Hazel fired a mana bolt at a Dire Wolf charging right at her. The bolt pierced its skull in an instant, causing the beast to collapse on the ground. Moments later, its body shattered into purple fragments and dispersed into the air.
The novice mage lowered her staff while sharply exhaling. “And that’s Dire Wolf number ten.” She paused before leaning her head to the side with a confused expression. “Or was it eleven? Probably not all that important anyway.” She declared with a shrug.
After completing her Fox Hole shelter, Hazel resumed her hunting/XP farming. Just because she made a place to rest didn’t mean she could stay like that. She was trapped in a dangerous dungeon, and it needed to be treated as such.
That and the fact that Hazel needed to farm as much as she could level up more. She was currently level twelve, so reaching level thirteen was going to be a little harder. The more levels you obtain, the harder it will become to get to the next level. This was because the requirements to achieve the level up are much harsher as you gain more levels.
To level up, you need to receive Experience Points or EXP. And to obtain EXP, you need to kill monsters. The stronger the monster was, in this case, how high their level was, the more Experience a player would receive when killing them.
So, in conclusion, if Hazel wanted to level up faster, she was given two options. Either hunt stronger monsters to level up quicker or hunt as many of them, no matter their levels, to obtain as much EXP as possible.
So far, Hazel has been forced to take the latter option.
Every monster she had hunted and killed so far was barely past level five or six. Hell, a good majority of them were below those. The dire wolf she just killed was level five while the goblin she ended previously was level three.
To make matters more annoying, she had only encountered one monster at a time, instead of a large group of them like with the Dire Wolf pack. While Hazel was hesitant to battle a small militia of monsters, she was desperate to earn more EXP.
She knew that if she couldn’t find stronger monsters to kill, then the best way to achieve the latter choice was to hunt the low-level monsters as a group. That way, their numbers would make up for their low EXP.
But that plan wasn’t working so well at the moment. And that was beginning to irk Hazel just a bit…
“Damn it!” She swore, howling at the sky. “Where the hell are all these monsters?!”
Okay, it was doing more than just simply irking her.
“Maybe I need to move to a different section of the forest…” The mage pondered with a groan. “I’m still pretty close to my base, so maybe moving further out will change things.”
The forest island was quite large. She didn’t know how big this place was, but she theorized that it could be several hundred or thousand acres large. This was nothing more than an estimate, so she could be very wrong about this.
Putting that thought aside, Hazel decided to move a little further away from her base to see if this was the problem. Of course, she couldn’t risk the possibility of getting lost and came up with a way to find her way back.
By blowing out a large chunk of a tree with a mana bolt. While it was a brutish method, it worked nonetheless, and that was all Hazel really cared about right now. However, this did pose a problem regarding her mana reserve.
She couldn’t just spam her Mana Bolt spell at every tree she saw. If she ran out while doing this and got attacked, her life was forfeit. And to Hazel, that would be a very stupid way to die in her eyes.
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So, to conserve her mana, Hazel decided to blow a hole in a tree every so often. Since her Wisdom stat was high enough, she should be able to recover her mana a lot faster than before.
So, Hazel ventured out further into the forest, desperate to find more monsters to kill. She struggled to maneuver around the rough and uneven ground. Everywhere she stepped, there was either a large rock, a tree root protruding from the dirt, or even large craters or crevices carving out pieces of the forest ground.
She had to walk over all of them and would occasionally trip over them by accident. Thankfully, she’d catch herself with her staff before completely collapsing on the ground.
“Even with my endurance stat being at twenty, traversing through this damn forest turned out to be a lot more difficult than I thought.”
Hazel wasn’t necessarily the most athletic, but she was by no means weak or out of shape. And yet, even with her high endurance stat, she could feel a small hint of fatigue weighing down on her. And it only got stronger as she continued her trek through this forest.
It’s likely because she wasn’t used to walking around in a forest. Considering how many inclines, declines, and various things protruding from the ground, walking around proved to be a bit more challenging.
Of course that wasn’t going to stop Hazel. She had been through the worst when she was surrounded by a horde of Fractured humans. Hiking through a forest was practically a cakewalk compared to that.
After trekking for a little bit, Hazel stopped near a tree. Instead of blowing a hole in it, she simply leaned against the bark with her arm.
“This place is a lot bigger than I thought,” The mage huffed. “I don’t think I was even this tired when I was roaming around the town. Then again, it had concrete roads and sidewalks. Not jutted dirt ground that threatens to trip me every five minutes.” She let out a heavy groan while scratching her head. “How did people even convert a place like this into a town or city?”
Despite the difficulty, Hazel pushed through. Taking a deep breath, she moved away from the tree she leaned on and kept moving.
As she continued her journey, the mage strained her senses, staying cautious of her surroundings. Surprisingly enough, the forest was eerily quiet aside from the rustling leaves. Hazel didn’t even hear any chirping insects or birds.
Then again, seeing either would be surprising considering the state of the dungeon. Practically every being that used to reside in this world was corrupted into Fractured monsters. If Hazel saw either creature, it would likely be Fractured as well. Just like everything else in this place.
Walking a little further, Hazel’s ears perked up as she heard something. The sound of roaring and metal clanging against metal. Judging from the inhuman roars, the mage assumed that Fractured monsters were fighting one another.
However, as she continued to hear the noise, something caught her attention. It was a scream. Not a monstrous scream from a monster but…a human-like scream. Not only that, but it sounded like it was coming…from a woman!
“Is it another player?!” Hazel muttered, barely hiding her anticipation at her discovery.
Hazel had been roaming around this dungeon for days without any human contact. Her only source of communication was with the Fractured humans back in the Town Island. If you could call it that since all they could utter were groans or snarls.
But what Hazel heard just now was definitely a scream from a human-like person. And this person was a woman, at that.
Which could only mean one thing; the source of that noise had to have come from a player. And Hazel was determined to find them.
Shifting into a sprint, Hazel followed the sound of battle. She ignored the visible roots and stones all over the ground and maintained course. Her clumsy movements were completely erased as if she was possessed.
The trees and bushes blurred past her as the sound from monsters and the mystery player got closer. It was only until Hazel caught glimpses of figures ahead of her that her excitement and curiosity reached their peak.
Stopping behind one of the trees, the novice mage peered ahead to get a closer look at whatever was happening. And what she saw surprised her.
There were several hulking, purple and green-skinned monsters attacking one lone individual. A person.
She bore no visible purple cracks on her body like the rest of the Fractured, which meant she wasn’t from this dungeon. She was another player like Hazel.
However, her appearance wasn’t what Hazel expected. The woman player had gray skin and long silver hair neatly tied into a ponytail. In her hands was a bow and arrow, which would mean she possessed the Ranger class.
But aside from the gray skin, there was something else that caught Hazel’s attention. And that was the player’s ears. Instead of being rounded like normal ears, hers were pointed almost like a dagger.
And it was when Hazel spotted the pointed ears that she realized who this player was. And the realization floored her immediately.
“An…Elf?”
At this very moment, Hazel had not only encountered her first player…but also a Resident of the other world that was being merged with hers.