Crashing through the trees glowing with a twilight hue comes a lone, dark grey wolf with black beady eyes. It sprints with quick shallow breaths while a pack of wolves, 8 of them, bound after this lone wolf. The lone wolf is different from its pursuing kind as it runs on 2 legs and not 4.

Suddenly that wolf sharply swerves behind a tree, its leaves rustling with activity. The wolves follow hungrily turning behind the tree to see it devoid of traces of the other wolf.

They sniff around for a few seconds, find no scent in the air and saddened start to disperse in different directions. For only a few seconds however, as the rustling of leaves and a soft thud back at the tree catches their attention immediately. The thick scent of that other wolf fills their snouts and when they turn that wolf's visage fills their eyes.

It stands there leaning slightly on the tree its head facing toward the sky looking at the low sun. Gleaming white teeth become visible as the wolves's mouths open in an almost gleeful smile. Step by step they inch their way closer and closer to this wolf, who ignores the deadly threat.

It notices this threat once 2 wolves have made their way a few metres from it. The last rays of the sun find its way through the trees dimly illuminating the 2 wolves; they appear the same as normal wolves except for the three needle like sticks protruding from their face. The standing wolf is also illuminated revealing a second pair of brown eyes beneath its snout accompanied by its gleaming grin beneath the eyes.

Rustle...A bright green glow appears from above the 2 wolves and they face upwards, each receiving a glowing green sword through their skulls. With a howl they burst into polygons leaving their attackers standing on their graves.

2 more of the 2 legged wolves stand there: one holds a steel rapier, the other a sword along with a knights shield.

Howling at their comrades death the other 6 who are barely meters away pounce towards them. They jump on the 2 standing wolves all at once, jaws snapping with anger.

The weapons glow blood red and with lighting speed cut horizontally across 3 wolves each bringing them into low red. Howling in pain the wolves are pushed back by the blow dropping them beside the 2 figures who stand immobile for a split second before they move into a more defensive position.

Standing up in haste the wolves once again charge the other 2 their intent to kill thick in the air. That does not matter however, as a red glow flashes by 2 of them turn into polygons while a third joins the rest with a wooden needle meeting its neck.

This was only one side and the remaining 3 clawed and bit but most of their frenzied attacks were blocked systematically by the shield of the wolf.

Relentlessly they rip away at the shield slowly deforming it. They are not able to complete doing that though as a glowing blue needle sticks into one turning into similarly blue polygons simultaneously with 2 green glowing swords thrusting through separate wolves killing them too.

Upon the last dying howls of the wolves the moon rises into the air, its iridescent rays illuminating the forest. No wind blows and there is no noise apart from the tired breathing coming from the weapon holding wolves.

Sheathing their weapons they get their breathing under control. The one who holds the shield recovers first and with the cracking of knuckles announces "We're close"

-page break-

We're close, but how close. Damn this is such a pain.

Shaking my head I rid myself of that thought and start to climb the tree after Gastalf. He like Charlesming climb it pretty adeptly while I have a much less aesthetically pleasing climb. It must've been the rain from earlier making the wood slick because I slipped more than I climbed.

Thankfully after a few times of watching me inevitably slide to the bottom of the tree, they climb back down and form a human chain off of a low branch. Jumping up I link with them and I climb on them to the branch. Repeating this process a few times we all manage to get close to the canopy.

Feeling it's high enough we all pick a nice branch to settle down in. I find myself a branch, well there wasn't much choice of what kind of branch I got because they were pretty much all just as uncomfortable and the only way to stay on the was to sit back on the trunk.

Settling down I remove my wolf hood, immediately regretting it when the icy night wind blows on my face. Quickly covering my face with my wolf face hood I snuggle deeper into my wolf clothes thankful of its warmth.

Whispering "good night" to each other the others fall asleep the muffled snores coming from Charlesming. I however stay awake as I'm on watch. It's strange because really no one needs to be on watch when we're this high up but we had learnt that knowing to have someone on watch made us sleep a bit more comfortable of the surroundings.

My eyelids droop out of my control. Gritting my teeth I plunge my face into the cold air snapping me wide awake, then retreat back into the warmth.

