Brandon, Tenjin, and Felix were walking straight north back to the cave entrance that they had exited from the day before. They decided to look for some herbs, and other resources on the way, along with a little hunting.

Since leveling up Felix picked up a basic fire shot spell, so hunting small creatures for food was pretty easy. As for Brandon, he acquired a wind spell called wind cutter which allowed him to make a slash with his sword that would send a blade of wind out cutting whatever the first thing hit within a 15 ft range.

Tenjin could contribute much to the hunting since he didn't have any attacks with range, but he did help gather plants and food whenever they saw any.

"Man, some of the animals are so weak we basically get the same amount of EXP even if we weren't the one that killed them." Felix noted to the others.

"Well, it's not like the system can give us half an experience point." Tenjin responded.

"Yeah true, but there's gotta be more then squirrels and boars around here." Felix complained while placing his hands behind his head.

"We're in the lowest level area probably in the entire Archipelago." Brandon explained. "Any other game would probably be higher level."

"I bet you could find low level deer." Tenjin concluded. "What do you think Trinity? Are there any deer on this island?"

"Not on this island" Trinity replied. "But there are some on the largest island. You'll need to be level 70-80 to kill anything on that island though.

"What!" Brandon said exasperated by how high level they'd need to be to get to the deer. He had lived in the city his whole life, so he hasn't seen much wildlife. He was looking forward to the prospect of seeing dear for the first time.

"Well, I guess we're just going to have to keep level grinding." Tenjin announced. "I suggest we three try to get to level 5 since we're out on our first real excursion today.

"Not a bad idea." Brandon replied while grinning with excitement. "Let's slay a few goblins once we get to the caves."

"Alright!" Tenjin and Felix shouted in unison as they continued walking along the path to the cave.

Meanwhile Ava and Cass were moving at a slower pace since they were stopping more frequently, and going off on their own little excursions to located areas with medicinal herbs.

They weren't taking a straight route to their destination like the boys were, so they naturally zigged and zagging throughout the forest whenever it pleases them, or they saw something interesting.

Ava and Cass had both managed to fill their inventory's with dozens of herbs and pants already, and they have only been walking for half an hour.

"Wow gathering is really easy in this world." Cass determined having expected it to be a lot more tedious. "We could literally just pick plants as were walking along and have plenty."

"Well maybe." Ava replied with uncertainty in her voice. "I'm not sure exactly how much we'll need, and if I'll even be able to brew anything. Right now, I'm not a proper herbalist, so I'll have to learn through trial and error."

"Yeah, but even if you can't make something some of these plants already have healing properties." Cass pointed out. "So don't worry too much. We'll be in good shape. And besides our HP heals naturally if we sleep, so we'll just take a nap if we get too hurt."

"Yeah, but we need something that will help us in the middle of a fight." Ava retorted. "Once our levels get higher these herbs by themselves won't be enough to restore all of our HP. I can already see it. Once our HP gets into the hundreds these herbs won't die much."

"You make a good point lassie." Cass said conceding to Ava's concerns realizing that they'll need a better way to heal, and they won't always be able to rely on Ava to heal them in a pinch. "Okay so maybe I'll help you out when you start trying to make medicine. Even if all I can do is by a guinea pig all do it." Cass affirmed as she pumped her fist.

"Thanks Cass." Ava replied. She was grateful that she had another girl in the group, especially one like Cass who was strong and confident. Having Cass around made her feel safer. If it had just been her and the boys Ava felt like she wouldn't have been able to approach them since they were strangers, but when she first saw Cass there when they all first arrived on this world it felt good to have a strong looking girl around who'd probably help out if one of them had tried anything.

The girls continued picking herbs for the next half hour, and the whole time they could see notifications that they were gaining 1 EXP at random. They each knew right away that the boys were probably doing a little hunting on the way to the caves.

They managed to do a little themselves. Since leveling up Ava picked a new spell called spark jolt. It was a tier 1 spell that caused sparks to come out of her hand, the only problem was she had to touch or at least be within a couple inches of her target to use it, so she wanted to try it out.

Cass helped her by drawing in a few boats and letting them chase her around for a while so Ava could try it out without getting hurt.

It looked a little funny to Ava watching Cass run in circles while being chased by a boar, but it ended up being good practice. She managed to get good timing down as well so she could run by and get her hand just close enough without having to make physical contact with the boat.

