Almost as soon as he shot the small dog guarding the burrow Hector knew that something was wrong. As the beast's dying howl faded he was able to hear the sound of combat behind him, back where his party was set up. He started to run back to them, but a swarm of dogs exiting the burrow made him turn back.

A quick scan with identify showed that they were mostly level four and five, but there were a few larger level eights mixed in. It was hard to get a count with them all bunched together, but it was at least fifteen dogs and that number was climbing by the second as more and more poured out of the hole in the ground.

He had no idea what was going on with the rest of the group, but he had to imagine that if they were under attack as he suspected that all of these new enemies joining the fight would do more to hurt their chances than Hector joining would help. Making a quick decision, he started running away from his friends while using his bow to shoot into the mass of dogs. If he could draw their attention then maybe it would give his party a chance to deal with whatever was attacking them.

After dropping his third target, the ravening pile of canines veered off course and headed directly for him. Now that he had their attention, he needed to make sure they didn't actually catch him, but he also had to stay close enough to keep them focused. Hector increased his speed so he remained in front of the pack, but he kept turning to fire arrows, bringing down as many of the dogs as he could. Eventually he would have to either lose them or kill them all. Either way, the fewer there were when that time came, the better.

Sprinting and then pausing to fire meant his pace was slightly faster than that of the whole group, but it didn't leave him any time for aiming. Fortunately it was hard to miss with the dogs running so closely together, each shot was simply pointed at center furball and most of them hit. Even if the arrow didn't kill his target, it usually knocked them down, if only briefly, which helped string out the pack.

Hector noticed that not all of the dogs were staying with the group. A few were breaking out from the mass where they couldn't run at quite their top speed and were making up ground on him as individuals. The next time he paused to turn, instead of bringing his bow around, he had his spear in his hands, and with a sweeping attack he sliced the chests of the two dogs who had managed to catch up to him.

The majority of the pack was still about fifteen meters behind him so he turned and ran again, storing his spear to let him move faster. A quick check of his stamina showed that this was not a winning strategy for him long term. His huntsman class gave him great endurance, but it wasn't as effective when it was he who was being hunted.

The area they were in now was less wooded than back the way they came. This meant it was easier for him to take his shots, but that there was less cover for him to try and hide in when the time came. He supposed he could try and climb one of the trees, but Hector doubted it would keep him safe. As he ran he kept his eyes out for some way to escape. The chase had been going for several minutes and at this point they should be far enough away that whatever his party had been fighting with should have been handled by the time these dogs could get back. It was time to see to his own survival.

His chance came when he spotted a river. It was at least thirty meters across and it looked deep. Even better was that it seemed to pass below the hill he was running toward, which meant there should be a small cliff or drop-off. Hector was an ok swimmer, it was something he enjoyed, but not an activity he excelled at. He didn't have a lot of faith in staying ahead of them if the chase continued in the river. The cavern dogs would probably be willing to follow him into the water, but if he could add in a drop as well, they might be more reluctant to follow.

As he ran up the hill, the dogs must have figured he was trapped. They slowed down and spread out, blocking him from coming back down the hill. At the top, there was indeed a rocky drop off, but it was only five or six meters. Hector thanked the stars that he was a lightly armored scout and not a platemail wearing tank as he jumped off toward the middle of the river.

He didn't land well, and the impact with the surface knocked his breath away. That caused him to panic when he also sank into the water, but he managed to calm himself enough to paddle up to the top as he struggled to get his air back. Once he had managed a few gasps, he turned and checked on his situation.

Several of the beasts were standing at the top of the hill looking down, but the majority were approaching the river from farther down or even in the flat. These dogs were able to simply wade into the water, and as he feared they had no trouble swimming out to follow him. His jump had given him a bit more of a lead, however, since they had to come back down the hill first, being unwilling to dive off.

Hector didn't think he would be able to swim fast enough to lose them, and crossing to the far bank wasn't an option. He hadn't noticed till he was in the air, but there was the telltale distortion of the zone boundary on the other side of the water. The river must act as a kind of dividing line between the adjacent tutorial areas. That left him with only one strategy to escape.

