The last rabbit fell to the ground, dead. Seven picked up its pelt and hummed to herself as she walked towards the center of the village. She had gotten nothing else from the level one animals but she suspected that they dropped nothing. Or she was very unlucky. One of the two.

Lehandre took the rabbit pelts gratefully. “It’ll only be a temporary solution, the things breed like kobolds. Here’s a little reward for your troubles.”

Village Chief Lehandre handed her five coppers and she took them gratefully. She was going to hoard her money until she knew just how much everything costs.

At the same time as the quest finished, she gained experience and levelled up so that her experience bar was on exactly Level 2, 0%. She gained a stat distribution point and put it into intelligence, giving her 12 intelligence and 24 total mana.

Looking around, she could see that there were already a few players here and there. Most of them were exploring the surrounding area and bothering the NPCs that were walking around. She had tried to talk to a couple on the way back to the chief, but they had ignored her like they were ignoring the other players.

Apparently not everyone was as welcoming as that priest, Barnacle.

“Are there kobolds around here?” She asked Lehandre curiously.

“Goodness no, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some in the woods. There have been some monsters roaring from the dark areas lately. We don’t know what they are.”

[You’ve received a hint about the monster of Signet Woods. 1/5 Collected.]

Seven’s eye raised as she saw the new notification.

‘Now this is interesting.’

Lehandre noticed Seven’s vacant expression, “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing. I think we should be okay with the rabbit population for now, could you deliver these rabbit pelts to Terhin the village merchant?”

[Quest completed; Rabbit Culling.]

[Quest updated: Terhin’s request.]

“Got it.” She took off immediately but didn’t have to walk long because just a few meters away the stall selling weapons and potions was being staffed by the person she was going to help.

“Hi there.” She walked up to the woman manning the stall, “Terhin?”

She could see the NPCs name highlighted alongside the word ‘Shopkeeper’.

“The one and only,” Terhin waved off an NPC customer lingering over the potions and turned to face Seven. “Oh, a new face? I hope you came into town with a lot to spend.”

She laughed to show that she was kidding and then waved her hand towards Seven, causing a menu to open up.

“This is my humble shop. I don’t have that much coin but if you have something I’d like I’ll buy it. Of course, if you see something you like, then I’ll gladly take your money for it.”

Seven looked through the potions and weapons available. There were the basics such as lesser health potions and lesser mana potions, but each one cost fifty copper, far more than she had.

“Actually.” She closed the window and Terhin looked disappointed. “I’m here to give you these.”

She brought out the rabbit pelts and Terhin crinkled her nose, “Smelly little things aren’t they. Worthless of course, but I can put them to use.” She took the pelts out of Seven’s hands. “Thanks for that. Hey, actually, would you like to do me a favor?” She brought out a couple of health potions and sprinkled the contents over the insides of the rabbit pelts, suddenly the smell of freshly roasted meat sparkled into the air, “It makes my heart bleed to use potions like this. All that money going down the drain.” She placed the pelts down on the stall counter. “See, I have this special skill that turns these kinds of things into food. Normally it’s pretty useless and wasteful to use them on rabbit pelts but those damn pests have attracted a few wolves. They’re slinking around the outer parts of the woods, but the smell of these pelts should attract them. Just put the rabbit meat down near the edge of the woods and kill a wolf if it comes near you.”

[Quest Terhin’s request updated: Terhin would like you to lure out and kill the wolves that have been getting close to the town. Slay at least 10 wolves and return to Terhin with their tails. Would you like to accept her quest? Yes / No]

Seven accepted and put the pelts back into her inventory, noting the item name change, ‘Quest item: Rabbit meat’, “That’s a pretty handy skill. Think you can teach it to me so that I don’t run out of rabbit pelts?”

“A negotiator huh?” Terhin sized Seven up and down, “You don’t have the skills to be pulling that on me girl. Try bringing down those wolves and then we’ll talk. You’re a bit of a scrawny brat though, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to fight the wolves as you are. Maybe you could scrape by, but I recommend training yourself up against some rabbits first.”

Seeing that Seven had no more business with her, Terhin shooed her away.

