Dawn broke and I woke up to a marvelous sight. Xantos was lying on the floor, emitting a soft warm radiance. The floor of the cottage was cold and hard so unknowingly, all of us inched nearer and nearer towards Xantos. The final product was the four of us cuddling with Xantos at the centre of everyone, no doubt looking pleased that it was receiving so much love.

Talk about some serious bromance.

I went to wash up in a river nearby the village and begun to formulate my thoughts on how to tackle the problem at hand. Apparently sieging a castle with unknown background isn't the type of quest you usually get at the start of the game. I decided that we needed to map the whole forbidden forest first to get a hang of the surrounding terrain. We could map the area and fight monsters to level up at the same time.

I went back into the cottage and wanted to wake them up but surprisingly they were all already up and doing their own preparations for the upcoming journey as well. Beathoven was playing his chaotic melody, Soup was sharpening his greatsword and Breadtalk.. Well let's just say his nose isn't the only thing that's big now. His lips were huge and dropping as well he looked like a freaking Nicki Minaj with a clown nose attached permanently on him or something. Xantos was walking around restlessly.

I turned on my mana manipulation, swift steps and electrical impulse to gain skill proficiency after hearing the chaotic melody and decided that we should just get down to business.

“Guys. We should go around raising our levels and I figure an efficient way of doing that would be going around the forest, exploring every nook and cranny around the castle to figure out the terrain at least. You guys ok with that?”

“Sure.”

“Yea.”

“Sqwak.”

“Was that Xantos?”

“No that's Breadtalk.”

“You guys always these idiotic?”

“Oh shit Xantos can talk?!”

“Yes I can and we should get going.”

Xantos stepped out of the cottage and took to the skies, seemingly excited to start hunting.

We went ahead and journeyed towards the east first, using the village as our centre. We ventured a distance in and we did not know what sort of monsters would be in this territory. The canopy of the forest started to thicken considerably so even Xantos had to fly in and join us on foot. Just when we thought no monsters inhabited this part of the forest, a menacing growl was heard from quite a few directions around us.

“Dire wolves!” Shouted Soup.

No wonder we did not see any monsters on our way here. Wolves were known to hunt in packs. Everyone knows that. However, Dire wolves were on a whole different level. They could communicate to the extent where they would evaluate the strength needed to take down their prey and sent a safe amount of wolves after them if they had more than required. They functioned efficiently not only as pack but as a race. Wolves only hunted in their own packs. They could even turn on other packs if they chased the same prey. Dire wolves, co-operated. They were also at level 50.

“Hmm. This could be a problem. Soup could you aggro them for a bit? I need to find out the elemental weakness of the dire wolves.”

“You got 1 minute. Nothing more.”

Soup roared his berseker's call and I counted 8 wolves leaping at him. Breadtalk took out his exploding spear and went to help him as much as he could. Beathoven reduced their attack with a song and I decided that the fastest way to determine their weakness was to look at their health bars while casting 8 beams of equal size and strength, each of different elements except for gravity on all 8 different wolves. 8 beams of different elements seeming appeared from the base of each wolf and they were struck with the different elements. It looked like a rainbow sprouting from the ground.

“Ohhhhhhh. I didn't know you were into rainbows Jinx!”

“Shut up Breadtalk.”

I quickly identified the wolves which took the most damage after that. It looks like the wolves which were the most damaged were the wolves that were doused with fire and ice. That feat earlier cost me a fair bit of mana though which had increased abit through all my levelling but it wasn't easy either. 1000 mana was burnt through just like that. I took that into account already and continued my plan.

I used mana manipulation to add fire to further improve Breadtalk's explosions and i decided to encase Soup's weapon in ice. I then proceeded to use fire to maze the wolves like I did with the treants. However this time I mazed them all in front of Soup, but instead of all of us fighting it out with the wolves like before, I decided to try something else. I froze their feet which required less mana and stopped the fire mazing. They were all rooted to the floor and could only lash out with their bites at Soup which made their movements amazingly constricted and retarded. The mana cost was also quite little compared to maintaining many blazing columns of fire.

New Skill : Rooted

Uses mana to root enemies to the ground. Can be used with ice,earth or gravity mana to different effects.

Immobilise enemies.

Mana Cost: Depends on element and strength of root.

