After steamrolling the first two wolves with our newly expanded party, the two newcomers gave a more or less grunted greeting of Hello and we turned to make our way back up the slope, towards the area where the big, boss wolf was supposed to be. On our way, I learned a little more about the classes my teammates were playing, surprisingly, given his, in my opinion, incredibly stupid name, the templar was the one who readily explained his character to me.

It made me glad that I hadn’t chosen to go in that direction, apparently, directly after picking the class he had to choose which god he followed and depending on the choice, his skills changed to a degree. Supposedly, it was the same with Clerics and Priests, some skills were shared across the class, others were specialised, depending on the deity they worshipped. Dworf had chosen to worship Dimamor, the god of Smiths and Craftsmen and as such, he had gained the ability to strengthen his shield and armour, in addition to the normal templar-starting ability that allowed him to hurl a magical projectile shaped like their weapon at an enemy. It sounded quite good, especially as he seemed to be planning to go the tank-route.

Gareth just told me that he was able to mark enemies, allowing us to deal more damage to them but all in all, he was rather close-lipped about his other abilities. I could guess that he had some sort of stealth-skill that might have allowed him to reach Venja and me while we were hidden between the rocks, it would explain his earlier laughter, but otherwise, I had no idea.

Venja explained how Monks used skill-combinations to achieve greater effects, for example, one of her skills stacked up something called Tidal Forces and once she had gathered enough, she could unleash them into a riptide, stunning and knocking down the foe she targeted.

Lastly, Menja told me I had seen most of his current abilities, they were rather limited at this point. Apparently it would change quite a bit once he was level ten and got his sub-class but for now, he had two different heals, a single ranged attack-spell and a self-buff spell that turned his hands into claws.

With a combination of small-talk and slaughtered wolves we made our way up the hill, where Old Grimjaw waited for us. Seeing him, I was a little intimidated, the normal wolves were rather big, their backs roughly level with the heads of my dwarven companions, easily a meter and twenty from the ground, but their boss was even bigger, his back coming up to my chest, at a guess and from the distance, I would have called it a meter and a half. Luckily, I just would have to hit it, while Dworf would have to fend off its attacks.

After making sure that none of the wolves were walking close enough to interfere with the fight we were about to start, it was on. Dworf used his magical flying hammer to get the first hit while I took quite a bit of distance to have a nice run-up for my charge. Gareth had taken position next to Menja while Venja was between the two of them and Dworf.

After taking the flying hammer to the muzzle, the big boss wolf turned and, after a rather impressive howl, started running towards Dworf who was engaging it in turn. Timing it in such a way that I would get there just before the wolf made contact with him, I activated my Charge, trying to keep track of my steps so that I was able to use the last step to twist my body into the charge-attack, hopefully making the impact even stronger. I wanted to knock the wolf over to interrupt its own attack, so that Dworf wouldn’t get bowled over, which was my biggest fear. He relied on his footing and his massive shield to be effective and on the ground, he would lose a great deal of that strength.

I had to stutter my steps a little but my plan worked just like I had hoped it would, right before the wolf and Dworf clashed, Gareth shot the wolf, placing his mark on it. I took that as my signal to start raging and right after, I impacted with bone-jarring force. I had managed to get my lead-foot exactly into the right distance, allowing me to use it as a fulcrum, twisting my complete body-weight plus the momentum of my charge into that single strike, even adding Power Attack into the mix. The wolf had just left the ground, leaping at Dworf to bowl him over when my lance stabbed into its chest and I even noticed the message that told me I had landed a critical strike, to my great joy. It had been a risky attack, with chances to turn into a massive waste of stamina, but it had worked and the big, boss wolf was not happy about it. Despite its greatly increased health, compared to the other wolves in the area, I had taken twenty-three percent off it.