“Wolves… wolves…” Seven absently tried to imagine the creatures.

The first rabbit she’d seen had nearly given her a heart attack. They looked eerily real.

“Hey there, hard at work?”

A voice called out from behind her and Seven turned around to find herself face to face with a massive warrior with a shaggy beard that went down to his stomach.

ID: IEatTortillas

“Can I help you?” Seven asked but took a few steps back as she got ready to slink away.

“You can tell me why you and Andrew didn’t even bother changing your avatar!” The man bellowed out loudly and smacked his large gut. “You wasted your chance to get a delightful body like mine.”

“...” Seven’s mind slowly put two and two together, “Holy crap Ana.”

“Damn right it’s me. The one and only.”

“That’s my line!” Terhin’s voice called out from behind the stall counter and Seven smiled.

IEatTortillas lifted his beginner sword above his head. “I’ve got your rabbit pelts right here missy.” He turned to Seven. “I’ll be right back.”

Seven waited patiently as IEatTortillas and Terhin began to chat animatedly. She didn’t know what her friend was saying to the storekeeper but the woman was chatting a lot more with him than she had with Seven.

“Holy crap,” he plodded over back to Seven, and they started to walk back towards the field of rabbits. “That woman can sure talk the talk. But it was worth it for that health potion.”

“Health potion? You got a health potion? What the hell.” Seven looked back over her shoulder at Terhin. “She didn’t give me a health potion.”

“Probably because you didn’t talk nicely with her.” IEatTortillas laughed and smacked his belly. “Or else she just couldn’t resist this curvaceous body.”

Seven cursed herself in her mind. She had already known that NPCs would act differently depending on how you talked to them, after all, she had received that clue about the Signet Woods just before from the village chief.

“Oh hey, why are you a guy?”

The Ana she knew was a girl. So she’d expected her to pick a female avatar even if it didn’t look exactly the same as her. But the portly man beside her was the furthest thing in existence from her friend.

“Hell, I can’t believe you’re not a guy.” He pointed at the nearby players, “Thirsty little fuckers the lot of them.”

A couple of the players nearby replied with rude gestures at her words but otherwise ignored her.

Seven rolled her eyes, “It’s not going to be that bad.”

“Yeah probably, they’ll all think you’re a guy with a girl avatar anyway.”

He waved his hand as he clicked through the menu that only he could see.

[IEatTortillas has invited you to his party: Would you like to accept his offer? Yes/No]

Seven accepted and immediately saw two names with health and mana bars popping up in her vision.

IEatTortillas: Health; 24

Attracting: Health; 16, Shield; 5

“You already invited Andrew? Where is he.” Seven hadn’t heard from her other friend since buying the game.

“Lazy bastard already did the rabbit quest with me and then he ran off to god knows where to explore. He wants me to kill his share of the wolves for him. Only works if we’re in the same area though but he probably already worked that out.”

Seven sighed, that sounded exactly like Andrew, “Explore?”

“Talk to all the villagers,” IEatTortillas clarified. “He thinks if he chats them up while everyone else is questing he’ll discover something good. That means we have to pick up the slack.”

They’d already begun killing rabbits on their way to the woods. Each rabbit would die within three hits when they combined their efforts and gave 2 experience each. It would take a hundred experience to level up to level 3 so they decided to stick around for a while.

“What’s with the extra health? Does being human give that perk.”

“Nah,” IEatTortillas stuck his sword straight through a rabbit's head and Seven winced, the deaths got a lot more graphic when you weren’t shooting the rabbits with magic, “I’m a lion beast person. But I’m only a quarter lion.” He pulled back his hair to show tufted little ears, “Gives me an extra vitality point with no bad stuff happening to me. You can go half or full beast person for even more vitality, but it’ll come with some backlash if you enter an area that doesn’t like those species.”

“Gotcha.” Seven shot two blasts at different rabbits to aggro them, “What does Andrew recommend we do?”

Despite her misgivings at his absence, she couldn’t deny that he was definitely the best planner out of all of them.

“Level three and then kill the wolves. Since we share the experience and I have his share of rabbit meat we can attract a lot more wolves.”

