As he stepped into the white light, the surrounding changed into a deep cave with emerald colored walls. You could see cobwebs everywhere, the cave was dimly lit due to the glowing emerald walls.
Stephie then briefly explained "Kyle, you take the lead. Me and Barry will help you with the load, the twins and Mary will deal damage from behind".
They all nodded and reacted based on their respective role, Kyle took the lead and they started walking forwards.
In less than a minute, he could already spot some spiders.
[Spider Soldier (Normal)]
Level: 5
HP: 600/600
Three spiders appeared, and the party members went to their positions.
Kyle attacked the first spider, and then used 'Double Slash' to hit the other two, he did it incredibly fast due to his high agility, his last strike was so quick his teammates only saw a blur.
But that didn't make his teammates happy, on the contrast, why didn't other tanks use an agility based build?
The answer was simple, if you focus on agility, your vitality will be lower. Hence you will become a fragile tank.
But Kyle proved his teammates that fast doesn't mean fragile, he swiftly blocked one of the strikes, after all he couldn't dodge the legs of three spiders simultaneously, each spider had many legs.
'10' A white number appeared above his head.
His teammates eyeballs almost popped off, how high was his defense? The spiders normally dealt 50 damage without defense, but they only dealt 10 damage to him.
Unknown to them, his defense was only 8, but the secret was in his high block rate, he achieved 90% in this block!
His teammates quickly came back to reality and started attacking the spiders, in less than two minutes all three spiders died.
"Amazing! It normally takes us at least five minutes and some potions to clear the first spiders. But not only did you not use any potions, you are even second in the party damage leaderboard!" Mary exclaimed.
Kyle was surprised as well, but for a different reason. The spiders gave him so little experience! He needed to kill at least 50 in order to levelup, that was multiple times the amount of wolves he needed to kill to get to level 4.
But that much was to be expected, not only is the level gap only one level, but the experience is split between six players, it couldn't be compared to his lucrative solo grinding.
They gained 10 copper coins after the fight, nothing else dropped which was quite disappointing for Kyle, but the others were already used to it.
After the fight they kept grinding spiders, and about an hour later, he finally leveled up.
He also leveled up 'Double Slash ', 'Strong Slash' and 'Quick Draw'. His damage output was raised to the first in the team, and that was without using magic!
Everyone congratulated him and he decided to put all of his points in agility, because he came to a realization after grinding for some time.
He understood that there are many ways to increase his damage, but it's hard to increase stats like agility, even if he managed to learn a spell that could increase his speed for a long time, it will probably cost a lot of mana to maintain.
On the other hand, by increasing his agility, not only can he move faster and dodge more attacks, but he can also increase his attack speed and blocking success rate, after all he can position himself better.
He now reached 30 agility, and could easily achieve 90% success rate with every block.
After his levelup they took a break, and decided to distribute the loot. Although common equipment didn't drop frequently, they still managed to collect a few.
As the party's only tank, he had priority over armor and defense related equipment.
He recieved a level 5 common chestplate, leggings and boots that each give 5 defence, his defense now reached 17, the spiders only did 1 to 5 damage to him when they managed to hit him.
A common sword also dropped, but he gave it to Mary with the excuse his sword was better, although his sword was a bit worse, it was only a level 0 low uncommon sword after all.
Now only a common bow was left, but both clones refused to use it due to a weird need to wear the exact same equipment.
Stephie was embarrassed but Kyle didn't mind, he had something else bothering him.
He wanted a harder challenge, these spiders couldn't satisfy him anymore, he could even solo them without using any magic.
After clearing another wave of spiders, he turned around and asked his teammates "I think this is a bit too easy, why don't we go for the first boss? Although we don't have a healer, I have a lot of potions so I believe we can do it"
They looked at him weirdly but eventually nodded, although they originally only came to grind spiders, it wasn't because they lacked ambition, but simply because they didn't have a priest and by using too many potions they will spend more than they will earn by killing the boss.
Stephie grinned and replied "I think we do have a chance, with a tank like you, it's definitely possible!" After all he had the most ambitions for this team, although the others mainly played to have fun, he had a competitive spirit within him.
And so the newly formed party started marching towards their first challenge.