Hector dove under water and swam for all he was worth in the direction of the current. His tactic was unlikely to fool an intelligent creature, but if these dogs only had animal cunning, they may not realize what his plan was. He paddled for as long as he could until his lungs were bursting. Rather than fully surfacing, he tried to stick just his pointed nose out of the water, holding his mouth closed as he breathed in the sweet sweet air with his natural snorkel.

He repeated this four times before he risked sticking his head out of the water. At this point his stamina was critical and if it wasn't working he was screwed anyway. As he looked around he saw that he had covered over two hundred meters and that the dogs were searching for him still, but they were a good distance away. It seemed that they were focusing on where they had last seen him and hadn't thought to expand their search much.

Taking advantage of his current separation, hector paddled back to the riverbank and pulled himself out. He made sure to stay low so that the dogs wouldn't see. This area was no longer really a forest and it had the ubiquitous tall grass that seemed to cover the fields on the tutorial disk. Once he was safely concealed by the vegetation he made his way as quickly as possible back toward the forest.

He had barely entered the treeline before he came upon an interesting find. While resting his hand on a large rock, he noticed a hole behind it. It looked just like the burrow he had discovered earlier. This one didn't have any dogs guarding it, but he did see a lot of paw prints around it. Doing a little mental math, Hector tried to figure out how far he was from the first hole he had found. He was having some trouble because he hadn't been paying too much attention to his surroundings while he was running, and he also wasn't sure that he had been traveling in a straight line.

Still, even if he had done a lot of zigzagging, these two holes had to be almost a kilometer apart. That was a huge distance, but if the true home of the dogs was somewhere in the middle, and the burrow holes he had found were simply the far flung arms they used for hunting, then it was a possibly reasonable size. He started to move away from it slowly and quietly, not wanting to draw any more of the creatures to himself, but then he stopped. Where were the guards?

If he was a betting man, Hector would have wagered that the noise he heard from his party was them being ambushed by a group of cavern dogs. Add that to the large pack that had been chasing him, over fifty was the number he had last estimated, and there may not be many left to guard their home.

This was not Hector's first experience with a nest. Early on in tier two he and his party had found a dungeon that required them to take out a nest of scavenger birds. The lair was located on top of a cliff and inside of a cave. There had been a large number of lower leveled creatures that protected the area, but in the center of the nest they had found a much higher leveled version that was spawning the rest.

If this nest was anything like the other, then somewhere in the tunnels the hole below him led to, was one or more cavern dog breeders. That was the true target of the quest. On his own, there was no way Hector could make his way through all of the guards these rarer versions would have around them, but what if there wasn't a mass of dogs between him and the nest proper? What if all of the guards were running around looking for him up here?

He had told Pebble that he felt like a fraud, and he still did, but after their talk he realized that he also craved the thrill of adventuring. Maybe this was the chance to prove to himself that he wasn't a fake, that he was really the risk-taking daredevil that one needed to be in order to thrive in this new reality. Taking his spear out of his storage pouch, Hector took a moment to firm his resolve. In life you didn't only ever get one chance to step up, but the more times you turned away from your opportunities, the easier it was to do the same the next time.

If he walked away now, he probably wouldn't look back and think of this as a pivotal moment in his life, but if he did pass on this chance, then one day when he was lying on his deathbed, he would most likely be unable to find any pivotal moments. Instead he would remember a life filled with mediocrity. Tightening his grip on the wooden shaft in his hands, he resolved that that would not be him.

Stepping around the boulder, he crawled into the hole. It was dark above ground with only a partial moon to light the area, but after entering the burrow he was plunged into a much more complete shadow. This wasn't a problem for the ferret man. Even before the Network, he had excellent night sight, and now it was bordering on true darkvision.

The walls around him were compacted dirt, but there were signs that it had been recently dug. He could see where roots had been severed and portions of the wall were crumbling. If he reached out his arms he could just touch the sides, and he had to crouch slightly to avoid bumping his head on the ceiling. His spear was not going to be a great weapon in here for a pitched battle, but it should allow him to take out pairs or solitary dogs who appeared in front of him before they could get close enough to attack. Hector had a pair of daggers on his belt in case he needed to drop the longer weapon.

