A cave was certainly the kind of place that might have monsters for him to kill. Well, an MMORPG would have monsters to kill basically everywhere. Kael just had to figure out if it was a place worth his time.
The monsters couldn't be so strong that he couldn't kill them, but they also couldn't be so weak that they wouldn't give him a decent amount of EXP. He had to find the perfect balance.
But that was easier said than done. Sure, the players joining the game in the coming months would have guides showing them the best places to grind, but Kael was the one exploring the world firsthand.
And that was exactly what made the game exciting for him. He wanted to explore it, to find things on his own. The thrill of discovering a special grinding spot before anyone else was just too good to pass up.
Anyway, he stepped into the cave, moving slowly, constantly scanning his surroundings. Monsters could be really weird in this game. Some had camouflage, others might even turn invisible. Charging in without paying attention was basically asking to die.
"I really hope this is a good place to level up," he muttered.
At first, there were no creatures around. It was hard to see anything inside the cave. Kael had a torch with him, but honestly, it wasn't the best thing to carry.
The biggest problem was having to hold it. It slowed his movements and made it impossible to use one of his hands. Luckily, that wasn't too much of a problem—he could wield his beast claw with just one hand anyway.
Kael was starting to think the place was empty when suddenly—something attacked him. One of the harmless-looking rocks in the cave wasn't a rock at all. It was some kind of crab, and it pinched his leg from behind!
The attack chunked 30 points off his health, which was pretty bad considering he only had 140 HP total.
"Fuck," he hissed.
Kael spun around to face it.
[Stone Crab]
[Level: 4]
Level 4. Way stronger than anything he'd fought so far. Those wolves from earlier were basically toddlers compared to this thing.
But instead of being scared, Kael grinned. Finding a higher-level monster meant only one thing—faster leveling. Assuming he could kill it, of course.
Kael prepared his one and only skill—Beast Claw. It was the only attack he had, but the power was ridiculously high.
It had been enough to one-shot the wolves earlier, but this was a level 4 monster. Way stronger. He wasn't exactly confident it would go down in just one hit.
"Beast Claw!"
His arm transformed instantly. The skin cracked, tore, and exploded off—but it didn't hurt. No damage, no pain. Just part of the animation.
In seconds, his arm morphed into a massive beast claw, looking vicious and dangerous as hell. Without wasting a second, Kael lunged forward, slashing at the stone crab with everything he had.
The damage popped up.
[60 Damage Dealt]
...Not great.
Considering the base power of Beast Claw—way higher than 60—Kael realized it instantly: the stone crab had insane defense. Its stone shell wasn't just for looks.
Cutting through that thing was way harder than fighting normal mobs. But that didn't bother him. Actually, it kind of made things more exciting.
And he noticed something else—the crab was slow. The only reason it hit him earlier was because of the ambush. Now that he could see it clearly, reading its movements was easy.
All those points he dumped into agility were paying off big time. Without them, this fight would've been a nightmare.
Kael danced around the crab's sluggish attacks, waiting for the cooldown. When it was ready—"Beast Claw!"—another slash. Then another. And another.
In total, it took four Beast Claws to bring the stone crab down. Way more than he hoped. But when the EXP notification popped up, it made it all worth it.
[+80 EXP]
Considering he needed 500 EXP to level up, getting 80 from just one monster was huge.
"The EXP's actually crazy when you fight higher-level mobs," Kael thought, grinning.
He remembered reading something about that—the game gave an EXP bonus when you killed monsters higher level than you. Which meant this cave? Yeah, it was a goldmine. The stone crabs were perfect targets for at least two more levels.
Now that Kael knew exactly what the stone crabs looked like, he started paying way more attention to his surroundings. It worked—he spotted the next crab before it could ambush him.
That alone made a huge difference. No surprise attacks meant no free hits. He could kill the crabs without losing a single point of HP. It was tremendously good.
But there was a problem—his MP.
Since it took four Beast Claws to kill a single crab, his mana was draining fast. After every fight, he had to stop and wait for it to regenerate. And during that downtime… he was basically defenseless.
Kael was sitting on the cave floor, recovering MP, when he noticed something—a rock was moving toward him. No surprise what it was."Another one... Seriously?" he muttered. "They're not even letting me regen properly."
He got up, killed the crab like the others, but that was it—his MP was completely drained. And that's when things started getting bad.
More crabs. A lot more.
Some crawled toward him from the front. Others skittered in from behind. One crab was manageable—he could dodge, fight, and win without a scratch. But two? Three? At once?
"Impossible."
Kael's heart pounded. He was officially in danger.
This cave was way more dangerous than it first seemed.
At the start, it looked fine. The number of crabs near the entrance was low—manageable. Easy, even. But the deeper Kael went, the worse it got. The crabs started showing up everywhere.
And now... he was surrounded.
There was nowhere to run.
Panic crept in. Kael felt it in his chest, tight and heavy. He didn't want to die here. Dying meant losing EXP, and that was the worst possible outcome right now.
He had to find a way out. Somehow.