MMORPG: Rise of the Peerless Pumpkinmancer

A small wolf showed an extremely stern face, its large eyes resting on the orange portal. Next to it was its laughing master.

"You seem so solemn. Ever thought of doing modeling?" Jack teased.

"Woo?" (Modeling?)

"Actually, we'll have to do that 100%. I'm sure merch with your face on it would sell well." Jack said.

"Woo? Woo?!" (Face? Shirts? What?!)

"Oh, just an idea for a side hustle to make more money. Don't worry about it." Jack reassured.

"Woo!" (That's great!)

Moon Moon was a smart wolf. It knew by now that money was good, great even. Money was food, and money was potions. Potions were almost as great as food for a few reasons:

1. Potions taste sweet

2. Potions help beat up enemies

3. Potions are a beautiful red color

"Alright, let's go. It will be challenging, but I believe we can do this." Jack encouraged as they stepped inside.

[Entered Dimensional Dungeon Fox Grove!]

[Difficulty = Hellish]

"Now, let's just see the hardest content the tutorial has to offer!" Jack bellowed loudly.

This was a mistake— even the spawn was full of motherfucking foxes!

"Woo!?" (Shocked!)

For once, it wasn't the small wolf who had screwed up?! Was this possible? Well, not that it mattered too much.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━ YOU DIED! ━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

.

.

.

A death later, they were back—Jack at 0% XP…as usual (recently). Note to self: the dungeon's layout changes in the new difficulty.

"This one didn't count," Jack muttered, slightly embarrassed.

Then they were inside again, sneaking for dear life. The whole forest was full of monsters. It was as if the Infinite gods had just turned the spawn rate from 3/10 to 10/10!

Reaching the village was a huge pain, but they managed. Then there were the goddamn rats: they too were stronger! If before they were normal rats, they were now half-humanoid with incredibly long, sharp claws.

The party bravely watched the NPC get annihilated, the scene graphically gory. They silently closed the door, forgetting about the horror happening inside. It was easy since the screams didn't last long.

But then it happened.

— CRASH! —

The door splintered as the ugly face of one of the rat-men showed up through it. These guys were level 12 and so damn numerous. The real issue was that they were no longer confined to that one room.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━ YOU DIED! ━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Once more, they died, coming back peeved.

This time around, they threw the NPC in, grabbed the item they needed, and then ran like the wind. Were the rats out and roaming the village? Maybe, but they wouldn't check for sure!

The village would most probably end up utterly destroyed. Then again, it didn't really matter since they had ruthlessly sacrificed its last resident.

"Moon Moon, is it me, or did you become fatter recently?" Jack suddenly remarked.

"Woo?!" (Really?!)

But the wolf quickly realized what its master meant. It sure had become fatter: its shadow had! They both knew what this meant. They were about to get attacked!

They got ready for the upcoming fight, prepared for a surprise attack. That's when they felt a disturbance in the for— air!

— Blink! —

A humanoid fox cloaked in darkness suddenly appeared behind Jack's back. The sharp claws went straight for his heart and— missed!

"There you are! Good news Moon Moon, it seems you've lost weight all of a sudden!" Jack chuckled.

The creature screeched as it kept charging at him. This would be easy! He just had to be careful of the blink, the fast-paced attacks, and the ultimate shadow slice. As long as he was careful, this would soon be their victory!

"Now, let me show you the power of potions!" Jack thundered as the fight went on.

But there was something very wrong. As he drank a potion, he wasn't the only one glowing with healing magic. Nope, his adversary also did the same.

What?! How?!

There was now a link between their two shadows on the ground. The healing was transferred through it.

"You can heal?! This is bullshit!" He vehemently complained.

Jack was getting a taste of his own medicine for the first time. How many bosses had despaired seeing the small human heal infinitely with potions? Far too many! Now the playing field was finally equalized.

Perhaps it was hypocritical of him, but he couldn't help but feel that this was cheating. But this wouldn't stop him from fighting.

"You want to play this game? Then we'll fucking play this game!" He bellowed.

Next happened the most epic yet lamest fight ever.

The reason was simple: they kept trading blows with extreme intensity and amazing moves…but only did a bit of damage to one another. Then they'd just heal it all! It was unending!

But Jack had a trick up his sleeves. He stacked chicken marks on his enemy for a long fucking while.

Then, he finally dealt the finishing blow. Jack had to time it perfectly to make sure it wouldn't blink away.

— SLASH!! —

The mini-boss stared in shock as the bloody cleave removed all of its remaining HP in one go.

"That's what happens to naughty foxes!" Jack celebrated.

"Woo!" (Congratulations!)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rare Shadowy Belt

Rank F+

Level 10

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Armor Rating] 2

[Armor Type] Leather

[Durability] Great (Except Light)

[Attribute] +3 AGI

[Trait] + Shadow Affinity

[Passive] LOCKED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Oh damn! The belt was now dropping as a rare version?! It had a locked passive too. This could only mean one thing. He was missing something to activate it.

Chances were that it would require completing the dungeon.

"Now we just have the last boss to deal with! Let's do this!"

They happily journeyed toward it. How hard could it actually be? Would it also regenerate all of a sudden? They would soon see.

<Protector of the Fox Grove! Lv 12!>

It was even higher level, but they could do this, right?

"Tonight, we're eating fox hot pot!!" Jack shouted as a war cry.

"Woo?!" (What's hotpot?!)

Wait, did it really matter? No, it was something that was eaten! The wolf couldn't help but look forward to it. They really had to defeat the enemy now!

"Woo!" (For the hotpot!)

They charged at the imposing creature and began beating it up. Every time Jack blocked a hit, he felt his arm grow numb and his body get pushed back.

-4

-4

-4

This was a lot of fucking damage considering how well he was playing. This one would be extremely challenging!

But a few seconds later, they realized the true horror of the Hellish boss. It still had the same Mirage ability….but this time, the clones were fucking real!

"Woo!" (Panicking)

Moon Moon was utterly confused. It focused on using its nose as it previously did, but something was odd. What the heck was this?! They all smelled the same or close now! How was this possible?!

They realized the ability's power the hard way as the fight suddenly turned into a 2 v 20! The clones weren't as strong as the boss, but they were such a goddamn pain!

They fought hard, but after about a minute, they were overwhelmed.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━ YOU DIED! ━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

As they respawned, Jack could only sigh. Clearing it was easy, but adequately doing so was hard as fuck! It seemed he had underestimated the tutorial once again.

"Woo?" (Inquisitive)

"What are we going to do? We're heading to the Wolf Den now. We'll come back to Hellish later on. One thing for sure: we won't give up." Jack explained.

Sometimes it was necessary to take a step back to progress faster. Hopefully, this next dungeon would work well…