"Captain, there are fresh berries out here in this forest."
Caius ignored his men and looked around the landscape and trees, where the magical portal that was opened to them by the dungeon boss dropped them off after they had proved their strength. He lost a lot of his men in that fight and was now left with 5 men, including himself, which made it 6.
'There is nothing here.' Caius thought, but he still couldn't let himself relax; he was so guarded that if any monster jumped out of one of the bushes for a surprise attack, he was ready to defend himself with his two daggers. 'I find it hard to believe that any part of Hlasked is safe.'
At that very thought, one of Caius's men started choking hard on poisonous berries; Caius sighed and felt like he jinxed himself.
"Where the fuck is the damn healer?" He asked in rage; he didn't want to lose another teammate when it had not been long since he lost the others.
"He's dead." One of his other teammates said. "He didn't make it out of the dungeon with us."
Caius ran his hand through his hair and pulled at it in frustration before letting go of his teammate, who was about to die.
The man's eyes bulge as foaming spit comes out of his mouth in disgust. His hand gripped at his throat, and he couldn't even let out a sound. The deadly berries were silent killers.
"I warned him not to eat it, but he didn't listen to me." A female voice spoke from Caius's team.
It was dangerous for them when Caius was angry; he was the type of man who relieved his anger by beating others until he was satisfied. Things weren't so bad when their healer was alive to heal whoever got beat up, but now that the healer was gone, their situations were looking bad, and Caius was the sort of captain who didn't want anyone to quit from his team; saying yes to them meant he was going to kill them.
"Don't worry, Marta, I'm in a good mood today." Caius smiled and forcefully grabbed Marta by the waist; she didn't dare scream or make any sound to go against him. She had seen what happened to girls who did and didn't want to be like one of them, and now that Caius's favorite girl toy was dead, Marta was the only female left on the team; her body structure didn't appeal to Caius. A displeased look crossed his face as he shamelessly stared at Marta's chest and wondered if she had always been so flat. He harshly pushed Marta away; her body hit the ground. Angry tears filled her eyes, but she didn't dare stand up against Caius. "Touching you is disgusting." He wiped his hand on one of his men's chests. "How are you any different from a guy? We are going to be needing more recruits in this team, and as for those of you who aren't dead yet, make sure you work hard to prove yourself useful to me; if not…" He left his words incomplete, but his cold voice was enough to tell them what would happen if they went against him.
"Should I check around if there are other players?" A guy in Caius's team asked with a trembling voice.
"I think we are the first team who had successfully made it out of that hell." Caius said arrogantly, although he didn't feel the hell was over. "From the video our new villain made earlier, I can tell that he's still in the dungeon. I'm going to kill that loser who thinks he's something because he now has a system, but before I kill him, I will kill that bastard Thorin first and be the new hero of this game. I'm stronger than those two weaklings."
"Are we going to go back to the dungeon so that you can kill them?" One of Caius's teammates asked in confusion.
Caius glared at him before he continued, "We are not going back in there." Caius didn't want to fight against that beast again; although they won, that beast was still alive and couldn't die. It was the first time his life has been endangered since the game started. "We will wait for them to come out of the dungeon."
'That is if they manage to make it out alive.'
—------------------------------------------------------
Captain Zarek held his gigantic sword on his shoulder. He was shirtless, full of muscles, and had a mean look on his face that made Morwen gulp down in fear as his captain stepped on the wolf-like monsters that he had slain on the ground to get to where he was.
"Are you sure that your magic is working properly?" Zarek asked, "I want to honor that guy's invitation by defeating him first before moving to that so-called chosen hero." He was trying to track Lucian in the dungeon through one of his teammates that had a rare tracking magic.
Zarek was starting to doubt Morwen's magic; instead of coming across Lucian as planned, he came across two groups of monsters fighting against each other and got involved when the monsters decided that fighting a human was easier than fighting themselves. The monsters he came across were low-rank wolf-like monsters and strange pig-like monsters with bat wings.
"My abilities are working, sir." Morwen said even though Zarek, like the others, was the same age as him. But with Zarek's strong body build, along with the way he fought and killed like a street gangster, a lot of his teammates called him "sir" and "captain," never by his name.
Zerek narrowed his eyes at Morwen and placed his sword down. His weapon was a special weapon given to him as a reward by his system after he had reached a high level of combat.
"I don't care how rare and special your ability is; if you don't find me that villain, you are dead. I don't accept failures in my team, and you in particular have been nothing but a drag on this team. This is the first time you have been asked to actually do something, so you better do it right. Don't make me regret all the times I had to save your weak ass."
Morwen had tricked his way into Zarek's team, pretending as though he was strong with a special ability, but the only power his system gave him was a tracking ability, which was useless in a fight against monsters.
One of the wolf-like monsters who wasn't dead rose up like a zombie and quickly dashed towards Zarek.
With brute strength, Zarek grabs its jaw and rips its face apart in two. He picked up his sword and looked around his surroundings, wondering if any other dead beast was going to come back to life.
'To think a weakling was able to become the villain.' Zarek thought with a smile on his face. He didn't know how Lucian was able to do it, but the idea of fighting someone strong made him excited.