Golden Experience

There was a clearing in the forest that was slightly illuminated, where the sounds of combat were clear. Hidden in the shadows of the trees, Rare observed the battle. There, a three-way confrontation between the wild boar, the wolf, and the mountain cats unfolded.

“Holy shit, they’re huge! The hell kind of boar and wolf are they?! They’ve gotta be goddamn monsters, not just wild animals.”

The wolf was a little bit taller than Kerry. Eyeballing, it was probably over two meters long. The boar was even bigger than that. It had to have been at least three meters tall. The clearing had been smaller, but the two rampaging monsters kept knocking down trees, so it ended up turning into a large, open area.

Apparently the wolf had been attacking the boar’s legs, since the boar seemed to be shaking on its feet. Kerry was keeping the wolf at bay while also aiming for the boar’s legs with her sword. A boar the size of a large car was charging around and she hung around slashing at it like it was nothing; Rare couldn’t possibly imagine herself succeeding in the same position. Kerry’s [Quick-Wittedness] and [Acrobatics] skills were putting in some work.

Finally, the boar heaved forward and collapsed on the ground. An arrow suddenly came flying in out of nowhere, piercing right through one of its eyes. The boar let out a screech, arching its back up and swinging its head around. At the end of one swing, its head stopped for a split second before it was going to be swung back the other way—zeroing in on that instant, another arrow sunk into its other eye. Must be Remy and Riley; they both had the [Archery] skill. Because it was so huge, though, the arrows that had speared both of its eyes didn’t appear to reach its brain, so the boar still struggled. However, neither the wolf nor the girls paid it any more attention.

“My hands are all sweaty just from watching this play out, but it’s not like they told me not to get in the way or anything.”

This was the perfect chance to test her skills and stats.

“All right, first is [Stupefy].”

She felt something pushing back for a moment, but that feeling crumbled away and the wolf stopped moving. Its eyes wavered, unfocused. It was now afflicted by the Stupefy status debuff.

“Yeah. Kerry, don’t attack. Continuing on, [Charm].”

[Stupefy] only debilitated a target for a few seconds. In that time, you needed to follow up with either [Charm] or [Fear]. This time she didn’t feel any resistance at all. Targets afflicted by Stupefy had decreased resistance to [Charm] and [Fear], after all. The wolf’s eyes half-closed, and it lowered its head and padded toward Rare. That was most likely what [Charm]’s caster, Rare, wanted.

“Looks like it worked. Next is [Control].”

There was a little bit of resistance as the wolf walked up to Rare and hung its head down.

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“Now for the finisher. [Subordinate].”

The wolf lay down on the ground, then rolled over to show its stomach. It barely resisted at all.

“Hmm. Success. Even against highly hostile enemies, I can still easily Subordinate them.”

As far as she could tell from watching Kerry and the girls fight, the wolf was stronger than they were. They could easily defeat it as a team, but one-on-one, they would have to run.

Part of the reason it was so easy to use [Subordinate] could be because Rare used it in the middle of a fight, while it was distracted, but the biggest factor was simply her enormous MND stat. Since her overall stats were so much lower compared to Kerry and the girls, she probably should have used her XP to help close the gap, but instead she put way too much into MND. Thinking about it objectively, she had casually spent 200 XP, but that was twice the amount that a starting player received. No sane player would ignore skills and waste 200 XP on just MND. While Kerry was above Rare in terms of overall strength, Rare’s MND was three times higher than Kerry’s. Monsters that were only a little stronger than Kerry shouldn’t have enough MND to resist.

“Or like, the girls are a composite four-person unique boss, and the wolf and boar were only a bit weaker. For early-game enemies, they’re pretty damn strong. What the hell’s with this forest?”

Rare was starting to wonder where exactly she had started out. She had no regrets at this point, but she was starting to feel kind of bad for the innocent skeleton players who started out in similar places as this.

“In any case, that was a good hunt. Let’s bring this boar back.”

“Boss, it’d be better to butcher it here. If we don’t drain the blood right after it dies, the meat’ll go bad.”

“Aha, you’re right. Go ahead, then. Remy and Riley will monitor the area. Ah, actually, hold on.”

She could put their new comrade to work instead.

“Hey, you. You’re mine now. Do you understand? We’re gonna make this boar easier to eat, so while we do that, I want you to make sure no other beasts come near us,” she said while mussing up the fur on the wolf’s stomach.

After hearing its orders, the wolf immediately got up and began circling the edge of the clearing, its nose and ears twitching occasionally.

As soon as it was tamed, the girls immediately recognized the wolf as their ally, so they completely trusted it to watch their backs. Rare, having nothing else to do, decided to check out the wolf’s status.

It had a number of skills she had never seen before. They must be ones with special conditions to unlock. These were skills that seemed possible for the girls to learn, but looking at their skill trees, none of them were available. They were apparently skills with unlock conditions outside of having the right combination of skills. She was glad that [Subordinate] wasn’t like that.

The wolf also had innate characteristics like [Keen Smell] and [Keen Hearing]. Monsters and wild beasts get to use their innate characteristics as soon as they’re born, it seemed. On second thought, for wolves to be unable to use their noses until they learned a skill was kind of silly. These types of innate characteristics must only be available to certain races.

The wolf was an [Ice Wolf]. Yep, it really was a monster. For an ice wolf, though, its belly had been quite warm when she had rubbed it. The spot for its name was blank. She should probably name it. The butchering was almost done, though, so she could come up with one after they’d gotten back to base and settled in.

“Boss, we’re done. For now, we wrapped up the meat in the fur; we don’t want the entrails so we’ll bury them, but what about the bones? It’d help if the wolf could carry the meat, but adding the bones would be too heavy.”

“It’s fine, I can take it all. Here.”

After saying so, Rare put everything in her inventory: the meat, the fur, the bones, and also the entrails.

“Boss, the meat’s all gone! Did you do that?”

“Yes, I did. It’s called an ‘inventory.’ It’s a way to hide things in a secret place.”

“Wow…! How do you do that?”

“‘How’… Well… Hmm… It’s like, there’s an invisible bag I can use to store things; if I want to put something away, I cover it with this big bag, then I just close it. Something like that.”

Since the system just did it for her, it was extremely difficult to explain how an “inventory” worked. Only players could use it anyway, so even if she could explain it properly, they wouldn’t be able to use it anyway.

“I don’t really get it…”

“It’s fine, I can explain it again later. Anyway, we’ve accomplished our goal, so let’s return to the cave.”

Vaguely handwaving the topic away, Rare stood up and made to start heading back. The wolf, who had been keeping watch, came up to her and pushed its nose into her stomach.

“Huh? What’s wrong? …Family? You weren’t just a lone wolf?”

Apparently, the wolf had family.