A man with shining gold hair sat around a fire. His white teeth gleamed from the flickering light. And his eyes sparkled like stars. “So there I was facing the minotaur giant! Leading my team...” He said.

“But I was leading the team Jeff, I’m one of the few of us with the [Basic: Commander] skill and with the best strategy and tactics.” Said Micky. The other man was a [Squire Paladin] and was named Joseph, or as he insisted that his ‘friends’ call him Jeff.

“But were you though? You weren’t exactly in the front lines man, I don’t know...” Said one of Jeff’s friends, not ‘friends’. The gathering was the group that raided the dungeon boss and took the core, it was promising to be an epic retelling of the whole boss fight. Of course, Micky had been in more epic boss fights, not to mention more hectic. However, this was his ‘biggest’ and one of the few times he could brag. The gathering was with the raid team and the top end of the class.

“As a [Basic: Commander]? Yes, yes I was. That’s kinda the point.” Said Micky defensively.

“But...” Started the priest started. “Guys, guys, let me tell the story for the less fortunate.” Said Jeff with a chuckle. He had invited everyone here to his small group’s campfire for an ‘epic retelling’ of the whole ordeal.

Micky and Carl quietened back down so Jeff could retell the story for everybody, though the raid party was there and didn’t need it. But this was their chance to brag so… “Anyway, there I was. And the minotaur giant slashed at me as I tanked for my team.” Said Jeff before he was interrupted again.

“But I was the tank though? He was too large for any of you to tank so we used me, a dodge tank instead?” Said Vincent the [Cultist Follower] which is a sub-shool of the warlock class. He had the unfortunate class combination as his first truly pact demon was of the succubus sub-verity. Unfortunate because the type of warlock he was specing for was often referred to as the ‘demo knight’ or [Fel Knight] verietties. This meant that he had to fuse with said demon. The demon being female… you get the idea.

“Hey! Let Jeff finish the story, then you can add in your own part!” Said the [Flaming Red Mage] known only as ‘Beuatty Infinitely Tracing The Celestial Heights’. They were always trying to figure out a shorter name for her but nothing seemed to stick out to them. So usually they just called her red hair, because, well, her hair was red. It probably had nothing to do with her personality?...

“It’s alright, relax, we all had our part to play. Some might have been smaller then others but no less important! Anyway, so I was facing down the minotaur giant. Did I mention how big this guy was? Like his axe alone was at least ten of me tall, right?” Said Jeff. A whisper of “not that tall.” came out but when asked nobody actually questioned him, this time.

Jeff continued with, “So there I was facing down the axe, and my friend Micky here was all like ‘Charge’!” “not what I said...” Micky whispered... Jeff continued uninterrupted “And we were all like ‘Yeah’ and so we slammed into him and I hit it in the knee crippling it!” Micky and Vincent looked at each other, the look in their eyes said, well that part did actually happen, though they wouldn’t have called it ‘crippled’ so much as mildly inconvenienced.

“So then ma’ lady in red over heya’ throws a fireball in it’s face and now it’s all blind right? Then it’s swinging it’s axe around in a flurry an’ all! But we ain’ gunna’ fall for dat’ and we are attacking it from the back and shit! But it was only temporary! So now we are all exposed to an angry giant minotaur!” Jeff said. And he was only about right on that it was hit with a [Fireball] to the face right off the bat. However, this messed up the positioning and almost cost them. But luckily the [Fel Knight] wannabe had force [Tuant]s and was able to keep the [Boss] of the rest of the party before it could cause problems. Of course, Red Head had simply said that if Vincent wanted to tank he should be able to handle it, and he did even if it made things harder. The party also didn’t have time to reposition let alone get out of position. At best they were able to get a few opportunistic strikes while the minotaur was momentarily distracted.

“So I was like, nu uh bra! Nobody is attacking ma’ team and I smacked it in the nuts with this here hamma’.” Jeff illiterate. This was also true, and pulled agro and [Enraged] the boss something fierce.

“Then ma’ pal ol’ buddy over there with the two shields got smacked around real good. And this blue haired goddess over here had to make him feel good again.” He looked over at the [Rejuvinating Blue Mage] he had in his other arm opposite the [Fiery Red Mage]. This was also true, and it was mostly because he wasn’t expecting the sudden [Enraged] state of the boss. This could be blamed on either of them really, the pali or the spartan.

“But we hit the boss back with a vengeance! Ma’ boy what, what?!” Said Jeff as he raised his hand to the dwarven archer and got a slap in return. Micky still couldn’t believe that he didn’t hate the archer for being an archer, he felt something was wrong here somehow.

“Ma’ boy shot it in the eye for it’s trouble while I lead the DPS to start burning it down in vengeance.” Said Jeff. Technically Micky told the DPS to cover fire while the healers both got the spartan back on his feet, but Micky was too tired to interject at this point. Plus he was partially right that the archer had gotten a lucky shot in that even the archer had exclaimed “What the blighted hells? I can’t believe that hit the sucker!”

“From there the minotaur was on it’s last legs and even the core came out to help! The core started throwing fireballs at us like crazy, like pew, pew, pew! And I blocked it like paching, paching, paching!” Jeff said, and that wasn’t even remotely close to what happened. First of all, they were [Flame Lances] which Jeff should know the difference of by know. Second, it wasn’t even Jeff that blocked except for himself. It was our shield spartan hero that blocked for the party while the core fired off the lances.

