My first instinct when I saw Lily was to hide my face, but I figured due to my in game character only vaguely resembling me, it would be much safer to act normal rather than attempt to hide. I thus stood around, trying my best to look like your average monster hunter. The group she was with soon approached us, and Lily took the lead in starting a conversation.

    “I see we’re not the only ones out hunting today, have you been having fun in the outskirts of the quarantined zone? We’ll be heading further in, the ones out here just aren’t challenge enough.”

    I frowned, she was clearly implying that we weren’t up to her standards, but considering her group had around ten people, it was clearly big enough to handle the larger groups inside the quarantined zone, so I couldn’t actually say anything against it.

    “Well enjoy your hunting, stay safe.” Loss handled her arrogant comment with a calm reply.

    Lily then turned with her group before leaving without bothering to reply. I shook my head, I was glad that she hadn’t noticed that I was the one to push her off the wall, but at the same time, I sort of wished she knew, just so I could see her haughty smile wiped off her face.

    I shook my head, this was no place to be standing around.

    “Well she was a jerk, didn’t even bother giving us a you too,” Liz commented.

    “Nothing to do about it, some people just think they’re above everyone else,” Loss said.

    We were soon back to hunting, but this time, with me feeling relaxed about just sitting back spamming spells, I began to look and see how the others fought. We were currently engaged with a group of six molts, and Loss had a business like expression as he carefully blocked then slammed his hatchet down.

    Liz on the other hand, was dancing around with her giant sword, wearing a feral grin on her face, that seemed to get larger each time she cut into one of the monsters. I watched for a while in bemusement, realizing she was as much of a battle junkie in real as she was in game.

    Jolie wore a cold expression on her face as she hunted, in complete contrast to her normal mischievous smile, as she carefully dodged before landing precise strikes with her kitchen knives turned daggers.

    Rachel was the only one of the group who seemed to be worried, biting her lip as she glanced around constantly, watching carefully in case she needed to heal anyone. I was relatively relaxed in my mage role, just sitting back and spamming ice spears, switching to force bolts whenever I started to get relatively low on mana.

    We slowly moved from group to group of mobs, taking each of them out in a short time, and it didn’t take even two hours before I got my first level up notification. I stared at it for a while, before finally deciding to do something I had been carefully considering, I held on to the point rather than spending it. I was going to train as many stats as I could as high as I could, and wasn’t going to spend my points from leveling until either I started slowing down in my natural stat point gain, or until I needed the boost.

    It didn’t take too much longer until the rest of the group got their level ups, even Rachel, though I wasn’t sure why she leveled so fast considering she’d only had to heal a few superficial wounds. Figuring it simply had something to do with us being grouped up, I shrugged and gave it no further thought.

    It wasn’t long until we started to get more relaxed as we hunted.

    “And that makes twenty seven for me. Watch out or I’ll catch up to you in no time.” Lars commented. Sometime along in the hunt he had started a competition of who could kill the most mobs, which Jolie and Liz had quickly joined. Liz was in the lead by a good margin, but Jolie and Lars were currently neck and neck, with Jolie leading by two.

    “Yeah yeah, I heard you the last fifteen times,” Jolie replied with a joking tone. Liz just continued her hunting with a feral grin, but it seemed to widen a bit as she listened to the two.

    “How about one of you give me a challenge,” Liz added in after the fight was over, being in the lead by a good ten. I hadn’t joined the competition, seeing as how I was the official scorekeeper, but I had been amused by the constant teasing of the three.

    Rachel on the other hand seemed to have tensed up even more than before, getting slowly quieter and more worried looking as the hunt had progressed. “Hey Light, I mean, Rachel,” I corrected myself. “Why don’t you try and relax a bit, I’m starting to worry with how much you seem to be.”

    Rachel just shook her head before going back to her constant vigil of looking around for any possible monsters. I sighed, Maybe she would relax a bit once we got more used to hunting as a team, but I wouldn’t put any bets on it.

    “Hey, why did Dark decide not to join in, he’s your brother, right?” I asked Rachel, trying to at least get her to talk a bit.

    “Yeah, he’s just not willing to hunt in reality, he says it’s just too worrying to go and do it when there’s no respawns. He tried to stop me going, but I’m just too worried to let the group go without me,” Rachel explained her reasoning, clearly she wasn’t happy about being out hunting, but she was there for the sake of her friends.

    The hunt continued in much the same way for a while, with Liz’s lead only growing larger the longer the hunt went, and all of us gaining another two levels. We decided to finish our hunt when we noticed the sun starting to fall down in the sky, and started to head back to the blockade.

    We were just starting on our way back, when Rachel’s head shot up.

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    “I hear something,” she mentioned.

    I tilted my head to the side to listen, and soon I could hear it, it sounded like people running, and I could also hear what sounded like a good group of mobs. I paled, that couldn’t be good.

    “We need to get out of here now,” I said. The others listened for a bit before all getting a serious look on our face and we began to run. We didn’t get far however, before the other group intersected us at the next split in the road. I cursed, of course they would be cutting off the path to the blockade.

    I soon saw Lily’s group being chased by what had to be close to forty mobs, some of the people carrying part of their group. They were being harassed by a group of brags, vainly trying to fight them off as they ran. I instantly began preparing my freeze spell, determined to at least slow  down some of the mobs, and released it just as the group led by Lily reached us.

    The spell impacted with a lack of noise, but a good part of the mobs fell over as their legs couldn’t continue to move forward to keep their balance, their forward momentum leading to them rolling for a few feet before stopping.

    I didn’t take the time to admire the view as the snow slowly drifted to the ground, and was soon running along with Lily’s group, both of us heading in the direction of the barricade. We were maybe halfway there, when the brags harassing us managed to poison one of the people carrying one of the wounded. The group fell over, and I cursed before turning around.

