Outside Ponson fields spread out in every direction, surrounded by waist-high stone walls that were covered in strange markings. I walked over to one of these walls to get a closer look at the markings, but I couldn’t figure out what they were until I realized that I had seen something similar before.

“These look a bit like the pattern on the back of my spellglove,” I mused. They looked a little bit different but there were enough similarities to let me believe that these markings were supposed to form some form of protection for the fields.

As I examined the marking, I heard an exaggerated yawning sound.

“Do you mind Katy?” I growled. Apparently, I was the only one of the two of us who found the markings all that interesting.

‘I do mind actually,’ my AI replied causing my face to twitch in annoyance. I could hear the smirk on her face in her reply.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be doing something more interesting? Like I dunno killing some of those ‘Terror Chicks’ or something?’ she continued.

“Fine, fine,” I sighed continuing my way towards where Jameson had marked on my map.

Approaching the area, I discovered that the Terror Chicks seemed to have taken up residence in a field with a broken wall.

“What could have done this?” I muttered to myself as I examined the shattered fragments of the stone wall, but Katy didn’t answer. Shrugging I looked over the wall carefully and discovered a large group of birds milling around, not that they looked like any birds I had seen before.

They had streamlined bodies built for speed and covered with rust-colored feathers, long powerful-looking legs tipped with talons as long as one of my fingers, serpentine necks topped with a narrow head with a small crest of feathers and a long, serrated beak.

While most of these menacing creatures came up to my waist there was some variation in size, here and there were scattered individuals that looked like they had been starving themselves and in the center of the group stood one bird that towered above the rest. If I had to guess I’d estimate that it stood about even with my shoulders.

“That big one has to be the leader,” I gulped, deciding to be extra careful not to attract its attention, I really didn’t want to find out what that beak could do to my flesh.

“Okay, don’t think about that,” I said feeling the blood rush from my face as my imagination ran wild, just because I had experienced similar injuries in other game didn’t mean I was looking forward to experiencing them here.

Shaking my head to clear the unpleasant thought I instead decided to focus on one of the weaker looking birds that had patches of feathers missing to examine it and was rewarded with a short line of text appearing above the creature’s head naming it a Sickly Terror Chick Lvl 4.

“That’s a bit more than I was expecting to have to take on,” I muttered under my breath as I stared at it wide-eyed. How exactly did Kimble or Jameson expect me to deal with these without having proper gear? I was only Level 1 and I didn’t know how much more powerful those two levels would make the monster or how powerful a Terror Chick was compared to other Level 4 monsters. A few healing items would only go a short way.

Quickly I checked some of the other, less intimidating birds and discovered that while there were a couple more level 4’s and a few Level 3’s the majority were actually level 2 which made me relax slightly, they would probably still be difficult to defeat but now my task seemed doable. All I had to do now was figure out a way to make sure I only had to fight one of them, especially since I didn’t know whether aggro radii were a thing in this game, but I seriously doubted that they were.

Looking around I picked up a small piece of masonry and hefted it in my hand, “Well here goes nothing,” I muttered hoping that this would allow me to draw the Sickly Terror Chicks away one at a time.

Tossing the stone at one of the weaker Terror Chicks I was rewarded with a loud hissing sound followed by swift footsteps as the large bird slowly stalked towards the wall as I quickly hid, just in case the sound had caught the attention of more of the birds.

As the creature stuck its beaked head through past the hole in the wall its eye widened, and it attempted to pull its head in to dodge the Thrust I had launched at it the moment it came in range.

The bird shrieked in rage as the tip of my spear carved a line across the top of its head, causing me to swear for two reasons. One being how loud the sound it made when I injured it was and the other because it was fast. I had timed that attack as close to perfectly as I possibly could, and it had still managed to avoid a direct hit.

Throwing myself into a roll I managed to dodge the first attack the bird launched at me as it simply leapt over the wall with its talons outstretched. Quickly I activated my spellglove’s Ward skill and grinned at my opponent as it glared at me with baleful yellow eyes.

Deflecting a vicious peck attack away with my Ward I quickly discovered what it meant to be outmatched in Soul Core Online, that single attack completely destroyed the magical shield and sent me stumbling backwards. Seeing that it had managed to knock me off balance the bird charged at me as I fell on my back. Before it leapt on top of me, I managed to raise my spear, piercing its chest just of center, my spear bending in a slightly worrying manner as the bird’s momentum carried it forwards.

Unfortunately, the tip was unable to penetrate the strong bones that protected its vital organs and ripped out of its chest sideways drawing a strangled squawk from the chick even as its razor-sharp talons shredded my left arm.

