Spoon let gasp in relief after the bonfire lit up the small cave where him and his group founded a small camp.
It's been two hours since Spoon's party reached the hunting area and on this journey, they have already lost three players, among which was a spear user. A spear which was now held by CofeeHater.
Their group has fought with a total of two Garut's on their way up the mountain and both of the times, they failed miserably. The mountain steppes were the homeground for these goat looking creatures.
"Just DM'ed Berry… he revived in the village, it doesn't seem he and others can catch up to us in time… What should I say to him and others?" Spoon was frustrated, his plan didn't go as well as he intended, he didn't understand how agile the beast were in this world.
'Beating some soot puppets is easy as they don't fight back.' He knew there was nothing to regret here, compared to tutorial players who were mostly going to life and death experience without learning any actual skills. His group of free players will learn from these mistakes and become more efficient the next time they meet those "Garuts".
'But man, it doesn't feel good.' Spoon was suffering from the responsibilities of a leader and guilt when he makes mistakes.
"He should wait for others to revive and go to the market to look for some more sellers… for comparison and stuff." Amira suggested. She knew what it felt like to be left out of something while your friends go on a fun adventure.
"Will do just that." Spoon sent this suggestion to Berry who had just met a second player who died after a few minutes of him falling off the mountain.
"Well, with that's over, why don't we talk about what went wrong before, the plan we worked so hard on doesn't even work." KungfuCheater fumed at her group leader, aka Spoon.
"No need to be so furious for just a failed hunt, we were successful in some and not to mention this was our first time fighting living things." Amira answered, trying to calm Fu down. She knew Fu somewhat resented Spoon and CofeeHater, for dragging her to the village, if they had left her alone, she would have long joined the tutorial and lived a life of "luxury", at least when compared to their present circumstances.
"The plan was not at fault here, it was us who were inexperienced, the beast here were way more agile than anything we practiced with in the village. Next time it will be better and next time after it will be great. Don't forget, this is an RPG, the only way we can go is up in strength and experience." Spoon supported Amira's words.
"For now, we should summarize what we have learned from this experience." He asked while looking at other players.
"We know one thing for sure, those mountain goats love to ram people off the rocks." Amira shared the thought everyone knew already, but it was a start.
"Well, the groundhogs are not that dangerous and easy to kill, the only problem is to find the right hole, I think smoking them out will work and they do give 40 experience." Another rock throwing player followed up. He was lucky to get in a shot at a groundhog that tried to attack CofeeHater.
"Well the antelopes are the hardest to hunt, they are able to run before we even approach them… they may not be as violent as goats, but they are probably the hardest to hunt on this mountain." Fu, also contributed ."We should find a way to mask ourselves or learn to create some traps if we plan to hunt them down."
"Well, leave that to me. I will probably get some hunters in the village to spill their secrets." Coffee said in arrogance as he played with the spear in his hand.
"Well these are good things, but I think everyone is forgetting something very important." Spoon interjected the enthusiastic conversation that his group had started to have.
They all turned to look back at him for his answer. "What are you waiting for, just say it."
"Do I really need to point out that teamwork is the main necessity that we all lack?" Spoon was surprised that needed to say something that was so obvious.
During their multiple battles, he had been struck by stray rocks from his companions on his back while he had collided with Amira mid battle that may have resulted in his death.
Spoon knew he was not the only one who noticed this problem, but it seems most of his team members were ignoring this problem out of embarrassment.
"It would have been better, if we stayed with the main crowd and did the tutorial." Fu once again chimed in, so as to distract everyone from the topic. It was she who made most of the mistakes while throwing the rocks and making friendly fire.
"Don't forget Fu, why we all came together. To kill that perv NPC "Korus" is our goal, he may have turned into a new leaf in the barracks, but it still detract from the fact that he harassed us, and as the first NPC hunting party, we need to kill him no matter what."
Spoon turned stupid the moment he had to talk about Girisia,his calm leadership qualities degraded into pure hatred.
"But is it really necessary though? What happened to us at the beginning was not even that bad compared to the jobs we were forced to do in the farm and that NPC also seems to be pretty famous. Why focus on him so much anymore." Amira countered. She has read the forum post and knows the kind of hell that will be unleashed on their small NPC hunting party if they actually succeed. The rest of the players in Riber city eastern barracks may not leave them alone for this kind of offense.
"Not to mention, with the kind of importance and knowledge he has exposed to the players till now, there is a high chance he is a mainline story NPC." This sentence was Fu's way of saying that she wasn't as enthusiastic about hunting Girisia anymore.
"Fu is right on this, we should be thankful to him that we all can come together." Amira showed her support for Fu this time, she held similar thoughts for a while now. But she can't voice them out as the hate towards Girisia is what kept this group together.
"I… I don't accept it… That bastard made me touch his… I don't say, but you guys probably know "what" it was. I just wanna stab him once." CoffeeHater got passionate as he flailed his spear around; "If you guys gonna back down, do it… I don't care. I will hunt him alone, if that's what it comes to."
"Abey, don't be a retard and think with your brain. That NPC is probably super high leveled and for us as noobs, it is virtually impossible to take him down. We should just focus on turning into mercenaries and earn enough money." Ulsia, the youngest player of their team blabbered, he was never interested in hunting Girisia to begin with, he just wanted a unique experience in this game compared to the majority, hence he joined Spoon's party.
"But it doesn't seem like that NPC is strong." Spoon mentioned with some enthusiasm. "He is so weak that he got hurt by basic mobs and has only escaped by the skin of his teeth… the bastard has even lost his hands."
"Huh?.. What happened? How can you be so sure?" the other players sitting around the camp asked.
"Well just look at the forums yourself, you will see it soon." Spoon said as he stood up from his seat ."I will go and practice my spear techniques, I plan to kill him before public beta ends." He left the circle leaving others flabbergasted. From how divided his party was, he already knew, it may break soon. So he planned to hunt Girisia before that happened.
*****
Girisia asked the two soldiers in the room for some privacy, knowing that they would deny it. Even if there were cameras recording the events in this room, there were multiple ways to fake it using externalist skills, so no matter what happens, Girisia's privacy won't be respected in this hospital.
"Well, if you say so." Girisia made a deep sigh after the soldiers denied his request.
He was just setting up an atmosphere.
"Well it seems I can only speak about your reward here, well not like it's some special knowledge, it's something everyone knows about."
Hearing these words, Tara happily tapped the record button and once again requested. "Uncle Korus, please tell, me and my friends have been dying to know." She asked with the enthusiasm of a 6 year old on her first carnival.
A lowered, but similar curiosity was shared by the two soldiers in the room. They wanted to know what kind of information would make the anomans act like that.
He knew how to exploit players and felt happy that the quest system has deemed the quest 100% complete meaning he earned expra experience and now he had enough to level up once.
Now all he needed to do to obtain that sweet extra experience was to complete his end of the bargain.
"Of course, I won't delay any longer. Let me tell you about the great power system this world possesses."
While hearing this, greed flashed through Tara's face, '20k dollars, here I come.', while the two soldiers fumed in confusion.
Girisia was not lying, he really was gonna talk about something as basic as power systems.