Chapter 109 - 106 : Intruder

Black Grill's Cave, Middle region, 4th floor.

*Bang*

*Rumble* *Rumble*

Accompanied with the fall of the last Rock Golem was a loud bang, as the Rock Golem shattered into rubble.

"Ha. That's the last of them right?" A young man stood close to the remains of the Rock Golem with a smile on his face and a dagger in his hand. He was the assassin, Lu Zhen.

"Yeah,that should be it. Even though we are still at the 4th floor, we have already encountered a lot of these guys." The only mage in the party of 3, Fudo, replied Lu Zhen.

"They sure are a lot of them though. If they gave better experience points as rewards, here would have been a true holy ground." Lu Zhen sighed. Black Grill's Cave was preferred over Kiro mountains by most of the players because the population density of monsters here was by far more than that of Kiro mountains. For every 300 metres or so, one would surely encounter at least 5 monsters. The only setback of it was that the experience points rewarded by the Rock Golems was quite low such that despite the large numbers of Rock Golems team Sato had defeated, they still didn't level up [1]. If this quirk had been fixed, Black Grill's Cave would have become the players' true holy ground.

"The system is just; it wouldn't just give such a perfect place out like this." Sato nodded.

"If we need to level up then we really need to find where the level 7 and level 8 are. Ok, let's move."

"Alright." Fudo and Lu Zhen replied.

"Hmm?"

*Phew*

'It's fast but not fast enough.'

Out of the blue, Sato swiftly turned around and hacked his sword in mid air at a black object that sped it's way towards him.

[Chop]

*Clang*

The sound of two metals colliding, resounded through the place. Sparks were emitted from the collision but they died out within a second.

'This is bad.' Sato thought as he looked at his hand that was feeling a bit numb from the collision.

Surprised at the sound, Fudo asked "What happened?"

"I just felt that something was right behind me for a second and I turned to attack." Sato replied while he was scouring the area for the origin of the weird object but he didn't see anything weird. Before the object had reached him, Sato had felt a weird gaze filled with bloodlust behind him and that was why he reacted like that.

Lu Zhen walked over to the remains of the black object and picked it.

"Look at this."

Sato and Fudo turned over to stare at the object in Lu Zhen's hand.

"An arrow?"

It turned out to be an arrow that was broken in half, thanks to Sato. The arrow was a bit crude and when compared to the ones used by Ranger class players, it was like a stick in front of steel. Calling it a stick wasn't wrong though as the arrow was made with a stone arrowhead tied to a twig.

*It doesn't look like the ones used by Rangers..."

"Rock Golems don't use arrows." Lu Zhen added.

With those two statements added together, there was only one conclusion.

"In other words, it's another monster and possibly an intelligent one." Sato said. By intelligent monster, Sato didn't mean a monster with Intellect like the [Cursed Servant]. A monster with intelligence was just a monster capable of using human type weapons and living in a society for example, goblins. Monsters of intellect could think like a full grown adult and adapt to conditions. They were a lot more scarier than regular monsters.

So far, everyone had the idea that Black Grill's Cave was solely occupied by Rock Golems. Some concluded that other forms of Rock golems like the Earth golems or Earth puppets may exist. No one had ever thought that an intelligent lifeform would actually dwell here. They shouldn't be blamed though as the highest explored region up till date, was the 5th region and the player who did so, had died before he could take a single step forward.

"But others have been here before right? How come they didn't experience what we did?" Fudo asked with a confused tone.

"Hehe. Each floor is as big as 2 or 3 stadiums and has multiple tunnels and halls. It's quite possible that the previous floors haven't even been fully explored much less this one." Lu Zhen chuckled. "Back then, no one bothered to go through the entire place for fear of death. Even those dumb risk takers didn't do so after dying twice."

The so-called 'risk takers' were a bunch of players who are in it for the fun. They don't actually hope to achieve much and just like exploring or doing the crazy things no one does. In the previous top VR game, Conquest, a few risk takers had actually tried to assassinate the Emperor of an Empire. Sure, there doesn't seem to be much problem in that but the issue here was that they did so while they were level 10...

Trying to assassinate a level 100 or so being guarded by a couple of other NPCs at the same level while still being level 10. To make things worse, it wasn't a planned assassination; they just charged at the Emperor during a public event while screaming silly statements like "we die for the fun" or "you're to handsome to live". If that isn't utter stupidity then nothing else is.

"There!" Sato shouted as he pointed his sword at a direction. Right there, a dark shadow had just fleeted past the place and ran into a tunnel. They could barely identify it and only saw it's movements.

"What was that?!" Fudo questioned.

"Let's chase after it." Sato said before speeding off.

"Alright." Lu Zhen replied while dashing towards the tunnel.

