It took Michael and his temporary companion, Kyrie, only half an hour to reach their destination. The historic residential district was about how Michael would have expected. Large manors with wrap around porches and large yards with gardens. The view was both fascinating and a bit frustrating. To think there were people that lived like this. However he could not dwell on it too much. They were cutting through the various manor’s estates and yards in order to reach their destination as quickly as possible. There were plenty of things like hedges and bushes that could conceal enemies till they were almost upon them

They had formed a party of two, and decided to go with the same drop distribution that seemingly everyone was going with. You keep what you kill. Still despite fighting through a couple packs of dogs and four groups of zombies neither one of them had gotten a white drop. Although coins had popped into existence during every single skirmish. Michael’s wealth had hit 110. It turned out Kyrie had even more. She was currently sitting at 141. It made sense. How many hundred more tier 0’s had the girl farmed to get so many stat points.

Finally, Michael caught sight of their destination. The two of them had reached a tall white picket fence. On the other side was an oval field of dirt encompassing an island of grass encompassed by the oval white rail. Michael had never seen one in person, but he had probably seen a horse track equivalent on a show.

“A dog track?” He asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

“Yep, let's hope we hit it big,” Kyrie said, smirking. She started climbing over the white fence.

Michael checked his tactical map. Sure enough a green haze encompassed the area, letting them know that there was a green drop in the area. The field was wide open, but the other side had stands that were a good fifty feet tall. Then to the side were metal gates and chutes, presumably where the dogs were held prior to a race beginning. Michael started over the fence after her.

Kyrie was already standing in the dirt studying the stand apprehensively. “The field was as far as I got last time.” Michael gave her a glance before studying the empty stands. “When I got midway across, dogs started pouring out through the tunnels. All tier 0, but there were like fifty of them. I decided to run for it, but as soon as I got back over the white fence they retreated back under the stands. But I have seen groups of dogs also leave here out into the residential district. It was a little odd, so I watched for a bit. Best I can figure is that every 15 or 20 minutes a group of 8 or 9 dogs leaves the race track.”

“Hmmm, that would make sense why they are everywhere out here. I wonder after we're done here, whether more will spawn…” Michael wondered.

“Who can say? I’m sure if we hit the outpost tomorrow, we can find out a lot of information from people who have experienced different things.”

“What about approaching from a different direction? If we were not completely out in the open, they might not see our approach” Michael suggested.

Kyrie shrugged. “ Fight them now or fight them later. What does it matter? Fifty tier 0 dogs too much for you?”

Michael scowled before setting off for the stands. Fifty hounds was a lot, but only a few would be able to approach them at a given time. If they fought side by side then that would cut one direction that attacks could come from. Sure enough, Michael stepped across their side of the white rail oval and dogs started pouring out of the tunnels beneath the stands.

“Ooops!” Kyrie said, brandishing her machete as they both analyzed the incoming beasts.

[Dark hound tier 0x 65, tier 1x 5]

Michael readied himself. An extra 20 dogs was not too big of a deal, but there were five tier 1’s in their midst. Likely, they would be notably bigger and stronger, but it was hard to tell when they were amidst a flowing mass of other dogs. He could not blame Kyrie. Even if she had been here yesterday, things were changing day to day. Just that morning, Michael had probably killed as many tier 1’s as he had in his first four days. Tier 1 evolved were just becoming more common.

The sea of dogs broke against the two humans. Kyrie’s machete whirred back and forth hacking leaping dogs into pieces. Michael’s bat crunched bone. In seconds the dogs were attacking from all directions. In truth it was not much different than getting attacked by a group of 8 or 9. The only difference was the chorus of barking dogs waiting for their turn.

The first tier 1 struck at Kyrie, but besides requiring an extra swing the beast was not much more difficult than the tier 0’s. However a tier 0 had snuck in during the extra second and sunk its teeth in her calf. Kyrie cursed, sweeping her machete through its neck. Michael knew when he encountered a tier 1 from the reverberation from his bat. The hound was still knocked back seriously wounded, but Michael felt like he had hit a wall.

When he slammed his bat into the head of a second tier 1 his bat noticeably cracked. His next swing hit a tier 0 shattering the wooden bat in half completely. Off rhythm a hound latched onto his left forearm. Its teeth got caught between the bolts locking the critter onto his arm. Michael had to swing the dog around, while he summoned a pipe wrench. Soon he had a dog flailing from his arm as he swung the wrench with his other.

With 25 strength he was still able to kill most tier 0’s with a good hit. When he identified a tier 1, he took a couple seconds to form the amber dart before sending it into the creature’s chest. The dog went down in a spray of blood. The dart easily had punched into the beast’s chest.

