"Shit! That lantern cost a ton!" cursed Alzeth as he ran.

"I don't think two hundred gold is that bad," said Emerr turned her head, aiming her staff at the closest rolling crawler.

A stream of blue light shot out, hitting it accurately. Thin ice swiftly encased the creature. As the moss was also in range to be frozen, the crawler was stuck to the ground. The sound of its brethren crashing into it was heard a second later.

Alzeth and Emerr were making use of this strategy to stay alive despite the massive numbers of rolling crawlers.

"Says the one who spends her time bargaining with the shopkeeper," said Alzeth with a smirk.

As if used to his teasing, Emerr ignored him and changed the topic.

"Anyway, how do you plan to distribute the fruits once she gets them?"

"Hmm." Alzeth seemed to be deep in thought as he hopped aside to evade a crawler. "I think we should let her have most of them. Well, if they survive the fire."

"Huh?!" Emerr was alarmed. "We're the ones doing the work! Wh-"

"Ahem!" he interrupted her with a cough. "Remember when I said she was a pay-to-win player?"

"That doesn't justify-"

"ANYWAY," Alzeth interrupted her by drowning out her voice. "She bought a four-star class right off the bat! Broken as fuck if you ask me. If she levels up to our level, she could basically singlehandedly carry our entire party."

"You don't find it shameful to have to piggyback?" Emerr frowned. "Also, who knows if she would just leave the party afterwards? I insist we take some-"

"EHH. I'm-"

"System announcement to all players in Greylands! An Epic tier boss, King Crawler has just spawned! Please check your map for the location of the boss. Good hunting!" the system interrupted his interrupting.

The cooldown for her ice spell was over. Emerr slung another bolt of blue light at a crawler.

"Hmm," said Alzeth after a short pause. "You think it spawning has to do with us burning the tree?"

"Let's ask Sherlock," said Emerr sarcastically.

The two continued to banter, dodging and freezing crawlers when the spell cooled down. It wasn't until a while later when they heard rumbling from the distance. A silhouette appeared in the distance.

"If that's what I think it is-" started Alzeth.

Emerr launched a fireball towards the direction of the figure. With the help of the light emitted as the fireball flew over it, they briefly saw a giant shiny golden black crawler rolling across the ground at twice the speed of the other crawlers.

"-we're screwed." he finished.

~~~~~

Meanwhile, Mei was stuffing her face with the fruits, unaware of the efforts of her party. Most of the fruits either didn't survive the fire or were covered in crawler saliva (she definitely wasn't going to eat those). Still, there was quite a number of pristine ones left.

Level up!

Congratulations, you are now level 11!

+100 SP

SpellSword level up!

Congratulations, you are now level 7 SpellSword!

+25 DEX

+50 AGI

+50 STR

+75 MAG

Race EXP 275/300

SpellSword EXP: 235/320

Mei was mildly annoyed. Almost every time she ate one of the fruits, a level up prompt popped in her face with a ding. She spat a few seeds away, then put the rest of the fruits in her inventory, including the saliva covered ones. Mei felt a little embarrassed piggybacking off her party members so she decided to leave some for them.

With nothing better to do, Mei decided open the party chat.

"I left around twenty fruits for you two. 11 of them are covered in saliva tho :C" she typed.

Seconds later, a reply came in.

"we died too XD" Alzeth typed back. "wait wtf u drooled all over the fruits?!"

"What? No! It's crawler saliva!" Mei typed hurriedly.

"That's even grosser" typed Emerr.

":C" Mei typed.

"lol just wash it off" typed Alzeth.

But as Mei was typing in the chat, she heard a familiar rumbling in the distance. It then struck her. After defeating Alzeth and Emerr, the logical thing for the king crawler to do was to go back to the tree to tend it. She should have hidden earlier! Cold sweat rolled down her cheeks. If she remembered correctly, items that are in the inventory for less than two hours are guaranteed to drop upon death unless bought from a shop!

The creature leapt into the air like before, towards the direction of Mei. She hurriedly ran to the side, narrowly dodging the scythes of it. The creature turned around slowly, looking at her with its beady eyes. Somehow, they managed to look angry despite not having any ability to contort its face.

It could smell the scent of the fruit from her mouth, cultivated from the efforts of its minions. How dare this puny human steal their efforts!

"SKREEEEEE!" it screamed at her.

Mei could feel her ears ringing. As it raised a scythe and aimed it at her, Mei hopped to the side. The scythe hit the ground with a loud bang.

Against such a big monster, her heart pounded frantically. Her instincts screamed at her to run, despite her knowing this was just a game.

But Mei knew that if she ran, the crawler could just crush her with its roll. If she confronted it, at least she had a chance to dodge if it aimed its scythes at her. If it decided to roll at point-blank range, she could run to the side before it got any momentum. If she could survive the encounter for long enough, a group of high levelled players would arrive to fight it for the drops!

Nervously, she took out her rusty sword, pointing it at the monster.

"Bring it on!"