Its surprisingly hard to be on watch, really isn't like the movies. It's my 5th night on watch and i'm still having troubles staying awake. Yesterday was the first night I stayed awake for the whole watch and tonight I'll do the same, hopefully.

Going through the memory of last night and how I stayed awake I remember my method and get down to it: I swipe open my menu and open my map.

The map is pretty cool as although it is only a 2-D image it is surprisingly fancy looking: it gives the names of the towns as well as where the forest and different landscapes are, as long as you have explored them. It's cool because the map has to be filled in which is a beautiful thing as it gives me reason to explore literally everything each floor has to offer.

Flicking around the map seeing huge amounts of it unexplored I get a small elated feeling of desire to explore.

After a while I find Horunka and see the snake like line starting from the edge of the forest. At first it heads south but soon swerves to the right and ends up in the opposite direction. From then on its mostly straight going north through the forest. It had taken us 2 days to find out the exact direction we were going through As our compass was the pack of wolves that would appear to hunt us every so often. They got more frequent and frequent as we walked north so we're guessing that it means their spawn point is close. Hopefully the spawn point is the lair of the alpha because well, thats our only lead we have.

The packs have been coming every 30 or so minutes for the last 2 packs so the spawn point should only be an hour or 2 of walking away.

Using the packs as a compass was a great idea, its working pretty well so far and Im getting some good xp and col out of it, along with some materials here and there. He big downside was that we've encountered so many of them all our armour is gone and we're through most of our weapons.

Smartly before we left town 5 days ago, we each bought 4 weapons and a full set of leather. All our armour is gone, the wolves ripped that to shreds when we started moving north. The weapons were doing slightly better: Gastalf and Charlesming are on their third weapon each and Gastalf's last shield. I say last stuff and third but we've still got everything but it is all beaten up. I however, am only on my second weapon as I have mostly been using my wood chips.

Well technically wood needles as I've spent quite some time carving them to be thin and point like needles. The more appropriate word for my wooden needles would be large toothpicks, realistically speaking.

We had hit level 4 on the second day and that had unlocked a third skill slot along with the throwing skill. Since I only have 5 Vitality and a pitiful amount of hit points I decided staying away from the enemy would be a good life decision. I also took sprint for the same reason really but also because running faster felt pretty awesome. Level 5 is close, I'm at 17,360 xp now, only 2,640 xp off. Surprisingly this game is teaching me some basic maths which I'm actually all right with.

I'm still not sure about the Sprint skill because yes its useful in running away from monsters but I've been assigned to be the decoy, which is understandable as I'm apart from throwing my mildly useful toothpicks I am really underpowered, untouchable but underpowered.

The others had taken acrobatics which I almost did take but I thought that I would rather stay away from the wolves instead of dodging it.

After musing this I decided to close my map, open up my skills menu and check them out:

Woodcutting 11/1000

Throwing 32/1000

Sprint 14/1000

Man my woodcutting was behind. Well to be fair I had only cut down 1 tree since entering the forest and then basically turned it into thousands of wood chips which didn't give me any the other 2 are racing on ahead which is satisfying to know that not all skills are slow like woodcutting.

Opening my inventory I spawn my battered wolf tusk sword, I didn't buy an axe because I didn't think I was going to be cutting a tree. Spawning some wood chips I start to carve them into the large toothpicks that are the weapon of my choice. Don't get me wrong I can use the wood chips as they are for throwing but the sharpening adds an extra 1-2% of damage which is always helpful...

I carve away for a while keeping an eye on the time situated on the top left of my menu. At 10:00 in the night I take a wood chip and chuck it at Gastalf. The wood bounces off his head and he bursts into action ripping his sword out of his scabbard while balancing on the branch.

Upon seeing my cheeky grin he gives me a I'll get you back look before settling down for his watch. With that I snuggle deeper into my wolf clothing and let sleep take me...

-page break-

Sleep soon leaves me as the bright morning rays caress my face gently warming me up. I arise from my slumber seeing the time to be 8 and no alarm. Being out of town meant that you had no alarm in the morning. Best thing about sleeping outside.

