For the next couple of hours, the complete ingame-night and well into the next day, I did quests around the fields of Grey Quarry, hunting various more or less cute furry critters, the martens were my favourites and completing a couple of fetch-and-carry tasks that a reasonably intelligent potato could have managed. But it was well worth it, netting me some seven-thousand experience, enough to make me level twice, bringing me to level six.I didn't change my attribute-distribution much, just diverting a point of strength into dexterity, just to keep things a little more even. At the end of the day, I wanted to play a brawling brute and that was what I did. Hit things, hard.

And those were only the normal experience-points, all my abilities gained some points as well, albeit relatively slowly. But that might be because I had been fighting enemies below my level.

In addition to the experience, I also got a few more pieces of gear, gloves, a belt to mount my belt-buckle on, boots, nothing that truly fit with my current gear but it looked reasonably fine, a little cobbled together but the chest and leg-armour I had gotten here were just worse than my plundered human armour and I wasn’t willing to rate fashion higher than efficiency just yet.

To further my ability to hit things hard, I went to Kangur, the Barbarian trainer, and was quite happy to see that I was able to learn new skills upon reaching level five. One was skill was called Call to Battle, allowing me to, well, call my allies to battle, temporarily mirroring the effect of my active rage-skill to them. Sadly, I had no allies to play with, at least at the moment. While I had seen a couple of other players, I seemed to have fallen into a bit of a gap, the players that had started at the same time as I did had already completed the quests I was doing and the players that had, likely due to real-life obligations, started later were on a lower level and would only slow me down.

But other than the currently slightly useless rage-skill, I also gained the skill to Charge, allowing me to quickly close the gap between me and my target, dealing increased damage with my first attack but also forcing me to move in a straight line. Sure, I could cancel it, if I was quick enough and I had a feeling that it might be the most important skill to master, if I wanted to play against other players.

To compliment the Charge, I learned the Class-Ability Athletics, another passive, just like the other abilities, this one increasing the effect of Strength and Endurance, while lowering stamina-consumption. The increase wasn’t massive, it was based on my attributes after all, but it was a start and would only grow as I levelled myself and the ability.

“Is there anything else that needs to be done?” I asked Kangur, as I had done after most quests I had completed, looking for follow-up quests or maybe the road forward.

“There is one task that needs to be done, but it is harder than all the previous ones. You see, wolves stalk the valley and the alpha of the pack is a particularly large and vicious one, it seems to take pride in ripping our livestock apart. But I doubt that you will be able to take down Old Grimclaw, at least not alone.” Kangur explained and another quest popped up.

New Group-Quest offered.

Hunt down the Grimclaw’s Wolfpack

Kangur, your Trainer in the Grey Quarry Valley, asked you to perform a final task, to hunt down the wolfpack that stalks the valley. You are tasked to slay twelve wolves and their Alpha, Old Grimclaw.

Rewards: EXP

A choice between: Wolftooth-Necklace, Wolfclaw-Ring or Wolf-Pelt Cloak

After accepting the quest, I considered things for a moment. The quest was marked as a group-quest so trying to complete it on my own would likely be met with failure and my death, so it would be best to look for someone else.

With a thought, I opened up the text-based regional chat, where all players in the same zone could talk to each other, regardless of distance.

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“Anyone else after Old Grimclaw?” I asked into the chat while starting towards the area that Kangur had marked on my map. There were a few posts in the chat, until I was whispered directly.

“You are looking for a party to kill Old Grimclaw?” the differently coloured text, sent by a player named Venja asked.

“Yes, I am. Level 6 Barbarian here, what about you?” I asked in response.

“Cool, I already have one more, level 5 Druid, in addition to myself, level 5 Monk.” came the answer and I smiled to myself, that seemed like a decent combination, certainly good enough to take down some first-level elite.

“Sounds like a plan, want to try it with three or look for more? Maybe do the twelve wolves first while looking before going for the Alpha?” I suggested and moment later, a party-invite appeared, which I instantly accepted.

“Greetings.” I spoke into the party-chat, which allowed us to talk without needing to type things out, regardless of distance.

Two voices greeted me, one sounding grumpy and male as I was used to, the other sounded female, making me grin a little. I had seen female dwarf-NPCs, they looked rather homely, painfully reminding me of my real-life figure, just even shorter than I was, making me wonder what the player had done with the race. I hadn’t taken the time to take a closer look at other players, but now, I would have a good chance.

At the edge of my vision, two additional sets of bars appeared, showing me how much health, mana and stamina my two new party-members had, while also displaying a small arrow, giving me a direction to them and a rough distance, indicated by the colour of the arrow. Both of them were further down the valley, in the direction of the small river, so I started walking into their direction. On my way, I had to smack down a few suicidally aggressive critters, but I welcomed the free experience they were delivering to me.

When I saw my teammates for the first time, they were fighting with a decently large wolf, on the other side of the stream. I considered just jumping into the water for a second, but looking at the swift flow and the steep, yet sandy bank on the other side, decided against it. But the monk looked like he had seen better days, her health at forty percent and the druid seemed to be focused on keeping him alive, using his healing.

With a smile, I took a few steps back, and, for the first time, activated the Charge-skill, targeting the wolf. The skill had no maximum range, it just took more stamina the further I charged and there was no extra benefit once I was at maximum speed. But I didn’t so much care about the actual gap-closing, what I was after was the fact that the skill sped me up and, from what I had seen, that speed translated into jumping-distance, so, with the etra distance to get up to speed, and a last-second activation of Fighting Rage for the extra strength, just in case that helped, I tried to jump over the stream.

I idly noticed the druid looking over, just as I was about to jump and heard a soft curse in over team-chat, yet, his avatar didn’t change expression at all, keeping the normal, sombre expression I had seen on dwarves. By that, I judged that I was dealing with a perph, someone playing using classical peripherals, most likely mouse and keyboard.

“Heal me, dammit!” the monk swore at our druid, who had been a little dumb-struck by the six feet of red-glowing, orcish rage-ball that was flying towards them and the monk had dropped below the half-health mark, which she didn’t like.

With a jolt, I felt my feet make contact with the river-bank and, as I pushed off to keep myself from stumbling, I felt it crumble away under me, forcing me to throw myself forward, almost out of control, but somehow, I kept my feet under me, falling forward while barely managing to take the next step.

I was too out-of-balance to get my spear into anything resembling attack-position, so I went with a different tactic, I simply rammed into the wolf, tackling it sideways and starting to tear at it, barehanded, even using my “Vicious Bite”-skill to add some extra damage. It tried to fight back and we turned into a snarling furball of claws, teeth and tusks, both of us trying to tear the other to shreds. I felt the small pricks of pain when it bit my arms and started shaking, to which I retaliated by using my own arm to push its head back, opening up its thorat, not to strike at it, my other arm was out of position, but to use my tusks to tear it out. It worked like a charm, adding a bleed-effect that dropped the wolf even further.

In addition to that, the druid started to throw heals my way, a warm feeling indicating the supportive spells, while the monk started hitting the wolf again, now that I certainly had its attention.

With two of us hitting it, the wolf quickly went down, giving me eighty experience, a little more than normal monsters in the area had given me before, and that was with three people attacking it.

Standing, I looked over to my two new companions, giving them my friendliest and cutest smile, while saying, “Greetings, let’s hunt some wolves.”