Everyone remained vigilant as they trekked deeper into the forest. There were quite a few encounters with boars on their travels which were easily dispatched without issue. Due to the fact that Locke only needed 100 experience to level up, it was actually pretty quick. Hitting level 3 allowed him to allocate 5 more attribute points to wisdom, he chose wisdom to increase his mana regeneration. The main goal was to offset his physical attribute boost mana cost, however, he needed a total of 40 wisdom to do so. This also gave him the side bonus of being able to train his magic outside of the tutorial easier. Future problems will arise with his weakness in close combat due to not allocating points to the physical attributes. However, being a pure caster for a little while didn't seem too bad.

The party just finished off a group of boars they encountered and took a bit to relax.

That is the twelfth boar kill and there haven't been any loot drops. Does this game not have random drops when monsters are killed? Is the carcass the only reward item wise on these creatures?

Rae stretched while saying, “Now I understand why they wouldn't let us go into this place without an explorers pack, we won't be finishing the objective in a day.”

“Yeah....we have been walking for hours and I don't feel like we're any closer,” Jason sighed, “my legs feel so weak.”

“Speaking of which we should take a break soon to recover our stamina,” Locke suggested.

Locke glanced at his stamina bar, it was around 32%. The max was still 100% which meant they didn't need to sleep, just rest. The issue was that your current stamina didn't really regenerate while you were walking. The lower someone's current stamina was the more exhausted they felt which could bring about disaster in combat.

“Sorry my mistake, forgot that I have more endurance than you guys so my stamina is still fairly high.” Thomas apologized but it felt more like bragging.

Everyone was about to find a spot to rest but a loud menacing roar nearby put an end to that idea.

“That sounded like a big one, and it looks to be coming this way,” Thomas shouted while moving between the direction of the roar and the party.

Loud foot stomps could be heard as the large creature rushed towards Thomas in a rage. Beads of sweat rolled down Thomas's face when he realized what it was.

“Is that a grizzly bear!” Jason screamed while backing away in fear.

Even the seemingly fearless Rae was backing up when she saw the creature. It made sense since she was still probably only level 1 at this point with the initial starter stats. Rae wouldn't be much stronger than an average human right now. Even if she was skilled, fighting a bear with her fists was probably not the best idea. Sheila remained calm though and moved to protect Jason.

Thomas roared a battle cry before he rushed forward. His shield started glowing slightly before it slammed into the bear's face. The creature's charge was halted and it looked to be stunned, Locke's best guess is he used a skill that caused a stunning effect.

A grin was on Thomas's face when he saw a large ice spear pierce into the grizzly's neck utilizing his stunning effect to the fullest. The spear was noticeably larger as Locke used 50 mana to cast it but it didn't pierce deep enough.

“Nice one Locke, keep tha....” Thomas began to shout but was interrupted.

The bear recovered from the stunning status effect pretty quickly, standing up on its hind legs it used both front claws to attack. One claw crashed into Thomas's shield and pushed it out of the way while the other one connected onto his shoulder. The force from the attack launched him face first into the ground, his shoulder now had a large gash in it which was bleeding a bit. The bear turned in anger to the man who tossed the previous ice spear only to receive another one in its left eye. Blinded with rage and literally also blind in one eye the creature started charging in Locke's direction.

Locke began moving fast, circling the bear at a distance using its disabled eye to his advantage. His mana was now around half due to the two ice spears cast. To make sure to disable its eye he made sure to use a max mana cost spell as well.

Sheila and Rae were preparing to assist Locke until he looked their way and shouted “Don't get involved Thomas and I got this.”

There was a good reason for stopping them, he needed the creature to keep its focus on him and not the others. It was much simpler to control the outcome of this fight that way. Locke understood his part in the plan Thomas was cooking up. Sure Thomas was injured from the attack but the bear seemed to no longer consider him as much of a threat which was a huge mistake. There was no way that kind of attack could incapacitate Thomas who remained motionless on the ground.

Staying out of attack range wouldn't work for much more than a few seconds as the bear was much faster than Locke. He continued kiting the creature while firing spells at minimal mana to keep its attention. No matter if it was firebolt or ice spear they didn't appear to do much damage with that little mana used to form the spell. The grizzly also did not let a single spell close to its remaining eye by either dodging or slashing them with its claw. Locke doubted if he could even disable the eye at that mana cost, but at least those movements slowed the bear a bit.

The goal was to get the bear in a certain position to where Thomas could surprise attack, however, time was running out before the creature caught him. Getting into position he rushed towards the grizzly. Seeing Locke move in its direction the creature got ready to strike.

If I can just dodge this one attack it is our win!

The bear pounced and swiped towards Locke who dove under its claw at the last second to get behind it. Screaming as loud as he could and rolling to his feet Locke launched another firebolt towards the creature's head who was turning to face him. He used all his remaining mana to make the spell as large as possible. Thomas was on the side of the disabled eye and the screaming was to mask the sound of Thomas's movement as much as possible. The last firebolt was just an added security measure to make sure the plan was successful.

The grizzly bear angrily deflected the final firebolt with its paw taking a good amount of damage to do so. However, the animal did not notice the shining axe swinging down towards its neck cutting the head clean off. The axe shined due to the skill called Chop which used mana to increase the damage output. The battle was finally over.

“Holy shit, give me a second to rest....” Locke coughed and wheezed while falling to the ground. His stamina was rock bottom causing him to feel extremely exhausted. It's been an extremely long time since he felt this way....not since running a marathon almost ten years back.

“Damn Locke that was a crazy setup, couldn't have asked for a better one,” Thomas complimented with a huge grin on his face.

“Wait what? You make it sound like it was your plan all along?” Rae questioned.

“What do you mean? Me playing dead and going for a surprise attack was the plan,” Thomas shrugged, “Locke called out saying Thomas and I got this even though I was playing dead so it was pretty obvious what he was implying.”

“Glad you understood, it made it quite easy for me.”

“Who cares about that are you alright, you took a hit from a bear!,” Jason shouted while running up to Thomas to examine his shoulder.

“Don't worry about me I am fine, it barely injured me due to my high endurance attribute.” He laughed.

“But you are bleeding,” Sheila mentioned while observing the wound.

“What?....oh so I am....here someone take this bandage and patch me up.” Thomas said while pulling the item out of his inventory.

“Wait we have to do something like that in this game?” Rae said with a confused look.

“Yes these kind of status effects exist to provide realism, but can I try something first before you wrap him up." Locke chimed in. He walked over to Thomas and channeled all his recently regenerated mana into a healing touch spell. This was a test to see how strong the heal was and if it removed bleeding. With his hand glowing white, he moved to touch the wound.

“Holy shit that stings. do you really have to touch it!??” Thomas yelped.

Unfortunately, the spell did require the user to touch the target. Now that Locke thought about it more maybe he didn't have to touch the wound directly, oh well something for next time. The hand radiated a healing aura throughout the wound and it began to visibly close up.

Good, it does remove bleeding.

“Wait you can cast healing magic as well? Does this game let you do everything?” Rae questioned.

Locke fell to the ground to lay on his back, he was exhausted but still found the energy to reply. “Unless the classes restrict you later then I guess the answer would be a yes.”

“The class you receive at the end of this tutorial will let you specialize a bit but I have not heard about any restrictions.” Thomas clarified Locke's answer.

“We can talk about that more in detail later. Let's set up camp around here first, I know its only midday but some of us are a bit shaken,” Sheila spoke up. Her eyes moved towards Jason who's hands were still shaking.

“Sure I don't mind, lets find a good spot first though,” Thomas replied.

The party found a decent spot to settle down and set up camp for the night.