Raven Hunters (P1)- Rotation

Darius kept his plan for the raid on the Raven Bandit group as simple as possible, they weren't required to escort Marchant Balelo until 5 days from now so this party of 7 had until then to raid the Bandit hideout, kill the guardian beast, wipe out all the members of the bandit group and kill the two divine hall members. It might sound like a lot on paper but considering that all of these objectives could be completed in the same place Darius planned to treat it as a glorified dungeon raid.

Before him stood the players Enemy Soldier, Cruel Silence, Stellar Blade, Mighty Bjorn and Guerrilla Queen with Immortal Lancer standing beside him as the second in command of the group, the way the squad would fight was simple enough as things stood. Queen and Soldier would provide cover fire for the close-ranged fighters to either disrupt enemy attacks or potentially blind certain enemies if this need arose. While those two handled that Silence would switch between poking the enemy lines and recovering used arrows for the two ranged fighters to prevent unnecessary waste of resources.

Meanwhile, Bjorn will switch between protecting the ranged fighters and picking up loose enemies that the front line may have missed while Blade, Lancer, and Darius fight up close and personal with the main horde of mobs or whatever boss monsters they may encounter. The loot division was 60 - 40 with Soldier's group taking the majority since they were bringing more experienced gamers, in return Darius and his lot would retain the rights to pick items first within reason.

Special rewards like the uncommon items from the 'S.O.S' quest would have some special trade rules initiated separately from the original deal for monster drops. It was also decided that unless necessary drops, gold, and general rewards wouldn't be redistributed until all the quests were completed, at least the parts the group planned to complete. With all the miscellanies sorted and the strategy thoroughly planned out, the group left the walls of the Iron Bastion starter town to navigate the rest of the complex terrain of the Kingdom of Europe.

Outside the Iron Bastion was the lush open plain with flourishing meadows and blossoming floral life that most other VR games opted for; but rather the sky was riddled with filth and waste, with smoke from fire in the horizon and barren, scorched soil beneath their feet. This starter Zone embodied the 'Absence of life' feeling it was trying to give and all members of the Raven Killer Party, the final name of the group decided through vote, liked the view for varying reasons.

Soldier's peers appreciated the level of detail and realism this game presented with its 100% immersion, they could feel the residual heat and borderline intolerable waste in the air and wondered just what other experiences this game could provide. On the other hand, Darius' portion of the group felt something more along the lines of nostalgia than wonder, despite the setting being different this starter zone reminded the group enough of what they were used to that being in this strange environment for some ridiculous task wasn't so unbearable.

The group traversed north on the Barren plains towards one of the dying-out fires on the horizon, it was the territory protected by a Wild Kobold that, according to rumours, used the corpses of its fallen challengers as fuel for the eternally burning fire within its territory. Questionable game lore aside though, It was very convenient that Darius' real target in all of this was casually waiting for him in the most open area imaginable. It almost didn't matter that there was no complex terrain to take advantage of, this monster only ever had one-on-one fights and he had no intentions with it other than to jump the unassuming creature with as many others as he could.

The Raven Killer Party travelled barely a few hundred metres over the hilltop before it encountered its first monster. It certainly had no appraisal users on hand but in all honesty, having it wouldn't have influenced their decision much as they could all clearly see the S in bright red and brackets beside its name. It was called a Dire wolf and was a humanoid wolf creature that bore a striking resemblance to the Beastman race over the Beast Kin race.

In Lay reader terms, it was essentially a wolf that naturally stood on its hind legs as humans did with the build of your run-of-the-mill 5-foot-tall gym bro. It had a very lean body with calves that were visibly denser than the rest of its muscles without competition. If someone in the group did have an appraisal skill, they would be able to see this:

Name: Dire Wolf Life stage: (Early) Adolescence Race: Dire Wolf Class: None Subclass: None Titles: None Items: None Lvl: 5 Rank: 0 Status: Normal Hp: 250/250 Mp: 30/30 Sta: 30/30 Atk: 75 M.atk: 105 Def: 50 M.def: 80 Str: 25 Spd: 50 Agi: 30 Int: 5 End: 25 Luck: 5 

Race Skills: Savage Hunt

Subclass Skills: None

Non-combat Skills: Sense

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: None.

All one needed to take from this was the fact that the person in the party with the highest damage was Bjorn who could deal 50, the person in the party with the highest health was Soldier with 90 HP, and the fastest member of the party was tied between Silence and Soldier who both had a meagre 20 speed even with item buffs. On top of the glaring disadvantage this put the party under, this game had a unique feature called level suppression where the higher one's level was over yours the more suppressed you were.