With a yawn I hug the tree trunk and slowly slide down, thankfully the wood was not as wet as last night so I had some control as to how fast I was going down.

Reaching the floor at a speed a bit too fast for my sake and 20% of my health sakes too, I acknowledge the others as they descend with more grace.

We all spawn our daily breakfast of our oh so loved 1 col bread and 2 col water. We lean on the tree trunk munching away silently at our breakfast, it was too early in the morning to participate in talking for us, also our talking sometimes attracted wolves situated nearby we had sadly learned a few days prior. Talking about wolves...

After 25 minutes of finishing off breakfast and doing early morning stretches Gastalf and Charlesming head back up into the trees waving me off as I sprint off at 107% speed.

I sprint for about 2 minutes before the familiar sounds of the howling pack reach my ears and soon after so do they reach my eyes. Turning on the spot and throwing a needle at one I run back to our ambush spot throwing a needle at the wolves with less than three needles.

When I return to the ambush spot, all the wolves have 3 needles stuck in them and 2 of them die immediately with a sword from above. The remaining wolves immediately aggro on them and we do our usual tactic: killing of Charlesming's side first while Gastalf defends and takes a little damage, then helping him one on one against the remaining 3.

It works as well as always and soon the wolves are nothing but polygons disappearing into the air.

Gastalf took a bit of damage and his pelt ripped, so he threw it on the ground in front of us and spawned another pelt. We had plenty to spare and they were better than nothing.

With that done we climb back up the tree, them helping me up, till we reach a decently high branch. We then jump to the next tree. This is so we don't spawn any packs after us but it will slow us down a lot.

They jump easily to the next branch thanks to their acrobatics and the turn arms outstretched ready to catch me if I fail to jump far enough. Sadly that has happened quite a few times and as I jump and have them catch me I add another one to that lengthening list of failed jumps. This was not going to be fun.

Another jump into the helpful hands of the other 2 and I make it onto another tree branch successfully. Gastalf starts to climb around tree but stops when his eyes see what is on the other side. Curious, Charlesming and I peek round.

I see a large hill in the middle of the forest, devoid of trees and mossy green. A large hole is on the side of this mountain. A cave then...oh. I realise and suspect the others have realised this too; that's the cave we're looking for.

The cave entrance is decently big we are shown, by 6 wolves walking out side by side through the entrance. 2 follow behind making a pack and once out of the cave they howl and sprint off southwards. Definitely the lair.

It's around midday now and although we found the lair, attacking it in broad daylight is pretty suicidal. To decide on a plan of action we hop as silently as we can to a few trees away.

Once we've made our way out of sight of the cave we untrusting of whether the wolves could still hear us communicate in hand signals.

I take both hands, clench them into fists and put them on top of one another. I then swing horizontally gesturing to me. They nod in understanding. Pleased, I continue by collecting my imaginary fallen wood, creating a cave with my hands and placing the wood under the rainbow. More nods. A finger inside the cave, shocked facial expression pointing outwards. More nods, bit more confused nods though. Point at us, finger walk inside cave, hand slide across throat. They think about my idea for a minute before bot h nodding. Gastalf gestures we should go further away and with slight reluctance on my part, we start to jump tree to tree once more.

-page break-

After about another 2 hours of jumping from tree to tree, failing a lot less then usual which was nice. We stop and I climb down spawning an iron sword, shiny and spotless for the time being.

I start to hack away at the wood while the other 2 laze about in the trees. The forest is silent except for my rhythmic chopping which is strange because I thought there would have been birds but apparently not. Maybe developers forgot the bird environmental sounds or maybe its event related. Either way there are no bird sounds which makes the forest seems a lot creepier than it should be.

After about 15 minutes of me hacking away my rhythm is interrupted with a high pitched whistle from above. Thrusting my sword in the ground I turn and sprint in the direction of the cave.

The pack meets me after about a minute and I give them a welcome of needles before leading them towards their death.

After we finished them off I pulled my sword out of the ground and continued to hack away at the tree...

