An elven figure was dashing through the dimly lit forest at their fastest speed, blood dripping from various wounds that covered their body. The figure never took a moment to rest and weaved through the various trees and undergrowth with ease. Suddenly there was low thumping noise that came from the treetops

*thwik thwik*

Large barbed quills appeared from out of nowhere and imbedded themselves into his body

[-531]

A massive damage number appeared from the attack and the figure had to take a moment to balance themselves before they were steady again. The next moment an orange tinted figure appeared close by within one of the treetops and the elven figure dashed in that direction with haste. The figure in the treetops sensed the danger it was in and tried to run but had realized its situation too late as when it jumped between the treetops, its hind leg was suddenly caught by a dark red viscous whip.

>

An incredibly strong force suddenly exerted itself on the Quillan's leg that had been caught and it was brutally ripped from the air. It watched as it was pulled completely into melee range with a bloody red whip and was suddenly met with the savage slash of a knife.

[-96]

After this slash had gouged a large portion of it's stomach, the inky tendril that was holding it finally started to dissipate and the Quillan tried to escape to a safer distance. Unfortunately it was met with a sharp pain from a coin being blasted at its chest.

[-173]

The force of this attack was enough to slow down the Quillan from being able to escape out of range from another attack and before it could react it found that a dagger had been pierced through the back of it's skull

[-128]

[Level up!]

This attack was enough to drain the rest of the Quillan's hp and so it fell to the ground and dissipated into a stream of white flakes only leaving behind drops for the group. Gii picked up and sorted through the drops before there was a rustle from the brush nearby and Ralph made his way over.

"Did we get anything good?"

"Materials? absolutely. I reckon we have enough to craft a few sets now."

"That's good to hear since they're obviously not good for leveling. We've been fighting these things for awhile now and you're just now levelling up?"

"Yea...well.. I had expected this to be honest."

Gii nodded in understanding at Raph's frustration with their leveling speed. Quillan were known to have good drops but they were not particularly good for leveling up. For one they were solo creatures that were good at hiding so it was always tricky to try and track them down. Not only that, but for Gii and Ralph it would become a difficult fight that usually warranted waiting until the invisibility of the Quillan ran out. If they were not able to kill the Quillan before its cooldown on invisibility ended, then things became very dicey for them and they would be forced to try and survive until it dropped invisibility again.

In the end they had been able to get a large number of drops and materials for crafting because of Ralph's great luck stat as well as the extra luck that Gii gained from using scrolls to raise his chance. Despite that they also had to rest frequently between fights so that Gii could fully heal. If his health was not at full then it was possible they could get extremely unlucky and the Quillan could get a Critical Hit on it's attack. If that happened and Gii was not at full health he would easily get one shot!

Fortunately things had proceeded smoothly until this point and they had not run into any major setbacks. Ralph collected the newly dropped materials and then went over everything they had gained and turned to speak to Gii.

"This should be enough for now, I'll get to crafting these sets and let you have one of them like we agreed."

"You mean you'll be giving me the best one right?"

Ralph looked at Gii with a sour look as his business sense was telling him that these would definitely fetch a pretty penny and help him get a major return on his investment. Still he nodded and agreed to give his friend the best one of the lot he would be crafting as it wasn't like they couldn't come back and hunt some more, even if it was a bit tedious. Ralph turned and spoke to Gii.

"What are you planning to do now? continue hunting?"

"Not here. I think it would be too difficult to hunt these things solo right now. I'm going to head to the piglet plains and do some hunting there."

The two said their goodbyes after making their way out of the forest and back to the Gate. Ralph teleported back to the city so he could start crafting the new sets of equipment and Gii teleported to the Gate at his destination. When he arrived he could see that the current area around the Gate was much more lively than when he had been here previously to meet with the Onyx team. Gii suddenly thought about the proposition and how it would probably be fairly soon that they would be able to form a guild, as some of the luckiest people were already talking about finding the Guild gem as a random global drop. As if on Queue, there was a message that popped up in front of him.

You have been invited to join the guild Ravenous

Will You Accept?

> >

Gii smiled and tapped on the yes button, after which he was greeted by the chatroom of the guild

[OnyxQueen: Everyone Welcome our newest member Gii!]

[Mountain Maniac: Hey buddy! Glad you can finally join us!]

[PhotonDan: Welcome to the guild!]

[Gii: Hey everyone]

[Rebellafleur: only level 9?]

[xxTerminatorxx: we got the first noob in the guild]

[PhotonDan: Hey Term knock it off, not everyone is a power gamer like you. Gii is more of a casual player, right Queen?]

