I couldn’t believe that I had been reduced to this. All that hard work, the sufferings, the obstacles that I have overcome in my life. I was supposed to be the greatest. I was always sure of myself. Never doubting my actions, the choices I made. Everything was calculated.

People looked up to me. I inspired people to better themselves. Philanthropist, upright, model citizen. One has to exhaust his vocabulary just to try to define my awesomeness. But now…I didn’t even know what I am anymore.

What have I become?

Clip-clopping of hooves shook me from my daze of despair. A Mardukryon player went near me, covering the light of the sun. “Kinda annoying that there’s no more monsters ‘round here, right?” CragHeadDave said. “What are you doin’ there man?”

I looked up at him. “Um…” I looked back down at the video I was watching. Of course, he couldn't see what I had on my user interface.

Video: CAN YOU GET COMPLETELY NAKED IN NORNYR?

Then I looked back to him and said seriously, “I’m watching a documentary about World War II. There’s so much that we could learn in history. It’s a pity that most people don’t watch meaningful videos over the internet.” I shook my head in disappointment at the current generation. “They upload stupid videos like trying to get naked in this game.”

“Ah, well you can’t get naked in this game. JYE couldn’t allow children to play this game if that was so,” CragHeadDave. “I think some people got banned ‘cause of  tryin’ to simulate sex. I think the players were elves and they were trying to make it appear they were having sex. Prob was, they did it in the middle of a highly populated city. Tons of complaints, ‘specially from parents.”

“Yeah, I heard about that one. That was when the game was just starting right? Tsk. Tsk. These people.”

“It’s stated in the terms of services that you shouldn’t do shit like that, man.”

I jerked my head back. “You read the TOS?” What kind of rare animal are you, CragHeadDave? I had a heightened sense of respect for him after learning that he did such a responsible act. The TOS of Nornyr Online was very long. Even I didn’t read it when I started to play. I only read it when I was bored guarding my plants during one quest. Very responsible of me, I know.

“Got to be careful about stuff we sign up for,” he said seriously. “Hey, the Pathfinders are back.”

Pathfinders, both players and NPCs, set out to track the beasts we were supposed to kill. These beasts provided highly nutritious meat and their bones made for sturdy utensils and furniture. They have some sort of energy that made anyone who ate them healthier. Which wasn’t a surprise because, according to the NPCs, they were hybrid offspring of the Lord Mirdabon and some other creature it fucked.

Don’t ask me how sex works here.

We gathered together to chase the beast. The Healers buffed our speed and we caught up with their herd in no time. The harvesting part of the Hunt was quickly finished because of the number of people that joined this time. Normally, according to veteran players, they could barely finish harvesting all the plants in a Hunt before the Lord Mirdabons went out of their lairs and walked all over the mountain again, making it dangerous to harvest the plants in their paths. 

This time, because of our number, the NPCs chose to split themselves and go to different harvest sites. Even the veteran players were surprised because the NPCs haven’t done this before in previous Hunts. They would stick to one route and that was it. Effectively, there were several mini-Hunts comprising the larger Hunt this time around. 

The beasts appeared to be herbivores because they were eating trees, as in whole trees. We passed through a decimated forest to get to them.

“Woah, fucking mammoths,” I said. I used the word fucking as an expression. There were no actual mammoths fucking each other, although that would be cool to see as well.

There were about a dozen of the monsters in the herd. Like I said, they looked like mammoths. They had trunks which they used to yank out trees to shove to their mouths. Their fur was gray and the very large ones, males I assumed, had silver hair down their back, like male gorillas. Wicked tusks curved into the sky. Sparks flew from their tusks. What the hell? Electric element?

“Fulmenerian Behemoth,” I said, reading their name. Fulmen meant lightning, right? Or thunderbolt? I learned some Latin during law school because latin terms were used in discussions.

An NPC said, “We will take down this entire herd. Their meat will keep our village well fed for a few months. This is an opportunity that we can’t miss.”