It worked! I had found out that after changing their positions, immoblising them would be the next best thing to do for us to clear mobs quickly. Furthermore the mana cost for now was about 15 mana per second. For eight wolves, that was 120 mana per second. I had enough mana to maintain it for about 30 seconds thanks to the mana regen buff as well which was more than enough time to cut down on the number of wolves.

Breadtalk, Soup and I began to hack down on them profusely while Xantos cast spells of light and wind to batter them up and when my mana finally ran dry, there was but one wolf left cowering at the sight of all it's murdered friends. It didn't help that Breadtalk the ugly clown Nicki Minaj was the one chasing frantically after it stabbing profusely with his exploding spear.

I always run out of mana. I guess I should put more of my stats into intelligence now and make up for the lack of strength with my skill proficiency.

We recovered our health and mana before venturing on, knowing the fights later would be easier now that I didn't need to find out the dire wolves weakness.

As we ventured deeper into the eastern forest, we found more and more packs, downing each one as we moved along. Looks like they were divided into 6-8 wolves per pack. Beathoven was mapping the forest with his considerable art stat and the map looked quite detailed. Before we knew it our satiety levels dropped and it was time for lunch. I did the cooking, Soup did the repairing, Beathoven touched up on the mapping and renewed the chaotic melody buffs and Breadtalk was just busy being Breadtalk.

By this I meant that Breadtalk suddenly ventured into the woods alone saying he needed to pee. However in RR there was no need to pee so it was obviously a blatant lie. Just when we were wondering what he was up to, he started using his exploding spear to poke random trees somewhere which was about 50m away from us. About 5 minutes later, the exploding noises stopped. Another 10 minutes later, we finally saw Breadtalk running towards us, smiling with a grin as wide from ear to ear.

“Why so random bro? Venting your anger in RR and coming back after feeling better?”

“No. I was just testing out my mob drawing skills.”

“Mob drawing skills? What?”

And as if answering to our questions, a pack of wolves appeared behing Breadtalk. Looks like his high luck stat proved to be useful not only for scoring critical hits or avoid blows in fights. When he went luring, he attracted about two times the size of the usual pack size. And so right in front of where we lay camp, 14 wolves were running to us with an idiot leading the pack.

“YOU FUCKING RETARD CHILD!” Everyone screamed in unison.

However, i noticed something. All of them were just chasing him. It was an easy formation to imagine and even easier to manipulate. I raised earth walls of great height and width from the last wolf and boxed them up from the sides and the back. I used earth walls because there were too many wolves to hold them all in place with Rooted. It still had the desired effects. They had no where to run but straight and the entrance was only narrow enough for one wolf. It became something like an arena. It cost me almost all my mana though to suddenly whip out such a huge structure from earth but I didn't need to use any mana after that. The wolves could now only attack one by one and by now, none of us could lose to just one dire wolf if it was 1 vs 1. Unless it was Beathoven of course but he did not have damage dealing abilities so he stuck with his songs to raise proficiency of the songs of his choice. I could even have time to went back to my cooking. Breadtalk was still laughing at what he had done which turned out to be a surprisingly good move. Soup was fighting the first wolf and was almost done with it already.

We decided to take turns and fight the wolves. Soup took the first one down and we rotated such that Breadtalk took the next, Xantos took the following and I took the last one. This cycle repeated until the last wolf was beaten up. I realised luring mobs could be a better training method as we did not have to walk aimlessly until the wolves found us. We could help them find us and thus kill them faster.

“This is great! But what made you do that in the first place Breadtalk??” I asked.

“My Loki's Entourage buff was running out as it was nearing 24 hours since the last time I had a buff and I decided to lure mobs to you all when you all were resting just to see the look on your faces. Loki gave me a 6 for it so I guess your reactions were pretty priceless.”

“You sunnavabeech.”

“Loki's Armoury!”

Two shining daggers appeared in front of Breadtalk and he grasped them tightly, wondering what these would do. He looked at Soup.

“Do not, test weapons out on me again. I swear to god I will slap you so hard your balls fly out. Both the eyeballs and those balls.”

“Although I'm a mythical bird you all do realise I'm still a female right.” Xantos added.

Breadtalk decided to test those daggers on one of the dead bodies of the wolves instead. He slashed the body and right in front of him, the body began to sizzle and decompose. Look's like those daggers had poison that naturally emitted out of the blades.

“If you tried that on me.. Holy shit.”

“Well it can't be that bad. Loki said he was suffering from poisonous venom which was of a much higher quality dripping down his head everyday. He's still alive and kicking!”

“Do i look like a god to you?”

