"," Henry repeated to the galloping donkey.

But, still, nothing happened.

The creature's non-compliance confused him. The donkey could use the ability for sure - he'd spammed it while moving through The Slums earlier.

Maybe the beast had gotten too cocky.

“," he ordered more sternly.

For the donkey, beads of nervous sweat joined those beading down its fur. For some reason, it found itself unable to fulfil the command that'd once come so naturally.

"!"

The donkey, hearing frustration infiltrating Henry's voice, began to panic.

How many times had it experienced the painful price of failure? It must succeed! Fixing all its donkey willpower on the task, it recalled its days of dashing down The Slum's narrow, winding streets, and it tried to return.

Suddenly, the donkey felt something shatter in its legs, which began to fill with heat.

At once, the donkey, , ripped across the field, moving so fast that the wind being dragged behind it caused the clothes of noobs they passed to flutter.

Henry, confused by the hesitancy, used a Merchant spell, , a stream of translucent coins channelling from his legs into the donkey, which sped up further.

Due to stacking game buffs, the donkey galloped at a whopping 70.7 kilometres per hour (43.9 mph). Its maximum natural speed was 35 km/h (21.7) and boosted this by 50% to 52.5 km/h (32.6 mph). The final boost from the Merchant's , which increased the speed of player-controlled vehicles, ships, and mounts, gave a bonus, at the Tier 4-2 Henry'd levelled it to, of 34.6%.

Math aside, the critical point was that the donkey could outsprint a Grey Wolf, which topped out at 55 km/h (34.2 mph). Now, Henry could harass the furry monsters from afar without ever putting himself at risk.

Better yet, the movement bonus of didn't trigger Sentience; without this exception, the Merchant class would be unplayable, as they'd generate intelligent beast hordes wherever they travelled.

With this last member on the team, it was pretty much good game on the wolf collecting quest.

"Easy," said Henry, the donkey zipping through the field at the speed of a pre-self-driving car. "Good work, Donkey Broski."

Who would ever suspect that such a short, decrepit animal could become a vehicle for destruction?

Th-cuh. Th-cuh.

Henry's bowstring continued pinging away.

Everywhere they passed, arrows rained on the boars, making them fall one after another, never to rise again.

The two could have made for a domineering sight if the rider wasn't wearing a monkey mask and the mount wasn't a stubby-legged donkey.

Henry and the suspicious donkey rode back to the others, waiting for the action to begin.

Dan amongst the noobs grinned and raised a thumb, looking like a hero in the last frame of an action film. "That was awesome, Big Bro! You, too, Donkey Bro!"

The other meatheads were impressed, too.

"Yep," Henry replied.

He wouldn't refute them. Admiration was useful for building obedience.

"Here," The Battleaxe Meathead handed Henry several potions.

Apparently, The Slum Empire had gifted these to groups for their reserve players to use in emergencies. In the plans, this was the position Henry would be fulfilling, sort of.

Around them were hundreds of noobs awaiting the order to sally forth, their hearts racing with pre-battle nerves, their spirits high on the challenge ahead. In contrast, a mounted company of high-level Villagers, aware of this wolf stuff being a sham, were gossiping while stuffing their faces with leftovers from the party. The only sober Villager was the Beast Tamer running the operation, who had a pair of binoculars pointed to the plains, his Sabretooth guarding his back.

Henry, unable to see much with the diminished night visibility and dust, pulled out his own binoculars.

In the distance, about 2800 ravenous wolves were passing through fleeing herds of boars, demolishing them like a shovel dragged over a trail of ants. Prowling among the giant pack were 8 wolves with rose-pink eyes.

On the outskirts of the slaughter, several dark figures could be spotted hiding behind uprooted trees or lying flat behind mounds of dirt. These were Cutthroats.

From the adjacent Grey Wolf Forest, there were no apparent stirrings, aside from the orderly movement of wolves dragging dead boars into the dark of the understory.

The Beast Tamer addressed the group. "We're beginning. Prepare yourselves."

A wave of silence propagated through the hundreds gathered. In the eerie quiet that followed, one could make out the nervous pants of noobs and the squeals of boars carried on the wind.

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Henry watched the dark figures bringing out one-handed swords while using their free hands to form shapes that sucked black ropes of shadow from the air.

A few seconds later, they turned invisible in sync. Their movements forward left no footsteps in the soil.

The packs of Grey Wolves continued devouring the boars, their sensitive canid noses not sniffing a whiff of the coming danger.

The Cutthroat stealth ability, , removed all signs of one’s presence beyond a certain range. This detection range was determined by a comparison between the Cutthroat's Technique stat and that of the target. With the relatively low level and therefore stats of the wolves, they would not detect the Cutthroats until the latter were close enough to plant kisses on their muzzles.

Henry focused his view on one of the Sentient wolf-leaders. Its underlings having brought a squealing boar down, the leader was chewing through the layers of fat of the boar's neck.

Suddenly, the wolf and the boar were enveloped in a pitch-black cloud.

, a Tier-0 Cutthroat ability.

This smoke cloud was one of eight hitting at the same instant - one for each leader.

From outside of the clouds, the underlings, unable to smell what was going on inside, were howling in distress.

Their calls summoned the attention of their kin, who stopped chasing boars and ran over to help.

Nine seconds later, the smoke clouds dispersed.

In the spot which Henry'd been observing, a boar and a wolf lay together, blood cascading from both their lifeless throats.

