Chapter 75 - Reaching the city 1

Character: Shadow Tyrant (Human)

Affiliated Village: Black Rock Village

Title: None

Job: Assassin

Level: 12

Exp: 5/6000

HP: 4500/4500; MP: 1800/1800;

Physical Attack: 128;

Defense: 88; Attack Speed: 84; Movement Speed: 88; Willpower: 38; Balance: 57; Focus/Search: 76; Reflect Damage: 1; Magic Resist: 20; Luck: *; Charm: *;

Attributes: Strength 63, Agility 62, Endurance 37, Intelligence 32, Vitality 47, Perception 38.

No Special Racial Attributes or weakness.

Free Attributes Points: 0;

Once he leveled up he added the remaining, points to vitality and intelligence to pull them closer to the rest of the attributes. Without much delay, he went to meet the rest of the group. There were still battling the lionesses along the path to the city.

With a four level difference between him and the monsters they were fighting, he had a strong advantage against these monsters. With a level 3 difference, the players would have a 50% higher damage than the usual. With a level difference higher than that, the damage wouldn't increment any more till unless it reached 5 levels.

He was easily able to evade their attacks due to the difference in agility and level. With the Red claw daggers, he was easily able to deal large amounts of damage to the monster.

His style of fighting wasn't going in stealth to use cheap shot and attacking the monsters rapidly when they were in a controlled state as he usually did after he got the garrote. He had a more than ten members who were working with him at the same level as the monsters. His garrote which he mainly used for controlling the monsters was at quite a lower level when compared to monster and him.

With the garrote at level 5, the damage he inflicted with it was meager. He couldn't even have a significant effect on the lionesses. Luckily, he was able to inflict a lot of damage from the red claw daggers. Within 5 minutes of his arrival, he managed to frightened the lionesses into running back into the forest.

With the lionesses retreating, he quickly made Merlin and the rest follow into the forest, but they didn't run after the pride. He already checked the location of the monkeys and their leader in the forest. He quickly led them to the location of the monkey as he knew they had to clear up as many monsters as he can before they went to the city.

Shadow provided the antelope daggers to people who could use them like Roll and Tetsujin. Even players who were mainly long-range attackers like mages, could use daggers as secondary weapons. He had always planned to provide his team with secondary weapons, which could pull them out of a pinch.

Along the way, they saw a couple of cougars, but the team were all level 8 and they managed to easily control and defeat them. As they went deeper, they came to lair of the monkeys. The monkeys were all situated around a large tree in the forest. Most of them were situated up in the trees.

The most difficult part of dealing with the monkeys was getting them down the trees. It was a tough task as most of them remained in the trees. Luckily their mode of attack was mostly chucking stuff at the player and the branches and fruits of the trees didn't affect the players much. The fruits could even be used by most of the players as items in potion or to have temporary buffs or increase the health and mana of the players.

Though they tend to come down after some time to attack player using stones. It would be a time-consuming process to wait for them to come down and then take them down. The players could also climb trees in forest, but it required skill from the players. Parkour was a skill that professional game players or even normal people hardly learned in this era. Moreover, such skill in a forest environment is much rarer as people hardly ever had stayed in such an environment.

Player slowly learnt these skills due the effect vita-nova had on human. But right now, most of the players hardly had any decent skill to move at such heights in such an environment. They could only do well in close combat on ground or bombard the monkey with long distances skill, which the monkeys easily evaded. But Shadow had none of these issues.

Shadow could traverse on top of the trees due to his experience in previous life. He quickly made his way up the tree in stealth while the others remained on ground and attacked. With his team having their attention, he could easily push the monkeys off the trees which both reduced their health and also left them in a stunned state on the ground.

The monkeys were level 7 creatures and Shadow's attacks dealt very high damage to them. With the level difference of five levels any player could easily kill a monkey in 10 hits. Shadow always used ambush and other attacks which dealt high damage even without obtaining the corresponding skill books which allowed him to take down within 2 or 3 seconds.

This was his advantage over other player in the game. But it had a side-effect of depleting his stamina which was used like MP. Luckily, he was on trees where there were quite a number of fruits and occasionally eating them managed to keep his stamina from depleting.

Observing Shadow, Roll and Slaine who were also high agility classes tried to do the same, but they didn't have the same effect. Though it was difficult, Roll tried his best to imitate and managed to climb up the trees, but he couldn't move there as easily as Shadow and could only move by slowly in stealth.

Slaine and Rudra was extremely surprised to see Balthazar able to move through the trees with such ease. They couldn't believe that it was their friend who had such good skills. Even general military men wouldn't have such skill. Only the rare elite who were in charge of clearing up new planets or those who did rescue operations at dangerous areas would usually be so skilled at such maneuvers. It was ironic as Balthazar learnt such techniques of movement by watching Slaine and his team.

The trees were supposed to be the monkeys' sanctuaries in the forest, but Shadow became a predator that invaded their safe space. Soon, the monkeys noticed this and began to scream crazily searching for him.

