Chapter 6: [6] : The Iron Jawed Hounds, Testing

The glowing yellow eyes moved closer to the edge of the firelight. The low scraping growls grew louder and echoed off the dead trees.

"Get behind the fire," Kendra ordered. Her voice was tight with panic. She kept her bow drawn and her eyes darted between the pairs of glowing eyes. "They can’t come into the safe zone. The system said so."

Sloane backed up. Her hands glowed with that faint green healing light. "Yeah, but we can’t stay by this fire forever. If they just wait us out, we’ll starve."

The monsters stepped out of the fog and into the dim orange light of the camp.

They looked like wolves but their biology was completely wrong. Their bodies were covered in thick matted gray fur but heavy plates of rusted iron grew directly out of their shoulders and spines.

The worst part was their mouths. Their jaws were disproportionately large and their teeth were jagged interlocking pieces of solid steel.

Floating text appeared above the pack leader.

[Biological State]

↳ Name: Iron Jawed Hound

↳ Level: 4

↳ HP: 400 / 400

Declan counted them. Five hounds. Level 4.

That meant they were twice as strong as the Razor Boar he had killed earlier.

"Level 4," Kendra whispered in despair.

"We’re Level 1. I don’t even have a combat skill yet."

"Shoot one," Declan said calmly.

Kendra glared at him. "Are you crazy? If I aggro them, they might figure out a way past the barrier!"

"Just shoot it," Declan repeated. "Let’s see what we’re working with."

Kendra gritted her teeth. She adjusted her aim and let the arrow fly. It sliced through the rain and hit the lead hound squarely in the forehead.

Clang!

The wooden arrow shattered into splinters against the iron plate on the hound’s skull.

The beast didn’t even flinch. A tiny pathetic number popped up over its head.

[-2 HP]

[HP: 398 / 400]

Sloane let out a shaky breath. "Oh we’re so dead. We do two damage and they have four hundred health. This is a wipe." 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The lead hound snarled and grew angry now.

It paced along the invisible ten meter border of the campfire and snapped its steel jaws.

The sound was like a bear trap slamming shut.

The other four hounds joined in. They paced and snarled as they waited for the players to step out of the light.

Kendra lowered her bow and her shoulders slumped. "We can’t fight them. We just have to log off and hope they despawn."

"There is no log off, remember?" Sloane snapped.

Declan ignored them. He was staring at the hounds and doing the math in his head.

His base HP was still 100. He hadn’t bothered spending any of his unspent Stat Points from leveling up yet; he wanted to see what stats he actually needed before locking them in.

His base defense was basically zero without his gear. But he had the +10 Predator’s Coat. The system said it gave him 50 defense.

In a normal RPG, 50 defense at Level 3 was an absurd mid game stat. He wanted to know exactly how that translated to the physics of the Grid.

If he was going to survive in this meat grinder, he needed to know his limits.

"Stay by the fire," Declan said.

He took a step forward and left the warmth of the camp.

"What are you doing?!" Sloane yelled. "Get back here you suicidal idiot! I can’t heal you through that kind of damage!"

Declan didn’t listen. He walked right to the edge of the invisible barrier. The five hounds stopped pacing. They all turned to face him and their yellow eyes locked onto his dark coat. Drool dripped from their steel teeth.

Declan stepped over the line into the dark mud.

Instantly, the lead hound lunged. It crossed the ten foot gap in a fraction of a second. It leaped through the air with its jaws opened wide and aimed straight for Declan’s throat.

Declan didn’t dodge. He didn’t pull out his cleaver.

He just raised his left arm to protect his neck and let the beast hit him.

The hound clamped its massive steel toothed jaws directly onto Declan’s forearm.

The force of the jump pushed Declan back a foot and his boots slid in the mud.

Kendra screamed. Sloane covered her eyes.

Declan braced for the agony. He waited for his arm to be ripped clean off.

Instead, he heard a loud violent CRUNCH!

It wasn’t his bones breaking.

The hound let out a high pitched yelp of pain and dropped off Declan’s arm. It tumbled into the mud. The beast was pawing frantically at its own mouth. Three of its jagged steel teeth lay in the mud completely shattered.

Declan looked at his left arm. The Predator’s Coat didn’t even have a scratch on it. The black fabric was totally intact. He felt the pressure of the bite like someone had squeezed his arm really hard but there was no pain. No blood.

He checked his health bar.

[HP: 98 / 100]

The Level 4 monster had done exactly two damage to him.

"Well," Declan smiled. A cold dangerous look appeared in his eyes. "That answers that."

He reached into his inventory. The +10 Chipped Cleaver materialized in his right hand. The jagged crimson edge gleamed in the dim light of the campfire.

The other four hounds saw their leader injured and attacked all at once. They rushed Declan from the front and the sides.

Declan didn’t bother defending. He didn’t need to. He let one hound bite his thigh. The teeth slid off the thick leather of the coat.

Another hound slammed its paws against his chest. Declan just leaned into the impact and completely ignored the monsters hitting him.

He raised the cleaver and swung.

He brought the blade down on the neck of the hound biting his leg. It wasn’t a clean chop. Declan’s strength was still too low to cut through their thick muscles. The blade just scored a shallow gash across the beast’s shoulder.

But the Hemorrhage trait activated immediately.

A geyser of dark blood exploded from the hound’s shoulder. The beast shrieked and instantly let go of Declan. It collapsed into the mud as its health bar drained by fifty points a second.

Declan spun around. He slashed the cleaver in a wide sloppy arc. The blade grazed the noses of two other hounds.

Boom! Boom!

Both hounds erupted in fountains of blood.

They thrashed wildly in the mud. They completely ignored Declan as the unblockable bleed effect melted their health pools.

The lead hound was missing half its teeth and tried to run away into the fog. Declan stepped forward and casually dragged the tip of the cleaver across its hind leg. Three seconds later, it was dead.

The entire fight took less than twenty seconds.

Declan stood in the middle of a literal bloodbath. The mud was dyed entirely red.

Five massive hound corpses lay around him and slowly dissolved into blue pixels.

System notifications spammed his vision.

[Experience Points Gained: 300]

[Experience Points Gained: 300]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[You are now Level 5.]

Declan shook the blood off his cleaver and dismissed it back into his inventory. He turned around and walked back into the light of the campfire.

Sloane and Kendra were frozen like statues.

Kendra’s bow had slipped out of her hands and was sitting in the mud. Sloane’s mouth was hanging open. They stared at Declan as if he were a ghost.

The jaws of both girls dropped as they stared at Declan as though he had run mad!

They had just watched a guy tank five Level 4 monsters without dodging. He wore a coat that literally broke their teeth and killed them all with paper cut wounds that made them explode!

Declan sat back down on his rock. He wiped a drop of hound blood off his cheek.

He looked at Sloane and Kendra.

"So," Declan said casually. "Got any more of that burnt meat?"