The three Hell Pigs barreled towards Loran, having used [CHARGE] a second time. Fortunately, he knew not to leap to the side and instead jumped upwards, easily clearing the beasts. This time though, he wasn't solely focused on evasion.

Twisting through the air, Loran swung his Spined Pick down and buried it deep in the Hell Pig's back. As the hog continued to charge forward, Loran was pulled with it, gripping desperately to his weapon. Feeling as though his shoulder was being ripped from its socket, Loran quickly pulled himself up onto the Hell Pig as he prepared to attack again with the other pick.

*REEEEE*

With the human practically standing on its back, the Hell Pig began bucking and thrashing like mad. Loran held on for as long as he could, even managing to land another attack on the boar's neck, but his picks were knocked loose as the beast flopped to the ground.

Thrown to the ground, Loran had no time to even consider getting to his feet as the lead Hell Pig was above him about to drive one of its hooves into his chest. Rolling out of the way, the boar then lowered its head and began to charge at Loran, thankfully without the actual Skill.

Loran raised his arms while still on the ground, desperate to keep the boar's razor-sharp tusks away from his stomach and neck. Holding the beast back, Loran was dragged across the dirt as the Hell Pig was relentless in its attempts to gore him. After a few seconds, Loran's [DANGER SENSE] flared up again, grinning as he realized what it was.

As the lead boar was pushing him across the ground, another one was coming from the other side, having used the last of its SP for one final [CHARGE].

Loran let go of one of his Spined Picks, grabbed one of the lead boar's tusks, and with all of his strength, forced himself upwards. In response, the Hell Pig jerked its head upwards to try and gore him, even managing to find purchase with the tip of one of his tusks. Loran cringed from the pain as the tusk dug a thumb-sized hole in his side, but it wasn't fatal, nor did it slow him down.

Having been flipped over the lead boar's head, Loran quickly planted his feet on its back and pulled as hard as he could on its tusk. Although Loran's STR wasn't much when compared to that of the Hell Pig, it was enough to keep its head raised for a second longer; long enough for the other boar to connect with a fully powered [CHARGE] right in its exposed throat.

Both Loran and the lead Hell Pig were thrown back by the attack, which connected with a dull thud. Carefully watching the hog as he flew, Loran went on the attack as soon as his feet touched the ground, catching the huge, thrashing pig in the side of its neck with his remaining pick. Loran quickly retreated to avoid the rest of the pig's outburst but was surprised to see that the beast's violent movements were slowly being replaced by weak twitches.

Curious, Loran used [ANALYZE] again, discovering that the Hell Pig had been afflicted with not only a [BLEEDING] debuff but also [CRUSHED THROAT].

'Well, that one's out of the fight,' he decided, confident that the boar was either dead or would be soon, 'now for the rest of them.'

Activating [SPRINT], Loran dashed forward, grabbing the pick he discarded before as he moved to attack the Hell Pig that had struck its leader. Still stunned from having attacked its kin, the hog was unable to react to Loran's approach or defend itself as his Spined Picks were swung upwards into the beast's throat.

Continuing his momentum, Loran used all of his strength to follow through on the swing, pulling the boar's head upwards and flipping it onto its back. With both arms raised, Loran brought the Spined Picks down on the exposed stomach of the Hell Pig, dealing enough damage to kill it.

*DING DING*

Loran heard the new system messages, one for the boar below him and he assumed the other was for the leader succumbing to its injuries; however, he had no time to check the rewards as the other three Boars came at him from all sides. They did not [CHARGE] at him, instead choosing to box him in and threaten him with their tusks.

Loran dashed for the opening between two of the Hell Pigs. The beasts responded quickly, closing the gap in an instant as Loran sensed the other charging in from behind him.

Loran tried to jump over the two pigs in front of him but was shocked to see one of the pigs rear back and jump up to meet him. It did not jump particularly high, but it was enough to catch his foot and send him tumbling as he hit the ground.