All of the players looked at one another. There were about a couple of dozen players present plus NPCs. Other players were in other teams all over the mountain, or maybe they were asleep, the important thing was there were so few of us here.

The mammoths were all level thirty plus. The biggest of them all, the boss of the herd, was level forty. This was going to be a hard fight. We should be careful. There was a high chance of someone dying if we went up against.

“Are we sure about this?” Raphael54nt1said.

My most favorite customer was with us. He caught up to our group after most of his group logged off to sleep or do something in their real lives. So, who was left tending their stall? The girl? Reid, I think, was her name. I swear I will do everything in my power to keep you alive, I promised inside my head. He was level twenty-six, so he was way stronger than me, but he still bought the consumables that I sold. I was the one supplying him during this Hunt.   

Our leader wasn’t ChilliMaster because he already logged off. This time, we were headed by the great Megiddo. Half of his team had left so he merged his team with what was left of ChilliMaster's team.

Megiddo. What an interesting choice of name. The place of Armageddon? I knew that there were some people who believed that. 

"Let's go for it," a player said.

"Might as well," another one piped in. 

Megiddo scratched his horn as he assessed the situation. He said, “They’re right there in front of us. It’s a waste if we don’t complete this. But I understand that you’re worried about the strength of those monsters.”

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CragHeadDave said, “I’m sure we’re faster than those guys. We can kite them. We have enough disables here. I’m sure we can lock them down and slowly chip away at them.”

His girlfriend, CragHeadBabe said “These furry elephants are dead. What are you all afraid of? If none of us is a total noob we can all survive.”

“Can we split them up?”

“I don’t think so. They’ll all probably follow the boss elephant,” I said.

“Yeah. This is going to be hard because they’re all tanks and they won’t split up. Do we want an open field to fight?” 

Megiddo said, “Not an open field. If they all bunched up together and stampeded anyone in their path, we’re dead. We’re going to drag them deep into the forest. Although the trees will give us a problem coordinating with each other they would slow down the Behemoths and maybe spread them out.”

“We could put traps here,” Santi said. “Some of them will be slowed down by the traps and that would break up their herd a bit. I doubt any of us have traps that could stop them for more than a few seconds but we could slow down parts of the herd so that they won’t come to us all at once. I'm sure traps won't work on the boss guy. The boss will always be in front, in that case, since the rest will be held back by traps and status effects.” 

“Let’s use your suggestion,” Megiddo said. “Lots of traps here where the forest starts to get thicker. The boss Behemoth will run right past them and destroy them but the mobs will get snagged by the traps. Once they're in the forest, Pathfinders will pepper the mob with various disables. The boss will pull ahead more and more. That will give us breathing space to kill it. I'll be the one to face the boss. Everyone else specialized in damage will go with me to kill the boss."

"We'll go for the boss first?"

"How about killing the mobs first?"

"That would take too much time. We can single out the boss from the mob. Kill it and the rest will be easy pickings."

Santi said, "Looks like the boss has tons of auras. Those magic circles by its feet." All of us turned to look at the mammoths in the distance. The boss did have some magical light show going on at his feet. He was probably buffing all the other monsters. "Let's just kill the boss first."

"We don't know much about what they do." 

Megiddo said. "Pathfinders will go first. Then we will be able to see what they're capable of." He pointed to a place in between us and the elephants. "Put some traps near those half-eaten trees so that we could already start to break apart their group before they reach the main group of traps which we will place here. It will also provide us some time to think about our plans if something weird comes up. Oh. And another group of traps deep in the forest.” Megiddo shared his mini-map with us. “Here, this will be our fall back point. Traps there.”

The Pathfinders began to lay down traps in our current location. Weirdly, the NPC Pathfinders followed what the players were doing.

Megiddo said to the remaining players, “We’ll designate roles so that we’ll not get our hooves tangled together. Who here is confident of being able to take a hit from one of those guys?” he asked, jerking his thumb towards the direction of the Fulmenerian Behemoths. “Don’t worry about the large one. Like I said, I'll be facing him. But others need to draw the aggro of the other Behemoths. 

