With a perfect 'swosch' the deer-like monster lost its footing and slammed violently into the sharp icicle, leaving a bloody hole in the neck of the beast.
It wasn't specified that I needed high level monsters so I was hunting in the forests surrounding Daystreak. Monsters and animals between level 20 to 30 resided in the forest. I I already earned a few coins and did my mission. Speaking of the mission, I hastily placed the corpse in my inventory. Other monsters would be attracted by the smell of blood. Players often chose to abandon the corpses, only taking the valuable parts or use it to attract more prey. But to gut a prey, one needed the corresponding skills to skin and butcher the corpse. Which I did not have. If I had time or an expensive corpse in the past I carried it all the way to Daystreak. But while carrying a corpse, space in the inventory was taken (the larger the corpse, the more places it could take) and my movement speed decreased. So I seldomly took the corpses back. It was too much effort and the price for unprocessed corpses of monsters was ranging between a few copper to a few bronze for a large beast. So I often didn't bother myself, except if Coven had asked me to bring some of my prey for his storeroom.
It was easier to use up the item space for drops or plants and the monster cores one could find if they ripped the corpse apart. Because I burned them mostly (it was fast and efficient) there only remained bones and their core (if they had one).
To help myself with the hunting mission today, I rented a small cart I could drag by hand. It had an enchantment, that any corpse laying on it emitted no scent and a lesser skill of reducing the weight of everything laying on it by 15%. The cart was already stuffed with a few dead bodies.
But still I wasn't sure if I could fit all the prey on the cart. 10 smaller prey weren't the problem, but the larger ones. After stuffing seven large of the deer-like monsters on the cart, it was already very stuffed. If it wouldn't fit at the end, I would have to resort to carrying the prey, reducing my movement speed drastically. I hoped there would still be enough time to find the merchant.
So I dragged the cart along to find more monsters to quickly finish my mission.
Just as I was about to finish my mission, it happened. A party of players stumbled upon me, their greedy eyes instantly zooming to the cart and counting the money they could make by stealing it.
I absorbed it into my inventory instantly. The staggering increase in weight made me almost stumble, but I tried to avoid showing how much it affected me. With blazing hatred rising from my heart and enough rage to burn anyone hindering my goal, I faced them. There were two boys and three girls. There was one healer, a berserker, one mage and two beast people. Because it wasn't easy to find out the exact occupation of the beast people, I was unsure how dangerous they were, but the other classes were already tough enough to face. Damage dealers with an extra HP bar were always bad news for a mage.
So I held my emotions back, forced my face to be as empty as possible and waited.
"Hand it over." said the healer, who was very buff and almost ripped his priest gown with his bulging muscles. The voice was scrappy and in a low baritone. He wore knuckles. A good old sadistic healer. What a lucky draw I just got. There was no way they would let me go. My death was unavoidable and they seemed to ponder what I might drop before disintegrating after their leaders' torture.
If you didn't hear of this special subclass, it was because it wasn't official. This way to play a healer was like a super-duper stress relieving course: One could literally use humans as punching bags as long as oneself had enough mana to keep them alive while beating them black and blue. As perverse as it sounded, it was a magnificent technique to torture people. Even I found it somewhat intriguing. If it was an official class, I might haven even considered becoming a sadistic priestess on my own. Fees from corruption, embezzlement, slave and drug trading would have made me rich very easily. But the thought of beating people while healing them seemed dull compared to slaughtering them by myself in a devious inferno.
I always thought it was a default setting that made the gods' followers misuse their powers to take all the wealth they could. But I also saw kind and forgiving gods whose followers were as caring and strong-willed as them.
So I didn't lose or mistrust faith in gods and wonders. But I lost the last bit of basic respect for other humans. People caused wars and maltreated each other. Although some vile gods asked humans to kill, wage war or sacrifice, they rarely toured the mortal plane to wipe out all living beings in Falan. At least the last official appearance of a god was centuries ago.
But regardless, I still had to handle the other party. So I let the freshly killed corpse of a monster drop in front of me. The blood oozed out of the circular wounds the icicles left in the body.
"All of it, including the cart." One of the beastwomen said. She wore bulging armor clad in thorns and her sharp fangs and split tongue belonged to a snake branch of beast people. Soft clusters of scales were visible on her visible skin, shimmering in greenish and purple sparks of light.
"Please, I hunted for days to collect this prey, please, don't take it from me!~" I wailed and my eyes turned wet. Still got it. Time to stall them for a bit.
As the weaker party, I had three choices while encountering groups or players stronger than me who wanted to take my loot (which happened a lot).
First, I died and lost only a portion of my loot. Second, I ran with all I had and would either escape or die at their hands. And finally, fighting them. Using dirty and cheap tricks and everything I could to drag down as much as I could or all of them. I mostly picked option two. But the players had visibly higher levels than me, so this option wasn't a real option anymore. Either fight or die. And since I was in a hurry, fighting appealed to me more than endangering the success rate of my mission any more. So I took out a freshly killed prey, with blood still oozing of the body to lure some predators. Even if the zone wasn't as high level as other woods around Daystreak, a horde of monsters would still terrify single players and smaller groups. Or at least distract them for a while.
"Stop whimping and just give it to us. Maybe we'll let you live, if you cooperate." The sadistic healer interrupted my continued crying and took a step forward. Since they had an open half circle around me, trying to entrap me, I moved a bit back, pretending to wipe my tears and calm down. Only after I jumped backwards, while throwing small animals in their direction, did they know that I stalled for time. Cursing me and my ancestors' choice of love interest, they either blocked the body with shields or instantly cut it apart in the air before them. Even more blood splattered the ground and I let out a muffled scream. It had a very high similarity to a wounded baby monster to lure and attract even more monsters as fast as possible. Since I wanted to thoroughly kill them all. No mercy was needed for people like them. Sadly, players couldn't really die in this world. They could try to hunt me, but I needed to finish the mission fast and had no time of stupid antics of other players.