12 Hunt in a Swampland

To the north of Elderwood Village was a swampland. This swampland was filled to the brim with various reptilian and amphibian monsters. In one section of this swampland there was a small scale battle currently going on. In this battle, there were a few giant poison frogs surrounding a werewolf equipped with a small knife. Naturally, this werewolf was Kirou.

Kirou had been roaming this forest for a few hours now. He had been looking for the right material to make his armor from. So far he's come across various forms of frogs, snakes, lizardmen and crocodiles. His latest opponents are a variant species of frogs called Giant Poison Frogs.

Monster: Giant Poison Frog

Level: 9

HP: 850

Skills: Leap, Poison Spit, Tongue Strike

Kirou was currently surrounded by half a dozen of these frogs at the moment, all intent on turning Kirou into their lunch. Kirou was bobbing and weaving through their attacks while countering whenever an opportunity presented itself. It was worth noting that Kirou was not using any skills, at least not any in his skill list.

Kirou was currently using these giant poison frogs as practice partners in order to develop another knife skill. So far he hasn't had any luck in developing the skill he wants so he's held back in his fight against these frogs.

After dodging another few poison spit attacks, Kirou found himself with his back against a tree. In front of him stood two giant frogs that used their tongue strikes to attack Kirou while the other four used their leap skills to jump towards him, blocking off any potential escape routes.

Instead of panicking, Kirou slightly lowered his stance before learning slightly to one side and lashing out with the knife. This allowed Kirou to dodge one tongue strike while simultaneous parrying the other with an attack of his own. Immediately after, he did a barrel roll to his right, going under one of the frogs leaping at him, escaping the so called entrapment.

[Miss]

[-53 (Kirou)]

[-120 (frog)]

After escaping the entrapment, Kirou once again did a barrel roll to avoid another attack. Apparently his fight was attracting other monsters. Although these beasts pose no threat to him individually or as a group with their current numbers, even he would find it cumbersome to deal with too many of these creatures at once, especially with them being monsters with poison attacks.

'I guess this I should make this my last attempt at learning this skill here before I finish these frogs off. There are plenty more monsters in this swamp if I want to practice this skill later on.' That was Kirou thought process as he once again lowered his stance, regulated his breathing and slightly closed his eyes in focus.

As he was doing this, the giant poison frogs approached Kirou again. Four of them attacked him with poison spit while the rest used their tongue strike. The poison spit was aimed to surround him, preventing another escape while all the tongue strikes were aimed at one place, his head. The group of giant poison frogs that launched the tongue strikes did it so well that all of them arrived at the same time. Seemingly superimposed, all three tongue strikes seemed to become one attack and it was at that moment Kirou opened his eyes and struck out with his knife.

As Kirou struck out, it seemed as if his knife strike changed from one strike to three, each hitting the superimposed tongue strikes at the exactly same time.

[-170 (Kirou)]

[-460]

[-450]

[-454]

[Generating Skill]

After taking the attack, Kirou was now left with just 5HP while his attack immediately finished off all three giant poison frogs that attacked him due to the amazing critical damage that showed up in response to his attack on their tongues. Kirou also noticed a message about a skill being generated but he ignored it as he didn't have the leeway to check it out now.

'Sigh, that was quite dangerous. I nearly died there, all because I wanted the best chance to create this skill.' Kirou thought this as he rushed towards the remaining four frogs. Unlike before when he abstained from using any skills, this time he made use of a movement skill, Shadow Teleportation. This was an original skill based on what he used back in his assassin days.

He instantly disappeared in the shadow of one of the many overhead trees in the swamp and appeared behind one of the frogs. Following the use of the skills ambush and cutthroat, Kirou would immediately disappear, only to reappear next to another frog and repeat the cycle. After doing so a few times the remaining four frogs died just like that. It wasn't even a minute after he killed the original three frogs with his new skill that he ended his current battle.

Kirou was now the last person standing, surrounded by over half a dozen dead frogs. He didn't immediately move as he was still low on health. Instead, he took out a potion and drank it before sitting down in a meditative stance while under a tree.

He didn't have to worry about others coming up and trying to steal loot from the frog corpses as the game had set it so that only he could loot them. After a certain amount of time the corpses will disappear on their own if he leaves them.

Kirou spent a minute like this to recover his missing health with the help of that potion he drank earlier. Unlike the low tier HP potions that are being sold in the general store of Elderwood Village, Kirou created a recipe for the 'Natural Health Recovery' Potion based on a recipe for the low tier HP potions he bought from the village alchemist. It took an hour of trial an error with a few monsters from the swampland to verify the effects. He even managed to create a few poison recipes from his tests but he put those aside for now.

Now that he was at full health again, Kirou approached the bodies and started his harvesting. He took everything he found usable, and a few miscellaneous parts before each body disappeared. After he was finished with his harvest, Kirou went deeper into the swampland as he wasn't satisfied with the materials he had just yet.