Feeling like he was as ready as he could get, and not wanting to give himself time to lose his nerve, he started down the tunnel. In addition to being able to see as long as there was even a trace of light, Hector's sense of smell was also impressive. At the moment his nose was inundated with the strong scent of dry soil and rotting vegetation, but he was also detecting a lot of cavern dogs. They had rancid breath with a good deal of blood and feces odors, but their scent also contained a trace of something he couldn't identify. If pressed, he would have said it was almost floral.

The tunnel continued without any alternate paths for quite a while. His nose was the first to alert him to a change. The air lost a lot of the earthy smell and the scent of the dogs got stronger. Slowing his pace, he carefully made his way forward. He soon found what must have been a sleeping area for the cavern dogs.

The tunnel opened up into a larger area that was mostly stone, with a few sections that were still dirt. The floor of the cave would have been covered in debris, except there were around twenty circles that were bare down to the stone amidst the ten centimeter deep pile of stuff. Looking closer, Hector saw bones, branches, rotting partially eaten fruit, and clumps of fur.

Making his way over to one of the cleared circles, he bent down and took a deep breath. As expected, it smelled strongly of the odor he associated with the dogs. These were most likely the areas where the dogs laid down to sleep. The instinctive need to flatten their sleeping area was one that many Corellians still had, and these dogs clearly had the same drive. While checking out the room he noticed that there was more light than he might have expected. Looking up at the ceiling some four meters overhead, he found some kind of luminescent moss. It was faint, but it provided more than enough light for him to see.

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There were no dogs here at the present, giving credence to his idea that all, or at least most, of the animals were out looking for him and his party. From here, there was only one exit other than the tunnel he came from. With his spear pointed in front of him, he started downwards again. The tunnel he was searching had a slight downward angle to it, and if he had to guess he felt that he had descended a few tens of meters already.

It wasn't long after finding the sleeping area that Hector encountered his first intersection. It was a four way intersection, but if he had to guess it was most likely simply two tunnels that happened to cross paths. His experience so far hadn't given him the impression that the cavern dog's lair was all that complex. He chose to continue with his current tunnel and pushed forward.

He found another sleeping cave, but like the first, this one was empty. Finally, after more than twenty minutes slowly creeping through the now mostly stone tunnels, he found signs of activity. His ears picked out the sounds of barking and cries of pain first. His nose soon detected an increase in the scent of blood. Finally his eyes noticed a source of brightness ahead. After rounding a slight bend he was finally able to see what was going on.

About twenty meters in front of him was an intersection. Instead of two paths meeting, the tunnel Hector was in simply ended and merged with what looked like a larger one. The light was coming from this new pathway, and he could see a pack of dogs being slowly pushed backwards. They seemed to be desperately trying to stop someone or something from getting deeper into their layer, but he heard the sound of dogs dying just out of sight around the bend.

A spike of earth came from the side of the tunnel and impaled two dogs at once. The next thing he knew, a dog turned and ran down the tunnel toward him in panic, a globe of water surrounding its head. It was so panicked by the struggle to breathe that it didn't even notice the ferret man in its path until his spear went through its chest, impaling its heart and killing it.

Hector started running forward, that combination of earth and water spells was too distinctive, it must be the rest of his party. They had managed to fight off whatever ambush they had faced and then entered the dogs' lair as well. He was proud of himself for facing the dark tunnels by himself, but he was thrilled that he wouldn't actually have to complete the task on his own.

All of the dogs were in the new tunnel and had their attention on the known threat. That soon changed as Hector used his spear to poke them in their flanks. He was using short, quick strikes to push his spear head in a few centimeters before pulling it out again. None of his strikes would be quickly lethal, but he didn't want his spear buried in an opponent when another dog decided to turn and attack him.

Some of his victims started to come around to face the new threat, but a burst of flames drew them back towards what should be Hector's party. That fire gave him sudden doubts, neither Gerry or Samson had any fire spells, so where had that come from. He pushed those worrisome thoughts away when he heard Lyonel's voice call out.

"Guys, there's another tunnel up ahead, watch our flank."

Another voice answered, once more confusing him because he didn't recognize it at all. "I think we have some help up there, something was attacking the dogs from the opening."