“Fuck!” I shouted kicking the bird off me and scrambling to my feet, downing a healing potion from my inventory as I did so and grimacing at the odd felling of my flesh knitting together faster than it should ever have been able to. I really hadn’t wanted to use that potion, I only had 4 left now.

The birds head weaved back and forth as it watched me drawing my eyes to its slender neck, I grinned as I came to the realization that even if its breastbone and ribs were too tough for my spear to penetrate there was no way that its neck would be able to withstand much damage.

Now that it had come off cooldown, I reactivated my Ward, even if it could only take one hit, that was still one more that I could take right now and I had no illusions about being able to take more than one hit after that. I glanced warily up at the top left corner of my vision to see that I had just below half of my health and quickly started weighing up my chances of finishing this fight before I had to use another of my precious potions; they weren’t good.

Noticing my distraction, the Terror Chick’s head darted forward, its beak attempting to close on my right arm, but I managed to react just in time, putting the energy shield created by my Ward Skill in between it and me just before the beak closed ripping through the shield like it was made of wet tissue paper and into my forearm.

“Shit!” I shouted swinging my spear clumsily at the base of its neck as it ripped its head backwards tearing at the flesh of my arm as it did so sending fresh waves of pain crashing into me, and drawing yet another curse from my lips, at this point I was just expecting to get swarmed by the rest of the birds in the fields, there just wasn’t any chance of them not having heard the fight that was going on just past the wall.

As I nursed my wounded limb, I noticed that not only was my healthbar now only a quarter full, but it also had a picture of a drop of blood next to it, the nigh universal sign of a bleeding effect. With a grimace I pulled the second of my potions from my Inventory and hastily downed it while the Terror Chick watched me with what I could swear was sadistic amusement in its eyes.

“Oh, laugh it up chicken legs!” I snarled activating Thrust. The sudden attack took the vicious creature by surprise and it barely managed to react in time to prevent the tip of my spear completely removing its head but even so, a large gash opened on its neck causing its head to drop slightly now that some of the muscles holding it up were severed.

“Not so funny now is it?” I quipped flipping the butt of my spear into the bottom of its beak sending it tumbling backward with a strangled squawk.

Noticing that the bar above its head was nearly empty I quickly stabbed down with my spear finishing it off. Before pulling out one of my bandages and wrapping it around my arm to stop the bleeding effect.

Two different numbers floated up from the fresh corpse a grey 30 and a blue 2. I knew the grey number was the amount of experience I got from defeating it so that meant that the blue number had to be Soul Points. Hmm.

I opened the Soul Links menu to find out how this particular feature worked. It wasn’t something that I had seen in other games, but it was especially important in this one which meant that understanding how it worked was going to be essential to my development, especially if I was going to obtain the skill to craft my own Soul Cores.

To my surprise both the Spear and the Spellglove Core had gained two points.

“Well, that’s going to make things easier,” remarked before turning my attention back to the dead Sickly Terror Chick.

“Uhh, Katy? You there?” I asked hesitantly, she had been quiet ever since I had entered the quest area and I wasn’t sure whether she would answer me.

‘Yeah, I’m here,” she replied quickly. “Sorry I didn’t answer before. I can’t interfere with your quests.’

“That makes sense,” I replied relieved that she was still there.

“Wait… what if you join me in the game world? Wouldn’t that mean you were interfering by definition?” I asked suddenly as I realized that things weren’t quite adding up.

‘If I’m just watching from outside the game, I can see everything around you,’ she replied. ‘If I’m playing with you, I’m limited to the same senses a player has access to and I can only give you general information about how the game works anyway. I don’t have access to specific information about quests or the game world itself.’

Well, that cleared that up… I think.

“Makes sense, I guess,” I replied. “Now how does looting work in this game?”

“Just examine the corpse like you would any other item,” she replied. “That’ll bring up the loot you can collect.”

I blinked, that was perhaps the least realistic part of this game that I had discovered so far. With the exception of magic and Skills of course.

“What about if you have a gathering skill like skinning?” I asked. “Does that affect the process in any way?”

“I can’t really tell you much about that,” she replied quietly. “But I will say that if you use a skill like skinning on a corpse it decreases the amount of other loot you receive.”

“Wait does that mean you can loot crafting components without the gathering skill?” I asked in confusion.

“Yes, but there’ll be less of them and they’ll typically be of lower quality than if you had the related gathering skill,” she replied.

