They came at us hard and fast. We barely had time to run to a large nearby tree to cover our flank when the Wolves hit. Luckily for us we all had potion buffs and
Gustav stood firm and took the first wave like a rock, however the wolves flowed around him and two of the wolves escaped aggro.
I deflected one of the wolves that jumped up with my sword, Denise grappled the other one, pinning it to the ground as Sarah stabbed at its eyes.
Gustav started walking forward with great swings with his mighty sword. He didn't hit any wolves as his slow moving attack was easily dodged, but he scattered the wolves enough so there was enough space for me to run up and give him a medicate.
The wolf I dodged came back at me, this time going low and targeting my feet. I rolled to the side and dodged it, but it quickly turn and bit down. -40!
Unlike the wolves of tutorial village it didn't stay long and jumped off, clearing my striking range before I could retaliate.
[Grey Wolf lvl 17 Killed!]
The girls finished their wolf and ran to help out Gustav. Gustav was surrounded and his health was being whittled away, although he had strong armor and I topped him off, he already lost a third of his health.
It looks like I had to deal with my wolf alone, but as we face each other, I realized that behind it, in the wolves, bushes were moving and blurry shapes were making their ways between they trees.
"Everyone Get Back!" I yelled, and we scrambled for the tree. We made it just in time as the second wave of wolves joined the first.
Twing Sarah has switched back to her bow. Although her accuracy was low, there was enough wolves that even a random shot hit.
There was no way we were going to survive this so I yelled out "Focus on one wolf! Let’s level up before we die! Kill them one by one!"
The wave of wolves charged at us, with an lvl 20 Alpha wolf leading the pack. I yelled at Gustav to Let the Alpha through and tried to hold the rest off.
As soon as the Alpha ran past Gustav he started spamming taunt and pushing the wolves back with his sword. “EnGuard!” Gustav shouted, using a Warrior skill that converts a portion of damage taken as SP damage. Gustav advanced forward towards certain death.
Denise tried to grapple the Alpha Wolf, but she was quickly shaken off. However it was delayed enough for us to get some good stabs in. I got a vicious blow in the back of the wolf's eye, and Sarah was able to get a hit in the eye.
The wolf howled and pain at bit at Sarah, but instead of dodging she let it bite her left arm, and used the opportunity to stab the other eye. Gritting her teeth she kept on stabbing and let her arm get ripped off. I medicated her while slashing with my sword.
The wolf tried to escape but I immediately used taunt, focusing only on the wolf. This time the wolf jumped at me. “Force Punch!” Denise shouted, using a fighter skill that would double the force applied. Denise hit the Alpha midair, the force deflecting it slightly, allowing me to shove my sword at its neck.
Unfortunately the wolf twisted its body midair and I hit the neck instead. Even worse two wolves slipped through Gustav, who only had a third of his health left at this point, and made towards us.
Denise put the Alpha wolf in a chokehold, however unable to attack back because I had aggro, the wolf could do nothing but thrash around.
The other two wolves viciously attacked Sarah, and soon she lost all her health and her status said ‘bleed out… 15 seconds’. But her sacrifice gave us the time we needed.
I switched to my Iron knife and with both hands I started stabbing the Alpha’s face, aiming for the eyes.
I saw Gustav finally lose all of his health and enter bleadout too. And even as Denise was attacked and enter bleedout she still kept her hold on the wolf’s neck. At right before the wolves got to me I saw the message we had been waiting for.
[Alpha Wolf lvl 20 killed]
[Leveled up to 13! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Vit]
[Leveled up to 14! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Vit]
[Leveled up to 15! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Vit]
[You have lost all your HP! You have entered bleedout mode]
[Death in 15 seconds…]
[You have died]
[Quest – Boar hunter failed]
---
Although we died and lost some XP and had to pay a quest failure fee, it was well worth it. Killing a monster 8 levels above us gave us so much XP, and level 15 was very important because it allowed us to get our second skill.
This time we also decided to train our weapon skills. There was no point in getting our class skill if people couldn’t hit their targets with them *cough* Sarah *cough*. In addition although Denise and I were good at hitting out targets, we lacked damage and it took us many hits to kill our targets. Gustav was going to train his crowd control skills, to better manage surviving multiple enemies.
---
Cleric Gregory was happy to see me, he was concerned because our party returned to his church very quickly through the ‘back door’. But upon seeing that I gained 4 levels so quickly he quickly took me aside and we discussed how being a fighting cleric worked.
Gregory was surprised to hear that we were able to kill an Alpha Wolf. He attributed it to the fact that we had so much damage output. In a normal party the tank would hold aggro, the healer would heal him and the mage would control the monsters to reduce damage and isolate some monsters for the DPS to attack.
Not only was there more damage because we had 3 DPS roles, having multiple DPS meant we could box in the monster we were focusing and not lose valuable downtime chasing the monster around. We could pin and burst down a target faster than my Medicate healing skill could cool down.