He was dodging rabbits left and right as he spoke. She saw him wait until the rabbits were well into the air before moving to the side so that they missed him. Seven tried to do the same when one jumped at her and got bitten for her troubles. This was why she liked to leave the cool-looking stuff to her friends.

After a few minutes they had already attracted enough rabbits to bring them halfway up to level 3 when suddenly their levels rose and they found both their experience bars were on Level 3; 15% XP.

Incoming message: -Did you like the boost? God, I’m amazing-

Both of them rolled their eyes as Andrew’s text broke through into their chat channel via the party message system.

-Good job.- Seven was the first to reply. -What did you do?-

-Oh- The message came back with a tone of surprise before a longer one came through -I found a nice little sidequest. Gave a little girl’s mommy a potion to help her tend the fields. Thanks to the free health potion I got from that shopkeeper it was a piece of cake-

“So you didn’t do that by accident” Seven eyed IEatTortillas who grinned sheepishly.

-I could have used the hint too you know.- She sent back to Andrew

-What’s that? Can’t hear you, oh no, the line is breaking up- Andrew typed some fake static sounds into the message and then stopped replying to them.

“Buttmuncher,” Seven motioned towards IEatTortillas and the duo walked towards the woods. “Do you think I should put the stat point into willpower or intelligence?”

“Intelligence, then the next one into willpower.” He replied without hesitation. “Good to have some extra mana for the wolves.” He’d already put his point into strength to increase his damage.

Seven took his advice and put her point into Intelligence, bringing her up to 13. Intelligence increased the total mana pool of the player and gave a boost to damage but willpower brought up her total mana regen and increased her resistance to crowd control effects. It wouldn’t give too much at the beginning parts of the game but later on, it’d be a vital component to her character.

“Damn wolves better not look as lifelike as the rabbits or I will shit in my capsule.” IEatTortillas spotted a shiny area and put down a piece of rabbit meat.

Almost immediately there was a howl and the scuffling of paws and a grey wolf came barrelling out of the treeline from the darkness.

Seven could see it sniffing the air and eyeing them cautiously, but it was still walking nearer despite being outnumbered.

[Starving Wolf Lvl 3]

“That’s not too bad.” Seven brought her wand up and let out a blast of magic. The further away the wolf was, the longer she could shoot at it without retaliation.

With a howl, the wolf jumped out of the attack's way and bounded towards the duo. Once it got close they could see its fur flecked with blood and twigs. Seven smashed another magic blast into it and it approached menacingly.

“Looks like it had a bad day.” IEatTortillas smacked his sword into the wolf’s side as it raced to bite Seven.

Both of their attacks combined had dealt about a quarter of its health in damage.

Seven thought back to what the village chief said about the monster roars coming out of the forest. This wolf was definitely something that seemed to fit the bill. She mentioned it to IEatTortillas.

“Ah damn, Andrew missed that,” He went still as he sent a message on the team chat but continued to attack the wolf, “Yeah he says he’s already gotten a couple of other clues like that and he’ll go back to the village chief for his one.”

Seven tried to dodge the wolf bite and winced as she got hit again. “This would be a lot more difficult if there was only one of us.”

“Let me attack it alone a couple of times,” IEatTortillas smacked the wolf twice and it turned away from Seven and towards him, growling.

“Damn son, you need some breath mints.”

He smacked the wolf again and another magic blast from Seven brought it down. Both of them received 10% experience for defeating the creature.

It was extremely good for their stage of the game. They were already putting down rabbit meat and eyeing the next incoming wolf hungrily.

“Let me aggro it first.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Seven looked at her health and saw that it had already gone down to 10. The wolf was slow but it dealt five damage each attack. Her health was slow to regen at about 1 every ten seconds.

[You have reached level 4]

[You have reached level 5]

By the time they’d reach their twenty-fifth wolf they’d level up twice and were putting down yet another wolf bait onto the ground.

“We’ll probably level up once more, but it’ll be close.” Seven frowned as a new wolf came in. “Hey, what’s that?”