She wanted to practice this in case they came across something that Ava wouldn't want to touch, but needed to use a close range spell on. From what she learned from her little sister about fantasy and even sci fi there was the possibility that they'd run into giant bugs, worms, or slimy creatures, and Ava wasn't looking forward to touching any of those.

"How much further do you think the lake is from here?" Ava asked a little weary from all the traveling.

"Trinity said it was only a couple miles west, so we should be their shortly." Cass replied.

"How many of these guys do you think we've each taken out?"

Cass thought back to each of their previous battles, and began counting with her fingers. "About four each, so eight in total".

"So, want to each take down one more, and then carry on?" ava asked.

"Sounds good to me!" Cass smiled because she had never gone hunting with another girl before. She mainly went with her father and some of his friends. A lot of the girls she went to school with weren't really into it, and the boys always either tried to impress her, or got really competitive all of a sudden. She doesn't mind competing, but it was nice to just enjoy the experience very once in a while she thought to herself.

"Hey Ava, once we get to the lake do you want to take a break?" Cass asked.

"Yeah sure. Sounds good to me." Ava agreed.

Cass smiled, and when another boar showed up she pulled out both of her daggers. She had wanted to try dagger throwing for a while, but the goblin cave was too dangerous, and it wasn't really safe to experiment on her own.

She held one of the daggers by the blade, and with the flick of her wrist sent it flying at the boar. It managed to hit the boar dead center, and Cass continued to smile as she found herself entering a state of truest complete bliss for the first time since she arrived here.

Brandon, Tenjin, and Felix continued walking towards the caves while gathering plants on the way. They had been traveling at a slower pace because of their continuous stopping to hunt and gather resources, but they managed to reach the caves entrance within the hour.

Right before entering the cave Felix noticed an alert from his system. Reached level 5; HP 70; MP 70.

"Hey, I leveled up." Felix stated excited at the pleasant surprise. He hadn't been paying much attention to how much EXP he had, so this honestly came as a surprise to him.

"Hmm well you have had the most kills out of everyone so I guess you'd have more EXP then the rest of us, Tenjin concluded a little envious of how quickly Felix was getting stronger.

"Yeah, I'm getting pretty close to leveling up to." Brandon declared. "Only 90 more EXP to go!"

"Wait really? I still have 105 before I level up." Tenjin was a little surprised the Brandon was closer than he was, but he did manage to take out five by himself when they first entered the cave so it kind of made sense to him.

Brandon could tell Tenjin was a little bit fidgety. He knew Tenjin desperately wanted to get stronger, so he must be feeling a little jealous of the two of them for getting ahead of him.

"Hey Felix since you're already at level 5 why don't you let Tenjin and I take the lead?" Brandon suggested. "We're obviously a bit behind you, so why don't you cover our back so we can get a little extra XP?"

"Sounds good to me. After you guys." Felix said while gesturing them to go into the cave before him.

Tenjin face lit up, and he stepped into the cave before the other two. Brandon followed him closely behind, and Felix took up the rear.

Since Tenjin had the light sphere spell it actually made sense for him to take the lead since he'd have the best chance at seeing enemies before the ran into them, and he also had the highest defense so he could take a lot more damage then the others.

Tenjin proceeded with his shield up covering his torso. When they entered the cave there were two paths in front of them. The left lead back to the goblin camp where they had fought the Goblin Chief while the right lead to uncharted territory for them. Trinity had mentioned on their way that there was ore in one of the spots that the group hadn't explored yet, so this direction was the obvious choice.

"Oh, hold up a sec." Brandon commanded before they began down the right path. "I'm just going to let the girls know that we're entering the cave, and make sure everything okay."

Brandon placed his hand over his ear as if he was holding a phone in his hand, and began trying to reach the girls using the guild chat.

"Hey Cass, Ava can you guys here me." Brandon asked still uncertain about how to initiate the guild chat.

"Yes, we can both hear you." Brandon knew right away from the sound of her voice that Ava was the one that responded.

"We're just about to enter the cave." Brandon declared. "Is everything okay on your end?"

"Yeah, we're fine." Ava replied. "We should be at the lake pretty soon. We'll let you know if we need any assistance."

"Copy that. We'll check in again in about another 30 minutes." Brandon stated. He was a little concerned about the girls since they didn't have any close quarters fighters with them, but he was relieved to hear that they hadn't run into any trouble so far.