...3 hours later I find myself sitting beside 2 big chunks of wood. Gastalf and Charlesming appear from behind the trees in front of me carrying a large pile of twigs and leaves and as they walk towards me it disappears into their inventory. They each pick up a piece of wood while I get traded all the pelts and teeth. My inventory up to 100% I'm forced to carry a sword in each hand, thankfully being able to sheath one to have a free hand.

It had taken me 2 hours to cut down the tree and another 1 to split it in 2. In that time we had 12 packs that had attacked bring me to a pretty 560 xp from level 5. However our gear had taken a huge toll. Gastalf was using and breaking his battered shields, only 2 remain. Charlesming was out of rapiers and now both of them had taken almost all my swords. Thankfully I have a couple of thousand wooden needles left so I'm sitting pretty on the weapon front.

Once everyone had their inventory spaces maxed out with wolf pelts, teeth and wood we climbed up the tree. Although we had 100% full inventories it did not make the climbing any harder which I am truly thankful for because its hard enough without being weighed down.

We jump across the trees again making our way back towards the cave entrance. The sun is quite low as it is early evening and as we make our way back to the cave the evening closer and closer to night and the forest becomes darker and darker.

Finding ourselves back at the cave entrance we climb up a bit more and prepare ourselves for sleep.

I'm on first watch so I get to see evening turn to night and watch as the wolves become dire wolves. Quite horrifying as they grow and spikes burst out from their back. The wolves also seem to be returning. My very early theory that there was a single pack hunting was quickly found wrong as 2 different wolf packs, arrived and went into the cave one behind the other.

There was a large gap between them and the 3rd pack. Seems like the forest is quite busy, to have so many packs out but with the information that another 'expedition' had come from the starting city to Horunka, it was not too surprising in reality to see so many packs.

About 1 in 40 packs came back is what I guessed which was comforting but disturbing at the same time as that meant at least 1 person in every 40 battles had died. 6 packs came back in my watch.

Waking Gastalf quietly I snuggle in my wolf clothing and go to sleep. It feels as though seconds had past when Charlesming shook me awake with a wolf paw glove over my mouth to muffle any sounds that might escape my lips.

After a few seconds and no sounds he releases me and I check the time. 5 am. Ok so we got 1 hour to set up cool. As quietly as I could I climb down the tree and upon touching the ground prepare myself to sprint. As I suspected a pack of dire wolves come out of the cave sniffing and upon seeing me growl deeply and charge towards me.

Sprinting ahead of them I lead them away. Looking back I catch the thumbs up from Gastalf and a 1 from him.

Thanking that the system does not make me tired and perform worse I sprint in a large circle keeping close to the other two but not within sight therefore out of aggro range, I keep this circle going for a whole hour. In all honesty I would have been able to stop after about 20 minutes as my slow but constant throwing of needles slowly whittled and killed the pack. I kept 1 alive though so that no more packs would spawn.

So it ended up being a 30 minute game of chase with me and this wolf until I decided 10 minutes before dawn that I would go back to the cave. Cutting towards the cave I sprint towards it and once in sight throw the last needle killing the wolf behind me.

I go to the front of the cave and see that the 50 minutes I spent playing merry go round with wolves was well spent: They had blocked off most of the cave with the 2 big bits of wood, leaving only a small exit on the far left for the wolves to escape. The exit however led to a giant enclosed circle of leaves and sticks piled to knee height. That should stop them for a bit.

Upon seeing me they light multiple sticks on fire with their flint and stone. The goods vendor at Horunka sold them and we thought it was a good idea to get some to make fires, just didn't think it would be to this scale.

Well if the forest burns down then so be it. The sticks catch fire and we quickly spread it around setting the 2 large blocks of wood which are covered in leaves on fire. Well the leaves are on fire so it looks like the wood is on fire which is all we need really. The flaming circle beside us gives off a heavy heat and also quite a bit of smoke comes off of our burning things.

I look at my clock, 5:55 am, 5 minutes till morning

The earthquake of howls from inside concludes that we've woken up the wolves and we got an inkling the magnitude of how many wolves there are inside. Were inside, as they all, in a panic upon seeing the fire rush outside and into the circle. The foremost turn back to go back into the cave but the huge stream of wolves coming from the cave does not allow that.