"..." Fudo really wanted to complain about their decision. This was the 4th floor and they were supposed to be cautious but instead of doing so, Sato and Lu Zhen just dashed towards an unknown creature.

"Well, it's just few experience points or at the worst, a level, that will would lose." Comforting himself with his words, Fudo ran after the two.

Two players were chasing an unknown creature. The reason why the creature is termed unknown is because it wore a worn-out cape-like clothing made of animal skin, to cover it's body and this included it's head. The only noticeable feature however, was a red tail that peeked out of the cloak.

"Damn it. It's fast." Sato cursed as he ran after the fleeting shadow. Despite being a level 8 player with quite a high [Agility], it didn't seem like he would reach the figure any soon.

"Let me." Lu Zhen yelled as he dashed past Sato. As an [Assassin] it was understandable for his speed to be greater.

Once he was less than 10 metres away from the creature, he brought a scroll out from his storage bag and unfurled it at the direction of the fleeing creature. The scroll had 7 stars arranged in a hexagon with the 7th star right in the middle. The 6 outer stars were connected by dots and by the side of the hexagon were mystifying scribbles that didn't look like any known human language.

This was a one-time use special grade scroll, which had the full powered attack of a level 10 [Assassin] sealed within it. It was quite cheap and affordable when compared to other scrolls but even this "cheap" isn't so affordable to average players. The major issue regarding this scroll wasn't it's  price but it's availability. The scroll was quite rare as it wasn't really appealing for NPCs to materials on such low level scroll.

"[7 star shooting strike]!" [1]

From the 7 stars, 7 daggers departed from the scroll and darted towards the figure, with a blue trail accompanying them.

The figure seemed to have noticed them as it moved in a weird fashion to dodge them.

"Kraawww!"

In the end, only 3 of the daggers managed to land on the creature and this slowed down it's speed greatly.

"Now die!" Lu Zhen closed up the less than 10 metres gap and slashed out with his dagger.

*Clang*

At the last minute the creature had turned around and blocked his attack with a machete. Using the strength behind it's arms, it pushed Lu Zhen away. During this time, Sato was but a metre away. He swung his sword at the monster, who was already distracted by Lu Zhen's advance.

-38 (???/???)

"Kraawww"

The monster screamed wildly before swinging it's machete at Sato forcing him to retreat.

"-38 from a full frontal assault. It has quite a tough defense..." With his attack power of more than 60 points, Sato delivering only 38 points of damage was enough to show how high the monster's defense stat was.

Once he was a few steps back, Sato decided to get a good look at the monster he struck.

The monster had lizard-type scales all over it's body. Lizard-like head, two little horns with a skin tone bordering brown and red, looking kinda wine-red in colour. Buffed muscles and an overbearing outlook with a height of 2 metres, the creature had a long garnet tail that lay quietly on the ground.

"Lizard-like scales and skin. A Kobold? I should have guessed it..."

Kobolds were Draconic creatures that had a humanoid form. Not a pure humanoid form though; they were more like humanoid lizards. They were called "Draconic" because their lineage could be traced back to Dragons. But unlike their ancestors, they were a lot smaller and anthropomorphic in nature. They were also far more weaker than them as the Draconic bloodline had already diluted a lot. It was so small and impure that it only had 0.00009% trace in an average Kobold's blood. Because of such negligible data in their DNA, Kobolds haven't been hunted down to be used as potions or the likes but their scales and skin was still impressive and valuable.

"A Kobold? Hehe. Explains why it retreated." Lu Zhen smirked.

Kobolds were said to have been bullied by their Draconic cousins because of their thin bloodline to the extent that they departed the Dragon lands and settled elsewhere. As a result, the Kobold race had become quite meek and had a strange inferiority complex together with a cautious behaviour towards other races.

"Doesn't matter what it is. Since it attacked me, it will die." Sato glared at the Kobold as he tightened his hand on his sword's hilt.

Infinite Facts :

I have a feeling a lot of people might mix things up so let me clear this mess.

Monsters, so far, are divided into 3 :

Monsters that are really monsters:(in other words, they are dumb and only like screaming h**k smash or something like that...). All they do is attack their targets. They don't employ strategies or the likes. Eg Rock Golems.

Monster with intelligence: These ones apply low level strategies like retreat and the rest. They don't always attack blindly. Their IQ is at an animal's level but not a dumb animal. E.g Goblins.

Monsters with Intellect : These guys are worse. They think like an average human being, are capable of evolution and a lot more. The more terrible of them are even as smart as Einstein! Well, that's a lie but you can get where I'm going right...

Usually, all monsters of with Intellect are guaranteed to be 100% crafty, 50% chance of being proud(because they feel they are better than the other kinds of monsters), and think at the very least, like an adult human being.