MMORPG: Rise of the Peerless Pumpkinmancer

They had spawned in a small cave, one filled with the musky smell of fur and the iron one of blood. Bones were lying all over the place.

As soon as he saw this, Jack's face changed.

"We gotta get the fuck away from here!"

As if on cue, wolf howls resounded from the exterior. The wolves living here were coming back from their hunt right the fuck now! In about a minute, this place would be crawling with them!

This was definitely a player trap.

The usual party would carefully proceed while exploring their surrounding. Perhaps they would even establish a defense perimeter. It would be a great mistake! The wolves would then come back and happily slaughter everyone.

What kind of idiot had placed the spawn into enemy territory? Jack believed this was 100% intentional. Somewhere a sadistic Dev had to be chuckling while thinking about the shit they had allowed the AI to do.

They were confronted with a nightly sky, an open area, and a river lazily flowing on the side as they exited the cave.

Jack instantly cheered up.

"See the stream? It will hide our scent. Mindlessly running away is the best way to get a wolf pack tracking us until we become their food.

"Woo?" (Wondering)

"Nope, diplomacy won't work on that one. The wolves in the New Leaf Forest give you face but only because of the wolf progenitor. This place is a different realm entirely. You have to be careful about every move you make." Jack advised.

"Woo!" (Nodding thoughtfully)

Jack couldn't help but chuckle. He had adopted a young master, one lording over the beginner forest. It was now discovering that the world wasn't as peaceful as it had initially thought. Not all wolves were friends.

Oh well, one couldn't remain innocent forever.

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

It really was time to get the fuck away. They approached the river carefully.

Jack murmuring:

"Be careful. We don't know what…."

But his pet had been way too excited at the prospect of swimming. It seemingly lost its mind without heading the warning as it was already jumping straight in!

— Splash! —

It happily began paddling around, dog-paddle style. When was the last time it had seen such a large body of water? Actually….never! No matter how it racked its memory, never had it seen such wonder!

But this happy moment was about to take a dark turn. Jack suddenly noticed a dark patch moving toward his pet.

"Get out of the water! Right the fuck now!" Jack shouted at the naive wolf.

Sadly, it was far too late. It tried to swim back to safety when it happened. The dark patch finally reached it before rising to the surface. A second later, blood filled the water as the little wolf cried out in anguish.

<Piranha School Level 8>

Well…fuck! Piranhas began devouring him alive. They dug their saw-blade-like teeth into the soft flesh. The wolf already couldn't swim. Even then, they couldn't wait till it completely sunk.

Many were throwing themselves violently at it, flying in arcs above the water. Before Jack could do anything, it was already over.

His pet sunk to the bottom, its pitiful howls resounding in the quiet forest, then it disappeared, dead.

Jack sighed. He hadn't expected such a huge reaction to water. Was it the first time it had seen a river? Most probably. It would take a little while for it to respawn. In the meantime, he would be able to explore this place and—

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

At that very moment, Jack knew that he was screwed. On one side, there were deadly piranhas, and on the other, wolves were appearing, 20 of them!

They had seemingly heard the dying howls and come over to check the situation out. They quickly encircled him, growling while licking their lips in expectation. Goddammit!

Jack didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This was such a rookie mistake for him! This was all because he had never tamed such a young pup before.

As the wolves surrounded him and pounced, their deadly claws magnified in front of his face. He blocked…the first beast. But then there were the 19 others. Needless to say, his end was as fast as painful.

-4

-4

-4

-4

-…

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━ YOU DIED! ━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Jack felt death claim him, and a second later, he was back in the spawn area, only to hear another headache incoming.

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

— Howl! —

And now the wolves were freaking coming back! This was adding injury to injury! As he saw the first ones appear, he didn't hesitate even a second.

"System, get me out of this dungeon!"

[Would you like to exit the Wolf Den?]

"YES!!"

[Are you sure? All Dungeon Progress will be lost.]

But it was already too late. The wolves had already begun tearing him apart, their teeth sinking into his limbs.

-4

-4

-4

-4

-…

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━ YOU DIED! ━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

.

.

.

.

.

.

A few seconds later, Jack was respawning. He didn't waste any time as he shouted, akin to a madman.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Just as he thought he would die another time, the system finally registered his choice. He disappeared from that annoying dungeon.

As soon as he noticed that he was back in the New Leaf Forest, Jack sighed in relief. They would need to be way more careful next time for sure.

For now, he would just wait for his pet and….but suddenly, he heard a low growl.

— Growl! —

On the side, there was a random wolf pup tearing up. It had been so happy to have its friend come back from the weird glowing silver portal. But, said friend was nowhere to be seen.

There was only its bloodied master standing there. The youngling had obviously died.

The problem was that next to the grieving pup was a menacing Wolf Progenitor. With the pup gone, it didn't have any reason to spare Jack's life.

"Fuck." Was his last word.

A gaping maw suddenly enveloped his head before crushing it with a crisp Crunch!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━ YOU DIED! ━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

.

.

.

.

As Jack respawned in the village, he couldn't help but sigh. This had sure been a shitshow. But just as he was about to leave, he was ambushed!

"Teacher, you're back, great! I need your help with something." Bubblegum came out of nowhere and eagerly latched unto him, not letting him run away.

"…Sure."

He'd at least see what this was about....