“Oh yeah...”

We took our break, finished our food and preparations and begun the second half of our hunt. The hunt was extremely simple. All of us used the base camp we set up for lunch as a reference. Beathoven would stay here and play music to keep himself invisible. I would be on standby here making some preliminary guiding paths with my earth manipulation which would eventually lead to a bottleneck where I could use earth walls to box the wolves up again. Xantos, Soup and Breadtalk would be responsible to take turns trying to lure wolves to attack them before running to the base.

We trained like this for a few moments and realised this was indeed faster. We also realised one thing. Luck helps you do whatever you want to do so when Breadtalk wanted to lure mobs, he always had more mobs than either Soup or Xantos. At first I thought it was because his skill could attract a lot of attention but it turns out whatever Breadtalk wants to find, his luck will help him find it.

Eventually Breadtalk was the only one we sent to lure mobs to heighten efficiency and we asked Xantos to fly around with Beathoven on his back so he could map out the rest of the forest. Xantos could only fit one man on his back and we needed the three of us to keep luring wolves and efficiently pulverise them. This persisted till nightfall where we had to go back to the cottage. The eastern side was also completely mapped out. More levels and proficiency was gained and I guess we needed to repeat this the next night.

A surprise was waiting for us back at the village though. It seemed that the tiara really did embody the demigod's powers. All the villagers were in such a good mood that they threw a feast.

Kyle said a few words and introduced us as the saviours of the village. Apparently everyone knew what happened and we were greeted with applause. There were even adorable children who came up to us after the end of the speech and gave us a garland of fresh flowers each. We decided that it would be ungracious of us to accept and if there were anything that we wanted to experience in RR, it was a party in RR.

Beathoven immediately took out his lute and play some of the classic party songs. He played rock, pop and even some house on a lute. I don't even know how. Don't ask me. Even more amazingly the NPCs seemingly understood all the music. Titanium on the lute sounds a bit weird but everyone partied along with it just fine. There was a huge bonfire in the middle of the town and we celebrated campfire style.

I was helping out with the food and drinks because of the large amount of people we had to serve. The bonfire helped us smoke all the different sorts of meat quickly and I even learnt from them a classic recipe the village used which gave +10% HP to the villagers. My first meal which gave a stat increase and how fitting was it that it came from a party.

Soup was going crazy with the villagers and he was the one who knew how to party the hardest. He drank liquor as if he was drinking isotonic drinks after a marathon and before long he was doing sit ups in the centre of dance circles, rolling around the floor saying he feels like a vacuum cleaner today and puking all over the grass shouting “It's okay! It helps the grass grow faster!”

Breadtalk being Breadtalk.... Well let's just say only Xantos did not have an especially fun night tonight when Breadtalk wanted to push Xantos into the bonfire just to see if it would become a fried chicken. The Demigod Valhalla apparently was present in spiritual form. As soon as he push Xantos into the fire, the fire became considerably smaller and Xantos immediately flew up into the sky, using wind magic to push Breadtalk into the fire. He nearly died but he was entertained so all was fine.

It was a night full of joy and laughter. The festives were about to come to an end when everything went downhill from there.

“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

“What was that?”

“Breadtalk?”

“No he almost died he's just sleeping and resting now.”

“Sounded like.. a werewolf?”

The night was dark and only the center of the town was lit due to the bonfire. However, there was unmistakably a dark figure on one of the cottage roofs. The sound also supposedly came from the dark figure. And to answer to our questions, the dark figure jumped three feet into the air and landed into visibility. It was a wolf on two's, black with red eyes gleaming with bloodlust. It was about 2 meters tall with very human like behaviour. No doubt about that. Werewolf.

The villagers all screamed and ran into their cottages and we immediately took our positions. Werewolves were known to be scared of silver. However, most games also had them attributed with a weakness of fire so I decided on my choice of element. Just when I decided though, Xantos came swooping down from the skies and begun pouring light magic on the werewolf. It immediately lunged at Xantos, achieving great heights whenever he leaped but Xantos was just staying out of reach as it was a relatively open area and she had all the advantage in the world.

I decided to change my aura to light instead and took a look at the monster details. A werewold was a level 100 monster which was far superior than anything we had ever seen before. I tried using Rooted but the werewolf immediately broke out of it. On strong monsters it seems like Rooted would not work. Boxing it in was not an option as well as it could easily leap over the walls. This was the first time in the game where we had the numerical advantage instead of the monster but the monster was the significantly stronger one instead.

