Forming a Party

Stepping out into the small clearing Zero stood opposite of the boar.

[Level 3 Boar]

HP: 400

Mana: 70

Attack: 30

Defense: 45

Skills: Charge

.....

"This boar is stronger considering its level, but it hasn't learned any new skills so I can still kill it."

As he prepared his sword and was about to run up to the boar and begin his assault. He was surprised to hear a couple of voices behind him.

"Awww yeah! A level 3 boar!" Running past the slightly confused Zero, a fighter zoomed past him and stopped beside the boar, giving it a couple of punches with his fists.

"Kenny!!! You can't just start fighting without me! Or are you planning to die?" A gentle voice yelled from behind the bushes. As the player stepped out of the bushes, Zero saw it was a female priest.

Turning back to the boar, it had already lost 50 health. Lowering his sword, Zero decided to watch the fighter take care of the boar.

"He has fairly good grasp on the basics of combat. Though he is a bit late to dodge sometimes he has a healer to heal any damage taken"

As the battle progressed the fighter was able to dodge most attacks while landing some punches and skills on the boar. During the times he messed up he ended up being knocked down by a charge or small things like dodging and bumping into a tree.

Considering the priest wasn't sending out heals until after the fighter was less than half health it was pretty easy to see that she had a decent understanding of her role.

When the boar had finally died after a few minutes Kenny, the fighter, turned towards Zero and looked straight at him with a confused look on his face.

"Where did you come from?"

"...."

Sighing to himself Zero was prepared to say something but was cut off when the priest stepped forward.

"Kenny! Though I didn't see it clearly I'm pretty sure he was here first! You most likely stole his boar too! Apologize!"

Looking at his teammates face, Kenny put his hand in the back of his head while turning slightly to Zero.

"Sorry about that..."

Laughing lightly Zero accepted the apology before asking the duo what their plans were.

"Well, me and Luna wanted to level up together our here where there were less people. It will be easier to find enemies than in that death zone outside the village." Kenny said while looking at Luna.

Luna, the priest, decided to speak next, "We planned to stay in the forest and get to level 10 so we can go to the city. There should be a boss out here somewhere if this game is as kind as the others. Since you are out here and are clearly alone, want to join us?"

Looking at Kenny who just gave him a thumbs up, Zero asked a few questions.

"You both don't mind if I join you? The experience will be split between us three."

"Nope, I'm fine with it."

"I'm also fine with it since I asked"

"What about drops?"

"We can just take what we need for our classes. Anything else we can give in rotation.

"Alright then, it sounds like a deal"

Agreeing silently with the two, Luna added Zero to the party.

Roaming the forest in search of monsters the party encountered many level 3 and 4 boars. Zero had suggested before fighting the first one, that he be the main rank temporarily.

Kenny was content with being the off tank and with his still he could charge up a punch to deal an extra 20% damage in a single strike. Though he didn't have any stun skills yet it was pretty good in causing the boars to stumble or outright stop moving for a few seconds. Plenty of time for Zero to get in position for another few strikes.

Other times the duo just blitzed the standalone boar to death in under half a minute. Using this strategy they killed a couple dozen boars and level up twice.

Looking up at the party display in the top right of his view, Zero read everyone's levels in his head.

[Zero(Swordsman) - Level 4]

[Kenny(Fighter)- Level 4]

[Luna(Priest)- Level 4]

As everyone had reached level 4 they had gained 10 stat points to use. For Zero, he split them between his endurance and agility. As for Kenny, he split them between his endurance and strength. Luna just put them into her intelligence stat for now since more healing what better as the boys took more damage.

Checking the time, it had just reached 8pm. Having played for 2 hours, Zero informed his party that he could play for another 3 to 4 hours at most before he needed a break to eat dinner. With the vr equipment able to simulate sleeping, players were able to remain inside the game while "asleep", effectively playing throughout the night.

Though, with a current time dilation of 1:1 there wasn't much anyone could do about problems with play time for the game. The developers had already said they were working to increase the time dilation to match other games of the past with time dilations of 1:4.

Going back to Zero, his party members said they had to get offline around the same time frame as him, to eat dinner as well.

"What do you both think about going deeper into the forest? We can't keep killing monsters of this level anymore." Zero suggested as the party leaned against trees after distributing their stat points.

"Well we need to if we want to get more experience, these levels are pretty easy to blow through, so if we can find a good spawn area then we could get through levels a lot faster" Said Kenny as he stoop up off of the tree and clapped his hands.

"Let's get going then" Smiling to the two, Zero started walking even deeper into the forest, so far they were a few hundred meters away from the village so it would take a bit to get back if they wanted to return.

Walking around for about 10 minutes the trio spotted a river. As they stood off to the side against some trees, down the river Luna had spotted a wolf getting a drink from the river with a couple of more laying on the grass a few feet away.

"There are 3 of them. It might be a bit tough but as long as we focus we can kill them. And if we get lucky we might be able to find the den they spawn from." Kenny said while stretching behind a tree.

"Calm down hot head, if you attract all 3, I don't think I'd be able to heal you fast enough. Let's try to split them up. Zero, are you able to handle 2 of them? Kenny is a fighter and using his fists he would have to get a lot closer than you to battle."

"Well it's not that I particularly mind handling 2 of them with my agility stat at 20, I feel like more could show up if we take too long so we should try to go for critical attacks. Crippling their movement and attacking their weaknesses should be our strategy. Wolves should have a soft under belly so as long as we can get an attack there it should be a large amount of damage."

Looking through the tree line, Zero watched as another wolf came out from some bushes and walked towards the other 3 already by the river.

Clicking his tongue Zero sighed while watching the 4 wolves now sitting by the river, occasionally getting a drink of water.

"Shit... now there are 4 of them..."