Another three days passed since Vesuvius fought with the lizard up in the mountains. He spent the days mostly sleeping and hunting while recovering from the injuries. His XP was slowly approaching that of level ten which was a threshold for a first evolution. He wanted to just go out and spend the whole day hunting for an XP to evolve as soon as possible however his still injured chest was preventing him.
The dragon was lazing on the cave floor, contemplating how the world was unfair, ‘I just wanted to hunt some yetis, yet I had to meet that lizard. On top of that, I once again got careless after I heavily damaged my enemy, forgetting that a cornered beast is the most dangerous one.’
Suddenly an already familiar voice came from a distance breaking Vesuvius out of his thoughts.
“If I were a drake, I would on one hundred per cent make my lair in some cave. And where are we going to find that cave?”
“In the mountain, I know that Fet.. but the problem is that we need more people to hunt down that drake. Don’t forget their powerful element attacks.”
“I know what I am doing. We will just explore and return.”
Vesuvius frowned, ‘These three again? Why am I always meeting with them? Is it my bad luck? They are still relatively far. I still have time to prevent them from discovering my lair.’
The small dragon left his cave, making sure not to cause any loud noise by hitting any of the massive boulders lying in the canyon.
He flapped his wings, quickly flying up towards a nearby cliff, using the mountains and rocks as his cover. He spotted a tall cliff far above the canyon, giving him a perfect overview of the mountain base. Then he tilted his wings and slowly landed there and laid down, making sure that only his long neck stuck over the edge of the cliff and waited.
A few minutes passed, and three players walked out of the woods and entered the bare rocky base of the mountain. The wind was howling all over the place as the current kept moving through the narrow canyons and valleys.
Vesuvius grinned, finally letting his murderous dragon emotion out of the leash, ‘Stupid poachers! They just stand there without any cover. They are just like sitting ducks.’
POV BoobaFet’s Party:
Fet and his two companions finally crossed the forest after a long journey and reached the base of the massive mountains that they always saw on the horizon. Air was noticeably colder, causing Fet to shiver.
“Are you sure about this? The quest has no time limit, and this area looks like it is higher level than the forest. Shouldn’t we farm some levels or get help in town?” The fat dwarf looked at the spearmen with visible doubt in his eyes.
“It will be alright…”, suddenly wind started to howl louder, and Fet slightly moved to the left to touch a glowing moss on the rock. Second, later his right arm was blasted off, brutally mangled and sent flying to the distance leaving behind a trail of red blood droplets.
“Shit, what was that?” Fet looked at his profusely bleeding shoulder, missing the arm.
Of course, players in LOMM had an option to either suppress their pain or turn it off completely. This option was by default turned on to protect players’ mental health, and of course, most of the players kept it that way.
The dwarf and Fet kept looking at the missing arm, thinking about what had just happened.
“Get a cover, you idiots! Something is attacking us!” Lilies’ voices brought them to their senses as they quickly ran towards the nearest rock.
A bottle of red liquid appeared out of nowhere in Fet’s hand as he brought it towards his mouth and took a big sip of it. His injury immediately stopped bleeding as a new layer of skin grew over it. However, his arm was still missing.
In LOMM, low and medium-level players didn’t have any access to healing potions potent enough to recover lost limbs. At max, they could use a potion capable of fixing broken bones and stopping bleeding. To recover lost limb, they had to visit a healer in town or simply kill themself to respawn.
“Has anyone of you seen what was that?” The dwarf asked while crouching behind the rock.
“No, but I am almost sure it was some wind attack as we couldn’t see it.” As always, Lili rationally analyzed the whole situation.
“Howl!” wind howled again, and Fet rolled out of the cover, ready for action.
“No, stop, you idiot, remain…”
The rock that they were hiding suddenly burst apart, sharp rocks hitting the players hiding behind it. Lili, who was wearing only robes and put almost all of her points into intelligence and magic, died immediately as dozens of sharp stone shrapnel shredded her body.
The dwarf remained still alive but heavily bleeding as he lay sprawled on the ground behind the shattered rock.
“I know what I am doing. Logically if it attacked while we were in cover, it means that it has the means to hurt us anyway…”
“Wow, Lili and I always thought that you were useless.” The dwarf was so surprised that he even forgot about his fastly dropping health as he kept bleeding out.
“Howl!” another invisible attack hit an already injured dwarf, his whole body twisted and its limbs bent into unnatural angles as it was put under the immense force.
“Arghh, I will return and find you. Whatever you are!” Fet waved his fist towards and mountains before turning back and quickly running back under the cover of trees.
POV Vesuvius:
[+180XP, -80 reputation]
Vesuvius grinned as the last intruder ran away, ‘Hahaha, it looks like my analysis was good. They were only around a level eighteen newbies. They shouldn’t be able to connect me with this attack as they saw me only using flames attack, and my red scales should only reinforce their beliefs even more. So they will still think that I am just a dumb drake… Still, I need to quickly evolve. I doubt they will be so unprepared next time.’