[OnyxQueen: yes that is what he told me]

[Gii: Im actually planning on power leveling right now. i'll be level 25 by the end of the week.]

[PhotonDan: Here that Term? best you keep leveling otherwise he'll catch up to you in no time! lol]

[xxTerminatorxx: Once a noob always a nub]

[Sundance Kid: Hey Gii don't mind Term, he's just in a bad mood because he lost a fight earlier]

[xxTerminatorxx: I didn't lose, he ran away]

[Rebellafleur: sounds like something a loser would say]

[PhotonDan: ouch burned]

[Sundance Kid: Good one Rebella!]

[xxTerminatorxx: i'm muting this chat]

at the lively exchange that started flooding his chat Gii couldn't help by have a smile creep across his face

How long since I was in a guild for fun instead of as a job?

Gii had been in many guilds in his past life but the majority of them were because they were members of an official team. As he was playing the game as his job back then. it was only natural that he would work with the upcoming talents to make sure that their advancement was taking the best path that they could choose.

Gii Chatted with the group for a little bit before going back to hunting. Truthfully he did get a couple of offers to join a larger group for hunting, but he wasn't at a level where he was comfortable contributing to the team. Truthfully he wanted to get to level 28 as soon as possible because that was the level he needed to be to wear the full Quillan set. Once he was able to wear that set he would be confident enough to join any group on hunting or dungeon raids.

In stage 2 and beyond it would be best to hunt in groups because they would be able to fight enemies that gave better experience, however in tier 1 it was actually not much worse to fight solo. In addition, he still needed to hone his skills with the class and familiarize himself with all of tits different intricacies.

Gii continued out to the piglet plains and could see the smushed faces of the small humanoid pig like people. In Listonia these small creatures were actually referred to by the locals as Goblins, however the player base took to calling them piglets because of how they looked. Honestly nobody was sure why the developers decided to make them look this way instead of making them look like normal goblins, regardless they were actually a great source of EXP for players up to level 30.

Most of them were between level 20-30 and individually they were actually quite weak and their attacks did not do much damage, especially compared to the Quillans that Gii had been fighting. However they usually gathered into groups, so it was not uncommon to have to fight 3 or 4 of them at a time. There were also some special variants like the "Knights" which wore makeshift plate armor and rode boars into battle. All that taken into consideration, Gii still felt like this would be the best place for him to grind out his early levels.

This was mainly because his buff skills were still at tier 1 which meant they only converted 5% of the damage taken from an attack into stats. Gii had tested it out with the Quillan's and realized that even though they were dealing massive amounts of damage, he was not able to convert enough of the damage into his stats to make much of a difference to his damage. For right now the best thing for him would be to fight enemies that dealt a large amount of small attacks, that way even if he was only adding a few points to a stat per hit, it would still pile up into an amount that could actually make a difference.

Gii made his way towards the nearest group of piglets and immediately drew their aggro. There were 4 small humanoid looking pigs charging at him so Gii immediately activated 3 of his retribution skills one after the other, they were the retribution of Strength, Agility and Chance. Shortly afterwards he was met with the sword attack from the nearest piglet as it slashed across his leg

[-60]

Gii immediately retaliated with his own knife attack but was struck by a shot from a makeshift crossbow that one of the other piglets were holding

[-112]

[-53]

The damage numbers popped up one after the other and Gii dodges out of the way from an attack from another piglet. He dashed towards the one with the crossbow and was able to get 2 slashes in before he was attacked by the fourth piglet

[-128]

[-128]

[-57]

The fight raged on as Gii focused his attacks on the piglet with the crossbow which was only able to endure another 2 hits from Gii before it fell to the ground dead. Quickly dodging the attack from the incoming piglet, Gii turned towards the one he had already attacked and began to focus him down as well. Fighting 3 enemies of a higher level at once proved to be as difficult as it sounds and Gii's health pool, while massive, was slowly whittling down.

However as the fight continued on Gii found it easier and easier to dodge the enemies attacks and he also noticed that his damage was increasing by a large amount. His thrust into the chest of one of the piglets showed up with a large damage number and the piglet dropped to the ground dead.

[-146]

He evaded the attack from the piglet to his left and slashed at the throat of this attacker

[Critical Hit!]

[-352]

This slash instantly drained the health of this piglet and it died on the spot. With only a single piglet left and his boosted stats, Gii was easily able to finish him off and end the fight. Gii thought to himself about the fight and began to get excited. This was because he realized that his buffs would last about 1 minute in combat but would only have a 5 minute cooldown. This would be more than enough time for him to recover and get ready for another fight.

Good, lets go at this pace and see how many levels I can get.