“So that means that they’re mostly for selling to NPCs so that they can make the goods they stock in their shops then?” I asked beginning to see how things worked.

“Yes and no, there are plenty of craftsmen who will refuse to use low quality components,” she replied somewhat evasively.

‘Alright, I can work with that,’ I thought as I reached out a hand and examined the corpse.

“Okay that’s kinda gross,” I said looking at the list of items that I would be looting from the corpse of the Sickly Terror Chick they included the beak and a few of the talons like I had been expecting, but also a few fewer savory items like its eyes. They were labelled as alchemical components and I was really hoping that I would never find out what they were used to make.

Quickly I selected the option to loot all the items and the screen disappeared as the body turned into motes of light and my Inventory became much fuller. I had opened it up to check how much weight I could carry when I was shopping for supplies earlier and I’d noticed that my weight limit was a mere 12 Kg which was a bit embarrassing for a fully grown man. But I suppose they had to balance out the fact that equipped items didn’t count towards the weight you could carry. Anyway, I was currently 4 Kgs with what remained of my medical supplies which weighed 1.5 Kgs in total, so I would have to go back to town to sell my loot and resupply.

I quickly double checked the quest details before pulling the crest I had received from my first kill to examine it.

Sickly Terror Chick’s feathered crest.

Item Tier (Rarity): Quest (Uncommon)

The distinctive plumage taken from the head of a Sickly Terror Chick.

The crest itself was a long strangely shaped feather, unlike the rest of the rust-colored bird it was a bright attention-grabbing red.

I sighed as I looked down at it, I still had to fight another nine Sickly Terror Chicks, and that was assuming that I would get a crest every time I looted one. Oh well, at least this quest didn’t have a time limit. If I needed to, I could go and hunt some rabbits so that I could buy some better gear like the other players.

Now that I knew that I could in fact defeat a Sickly Terror Chick if it was level 2, I decided to have a look at the normal Terror Chicks, as well as that extra-large and ugly one. To my horror it turned out that not only were the normal Terror Chicks between levels 5 and 9 but the big one was an Adolescent Terror Bird (Elite) that was level 12.

“Well, I’m not going to be able to do anything about that any time soon,” I muttered under my breath deciding to make extra certain that I didn’t attract the killing machines attention. I wasn’t sure how powerful something labelled Elite in this game was but that didn’t matter to me right now as its level was more than enough to make me stay as far away from it as physically possible.

Picking up another piece of rubble from the destroyed wall I waited for another Sickly Terror Chick to wander both close enough to me that I’d be able to hit it and far enough away from the other mobs that it hopefully wouldn’t attract their attention as well.

Finally, one broke away from the rest, if anything this one looked even more pitiful than the last one. I decided to check its Level to make sure that it was level two before I threw my projectile which clacked off its beak causing it to hiss angrily as it looked around for me before it turned and started moving away from me.

Reaching down I picked up another rock and quickly threw it at its retreating back causing it to squawk as it impacted with its tail. The creature which must have been well and truly pissed off by now charged in my direction having finally figured out where the rocks were coming from.

It hurtled through the gap in the stone wall even faster than the previous one and was unable to react in time to my tactic of hiding just to the side of the gap and using Thrust when it came through, the head of my spear ripping into its side just above its left leg causing it to fall to the ground hissing angrily.

I grinned as the creature struggled to its feet, it looked like the fight would be easier this time, the wound in its side looked like it was slowing it down. Raising my spear, I smoothly approached the Terror Chick which looked at me with wide eyes, unable though it was unable to believe that I had injured it so badly.

Just because it was injured didn’t mean I was about to let my guard down; it still had a level advantage over me, and I already knew how fast the other one had been. Once I was in range I started stabbing at the bird with my spear, using my slightly longer reach against it and causing it too slowly back away from me.

As soon as Thrust came off cooldown I activated it causing my spear to shoot forwards with much greater speed and force than I could produce with a normal attack towards the already injured flank of the Terror Chick which shrieked loudly at me in rage as it tried to avoid the attack.

Unfortunately for it, my spear was moving too fast for it to dodge and it screamed in pain as my attack struck its wounded side worsening the injury and taking a large chunk off the small healthbar that was floating above its head making me grin. It seemed that injuries would take more damage when targeted in this game, that would make fighting a lot more interesting.

Twisting my spear as I removed it drew another cry from the wounded bird and some more of its health to disappear and I quickly stabbed again before it could recover, but this time the Terror Chick managed to deflect the attack away with its beak. My eyes widened slightly as the clash between its beak and my spearhead drew sparks. Was this bird’s beak made of some sort of metal?

