After feeding the group breakfast, they eagerly took off for their dungeon run. Their last excursion had provided them with a nice reward and they were looking forward to what this newest one would supply. Since it was located on the other side of the village from their camp, Alan chose to follow them. He kept his distance, but he also wanted to make sure they didn't double back for some reason.

Soon enough, their paths diverged and he broke off to make his way to Elstree. He was still wearing the same outfit that he had as a busboy, and after a couple of days his clothes smelled fairly rank. It was definitely not him, no way, so Alan made a stop at the river. A short dip and scrub in the refreshing waters and he was on his way again. He had tried to rinse the meat bag out, but most of that blood wasn't going anywhere, having soaked into the leather.

Something Alan hadn't explored much was an early entry from the magical primer he carried around. It had been the source of his initial attempts to heat up his bath water. The primer spoke of a class of spells that were below the Network threshold for being added to status sheets. They were called cantrips, and were a straight application of a single mana type. Alan pouring heat mana into the water to warm it was a perfect example.

He used it in a similar way to dry off his clothes. It wouldn't do to show up at the village sopping wet and he didn't have time to hang them up and wait for the sun to take care of it. It was his first attempt at using it as such, and the results were acceptable. The fabric was still a little damp, but at least he wasn't leaving wet bootprints behind.

It was around fifteen minutes later that he reached the village and by then most of his outfit was completely dry. The sun had only risen less than an hour ago, but the villagers were out and moving. There were a bunch of people working the existing fields, but even more were digging and plowing out new farmland. It looked like they didn't quite understand how irrigation worked, instead they were simply watering the majority of the plants by hand. That looked tedious.

He saw a group in the distance that was headed for the forest, most carrying axes on their shoulders. Must be a harvesting day, there was probably another group heading south to mine some metal. He had only heard of them finding iron so far, but he didn't know if there was anything else in the area. Checking out their resource gathering efforts hadn't made it high enough on his checklist to bother with yet.

Inside the village proper, the streets themselves were not very crowded. Most people were either out at their jobs, or they had a day off and were taking it easy indoors. A few construction crews were moving around town. Almost all of the housing for the new residents had been completed already, but some of the older houses needed a little fixing up. There were also a few people who had managed to talk someone into giving their residence an addition.

Scoping out the place, while still hidden from view, he didn't notice any posters or signs with his face on them. Alan wasn't sure if wanted posters were something they would actually use, but their absence was reassuring. That didn't mean he was going to assume everything was all right, though. He approached town striding openly like he had nothing to fear, but ready to bolt if something seemed off.

It was soon obvious that something was going on in regards to Alan, but he wasn't sure if it was a good thing or bad thing. When he was initially spotted by a villager, they would get the attention of everyone around them and they would all gawk at Alan. The first time it happened he almost called it and fled, but after no other overt actions, he decided to push on. The second group was smiling as they pointed his way, it seemed that whatever was going on wasn't negative.

In this manner he made his way to the town hall. Roger was dedicated to his job and was almost always one of the first to work and the last to bed, thus Alan was not surprised to find the front door open. There was a desk in the lobby area that he had never seen occupied, but this building had been supplied, pre-built, by the Network itself. It was most likely bigger than they needed it to be at the moment.

Knocking on the mayor's office door frame, he stuck his head in. Roger was sitting behind his desk, but rather than working on a pile of papers like an Earth official might, he had a vacant look in his eyes that signified someone looking at Network text. No doubt he was scanning through the many pages of the village interface. Having founded his own 'village', Alan had some firsthand knowledge of what that was like. Amthraxia was only a tier zero village however, whereas Elstree was a solid four.

After being alerted by the noise, Roger's eyes refocused and he took a moment to assess the disturbance. "Silver Spoon, you're back!"

Now it was Alan's turn to take a second. At first he thought the mayor was intimating that he was spoiled, like Tamee had done, but that didn't fit the greeting. It had seemed more like a name. Unfortunately he couldn't simply ask what that meant, instead he had to continue to play the mute. Miming shoveling food into his mouth with a spoon and then shrugging worked well enough to get the question across.

"Oh, sorry. I never know what to call you, and it's something the residents have started using. It had just begun to catch on from people seeing you fighting in the surrounding area before you hit Chrisly over the head with the ladle, now it seems to have stuck."

Well, it sounded grander than Pebble, and it was certainly better than busboy, Alan could work with that. One of the benefits of pretending to be mute was that he didn't have to worry about small talk. Instead he walked up to the mayor's desk and placed several bags on it. The residents of the village had lived within the Network their whole lives, and if he started using spatial storage items it would clue them in to the fact that he was more than he seemed.

