In Emerald city there was a bar. The bar its self was filled with many different people, however one of the tables had a group of players gathered around it.
"That fuking necromancer from back then is here?!" – said the male human player with dark red hair.
[Silver Tiger Guild Master – Alamin]
"Yea. There is no doubt. The guy I saw was definitely him, there is no mistake about it. He was by himself back then in library, but I can bet the other 3 people that were with him are here as well." – said Amari.
"Great! We can finally have our revenge on him for the last time!" – said Alamin.
"No, you idiot! We have to focus on the quest right now!" – said the female dark elf player named Gima.
"But- "
"No buts! We need to complete the quest at all cost. You can have your revenge after we deal with that those guys after we completed the quest, but for now we need to try and avoid making any contact with them! We can't bother dealing with them right now." – said player Gima.
"…Tch."
After entering the Adernul kingdom we ended up arriving at the first village we found. We asked around and as it turned out, there was nothing to do there. We asked bit more and find out about a town called Brown Boar, so we decided to head there instantly.
Getting there…. Was bit longer than I thought, however, on the second day of traveling to the town, we ended up running into something unexpected.
We saw a group of bandits attacking a carriage and some knights fighting them off. The situation seemed quite dire, so we decided to lend the hand and deal with the bandits.
After bit of struggle, we manage to defeat the bandits with the knights.
"Thank you for your help." – said the young blond haired female.
As it turns out, the people that were attacked by the bandits was a noble man daughter named Ellise.
Apparently, her father lives in the city called the Emeral City and is an even a mayor of the city. She guessed that the reason why the bandits came at her was to kidnap her and demand ransom. Apparently, the reason why she was even here was because she was visiting her mother grave that was located nearby.
After she explained her story, we introduced ourselves and afterwords she offered us a ride to the Emeral city. We got lucky!
We were the first ever players to set the foot in this place and not only that, the monsters here are between level 70-130. They only have 10 level difference from our current level, but for our party it shouldn't pose much of the trouble, meaning we had the entire city for ourselves. Our grow was way faster than when we were in Jih city where we had to share the hunting grounds with others players, at that rate, we may be able to out level the others players!
However, the story doesn't end there.
After few days passed arriving to the city, we ended up being greeted out of nowhere by the servants of the Ellise Emerald, the noble daughter that we rescued before. Apparently, the Ellise Emerald wanted to meet us urgently. The situation seemed quite interesting and back then I thought that we maybe be able to get a quest or something. We decided to go fallow the servants back to the mansion and meet up with Ellise Emerald.
After getting to the mansion and meeting her, she was very happy and very exhausted.
Apparently, she was in big trouble and she didn't know who she could ask for help, so she decided to contact us, since she has some trust in us.
She gave us a quest.
[Emerald Family Crisis.]
[Quest Rank: B-???]
[The family that was governing the city for generation, even before it was the city and was just a simple village was an Emerald family.]
[The current head of the family, Joshua Emerald was a noble, a merchant and even mayor of the city. He held a lot of power and respect as well envy from the others.]
[However, one day the Ellise Emerald father, Joshua Emerald went missing and nobody knows what happened to him. The multiple corrupted merchants as well as noble are trying to take over the city while Joshua Emerald was missing, forced his daughter to try to keep the situation in control, but she isn't like her father and is very lacking in many areas right now, meaning she can't run the city very well for a long time.]
[Find out what happened to the Elise father before the situation end up going out of control. If Elise's father won't be found dead or alive in time, the unrest among the people will continue to rise up.]
[Clue: Elise's father was last seen conducting the business in the alcohol brewing village before going missing.]
[Failure condition: No progress in the research after a month passed after accepting the quest / Death of the Elise Emerald / Elise Emerald losing total control over the city.]
[If any of the failure conditions are meet, the quest will fail.]
[Reward: Depends]
[Failure Penalty: Depends]
"As much I want to go kill them right now, you are speaking truth. We need to focus our entire effort on trying to finish the quest. The reward is unknown, but there is a good chance quest we are doing is a chain quest, meaning if we were to complete all the quest from the chain, we would get big rewards. We have to do it." – said Alamin.
