“You can come down now,” 664 said, scratching the side of his head.

“It’s okay. I like the view from here,” Nilbog said, and then clutched the trunk with even tighter ferocity.

“I guess I was wrong about him being a useless rat. Turns out he’s a useless monke-” 666 said, before having to jump out the way. Half a second later Nilbog landed in his position.

“Ops,” Nilbog said, the adrenaline putting on a wide smile, “I fell.”

“This little tit fucker, getting an attitude because he-”

“-did some serious work out there,” 664 finished. “You don’t got nothing on him. He did his part and some.”

“The person that sulked around, though,” 663 began, and glared at the Rogue.

The Rogue, in return, stuck his finger into his hooked nose even further, the bogger escaping his fat fingers.

“Care to explain, good sir?” 666 said, in a mocking tone, “or would you rather have me open the ball of your stomach and see what’s inside there?”

“What he said,” 663 said, ”but without the stomach part.”

“What you want me to explain?”

“I’m going to strangle this litt-”

“Why did you not warn us?” 664 said. At this point, 666 was becoming accustomed to being interrupted.

“Oh,” he said, and then scratched his other breast. “It was to test you. If you can’t kill a couple Ghouls, then we got no chance.”

A moment of quiet settled on the group. 666 turned towards 663. “Can I strangle the bitch now?”

663 shook his head. “We killed a total of seven Ghouls. Five adults and two larger variants. If they didn’t rush us sporadically then we would have probably lo-”

“The hell does spordikaly mean?” 666 asked, spitting to the side.

“In interv-”

“What does intervals mean?” 666 asked, a bored look on his face.

“Argh, that’s hard to explain. It means to--wait. You knew the word I was gonna say!” 663 said, accusingly.

“Oh, did I?” he said with a smirk. “Please do go on then,” he said, smiling.

“What a jerk,” 663 said, under his breath.

“I’m guessing there are mini-bosses as well,” 664 said.

“Anyone took a lot of damage? No? Good. Rogue, can you actually warn us next time? I think we’ve been tested enough."

665 shrugged and went further ahead.

663 attempted to get some conversation going, but it usually bounced off from 664 and came back to him, if it did not fall flat through 666’s efforts. It took a long while for their next encounter. As unattractive as 665 was, when he popped his next head out of the bushes he was received with welcoming smiles. “Got something. More Ghouls. Three Adult and three Bruisers. Level 20 now.”

“Perfect,” 663 nodded. “Let’s find a good chokehold.”

“You expected this?” 664 asked.

“Mehm. The deeper we go, the higher the difficulty curve will be. Cus' we're going around the circle, we can farm Ghouls for safe mission points and experience, and after we work together we’ll be able to take on the more difficult foes.”

“Makes sense.”

“Try not to lose much HP. Take it slowly. The forcefield is seven or so minutes behind us. We got time.”

The next two battles went smoothly. 664 and 666 tanked the frontline, while 663 provided backup and a spear to the air whenever a Ghoul attempted to jump over. Those that attempted to flank were distracted by Nilbog and 665, who was proving surprisingly useful.

He moved with languish reluctance, though when the need arises his bones seemed to move a bit too fast for the rest of his flesh.

After farming up two more Ghoul groups, they began to move towards the center. While killing the last group, one of the monsters dropped a white orb. 663 used his Intel skill on it, and reported that if used it would provide a 10% party increase to Armor. If unused by the end of the mission, it would boost the party's ranking.

Fortunately, no one reported on their experience gain. Everyone got slightly distracted at some point, probably increasing their stats from the level gain, and Nilbog acted the same.

He would have to come up with an explanation of why he was stuck at level 20. This was one of the reasons Nilbog had not hunted with other people--his Shapeshifting skill changed his look, and hid his race and class, but it did not change level. There was an add-on for it, but Nilbog’s oath to himself extended to upgrading that cursed skill as well.