“Alright cya later.” Winter closed the conversation box with Davoth. “Right, sorry, Selena, or Silentwire. You swear on your life you’re not tricking me?”

“I promise.” She groaned.

“Okay. Well, I’m going to fight some boars then. See you around.” Winter continued walking away.

“Wait, what about playing together?”

“Oh yeah, uhm. I’m mostly playing alone, the grinding I’m doing is a bit weird, really boring.”

“I can help!” She replied enthusiastically as she followed behind him.

“I’m good, I appreciate it though.”

“But leveling in a group is way faster, especially for a priest.” She insisted, he paused at this thought and turned to face her.

“The experience gets split if we party, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, but we could fight a lot more monsters at once.” She suggested. Winter thought about it for a second.

“I’m training my defensive attributes and skills, so that doesn’t really help me much… I’d just die faster than I can heal myself if we grabbed more enemies.”

“It does! I thought about it - I can round up the boars for you, and if you heal me, they’ll run to attack you, and once you run out of mana I can kill them for you. That way you don’t have to wait for them to run out of stamina.” She explained, to which he glared at her. She clued into why he was glaring rather quickly and threw her hands over her mouth.

“Sorry, I just thought they might try to come after you again, so I tried to find you in the forest to make sure you were okay. I only watched you for a little bit, and then left. I wasn’t s-spying, I swear.” Winter crossed his arms and eyed her carefully. He knew he wasn’t the best at reading people, but he didn’t sense that she was lying to him.

“I don’t get it, why’re you so set on helping me out and playing with me, we’re not exactly friends.” Winter put it bluntly.

She looked away to avoid his gaze. “I guess it makes sense you don't trust me.” She sighed. “Wait here.” She asked before quickly dashing off into the dark forest. He heard her footsteps fade out of earshot, followed by the sound of squealing in the distance. Due to the darkness of night and the sparse moonlight breaking through the canopy, he could hear more than he could see, but about 30 seconds later he saw her return, trailing behind her were four angry boars.

“Now heal me!” She called out to Winter, but saw his look of hesitation glaring back at her. “Just trust me.” She groaned, and Winter took note of the fact that unlike himself she was able to outrun the boars fairly easily.

“Minor Heal!” He began casting against his better judgement. Two seconds later his bright radiant light surrounded Silentwire and the focus of the boars shifted to him. He put his shield up and braced himself for the hits, and as their skulls collided with his shield he kept repositioning himself and the shield to make sure the attacks didn’t get through his defense.

It took a lot more concentration than usual but between blocking their hits and healing himself until his mana was empty, he got a few notifications rather quickly.

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Agility

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Strength

Level Up!: Shield Mastery reached level 8!

Because of his armor and improved shield, the boars were only dealing three to four damage per hit, and his healing at level 5 was healing for 71 health. But Minor Heal and his attribute experience had a drop off because he’d only been fighting level 1 monsters.

Winter had figured out that the Pacifism experience boost also wasn’t affecting his base level experience, only the skills. Because of his pain threshold and pacifism, Shield Mastery was still gaining experience from the level 1 boars, but even that was beginning to drop off.

“I noticed for some reason you aren’t using a weapon? Why don’t you just kill them with a sword instead of running them out of stamina?” Silentwire asked.

“I can’t…”

“Are you afraid of them? Or scared to use weapons? I could teach you!” She smiled.

“No, it’s something else. Can’t explain it.” Winter replied between taking blows, forcing him to shout over the loud squeals and thuds.

“Oh… okay. I can be the sword then, you be the shield?” As she said this a party invitation message popped up in front of his peripheral vision. Winter let it hang there for a moment, thinking on it as he blocked a few more hits. Eventually he relented and hit accept, and the party interface appeared showing her health, stamina, and mana values. It also displayed her class to him as a Thief.

“Good!” She smiled gleefully. “Now I can see your stamina and mana, so when it gets low, I’ll finish them off.” She drew two small daggers from her belt and held them tight, pacing around nearby as she watched him take the hits.

“Thief?” He asked between blows.

“Y-yeah. They’re good at hiding. I like to.. go unnoticed...” her voice trailed off shyly.

Winter glanced at her inquisitively for a brief second. “Is that so.” He blocked one last hit and healed himself with the remains of his mana. “Now should be good.” He called out. On command Silentwire dashed forward with grace and stabbed each boar in the back with her dagger, killing them all in one hit mercilessly and with finesse, granting Winter 2 experience per kill. Winter found himself staring at her with confusionion due to her sudden transition from shy girl to ruthless killing machine, but quickly shrugged it off.

“You get a lot more experience fighting higher level enemies.” She said while sheathing the daggers.

“I - well, I guess if you’re killing them for me we could try Rockjaws. I’m almost able to tank these boars infinitely though, and the leather…” His eyes twinkled as he pulled out his skinning knife and began harvesting the boars.

“Okay.” She shrugged. “I don’t mind, I can grab a lot more. There’s a den somewhere around here.”

“You sure? It looks like you could easily handle higher level guys, so I can’t imagine this is fun for you.” Winter said as he knelt over the second boar with his knife.

“It’s fun.” She smiled.

“Alright.” He said doubtfully. “How many boars are in this den?”

“I dunno. Let’s find out.” After recovering, he followed her along through the forest, taking breaks to chop down valuable trees and gather herbs along the way so that his mana had time to recover, and eating in between to top up his stamina. Despite the fact that this slowed down their travel significantly, Silentwire didn’t seem bothered by it too much.

They arrived at a large rocky mound jutting out of the forest floor, gigantic oak roots entangled with the stoney slopes as their large trunks sat on top. There was a large opening into the hill with vines and roots draped over it, and clear signs of movement in the earth surrounding the opening - countless boar prints going both in and out of the wide cavern entrance and a large area where the grass had died down into dirt due to the hoof traffic.

“You wait here, I’m really fast so I’ll grab them and bring them outside.”

“Right, just try not to bring too many…” Winter said as he tried to get a better view of the contents of the cavern, but it was too dark to see far inside. Silentwire nodded before rushing in, and seconds later she disappeared into the darkness of the cavern. It wasn’t long before Winter heard the squeals of several boars coming from deep inside the cave, as was expected.

He positioned himself in front of the cave a few meters away in a fighting stance with his shield held in front, waiting as the squeals increased. More, and more, and more. Winter began to get nervous, but what sent him over the edge was a sudden loud snorting squeal that echoed out of the cave and through the forest around him. Following it, the sound of heavy stomping hooves that shook the ground itself causing birds to flock out of the trees nearby and flee.

He looked at his party interface, then glanced over his shoulder to see a clear escape route, a path through the forest he could use to get away. He had half a mind to run as he considered the possibility that she may still be tricking him, but his curiosity overtook his caution and he held his ground.

A moment later he saw Silentwire rushing towards him out of the darkness of the cave with a panicked expression.

“Too many! I think I got too many! And a really big one!” She yelled, and from behind her out of the darkness came a stampede of boars charging forth, trailed by one gigantic boar with large gnarled tusks, easily the size of a house. Unlike the other creatures that Winter had encountered thus far, this one had text floating above it, a singular word written in red.

[Boss]