Several players stepped forward. I also stepped forward as well. I was the only one below level twenty who volunteered. 

“Are you sure?” Megiddo asked me. He had obvious reasons to doubt my capability of surviving. “We’ll be using potions that maintains aggro on you so that the monsters wouldn’t chase others."

“Yep,” I said enthusiastically. “I am confident that I can survive getting chased by one, maybe two even."

Most of the group weren't prepared to believe me given my low level. Fortunately, there were a couple of Foragers that fought with me against the Ice Troll earlier. They explained that I was able to stand up to the Troll even in the middle of flames and poison as long as there was decent support. Finally, Megiddo relented. One of the Foragers who were capable of brewing the potion that increased aggro gave me some. 

Most of the Pathfinders set off, jumping over fallen trees and holes in the ground left by uprooted trees. The others went deeper into the forest to build traps for the place that we were going to retreat to in case something really bad happened. As the vanguard neared the mammoths, they left all kinds of traps along the way. They were the fastest of us and they have some sort of phasing skill which they could use in an emergency, allowing them to ignore terrain and just run straight for a few seconds.

They let loose a rain of spears. Multiple status effects were cast on the elephants hit by the spears. The boss, as we rightly guessed, wasn't easily affected by status effects. The elephants trumpeted then faced the Pathfinders. Their tusks glowed. Suddenly, thunderbolts zapped out of the tusks. Some of us gasped in surprise. The Pathfinders were able to evade the attacks with their quick reactions.

"What the fuck."

"Those are some wizard elephants."

"Ranged magic," Megiddo said. "That's rare in this mountain."

The Pathfinders started to retreat as lightning blasted the ground around them. They quickly got out of the way, making sure that they were leading the monster herd towards the traps. The elephants weren't done with surprising us.

"Holy Shit," CragHeadDave said.

"Holy Shit indeed," said CragHeadBabe.

I said, "What the hell. They're all buffing the boss monster."

"Dammit," Megiddo said.

As the mammoths trumpeted, their boss was zapped by lightning from the skies. They were giving the boss monster all kinds of lightning buffs.

"This is bad."

"Agreed."

"Looks like the plan of taking out the boss first is down the drain. It's obvious we need to kill the mobs first."

"What do we do? They're getting nearer," a player asked. The boss elephant barreled through the traps, setting them off and then destroying them. Some of the herd also got trapped but only for a few seconds. They started to spread out a little because of the traps but they were running faster towards us as they chased the Pathfinders. 

Before Megiddo could speak, I said, "Let's split up." They all looked at me in surprise. "We can split up even if the Behemoth herd won't. Megiddo and all the really tanky guys stick with the boss monster. Healers and Smiths will support you, of course. The rest, and the heavy hitters stay back until the boss monster gets inside the forest. Then we will pounce on the back of the herd. Their lines will be stretched because of all the traps."

"Yes, yes," Megiddo said, nodding his head while deep in thought. "There's no more time. We'll go with that plan." He pointed to the people who will go with him while he directed the rest to come with me. He also messaged the Pathfinders about the change of plans. 

Our smaller group veered to the left so that the herd wouldn't chase after us. I also suggested that we take the NPCs with us because it was safer that way. Megiddo and the rest waited for the Pathfinders to join them before running deeper into the forest. A few Pathfinders broke off from the main group to join us. 

That Megiddo is good. He probably played with some of the players in our group but he had no way of knowing what each one was capable of. Yet, he was able to quickly group us together just by looking at our gear. He has mastered most of the Mardukryon gear and their effects, along with the probable builds of people who used certain gears. This was probably the reason why he was the top Mardukryon player. 

We waited until the Fulmenerian Behemoths were on top of the next batch of traps. The boss didn't' even stop. It destroyed the trees, smashing them away with his trunk. Some of the mobs got caught in the trap but after they got out they quickly tried to rejoin their boss. There were three stragglers who were left behind. In a few seconds, they were going to break free of the traps and rejoin their herd running ahead of them.

"Let's go!" I said as I charged forward.