Chapter 38: Grinding time
The next day came, the second day of hunting and the whole team were awake. Jake woke up to do his daily quest as usual. After doing his quest, he decided to check his status screen which displayed.
<Status>
<User: Jake Lucas>
<Level: 8>
<Combat level: Novice>
<Skill level: Untrained>
<XP level: 210/800>
<HP: 30/30>
<Strength: 30>
<Agility:26>
<Endurance: 33>
**************************
Jake decided to do more physical exercises and push himself further than his limit and after one hour thirty minutes of exercising, he was finally rewarded by the system.
<User has pushed himself passed his limit. The system has decided to reward him.>
<Strength; +3, Agility+3, endurance +1>
'Huh?!? Why did the system decided to give me +1 in Endurance while the rest are +3?'
"I don't know." Zee answered.
After pondering about the likely scenario, Jake just decided to leave it at that and check his status screen again to confirm the rewards.
<Status>
<User: Jake Lucas>
<Level: 8>
<Combat level: Novice>
<Skill level: Untrained>
<XP level: 200/800>
<HP: 30/30>
<Strength: 33>
<Agility:29>
<Endurance: 34>
***********************
"Well at least it really gave me the rewards." Jake shrugged and headed back to his dorm room to freshen up. After the whole room were done bathing, they waited for an hour before they were called to take their breakfast. After a few minutes of eating, they rested for two hours before they were told they could go into the hunting grounds.
Before they left, Kate decided to ask something. "Sophia, are you sure you really wanna do this?"
"Yes I am very sure I wanna do this."
"Fine then, I guess there's no stopping you then."
They all head off to the green zone, when they got there, Sophia, Jack and Peter split off from them to head into the orange zone meanwhile Kate couldn't help but be worried about them.
"Calm down and stop worrying, they will be alright besides what could go wrong?" Jake said heading off to begin hunting.
The team started hunting the sand worms like before but this time, knowing the strategy of hunting, they had an easier time of killing the beasts faster. After an hour of hunting, Jake decided to stop hunting.
"Ah damn! I'm tired of hunting these beasts. I'm not even sure they are gonna be worth anything when we get back to the academy."
"I agree with you." Cindy said. "This is quite boring, the beast are to easy to kill well that is if you know the strategy."
"So what do you want to do?" Kate asked. "Head Into the orange zone like Sophia?"
"I don't mean it that way." Cindy apologized. "I meant we could explore another area of the green zone. I'm pretty sure that they are more hunting grounds of the green zone around."
"Well I kinda like that idea." Jake said.
"Fine." Kate said getting ready to explore another area. 'i just hope Sophia and the rest are okay.'
Meanwhile when Sophia and the guys split up from the others, they made their way to the orange zone unknown to them that a team were trailing behind them but a little bit farther away from them so they won't be discovered.
"Are you sure of this?" One of the members of the opposing team asked his leader.
"Yes I am sure of it." Ben replied. "I will make they sure they pay for stealing my crystal from me."
"But they are heading into the orange zone" the earlier student who's name is Clark said. "There could be dangerous beasts in there."
"Didn't you listen to what the sergeants said, they said the highest beast here is an intermediate beast and he said the chances of encountering one is very slim." Ben said.
"Besides we can handle ourselves, we are not weak either." Another student that goes by the name of Liam said.
It was only Ben, Liam and Clark that were trailing behind Sophia while the rest of their team were hunting in the green zone. They were all already hunting in the green zone when Ben spotted Sophia and the guys splitting up so he decided to follow them with his own team and he saw that they were heading into the orange zone.
Sophia and the guys walked a bit more before they came across their first beast. The place they were in currently had torn down buildings all over and scurrying out of the buildings was a beast that looked a bit like a dog but it was bigger than a normal dog. The dog was big like a mini bicycle and this type of beasts were called Dogsy.
It came out of the building and ran at a fast speed towards Sophia and their group.
Sophia looked towards the guys. "Are you ready?" And they both nodded and prepared their respective weapons. The beast lunged towards Jack who was in front of the team. With a swing of his blade, Jack hit the beast back and then put a little bit of distance between them. Immediately, the beast stood up and charged right at the group but this time, Peter and Sophia were a little bit faster.
They got to either side of the beast and slashed with their weapons therefore killing the beast. "That was a little bit hard. But thank heavens we managed to pull it off." Peter heaved a sigh of relief.
"Come on, let's extract the core and let's move on." Sophia said heading to the dead beast and started looking for the beast core. After some time, she managed to find the core then she threw back for the guys to keep safe.
And then they moved closer to the buildings so they could hunt more beasts. Meanwhile, Ben and his group were still far back watching their every move.
"Are we gonna make our move to?" Liam asked.
"No not yet. It's not yet time." Ben replied and then they continued watching Sophia and her team that were slowly inching closer to the center of the buildings.
And that was when they heard scurrying from all around. "Well good thing that this place if filled with beasts." Sophia said preparing herself for battle. "it's time for grinding." And then jumping out of all the buildings, were Dogsys.