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Obviously, it didn’t take such an attack kindly, instantly turning to me and trying to turn me into a chew-toy, no matter what Dworf had to say about that. But I had my own tricks, a quick backstep brought me out of the immediate danger-zone, followed by quick stabs using the counter-skill to reduce the damage it could deal to me. Despite my frantic footwork and rapid counter-attacks to ward of its far too large jaw, I was tempted to ask if I should call it Grandmother, its teeth were that big, I took more damage than I was comfortable with. I had done the cardinal sin of a damage-dealer, I had managed to get the attention of the boss. Because, despite our low-level, that was what the fight felt like, a boss-fight. Just that we barely had the skills for it, whether the skills of our character or the skills of us, as players, controlling those characters. Maybe the Developers had deliberately ratcheted the difficulty of the quest up to eleven, to show players what to expect.

Luckily, after my health had been dropped to some seventy percent, despite getting a heal from Menja, Dworf pointed his hammer at the wolf, a gesture similar to the one he used to toss the glowing hammer-projectile and shouted, “Face me, foul fiend!”

A reddish glow sprung from his hammer and the wolf instantly turned, its eyes mirroring the glow for a moment, focusing its attacks on Dworf. I held back, knowing that the skill Dworf had likely just a limited effect and if I overdid it, the wolf would just turn back to me and attack me again.

So, I deactivated my rage to save mana and used simple attacks to add damage to the encounter. I had done quite a bit of damage already, so I felt quite complacent to let Venja and Gareth deal their damage, that way I was on the safe side.

Sadly, the boss had other plans and once we had reduced it to fifty percent, it gave off a loud, piercing howl, just like it had in the beginning, only this time, it was answered by two howls coming from nearby. Looking around, I noticed two new wolves joining the fray, one coming from far behind us, the other from the other direction.

“I take the one in the front, you take the one in the back!” Dworf ordered, taking a step back to throw his hammer at the wolf on the far side. But I could agree with his orders, so I turned to the wolf that was about to pounce on either Gareth or Menja and started running. I needed to charge in order to make it, so I activated the skill, quickly gaining speed, managing to get there before the wolf’s pounce hit Menja. Gareth on the other hand had managed to distance himself, joining Venja in focusing down the other freshly joined wolf.

I had to smile when my charge hit, the wolf had comparatively low health, a lot lower than the other wolves around, so I had depleted over half its health with the first attack. Knowing that I needed to quickly deal with the add, I pressed my attack, ignoring the damage I was taking in turn. And it worked, I would easily kill it long before it would come close to kill me, without getting a single heal.

“Shit, don’t kill the adds!” Menja called out, right before I could give the wolf the killing blow, causing me to fumble, missing my attack.

“What?!” I asked in return, dodging back, not wanting to kill the wolf before knowing what was going on.

“The boss got a massive damage-buff when the other wolf died, it’ll kill us all if it stacks up!” Menja shouted, causing me to cringe a little. So, it wasn’t a fight in which you killed the adds, it was a fight to quickly kill the boss before the adds took too much of a toll on your group.

With a swift kick, I disengaged from the wolf, using the last of my stamina to start a charge, back to the boss-wolf. The charge would give me enough speed to get there without taking too much damage and once there, I could do my part in taking the boss down.

The others had done their part while I had been attacking the other wolf, further reducing the boss to thirty-five hitpoints and my second charge-attack took another ten percent, bringing it down to twenty-five.

Without any stamina left, my character was a little slow and sluggish, but the others still had some resources left, putting the hurt on the boss. Menja tossed a heal my way, when the smaller wolf arrived and I focused on dodging and keeping myself alive. I had done my part in the boss-fight and more.

A quick glance to Menja told me that he had about twenty percent mana left, allowing me to breathe easier, knowing that it would be enough. As I danced away from the wolf, there was another, loud howl but this one was suddenly cut off and moments later, Venja and Dworf joined me to smash the small wolf into the ground.

The boss was dead on the ground, slain by my party while I kept the other wolf off them.