    They may be part of Lily’s group, but I wasn’t going to leave them to die. A couple of Lily’s group that was still standing decided to turn and stand with me, and all of my group did after noticing I had stopped. We ran forward, trying to get in between the wounded and the mobs that had been thinned out from my freeze spell.

    They were soon upon us, around seven Craw, and maybe a dozen molts, joined by a small cloud of brags, which swelled a bit as some of the ones harassing Lily’s group split off to join them.

    I was instantly pelting force bolts at the brags, trying to thin out their numbers as the molts and craw impacted our oh too thin defensive line. Jolie was moving around as fast as she could, cutting down brags with every flash on her knives, her cold expression from earlier having deepened, making it seem that anything she looked at would be turned to ice. Lars caught the first swing of a craw on his shield, sliding back a bit from the force before stopping and slamming the hatchet into the joint in its arm, not quite separating it.

    He instantly had to step back though, as a molt lashed out with its body, its claw like limbs swinging through the space he had occupied a moment earlier. Liz was holding her own against two craw, and I was sure she could handle them on her own, but the third one approaching could spell trouble, so I cast a frostbite at it, trying to buy her enough time to finish one of them off.

    I soon was starting to be harassed by brags, so grabbed my spear, slashing out at any of them who approached me, though I got a few cuts in return. Luckily, none of them managed to catch me with their stingers, as I wasn’t wearing any armor to block them.

    I soon fought my way over to Rachel, who was vainly trying to fight off the brags around the wounded people from Lily’s group. I stood in front of her holding them off as she healed them up. Once they were on their feet, two of them joined the fight, with one of them simply running away, likely assuming we would hold them off long enough for him to get away.

    I gave him a dark look before turning back to the battle, casting frostbite more than anything else, buying time for our group of melee fighters to cut down the monsters they were immediately dealing with.

    Once my mana ran out, I waded into the battle, joining the rest of the melee fighters. My first opponent was a craw, who I promptly handled with my sharpness enhanced spear along with my vast experience of hunting them in the caverns.

    While fighting, I idly thought at how easy this was compared to the king class craw. My attention wandering instantly brought about trouble however, as I was stung in the shoulder by a brag. My eyes widened, and worry began to fill my mind as I finished the craw off as fast as I could, wanting to kill it before the poison began to affect me too badly.

    I was starting to feel a bit sluggish before I manage to kill it, and I instantly turned to deal with the brags, casting force bolts with the little mana I had regenerated. I took two out of the fight, but likely didn’t kill them, and stabbed out at another one, my spear going entirely through its body.

    I turned around when I heard a loud sound of pain, to see one of Lily’s group bent over, blood leaking out from under his hands at his stomach. Light was there almost instantly though, healing him up, and I turned to make sure the rest of the group was faring ok. Everyone was doing fine except Jolie, who had managed to attract the attention of a group of three molts, so I instantly ran over and stabbed one of them from behind, right in the weak point behind their third joint.

    That took one out of the fight, and then it was relatively easy to take care of the other two, jolie and I each taking one. Once we had finished, I looked around, to see the area littered with dead and dying monsters.

    I let out a breath, then noticed a notification that I had leveled up, becoming far more prominent now that the fight was over. I dismissed it, holding on to the point as before, and sat down on the ground, feeling the tension leave me as the fight was over.

    One person let out a cheer, and then the rest of us joined in, though it sounded a bit ragged with how exhausted we all were.

    “That, is something I do not want to have to do again,” Lars commented.

    “I dunno, it was quite the rush,” Liz let out her adrenaline junkie attitude.

    “I’m just glad no one died,” Rachel mentioned quietly, seemingly more exhausted by the fight than the rest of us.

    Jolie just gave sound of affirmation to Rachel’s comment, her normal smile nowhere to be seen. A moment later, the one who had been wounded and one of the guys who had been carrying him came over.

    “Thanks for coming back for us, I thought we were goners when the brag got us, I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

    “It’s something any decent human being would have done,” I commented, taking a jab at Lily, who had continued to run.

    “Well regardless, most people would just run, so again, thank you,” the man who had been wounded said.

    I squirmed a bit, awkward with this serious atmosphere, before simply acknowledging him with a nod. After the serious mood, we all started heading back to the blockade, chatting about the large battle we’d had.

    Once we arrived, we were greeted with a not so welcome sight, it was lily and what remained of her group.

    “I’m so glad you guys are ok!” she exclaimed, running over to the people we had rescued and the two people who had decided to fight with us.

    “No thanks to you,” I darkly mentioned.

    “Well how was I supposed to know that we could win the fight?” Lily mentioned.

    “You could have at least tried! You left your people to die out there!” Rachel chimed in, surprisingly loud for her.

    Lily got a dark look on her face, not replying.

    “What were you thinking in the first place, you not only risked your group, you tried to MPK us too!” I commented, not happy with what had happened at all.

    “I… I…” Lily hung her head, clearly her haughty attitude was cracking over what had happened.

    “I’m sorry,” She eventually mentioned under the glares our group was giving her, in a quiet voice.

    “Well at least try to be a bit more careful next time, you nearly got us killed, and left your own group to die. If you’re going to do stuff like that, don’t hunt in the first place,” I said, almost feeling mean with how dejected she now looked.

    I shook off the slight feeling of guilt that plagued me, knowing her attitude wouldn’t be fixed with just this mild scolding. I then let out a quick “Let’s go” to my group, and we filed past her group, some of them actually having the gall to look annoyed at us for injuring their idol’s pride.

    We soon arrived at the cars and said our farewells, the atmosphere muted from meeting Lily. We then hopped in our cars and went back to our own homes, all of us wanting a good deal of rest after the trial that today had been.