As usual my brave pair of pet-levellers swung into action just before breakfast, and it wasn't long before SirPerivale got the horse he is working on up to level 32. Peri was able to take a rest after (iced) coffee, though, as it was once again time for MistressDomina to head for Auzura-4's Prokion Temple.
After yesterday getting 405 skill points from a 50% skill exp boost over a slightly extended two hours, this time my first "test kill" showed that unfortunately the GMs had remembered to switch off that boost after the US "Happy Hour" last night, so I was able to use the 100% super skill pill and 15% skill pill stacked together, which gave me 281 skill points over the first hour, and 278 over the second hour - well I did have a rather brief phone call to deal with! That was another 559 skill points in the bank, along with 27.36% experience and 1608 pet points.
After lunch I had to do a little bit of moving items around, and made a new healer character just to carry some spare accessories and event items... I was surprised to find that the name LadyAuzura wasn't taken yet, but it is now! And then Ratel got in touch, asking me what the price was for Chaos Balls currently... I said that I'd sold a few for 1.65 million a little while ago, but that with the way the price of Chaos Smelting Stones has gone up recently, they may be worth more than that now.
It turned out that Ratel had bought one, and, while he'd not got a "CSS", what he had got in exchange for it was a Blessed Iris, giving double experience gain for three hours, and he was eager to use it in Egeha, hint hint.
So Rage logged in, and paid the 800,000 gold to take the teleporter to Egeha; she partied up with Ratel and MrChuckNorris, and used her Party Recall to bring them to Egeha with no further fee. Ratel politely handed over his 400,000 gold, and then Chuck and Ratel headed out in search of Bogles. I hadn't got any Blessed Irises on Chuck, but I did have some of the "lucky draw" Experience Boxes, and while the first one I opened just gave me a 1-hour 30% experience gain bonus, the second one did give a Blessed Iris, so Ratel and Chuck were able to both start the boosts within seconds of each other.
Generally, we stuck to the Bogles for our marathon session, with a few Dark Bogles thrown in. Of course when we happened to get a bit near the first mother Ape and the Baby Apes, Ratel wanted us to kill her... which took a while and a lot of health, and mana, pots, but we did manage it. A little later we moved past her (Ratel used a potion of haste, but that seemed to leave her a bit frisky and rather in the middle of the path, so I used a memory scroll as we'd previously added the Baby Ape location to our scrolls), and started an attempt to farm the Baby Apes.
The first one or two were okay, with Ratel's teleportation skill coming in handy, but the next one, well they are aggressive, and a second one came in on us while we were fighting a first one, and then a third one joined the fight - we both used the Recall that Rage had provided us with, and after that Ratel was content to stay with the Bogles. They may not give quite as much experience, but they are quicker to kill, not aggressive or protective, and there are plenty of them around.
We did have a number of visits from the Grand Gold Dragon, though; Ratel had a close call at least once when he clicked on it, but luckily he didn't have an attack initiated. Sadly, Aszune was offline (and rather unhappy later to know what she'd missed), and though Rage announced the visits on the DreamingRequiem guild channel, nobody else who was on was the right kind of level. The GGD did what Kamira used to do sometimes, after "Arriving" and hanging around for 14 minutes she'd vanish, only to "Arrive" again, seconds later, in the same location.
I was grumbling about this to Greengem593, who'd opened a Friends-type messenger window to see how I was getting on - and, on hearing that it had "Arrived" at our new location, told us she had a level 93 rogue, Kiramin, who used to kill the GGD, though she'd sold her armour. She quickly found her previous armour, joined the party, and took Recall to Rage, who was able as usual to just point out the dots of the other party members on the map.
Kiramin was a bit under-prepared, and Ratel bravely transferred some suitably large health potions to her during the battle. It went on so long that the horse buffs he had applied ran out, so he had to re-apply them. and I think that this, while entirely necessary, did jinx the possibility of good drops. The rogue's health did go extremely low at one stage, I was advising her to take Rage's Recall and regroup, but in the end she triumphed, killing the Cursed Weavers it spawned too, She was so happy to have managed this that she didn't mind the absence of drops; with any luck the Weavers dropped a little gold, anyway.
