Is this really a Game?!

Swish

Bang!

The leopard swiftly dodges an arrow sent its way before slapping Adam away with its tail, the young boy managed to block the hit but he was sent flying back from the powerful impact. After being some 3 meters away Adam suddenly teleports to the side of the leopard that was now attacking his other two teammates, the teleportation dispelled all the inertia and Adam was able to quickly attack.

The surprise attack from Adam made it very difficult for the monster to dodge, the leopard twists its body before jumping to the side, blood, however, spurts from the small hole that Adams's spear had created when it hit it. The fur of the leopard was surprisingly strong and elastic, but against a weapon such as a spear, the defense it provided was quite low. The monster growls at Adam as it dodges arrows that were launched towards it, the two other close-quarters fighters also arrive and position themselves around the monster, there were larger gaps in the formation near Adam as he could easily stop the monster from escaping with his teleportation.

The leopard wastes no time as it quickly attacks one of the players, its instinct was telling it that Adam would be a harder opponent to fight compared to the two that just arrived so it decided to try breaking through by attacking one of them right away. Its reasoning was fine, the two were in fact weaker than Adam, but they were not weak enough to be defeated by the leopard right away, in a one on one fight the leopard would, of course, come out as the winner, but the players simply needed to defend against it when it attacked and wait for the others to attack the leopard.

​ The sounds of the leopard's growls and the wind being sliced apart by the player's weapons reverberated through the forest as they fought, another monster slowly neared the area as it wanted to try and capitalize on the fight, looking at the fight happening before it the brown and red level 20 tiger focused completely as it couldn't wait to pounce on his prey. Before it could do so it felt a powerful pressure coming from the top of its head, it struggled fiercely but it couldn't escape the clutches of the person that grabbed its head.

"Now, now, be quiet little kitty, the little ones are playing, let's not disturb them." Reign smiles as he uses his katana to pierce through the tiger's head before electrocuting it, the powerful beast immediately stops moving as its lifeless body lies beneath Reign who simply wipes the blood from his blade before going back to Beast and Greenie.

"Done," Reign tells Greenie before sitting down on the tree branch, the players were doing well so far, the leopard's fur was disheveled as blood was coming out from its wounds, dying the fur red.

Adam and the others didn't look that good either, cuts and bruises could be seen on their bodies as the leopard proved to be a strong opponent, after all, even the long-range attackers were at risk of being attacked as the leopard charged at them a couple of times, luckily for them Adam was able to stop it each time by using his ability.

The weakness of his ability was evident here, other players that had abilities were able to use them to deal good damage to monsters such as the leopard which was of the elite tier, but Adam couldn't, his ability's strength lay in the fact that he could attack his opponent from any direction at any time, retreating from a battle and stopping someone that was retreating were things where it excelled at.

If Adam ever came across enemies that had strong defense he would find it incredibly hard to break through their defense, even with the skills he had gained after choosing his class, compared to Reign and the others he had still not managed to create a strong offensive skill that he could use and that could potentially lead to him not being able to catch up to others in the future, of course since the boy was so talented everyone had faith in him being able to do that.

After about 5 minutes of fighting it seemed that the battle was finally going to end, the leopard was slightly limping, Adam managed to pierce through the muscle of one of its legs previously while the others attacked and that limited the beast's mobility by a lot. Adam however didn't come out unscathed from that as the leopard was quick to respond with his tail that hit him from the side, he could feel a couple of his ribs breaking when the attack connected as he breathed heavily after forcefully hitting a tree.

The sharp pain and the feeling of suffocating made him forget about his skill for a moment which led to him getting injured heavier than he would have as colliding with the tree made his condition worse for a couple of seconds.

Luckily for him, the others managed to keep the leopard busy while he recollected himself, with the monster's leg injured it was easier for the players to attack and dodge the leopard's attacks. The monster knew that its situation was dire and tried to escape but the players would of course not allow that, they gave it their all and channeled mana to move faster as they did everything they could to keep the monster here.

After Adam recovered a bit he joined the battle, with him taking the lead with his spear they were able to finally defeat the monster, the exp they had gained was of course nothing special and they could get a lot more if they simply went hunting as they usually did, but the feeling of defeating a powerful opponent and forcing themselves to use everything they had was something that could not be replicated, even though their level stayed the same all of them felt a bit more powerful, that was partly because their proficiencies went a bit up and their reflexes were honed a bit after such a dangerous fight.

Reign and the other two came down as they congratulated the players, defeating an Elite monster of a higher level was not something that everybody could do, Reign remembered the first day of the game when they came across the cockatrice, Wolf had almost died during the fight, luckily for them all the armor he wore back then saved him.

They all took a needed rest before proceeding further, even though Laura wasn't there to heal them, Beast still had the rejuvenation ring, the rings magic was weak and used a lot more mana than what a healer would need but it was enough, the small ring saved both Reign and Shadow back in the black forest, after all, its magic was not to be underestimated, even though it needed most of the mana that all of them had back then to heal them sufficiently.

The wounds were healed and the players rested enough, they all made their way through the forest in hopes of finding another strong monster to fight against, Reign was on the lookout for any powerful monsters trying to ambush them as the tiger had tried previously. It was a good thing they were here, if the players were locked in battle with the leopard by themselves the interruption from a stronger monster could have been fatal.

The party soon came across more monsters, this time it was a group of kobolds that were patrolling, the kobolds were different from the one's Reign and the others had fought a long time ago, these guys had some rough leather armor on and their weapons seemed to be of good quality. Their muscles looked strong while their scales reflected some of the sunlight that would fall on them, it was evident from the scars and some ripped scales that this party had gone through their fair share of battles, they were observing their surroundings seriously and it was evident that they would go into battle mode the moment they spotted someone coming close to them.

There were 3 kobolds in the party, two used swords while the last one used a spear, looking at their levels Reign decided that they would be good opponents for the party, the kobolds were not elite monsters but they were still stronger than the average monster of their level, not to mention that these were battle-hardened veterans and there was a chance of them being variants of some kind as well.

He gives Adam and the others the signal and they slowly move toward the kobolds, the long-range players attack first as they try to take them by surprise, unsurprisingly the kobolds were quick to respond and they managed to dodge to attacks before attacking them.

Adam took on the spear-wielding kobold, he wanted to see how well he would match up against a monster that used the same weapon as him, the other two players used a sword and a mace and they took on the other two kobolds. The strength of the kobolds were not only their strong bodies, most of them had quite high proficiencies with their weapon as well, of course as all things had balance the kobolds had a weakness as well, they didn't have any skills and their ability to use mana was relatively low compared to other monsters, even with that they were still amongst the stronger monsters at their level, that alone is enough to show just how terrifying their physical ability is.

The battle starts and the players immediately feel a huge pressure, the kobolds were incredibly strong, the way they used their weapons was incredible and even Adam was put at a slight disadvantage against the spear-wielding kobold, of course, he was still not using his ability as he wanted to use this fight to improve his spearmanship.