That didn't mean there were no such items around, the group going out to log the forest most likely had one with them, but these were purchased by the mayor using town funds and used for village business. A private citizen, especially a busboy, would never be able to afford one.

This meant that he had needed to withdraw his many sacks outside of town and carry them all the way to the hall. Each bag was for a separate bounty. One for mushrooms, another for frog legs, iron tusks, butterfly wings, and more. He set ten bags on the desk, and enhanced stats or not, his fingers felt the relief from holding so many straps at once.

Roger was used to the busboy bringing him a few bags, but this was truly impressive. Where Alan had carried them all, like a man trying to bring in the groceries in one trip, the mayor came and went several times. Thankfully the town vault included its own dedicated spatial storage and he was able to return the empty bags. Alan would need them for his next run. The mayor also handed him a generous pile of coins. Most of it was silver, but there were some golds thrown in.

"I don't know how you manage this Silver Spoon," a sudden thought made him change course, "Or is this from the group you are traveling with." Roger was ashamed to admit it took him this long to realize that the massive bounty was probably the result of the whole team of beastkin working together. A shake of Alan's head disabused him of this notion, however.

"You collected all this?" A nod." Well, the town thanks you. We'd probably thank you even more if we could use any of this stuff. Although, those iron tusks looked like maybe Smith could do something with them. How is Lyonel treating you?"

Alan smiled and gave him a thumbs up. They really were treating him well, and if he had truly been the simple serf he was pretending to be, then they had been incredibly considerate. After settling that issue, Alan had a question of his own. He looked intently at the mayor and then pointed to himself. Then raising one hand above his head as if clutching something while tilting his head to the side, he tried to get his question across.

The mayor was an old hand at trying to interpret his gestures and got the idea almost instantly. "No, you're not in any trouble, yet. But I think that might change soon. Chrisly's group dragged him home in one of our carts, but he was still unconscious. There hasn't been time yet for him, or his family, to make any demands. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if they came looking for you soon. This might need to be your last trip into town for a long while."

He understood where the man was coming from, but Alan wasn't that worried. Unless Chrisly or his goons were around to enforce things, it was unlikely the villagers would do anything. The pompous Aristocrat had ruffled enough feathers that unless they offered a truly outrageous reward, he should be safe. The mayor must have read something of Alan's thoughts in his eyes.

"It would make it easier on all of us if we didn't have to lie for you. A pampered rat like Chrisly cannot stand to allow someone like you to have tarnished his image. He will pull out all the stops to find you and make an example out of you. If he even thinks we're helping you hide from him, he'll take it out on us as well."

It wasn't hard to imagine how difficult the man could make life for the villagers. Clearing out the nearby monsters and resetting the dungeon weren't really an issue anymore, not with Lyonel's group around, but there was nothing to stop him from physically punishing the residents. With a shrug, Alan decided to play it by ear. He couldn't completely leave the village alone, he needed to continue generating goodwill, and that meant being seen. He had a few ideas in that regard. There was one more thing Alan needed to do while he was here.

Without any idea of how to communicate his need with gestures, he instead convinced the mayor to come outside with him. Then pointing at the quest board and then back at himself he managed to get his point across.

"You completed this quest? You cleared the salamander nest?" A nod. "That's incredible. They were starting to cause problems. Not here, of course, their nest was too far away. But some of the lumberjacks were complaining of being harassed. Come inside, there's a special item to confirm the completion."

So he followed Roger back into the hall. This time the mayor knew exactly where to find the quest orb and after Alan placed his hand on it, the mayor once again went into the town's vault. Alan would love to see what it looked like inside, but Roger never offered and he didn't want to seem pushy by asking. When he returned, he was carrying a large bundle of arrows.

Contrary to what most RPGs seemed to think, arrows, good ones at least, were not cheap. Especially for an area without major industry. The arrowheads were actually the easiest part to make. Forming a straight and sturdy shaft of a consistent diameter was no mean feat, and the fletching wasn't easy either. Finding game here was already a challenge, and getting anything with feathers was even harder.

Unfortunately for Alan, the thirty arrows he was being offered were not that useful for him. He supposed he could try and make himself a bow, he was getting fairly handy at making his own weapons, but he already had a perfectly functional crossbow. It was possible he could try and cannibalize the arrows to make some more bolts, but he wasn't too worried about his ammo supply at the moment, especially considering how much work that sounded like. Instead he handed them back to Roger.