Gasping hard, Loran had hardly a second to breathe before the third boar ran around the other two and continued running at the downed hunter.

Ignoring his screaming lungs, Loran pushed himself out of the Hell Pigs path at the last second. Knowing this was no time to catch his breath, he quickly leapt at the boar's exposed side and attacked with his picks.

Unfortunately, Loran simply wasn't fast enough after having gotten the wind knocked out of him and the boar had just enough time to turn around, taking his attacks on its face. The damage was almost entirely nullified and Loran cursed bitterly as he realized his picks were less than an inch away from blinding it, only managing to frame its right eye with two long but shallow cuts.

Loran retreated as the other Hell Pigs came around to help. 'This...I guess isn't too bad,' he thought as he assessed the boars.

The left one had a deep wound in its neck that was still bleeding heavily, struggling to stand; it was clear to Loran that one more good hit would take it out. The other, though far less wounded, was the one that Loran had partially blinded and was stomping the ground as if barely holding back its rage. The main problem was the one he just tried attacking since it was functionally unharmed.

Meanwhile, Loran may have barely taken any damage so far but he had used a lot of SP, almost half he realized after checking the menu quickly.

'I need to reduce their numbers quickly,' he decided, 'with how winded I am I'll need to rely more heavily on Sprint if I want to dodge all three of them, but one should be manageable.'

After a brief moment of stillness, the three boars each activated [CHARGE] and performed one last group attack on Loran. The distance between the two sides was covered in an instant, and at the very last moment, Loran jumped back while reactivating [SPRINT], aiming his foot at the blinded side of the boar's face.

Allowing the momentum to flip him, Loran went for an attack at the back of the blinded Hell Pig, leaving a long, bloody gash down the length of its body.

Landing on his feet, Loran approached the blinded boar and brought both picks down on it for one last attack.

*DING*

'Seven seconds left,' he estimated.

Seeing the other two boars turning around, Loran decided to throw one of his picks at the more heavily injured one, not wanting to waste time getting around their defenses again.

*DING*

The desperate attack, much to Loran's relief, landed perfectly at the base of the boar's neck, dealing enough damage to kill.

Having finished turning around, the final Hell Pig realized that it was officially the last one standing. The two stared at each other for a moment; Loran lowered his body, getting ready to [SPRINT] as he took a step forward. Much to his surprise, the Hell Pig took a step back in response, and when Loran raised his head in curiosity, the boar quickly took off in the opposite direction.

Loran briefly considered chasing but decided against it. 'I'm already low on SP and catching up to it would probably mean fighting it without any Skills at all.' Considering he had just finished fighting a whole pack of Hell Pigs, he figured that was enough training for one day. Just as this thought occurred to him, Loran's legs practically gave out beneath him and he fell forward as all the tension flooded out of his body.

Though he might not have taken much damage, he had spent the entire fight at maximum concentration and physical output, leaving his mind drained and his body feeling like he had just run a 100-Meter Dash.

Too tired to do much more than get his face out of the dirt, he closed his eyes and let his mind and body recover from the hyperintense battle. 'It still feels far more stressful than gaming normally, but at least now I'm confident that I won't be a liability like I was with the wolves.'

After a moment, Loran began moving over towards one of the trees, ready to sit back and check the spoils of his victory...

*DING*

...When a new notification took him completely off guard.

"Hm? What the hell could that be?" Curious, he opened the notification log, seeing a total of five alerts as he sat at the base of a tree.

[CREATURE (Hell Pig) HAS BEEN DEFEATED]

[1,700 EXP AWARDED]

[ACTIVITY {Pulling Attack} PERFORMED]

[RELEVANT VALUE(S) {STR:10 Level:10} SUFFICIENT]

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO GENERATE A NEW SKILL?]