"See? Then don't try to even get close to them! I want to punch them myself, but we can't bother dealing with them at all cost. We don't know how long it will take us to complete the quest." – said female player wearing a heavy armor.
"However, how these are here now? Did they got carriage ride like us?" – said Alamin.
"…No. I don't think so. Remember, the merchants won't allow random people to ride their carriage, since the 2 villages were destroyed and culprits has yet to be found. My guess they traveled by foot here or something and probably leveled up along the way as well, before getting here. There is a good chance they have similar if not the higher level than us." – said female player wearing heavy armor.
"Tch. If you are right, then this is troublesome. Dealing with them now will only end up badly even if we win or something." – said dark elf player Gima.
"Well, now we have even more reason to avoid them. Just, don't do anything stupid and we should finish the quest before you know it. Afterwords, we can think of dealing with them and having our revenge" – said the female player wearing heavy armor.
"…Fine I get it. Jezz." - replied Alamin.
While the Silver Tiger guild were organizing their plans, the Purple Hyena guild was outside of the city, doing quest.
[Treeman – Level 90]
A humanoid monsters made out of the wood were facing off against the members of the Purple Hyena guild.
"Skeleton servants! Defense formation!" – shouted the ClownFrog.
The skeleton servants under ClownFrog control gathered together and put up the defense with their shields while the tree monster run towards the group.
While the tree monster were running towards the party, ClownFrog, Oron, Shri and GreyHunt were firing nonstop range attacks at the enemies, killing the tree monster left and right, but before long the tree monsters and skeleton servants finally crashed with each other.
The skeleton servants use their shields to block the savage attacks from the treemans and retaliate using their spears, effectively holding out the tree monsters and not allowing them to break through. While the skeletons servants were blocking the enemy, the party and the rest of the monster began attacking the tree monsters and killing them at rapid rate.
However, while the fight between two sides continues, a pair of giant treeman appeared.
[Tree Ogre – Level 92]
"!"
"Big ones coming!" – shouted Oron.
The two big tree monsters began charging through the treemans, disregarding that they are on the same side while being attacked from afar by the party, however the tree ogres manage to get close to the skeleton servants and one of them were even ready to attack with its wooden mace, but before it could do that, the bite ant princess tackled into the tree ogre, pushing it away in time.
After pushing one of the tree ogres away, the ant monster and the tree ogre both ended up getting near the second tree ogre.
The other tree ogre tried attacking the ant monster after a chance presented itself, but then the second tree ogre ended up being attacked with a giant sword, pushing away the tree ogre away from the other tree ogre and ant princess.
The one that attacked the tree ogre with a sword was a big burning undead pigman.
[Pigman Warrior – Burning Zombie] x 6
[Rank: Zombie / Lesser Burning Undead]
[Pigman Warrior – Burning Skeleton] x 6
[Rank: Skeleton / Lesser Burning Undead]
[Pigman Glutton – Burning Zombie]
[Rank: Zombie / Burning Undead]
[Undead Evolution: Fire Fusion] – [Cost: 60]
[Active] – [Cost: Depends on the target.] – [Cooldown: Non] – [Category: Rank Change / Necromancy / Fire]
[An improved and stronger version of the [Undead Evolution: Fire Fusion].]
[The upgrade monster will receive a rank [Burning Undead].]
[The upgraded monsters will be infused with fire element, making them stronger and infusing their basic attack with fire element. Also increases the undead defense and magic defense against fire elements by 10%. The bonus defense will increases whenever this skill level increases, up to 50% bonus.]
[The increases defense will also influence resistance against some other elements, however some element attack will deal more damage for bonus 35%, for example water element will deal increased damage against the undead.]
[Monsters upgraded by this skill and granted the rank of the [Burning Undead], will have their cost increased by 50%]
[All stats increase: 15% + 1.5% times the current skill level. The stat increase at skill level 10 will be 30%.]
[The undead monster affected by this skill will not only mutate and became stronger, but can also influence some of the undead monsters characteristic AND even some skills may end up mutating because of that, brining changes to some skills.]
