“Alright, how are we going to do this?” Typhoeus asked, it seemed the wolves seemed to have finally noticed their presence.

Merlin decided to give Snowbunny the spotlight this time around, but he wanted to make sure she had as much of an advantage as he could give her.

“Snow, do you think you could hold the big guy until we deal with the little ones?” Merlin asked her.

“Sure, I could do that.” She answered while drawing her rapier.

“Alright, bring your rapier here for a sec.” Merlin ordered. When she raised the rapier towards Merlin, to her surprise, he grabbed the blade without any hesitation, causing his palm to be cut open and his poisoned blood to leak onto the blade. Making sure to coat the entire blade, he slid his hand down, causing a sharp, stinging pain to run up his arm.

Merlin flinched as he did so, and he actually lost a point of health.. “There’s a ten percent chance your attacks will trigger my poison, good luck.”

He pulled his hand away from the blade. Snowbunny’s expression showcased that she appeared to be in utter shock, but she quickly snapped out of it and rushed into the room, with the other two following.

“Time to wipe out the little guys, go for the legs.” Merlin shouted while sending a couple vines out to slash at the wolves and get their attention.

He managed to cut a few of the wolves, but rose blight still hadn’t triggered. But he did complete what he wanted to do, which was gain the wolves’ attention, as they were previously focused on Snowbunny as she was the first to enter the room.

Merlin rushed forward with his gladius, he didn’t just nuke down a single wolf like he usually did. Rather it seemed as though he was dealing heavy slashes at the wolves’ legs on purpose, slowing them down enough for Typhoeus to do his part.

Typhoeus was performing wide sweeping attacks that hooked around the wolves’ legs and sliced through their muscles, leaving them helpless before moving on to the next wolf.

Snowbunny had rushed towards the level seven beast, it was much larger than the dire wolves surrounding it. Unexpectedly, the wolf dodged her initial thrust, and when she tried attacking it with a flurry of blows, it barely dodged those as well. She managed a few shallow cuts, but nothing serious.

When the wolf decided to attack back, Snowbunny was forced on the defensive as she barely managed to avoid the wolf’s claws. Her improved mobility didn’t seem to be doing her any favours when it came to turning the fight around, but had the other two been in this position they would have suffered a fatal attack.

From a distance, it looked like a wolf was playing around with its food, as all Snowbunny could really do was avoid the attacks and try not to get cornered or trip over. There was also the disadvantage that the only light in the room was the floating ball around Merlin.

While running around, she barely managed to get a few more scratches in, but the wolf was extremely elusive. Until one of the attacks caused the wolf’s expression to change, and a patch of skin under its fur began turning purple. And not even a few moments later, it was as if the wolf had suddenly slowed down.

A notification appeared before Merlin while he was cleaving a wolf’s head off, he ignored it for a few seconds as his blade cleaved through the wolf’s neck, and then decided to give it his attention.

「Passive skill ⟪Rose Blight⟫ has triggered, target’s stats have been reduced.」

He peered over at Snowbunny, who was now turning the fight around with her new-found advantage. It seemed she didn’t need his help anymore, so he turned his attention back to Typhoeus, who was cleaving heads off at an impressive speed. After taking care of the last wolf, the two began admiring the fight between the strongest wolf and Snowbunny.

Snowbunny managed to partially blind the creature, as well as limit its mobility even more by piercing and slashing at its muscles and ligaments. It was an almost one-sided massacre, the wolf became unable to even get close to hitting her, and eventually all it could do was howl in pain as she dealt the killing blow.

As soon as the wolf died, she slumped down onto the ground alongside it and complained about how tired she was. “Man that was exhausting.”

“Do you think you would be able to handle two of those at once?” Merlin asked curiously. 

“Not a chance.” Her answer was resolute, “Not even if you poisoned both of them.”

It was at this moment when a large red alert box appeared before everyone, signalling the nearing of the server close.

┌───────────────────

[Message from the devs!]

You’ve got one hour left until the server is shut down for the day, you will receive another notification when it’s time to log out.

If you do not leave by that time you will be forcibly disconnected, please make sure you’re in a safe location when you log out.

└───────────────────

“Aww, already?” Snowbunny let out a disappointed sigh, she didn’t expect it to come out as audible as it did.

After a slight chuckle at Snowbunny’s expense, the team started looting their latest kills. And out of all the smaller guys, only one of them decided to drop a fang, which went to Typhoeus. The larger wolf that Snowbunny essentially fought solo had dropped a large wolf bone. The item was given to her without any argument, as she was the one who took it down.

“We’ve got roughly an hour left, we might need to speed this up depending on how large this dungeon is.” Merlin announced.

The group stopped dawdling, and they began quickly moving through the rooms, dealing with a few wolves that were patrolling the hallways alone. At some point Merlin had to recast light, as it suddenly died, leaving the group in pitch-black darkness for a few seconds.

Eventually they came across a narrow opening, and after peering inside, they saw a group of roughly twelve wolves sleeping. Nine of the twelve were level five dire wolves, basic trash monsters that they had quickly gotten the hang of purging with ease. Two of the remaining three were level seven dire wolves, and seemed to be the guards for the last wolf which towered over them in both level and general size, the level ten alpha dire wolf.

The group pulled away from the entrance and moved a few meters away so they could talk without disturbing a whole army of wolves.

“Well, that’s a level ten boss, and we’re a party of three that average at level three. And if that weren’t bad enough we need to deal with a couple level sevens and a hoard of fives.” Merlin clearly explained the scenario they were in. “Either we’re going to need to think of a solution to the boss, and fast. Or we run away and come back in a few levels.”

“Shall we take inventory and see what kind of strategy we can come up with?” Snowbunny spoke up first, she reached into her inventory and began taking out a handful of miscellaneous items.

“Works for me.” Typhoeus also began taking a few items out of his inventory, placing them on the floor.

“Yeah, lets do that.” Merlin reached into his inventory and pulled out a few items too.

The first item he pulled out was a single flask of lantern oil, the leftover from the time he bought two flasks from the now-dead merchant. The next item he brought out was the flask full of black tar-like liquid, he could almost swear that it was a vial of infected blood, just due to its consistency alone. He also had the sling and remaining ammunition for it, which he hadn’t really bothered using lately.

Snowbunny took out a flask of lantern oil, two torches, a small bag full of what Merlin determined to be some kind of spice mix with a single tear-inducing whiff, thirty meters of rope and a shoddy net. Typhoeus took out a torch and a shovel, but he didn’t seem to want to answer why he bought a shovel this early into the game, so everyone stopped asking him.

“Snow came prepared.” Merlin seemed impressed with her current collection, “What’s the spice mix for?”

“The soup in the town tastes like soapy water.” She declared proudly, “So I found an old spice shop that was hidden away in an alley and made myself a spice mix, now everything tastes alright.”

Merlin couldn’t argue with her logic, the food you could get in Orchomenus did taste rather bland unless you splurged, which was something nobody would do this early in the game. Ironically enough, the beginner village had better food than the first town, although not by much. The best thing in the starter village being the overpriced beef skewers, or the various rabbit dishes due to the overabundance of wild hares in the area.

Eating within the game wasn’t required. It didn’t benefit you that much earlier in the game, and what little benefits you did get were ultimately not worth it until later in the game when it either started applying status boosting effects, or it tasted good.