Michael muttered “Unlike most RPGs I’ve played, the drops seem to be tailor-made, specifically for the people who are farming them. I wonder if it has to do with the last or first hit? Nah, probably just randomly picks one of the people in the party… Most likely based on the Luck stat.”

Then he asked Elina “In a large group of adventurers, do the chances of items appearing increase?”

She angrily bit her lip and mumbled “Yes, they do… Didn’t anyone ever tell you it was rude to interrupt people?”

Ignoring her, he continued to talk to himself: “Sweet, so it’s a combined effect, huh? That makes sense, cause Sarah’s Luck is currently the shittiest out of the three of us. However, if we add mine and Elina’s, that’s a whole twenty-two points… If Inari wasn’t so exhausted, I could bring her out and increase our drop-chances a bit more.”

Then the vigilant Thief suddenly yelled “Enemy!” With her ‘normal’ vision returned, she also improved her mana-sense even farther, which made it very easy for her to notice the strange creature that was creeping-up on them.

When Michael saw it, he smirked and said “Hey, it’s time for you to finally do your job… Meow-meow~, nyan-mew~?”

Upon hearing those extremely offensive remarks, to Cat-Tribe, Elina glared at him with her bright-yellow irises radiating a blinding light. Then she asked “Are you sure you wanna fight that thing? It’s pretty slow, so we should be able to escape, but without a fire-mage, I don’t really see how you’re planning to kill it.”

He snickered, as he stared at the “Natural Ursus Treant, Level-7, Rank-E, Elite.” It had a ridiculous three-hundred health-points, while in the shape of a large, bio-luminescent, green bear; the total height was over four-meters, and unlike a normal animal, it was entirely made out of bark and vines.

Sarah complained “Where hell do we attack something like that?” as she glared at the giant creature, which was even standing on its hind-legs.

MIchael yelled “Don’t worry brat, I’ll Tank it; just keep moving around and stabbing at it!” before taking out a miscellaneous, mossy, smooth-stone. Then he snarled at the bear while roaring “Oi, look at me you ugly piece of shit! I’m gonna fucking tear your grassy-dick off!” while channeling mana into his voice, and creating the skill ‘Taunt’ while pitching that rock as hard as he could.

The treant lacked reproductive organs, but the spell was still extremely effective, because he managed to shatter the creature’s left, bright-blue, crystalline eye. It’s health quickly dropped down to 278/300, and it became ‘enraged.’

After that, Sarah teleported onto the back of the treant’s neck, and started furiously stabbing her rusty daggers into the various vines and relatively soft spots. With every prick, a small ‘-3’ or ‘-2’ would appear, but the elemental-beast didn’t seem to mind her attacks.

However, it let our a rage-filled growl as it fell to all fours and began charging towards Michael. He immediately pulled out a second stone and tried to pitch it into the monster’s right eye, but the bear was able to turn its head slightly, causing the rock to miss.

He yelled “I thought you said that this bastard was slow?!” as he jumped to the left, rolling across the ground, and standing back up again, while removing a handful of pebbles from his inventory. Then he used a combination of physical strength and telekinesis, to fire them like buckshot, striking the elemental-beast’s torso six times: ‘-1,’ ‘-2,’ ‘-.4,’ ‘-.8,’ ‘-3,’ ‘-1,’ and ‘-2’ appeared in quick succession.

Sarah had jumped off of the creature’s neck after it started charging, so she was still waiting for her mana to regenerate, before she could land another flurry. Elina shouted “Michael, look out!” as dozens of thorny vines emerged from beneath the man’s feet.

All magical creatures could obviously cast spells, and the more powerful they were, the more complicated their abilities could be. The snake-like plants slithered up his legs, dealing minuscule amounts of damage, but the real problem was that it was a ‘crowd-control’ technique.

Michael yelled “Get ready to heal me!” as the bright-green bear turned towards him and roared loudly. Even though he couldn’t move his legs because of the ‘rooted’ debuff, he didn’t stop pulling out smooth-stones and throwing them at the monster’s face, while cursing “What the fuck are you waiting for, asshole!?”

His mana was at 15/20 from using telekinesis, so he couldn’t afford to keep using the actual ‘taunt’ spell. However, simply pelting the beast with rocks was enough to maintain its ‘aggro’ and keep it from paying attention to the two girls.

