For a moment, after killing the wolf and greeting my new teammates, nothing happened. I felt a drop of liquid on my face, running down towards my lips, and my tongue darted out, licking it up. There was little flavour, just a tiny bit of a metallic taste, but the effect it had on one of my teammates was rather pronounced.

“Well hug me…” Venja muttered, loud enough to be heard, even if the middle word clearly had been a different one when coming out of the players mouth. I noticed that her mouth was gaping open, in a rather obvious expression of shock, cueing me into the fact that she was another directly controlling player, otherwise, the expression would be similar to the one on the Druid’s face, stoic indifference, unless the player manually changed it. It was one of the disadvantages of perphs, the game simply didn’t know what your expression would be like.

“Sorry, hun, you are not my type.” I quipped, not caring to suppress the snark. Apparently, laughter was one of the sounds the game was set to recognise over voice-communication, because the look on the druid’s face suddenly changed as both, he somewhere in reality and his character in-game started laughing. It was a little creepy and uncanny, the instant switch from uncaring stoicism into full-blown laughter, but sadly, that was par-for-the-course. That the game was even set to have the character adjust to some sounds was quite the progress

“Well met, good lady. And Greetings, you can call me Menja.” the druid introduced himself, even making his character bow in a friendly gesture. I raised an eyebrow at the similar names, guessing that the two players knew each other in the real world, or the chances that they used such similar names and having met up right after the start were virtually nil.

“Indeed, well met, you can call me Venja. That was quite the dynamic entry.” the lady-dwarf was now grinning as well, having overcome her surprise.

“Well met. You can call me Chrystal.” I copied their greeting, it felt right, more… intimate and immersive to greet them, now that we actually were in front of each other, instead of using the game-chat. I wiped off some of the blood that still covered my face, before noticing the shadowy bag on the ground, after the wolf had despawned. Just from the fact that the loot-bag looked transparent to me, I assumed it was for one of my party-members and I decided to check the loot-system out, but later. For now, we had wolves to hunt.

“What do you say about this basic-tactic? I take their attention, Menja heals and Venja flanks?” I asked, picking up my lance, I had dropped it while tackling the wolf. At the same time, Venja walked over to the loot-bag, picking it up herself.

“Sounds good.” Menja agreed, while Venja nodded and softly added, “I’m so looking forward to getting the Mountain-Stance.”

“Mountain Stance?” I asked, curious. I hadn’t taken the time to scour the internet for information on my own class, to say nothing of other classes.

“When you get to level ten, you can choose a sub-class, monks can specialise on an element or walk the path of balance and if you chose Earth, you can play as a tank.” Venja explained.

“We played in the Beta, that’s why we have headstart-access.” Menja chimed in, clearing up the confusion.

“Oh, okay. I got here by luck of the draw.” I admitted, while we started walking towards a couple of nearby rocks where I hoped to find another wolf.

“I’m more curious how you got to be in the dwarven starting-zone as an Orc. In the beta, the races were mostly separated until you got to level fifteen or there about.” Venja asked.

“I got to pick a special background and when I completed the initial section, I started here. It was quite the ride.” I told them. That was when I saw one of the large wolves in the shadow of the rocks we had been walking towards and pointed with my lance, showing the other two my target.

“There is one.” I started to grin, and bellowed “Charge!”. With that, I activated the charge-skill and started running, straight for the big, bad wolf. My approach was about as subtle as the massive axe I had wielded in the tutorial, the wolf looked up and started running towards me. I heard Venja right behind me, trying to keep up with my charge but I was accelerating faster. Only a second or three after I had started my charge the wolf and I were about to collide and I activated my rage, stabbing my lance forward.

The impact was strong enough to jarr me, almost ripping the lance from my arm and knocking the wolf back, dealing a nice chunk of damage. But it showed that it was truly an elite-enemy, strong enough to challenge multiple players at the same time, quickly rallying and trying to attack again. As it did, I used my lance and quick stabs while retreating to keep it from overwhelming me, but despite that, I was taking damage. Not a massive amount, but more than enough to kill me, if I tried that on my own.

Luckily, I wasn’t on my own, after I had warded off the second attack from the wolf, Venja jumped in from the side, her hands holding what I could only describe as brass knuckles and her arms covered in water. The attack added some damage but the initial charge-attack had done enough to ensure the wolf’s focus was on me, at least for now.

Venja and I kept hitting the wolf, while Menja gave me some healing and when the wolf was down to roughly sixty, maybe sixty-five percent, Venja spoke up.

“I can stun it for two seconds, be ready to throw some damage at it!” she ordered me, making me grin and activate my Call to Battle, to share my rage with her. It took some mana, reducing the time I could keep raging, but it was well worth it, at least in my opinion.

“Now!” she commanded in the party-chat, just a moment later, and suddenly the water covering her arms surged forward, striking the wolf and knocking it to the ground, stunned. Thanks to her warning, I was prepared and instantly twisted my whole body, letting the lance slip through my hands until only the end of the shaft remained gripped in my hands, and slammed it down, right onto the wolf’s helpless body, adding the Power-Attack skill to the physical attack, not sure if it actually worked but I thought it did. Something similar had originally allowed me to learn the skill, so I thought it was worth it.

While I turned, to get more momentum into my attack, I saw Menja for a moment and his hands were covered in green magic and right before I lost sight of him, a vine lashed forward, going past me and striking the wolf as well, right on its head.

Venja added couple of kicks, or maybe calling them stomps would be more appropriate, to the barrage we had unleashed on the stunned wolf, taking its health from about sixty-five percent down to forty, in a single coordinated onslaught. Before that, we had attacked it for almost ten seconds and dealt less damage, at least if I took the charge-attack out that, on its own, took ten percent from it.

After the two seconds were up, the wolf got back up and turned to Venja, only to have me use another power-attack and get its attention back to me. We continued attacking, grinding its HP down for another ten seconds, when Venja spoke up again, telling me that she was able to stun it again. By now, the wolf had merely twenty percent remaining, so after giving me a moment, she stunned it again, giving us another round of free attacks that we used to reduce it to zero hit-points.

“That works.” Venja said in an obviously pleased voice while Menja walked up from behind.

“Looks good, I’m still at sixty percent mana and have more than enough stamina to keep casting.” he said when he stood next to us and reached down to the loot-bag.

“Meh, just vendor-trash.” he grumbled while I was looking around for our next target, thanks to his healing, I had plenty of health and both mana and stamina were above sixty percent, so I could keep going.

“Hold your horses, if it’s just one, we are fine but if there are two, we are done for. Regenerate, people, those crystals are cheap, no need to scrooge ourselves to death.” Venja stopped me, before I could attack the next wolf. She had a point, so I pulled the crystal from my inventory and moments later, my resources were full again, making me ready to rumble.

“Now, what was that about the special background we haven’t seen those in the Beta.” Menja asked, while we continued on our way.

“Well, you got a couple of abilities and such when picking your background and it set your starting point, right? Well, I could pick a Pre-order exclusive Background, starting out as a Gladiator. I may of may not have decided that the arena was not the place to be and organised a little walk-out, joining up with a dwarf as we quit.” I explained. “He used some magic to get us out of the city we were in, teleporting us into Grey Quarry. And here I am, starting as the one Orc in Dwarven Lands.” I finished, right on time to charge the next wolf.