Seeing my sudden confusion, the Terror Chick attempted to use the biting attack that the last one had used to cause a bleeding effect, but I managed to deflect its head away with the Ward that I had conjured before I had thrown the first rock.

As expected, the Ward shattered as it was unable to absorb all the damage, but the birds head was still knocked away from me and I immediately countered with a stab that ripped into the birds open wound as the bird charged forwards impaling it completely on my spear and emptying the healthbar above its head.

As I quickly looted the corpse, I heard a curious squawk and looked up in surprise to see another Terror Chick standing in the gap in the wall. The creature screamed in rage as the bird I had just killed turned into motes of light drawing the attention of the others who had evidently been wondering where the two birds I had managed to lure away had gone.

“Oh shit,” I said remembering Jameson’s advice about not attracting the attention of the group and promptly turned and ran back towards the gates of Ponson as what seemed to be the entire flock, including the Adolescent Terror Bird gave chase.

I glanced backwards over my shoulder at my pursuers and swore again. I had managed to create about 10 meters of space between me and the wall during the last fight, but the birds were rapidly gaining on me. The Adolescent Terror Bird was slowly making its way through the crowd knocking its lesser brethren left and right as it worked its way towards me intent on being the one to bring me down. It was starting to look like I was about to find out why the other player that Jameson had recruited didn’t come back.

I was really starting to wish that I had bought one of the smoke bombs that I had seen at one of the stalls instead of the herbal tea that I hadn’t even used, one of those would’ve been really helpful right now.

By now I could see Jameson’s crimson hair glowing in the late afternoon sun as though it was trying to guide me to safety, and I put on a burst of speed as I ran towards what was now the only way that I could get away without going for respawn.

“Jameson!!” I roared as loudly as I could in the hopes of attracting the big man’s attention before the beaks of the approaching Terror Chicks could rip me to shreds.

The big man cocked his head as though he had heard something but didn’t know where the noise was coming from.

“Jameson! Help” I shouted again, hope beginning to fill me as he turned to face me.

Jameson’s face paled as he saw me charging towards him being chased by the entire flock of Terror Chicks and he started shouting something at me before he took the horn that was hanging from his belt and blew it.

More guards rushed out of the gatehouse and looked around trying to see what was going on before seeing me. I was now close enough to see their eyes widen in a way that would have been comical in other circumstances and they quickly prepared their weapons and ran out towards me led by the red- haired giant that I knew as Sergeant Jameson.

The birds shrieked in rage just behind me, it seemed that they were unwilling to let me escape and I quickly activated another Ward hoping that I wouldn’t have to use it as one of the guards started firing arrows that arced over my head into the crowd following me.

“Run lad!” shouted Jameson as he approached causing me to roll my eyes, what exactly did he think I was doing?

The big man was brandishing a large axe above his head as he charged towards me in way that would be very intimidating if I didn’t know he was there to save me. The birds were now close enough that I could hear the clacking of their beaks as they tried to reach me, and I chanced a glimpse behind me.

This was a bad idea; the Adolescent Terror Bird was right behind me and it took advantage of the slight decrease in speed caused by my shock to quickly jab its beak into my back sending me sprawling with over three quarters of my health gone.

The monstrous bird screeched in triumph before leaping to one side as Jameson’s massive axe spun past it turning one of its comrades into an explosion of feathers and gore before reversing its path and returning to Jameson’s hand as he came to a halt standing over me.

Taking a deep breath, the man shouted loud enough to scare a dragon. In fact, I could swear that I could see the air rippling as sound waves buffeted my ears, luckily doing no damage as I hastily took both one of my remaining health potions and a bandage from my inventory and used both as the crowd of Terror Chicks started milling about in fright.

“Well now lad,” Jameson said to me as he looked at the Adolescent Terror Bird which glared at him briefly before attempting to calm down its followers.

“Quite the party of guests you’ve brought to our door,” he continued as the rest of the guards arrived, one of them helping me up and casting some sort of spell that restored the rest of my health before turning to face the Terror Chicks.

The Adolescent Terror Bird was still struggling to calm the others down when the guards suddenly attacked charging towards the flock which squawked in unison before turning tail and fleeing back down the road, much to the disgust of the Adolescent Terror Bird which glared at me over its shoulder as it chased after them.

Coming to a halt Jameson shrugged and turned back to face me.

“So, lad I hope we’re not the only ones who killed some Terrors today,” he said flicking some gore off his axe as he did so.

I wordlessly held up two fingers in response with a weak smile.