Within a minute the circle is brimming with hundreds of dire wolves howling in fear and anguish unable to escape the fire as it encloses them but leaves just enough space to not have them act like cornered animals, which technically they are but within the system it hasn't been recognised as that yet.

Feeling satisfied with our work we sneak around the side far away from the wolves as we can luckily aggroing none. The wolves have turned and are starting to make their way back but with so many wolves freaking out over the fire the ones who have seen the exit back into the cave are having a hard time getting there.

Those wolves hopes were smashed with a smile as we pushed on the wood fully enclosing the wolves and giving us space to get into the cave. The pained howls of lost hope is like music to our ears.

With the torturous sound of wolves filled with pure fear, we walk inside, with 2 giant appearing to be burning blocks of wood behind us, look for the monster that hopefully resides here...

AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

The sound pierces the sky smashing into our ear drums. Covering our ears against the earth shaking howl We look round for the producer and find it easily: The shadow in the corner of the cave seems to grow into a large shapeless form as if it were a slumbering beast waking from its rest.

The shadows seemed to retreat to the left hand side of the form and they seem to sharpen unnaturally becoming fur black as the night. The other side devoid of all shadows smoothens and turns a blinding white.

This form half covered in darkness opens its eyes. Its blood red eyes pierce through the darkness staring at us not in fear or hate or anger, but in hunger.

A single giant black paw reaches out of the shadow and claws the ground making it screech when its hand sized claws rake across. A white paw, follows up creating the same sadistic screeching sound.

Its face with those piercing red eyes accompanied with a gleaming white smile of rows of canines deadly sharp comes into the light too. Its face like its body is split into a sharp pointy black and a smooth white.

Its tongue travels around its lips licking them, anticipating what we would taste like. Its tongue retracts and it raises its head to the ceiling.

AUUUUUUUUUU!

Lowering its head back down to where its eyes line with ours a bar pops up on its head along with 3 green health bars at its side: [Mongrel]

Bit of a lame name, suiting but lame. However the coolness factor of its name flies out of my thoughts as [Mongrel] pounces at us.

Instinctively I throw myself to the side landing hard on my shoulder. No time to think about the non existent pain as [Mongrel] lands gracefully, turns and pounces at me in a fluid motion. Pushing off the floor, jumping sideways I manage to get out of the way but a claw swipes past me grazing my chest.

Slamming into the floor my health on low red thanks to the combined environmental and claw damage, I immediately prepare another dodge but thankfully [Mongrel] cannot do the pounce three times in a row it seems. It turns towards me however the hungry smile printed on its face.

A pair of glowing green swords rip at either side of it wipe that smile off along with most of its first bar of health as it drops to a low red. So a very high damage but low health.

With an angry howl it swerves towards Gastalf who holds one of his battered iron shields along with his 3S anneal blade. A pair of claws rip at the shield shredding it to ribbons within barely more than a second or two. Its jaw opens wide and surges towards the shieldless Gastalf but stops with a howl of pain as a sword pierces through its left flank.

The ground cracks underneath its paws as it leaps into the air landing back in the corner. The shadows envelop it as growls fill up the room. Thankful for the breathing space I down one of my 2 healing potions and watch my health slowly return to yellow and on its way to green.

I lose concentration over that though as [Mongrel], once again residing within the shadows, stands up its crimson coloured eyes a mix of hunger and hate. Something seems strange about it: it looks taller, much taller at least 12ft high.

My queries are answered as [Mongrel] bursts out of the corner wielding a large green glowing claymore. Reflexively I jump to the side and an almighty bang behind me sends dust and bits of dirt into the air. EH? It can use Sword Skills?

No time to think about that I get back up on my feet I prepare for another attack but only a faint red glow and the sound of earth being crushed fills my senses. The red light comes towards me and the sound gets louder. Bursting from the dust comes the claymore slicing through the earth. jumping into the air dodging the wildly swung sword I return back to the ground unharmed and without hesitation sprint to the other side of the room.

I wasn't the only one who wanted to get out the dusty area as Gastalf and Charlesming both join me within seconds and so does [Mongrel]. It comes lumbering out of the dust not used to being on 2 legs.

