Looking up Mike was forced to really crane his neck in order to see who was talking to him. The one who asked if he put up the "mission" was actually a really tall minotaur. He was wearing a bear fur cloak that barely went down to his knees. He had a great ax on his back along with a closed top quiver of arrows on the back of his waist and a custom made longbow meant to accompany the user's strength and psyche.
He had brown fur and has very muscular arms that were clearly visible through the cloak the minotaur was wearing. The minotaur was still standing and looking down at Mike who scrambles out of his chair and extends his hand.
"Yes I am the one who posted the mission," Mike says
Seeing Mike extend his hand the minotaur does the same and clasps Mike's hand and Mike feels his hands almost break from the sheer strength of the meaty hand of the minotaur. After their handshake, Mike sits back down on his chair while the Minotaur moves the nearby chairs and just sits on the floor since most of the chairs cannot carry his weight.
"So you are here to help me hunt some wolves right?" Mike asks as he orders some Mead for the both of them
The minotaur shakes his head as he takes his cup and downs the drink in one go.
"Now then where is the money?" the Minotaur asks
Mike takes out two gold coins and hands them to the minotaur who puts them someplace inside his cloak.
"So um... how did you know I was the one giving the quest," Mike asks while taking a sip from his drink
"The guild's have a magic that can show the image of the quest giver" The minotaur explains
"Do you think more people will show?" Mike asks as he looks at the door
"No,"
"What? Why not?" Mike asks
"The payment was to low for the better hunters only newbies and those who are bored will take your quest"
"Well, then what category are you under?" Mike asks
"Erm... neither"
"Okay... then why did you agree to help me?"
"I needed the work," the minotaur says proudly
'Why are you proud of that!' Mike shouts in his mind
"Okay well since no one else is showing up how about we both head to the forest and finish the quest yeah?" Mike asks
"I don't mind," The minotaur says as they stand up and walk towards the door
They both leave the city after Mike stops by at Wendel's house to get his adventures badge which apparently can allow Mike to get some perks with a higher rank apparently. As the journey to the forest is about two hours Mike makes some casual conversation with the minotaur he hired. Mike found out the Rogen was a minotaur who was one of the domesticated breeds of his kind, minotaurs have to kinds of breeds the free breed and the guardian breed. The guardian breed of the minotaur is more aggressive, dumber, and deadlier. They are the classical minotaur who guards mazes and other such similar places from adventurers and others. No one knows why these guardian minotaurs are born at random but once they are born they apparently feel a draw to a place that they never have seen or been to before.
Now Rogen was a free minotaur who was not bound by a maze or feel any sort of urge. His clan used to be situated nearby the city a long time ago but they were a wandering tribe so they moved on. Rogen stayed instead of leaving with his tribe as it was deemed by the tribe that he must make his own tribe for some reason and to do that he would have to do that alone.
Now Mike did not really get most of what Rogen told him since his culture is a whole lot more different than human culture and society in this probably Feudilist era[1]. Still, it was interesting to learn about another way of life in this world albeit it was confusing and hard to understand most of the time. Thankfully Rogen talking was able to make Mike forget about the long hours of walking and before he knew it they both were at the edge of the forest.
Now when Mike heard about going into a forest he originally thought that it would be dark and decrepit with a bunch of monsters and dangers around every tree. But reality was a lot different than he thought. The forest was pleasantly nice with a bunch of birds in the branches singing their different tunes, a deer walking amongst the trees and grazing. It was quite peaceful-looking if Mike were on Earth he would have probably taken out his phone for a picture for a new background. As Mike was taking in the natural beauty of this place it was suddenly disturbed as Rogen starts running into the forest causing all the animals to flee. Startled and confused at why Rogen started to run into the forest mike also starts running after him albeit a lot slower than the minotaur and even more so now that he no longer has the Dash skill.
After a few minutes of running Mike finally ends up catching up to Rogen since he suddenly stopped in a small clearing so Mike caught up after and flopped onto the floor out of breath. His stamina stat was practically empty and was slowly filling back up. Mike looked around for a bit to see if there was anything around them and just like clockwork Mike feels the dread of the roll of the dice.
12
The number does not show any sort of color so Mike does not know if that is a bad or good roll but he starts to faintly see something amongst the trees moving in the branches and on the ground. Mike does not really know what it is but he feels that it might be dangerous so he takes out his short sword from the inventory and preemptively casts [Supply] on himself, casts [Increase] to improve the damage of his next magic spell, and gets ready to cast [Ice Blast]. The thing was that Mike forgot about his spellcasting trouble so when he cast [Supply] the dice morphs into a d100 and rolls to get a 4 so instead of gaining 2 temporary hit points he lost 2 hit points. The dice rolls again for [Increase] and he rolls an 88 and the spell goes through.