*******************

Currently, a party made up of lycans, dwarfs and an elf were currently inside the swampland. So far they hadn't ran into any monsters and this troubled them. They were there to hunt for monsters as they were on an extermination quest.

After noticing that no matter how deep they went, they still couldn't find any monsters, the elf of the party furrowed his brows with worry.

'What's going on? Where are the monsters? Have they been killed? How is it the monsters haven't re-spawned yet? It's almost as if a party is ahead of us clearing the monsters and we just so happened to be following their clear path. Even then, how have we not run into anyone yet.' This was the elf's thoughts as he and his party traversed the swampland.

"Guys, let's change directions," said the elf as he came to a stop. Following that, the other party members stopped and faced him.

"What's up, Brother Bow? You notice something?" asked one of the dwarfs in the party. The 'Brother Bow' was apparently what the party members called the elf.

Instead of answering, Brother Bow posed a question to the party, "Don't you guys find it strange that we've entered this forest for a while now, yet we haven't seen even one monster on our path?" This question got everyone to immediately look around in worry. Originally, they thought they were just unlucky but now that Brother Bow pointed it out, they seemed to be vaguely aware that something was wrong.

"Even if we somehow stumbled on the path that someone else made, the fact that we haven't run into any monsters that should have respawned by now means that this person or party should be just ahead of us. But the fact that we haven't caught up with them after so long means that they are strong enough to be able to kill and cleanup their battlefield quickly." When Brother Bow said this, all the party members got a pensive look on their faces.

Seeing the reaction of his party, Brother Bow then continued, "Since that's the case, let's avoid the risk of running into such a party and gaining their displeasure and just find the monsters we are here for and leave. At least that way this won't be a wasted trip."

Most of the party members agreed except for the two lycans. They instead had a flash of greed appear on their faces. Seeing them like that, Brother Bow couldn't help but furrow his brows. "Is there a problem, Brother Slash? Brother Blade?"

"You might be right, Brother Bow, but you gotta think about it? This is a low level area, just north of the lycan's beginner village, Elderwood Village. Why would a strong party or individual be here?" Those were the words of Brother Slash, one of the two lycans. He had a lean build and was slightly shorter when compared to Brother Blade.

"You don't mean..." started Brother Bow. He had an idea what they were thinking but that made it all the more reason why he wanted to leave.

"Exactly, Brother Bow. It's either a treasure or they found a boss," finished Brother Blade. When the rest of the group heard this, they let out brief exclamations before a hint of greed flashed in their eyes as well. Seeing this caused Brother Bow to sigh inwardly.

'Leave it to the wolves to notice such a thing.' This was Brother Bow's thought while feeling bitter on the inside.

"Why don't we speed up our approach? Considering that the party ahead of us is so good at clearing the path, we wont have to worry about running into monsters and if we just so happen to meet them while they are fighting a boss, we can just "offer" to help them out. Even if they say no we can just wait until the boss is nearly dead before we "help out," you know," said Brother Slash with a nefarious smile on his face.

Even while that smile was on the face of a lycan, Brother Bow could tell that Brother Slash was used to doing such things. He could see the same smile on Brother Blade and just knew that they were the kind of guys used to doing this. This caused Brother Bow to develop a headache. He didnt want anything to do with this but he got the feeling that if he tried to back out, the others would kill him instantly. This feeling grew stronger when he noticed that the dwarfs agreed to two lycans' plan.

Brother Bow could only shake his head and sigh inwardly while following the party. He would do his best to try and separate from them as naturally as possible during the trip and see if he can find another route out of the swamp. If push comes to shove, he'll just commit suicide and respawn back at Thousand Wood Village.

Unbeknownst to this party was that they were following Kirou's path in the swampland and they were very close to him. So close in fact that they eventually caught up to him after a minute of running while he was fighting a group of swamp crocodiles.

The group was greeting to a werewolf being surrounded by a dozen swamp crocodiles. Both sides were going at it fiercely. While to most of the party, it looked like the crocodiles were winning, only Brother Bow noticed that it wasn't the crocodiles but the werewolf that was leading the crocodiles around by the nose. The fight lasted a little over five minutes, after which, Kirou shoved his knife into the head of the last crocodile, finishing it off.

The group was originally planning to watch the crocodiles kill him and then finish off the crocodiles for their respective quests until they saw him finish off all the crocodiles. It looked like he was injured and needed to rest to restore his HP. When they saw all the bodies on the ground and the relatively injured man sitting under a tree, Brother Blade gave Brother Slash a look before Slash nodded and disappeared.

The rest of the party besides Brother Bow took out their weapons and started to approach the seemingly 'injured' Kirou. Brother Bow didn't miss this moment and decided to back away from the party. It didn't matter to him whether they succeeded or failed but he had to make sure he could get away the moment they began.

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