Taking 2 of my needles out I throw them simultaneously causing the second health bar of [Mongrel] to go down almost to yellow.

Roaring on pain it raises its weapon and with a purple hue stumbles towards us. Gastalf and Charlesming charge forward getting too close for it to hit but it doesn't care as its aggroed onto me.

Its weapon comes crashing down at lightning speed and even though I dodged sideways the earth raised by such a blow buffeted me back down to yellow. Immobile [Mongrel] provides a perfect target for the others as they charge to slice at its legs.

Recovering within a split second [Mongrel] dances its feet out of the path of the swords causing only grazing injuries but still bringing it down to red. Jumping back giving us space it charges instantly sweeping its blade horizontally but more controlled this time no longer slicing through the floor.

The others luckily have acrobatics so jumping over is difficult but not impossible as they pass over as the blade slices the air in half. I'm far enough away and. I throw another 2 needles at it bringing it almost down to 1 bar.

Turning at the end of its Sword Skill [Mongrel] instantly raises its sword and smashes it downwards slicing off Charlesming's left arm before crashing into the ground. My eyes widen in shock as I see the severed limb floating in the air for a second before bursting into tiny little blue polygons.

The scream of rage and pain from Charlesming brings me back to my senses and I watch as he slices with no sword skills the hand [Mongrel]. Immobile for almost a second Mongrel goes down to his last health bar but instead of something happening again it just rips its sword out of the ground and begins its assault anew.

It swings its sword without Sword Skills making them faster and slightly less deadlier, well would kill me any way if I was hit Sword Skill or not. Charlesming and Gastalf can do nothing but jump, roll and duck the blade as it furiously tries to hit its mark. I fire another volley of 2 needles slowly pincushioning its body.

A razor sharp back paw kicks Gastalf in the chest sending him flying and smashing into a wall. He drops to the ground just hitting red and downs a potion angrily.

I release another 2 needles as Charlesming runs around the legs causing [Mongrel] sword to be useless. Kicking its feet out angrily trying to hit Charlesming makes it look like its doing a sort of jig which is quite hilarious to watch in the current situation.

Its health on low yellow, [Mongrel] jumps back and slices upwards with its sword grazing up Charlesming's chest bringing him to red and raising him slightly into the air. Switching directions the claymore grows purple and sprinting I run towards Charlesming as the sword flies down. Tackling Charlesming in the air I wait for the blade to slice me in half but the clanging of metal tells me I'm safe for this swing at least.

Landing on the ground with Charlesming I throw 2 more needles while Gastalf kneels underneath the large glowing blade, his shield disappearing into the air and cracks spreading on his blade.

[Mongrel] suddenly stops and with an earth shaking roar jumps back giving us space. its bar is on red and Mongrel who howls into the ceiling gives off a lot of bad vibes. Mongrel flails violently howling in pain its head moving back and forth, back and forth. The head, a blur looks to be splitting and soon the head stops moving and we see that here are 2 of them: one full black, the other full white. Its body does the same and splits into separate bodies, along with its health bar which also divides into 2.

The full black [Mongrel] lowers itself down onto 4 legs its blood red eyes full of animalistic desires whereas the white one stays standing and holding the claymore. The name tag duplicates however.

"You guys kill Black, I'll get White" I scream as I get off of the floor and sprint towards white [Mongrel].

I throw my needles but it blocks them with its sword. Surprised at how the AI is learning I sprint under the oncoming blade and it smashes into the floor behind me. Moving through its legs I see it spin its blade towards me from the right side glowing blood red.

Cutting towards the blade I meet it head on and as it fills my view I commando roll underneath it. With a controlled change the blade lowers itself slightly and it slices through my feet bringing me down into low red.

Screaming with a mixture of fear and anger more than pain I throw another 2 needles which its dodges easily. Footless I stand up and continue to sprint awkwardly and slowly while an unbearable itch and burning sensation emanates from the open wound.

[Mongrel] holds its sword pointed at me and bright green as I make my way over to a wall. Facing back to make eye contact I roar at it as it howls back and charges me the bright green tip soaring towards me.