"You want me to keep these?" Another nod. "Thank you, the hunters will be thrilled. They were already complaining about losing the Network supplied arrows they had started with and the poor quality of the replacements. I'll tell them these are complements of Silver Spoon."

That made Alan smile and he left the mayor's office feeling much more optimistic about his chances here. If he could figure out how to deal with the Bodarians and Chrisly, making a deal with the village should be easy. Chrisly was probably going to be the more difficult challenge, but also the one he should address first. He didn't want to lose access to the village, it would be bad for his image and his opportunities to complete quests. However, he also didn't want the man making it hard on the villagers because of him.

Speaking of quests, he noticed that there was now a new gap on the board. It seemed that after turning in the salamander quest, the paper had been removed. Nothing had replaced it yet, but he took a moment to scan the other options before heading out. There were no new bounties posted, and he still had plenty of time before Lyonel's party returned, so he decided he would take a run at the town's dungeon.

Mindful that his time was not infinite, Alan sprinted back to the location of the entrance. The beastkin party had talked about their experience there a little, so he knew that they had been tasked with defending a corn field from waves of deer. The exact setup would probably change, but the general design should hold. There would be monster waves and something for him to defend.

This was not an ideal design for him. Because the enemies were coming to him, and he was stuck protecting a single position, it would be easy to get overwhelmed or to allow someone to get by him. It would have been much easier if he was tasked with taking out an enemy location, that would have opened up a myriad of choices. However, Alan still felt confident, and if his opponents proved to be too much, he could always retreat to the exit and simply fail the run.

Stepping through the portal, Alan found himself standing on a hill. It wasn't much of one, perhaps twenty meters high and the top was only fifteen across. The hill backed up to a cliff, so at least he didn't have to worry about getting surrounded. Sitting on the top of the hill was a large birdcage, or maybe it would have been better to call it an enclosure because of its size, it took up more than half of the hilltop. Inside were around twenty ducks.

These weren't the white domesticated ducks he had seen in people's backyards. Each bird was mostly grey, with streaks of black and blue running throughout. They were also a good size, not as big as a goose, but still around half a meter in height. There also seemed to be both male and females inside, as their coloring came in two varieties. What he assumed were the male ducks, had a lot of the black and blue coloring running throughout their feathers, and their heads were entirely black. The females tended to be mostly grey with only small spots of black and blue, and their heads were the same color as the rest of their body.

New Quest: King of the Hill

[The local farmers have been trying to breed a flock of ducks. Several predator packs in the area have noticed the succulent treat sitting there on the hill. Kill all who come to feast on the bounty that is kept within the cage.]

That quest message seemed a little more poetic than normal, but it got the idea across. Instead of guarding a field, he had a bunch of ducks to protect. A bonus was that they were in a cage. The construction didn't look too heavy duty, but it should keep predators off for at least a moment. This should make it easier for Alan, as anything that got past him wouldn't be immediately among the birds.

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Less helpful was the description he had been given of what was coming for them. It would have been nice to know the type of beasts he would need to deal with. At least his elevated position should allow him to get eyes on what was coming before they arrived, giving him at least a moment to plan. Speaking of a plan, it was time to make some decisions.

The cliff behind him had the exit for the dungeon, but he hoped not to need it yet. The rock wall also cut off a full one hundred and eighty degrees of approaches, but because the cage was several meters away from the wall, it made it awkward to protect all the possible vectors to it. Alan decided to make his life easier and created two stone walls to block off the top of the hill, and the cage, from any angle behind it. It cost him some of his mana regeneration to keep them up, but it would most likely be necessary since he didn't have a party to guard the other attack lines.

Alan made the walls angle back to the cliff so that he could still see anything approaching from the sides. The walls were two meters high, and it had hit his mana hard to make them so large, but it meant any attackers should have a hard time getting over them. However, he needed to keep his sightlines open because not all predators would be so easily thwarted.

The next issue was what weapons to equip. He planned to use his crossbow, at least while the attackers were approaching, but he had a limited number of bolts. Too bad he couldn't have used those arrows he had given away. It meant that he couldn't rely on using the weapon to take out the animals at range. Any bolt in a carcass at the bottom of the hill would be one less for the next wave. Hopefully there would be time between the packs to retrieve his ammo, but he wasn't going to count on it.