[Ice Blast] was not cast yet so Mike had not yet rolled for the success of casting the spell. Still, he had to be optimistic that he would succeed. Mike waited for a bit with Rogen in dead silence for a good minute or so until the thing in the trees jumped down and tried to attack Rogen. To Mike's surprise, it was a wolf that jumped from the trees. It tried to attack Rogen with its claws but he just moves to the side and the wolf falls past him. Seeing an opportunity Mike launches his [Ice Blast] at the wolf but the dice rolls a 2 causing Mike to also take damage from his spell as well.
...
Mike has dealt 2 frost damage to Stalker Wolf
Mike has taken 5 frost damage
...
The wolf was able to sense danger coming from behind it so it dodged out of the way and took less damage as a result of it. The plus side was the 10% speed reduction for getting hit so it was no a lot slower than before. Still, all good news is accompanied by bad news as suddenly more wolves come out from the woods. There appear to be about 15 of them surrounding them which is not good. Seeing as they are now surrounded Mike really wishes that he had some sort of group spell like the oh so famous Fireball.
Still wishing for something to happen will usually not lead to any results and it is also dangerous to do so while in a fight as people can become distracted and being distracted can lead to your death. Still, Brogen is with him so at least he is not going to be alone and heck he might be able to get out of here alive.
"I see the spray worked," Brogen says as he hefts his great ax
"What spray?"
"The animal spray"
"What does it do?"
"It attracts all the animals nearby to the location of the smell," Rogen says as he slams the ax into an unfortunate wolf that got to close to him and killed it instantly
"Why did you do that!" Mike shouts as he dodges a wolf that pounced at him
'So that was why these wolves appeared here this idiot enticed them to come here' Mike thinks as he stabs at the wolf that attacked him before
9
He missed but at least now there are no wolves in the immediate area around him. For some reason, it looks like the wolves are just letting the Stalker Wolf do all the work as they aren't really attacking as one group. They only hop on in whenever the Stalker Wolf seems to tell them to. So Mike decides to help Rogen take down the Stalker Wolf but he is stopped by him.
"Leave him to me you just deal with the ones that decide to jump in to help," Rogen says as he faces off with the Stalker Wolf
The wolf is fast that sometimes Mike does not even see even though it has been slowed down by the Ice Blast he used but what is even more surprising is that the hulking Rogen is actually matching the speed of the wolf. Of course, using a great ax against a wolf is not ideal since it is a bulky two-handed weapon and is slower than the attacks made by the wolves. So Rogen jumped back away from an attack by the Stalker Wolf and backs up a fair distance away from it. Taking use of this short reprieve he hefts his ax and throws it at the Stalker Wolf. The wolf just jumps out of the way of the spinning ax of death and lands off to the side but the ax still flies forward and hits two other wolves killing them instantly. Rogen took the opportunity to draw forth two daggers and wields them against the Stalker Wolf.
Meanwhile, Mike was fighting against some other wolves as they deemed him to be the easier prey so he was fighting against them as well. His Hard to Hit skill was really helpful in this situation and he had been lucky since none of the attacks from the wolves had managed to land on him. Still, he restrained himself from attacking with spells since he might fail to cast them and deal damage to himself instead so he limited himself to his short sword.
The battle between the wolves took a long time about an hour and still Rogen and the Stalker Wolf fought each other with the same vigor as when they started. Mike had killed five of the wolves while Rogen had only killed the three from before with his ax. Still, the wolves stayed here with their leader with bloodshot eyes staring while Mike was sweating like crazy and breathing hard from the fight. the bodies of the five wolves laid around him while his clothes were now bloodstained with their blood. Surprising Mike had not taken any sort of serious damage from his fights with the wolves and he also got a new skill.
...
Small Luck (Passive)
Increases the user's luck by 2.5%
...
Mike did not know how exactly this would help him but it still was good as it involved luck and that was good for him. Still, though the fight was not over so Mike gets back at it while Rogen was fighting the Stalker Wolf and finally started getting the upper hand in the fight.
___________
(Okay I did it again and forgot to add the bracketed information so here)
1. Feudalism was the social structure during the Medieval ages of Europe with a king and queen and everything else in between like knights, lords, and other things I can remember off the top of my head