One step at a time, Adder slowly walked through the long grass, keeping an eye on any uneven movement.
Suddenly, he crouched down.
The grass before him shifted.
A herd of drill-horn rabbits appeared before him.
He held his breath, not making any sound. Thankfully, none of these beasts saw him.
He slowly parted the grass, staring at them.
There were six rabbits before him.
Two massive brown-furred rabbits were munching just a couple of feet away from him. From their size, they should be around level 6–7.
Just behind them was a group of three small rabbits. These smaller ones should be less than level 5.
These five were not the problem. But the last one at the back was almost the size of a big dog.
He also noticed this one had hazy red eyes, a clear sign that it was close to level 10.
This made him pause.
He glanced at the trash sword in his hand and shook his head.
His weapon would be ineffective against that beast. Still not giving up, he grabbed a small stone and stood there in silence.
The big rabbit stopped chewing for a moment and looked up.
Right at that moment, he threw the stone at the beast's eyes.
Ding!
[You have learned the Throw skill!]
Waving off the notification, he rushed in.
Cheeeee!!
The big rabbit screamed, alerting all the rabbits.
Too late, he already rushed to the side of the first rabbit.
Slash!
-72 HP
A bit of resistance, and then the metal blade cleanly slashed past the rabbit's neck.
A stream of warm blood splashed across his side.
Twisting, Adder stabbed the sword into the second rabbit's side.
Puich!
-23!
The first rabbit had already fallen to the ground while the second screamed.
Cheee! Chee!!
Adder pulled the sword out.
In pain, the rabbit tried to swing its horn.
In one fluid motion, Adder took out the witch's knife and stabbed it into the rabbit's thick neck.
-52!
The beast dropped to the ground.
By now, the three smaller rabbits rushed toward him.
Adder jumped to the side, dodging the three horns.
He rolled forward and rushed toward the big rabbit.
The massive beast swung its horn.
Adder dropped his sword and grabbed its horn.
The panicked beast swung its head upward.
He smiled and moved under the beast's head, staring right into its eyes.
The next instant, he jumped up and stabbed into the rabbit's eye.
Puich!
-82!
Chee!
The beast staggered back.
He jumped back and rushed to the remaining rabbits without looking behind.
Not taking any more risk, he just rolled around, focusing on slashing the three rabbits.
At one point, he glanced back and saw that the biggest rabbit had already fled the scene.
He shook his head. If only he had a better weapon.
Clicking his tongue, he focused on the group before him.
-12, -15, -4, -6, -9… -2
After struggling for almost five more minutes, the last rabbit finally fell to the ground.
Ding! Ding!
[
+150% level suppression bonus
+20% herd bonus
+600 EXP
]
[LEVEL UP!]
[LEVEL UP!]
Adder shook the blood off himself. "Haha, that went well."
This single fight had gained him two levels.
He glanced back at the crowd, where a large number of players were running around looking for lower-level beasts.
He knew from experience that it would take more than half an hour to hunt there.
Compared to the front, there were very few groups hunting in the middle ground like him.
Not wasting more time, he picked up his sword and started making small cuts on the monsters' bodies.
In Zenaris Online, there were two ways for a player to collect loot from monsters.
The first way was to wait for one minute after killing the last monster.
In just one minute, all the dead bodies would disintegrate, and the player would gain bounty rewards.
These bounties were placed by the village chief. He did not check it, but from experience, he knew it would be a copper coin or two at best.
The game system simply made the transfer of coins easy. Beyond that, players could gain one or two random processed body parts.
In extremely rare cases, they could even obtain skill tokens.
Beyond skill tokens, the system rewards were nothing special.
Adder bent over the last monster and stabbed into its side.
Finally, he sat down. This small cut would stop the monsters from disintegrating.
Now, the entire body was his reward, which he had to process manually.
This was a much more profitable method, but it was too tedious, as entire bodies could not be stored in the inventory.
A player could only store butchered parts.
Adder took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The memory of the past, when he was forced to work as one of the butchers, flashed through his mind.
Remembering the sensation of a blade gliding through flesh, he pulled a nearby rabbit and started extracting its eyes.
From experience, he applied more force to the rabbit's skull so the knife would not scrape the eyes.
To be honest, if not for the witch's requirement, he would have preferred the first method for these monsters.
It took him double the hunting time. Finally, he placed the last pair of eyes into his inventory.
Adder glanced at the bloodied mess and decided to move on. There were other useful parts like rabbit horns and hides, but those would take too much time.
With one last look, he started moving back toward the village. Along the way, he mumbled, "Player status."
===
Player Name: Adder
Species: Human/???
Class: Dungeon Master
Subclass: None
Title: Master of Serpent Cave
Level: 3
Health: 120/120
Mana: 110/110
__________________________________________________________
AGL: 5
VIT: 5
INT: 5
STA: 5
STR: 5
DEF: 5
___________________________________________________________
Status: Normal.
Unassigned stat points: 14
Equipment:
* Beginner Sword (Low Trash)
* Witch's Ritual Knife (Mid Trash)
===
Each level up increased health by 10 and mana by 5 for all players.
He focused on the 14 unassigned stat points. Being one of the rarest classes, he gained two extra stat points compared to the common five.
Also, what made the Dungeon Master more special was that his extra stat points were flexible.
For most rare classes, extra stat points were fixed. For example, he knew the Swordmaster gained one extra point in agility.
This was another major advantage he could use to build something unique.
For now, he just closed the status; it's time to move to the second task.
###
Weapon grade in the game:
Trash-> Iron-> Bronze-> Silver-> Gold-> Dark gold-> Epic-> Legendary->???->???
Each grade further has in between: Low, mid, and High.