Since he was holding the area by himself, he also couldn't rely on purely defensive tactics. That would give his attackers time to move past him and take out his protectees. Alan chose to go with his standard spewn and pugio loadout to start. He could always rapidly switch as he got more intel on his foes, but this gave him the ability to engage a variety of targets without needing to switch out his weapons and it maximized his attack. He could have substituted his gladius instead of the pugio, but he felt more comfortable with his knife skills, and the sword in his off-hand would have overbalanced the spewn.

He vigilantly scanned the approach, but it was almost ten minutes before something appeared. Below the hill was a thick forest, but it didn't start till about forty meters away from the bottom of the incline. It gave him plenty of time to see what was headed his way, plus the attackers would still have to climb the relatively steep hill to get to him and the ducks.

There were eight beasts approaching him, and they were all less than a meter in length and only about as tall as the ducks. They had four legs and medium fur with a predator's face holding the eyes in the front. They also had two pointy ears on top of their head. In shape they almost looked like racoons, but they didn't have the distinctive burglar coloration. Also, he didn't think racoons had such large teeth. It almost looked like crocodile teeth sticking out of their mouth.

Beast: Aracun (uncommon) level 8, threat: low. This small mammalian quadruped is an omnivore, willing to eat anything it can find. They are agile creatures with wickedly sharp claws.

As he suspected, the numbers could be a problem for him. Thankfully, they were coming together as a single pack, so he didn't worry about having to cover a large front. They were also rather small, and as described they were moving fast, so he didn't bother with the crossbow. He did test out his new exploding rocks though. Taking a pebble out of one of his pouches, not a magical one, just a regular bag, he held his palm up. Then he cast his still experimental spell and the small stone whizzed down at the lead aracun.

The stone moved fast, covering the more than twenty meters to his target in less than a second. Alan had aimed for center mass and it buried itself in the beast's torso. This next part is where he had been running into trouble. Figuring out a way for his spell to know it had hit the target and that it was time to explode was beyond Alan's skill level. However, he had figured out a way to activate the explosion by sending a pulse down an energy thread attached to his bullet.

This had worked great when he tested it on a rock sitting on the ground, the results were less positive when he tried it on a hunk of their venison meat. Back at camp they had plenty to last until it started to go bad, so he hadn't felt guilty about using some for his test. The first time he tried to get the pebble to explode, nothing happened. His pulse had been blocked somehow by the meat. Increasing the size of the energy strand, and the strength of the pulse had led to success and a shower of gore. He had just finished cleaning up that first positive test when the party had arrived last night, so he hadn't gotten to mess with it anymore.

He sent the pulse now, even stronger than last time, but nothing happened. He saw the energy travel down the strand, but when it hit the beast it seemed to stop and dissipate. Perhaps it was because there was more of the creature, or maybe its aura was interfering. By now the pack was about a third of the way up the hill and Alan sent an even larger pulse than before.

Whatever the problem was previously, it worked this time. The rock buried in its chest exploded and took out the front half of the small animal. Its head was still attached, but all of the tissue at the base of its neck was gone, leaving the spinal column as the only thing keeping the two parts connected. There was also a gaping hole to its chest cavity and he could see where several of its organs had been shredded. It was definitely a kill shot.

The mana cost was a little high, fifty mana with the pulse included. That was the same as one of his max size fire bolts. For the sake of comparison, Alan sent one of those large flaming balls at an aracun in the middle of the remaining pack. The bolt hit his target and it turned into a blackened, burning ruin of a beast, also a kill shot. In addition, its nearest neighbors caught some of the blast and three of them had their fur catch on fire. So far his new spell seemed less efficient than what he already had, but hey, that's what experiments were for.

The pack had closed on his position and the ducks behind him were furiously quacking and flapping their wings. There were only six of the aracuns left, and half of those were now rolling around trying to put their fur out. That left a small gap between the groups that he could exploit. The first three were aiming right for him, apparently deciding to take him out before moving on to their feast. This suited Alan just fine.

The only thing the creatures really had going for them was their small stature. Some might see that as a disadvantage for them, but it meant his attacks would have a difficult time reaching their level. Fortunately the first two decided to jump up at him, flying through the air, claws forward. The third one went for his legs.

Counting on his bone mail and bracer to protect his arm, he stabbed out at the left one with his pugio, spearing it in the chest. The other jumping attacker he clubbed out of the air with the mace side of his spewn. It didn't seem like it was instantly lethal, but the creature was now lying on the ground barely twitching and mewling in pain. The one he had impaled on his knife latched onto his arm, the points of its claws barely reaching through his padded shirt to his skin. It also tried to gnaw on his forearm, its teeth too big to get through the small rings in his armor..