This was Shadow's main intention. The faster he infuriated the monkeys the faster the elites and the leader of the monkeys would show themselves to the players. This was the general idea in getting the attention of the leaders of the monsters in the game.

Shadow's plan worked as the leader came screeching down the branches. They were immediately noticed by the whole group as the monkey leader was louder than most and the larger than the rest.

It also had very large fangs coming out of its mouth and had small bag over its back. As soon as it arrived, it started taking stones from the bag and chucking them at the player on the ground. It stayed at the top of the trees like the others, but it went into the foliage of the trees above the range of the attacks from ground.

[Forest Monkey leader] (Special Elite monster)

Level 8;

HP: 3000/3000.

Its appearance cause all the other monkey to get into a berserk state. Moreover, it was above the other monkeys and only came out to launch an attack before it went out of range again. It was as if the leader allowed the others to attack them first to observe their attack range before it started its own assault.

It would only come down after its bag is emptied of rocks. The team couldn't attack it either and other monkeys were making the fight difficult. Shadow immediately moved to the branches at the top to pursue the forest monkey leader.

It wasn't easy to reach the leader. Unlike the other monkeys which only moved around when they saw an attack coming towards them. The leader was moving around continuously. His only advantage was that the leader didn't notice him as he had the team to continuously attack. As he reached the leader in stealth his first instinct was to pickpocket from the bag. But there was nothing in the bag other than stones.

Disappointed, he wanted to make the leader get the largest possible damage from the fall. He cast cheap shot and used garrote to pull swung the monkey leader down with great force. He left the garrote tied around its neck and jumped down right behind it.

The fall of the stunned monkey leader from that height couple with the stones on its back caused its health to be immediately plummeted by a third. He along with the rest of the team immediately followed and used the Red Rage skill as soon as he landed by the monkey leader.

With the Red Rage skill, he managed deal very high damage to the monkey leader in killing him in 5 seconds as Tetsujin held it down using choke. As the monkey leader died the rest of the monkey subsided and scattered quickly into the depths of the forest.

"The monkey are done, next is the lions. I hope there wouldn't much harder species after that," thought Shadow. As soon as the notification for the leader's death sounded, he suggested they loot all the monkey and leader, while he scouts for the lions. He quickly moved into the forest without giving them a chance to talk to one another.

Their attack on the monkeys was quite beneficial. With Shadow already at level 12, defeating the monkeys was like forced leveling without much effort. A few among the group already leveled up during the fight. The ones who didn't level up hoped that Shadow could have delayed his attack on the leader for some time which would allow them to gain a little more experience to finally level up.

The entire fight to defeat them took less 10 minutes. Everyone couldn't understand Shadow's hurry to finish the quest. Though it was a very small amount of time, Shadow didn't feel the same as the rest of them.

He needed to go to the White Heart City as fast as possible. The faster he reaches the city the faster he can get to his aim. The only reason he was in such a hurry was a pair of unique daggers that can be found in the White Heart City Region.

The previous owner of these daggers was a member of the guild Foedus Rex who were the first to reach the White Heart City. Apart from the daggers, his team also gained other unique armaments. Another member of the team called Sultan-e-Shehzad had boasted about its attributes and effects in the forums, a year after they managed to get it. He also mentioned the quest and the manner in which they got hold of the unique armaments.

That post was one of the most famous ones in the forum and it was talked about whenever, it came to be known that a player found a unique armament. But the post also earned the player who posted it the ire of the rest of the guild. Sultan was immediately kicked out of the guild.

This was the reason that Shadow wanted to get to the place along with others before anyone else managed to reach White Heart City. Doing this would serve two purposes in regard to getting a hold of these unique armaments. The first is that it would provide them an advantage over other players as they would be the first to get a chance at these weapons by following Shadow.

The second is that in being the first to reach the city, they would get more reputation and also get a chance to do quests before others. Even after the other teams and members reach the city after them, they would be mostly concentrated on gaining the city reputation points. The quest for the unique armaments was a temple quest which wouldn't be the first priority.

While Shadow set out to search for the lionesses tracks, the rest of the team were focused on gathering loot from the monkeys. Roll, Tetsujin and Slaine went to pull out some fruits from the top of the trees. They noticed how useful eating fruits could be for classes that focused on physical combat when they saw Shadow fight. The most important thing about the fruits is that they could be eaten during combat rather than the other foods which could be used only in out of combat state.

Shadow managed to quickly find the lionesses' tracks and managed to get to their lair. It as a huge cave that went into the ground. Though it was the lair of the lions. There weren't many monsters there. It was only 2 lion and about 30 lionesses.

He didn't care to even check the amount of cubs. Until now, no one in his team managed to get hold of tam beast skills. Cubs and younger monsters were easier to tame. So, they could only attack and kill these cubs.

He ran back to the team to bring them back and finish the quest as soon as possible.