Despite the quiet night, The Forest of Beast is filled with many sounds, chirps of cricket, the occasional chirping of nocturnal birds resounding throughout the forest, the rustling of leaves blown by the wind, and a magic beast's growl followed by a sound of steel clashing with something sturdy.
I and the others have been given an order by master to hunt down the magic beasts in the Forest of Beast. We have been hunting for roughly an hour if my numb zombie senses are correct. Although we're not that strong yet, you can't say that we're weak either!
When master gave us these new bodies and a second chance, we actually have regained much or less the same power when we were alive, except for Edgar who sadly can't use his magic for now. Although we don't have our job like last time, leader.. or Husk had shown us that if we reached rank 3 we're able to have similar abilities as our former job by evolving our race! And if we're able to reach a higher rank, master said that we'll even be much stronger than before! Isn't it exciting to know that we'll be more useful for master and we're able to achieve even greater things than when we were alive!
Regarding our new bodies, for me it is still not possible for me to speak even though I really wanted to talk to master and thank him for choosing me as part of his undead army, The Hyenas are now changed to zombie crew! We are also not able to talk to each other, but we can somehow understand each other intentions so we can communicate and have a certain level of teamwork although not as good when we're able to talk. Husk being the team leader in our past lives is still doing his job now as a team leader, and he's also the first to reach rank 3! As expected of our team leader, he is really amazing.
About me, I'm in a dilemma on what should I do in the future to be more useful to master. When I think about it, the zombie crew already has 3 thieves and if I became another thief, I won't get my chance to shine and prove myself to be useful for master. Although I know that master is a really good person and won't abandon his people like that, and the other member of the zombie crew certainly won't judge me or anything, I wanted to be special! I want to able to do something that only I'm able to do.
But that's all food for thoughts in another time, for now, let's focus on master's order on getting stronger!
In this short hour, we've defeated about 3 magic beasts. Without master's spirit surveillance system it is hard to find magic beasts for us to fight, so far only Zayn and Me got a level up. Husk's skill that he got from ranking up has been helping us ambush the magic beast and got us an advantage in the fight against them.
Master told us to be careful and not got our already dead bodies more dead. So we don't target rank 2 magic like the pack of wolves from last time. So far we've only hunted a rank 1 magic beast and 2 rank 2 magic beast that doesn't hunt in packs.
We're all trying our best to fulfill master's order as quickly as possible and do it properly. But if we go at this pace, I'm afraid that master will have to wait for too long, so I tried to propose an idea to Husk. Our method of communication is limited, but I tried my best to convey my idea.
What I think we should do is that we should focus all the experience on 1 member so they will rank up faster thus we will be able to hunt quicker and fight stronger enemies. If the experience is spread out like this, I know we'll all eventually reach rank 3 but with the focusing method, I think that it will work better!
After trying really hard to send my complicated idea(intention) to Husk, he finally gets what I'm trying to convey and called the zombie crew for a strategy meeting. But I might say this meeting sure is a quiet one. We only stopped what we're doing and focused on perceiving each other's intentions so we can understand better.
After the strategy meeting, we decided to funnel the experience to Ben first, which has the highest level of us all and the one closest to ranking up. And if his rank up gives him a race that is similar to his former barbarian job then it certainly will be better and will help us significantly on our hunt for experiences. With the axe that master makes using the magic deer antler's and the rhino's horn, Ben is sure will be able to deal a lot of damage to the magic beasts we're about to fight.
So how we're going to do this is, Husk will first search for our potential prey and wait for an opening to ambush and deal significant damage to give us an advantage in the fight. After that, we will help and focus on dealing damage that will hinder the beast's ability to fight such as attacking its eyes or limbs and weakening its overall strength. After that, we'll leave the rest to the person who we will be giving all the experience to finish the fight, in this case, the person is Ben.
Following the finalization of the battle strategy that we came up with on a whim, we departed and searched for the next prey. According to master's order, we avoided going too deep into the forest and searched in the outskirts of the forest. We didn't worry about getting lost in the forest because our bond with master tells us where he is and we only need to follow the connection to get back to him, so as long as we can feel the connection, we're able to roam around freely.
Either because of his rank up, his past life, or even both, Husk is very talented in roaming around the forest without being noticed by the creatures living inside it. His steps are blended in with the surroundings and his moves flowed like a water without making unnecessary additional movements. Up to this point we've had successfully killed 3 rank 1 magic beasts and a few rank 2 magic beast, but unfortunately Ben still hasn't reached level 10 yet. I guess the higher the rank we have the harder it is for us to level up and evolve, but we won't give up. Our tireless undead body gives us no reason for us to give up unless we're tired mentally, which we don't because who won't be happy to do master's order!
So with Husk leading the way we continued our search to find a rank 2 magic beast. The rank 1 magic beast along the way is not that useful to our experience funneling plan so we just killed it and shared the experience as usual, and giving some to Edgar since he had the lowest level among us all.
After scurrying around for a while, we finally found the same type of rhino magic beast that we had fought with master before. We should be able to fight it six against one, but I'm curious if we will be able to do it as easily as when master is fighting with us. We started the arranged plan for fighting a monster, 5 of us spread out and ready to get in the fight after Husk deals an ambush attack to it.
Husk's surprise attack succeeded in incapacitating one of its limbs making its charge weaker. Because none of us can use magic we can't limit its movements or play tricks with it. But it's true when people say that there is strength in numbers. Six of us started beating the rhino, Husk's dagger came from the side, when the rhino turned to Husk's direction, Zayn and Mark came from its back and stabbed their dagger to its hind legs and so on. I felt that this is actually easier than I think this would be! Even though when master's brother hold down the rhino, the fight is very easy that it became a beating game, but that is not possible for our current strength to use that strategy, when the first time I saw it, I can't even believe how a kid that only half as tall as me has the strength to hold a rank 2 magic beast as huge as this rhino down.
The rhino is reaching its critical state and it's time for Ben to finish the rhino so he will get the most experience, but when he wanted to deal the finishing blow to the rhino's head with his halberd, suddenly someone gave a warning through our soul connection telling us to dodge and jump sideways from where we are standing right now.
With our absolute trust with each other, even if we don't know who said it, we followed the intention transmitted and we jumped from our current place, and right after we landed. At the place where we were standing, appeared an earth spike from the ground. Turns out the one who warned us is Edgar! It seems that he is already able to sense magic even when he still can't use it.
We searched the area to find who just attacked us with earth spikes, and not long after, we found out that 4 rank 1 magic boars are coming from all sides surrounding us.