Taking a detour off the main road, we naturally encountered more dangers.

Just a few hours after we stopping travelling on the main road, we encountered a pack of wolves again.

Our Ogre friend took the lead again, driving off the wolves with his large moves.

His skillset was extremely geared towards group fights.

He has displayed his omnidirectional move, ‘Quake’, on several occasions already.

Stomping on the ground with his right foot, he creates a reverberation in his surrounding ground with just the strength of his foot. This causes the wolves near him to shake, struggling to maintain their foothold.

It’s a move that can be learnt by both Knights and Berserkers, but requires a high level of strength to achieve. As such, it’s typically only learnt by Berserkers, since they focus more on strength.

He’s a Knight, rather than a berserker, which shows that he must possess extraordinary strength, above the average Knight.

At this point, he launches his Axe skill, ‘Whirlwind Slash’, allowing his Axe to freely cut off the heads of those shaken wolves.

The wolves quickly retreat after this.

However, soon after, we run into a pack of wild dogs.

We relax slightly, since dogs have lesser combat strength than wolves.

As the dogs near us, however, we realise that this would be a harder fight than before, and the mercenaries tense up.

A dog, with a small jewel etched upon his head is noticed from behind the pack.

It’s a Class 1 magical beast.

While we may be able to handle 3 Class 1 magical beasts, that is on the presumption that all 4 of the mercenaries work together well, and are not disturbed by ordinary animals.

In a crowd situation, we would need someone else to tank the remaining horde, while the remaining 3 focus on the beasts.

In this way, we would be able to handle 2 magical beasts without suffering casualties.

Without cooperation, from what I’ve seen, probably only the Ogre man is able to defeat a Class 1 magical beast in a 1-to-1 fight.

The mercenaries take up their positions, as the Ogre prepares to handle the magical beast.

The adventurer also steps forward, instead of his usual guard role, to control the horde in front instead.

Sylvia then takes the previous position of the Ogre man, controlling the horde as well.

She slams against the wolves with her large hammer, pushing them back quickly.

Unleashing the skill, ‘Swift Strike’, she makes up for the heavy nature of her hammer, being able to strike more often. This is a skill that can be learnt by all classes, which simply allows her attacks to land quicker.

However, the toll of the previous battle quickly caught up, as she starts to strike less. She starts panting harshly, clearly not used to extended battle. However, the small girl grits her teeth, showing determination as she pushed back the horde.

She starts using skills less often due to her fatigue.

Eventually, a dog breaks past her defense line, aiming straight at the long-ranged archer, Wind.

Wind arches up her eyebrows, shifting her gaze between the incoming dog and her attack targets.

However, she doesn't turn her bow to face the incoming dog.

As the dog nears her…

*CLANG*

A sound of metal is heard, as Zhe Yun shows off his skill, ‘Wind slash’, to intercept the wolf.

He quickly dispatches the dog, before shouting at Sylvia to pull back.

Sylvia looks at him for a moment before nodding hesitantly.

She retreats to Zhe Yun’s position, as Zhe Yun rushes forward.

He utilises a combination of many simple skills, like ‘Wind Slash’ and ‘Stone Wall’, to fend off the wolves.

He’s clearly more specialised in defense.

They continue this fight, as the horde grows smaller.

At this time, Wind fires an arrow using ‘Phantom Arrow’.

The Dog king strikes the arrow down, however, the shadow of the arrow emerges, striking the beast in his right eye.

The beast roars in pain.

The Ogre man, taking advantage of this, unleashes his ‘Additional Impact’ right at the Dog king.

Caught off guard, the Dog King is helplessly cut into two halves by the fierce Ogre man.

The Ogre man then returns to Zhe Yun’s location, intending to help him clear the rest away.

The dogs are only left with less than 10 of them at this point, as compared to their huge numbers before.

However, they chose not to retreat, even knowing that the Ogre man was about to join in the assault.

With the addition of the Ogre man, before long the last remaining dog lets out of soft whimper as it dies.

Since it’s not the main road, we ignore the corpses and quickly journey, everyone had the intention of returning to the much safer main road quickly.

As we set up camp at night, we decide to not light a fire, not wanting to attract beasts.

We settle for some simple bread.

As I pull apart the tough bread with my teeth, the exhausted Sylvia joins me for dinner as usual.

We simply chat casually, talking about lighter topics like the horrible bread and if the merchant has a wife at his age. There’s no point discussing about our current circumstances afterall.

If not for the merchant’s preparedness in hiring, this journey would likely have been much harder.

However, with such a lineup, we aren’t in a dangerous situation at all.

Even if we were to venture deeper into the forest, away from the main road, we would likely be safe.

We’re able to handle everything within the forest. The forest only has Class 1 magical beasts normally, so even the possible Class 2 magical beast we saw earlier is an anomaly that may not even exist.

What if we get surrounded by many magical beasts, you ask?

Well, that simply can’t happen, as two magical beasts have never been able to live under 1 roof in a pack.

If 2 magical beasts were to appear in the same pack, the newly evolved one would simply gather a part of the pack to leave the group.

The only exception is if a Class 2 magical beast were to exist, in which case it could command a few Class 1s, depending on how many it could subdue with its strength, taking over their packs.

In that case, we would simply escape. Preserving just our lives wouldn't be that hard.

As for the goods… they’ll be a pity in that case, but it can’t be helped.

We chatted in high spirits as usual, and soon the night grew dark.

As I bid her farewell, I notice my mood was much better. I got along well with this bright little girl…

You could even call her the first real friend I’ve made in this world.

I sigh softly before turning in, knowing that after this trip we’ll probably never meet again.