Chapter 45 - 43. Village Tokens

With buffed up BONE-VOYAGE the party re-engages the black panther with a full force. A red number start to appear repeatedly above the black panther head but it was still standing strong fighting 4 vs 1.

James is having a hard time concentrating his mana in both BONE-VOYAGE and his shield. He can only block every so often and withdraw any intent of attacking with his shield. Luna is struggling to land any hit as the panther is much faster compared to her. To put it on top of that the panther has 4 limbs and one very strong jaw which could foil any of Luna's attack as it would harm herself more than the panther if they traded hit.

Observing the fight since the beginning Albert start to learn the panther attack pattern and decide to try a different approach. He plays his zither and commands Luna to stop attacking and wait for his next signal.

BONE-VOYAGE fight into the panther into a draw but a long drawn out fight is not a viable option as James stamina wouldn't last that long. Stamina depreciation causes your body to move more sluggish making it hard to avoid and launching an attack on the very fast black panther.

Fortunately, Albert's party is not the only one who didn't want a long drawn-out fight. The panther stamina is not unlimited and fighting a 5 vs 1 didn't help it conserve stamina. Albert starts strum notes after notes sending a sound message to Luna.

"Kana! Get ready to heal Luna!" Albert whisper to Kana quietly as he continues to play his zither

"James! Drink an MP potion!" shout Albert, reminding James to do so as he almost out of MP due to blocking

The panther saw an opening and jump towards James as he takes out a lesser MP potion from his inventory. Without the panther knowing Luna is waiting behind BONE-VOYAGE to ambush the panther. As soon as the panther moves pass the skeleton Luna throws her whole body onto the panther caught one of it hindleg.

The panther loses it momentum and crashes into James shield face-first stunning the panther and negating the damage. Due to its big body, Luna gets dragged on the ground dealing quite a bit damage. Kana is already precast her healing skill and execute it as soon as Luna HP drop bellow 80% healing it back to full.

BONE-VOYAGE and Alice took chances while the panther is stunned and attack it with their most powerful attack. The panther snapped out of stunning effect but it is having a hard time contending with the party as his movement is significantly slower as one of his hindlegs is get constricted by a snake.

The panther tries to roll its body around and eve smash its own body to the ground try to laid-off the snake. Luna is struggling to keep latching on to the panther and only manages to do so because of Kana's healing skill. The panther injures not only Luna but also itself every time it smashes his own body to the ground.

After struggling for almost 5 minutes the fight finally ends and the panther fell as it HP reaches 0. Seeing the panther is dead the party follows the panther as they fell butt first onto the ground as they are too tired after an intense fight.

Albert, Alice, James, and Kana are too tired to continue hunting so they decide to haul their loot and decide to call it a night. The party spent quite a bit of their potions supply fighting the panther; 8 lesser HP potions, 2 lesser MP potions. But since the panther yield almost 20% of exp for each of them it was really worth the effort. Storing the panther corpse took 2 big inventory slots and with the panther safely stored in Kana's inventory the party walk back to the village.

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Early in the morning, Albert, James, and Kana meet up in the tutorial village again. Albert plans to restock their inventory and turns in their last night loot before they log back out again to eat breakfast with their family. Alice the lazy bug decides to skip out and just continue her beauty nap as she has little to no interest in anything besides hunting monsters.

Alice's personality changes worry Albert a little but then again the little devil is much more active compared to others around her ages. The group visits Mr. Theo's empty stall and pulls out a big black panther carcass to Mr. Theo's surprise. Kana was too afraid to damage it since she hasn't mastered the harvesting technique and so they decide to let Mr. Theo do the job.

With the bone, meat, leather, and fangs cleanly harvested the party proceeds to the town hall to turn in the panther head for a possible quest reward. The panther leather is in perfect quality since no one in the group using any sharp weapon that could possibly damage the skin. On the contrary, the fang and bones are in a much worse condition to the blunt damage the panther receives during the fight.

"Hello, adventurer! How may I help you today?" Said the town receptionist as she welcomes Albert's party.

"Hello, miss. We would like to turn in this monster head as proof of subjugation. Is there any quest related to this monster?" Kana said as she took out the panther head

The receptionist is in shock as she witnesses a low-level party successfully hunt a higher level night predator on the first week. A High-level party even struggles to hunt one of these as if the panther decides to run nobody would be able to catch not to mention with its camouflage ability during the night is really good.

"Yes, there is 2 quest related to this specific monster. 1 is subjugation and the other is to procure its leather, preferably in good quality. Would you also submit it's leather or only the proof of subjugation? Also as this is a high-level quest the one who completes the quest would gain some village tokens and reputation point as a quest reward. Would you like to submit the quest under your name or someone else?"

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