Dropping onto the ground as the sword crashes into the wall behind me I take out another 2 needles. The dust floating everywhere reveals only an outline of [Mongrel] but the grunting sounds coming from this outline makes me think its trying to pull out its blade.

I give it no chance to do such a thing and my 2 blue glowing needles fly over to Mongrel and with 2 soft thuds the sounds of struggling ceases. The dust slowly settles revealing white [Mongrel] to be stumbling backwards its health bar gone.

It stumbles with a pained whine and upon reaching the fresh corpse of black [Mongrel] it topples over on top of it. When together they seem to merge together but before they get halfway they shatter into the sky. The blue polygons disappear leaving nothing but a rewards screen behind. A ping beside my head acknowledges me as level 5.

Sliding down to sit by the wall I call over Gastalf and Charlesming who come with large, tired smiles on their faces.

Gastalf now also is missing an arm, his left one too, his blade is also shattered and only the hilt remains. Charlesming fares about the same but he looks happy, which from the past week and a bit its the first time I've seen him happy. Although he does have a empty element in his eyes, revenge leaves a kind of emptiness or so I've heard but I feel quite fulfilled, although with 2 feet less.

They plop either side of me and we all open our reward screens: 1200xp damn, 180col, Eye of an Alpha. I checked out the eye info window but it was only a trophy nothing special. However I also got another reward screen that popped up once I closed the original. This one said Last Hit Bonus on the top of it and. I opened it to reveal 'Mongrel's Pelt'. Opening the info window I gave a low whistle.

Its worn as a cloak, has the defence of chain-mail armour but the weight of leather and also has 2 minor abilities: Wolf Form. User gets 10% increase to speed and takes guise of Black Wolf, lasts for 1 hour, once per day. Mongrel Learning. 10% increase to skills and stats, last for 1 hour, once per day.

Wow this is pretty cool...

I immediately without hesitation spawn the cloak after removing my other wolf clothing. The cloak appears, but not alone: It appears with a wolf head as a helmet and its back paws shrunken slightly to fit my feet. I check the cloak itself and see that it has pockets to which I fill up with needles and my last health potion, as well as an emergency meal.

The gasps of awe from the others suggest that what I'm wearing is pretty cool and wanting to get a look at it I take the stuff off and have a look at it myself: It is white with black highlights on the end, damn. I touch the smooth fur that get sharp and prickly at the black highlights, so it is exactly like it was before sweet. The boots had the claws albeit a lot smaller but still there but the head lacked the eyes, well to be fair. I was carrying one anyways.

"Whoa, how'd you get that?" Asks Charlesming

"Well I got the last hit bonus, apparently" I shrug my shoulders in the I'm just lucky like that pose.

"Well figures, guess they were still the same monster even though they split up" muses Gastalf from the other side.

"Ah I was going to ask you how did you—"

The howling of many, many wolves outside interrupts our chat and I was shocked as I'd completely forgotten about them. The earthquake of wolves running brings fear in our hearts and we glance towards the entrance of the cave waiting with bated breath for the wolves to come inside.

But none come, maybe it's because of the 2 giant blocks of wood that have thankfully caught fire and are now properly burning. Well with that amount of wood we have a few hours maybe less if the wolves decide to brave it.

Well first things first we wait until our health bars are full and while waiting for mine to get back up to full Charlesming's arm materialised attached to him.

That was a huge load off of all our chests as really I had been trying to ignore the fact that I have no feet, like I can still move with them but its akin to having 2 wooden legs. I did have a nagging feeling that because there was a game there would be some way to recover limbs, but getting free regeneration is amazing. I really should have freaked out about my feet a bit more though but I guess was too distracted with the cool loot.

After another few minutes everyone limbs had reappeared and we decided to form a plan of action.

"Hey Gastalf, could you write a message for the guys back in town?" I ask with a sly smile

"Just tell me what to write"

Ok so sorry I got one in this week, well tis been helluva busy week so Im pretty amazed I got this done. Anyways hope you enjoyed it and will get next chapter up next weekend (very busy weeks lately sorry T_T)

-ChazRay