Chapter 409 Expedition To The Frozen Region: Frozen Vultures And Snow Hyenas
With the death of the Mistfall Turtle of the Damned, the soldiers and some people expert in salvaging materials from carcasses of monsters started to harvest materials from the giant carcass of the behemoth turtle. Almira is the one who is leading the salvage operations to grab different materials from the Mistfall Turtle of the Damned. So she cannot attend to help her disciple and decided to hand him over to everyone else.
"I didn\'t know you could pass out in-game without logging out," Bladeheart\'s father carried his unconscious body to the nearest vacant seat.
"It usually happens if he used too much mana, it was a realistic effect that is added for realism and to also teach players that having a full intake of mana most of the time is going to leave you vulnerable. He will be fine after sleeping for a bit," Harmless Sparrow explained.
"You have experienced this before?" Bladeheart\'s mother asked.
"Not really, aunty. Although I was on the verge of getting into this situation, it didn\'t actually happen. On the other hand, Dolly already did."
Bladeheart\'s parents turned to look at Dolly.
"Ehehehe, well, I thought it would be fine since it was a game, turns out, there are some side effects I didn\'t have any idea existed."
"Most players who suffer this much especially if they pushed themselves too hard are the Magician classes. If they didn\'t have the [Mana Regeneration] passive learned, they will constantly feel headaches every time their mana reaches the critical levels which is why it is was a good idea to refill the mana once it is almost down to the critical levels due to this. Then there is the excessive mana release where the user will expend lots of mana in one go. There are some chances that nothing will happen to you but if your mind is not used to it, you will collapse, according to some players who keep on experiencing this, the more they experience collapsing every time they run out of mana, the more they can resist the possibility of collapsing from getting drained with mana. This is also the main reason why the skill [Mana Drain] and [Mana Burn] from some enemies especially the Necromancers is dangerous especially if you are not used to having your mana fully drained," Sigma explained.
"That was one hell of a detail. I didn\'t know that, until now," Hagane rubbed his chin.
"The most vulnerable ones of this phenomenon are the magic users, as for the players like Swordsman, Samurai, Paladin, Berserker, and other classes that focus more on basic attacks and some skills had somewhat high immunity of this phenomenon. For example, Mr. Teddy runs out of mana to use his skills, he won\'t pass out due to it."
"Huh? Why is that? Aren\'t the effects of being run dry from mana will cause you to collapse?"
"Not really, when we say Mana, it is the energy used to conjure magic. Players who are more in magic spells are vulnerable to that, however, as for the warrior classes, who rely more on their weapons than on their skills, the reason they have mana is to use them for skills. More like external energy that can get easily exhausted once a skill is used and is not similar to the MP magicians and other classes that have a high mana pool. That is why the category of the Warrior classes has usually a small amount of Mp compared to classes that utilize magic since the latter uses the real mana while the former uses the energy in their body. It is also the main reason why they have faster MP regeneration compared to magic oriented classes that would rely on [Mana Regeneration] passive or anything similar to that just to keep them having some mana to spare."
"So as melee fighters are not afflicted to this?" Iron asked,
"Not really, I heard you can still experience this kind of thing but it leans more on too much exhaustion rather than on running out of mana," Sigma carefully explained.
They still wanted to discuss things when the sniper from the last carriage appeared while carrying his rifle.
"Oh, there you are guys. All of us have a job to do. And I don\'t think we will be having a good rest for a bit due to this."
"Is something happening? I thought we are done since the main enemy is dead," Bladeheart\'s mother tilted her head with a confused look on her face.
"Unfortunately, that would have at least made our lives much easier if that was the case but since we are in the frozen region, things still happen. Come, I will explain once we get there."
Despite not knowing what is going to be in store for them, everyone followed the sniper and there they saw the soldiers fighting against smaller but big enough to be considered threat monsters. Everyone is doing fine but it seems there are a number of disadvantages against the humans especially since the monsters just have overwhelming numbers compared to the soldiers fighting them.
"Dang, they are getting numerous," the sniper grit his teeth.
"Alright, I am seeing a lot of experience fodder before us! We can\'t afford to miss this chance!" Hagane prepares his two shields.
They rush towards the site where the carcass of the Mistfall Turtle of the Damned is lying. There, they saw white birds circling around the carcass while on the ground, white dog monsters are harassing the soldiers and are circling around them, while their noises seem to be giggling.
"These damnable f*ckers...they always appear whenever a dead body of a monster or a human appears. They are not that dangerous but they are very persistent in trying to grab a bite from the carcass. Our goal here is to at least get rid of them. Killing them is optional but that is still a viable approach."
Everyone nodded and they started to deal with the little monsters. At first, they were easy to deal with due to their sheer numbers but over time, they started to get annoying and troublesome as not only do they have high agility to dodge attacks, it also seems to be like they are adapting to your attack patterns.
Whenever they try to attack, there are times they got tricked by them, and the attacks that were meant to land miss miserably. This also rubs salt into the wound whenever the white dogs started laughing like they were mocking the efforts of everyone.
"These guys... are some kind of Hyena? I can\'t catch a glimpse of their names since they attack so fast and I have to defend my blindspot," Hagane gritted his teeth.
"Yeah, they are known as Snow Hyenas. Highly intelligent monsters that are capable of making tactics to steal food and to annoy hunters just for their game to be stolen by them," the sniper explained.
"Then what about those birds? They seemed to be just circling around," Hagane then points out those white birds in the sky, circling just above the Carcass.
"Those guys are the Frozen Vultures. They aren\'t that troublesome and they don\'t attack humans, however, they are one of the signs we use to find if a nearby pack of the Snow Hyenas are nearby since they two appear simultaneously. So, you can say they are important as well if we wanted to know whether these guys are around or not."
"So you guys don\'t kill them?"
"We don\'t as they don\'t pose any threat though we usually hunt them especially if they are going to pick on our game. They are fast flyers and they are big and if they catch the prey we hunted, we are always doomed to fail to get any food, especially before where the kingdom is still flourishing and our primary source of food is hunting."
With the explanation of the sniper, the crew understood that these monsters are just similar to their real-life counterparts. It was not an exaggeration that they can be troublesome in hunting and seeing them in action, makes someone think whether they are really not threatening or not.
Almira remained observant of the surroundings. She just keeps on glancing around while still maintaining her focus on the main job. Since most of the workers are quite efficient with their job, the Mistfall Turtle of the Damned\'s carcass is being processed smoothly.
Of course, with the Snow Hyenas keeping on interrupting the work, it was a troublesome way to prolong the work.
After a few hours of attacking, another batch of soldiers has returned from resting.
"You guys should go rest now, There is no point fighting against the hyenas without a rest, you guys will just be exhausted and collapse before you can even get rid of them. Let\'s go and alternate our roles so that we can at least finish defending everything."
Now everyone understood why the difficulty of this quest is Very Hard, it is because the job you have in here is something that seems a slave driver likes you to do.