After the flames died out on the cavern dogs' fur, Hector found them once more turning to deal with their new threat. He took a couple of steps back and leveled his spear, ready to stab the first one to attack. His plan was to fully impale the initial attacker and then release the spear and switch to his daggers to try and hold off the others. There was a tense moment where the front dogs crouched lower, readying themselves as they tried to build up the courage to rush the armed Hector.

The standoff was resolved when the party coming down the tunnel made it to the intersection. A club bashed the head in of a larger dog in the main pack and then a strange weapon lashed out and cut the legs out from under one of the dogs facing him. The rest turned and moved back into the bigger tunnel, trying to block the way deeper into their layer.

Hector got his first look at his rescuers and he was thrilled to see Lyonel with a shield in one hand and a club in the other. Then his brain caught up and he realized there was someone else with a shield standing next to him. It took him a couple seconds before he matched the dirty bloody figure with the human they had rescued.

"Pebble?" Hector croaked out.

Gerry, standing just behind the pair, heard the disbelieving question and looked over, his eyes lighting up when he saw their lost scout.

"Hector, we found you! We thought the dogs had killed you and dragged your body into their lair. This is so much better, but what…Oops!"

The giraffe man was interrupted by a dog that had managed to get past their front line. It had made a rather impressive acrobatic move and jumped on the wall next to Lyonel's head before pushing off to land behind him, right in front of Gerry. Without even looking, Pebble reversed his hold on the strange weapon he was using and thrust it backwards, stabbing it deep into the dog. He kept his shield forward and used it to cover himself while his weapon was busy.

Gerry called out, "Thanks! Sorry Hector, we'll have to catch up later, we're a bit busy now."

Hector didn't have an intelligence or wisdom class, but he thought he was a fairly smart guy. His focus class also let him process large amounts of information at the same time, however, this was proving to be too much. Instead of stalking through the tunnels alone, he had now found his party, who had thought he was dead, and not only that, but the busboy they had rescued and was now their cook was standing shoulder to shoulder with his party leader, cutting through the dogs like they were paper dolls.

As first Lyonel and Pebble moved past his tunnel entrance, and then Gerry did as well, he saw Samson bringing up the rear. Hector's feet knew what to do even if his mind was locked up, and he stepped out behind the mage, taking on the role of rearguard. Samson smiled back at him and gave a thumbs up before turning back to the carnage ahead.

Hector's mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to ask a question that his brain never got around to sending. The back of their group seemed to be a safe place to be. He knew that there weren't any dogs coming from his tunnel, and there seemed to only be a collection of dead bodies behind them from the other. He could have taken out his bow to try and support from back here, but with the short attackers, and so many people in front of him, Hector felt he was better off simply trying to process what was going on.

He wasn't going to get any answers from his party until they finished off the enemies ahead of him, so instead he just tried to study his groupmates. All three seemed to be in great health, despite the fact that they were also covered in gore. He shuddered to think how many dogs they must have killed so that even Samson in the back was filthy.

His eyes next turned to the human. He soon saw where the earlier fire had come from. Two dogs pushed their way through the pack. They were the largest cavern dogs he had seen yet, and identify told him they were level ten. Before they could get all the way to the front, Pebble pointed his mace/spear thing at them and two balls of flame shot out catching their fur on fire and causing the dogs to whine and writhe in agony.

Before they could recover, the two front line fighters cut through the smaller beasts shielding the flaming dogs and then crushed both of their heads. Hector hadn't been here long, but he was already able to tell that not only was Pebble a great fighter, but that Hector's whole team was working at a level that he hadn't seen before.

The party of Corellians had lost something when their leader, Vesper, died, but even before then they hadn't been as powerful and efficient as they were at the moment. Lyonel was able to hold his position with little effort now that there was another shield next to him, but his motions seemed to be smoother than before, more sure. Gerry and Samson were also using their spells to great effect. Every one of Samson's stone spears was angled to kill more than one target and Gerry's water spells were being used to strategically reduce pressure on the melee fighters.

As the party moved down the tunnel, Hector decided it was more than simply the addition of another skilled warrior could account for. He was starting to notice a change in himself, too. There wasn't much to do in the back, so he wasn't taxing any of his resource pools, but he felt like his stamina was regenerating faster than it should. Also, even without a clear target he was feeling his attention drawn to openings that he could have exploited. It wasn't anything he hadn't experienced himself in the past, but it felt like the effect was cranked up to the maximum.