He tried to flick his left arm out, hoping the creature would fly off, but it was firmly attached. It did have a knife blade half as long as its body punching through it, so it should soon bleed out internally. His armor was holding and the scratches it managed to inflict were barely taking any of the healing energy from the regeneration spell he had precast. All of the spells he had thrown around left him fairly low on mana, but he didn't want to activate mana lode until he had a better read on the waves. It wouldn't do for it to be stuck on cooldown when he really needed it.

The aracun on his leg, the left one as always, was having more luck doing damage. Its teeth weren't penetrating, instead inflicting some crushing force which would have left him with a nasty bruise if his body wasn't already healing it. The claws, on the other hand, must indeed have been sharp. They were leaving small slices in his toughened hide pants. They were supposed to be resistant to cutting and slashing, but not enough apparently. Most of the force was being blunted by his armor so he was only left with shallow slices that quickly healed, but his pants weren't able to self-repair like his shirt.

Needing to deal with the little menace before it trashed his armor, Alan swung his spewn down, parallel with the front of his body. He was using the edged portion of his weapon, but because it hit the creature solidly in its side, it only managed to pierce the skin and shallowly cut into its internals, before then the fatter portion of the weapons head hit and it knocked the beast clear off of his leg. It was a nasty wound that would eventually kill it, but it was still capable of fighting. Thankfully it wasn't attached to him anymore, at least.

By now the other three had managed to smother their flaming fur and were making their move. It seemed they didn't want anything to do with him, and were trying to move past Alan instead of through him. He wasn't sure how much damage the fire had done to their health, but it had certainly burned a lot of fur. Their backs were mostly blackened skin now with small tufts of charred hair.

If he ever got back to a decent blacksmith he was going to buy himself some throwing knives. This would have been the perfect situation to hurl a couple at each aracun, which would have left them crippled and easy to mop up. Instead he had to use his dexterity boosted speed to take them out quickly.

Two moved to his left and one tried to get past on his right. The one on the right got a small fire bolt that was boosted by his spewn. The closer one on Alan's left received a foot to its middle that sent it flying into the third raider. Neither was that injured, but they were tied up with each other and it gave him time to move in on them. The one that had been hit by the fire bolt was curled up and screaming an inhuman howl of pain as its back bubbled. Burns were supposedly very sensitive to heat and the sensation in its back must be excruciating.

A single poke of his spewn went into the tangled pair, piercing both. Neither was dead, but they wouldn't last long with blood pouring out of the large hole left behind. The aracun that he had clubbed out of the air was now lying still, most likely dead, and the one he had impaled on his knife was still attached to his arm, but it was no longer clawing at him. Now that he had a moment he pried it off, it had latched on with a literal death grip, and once free it slid off onto the ground in a boneless heap. Three of the six were definitely dead and two more were busy leaking their lifeblood all over each other.

Alan looked around for the third one, the one that had been on his leg. He found it hobbling toward the duck's enclosure. It wasn't moving very fast and it was a simple task to finish it off, and then the two mortally wounded ones. Scanning the hilltop he made sure that all of his enemies were dead and the cage was safe. Everything looked good up here.

During the fight Alan had also tried to keep track of what was going on at the bottom of the hill. He didn't want to get surprised if another pack showed up while he was fighting this one. Tamee had told him that didn't usually happen, but not usually wasn't the same as never. Now he directed his full attention to the treeline.

After a whole minute with nothing happening, he decided he probably had some time before the next group showed up. Looking around, he figured he should do something with the bodies. He didn't want to trip on them while trying to fight off invaders. On the other hand, they could possibly foul up the attackers as well. The aracuns weren't very big, and there weren't a lot of them, but he thought he could use them to cover the duck enclosure a little.

The idea was to use the carcasses as a meat shield to protect the metal frame of the cage, but the ducks did not appreciate his efforts. When he placed the first two bodies against the frame they started freaking out, quacking and flapping, feathers everywhere. It appeared that prey animals didn't appreciate the smell of so much blood.

With his first idea shot down, he went with plan B. Alan chucked the bodies down the hill. A casual throw was enough to have them land most of the way down and gravity took care of the rest, the dead beasts rolling to the bottom. His area was now clean, and maybe the pile up at the start of the incline would slow the next group down.

Watching his mana slowly tick upwards, Alan wondered if there would be time for it to completely reset. The answer turned out to be, almost. About five minutes after the last of the first group died, another set of predators came out of the trees. He needed a full ten minutes to restore an empty mana pool, but fortunately he hadn't been completely mana dry and he was now close to full. Squinting at the group below he noticed taht they were not the same as the first group.