We just had to deal with it as best as we could. Beathoven played chaotic melody as usual before playing a song that debuffed what seemed to be the werewolf's greatest strength. Movement speed. Soup used berserker's call and went into a melee with the werewolf immediately. Breadtalk was still sleeping that sunnavabeech. I decided that since the werewolf had all its attention on Soup and Xantos was also harrassing it constantly with light magic that seemed to do some damage, I would try something I usually did not do.

Up till now I only wanted to achieve crowd control abilities as I was the only one who could do that and to quite a huge extent dependent on my mana and imagination. However, this was the time where all that didn't matter. It was about dishing as much damage as possible per second to just one target and I did not have a spell to do that. I needed to use a large amount of mana and make it into a skill. However if the skill was too spread out, it would lose power and it might even hit Soup if I was not careful. I wonder how best should I tackle this problem. And then I remembered how I fed Xantos with mana the previous night.

I focused all my mana into a single area directly above the werewolf's head. I then begun to compress and condense my mana before turning it to light mana. I shaped the mana into the most destructive object I could first think of, a sword. It was a sword made entirely out of light mana, thin and slightly long and it was hovering a few meters directly above it's head. After making sure I used all my mana and not even a single drop was left, I let it drop onto the werewolf's head.

New Skill : Divine Judgement

Concentrates a huge amount of a specific mana type into the shape of a sword above an enemy's head. After determining the amount of mana the user adds, the sword will then drop down straight into the enemy skull.

Deals high damage to a single target. High critical hit rate.

Mana Cost: Depends on amount of mana invested into the creation of the sword.

The attack alone took about 70% of the werewolf's health. With the damaged received up till now, I suspected he had about 10% of health left. However just one attack left me totally dry and the werewolf turned to look at me. Looks like aggro can be transferred onto a player even though other players are attacking the monster if the player inflicts a huge damage onto the target.

The werewolf lunged at me and I barely had the time to use my katana to defend myself. It had extremely quick movements, even though Beathoven was already slowing it down with his song. I had to use electrical impulse and wind steps to keep up and the use of these skills were extremely apparent in these 1v1 fights. Actually it was 3v1 but as long as the opponent side was kept at 1, the skills helped me to manage. I was totally dry on mana as i needed to maintain the two skills with a thin layer of light aura around my katana as I engaged the werewolf.

Soup was hacking and slashing behind the werewolf, dealing heavy blows but apparently physical attacks were less effective on werewolves that magical attacks maybe because of their tough fur. It took me and Soup a good 5 minutes with Xantos' harrassment before we brought down the last 10% of health off the werewolf.

“If this was how much trouble one werewolf could bring.. How much would two or even a pack.....”

I wouldn't even dare to imagine that scenario.

However this werewolf wasn't supposed to exist in the forbidden forest. The highest level mobs around here based on websites were the level 70 Gorillas that lived somewhere among the forest. How did a level 100 mob just appear out of nowhere?

“Wait. I think we solved the identity of our unexpected intruders of the castle.” I said.

“Werewolves? Holy shit.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Valhalla already said herself, the foreign enemies are dark forces. This forbidden forest has a majority of earth type creatures which do belong in the wild. However a dark werewolf suddenly appears out of the blue? And what was he even doing in this village? Maybe he wanted to take the tiara for himself after the treants failed to accomplish this?” I suggested.

“Sounds reasonable... However if there are a castle full of these monsters within it. I cannot see how we can win against more of these creatures.” Said Xantos.

“I don't see how we can now either... But I believe we can still complete this quest but with tons of preparation and proper planning. It's a C rank difficulty quest for a reason right?” I reasoned.

They all agreed that it might be possible that that was the scenario and everyone seemed even more excited than before. Sure the task was hard but if it wasn't hard it wouldn't give the sense of achievement after we managed to finish this damn quest. We went to turn in for the night, knowing that we had not much time to lose, even though we have already mapped the eastern side of the town, there was still the other parts to map. I had a bad feeling that if we didn't finish this fast, more and more attacks would come to the town due to that tiara which I was pretty sure the dark forces would be able to sense and want to get rid of.

Party Name : Bunch Of Tards. Party leader : Jinx.

Jinx, Level 41 Elemental Swordsman

Beathoven, Level 45 Bard

Soup, Level 50 Gladiator

Breadtalk, Level 41 Trickster

End of Chapter 8