[Magic-touched Starving Wolf Lvl 5]

This wolf was far bigger and tougher than the other wolves. Seven couldn’t spot a difference other than its size until she caught a bright flashing light behind it. The wolf’s tail was a dark blue colour with specks of light falling and floating wherever the tail swished in the air.

“Ka-ching” IEatTortillas took in a deep breath before swinging his sword at the mob.

Now that they were level 5, he had 14 vitality (28 health) and 7 strength, thanks to his quarter beast-man trait of gaining 1 vitality per 5 levels.

-10

Seven felt a tremor of fear as the wolf jumped onto her companion so quickly that it left an after-shadow. None of the other wolves had come close to this kind of speed.

IEatTortillas winced as the wolf tore into his arm. He had barely touched the thing before it took a little more than one-third of his health.

“This mutt is a lot faster than the other ones!”

By the time the words were out of his mouth a retaliatory swipe was cutting into the wolf’s fur, followed by a blast of magic.

-5

Their two attacks had taken out around 10% of its hit points, but it jumped into the air and mauled into IEatTortillas again before they could blink.

“Ah damn.” He gulped down his only potion.

+25

“Bit of a waste”

“Saved your life didn’t it.” Seven blasted the wolf again.

She was barely skirting the side of the field just in case they had to run. The wolf was clearly too strong for both of them to take on. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to try and dodge the thing if it came at her.

She moved behind her companion so that she could cover him if they ran. “Get out of there.”

They’d taken out 20% of its health and IEatTortillas began to jump back away from the wolf and towards Seven.

Both of them could already tell that they couldn’t take the creature head-on.

“Hit it while I run.”

He tried to draw the aggro of the wolf and dodge its incoming bites but as though it could see through his tactic the wolf avoided the trouble and jump towards the rabbit meat they’d placed as a lure.

+20

Seven shivered as the wolf recovered almost all of its lost health and its tail grew brighter. She’d already been thinking of running but now it was a certainty.

“Damn it. We’ve got to run” She was quick to give out the call.

IEatTortillas nodded and began to back away from the now-healthy looking wolf. Its skin had grown livelier and its eyes shone brilliantly with a light that hadn’t been in there a few moments ago. The wolf was going under some kind of transformation.

They’d have to re-do the fight without a health potion and he didn’t have the confidence to dodge all the attacks.

“And let this interesting guy get away? Think about the experience!” A new voice called over to them and suddenly a magic blast hit the wolf from further away.

-4

The wolf turned to growl at the newcomer. They weren’t dealing as much damage as Seven had dealt with her same blast but they drew aggro since the duo had stopped attacking the wolf. She turned but kept the wolf in the corner of her vision. She saw a white man step out from the grass field, firing another shot at the wolf.

“Andrew.” IEatTortillas nodded at him and ran towards the wolf to attack it.

“It’s Attracting in the game! Hey Ana, you found something good. I came by as soon as I saw your health bar dropping so low.” Attracting kept his wand pointed at the wolf but stepped closer towards it.

Seven felt a pang of fear. “Don’t get closer to it, it’s really fast.”

‘This guy couldn’t have fought anything tougher than a rabbit so far.’

The wolf howled at him but turned away a moment later as IEatTortillas hit its flank and then became more confused as Seven blasted it. She celebrated as it seemed to turn to them, but then it decided to chase the first person to attack. With a blur it sped towards Attracting and Seven gasped.

It was almost twice as fast compared to before it had eaten the rabbit!

She ran back towards Attracting as the wand-user showered its pelt with magic blasts.

“You think I’m going to lose to a furry little puppy like this?”

Attracting laughed as the wolf pounced towards him and Seven’s eyes widened. One moment she couldn’t see any outcome other than the wolf tearing her friend a new one and the next its paws hit the ground and it looked down in confusion.

Attracting had dodged its lunge at the last second and blasted it in the eye while stepping away from it.

“Woah, when did you learn to do that.” IEatTortillas slashed at the wolf with his sword but it continued to ignore him to try and kill its original target.

