With my spear in hand, I headed out into the woods. I thought about the monsters we had encountered earlier, as well as what I knew about this zone. I realized as a player, I had never been near Ghazban village. My travels had just taken me in different directions. So, I was going to be learning most of this from scratch.

I couldn’t remember if badgers were nocturnal animals on Earth, but that might not necessarily mean that the rage badgers here followed the same pattern. From what I had seen in some zones of LoS, the monsters were the same whether it was day or night, but others that had a difference based upon time of day or even season. The game world was very detailed and varied.

The forest was filled with insect noises which grew louder the further I got away from Shemi’s hut. I felt eyes on me, but maybe that was just my own fear. I kept my eyes open and paid attention as much as I could. I had never played any hunting games and my characters were usually always the wizard. It definitely sucked not to have a party scout out pulling monsters for me.

I heard some rustling behind me and spun to see what the source was. As I did, I saw an enormous cat leaping from a tree just over my head height. It was lean and built like a house cat, but was as much larger than a typical pet as the rage badger was compared to a badger on Earth. Which was to say that it was four feet long, not including its tail.

The spear felt heavy and my movements sluggish as I tried to lift it up. Everything seemed to slow down. Sometimes, I had heard it described that in combat, the world slows down so the hero can react more quickly to everything. That wasn’t the case here. I was the one who seemed to be moving slower. My mind screamed for me to raise my spear, but it felt like it was coming up in slow motion while the cat streaked through the air at me.

Fortunately, I got my weapon up enough that it impaled the cat’s lower half. That didn’t stop its claws from sinking into my chest or its weight impacting me. The saving grace was that the cat probably weighed no more than two hundred pounds, which was a fraction of my own weight. I was still knocked backwards, but I stumbled rather than being knocked to the ground.

If I had been knocked prone, I had no doubt its snarling mouth would have bitten down on my neck. As it was, I was able to keep it from pinning me. The spear was ripped from my arms and I could see blood dripping from the cat’s underbelly, just like I felt it running down my chest.

My gamer instinct took over as a wizard and I shouted, “Flameburst,” while the cat was growling at me. This time it worked so much better. Exploding in the open mouth of a giant bear-pede hadn’t meant very much, but my now stronger spell bursting in the much smaller mouth of the jungle cat sent teeth flying everywhere.

The creature wasn’t dead, but it was spasming around on the ground as it bled out. Its head was a charred mess. Rather than jump in to attack it, I stood back, watching. Those claws still looked deadly. I paused long enough to cast Regeneration on myself and then assess the beast.

The deep blue aura around it indicated that it was an even threat to me, dangerous enough to kill me, but still, something I could fight. Assessing the dying creature was interesting.

Jungle Cat Level: 4 HP: 17/210 Conditions: Bleeding x10, Dying, Blinded, Immobilized I still wasn’t sure about trusting that immobilized meant it couldn’t rake me with those claws, even if it was nothing more than a death spasm. So, I carefully made my way around the cat. I wanted to reach for my spear, but it was still stuck in the beast and not worth the risk.

Its head was so ruined that it wasn’t making any noise, but its body was still spasming as the last of its HP drained out. I realized my buddy, Dan, would be screaming at me now to put the kitty out of its misery. Heck, he would probably have told me I shouldn’t be fighting jungle cats in the first place, and I needed to heal it. I doubted my regeneration spell was capable of putting its head back together, so I would just have to suffer the shame of knowing my friend wouldn’t have approved.

Of course, the only chance I had to see him again was if I could make it to the player zones and somehow found his character there. So, the odds were pretty low he would ever find out about my cat murdering ways.

While I waited to be sure it was truly dead, I thought over what I had learned from this battle. First off, I was able to manage higher level monsters, but primarily because of my ogre racial bonuses. If I had been human, those claws would have taken half my HP and worse, it would have pinned me to the ground instead of knocking me back.

Maybe I was taking this for granted. The ability to kill level four monsters while I was only a level one was nothing to sneeze at. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to die again. So maybe I should gain a level or two. It would reduce my XP bonus, but it might also allow me to kill stuff faster. I just couldn’t make up my mind.

The gamer in me said to hold on to the XP. Meanwhile, the guy who didn’t like feeling claws ripping his flesh was saying to level up as quickly as I could. I probably needed to walk a line between leveling up and holding onto the power till I crossed a threshold.

If I was honest with myself, I had only managed to defeat that jungle cat with dumb luck. My reactions were too slow, and only the fact that my spear delayed it long enough for a lucky Flameburst to take it out left me standing and it bleeding to death.

Another notification told me the monster was finally dead.