[YES] / [NO]

[CREATURE (Hell Pig) HAS BEEN DEFEATED]

[1,700 EXP AWARDED]

[CREATURE (Hell Pig) HAS BEEN DEFEATED]

[1,700 EXP AWARDED]

[CREATURE (Hell Pig) HAS BEEN DEFEATED]

[1,900 EXP AWARDED]

"Holy- that's a lot of EXP!"

So far, none of the other players from the village had tried fighting the higher-level animals in anything less than a group of four, greatly distributing the total EXP. Loran was the first person to reap all the benefits for himself, to great success.

"...Maybe Alexx was right about trying to fight these things by ourselves...' he thought, '...well, maybe not.' Though he was still in a rather good condition, he was still quite exhausted physically and mentally. It took tremendous effort to defeat the Hell Pigs while taking so little damage, and he was certain that trying to do so again would be a death sentence. 'Getting back is going to be a pain too, I should probably just stick with the others from now on.'

Stretching for a moment, Loran pushed his hair out of his face before returning his attention to the menu. 'Well, all that aside, let's check out this new Skill.'

[PIONEER SYSTEM ACTIVATED]

[...]

[A NEW SKILL HAS BEEN GENERATED]

[ _ _ _ ] Lv. 1

(Active: Cost 10 SP) Reduces the power needed to pull a target.

'Pulling huh, so it's a CC Skill.'

CC or Crowd Control was a gaming tactic where the player would manipulate the attention or movement of a target. They were essential in large-scale battles, both for grouping up many enemies for a large, concentrated attack or restricting a single Boss monster from running around freely.

'I guess I got this from flipping that pig earlier.' While the Skill would be more useful for a tank like Yang, it would still be useful considering his preferred weapons.

[IT WILL COST {1} ABILITY POINT TO LEARN THIS SKILL]

[LEARN AND NAME SKILL?]

[YES] / [NO]

'At least this isn't more expensive,' he thought gratefully. After agreeing to learn the Skill he experience the same unsettling feeling he did the first day, although he had grown used to it by now. The feeling was felt by all players whenever they learned a new Skill, seemingly a side effect of the Pioneer System.

Once the feeling faded, Loran got up to test the Skill out. Picking up his Spined Picks as he approached one of the Hell Pig corpses, he realized something was wrong. The fiber rope he had used to tie the Spined Deer Antler to the handle was incredibly frayed, and on closer inspection, the spike was also wiggling in its socket.

[DURABILITY]: 19/150

'I guess I've been rougher with these things than I thought.' It wasn't hard to see what happened, he had just used a handmade wooden weapon to throw around animals weighing at least 300 pounds, and that was on top of having used it for the past few days. The other was in a similar condition. 'Honestly, it's just impressive that they didn't break in the middle of the fight.'

Hooking the damaged weapons to his hips, bent over to grab the tusks of one of the Hell Pigs. Loran pulled on the boar, getting a feel for its weight, before activating the Skill and pulling again. Since he didn't pull with all his strength, the body didn't move much, but there was a noticeable difference. Deciding to test his limit, Loran got a firm grip, before pulling as hard as he could while activating [PULL]. The body was easily lifted off the ground, landing on Loran's opposite side.

"Huff... not bad, I bet if I maxed this out I could toss these guys around with one hand." As much as Loran wanted to continue his testing, he was running low on SP, and getting into a fight without any would be much too dangerous.

Loran stretched his back before looking around at the bodies. 'Guess I can only take one of these back with me.'

*SNAP*

The sharp sound of a stick breaking behind him caused Loran to turn and put up his guard, reflexively reaching for his picks before remembering how damaged they were. 'I'm still probably better off using them, but...'

"Wait."

Before Loran could finish his thought, Maxie stepped into view from behind a cluster of trees, followed by the other members of her hunting party.

"Oh, it's just you guys," Loran relaxed his guard. "Perfect timing, can you guys help me get these back to the village?

"Loran, did- did you come out here all by yourself?"

"Yeah, so can I get some help?"

Still stunned by Loran's achievement and his boldness, the party of four began prepping for the trip back.