[The number of the monsters you can evolve with this skill is 1. The max number will increase whenever this skill level increases.]
[This skill also increases the number of monsters you can grant rank with [Undead Evolution: Lesser Fire Fusion] by 1 times the current skill. At skill level 10, the max amount of lesser burning undead would be increased to 10.]
[You can use this skill on the undead with [Lesser Burning Undead] rank, changing their rank in the process.]
A big pigman burning zombie was blocking the path of one tree ogres while the other one was blocked by the bite ant princess.
The rumble between 2 big monsters and 2 tree ogres began.
While the tree ogres were being held back by the party monsters, the treemans around tried supporting the tree ogres, but they were stopped by the Shri and her ant monsters as well as the burning undead pigmans.
The all-out battle between the party the two sides continue for some time, but thanks to the Oron and ClownFrog fire element attacks and burning undead, the party gained the upper hand over the enemy that was literally made out of the wood. Making the fight not lasting very long and ending in the party victory.
[You have leveled up! You have reached level 87!]
'Phew'
"…That was easier than I though." – said ClownFrog.
"See? I told you we can take the quest that involves monster with higher level than us!" – said Shri.
"Yea, yea. I get it. But this time we could be technically consider lucky, since we had element advantage against our opponents." – replied ClownFrog.
"Well, we could still probably win easily even without advantage." – said GreyHunt.
"…Okay. Well, we did a get a lot stronger, so hunting something big will help us level up faster, so let's go with your plan Shri." – said ClownFrog.
"Told you would change your mind." – said Shri with smug look.
"…"
"Okay, first of all, fuck you. Second, are we finish with the quest?" – said ClownFrog.
"Yeb. We have enough of the tree ogre wood for the quest. Do we go back for now?" – asked Oron.
"Hm… I'm against it. When I was looking through the adventurer guild quest, most of them were about odd jobs or getting specific materials. Honestly, they all kind of sucks in one way or another and only few are good and worth time doing." – said GreyHunt.
"Really?" – asked Shri.
"Yeb. It maybe just better that we just hunt instead of going back and forth between the city and hunting grounds. It should be way more beneficial with this approach and see how things go, maybe with this approach we will level up faster?" – suggested GreyHunt.
"…"
(Well, the faster we level up then better. His plan isn't bad at all. Normally we were focus mainly on doing quest, but if the quest here suck that much, wouldn't just hunting be better? But I should ask the others first.) – though ClownFrog.
"What do you two think?" – asked ClownFrog.
"Well, I think we should go with GreyHunt idea." – said Oron.
"Same. We will level up faster this way." – said Shri.
"Okay then. I guess we go with your idea. Any suggestion where we go?" – said ClownFrog.
"I say we go deeper into the forest. We will probably run into something stronger if we go there and if the monsters are like those guys we just fought now, we have very big advantage over them." – said GreyHunt.
"Okay, then let's go."
It was risky approach, hunting the monsters that were several level higher than us, but thanks to how strong we are now, we were able to surprisingly easy hunt these monsters that were even 8 level highest than us, even though there is only 4 of us in the group.
Honestly, I thought we would have some trouble or something, but nope! It wasn't difficult at all? Wasn't expecting that. I guess I was bit worried for nothing?
Well, we are "Stronger than average player", so maybe I should have expected that we would be able to do it?
Well, at least I learned that we can handle monsters that are higher level than us without a problem. Maybe we can even handle monsters that are 11 or even 15 levels above us? Don't know. Only way to find out to get greedy.
Honestly, now that I think about it, the last time trouble we had with monsters was with the area boss or ant queen but afterwords, we didn't ended up having any difficulties at all.
…
Am I stupid? I mean, the reason why I was careful was because of these two encounters, where the boss monsters could wreck us like nothing if we weren't careful enough. However, compare to our current selves, we are now stronger that average player now, unlike before when we were on the average player power level. So, I guess it should have been obvious we can take stronger enemies now, unlike before.
Yeb. I think I'm very stupid for not noticing something obvious like that.
I guess we can be greedy for now.
….
[Meanwhile at the ???]
[??? – Level 150] – [Unique Boss]