Chapter 75 - The Wolves Den - II

The wolf's fangs pierced Typhoeus' flesh before his skill had activated, as it tore at his thigh, it didn't realise that the scythe had come back and wrapped around its neck until it was too late. The wolf released his thigh before trying to evade, but the scythe had dug into its flesh the second it backed away.

With a frustrated roar, Ty swung the wolf around while it was still hooked around his scythe, the blade continuously dug in deeper due to the rotational force, until the skill activated. "Heavy strike!"

Merlin watched as this wolf that was being swung around on a stick suddenly flew off into the treeline, its head flying off in a different direction. He praised him before looking towards where Snowbunny had gone.

Snowbunny seemed to be doing fine, in fact she hadn't yet been hit. She was using a rapier to slowly bleed the wolf out while dodging around with her improved mobility given to her by the wild hare soul. 

It seemed that out of everyone, she had the least amount of issues dealing with slippery targets, as she was no doubt as mobile, if not more so, as they were.

Eventually all the wolves had died, and the group spent some time healing up before they could continue inside.

"Wolves suck." Ty complained as he watched his leg slowly heal. "They're too hard to hit."

"I told you to just use a sword instead." Snowbunny retorted. "Or a spear, scythes are way too slow and clunky." 

"Well, you'll probably do better off once you get the right souls to assist you." Merlin joined the conversation, "Skills that specifically buff scythes, or maybe magic that can debuff and slow enemies so you can hit them easier."

"Another possibility is that you can use war scythes instead, at least until you find a better replacement for your beginner farmer scythe." Merlin continued, "There will probably be an undead you could steal a reaper scythe from at some point."

These were all things Typhoeus had done in the past, Merlin was just planting the ideas in his head much earlier. Out of all the players Merlin had met, Ty was actually one of the biggest roleplayers he knew, which was why he was so adamant about using a scythe even though he knew it was inconvenient, and why he spent so much time staying ahead of everyone else in the future.

Typhoeus seemed to have taken Merlin's advice into consideration, and not too long after he had been completely healed, allowing the group to continue inside the dungeon, a notification window appeared before everyone.

┌───────────────────

You have entered the "Orchomenus Wolves Den".

• Clear Condition: Kill the boss.

└───────────────────

The dungeon entrance was essentially just a small hole on the side of a hill, but it quickly expanded into an vast underground cave network. Unfortunately it didn't take long for the cave to become nearly pitch black inside, so Merlin began chanting a skill while his two party members began reaching for their inventory.

「Skill ⟪Light⟫ Activated.」

A small ball of light formed in the palm of his hand and floated into the air, illuminating the cave roughly ten meters around it.

"Well that's convenient." Typhoeus declared while putting a torch back into his inventory, Snowbunny had done the same.

"Yeah, I'd definitely recommend picking it up at some point. It's one gold, but it's worth the price." Merlin explained while watching the ball of light slowly hover around him.

The group began hearing faint growling noises echoing from deeper within the cave, they all prepared themselves for another attack.

Two wolves started sprinting towards them while revealing their teeth, Merlin got a quick glance at their levels and saw that they were both level five as well.

"It seems level five might be the lowest level in the dungeon, if it scales too high the further we get in, we might not be able to do this just yet." Merlin told his teammates as he ran towards the wolves, sending his vines out to trip them up.

The vines swiped at the wolves' legs, causing one of the wolves to trip, the other one had caught a glimpse of the vine and instead clamped its jaw on it, causing it to snap, releasing a splash of poisonous sap in the wolves' mouth before retracting back into Merlin's body. The only benefit being that he received a notification in regards to the wolf that bit his vine off.

「Passive skill ⟪Rose Blight⟫ has triggered, target's stats have been reduced.」

"Alright finish them off." Merlin shouted as he watched the one wolf's lips and tongue start turning purple.

Snowbunny took the wolf that was still standing, she rushed it with a flurry of attacks from her rapier, puncturing the wolf's skin in several places and causing its dirty light grey coat to slowly gain small patches of red as its fur soaked up the blood.

The reduction in stats made the fight even easier for her, and within the span of a few moments she had caused the beast to bleed out without getting a drop of blood on herself. It was an elegant way of fighting, and it seemed as though Snowbunny had actually been trained with the rapier in real life.

He realised now that he never really knew much about Snowbunny outside her love of all things cute and fluffy, especially rabbits, or that she was a member of the guild Clouds and sat within the top five hundred on the leaderboard, albeit near the bottom.

Typhoeus on the other hand had decided to attack the one Merlin was so kind as to trip over. He raised his scythe into the air and brought it down on the wolf's neck as if he were an executioner swinging an axe. The scythe blade pierced the wolf's flesh, causing the wolf to howl in pain.

Typhoeus lifted the blade out of the wolf, which had just started trying to get back up, and swung the blade down once more, successfully digging the blade into the wolf's torso. As it stood up, Ty began pulling the blade, causing a large tear to form in the wolf's side, hitting a few major organs, and a few moments later it fell back to the ground dead.

Typhoeus however seemed to be the opposite of Snowbunny, rather than graceful, his fighting style was barbaric and brutal. A significant amount of blood had splashed all over him, and the corpse he was left with was shredded, if anyone on the team had a skinning or harvesting skill, they wouldn't get much but torn scraps from his kill.

"Man, that vine thing is overpowered." Typhoeus said while trying to wipe the blood off of his hands.

"It's basically just sentient rope, honestly. It barely does any damage, and I cant use it on anything other than tripping up beasts." Merlin refuted, pointing out a few of the vine's flaws. "And if a vine gets destroyed it retracts back into my body and I cant use it for half a minute. "

Merlin cast the cleanse spell targeting Typhoeus, the various splotches of blood covering him, his clothes and his weapon began peeling off, hovering for a moment and then vanishing.

"Thanks!" Typhoeus felt better now that he wasn't covered in blood.

"I'd recommend picking this up too, it's just as important as light." Merlin told him. "And ignite, if you can afford it, but it's not as important as the other two."

"I'll keep it in mind." Typhoeus turned to the cave, and the group started making their way further inside, the ceiling went from hardened dirt and roots to stone as they traversed deeper into the den.

After a couple minutes of travelling, Merlin received a notification that caught him off guard.

「You have earned +5 familiarity with Serpent-Bearer Kilo.」

"What?" Merlin blurted out loud due to the unexpected notification, which caused both his teammates to look back at him with a confused look.

"What's going on?" Snowbunny asked while seeing that Merlin was looking at the floor with a confused look, but when she stared at where he was looking, she didn't find anything out of the ordinary.

"Sorry, I just got a notification out of nowhere." Merlin briefly explained before swiping the notification away. "How strange."

"Fair enough, well it looks like we have a group of wolves ahead. I can see four, no five of them." Typhoeus called out as he peered from behind a wall into another opening. "And it looks like there's a level seven with them, the rest are fives."

"A level seven already huh, this is gonna be an issue." Merlin thought about how he was going to do this.

He could take the level seven himself, leaving his party to deal with two wolves each. Or alternatively he could let Snowbunny take the level seven while he and Typhoeus wipe out the lower tier wolves before coming to help.