"Sounds good. We'll talk to you later." Brandon said.

"Copy over and out!" Ava replied.

As Brandon took his hand off of his ear he saw Tenjin and Felix both grinning at him. "What are you guys look at?

"So, did Ava respond?" Felix asked mockingly. "What did she say man? Did she say she missed you?"

"Oh, shut up!" Brandon retorted. "We're not like that!"

Felix continued to tease him. "Oh really? You should said "I love you" instead of goodbye!"

"Now you're starting to sound like Cass." Brandon remarked. When he saw Felix raise his eyebrows due to his surprise at that comment Brandon began walking down the path to the unexplored area.

"Come on you guys let's go." Brandon commanded while turning back to look at them to make sure they were following.

Tenjin and Felix both smiled and laughed for a second, and took their planned position around Brandon.

The wondered around the cave for a few minutes running into several forks in the road that lead to dead ends or just circled around, but it didn't take long before they spotted a torch light ahead signaling that there were goblins nearby.

Tenjin stopped in his tracks, and quickly turned around to tap Brandon's shoulder. He then pointed to a torch on the cave wall. They could see the cave began to bear of to the left, and could here the crackling of a campfire.

The group took a few steps back so they could plan how they were going to proceed.

"Do you think it's another camp like the one with the Goblin Chief?" Felix asked concerned they might have a difficult fight ahead of them.

"No, it's probably pretty small." Tenjin replied while trying to keep his voice as quiet as possible. "I could hear the crackling of a fire too. If I was hearing that it was probably pretty close, and it's probably in a pretty small area. I doubt there are that many goblins in there."

"The Goblin Chief is the highest level monster in these caves, and would be the only thing classified as a boss monster." Trinity assured them.

"Okay then Tenjin, you're in first, I'll follow behind, and Felix will cover our backs." Brandon stated.

"Got it let's go!" With that Tenjin deactivated his light sphere and crouched down walking slow and low to the ground so he could avoid being scene. He peaked around the corner and saw three goblins the first of which was a level 4 goblin with the other two being level three.

Tenjin counted down using his fingers showing them three, then two, then one. On one he charges in with the others at his back, and struck the highest level goblin first.

When Tenjin reached level 4 he decided to learn a spell that he could use with his hammer. There was a spell on his list called thunder strike. It would cost him 5 MP, but it would add an additional three points in lightning damage to his regular attack after all the damage was calculated according to the spell.

With the goblins increased HP of 30 and a constitution of 7 it was stronger, then most of the goblins they had fought, but his first strike managed to deal 21 damage to it.

The great thing about spells that involved weapon attacks is that the damage was based off the users strength stat instead of magic. It cost more MP to use these attacks then the standard tier 1 magic attack spell, but it was worth the extra, and they still had enough MP to make 12 more strikes.

Before the goblin could even respond Tenjin managed to strike it again, and finish it off for good this time.

Once Tenjin had made his first strike Brandon came in and stabbed the goblin on Tenjin's left flank. Once he hit level 4 Brandon had taken wind cutter so he decided to put it to use. He swung out his sword from behind Tenjin managing to deal 22 damage, and then finish it off by stabbing it.

As for the last goblin, Tenjin had enough time to block the strike it had tried to make with his shield, and then strike it down with another thunder strike followed by kicking it and making another regular strike with his hammer.

"Who do you think you are Tenjin, Thor the Thunder God?" Felix joked after finally walking into the small chamber where they were standing.

"You like the thunder strike?" Tenjin asked obviously proud of the spell he chose.

"I gotta say it's pretty cool." Felix admitted. "And look I think we found our ore vein."

Felix lifted his finger to point to the back wall of the chamber. They could see the dark grey color which barely contrasted with the lighter grey of the cave walls, and coincidentally it looked like there was a few pickaxes lying next to it.

"Wow this is too much like a video game." Brandon stated lightheartedly.

"Yeah, no kidding. This couldn't be anymore convenient could it?" Tenjin asked jokingly.

"Well that aside, why don't we get to it and start mining some of this stuff." Felix recommended as he walked over to pickup one of the pickaxes.

Brandon picked up the other pickaxes and started mining ore with Felix while Tenjin used his light sphere and stood guard looking out for any goblins that could try to sneak up behind them.