You have killed a level 4 jungle cat. Being lucky is better than being good, sometimes. XP gained: 48 XP available: 226. Accept XP- Yes or No

I triggered ‘no’ again. It might be blind enthusiasm, but it was going to take long enough to level up fighting these monsters with the XP bonus I got for being a lower level. I would never get there if I was only getting 25 XP per monster. By my calculations, I needed to be at least level twelve and probably better to be fifteen before I sought out a party with players.

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I had been level fifteen before being co-opted into the game as a monster. I had to assume that most of my friends were that level or higher now. So even with the bonus stats I had for being an ogre, I wouldn’t really be appealing to them without being fairly close in level.

There was always the option of trying to get a noob pick-up group, but if I was going through all this trouble to live, my new life surrounded by people I liked, then I wouldn’t take half measures.

Over the next five hours, I fought twelve battles ranging between one and three monsters at a time. There were jungle cats, rage badgers, and hooked bats. I still felt the AI in charge of naming needed a programming upgrade, but those were the monster’s names.

The net result was a sizable gain in XP. The monsters all seemed to be level three or four and I nearly died in at least half the fights. As much as ogre toughness was a pain when it didn’t actually save you, it triggered enough times to allow me to heal myself and survive a battle. My XP now sat at 1,966.

The XP was not the only spoils of the night. I had bundles of meat, claws, and fur. My skill selections made it much easier for me to perform those tasks. Beyond that, I also got several level ups for my skills. As I looked over them, they were all respectable gains and definitely out of proportion to my class level of one.

Blunt Weapons: Basic 4

Piercing Weapons: Basic 6 Skinning/Butchering: Basic 4 Cooking: Basic 4 Mana Channeling: Basic 6 Spells: Flameburst (B-11), Regeneration (B-8)

I had cleared out the area within half an hour of Shemi’s hut. So far, I had hesitated to go further into the forest. I was worried I would find something that was truly too strong. I almost had enough XP for two levels, but if I spent it now and didn’t find stronger monsters then I would cripple my leveling speed. As it was now, I would have enough for the first threshold in less than two more nights at this speed.

Delusions of grandeur started running through my head. If it was really gonna be this simple, then a couple weeks of fighting and I’d have enough to hit level fifteen. There were only two problems with these plans of mine. One truth which I had forgotten, namely that Legends of Selmia, was a reactive game.

If players tried to power level a lower-level player, it would work for a certain amount of time. Eventually, the game would compensate though and send monsters that challenged the strongest of the party. The same thing applied if a party stayed in one area for too long. They would face increasingly powerful monsters.

Probably the only reason that the game AI hadn’t reacted fast enough was that I had moved around enough. Well, maybe that and the fact that I had nearly died repeatedly. The thing was, the longer it took for the game to respond, typically the more decisive the response.

The other thing standing in my way was something which I had yet to learn. I should have seen inklings of it in the ogre village. But I learned that Mistress Shemi was nobody’s fool. If she said I couldn’t survive the jungle monsters, she was right.

As it was, I decided to head back to her hut to catch a few hours of sleep before sunrise. I fully expected the chief to have me cook him breakfast in the morning so it wouldn’t do to fall asleep standing up. Ogre constitution or not, I still needed some sleep. Or at least I felt like I did. I wondered if now that I was a Hybrid intelligence I would dream of electric sheep.

On my way back, I was attacked by a group of four level three jungle cats. I should have known something was up. Most of the creatures had taken to fleeing from me throughout the course of the evening. The AI must have decided that the monsters could feel I was too much of a threat. The fight resulted in me being cut up and mana exhausted, but I had raised my total XP up to 2,239.

It was a good night’s haul, and I wasn’t even going to bother skinning these cats. I just wanted a good night's sleep. I don’t know to this day if that was the final insult to injury sort of thing, but a moment later I felt a presence before I even saw it.

I turned and behind me, nuzzling the unmoving bodies of the jungle cats I had just dispatched, was a much larger version of the same creatures. It had to be at least ten feet long with the same sinuous body. I quickly triggered Assess. The results were terrifying.

Alpha Jungle Cat Variant- Shadow Level: 11 HP: ???? Conditions: Enraged

Backing away, and maybe climbing a tree seemed like the only available options. But it was a joke. As soon as it saw me, the beast flashed between the intervening space between us. It was there one moment and gone the next. I knew variants were more powerful versions than the base one, as was the alpha. Such a creature was beyond almost as much as the bear-pede.

I’d like to say that the end was mercifully quick, but nothing could be further from the truth. I can’t really describe what it feels like to have your arms and legs both broken and lay there while a giant cat first plays with you like you are a combination of a chew toy and a squeaky ball.

Eventually, I thought to end my suffering by refusing to play along. When the cat acted like I could escape, I gave up on trying to crawl away. That soon bored the cat and then the agony set in. Being as tough as an ogre was great, except when it simply serves to extend your suffering. Feeling needle-sharp teeth eating your guts out was a slow painful way to go, and eventually I died.

You are being sent for respawn.