“I…” Attracting’s words caught in his throat as he dodged the wolf a second and third time, each time almost getting hit and returning the favor by blasting the wolf in the face, “Read enough on the forums to guess that something like this might happen. It’s not a skill; we just have to measure the right timing to dodge attacks.”

Attracting saw the wolf duck down and lower its body as it prepared for a pounce. “I didn’t think it’d work so well.”

“Yeah, yeah. You must be some kind of genius or something.” IEatTortillas responded sarcastically.

Attracting smiled. “Some kind.”

“Humble,” Seven butted in as she was aiming at the wolf.

The thing was so fast that she could barely point her wand in the right direction. If it wasn’t for the fact that Attracting was only taking small steps to dodge it then she would be missing completely.

‘Ah man, I’ve got to get better at this.’ She lamented as she saw Attracting expertly dodging and counterattacking, ‘how the hell did Andrew get so good.’

The wolf had finally reached less than 20% health and it still hadn’t even caught the edge of Attracting’s pants. Seeing this the wolf sped up and Seven missed her next attack as the wolf finally took a bite into Attracting.

- 18

The wolf’s eyes shifted as though it couldn’t believe what it was feeling, before they glazed over and it flopped to the ground, dead. They all blazed with light as they levelled up straight to level 7. The wolf had given them crazy experience.

“What the hell was that?!” IEatTortillas sped up to Attracting and checked him over.

“That’s my racial ability. See, I had it all in the bag.” Attracting smiled as though he had planned the whole thing the entire time.

Seven joined up with them and checked the disappearing wolf body. If she’d seen correctly, then the wolf had definitely bitten into Attracting but the moment that it happened Attracting’s skin glowed bright blue and a blue light injected itself into the wolf, killing it.

“What kind of racial ability is that?” She gazed at the ground and felt delighted as she saw that instead of the usual white light, the ground was glowing blue.

At least one blue rarity item drop!

“Ohh,” Attracting saw the blue light and knelt next to Seven, “May I?”

“Go for it.”

He was the one that had done almost all the work for them. She wouldn’t complain even if he took everything since she’d already gained a level up from this.

“Well, well, well,” Attracting looked at the item screen cheerfully. “It looks like this guy dropped a pretty good dagger and some copper.”

A screen popped up in front of Seven as Attracting shared the item screen with them.

Baldar’s Dagger:

Strength: +5

Vitality +2

Description: Poor Baldar found himself a nice dagger and fancied himself an adventurer. On his first walk into the woods he ran into a hungry wolf and it took his hand, his dagger and then his life. The dagger enhanced his health and strength, transferring these properties to the wolf that had ingested it. Now it waits for a worthy adventurer to slay the wolf and wield it in battle once again.

“Oho,” IEatTortillas stared at the dagger greedily and reached for it, “Don’t mind if I do.”

Seven didn’t complain, she couldn’t use daggers as a mage and even if it helped her now, she wanted to be only a caster even before she’d picked her class.

“Well, it was always going to be yours anyway.” Attracting handed Seven half the coppers and kept the rest for himself. “But we’ll be taking the money.”

He lifted himself up and they moved back to the baiting area so that they could bring in a few more wolves. They still had twenty pieces left.

“Hey.” She got their attention. “If this one came up after we killed twenty-four wolves, won’t another one come up as the fiftieth wolf? An even stronger one with better drops?”

“Definitely not.” Attracting shook his head without hesitation. “This is the kind of thing that would only happen once, no more. It’s better not to waste our time because we got greedy and decided to chase loose ends. We’ll move onto a new area once we’ve used the last few pieces of rabbit meat to kill wolves.”

“You don’t even want to try?”

Attracting shook his head and she looked away in disappointment. He seemed certain that nothing would happen if they kept hunting wolves, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it. But she saw that IEatTortillas was nodding his head and placing the next slab of rabbit meat onto the baiting spot.

“Oh, okay then.” She nodded, maybe she’d try it again when she was alone. She was probably high enough level to do so but she needed more rabbit meat.

The distinct howl of a new wolf interrupted her thoughts, approaching them through the thickets and trees.

Now that she was level seven she brandished her wand gleefully.

Maybe she’d even try some of that fancy dodging the others were doing.