Elina started chanting, while clasping both of her hands together and closing her eyes: “Great Goddess of Light, please bless this man with your divine protection…” A golden halo appeared above her head, and then a shower of warm light began falling upon Michael’s body.

He laughed hysterically as his health began regenerating rapidly, but when the treant swiped its left paw, his right arm was instantly torn out of the socket. As he screamed “Fuck, shit, cunt, ah! Heal harder please!” the radiance intensified; while the missing limb didn’t recover, the bleeding did stop.

As the bear was about directly devour his head, he held a smooth-stone in his left hand, and slammed it into the creature’s only remaining crystalline-eye. The orb was shattered into a thousand pieces, and some of them flew into Michael’s face and neck, but didn’t deal much damage.

Fortunately, it was at that time when his ‘rooted’ debuff disappeared, and he was able to forcefully remove the thorny-vines from his legs, before dodging the blinded monster’s attack. Sarah suddenly appeared on its back, and began slicing apart the squishiest spots that she could find.

Each of her seeming insignificant strikes dealt three to five damage, but the bear’s total health was down to 167/300. However, that’s when it grunted a few times and then calmly stood there, causing Michael to yell “Shitballs! Damn it, the bastard can heal itself! Ugh, this is why I hate these fucking plant-whores!”

Every second, a huge ‘+15’ or ‘+25’ would appear above its head, and no matter how many vines the little Thief slashed apart, they swiftly reattached themselves or new ones simply grew. One of her daggers actually shattered, so she had to pull out a replacement from her hip.

Unlike Michael, she couldn’t actually see a health-bar, and could only continue to attack without realizing that it was pointless. The one-armed man calmly walked around the bear-shaped treant, carefully examining its exterior.

Elina finally opened her eyes again and yelled “We should run away now, while we still have the chance! If we had a fire, chaos or ice mage here, things would be different, but how do you expect to hurt something like that?! Wa-what are you doing!?”

Even Sarah stopped what she was doing to stare at that absurd scene, as Michael struggled to use his right foot and left hand to widen the mysterious hole below the creature’s fuzzy tail. He started snickered and then shouted “What the fuck are you just standing there for?! It’s not an actual bear, the inside’s almost completely hollow! Hurry up damn it! Crawl into this bastard’s ass-hole, and attack it from the inside!”

She hesitated for a moment but then said “Fine…” as she jumped down to him and swiftly dove into the relatively small entrance into the treant’s body. The moment she attacked something that looked like a giant, throbbing, vine-infested heart, a huge ‘-45’ appeared in bright-red above the monster’s head.

Then it stopped regenerating and flipped over onto its back, curling up and trying to grab at Michael. He immediately pushed off of the beast and rolled across the moist dirt and various types of jungle-foliage.

Another large ‘-35’ appeared above the bear’s head, as it rolled onto its stomach and charged towards the only enemy that it could think about. The one-armed man was covered in soil and blood, as he roared “Yea, come at me bitch!”

He didn’t even bother throwing stones anymore, since they barely did any damage anyway. A massive ‘-24’ appeared, as Michael was rammed by incredibly hard snout, launching him into a huge tree, and dropping his health down to 12/45.

However, Elina completely skipped the chant and just yelled “Flash-Heal!” as she raised her right hand into the air, causing a beam of light to fly into the sky, then come down from beyond the jungle-canopy. A golden number suddenly flashed before his eyes, because the spell critically healed him for fifty points.

Unfortunately, the bear used both of its huge paws to pin him against the tree, roaring furiously as it was about to chomp down on his head. Normally, Michael wouldn’t really mind dying too much, but he was afraid that the drop-chances would be ruined; it was also possible that the two Companions would be forcefully recalled, and Sarah wouldn’t be able to finish the ‘Elite’ off.

The enraged Thief screamed “Just fucking die already!” as she plunged the two blades into the heart and channeled all of her malice, in the form of pitch-black mana, into the treant’s core. Suddenly, a screen appeared and told her “You have learned the spell Hate-Strike.” accompanied by a black ‘-75,’ the next second there was another ‘-90.’

Next Chapter!