After another couple of minutes, Michael fell to his knees. There were still a few hounds left, but his stamina had dropped to 0. He just had to fight to stay conscious. Luckily, he was not alone and Kyrie was able to finish the fight up without him.

“Did you really just run out of stamina,” Kyrie smirked. “What, haven't you had to fight off 70 dogs before?”

Michael just glared at her. She shifted her attention to the battlefield. “Okay, I’ll be honest there are three white drops floating out here. I picked up a fourth during the fight. I honestly could not say who these three belong to. What do you say? Each of us gets 2. I mean according to my log I killed 39 of the 70 hounds, so I guess you could say that I did the most work. But you did kill one more tier 1 than me.”

Michael glared up at her then nodded. “Tell you what to speed things along, I will even collect them for you.” She moved through the three white balls.

[Contender Kyrie Allison has given you two white drops.]

“Looks like one of the areas I’m ahead of you in is endurance, and I’m only at 13. Guess you have not thrown a point into there yet, have ya? Well you should probably throw these in there. I’m down to 16 SP myself, and I bet this machete requires a lot less SP than bludgeoning things to death.”

Michael ended up throwing both points into endurance. Almost immediately he moved from the brink of collapsing to where he could stand up again. He turned away from his companion who wore a knowing smile. “So should we just wait here till our SP is back at full. I don’t think it works this way, but I guess there is a chance another swarm could be summoned if we fell back behind the fence and came again.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“We can wait here. If going back across the fence would reset the swarm, I would say we should do that over and over so that we could grind out some points, but you’re right that is not how this battle seems to work. At best the swarm might be back tomorrow. Or maybe the groups of dogs that leave every 15 minutes or so just won’t leave till the swarm is back to full strength,” Kyrie theorized.

“So those tier 1’s were probably newly evolved. I wonder how terrible the thing at the end is,” Michael stated. Kyrie looked at him. “Oh right you haven’t gotten a green drop yet.”

Michael spent the rest of the 10 minutes going into a bit more detail about what he had been through in the battle up to the point of meeting her. He had gauged that she was fairly trustworthy since he had bottomed out his SP and she had fought the last few hounds off by herself defending him.

Kyrie just listened. “Let's go,” she said with a more serious tone. Hearing about the ghast and Michaels theories had dampened her mood. Up to this point Kyrie had been fairly light hearted, perhaps thinking that with his help getting a green drop would be as easy as a walk in the park. But hearing about how tough of an opponent the ghast was two full days ago had unnerved her smugness. Michael could only hope he had just needlessly moved the expectation bar higher, and that they would be able to get the drop with a minimal amount of effort, but he knew that was just wishful thinking.

The stands were obviously empty, so the tunnel was the obvious choice for them to head to. They headed through the center tunnel without need for a discussion. There was nothing of note underneath the stands. Ticket booths were interspaced every hundred feet or so, but other than that the under the stand space was completely empty. There were no enemies in sight, and then there were. A group of 9 hounds emerged from a stairwell toward the side where the dogs were kept.

Kyrie and Michael easily tore the 9 apart earning a couple crowns for their trouble. “I guess we go down, then?” Kyrie said, looking down the stairs. There were two flights of stairs with a single landing in between.

“Well you heard about my experiences. It seems like they like to put these drops in dark locations that would be difficult to run away from. Don’t tell me you are afraid of the dark?” Michael said smiling.

“Afraid of what,” Kyrie replied, starting down the steps.

At the bottom of the steps they hit a turn. They did not have to look around to know that there was less light after this point. The light from the outside would not turn the corner. After the elbow in the hallway was a dark passage leading into a bigger room. Several passages led off of the main hallway, but their openings were shrouded in darkness. The room on the opposite end however had a red light source illuminating it from within. They looked at each other.

“Yeah I’m on board with your creepy dark place theory,” Kyrie said staring down the hall.

“What are those at the end? A bunch of kennels for the dogs,” Michael theorized. In the middle of the room were metal cages stacked upon one another.

“How should I know? At least they are empty. Let's just get this over with,” Kyrie said inching forward.

The two of them passed the darkened offshoots, but other than peer down them for a good moment the ignored them and continued on. They both wanted to check out the room with the red light first. As they got closer it was clear the light source was from a fire. Cages lined the walls and the center. At the opposite end was a ramp leading down. Firelight streamed out from the hellscape below. They shared the notifications.

[Warning: this is an entrance to the hell gate.]

[Hell gate: One of the many gates in existence throughout the map. Gates are all one way, allowing occupants from the plane they open too to exit, but none can travel back to the plane through the gate. A special key is required to close a gate]

“So the catacombs go throughout the map, allowing undead out into the map, and we are able to go there, but these gates allow beasts onto the map but we can’t go through them,” Michael remarked.