The major problem with this fighting technique was that I could only get off one or two healing spells before the battle was over. And since we had no dedicated crowd control, all party members would take a lot more damage and require more healing. Gregory’s solution was to use stronger abilities that cost more SP and have longer cooldowns.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
It may seem counter intuitive using skills with longer cooldowns, but if I only had the chance to use one or two healing skills in a fight, it would be best to make it count.
The next skill was also an AOE instant cast skill, but the cooldown was very long so it typically was used as a last resort.
[Class Skill Learned – Blast of Healing lvl 1]
[Heals 100 HP in a 10 yard AOE (4 targets max), Costs 200 SP, 10 minute cooldown]
The SP cost was staggering, but I had the raw stats needed to support it.
I was a little concerned about having so many skills being taken up by healing spells. But Gregory explained to me that class skills did not count towards the skill total.
However class skills were harder to level, in order to level them you needed Skill Crystals, rare items that could be found in dungeons. Skill Crystals allowed you to modify your class skill how you wanted, you could increase its effect, decrease the cost, you could even change its effect if you got a rare Skill Crystal.
Gregory mentioned that to the north of the town there was a monster cave where parties would train and search for Skill Crystals. He recommended that we check their next.
---
Next I went to the gym in the Warrior Trainer’s area. Denise let me in and I could see she was hard at work leveling physical combat. Countless clay figurines were broken, and when the NPCs would bring out fresh ones, she would attack them again.
My goal was to reach lvl 5 one handed combat and then convert the skill into swordsmanship. I found out how by paying the information brokers one of my credits. You needed to train one handed combat with hundreds of sword slashes.
The best way to do so would be to go to the equipment that looked like iron rods hanging from the ceiling. You then hit the rods with a sword, and when the rod flew back you had to dodge, block, or hit the rod back. The more rods you were able to deal with, the faster you would train.
Handling one was pretty easy, but the training speed was far too slow. Two was kindof tricky, the rods were attached at different lengths from the ceiling so they would swing at different speeds, so you couldn’t just juggle them in a simple rhythm. Three was pretty difficult but I got the hang of it. Four was out of my grasp, it was just too hard trying to keep track of everything.
So while training I started talking with Mr. Morrison. He was pretty interested in our adventures, I sold information about how Gustav leveled his Smithing without maxing craftsmanship or repair, and hey, Gustav never told me to keep it a secret, its fair game.
I asked Mr. Morrison about how XP worked in the game, I was wondering how we were able to get 3 levels by killing a monster 8 levels above us. Mr. Morrison speculated that the amount of XP you get decreases the higher level you are. If you got 300% XP by killing 300 monsters, the first 100 monsters would give you 1% xp each, and after you leveled, the next 200 monsters would only give you 0.5% xp each. But since we killed the alpha wolf in one shot, we got 300% XP in one giant go, giving us three levels as the XP was never reduced.
It made sense to me because I was able to exploit getting bonus XP when doing untrained crafting. It just simply meant that it was incredibly rewarding killing monsters well above your level. And since XP was split evenly among your party, having as few party members as possible was optimal.
Mr. Morrison also updated me on how everyone else was doing. Tim had officially become a warrior, he was also paired up with three other people, and they had a more traditional Mage, Warrior, Archer, and Cleric setup. My other classmates were a little slower, however a few of them were leveling crafting very fast. Jacob, one of my friends who sat next to me in math class, got really addicted to light armor making and sold a lot of secrets to the information brokers in exchange for materials.
I couldn’t wait for Jacob to reach the Land of Magic, hopefully he could upgrade my equipment for cheap.
Mr. Morrison himself was level 8 and so he would probably reach the Land of Magic by tonight.
---
[Skill Leveled - One Handed Combat lvl MAX]
[You can upgrade this skill to One Handed Blade, or Swordsmanship]
I chose Swordsmanship
[Skill Upgraded One Handed Combat becomes Swordsmanship lvl 1]
[+30 Damage with swords]
Although I lost my crafting bonus, now I was less restricted with what kind of weapons I could use. It was hard building up good power by only using one hand.
I didn’t have to wait long for everyone to finish. Sarah came out grinning, she pointed at a target and shot it dead on. She even showed two of her skills off. The first, which we never saw, was “Wind Arrow”, it fired a magic enhanced arrow that when it hit, lifted the enemy with a small amount of wind. The second was “Entangling Arrow” which would trip an enemy if you shot it at their feet. It looks like she picked some good control skills to make up for the lack of a mage.
Denise had “Skull Crusher” which was pretty self-explanatory, and Gustav picked up “Sweep”. “Sweep” would have your sword swing out in a wide arc, blowing all enemies around you back, essentially the skill form of what Gustav was doing earlier. But Sweet would also interrupt enemy movements, so monsters wouldn’t be able to slip through by dodging.
I told my party about the monster cave north of town. When I mentioned there would be Skill Crystals they immediately agreed and we set off.