It was a math thing and every level equalled 1% of stat points that you would lose, in this case, the party was facing a 5% loss which just barely made it so that no one in the party could do damage to the thing with normal attacks as Bjorn's damage was suppressed to 48. He couldn't do damage already but he could have fought the beast back at least, now that wasn't an option anymore or his weapons would rapidly lose durability. The only upside to all of this was that Darius' defence, even after suppression, was more than enough to block all damage this thing completely could do.

But when has life been so easy and kind, this thing was rated S difficulty for the Party to defeat as a whole, and this was for the simple reason that the thing was significantly faster than the group. Case in point, The group was roughly 70 metres away from the creature when it noticed them and in 2 short seconds it was 10 yards away from them all. Queen was the first to react and tried backing off as quickly as she could to buy herself time to fire first, but she never got that chance as the Dire Wolf's next dash put allowed it to get behind Queen and drive its fist into her back, launching her back at her group, dealing 62 damage, and killing her in one blow.

Queen's body hit the floor several times before slumping in front of the party and eventually dissipating into light, leaving all of her non-clothing Items behind in her place. Ironically enough, the fact that Queen wasn't a gamer was the only reason she died as the skill she had unlocked when she first spawned was one called 'Sprint' which was exactly what it sounded like and would likely have allowed her to move fast enough dodge and even counter-attack on the wolf.

Fortunately, Soldier wasn't such a noob and activated his entry skill, 'Quick Draw'. The wolf tried rushing at him next and attempted to claw Soldier's throat, but Darius rushed ahead of him just in time to block the claw, with his Body shield. Darius triggered a perfect block that stunned the wolf for a second and dealt 94 damage at the same time, with the impact launching both back a few yards. at soon as the wolf was stunned Soldier buried an arrow in both eye sockets, blinding the wolf but still dealing no damage despite triggering a Perfect critical.

While the wolf was disoriented from the combination Lancer rushed forward and struck out at the wolf's knee with the Axe end of her Halberd, cleaving it off in one momentum-packed motion, triggering a normal critical that dealt 16 damage to the beast and reducing it's formerly ludicrous speed by half, more than enough for most members of the party to now keep up with. 

Realising the mistake it had made attacking this group, the beast had tried to flee on all 3s in a random direction and slowly recuperate its former strength, but in the end, it had made two critical mistakes. Firstly, it had tried running blind which was stupid for obvious reasons, and secondly, It had underestimated the speed of the party and thought it was at least able to outpace them even at half its speed which simply wasn't the case. The moment it had stopped taking the initiative to attack the level of suppression wore off on the party and it lost the only advantage that kept it alive to this point.

Lancer Kept pace with the wolf and struck down on its back with the axe end of his Halberd, breaking the beast's momentum and triggering a perfect critical, chipping off another 40 from the beast's HP. Despite having 100 HP left over the beast was already panicking and had since left the stage of fight or flight and was now desperately seeking an avenue of survival. But what was this? The group had been flawless in its counter-attack after Guerilla Queen was killed and even now had only barely taken out half of the creature's health. What was all this nonsense?

Ignoring all of that, what rule stated that only Players and NPCs could have skills, wasn't assuming such a thing the height of stupidity, the Wolf decided to bear its literal and proverbial fangs. Since flight wasn't working, he would fight until the bitter end, if it was a boss battle this would have been considered phase 2. The Wolf initiated its Savage Hunt skill and practically disappeared from beneath Lancer, Darius managed to activate focus and motioned to block the incoming attack once more. This time though, despite Darius triggering a perfect block once more, the wolf's momentum triggered a normal critical that allowed it to deal 45 piercing damage to Darius and his shield, sending the team Tank sliding backwards.

Darius quickly used his small stamina potion before the cost of using focus set in leaving him with 1 point of stamina left; Darius immediately felt the effects of this as his body became incomparably sluggish and heavy as it was all he could do to keep himself upright. It didn't help that more than half of his health was gone in the one blow, furthermore, it didn't look like this wolf would relent anytime soon. Darius shared a look with Blade as he braced for the Wolf's follow-up attack.

This time though, Blade cast his entry skill 'ignite' on Darius' shield before the wolf made contact, the same situation repeated itself as just earlier except that Darius only took 15 damage this time, while the wolf ended up taking 45 burn damage as it's right arm was burnt through. Before the wolf could do much else two burning arrows tore through the wolf's head, both being perfect critical blows that dealt 30 burn damage each. Only after this blow landed did the Dire wolf's health bottom out, as it dropped to its knees and slumped over as the flames cooked up its corpse.

{{System: Congratulations on killing a 'Dire Wolf' Wild Boss. All Party members will be rewarded 18 exp}}