“What a convoluted way for them to say, we are sending more beasts into the map,” Kyrie remarked. “So if it is a hell plane, shouldn’t we be facing hellhounds. What are with the dark hounds we have been seeing?”

“Likely they are a lower tier version of a hellhound. Maybe someone will get the special key to close the gate before anyone come out?” Michael hoped.

“So where is the drop? It should be around here right,” Kyrie stepped forward into the room.

Two green eyes blinked open from the far side of the room, just behind the ramp leading down to the hell gate. The eyes seemed to be illuminated from within by a green light source… similar to what a green drop looked like. Had the creature ate it, Michael wondered as the dark shape stood up from its haunches. It was a wolf-like animal, with shaggy black fur. The top of its head would likely come up to his chest, if it was standing next to him.

[Imperial guard hound, tier 1.]

The beast howled. The sound Reverberated through the room and tunnel. Michael felt like he had been struck with paralysis again. The difference was that his body was completely rigid instead of his muscles spasming. The only thing Michael could think to compare it to was sleep paralysis. The mind was awake but the body was still sleeping and would not respond., and just like during an episode of sleep paralysis Michael felt terror working to throw his mind in utter panic.

“Bastard, hit us with a fright attack,” Kyrie said from between clenched teeth.

“Ha, didn’t know there was such a thing,” Michael said, straining. Unable to move he was trying to form a pulse dart, but his frantic mind was having difficulty maintaining focus. White and yellow dots popped into existence before phasing out. His pulse was still dropping with every failed attempt. When it was halfway gone, he stopped and started focusing to try and move his left arm. At this point, shaking it was about the extent of what he could do.

The large imperial guard hound had not remained still. It was walking toward them maintaining eye contact with its glowing green eyes. There were cages in the middle of the room, so the gate guard dog would have to pick a side. Of course it had picked his side.

“It can’t be like this,” Kyrie groaned. Michael could see that her whole body was shaking as she fought to fight off the terror they were both caught up on.

Michael agreed. This seemed utterly unfair. Potentially this thing would rip them to shreds without them even being able to fight back. He struggled there for a moment more, his panicked mind racing. Then he had an idea. Did not people always break fingers or something to escape from hypnosis? Would something like that work? He did not know, but the beast had covered half the distance with its slow but steady gait. He did not have time to come up with anything else. Michael could not break a finger or bite his tongue since his jaw was clenched shut, but he could shake his left arm. ‘Phffft,’ a bolt streaked out and stuck straight into the toe of his shoe.

Michael’s first thought was, ‘bloody hell.’ it had hit one of his toes and instantly caused a terrible pain eclipsing any he had faced in the survival battle. However, the situation demanded he act. His next bolt was sent into Kyrie’s thigh, before his left arm snapped up. Bolts started pouring toward the tier 1 guard dog.

Four or five hits before the dog was able to react. Several more flew through empty space as the dog darted to the side and instantly forward. Michael backstepped further into the tunnel.

“Can’t believe you shot me,” Kyrie said backpedaling with him. But her attention was caught searching for the death hound that had vanished behind the tunnel wall after dodging to the side. They both were moving back to limit the small tunnel as the only way for the hound to approach.

One second the opening was open, the second a black mass was on them. Michael was bashed backwards by one of the creature’s paws. He rolled over once and then focused on the beast that was now trying to maul Kyrie. It stood over her trying to snap its jaw around her neck. Kyrie’s hands were gripped around the creature’s neck trying to keep it away, as white fangs snapped inches away from tearing into her. It was a battle the girl would eventually lose.

A dark yellow bolt appeared over Michael’s head before streaking forward striking the creature’s chest. The creature growled. Its emerald eyes focused on him, as it strained against Kyrie’s arms. Michael raised his left arm, sending bolt after bolt into the creature’s face. While Kyrie's arms held its head up in place.

Michael stopped firing when the beast collapsed on top of the girl, dead. Michael immediately started to help it off her. He cried out the first time his left foot fell. It felt like his shoe was full of blood, but he could not worry about it now. The guard hound likely weighed 3 times what Kyrie and Michael weighed together. Both a yellow and green drop appeared and went into him as he pushed the wolf off her. Kyrie was covered in blood, but her eyes were open, occasionally blinking. Michael strained and pushed the creature’s body all the way off her.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, sitting up and backing away from the creature. “This is only the first damn week. I thought you were just being a bit over dramatic. Did we at least get the drop.”

“Hold on,” Michael said, pulling up his interface and sitting down to take off his shoe. Sure enough he had a bleeding status.

[You have lost a toe - 2 HP, and gained a bleeding status. You will continue to lose 1 HP every five seconds for the next 5 minutes.]

Michael could not believe it, his pinky toe on his left foot was just gone. Michael hurriedly pulled some cloth from his inventory and shoved it against what was left of the stump. He had shot off his own toe.