Lying across the field, some of the other leaders were missing their heads, some seemed to be napping, their killers having finished them by putting clean holes through their brains before stealthing away.

Their leaders dead, the remaining wolves raised their heads to the moons and howled.

As the last of the boars escaped the wolves and the dust began to settle, the rest of the trainees could finally make out what was happening. At the same time, they were struck by a chorus of spine-shivering howls expressing unmitigated, unguarded lament.

The next moment, twenty-one black figures blinked into existence, having arranged themselves, with about 30 metres between them, in a box that surrounded the grieving pack.

Those luckless wolves close to the Cutthroats were lassoed by ropes of shadow, dragged back, and chopped down.

Those outside the box suppressed their sorrows and fled for the forest.

The most notable reaction, though, came from the wolves inside the box. Their hair was raised, their bodies lowered, and their teeth bared in postures of threat. But as the first of them dashed forward to take revenge on the Cutthroats, they yelped, and all their former will to fight was replaced by abject terror; turning tail, they fled back to the centre of the boxed enclosure, where they could only bark and howl in frustration.

All wolves that tried their luck were repelled in the same way.

Here, the Grey Wolves were not being held back by an ability. The Cutthroats were exploiting the terror that all monsters had for entities far beyond their level, and which made them avoid them at all cost. This fear could be overcome in the Sentient state, but the wolves would first have to reach the 15-metre range to trigger Bloodlust - which they couldn't force themselves to do.

By exploiting this mechanic, The Empire's Cutthroats had trapped the wolves for the noobs to slaughter.

The Beast Tamer coordinating the trap raised an open hand. "Trainees, hold your positions. Crimson Lions, sally forth!"

The Villagers spurred their mounts into action.

While the trainees were expecting to charge into the fray like King Leon earlier, what happened, in reality, was that the Villagers stopped after a couple hundred metres. At a point between the trapped wolves and the forest, lining themselves to form a barrier, they whipped out their party foods and continued their gossip.

The noobs did a double-take.

Meanwhile, Henry and the Beast Tamer were breathing sighs of relief.

"Stupendous," said the Beast Tamer to the trainees. "Let's head out there in a relaxed, orderly fashion, and we'll move on to the next phase."

The group moved forward, all the built-up tension destroyed, the noobs seeming to transform from a ragtag army of savages to a bunch of, mostly, teens in cosplay.

Where, the noobs wondered, was the promised struggle of life and death?

As they began marching out at the Beast Tamer's orders, their reactions were mixed. Some nervous trainees were relieved. Some hyped ones, unable to shed their vigour, contemplated charging on their own.

Handsome Dan approached Donkey Bro and Henry, tugging on the latter's knee.

"Big Bro, isn't it disappointing?"

Henry shook his head. "Nope. That's exactly how you want it to go. It's perfect."

"Oh?"

"Quick, zero casualties, and no room left for the enemy to respond - later, you'll appreciate the victories that play out so uneventfully."

Noobs always wanted to run in swords-a-slashing regardless of the odds. This recklessness would be curtailed sometime after they befriended an NPC and their poor decision making caused their companions to be deleted from the server. With NPCs being fairly realistic, players grew attached to them and losing them felt somewhat traumatising - not quite a parent dying, but around the level of a beloved family pet.

Handsome Dan had pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, his thoughtful features carrying the stern masculinity of a Grecian statue. "I don't get it."

Henry didn't expect him to. "Wait a couple of weeks. You'll get it by then. Or you won't."

Awoo!

Awoo!

Awoo!

The forest along whose borders the group were passing suddenly rang with a blood-curdling chorus of thousands of threatening howls.

Handsome Dan and the other noobs brandished their weapons. In the darkness of the trees, they could make out hundreds of pairs of floating rose-pink eyes.

But soon enough, the howling stopped of its own, none of those inside the shadows' shelter emerging to attack. The wolves, having determined they couldn't bypass the gossiping villagers to help their trapped kin, accepted their loss. The glowing eyes blinked out, and the forest's edge returned to its darkness.

The noobs, hit with another anti-climax, lowered their weapons in frustration.

Henry, watching the departure of wolves and the invisible presence coordinating them, felt—as strange as it might be to say after the morning of annoyances—as though a part of himself were leaving, too, the part of a person who clashes with such monsters.

Perhaps, then, he would be able to finish this tutorial without further incident.

"Perfect." In a small gesture, not wanting to commit prematurely, he raised two fingers holding the donkey's reins and wiggled them in farewell. "Bye."

With that skirmish over before it began, the Beast Tamer had the trainees gather on the edge of the trapped wolves, the thousands of boxed-in monsters continuing to howl for help, to snarl at the wicked players. There, the Beast Tamer explained the next step. Teams would spread around the perimeter and coordinate with the Cutthroats, who would use their invisibility whenever the noobs wanted to pull a pack to let some slip through. Before beginning, he asked for a group to volunteer and demonstrate the pulling procedure, preferably a player rerolling their character.

Beside Henry, Dan grew excited. “Should we do it, Big Bro?”

"Sure."

Henry was impatient to get this over with.

Their group's tactic leaking wouldn't cause an issue. The other noobs would merely hamper themselves if they copied, leaving more wolves for him.

"Let's earn our keep, Donkey Bro." Henry whipped out his bow and had the donkey trot to the front of the noobs.

He fired five arrows into the distance, away from both themselves and the wolves, each shot landing in the open ground. Dan and the other meatheads, following his prior instructions, positioned themselves alongside the arrows by the order he'd designed.