Chapter 3—System?! Levels? What's that?
"What do you mean, a wild animal that is huge and attacking humans?" asked Elise while intrigued. She's never heard or seen anything like that, even when she was living in the Elven Forest back in her home.
The man did not respond; he was still in shock, and he fainted.
"Let's just put him out of his misery; it's obvious he's lying," said Takumi while sounding angry.
"Hey, hey, let's calm down for a bit; we don't need to rush things," Jin said, trying to calm Takumi down.
"For now let's restrain him and move him to our ca…" Before Daewon can complete his sentence, a massive sound was heard slightly above ground level; it was an unfamiliar screaming sound of a "monster," specifically, it was multiple monsters roaring while heading towards them.
Everyone felt dizzy for a bit; it's like the atmosphere completely changed and the sky "split" open.
Before they could even process what just happened, they heard sounds coming from different angles around them, like they were being surrounded, and monsters started pouring out from behind the trees: goblins, orcs, and all types of classical fantasy monsters coming out.
"FORMATION!" Daewon shouted at everyone; there was no time to panic or understand anything; it was a life-or-death situation.
Everyone got into formation, with Daewon being in the front as the vanguard and Jin assisting while Elise took a step back as the archer. Takumi and Shaun were in the middle, with Takumi setting up gadgets at lightspeed. Shaun was still in disarray, but he quickly grasped the situation and started preparing to assist the rear.
"The priority is clearing out the back so the rear can be safe," said Daewon while grabbing his one-handed axe and beginning to scan the surroundings.
"But what are those things even? Can we even fight it?" said Shaun while breathing heavily.
"There's no time to understand anything; luckily they're not that huge and only slightly bigger than humans," said Takumi while grabbing Shaun's shoulders and moving him out of the way. He was setting up a device similar to a gun that shoots tranquilizers to stun enemy units—more of a dart gun, basically.
Daewon started attacking the monsters along with Jin; they were struggling at the start but soon realized it's not that different from fighting humans, except the monsters didn't have any weapons besides their bodies.
In the first five minutes, Daewon and Jin already took care of half of the monsters, but the remaining ones were stronger and angrier that their fellow monsters got beaten, so it was not going to be easy to clean up the rest.
Elise was also in the rear, shooting multiple arrows at once and slowing down the monsters' progress. Takumi had finished his dart machine and started also slowing them down so Jin and Daewon could clean them up, while Shaun was covering both Elise and Takumi from wild monsters that went out of their formation to attack the rear.
They made quick work of the remaining monsters without sustaining any losses; it was a perfect victory, but that was only in normal circumstances, for what just happened was out of a fantasy tale: monsters pouring out of everywhere in the forest like the sky just split open and started teleporting them out of nowhere.
"We cleaned everything up here; what about you?" Takumi said,
"Finished here as well," Jin said while getting up from checking the monster corpses.
"What the hell are these things? Where did they come from?" Takumi was asking while also checking one of the monsters out.
They didn't know what these things were, and they've never seen a creature that looked like an animal like this be this hostile.
"We should report this to the Saint; he might know something," said Daewon.
The saint was one of the key figures in the holy empire's army structure; he was technically the link between commoners and the royalty in the army. He didn't like it since he was a royal himself, but they had no choice if they wanted to keep a tight leash on the commoners.
While they were finishing things up and collecting some of the monsters' corpses, they shared a slight tingling feeling like they were being electrocuted.
[Initiate System Loading]
BAM!
An electric feeling hit all of their bodies; it didn't hurt at all or even sting, but they felt it.
"Did you all hear that sound just now?" Jin said while confused.
"What sound? Did you get that stingy feeling just now?" Takumi said while feeling his body to check for possible sting marks.
Nobody but Jin apparently heard that sound; it's as if it was talking about a system or something?
"Is everyone okay? Let's check the status of the hu…"
[Status Window Open]
Before Jin could complete his sentence he heard this sound again;sentence, it was like a woman speaking into his mind in a calm and chill voice. This time it was talking about a "status."
Suddenly a white-greyish window appeared in front of Jin's eyes; he was hallucinating! The monsters must have poisoned him while battling, but wait, isn't he supposed to be immune to this? That's what Jin thought to himself, at least.
He didn't pay that much attention to the window that just opened because the event that was about to happen was so breathtaking that someone could be poking a sword at you and you wouldn't pay attention to him.
In front of them, it seemed like space itself was distorted, and a crack appeared in the sky. It was truly a sight to die for. A blue dome appeared in a 50-meter radius around them; they were trapped under the dome, and a white circular gate like those in fantasy novels appeared in front of them.
[Quest: ????
Conditions: Kill the boss monster residing in the gate.
Reward: ???]
A system window popped up again. In front of Jin, this time there was no voice talking, just a popup sound like a ring notifying him of what was just happening; this time he had no reason not to look at it.
"Huh? System?! And why does it say my level is 1?" Jin said while looking at both his status window, which he forgot about moments ago, and the new quest pop-up, he was still very confused about the situation; there was a lot to take in.
It seems he was the only one experiencing this "system" thing while no one else did, but at least the sky splitting and the white gate were visible to everyone still; there was no way he would be hallucinating about everything.
"What the hell!" Takumi said while looking at everything around him.
"It seems we can't get out of this; this seems like a magic spell," said Daewon, trying to punch his way through the barrier.
"What about this weird white thing in front of us?" said Elise.
"It's as if it's telling us to go inside it?" Takumi said after also trying to use his gadgets to break the barrier but failing terribly.
"Could it be possible that some noble did this?" Jin said with narrowed eyes.
"There's no way a magic spell like this exists in the first place; that would have to be the archmage we have in the capital, and maybe even he couldn't pull something like this," Elise said while confused.
"It seems there's no way out then; we have to go into that white thingy," Daewon said in a frustrated manner.
They decided to go into the white gate by their own will; no one "forced" them to it, but they sure would regret it soon and would have rather stayed under the dome than experience the worst day of their life inside the gate.
The first dungeon quest of human history had just started in the Holy Empire, by a commoner squad that had almost no merit or real reputation.