Beast: Juhla (Uncommon) level 8, threat: low. This medium-sized mammalian quadruped is more comfortable operating nocturnally, but is also able to hunt during the day if the occasion arises. They are nimble but not particularly durable.

If his skill wasn't saying differently, he would have called these things foxes. They were a bit bigger than the ones he had encountered in tier one, but otherwise they looked the same. He remembered that the foxes had rather tough skin, so he put away his pugio and took out the club Lyonel had given him.

These things were a higher rarity than what he had encountered before, and the level increase was huge, but it turned out that there wasn't much of a difference. Oh, they were faster and their skin was tough, but that didn't do much against blunt force trauma. Their main attack was their bite, which he thankfully didn't have to suffer through. It also helped that there were only six of these things, but they had better tactics than the racoon analogs.

Fire was once again an effective attack, and two firebolts had managed to take out three of them on their way up. Another had stopped to eat some of the dead aracuns, so that was helpful. That left him fighting two at once which had been trivial. When the third finally decided it was done digging around in the guts of the first wave, it was not only alone, but moving sluggishly with a full belly.

He didn't want to wait for it to waddle its way up so he shot it with his crossbow. It seemed like there would be time in between waves to retrieve his bolts and he wanted to get on with it. After killing the last one he threw their bodies down to the bottom as well. He now had a small wall of the dead around a third of the hills perimeter.

He had to fight through five more waves. The next was a small group of level nine wolves. It hurt him a little to kill them, thinking of Two Socks, but they really didn't look that similar anymore. Two Socks was the size of a horse while these things were only slightly larger than normal. After that was the worst wave. Ten large snakes, why did it have to be snakes? They were also level nine, and they slithered their way up the hill. Each was as big around as his arm and at least three meters long.

Thankfully they were relatively slow and he made pincushions out of a couple and then practiced more with his exploding rocks to thin their numbers. Alan had tried a firebolt, but while it had done some damage, there was little on the snake to catch fire so he didn't get any secondary effects. A single stone bullet exploding in their side was enough to blow them into two pieces, however. Perhaps his new spell wasn't so bad after all, exploding missile had its uses.

He had blown most of his mana pool killing the rest of the snakes before they got to him. Honestly, he wasn't sure how bad they would have been as opponents, but he wasn't in the mood to find out. Just, ewwwwww. Snakes and spiders were on the no-no list for a reason.

Following that were two level ten bears. The best part of those was that they were slow, but the bad part was they were tough and powerful. Each was a walking tank and the one swat they had landed had knocked him down and taken the breath out of him. Fortunately, Alan was able to recover before the bear had a chance to take advantage of his vulnerable position. He had managed to engage each relatively separately, and it hadn't proven to be much of a challenge to wear them down.

The fourth wave was a bunch of ferrets. They were actually identified as ferrets too, but they were about three times any one he had seen. They were also level ten and there were eight of them. That had been a challenge and his pants were not looking so good by the end. Alan would take a human sized opponent over these ground huggers any day. One of them had also managed to break through the duck's cage, but he had exploded a rock near its spine before it could crawl through. It had the added benefit of leaving the body blocking the hole.

The fifth wave was five panther type beasts. They were all level eleven and the only reason he hadn't lost any ducks to them was that after killing one of the cats, they had been more interested in him than the birds. His bone mail had gotten quite a workout and his padded shirt was going to need a lot of repairing time after that. Most of his mana had been spent healing himself, as his fire bolts hadn't been effective enough to deal much damage, and while his exploding missiles had done a number on the panther analogs, they weren't fatal. He had given up using his spells offensively and saved the mana for fixing his wounds, of which he had received many.

Quest Update: King of the Hill

[You have managed to protect the fowl flock through numerous waves of predators. All that remains to threaten the quaking quackers is the Queen of the Valley. Kill her and the ducks will be safe.]

A screech echoed out over the forest and Alan's head snapped up. The last panther had been dead for only a moment when the notification came and the cry rang out. He didn't see anything in the forest, but a second call had him looking higher. There high above the forest flew a large bird. It was hard to tell exactly how big it was, because he also wasn't sure how far away it was. He activated mana lode at the same time he identified it, sure he would need the mana.

Beast: Hawk King (Rare) level 14, threat: medium. This is no ordinary hawk, both physically and by its abilities. Having risen above its peers it has gained numerous special attacks in addition to its razor sharp feet.

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