Hours later...

"Man..." Uhtred muttered as he watched Diya, Dennis, and Minh Quan fight against a Level 3 monitor lizard.

"This is just... woeful."

Even with Dennis’s fast thinking, even with Minh Quan’s decisive ruthlessness, and with Diya’s healing support, the three had only been able to take down the Level 3 beast after nearly ten minutes of battle.

Uhtred had purposely let them take on the beast themselves. He wanted to gauge just how much work he had in store and whether or not it was even feasible for them to truly follow him deeper into Zone 1.

Regardless of how much he felt they would be useful to him, if they couldn’t even keep up with the weakest of beasts, then he couldn’t be bothered to play the role of a nanny. He had his own path of ascension to climb.

Of course, to be very certain, right before they left Zone 0, Uhtred had asked for the exact details of Dennis’ and Minh Quan’s classes, the two men who had shown clear interest in following him outside the safe zone.

Uhtred already had an idea of Dennis’ class being related to something intellectual and non-combatant, but Minh Quan was a very blank slate. He had no idea whatsoever. He only knew the man was an old soldier, one adept at torture techniques, apparently. But aside from that he knew nothing else.

However, from his brief "interview" with them, he’d come to know their exact classes, and more importantly, their class grades.

Minh Quan’s class was called "Relentless Hound." The name was extremely badass, if Uhtred said so himself. But that was the only thing badass about the class, because the grade itself was nothing really that amazing. Minh Quan’s class fell under the Uncommon Grade, with only the Common Grade being less than it.

Bearing that class grade in mind, Minh Quan’s performance in their fight against the monitor lizard just now was even somewhat good.

For Diya and Dennis, however, they were the two whom Uhtred felt the most disappointed with. Diya was an Epic Grade talent, and Dennis had a Rare Grade class. Both of them were above Minh Quan, but they had performed even weaker than he had.

Of course, most of it was due to the specific nature of their classes themselves. Diya was a "Healer Mage," and Dennis had a class called "Insight Adept."

Diya’s class was self-explanatory. She healed people, and the mage aspect of her class gave her the ability to do battle to an extent. Essentially, she could weaponize her medical abilities depending on her level of knowledge... at least that was what she explained to Uhtred.

Meanwhile, Dennis, on the other hand, was totally intellectual. The man had not been joking when he said he was a non-combatant. If this was an RPG game, Dennis’ role would be to stay at the far back of any party, observe the whole battlefield, come up with strategies and plans, then call out orders to the entire party.

The man’s Insight Class boosted his mental acuity. And in battle, it helped him to spot patterns, spot weaknesses in an opponent, and come up with plans on the fly.

In their fight just now, he was the one calling out orders, and he had also been the one to quickly figure out that the monitor lizard’s skin was extremely thick. And that they should find a way to pin it down and try to break its bones instead.

"Well..." Uhtred let out a light sigh, "...at least none of them died."

He looked at the three huffing individuals. They were sitting on the ground, gasping for breath after they had all joined forces to hold down the body of the monitor lizard to kill it by snapping its neck.

Their fight just now was extremely woeful, but he could see some potential there. It was their first fight after all, and they still had a lot of room to grow into. Uhtred himself had not been particularly graceful in his first fight with the monitor lizard.

"Yeah... I should probably cut them some slack," Uhtred rubbed his face in embarrassment, remembering how the first monitor lizard had dragged him all across the forest floor and through the bushes, scratching his skin open in several places.

"Alright then," Uhtred clapped, drawing their attention. "That was... not bad for a first try. A few more fights and you would at least be able to hold your own and not be a hindrance to me."

His words were raw and direct, but it was true, and none of them took offense to it. They had been the ones to volunteer, after all.

"So here’s how things are gonna go," Uhtred squatted and began to draw on the ground, and the three scooted closer to see what he was drawing.

"Right now, we’re about twenty miles away from Zone 0. We can’t even say we’re into Zone 1 yet based on how large an area Zone 1 covers. The beast you guys just faced is only the tip of the iceberg."

He drew the picture of a long winding river, demarcating their position with an X close to the area he drew as Zone 0. He was directly copying out what he could see on his map from his interface, so it was a very correct representation.

He drew a line trailing from their position straight upriver, cutting well into Zone 1.

"We would have to form a camp somewhere around here, a base where we could always retreat to. It could be a cave or something, but it has to be somewhere around here," he drew a circle near the midpoint of Zone 1.

Diya sucked in a breath. "How soon do you expect us to do this?"

Even she could tell, especially now that she had faced a beast out here, that the creatures they would face that far deep into Zone 1 would be on a whole different level compared to the Level 3 monitor lizard they had just struggled with.

"Huh?" Uhtred looked at her with a raised brow, before he realized exactly what she was asking. "Oh no, I don’t expect you guys to push this far yet."

He let out a light chuckle.

"That’s just the long-term goal. Just think of our camp as a continuously moving one. I’m the one who gets to push ahead first and scout out the area. I will also use the chance to grind and gain levels," he explained. "None of the beasts here offer much benefit to me."

"Oh?" Diya looked genuinely surprised. And even Dennis, who usually had his expression in check, couldn’t help the surprise that flicked through his eyes.

His surprise quickly disappeared, however, and he looked more like he was reassessing Uhtred and coming to a conclusion about the estimate of his level.

"Yeah. I’m that high leveled," Uhtred nodded, then the look in his eyes changed.

"And that reminds me," he stood up and stared them all in the eye one-by-one. "Now that you’ve chosen to follow me, you’re going to see a lot of things... things that I don’t want others to know about..."

He paused, letting the silence carry his meaning.

"No matter what you see, it remains with you. I don’t want to hear a word of it out of anyone else. Do you understand my meaning?"