So, for the last half hour or so we didn't have to worry about great flapping gold wings overhead. Ratel managed to reach level 47, so is on the lookout for some new armour; both he and Chuck did get heaven stones, and we also picked up a number of Stars and Stripes, and some pieces of armour, mainly titan type, and almost all to Ratel, or so it seemed. By the time the Blessed Irises ran out, Chuck had added a total of 48.46%, along with 5 skill points and 1573 pet points. While he didn't level up, his drake did, and is now level 35.
After the slightly delayed food break, Rage made a trip out the the Forgotten Temple; there are supposed to be some armour items that only drop there, but I didn't get anything like that, just gold, a moonstone box, Stars, and Stripes. I added the location to Rage's scroll, in case the Aeria people do actually improve the skill experience there before Rage outgrows it - it isn't dangerous to get to, but it is a long way. There are some dangerous monsters in there; the level 65 and 67 spiders are passive but protective, while the level 68 Legendary Slayers are aggressive as well as being protective of the spiders, and have a long-range magic attack, Nova Break. The Curd Hadians (level 69) and Twin Hadians (71) are aggressive and protective, while the level 72 Jumping Devils are just aggressive - thankfully all three just have a short-range physical attack, but they hit pretty hard. I didn't tangle with the two oversize boss monsters, the level 73 Barren Eise and the level 75 Blood Terrain. The former has a short-range area of effect magical attack, while the latter goes for short-range physical, plus an area of effect debuff which slows down our attacks.
I'd reached the furthest part of the Temple, and was fighting a few spiders, and individual Jumping Devils, close to the Blood Terrain, when Ratel joined the party for the "solo party" boost, and I invited him to take Recall and come and have a look. Sadly, we were just too far back for him to be able to see the Blood Terrain, but he was suitably impressed by the cathedral-like room...and quickly made his excuses and left. He went off to fight the level 49 Elite Goblins... he needs to farm some skill points for the next lot of temple knight skills, so presumably won't be available for teaming with Chuck for a while. It depends how long it takes, I suppose he may end up teaming, as senior partner, with MistressDomina instead, once she has left Prokion Temple. I do still have plans for her to do some farming in Merac, riding her own red dragon, that idea has just been slightly delayed.
It wasn't long, however, before I got a call from Ratty to say that Kamira had arrived at his location, and he expected me, Rage, to come and kill her, since I was exactly the right level now. It was lucky I'd added the Forgotten Temple's entrance to my memory scroll, I was able, rather than fight my way through the length of the place, to return to Dratan City, teleport down to the entrance, and swiftly ride across to where Ratel was. He kindly loaned me some level 12 magical defence minerals, and put his defence buffs on me, then, once I'd got the horse buffs too, and moved some Great Healing Potions to the skill bar, I double-clicked on the mineral, and on an item drop booster, and attacked the raid boss.
Kamira fought back hard with her fiery magical attack of course, but thanks to the extra magical defence (Rage's is normally 114, along with 161 magical evasion, so an extra 150 makes quite a difference), plus Snare working a time or two, and using a few Great Healing Potions, at the end I was still standing, and Kamira wasn't. The level 35 Death Goddesses she spawns towards the end were no problem of course, and soon I was picking up the assorted drops. As I'd not had a Lucky Scroll to use, it wasn't surprising that there was no rare accessory, but there were the usual sorts of things a raid boss drops - 5 moonstones, 5 tool aids, scrolls of memorising, a medal of honor, 5 lucky scrolls, a crystal of experience (greater), a rather ordinary Hero's Necklace (physical fortitude 4, evasion 11), and a little gold.
So, Rage was now a Kamira-slayer. I paid Ratel for the three minerals, which he let me have at a suitably bargain price, and passed the crystal of experience (greater) over to him as well as a small "thank you" for his assistance and encouragement.
After that, well, LordElpus went out for a fairly brief bit of skill exp farming, and then it was time for SirPerivale to rejoin SirDarth down with the Berserkers in Merac. Darth's hatchling had become a drake now, and ended the day on level 17, while Peri was making good progress on level 32 of his current horse, reaching the halfway mark. We start the day with pet-levelling, and that's how we end, too, which brings our narrative to a satisfactory conclusion.
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