“But even that was not enough and I took the minotaurs head! Then, there was no then!” Said Jeff, like that explained anything, or was what really happened. Then he showed off he had been sitting on a minotaur head the entire time by lifting the trophy up. Except once the core got involved things got really hectic. Luckily, both the warlock tank and the shield tank knew what to do. Jeff was actually helpful at crowd control as the core brought out adds. But he was the OT of the OT the whole time. The raid burned down the adds quickly though so that they could focus on the minotaur since that could easily break their lines.

The core was shooting out [Flame Lance]s sure, but while more potent and penatrative then a fireball, they aren’t as bad if the tank knows what they are doing. So, once the adds were down they went back to burning the minotaur down while the support boss was blocked off from the fight by the spartan. Of course, the core was also pissed off and kept yelling “How dare you kill my minotaur harem! How dare you! I’m going to kill you all!”

However, the core was easily contained and the minotaur just had to be burned down while they tanked and spanked it. There were a few close calls from when the two bosses tried to meet up, but for the most part they kept them contained.

Finally when the minotaur was [Dead] after so long and they focused on the core’s demonking avatar. Had it been a normal mage it would have run out of mana a long time ago but it was not. In the end it’s last words were “I just wanted a minotaur harem, is that too much to ask?” The girls and even the [Priest] had screamed “Yes!” in it’s face as Prin finished it off with a flourish. Then Jeff had sliced off the head of the minotaur as a trophy. This would affect the loot drop from the system reward but Jeff had said “But we need a [Trophy] to show off our epic battle with later so that all the classmates that couldn’t be here knows how awesome the battle was!” Since he had most of the votes in the party he got to keep it. Oh well, in the end Micky was able to get a [Minotuar Kilt] from the [System] loot drop anyway. And in spite of what the system description says, Micky knew that nothing in the system is previously used, even if it says “Was made from a used minotaur loincloth.” The fact that there were other ‘minotaur’ type items of similar type loot dropped for other raid members helped Micky reaffirm that though.

But now that Jeff had finished his retelling there was no place to interject. Micky sighed internally, oh well it was an alright story if a little Jeff heavy.

“Fuck! That little bastard!” yelled the head instructor. The entire class immediately went in the direction to see what was going on, for reasons. Who knew if they might need to help or something, right?

Micky walked up to the instructors, the only one in the class to do so while they were so clearly pissed. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Some little cunt licking bitch stole the core, that’s what! Fuck, we knew it was going to happen but still! Ergh!!!” She said.

“All kinds of parties are interested in cores, of course. And inspite of these kinds of missions being so rare, because dungeons are valuable, the king has long since learned that if he wants to be the one to get the core he has to pay the best. That core would’ve been enough to pay for a lot of things. They are worth literal millions of gold, and that is just the monetary rewards. I will be honest a dungeon core might actually be the most valuable thing you will ever see. But don’t think you should go off just grabbing one. Unsanctioned core poaching is punishable by the [Dead] of not just yourself but your entire family, and in some cases your entire clan and noble house too. But core theft is such a common thing that nobody is going to even listen to us bitch and moan about it. Urgh!! We knew this was going to happen, we knew and it still did. Let this be a lesson to you all! Never let the loot control your party. Because we are going to hunt the person who did this as the guild! But that isn’t for you kids, ok?” Said the head instructor. With that the instructors pushed everybody back to their campsites. The werewolf instructor was exceptionally pushy with Micky and co. like he was the most pissed about the whole ordeal.

Pagebreak

The Red Head stopped Micky while he was heading back to camp. “Hay Micky, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” She said shyly.

Micky looked at her like she had just grown two heads.

“Look, I know that I act all angry all the time and feisty and anxious but that’s what Jeff likes. And I mean, it’s just nice to feel included you know? Just saying I’m not actually seeing the guy either. He’s a bit handsy but he is popular. And that blue haired bitch is actually in his pants all the time. Anyway, I just wanted to apologize. I just like being a part of the group, ok? Can you forgive me?” She asked sweetly.

Micky did not know what to say to the sudden switch. But he managed to stammer out an “Okay, but you know you should probably apologize to Vincent more than me though?”

She giggled and said “Yeah, he was my next stop! But I saw you first and figured I might as well get that done and out of the way beforehand you know?”

“Fucking green bitch! You stay away from Jeff, you hear?! If I see you anywhere near him I will cut your tits right off and shove them right down your throat, I sware to you!” Said a certain blue haired lady to a green ork girl Micky used to know…

“I think that’s my cue! Let me take care of this real quick before I go see Vincent ok?” Said Red Hair, who Micky still didn’t know the real name of, somehow he felt like he and her were in similar positions…

“Blue bitch, you wanna fight?! I’m game! I wonder how well you can heal a burned face!” Said Red Hair. Blue hair whirled on her and launched a waterball at her. This soaked Red Hair. She stamered and started to cast a fireball before a teacher came along and stopped it.

Micky turned to the approaching Princess and asked “So you and Jeff eh?” Micky had a sly smirk on his face when he said it.

“Not on his life! Not on my life! A thousand eons could pass and he could be the only male ever and I still wouldn’t even be able to stand to think of it! I would rather start dating women than go out with that guy.” She said.

“Women eh?” said Micky with a completely different kind of smile on his face.

“Slow down there dreamer. I said would rather, not ‘it’ll ever happen in this lifetime’. I am straight as a fucking spear shaft, and I like to be the one getting the shaft if you know what I mean.” She said.

Micky did, unfortunately. He had roomed with her enough to know that he needed to give her a room down the hall and around the corner if he wanted to get any sleep at night, and not listen to such… ‘energizing sounds’.