After another intense push by Pebble and Lyonel where they cut down six dogs in as many seconds, the remainder of the beasts turned and fled down the tunnel. Rather than pursuing, Pebble and Lyonel rested the heavy shields on the ground and stored their weapons. It was Pebble, and not the hamster man, who turned and gave them the order to stand down.

Hector couldn't hold it in any longer. "You can talk?"

He noticed the rest of his party gave him sympathetic looks and Pebble smiled as he explained. "Yeah, I'm not really from the village, I'm another recruit like you. I was just hiding there, looking for information. I know this is sudden, but I can explain more after we finish this nest. Here, everyone grab a bite. Anyone need a heal? Oh, Hector, I'm gonna use an ability on you, please accept it."

Lyonel looked back at his lost scout and nodded in confirmation. Hector felt a warm feeling trying to enter his aura, but he felt that he could push it away easily if he desired. He also received a notification asking if he would accept the boon Healer's Mark and with another glance at his leader, he gave his acceptance.

Pebble handed out charred wooden skewers containing chunks of cooked meat of some kind as well as some vegetables. Hector wasn't that hungry, but his partymates eagerly ripped into their food. They must have been circulating a lot of energy through their auras, which tended to stress the body and increase the need for sustenance. Seeing that Hector wasn't eating his, Samson eyed his skewer and the ferret man quickly handed it over.

Seeing that everyone was done with their snack, Pebble took charge again. "If everybodies ready, let's keep going. I can't believe how many we've killed already, there can't be much left here."

Backing up his words with actions, Pebble lifted his shield and took out his weapon. Lyonel did the same and they started down the tunnel again. It wasn't long before they ended up in another cavern. This one was bigger than any of the others they had seen so far, at least forty meters across and almost half that in height.

Scattered around the ceiling there was some more of the luminescent moss with some other plant mixed in. The second plant had a many-petalled white flower for a bloom. As they were standing there they noticed that the room was trembling slightly and Hector could see a fine mist of pollen falling from the flowers. His nose was telling him that this was the source of the floral smell he had detected in the dogs' scent earlier.

Down on the floor of the room was the nest. There were around fifteen of the dogs left from the tunnel earlier, and in addition there was one large beast laying on its side. It looked like what would happen if a regular cavern dog was fed twice its body weight every day and was never allowed to move. He identified it as a rare version of the dogs, a Broodqueen. This was the target of their raid.

In addition to the dogs from the tunnel, there was also a pile of puppies suckling on the giant dogs' teats. Hector's party must have gone through a lot before he found them, and they took their frustration out on every animal in the room. The giant broodqueen didn't even try to resist when Lyonel smashed her head in. It took two hits and Hector could almost see relief in her eyes as the second blow cracked her skull.

The next step was gathering loot. Samson and Lyonel went around collecting the corpses. Many of them looked a little malnourished, but there was still meat on their bones and the village would pay a good price for the protein. Gerry and Hector were given the duty of collecting the flowers from the ceiling.

That was a challenging task since they were far above their heads. Hector also didn't know why they were trying to collect them, but when Pebble had asked them to do it, Gerry had leapt at the opportunity to help. The only solution to the height issue that they came up with, was to have the giraffe man shoot light bolts at the base of the flowers. More often than not that caused the plant to detach from the ceiling and then Hector scooped them up. He had to admit that Gerry's aim had also dramatically improved since he first met him.

On the way back to the surface they all pitched in with collecting the corpses. With spatial storage keeping the bodies fresh, they could sell meat to the village for weeks. Once they reached the surface, it was Lyonel who spoke up.

"I'm sure we have a lot of questions for our friend here, but I think that would be a conversation best held back at camp."

Hector noted the stress on the word friend, but he still wasn't sure about walking all the way back to camp with what he was now realizing was a stranger. However, their leader had a point, the group had been through a rough night and they didn't want to get caught up in another confrontation if they could help it. It was better to get back to somewhere safe before they hashed things out. Also, this wouldn't be the first hike they made recently in relative silence.

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