Group Battle

"Are you talking to me?" Bob asked and pointed at his own face. He was looking at the person who just shouted for attention.

"Yes. Yes. We saw what happened just now. You are dope, dude!" The man said. He was using a character person of color which was unusual within Immersion Online as you have to pay to change your skin color from the default.

The man approached Bob and tapped Bob's shoulder. He was wearing a full smile on his face and he had the bearing of a great man. With a staff on his other hand and a robe as a choice of wares.

"Uhm. Nice hair?" Bob said. He was looking at the man's hair as he said.

"Thank you! I had to open up a lot of gacha boxes just to get these." The man explained. His hair was pretty neat, clean-cut, and had waves. This hairstyle was not available in the character creation menu.

"So, want to join our party? I'm going to assume you're a tank since you survived through that." The man asked.

"Party? Ok!" Bob replied. He did not even care about the following statement.

"Nice. My name is E by the way. Nice to meet you."

"Oh. I'm Bob. Same here, nice to meet you, sir."

After Bob said his greetings, E suddenly turned back and motioned for something. He waved his hands and opened his mouth.

"Hey, guys! I found us a tank!" E said.

Then 3 people suddenly showed themselves from behind a pole.

'Wow.'

"Hello!" A guy wearing a red robe said. He was carrying a book with him as he waved.

"Hello! Why are you bringing a book here?" Bob asked as he bowed slightly.

"This is a grimoire."

"Ok."

Bob does now know what the word grimoire meant but he just nodded anyways.

"Greetings. I am Enma and I'm a badass." A man wearing dark clothing said. He had ashen white hair and he carried a bastard sword. He is an edgy character.

"Uhm. Hello Enma. My name is Bob. I don't know how bad your hind can be but okay."

"I'm Blight." A man donning a bow on his back said. He didn't say anything more than his name.

Bob looked at each and every one of these fellows and went into deep thought.

"So let me get this straight. You guys were observing me since the start of the battle?" Bob asked.

Everyone nodded their heads as they looked at each other.

"I see. So you guys were capable of offering your help to me, right?"

Everyone nodded their heads once more.

"I see. So why didn't you help me?"

Everyone nodded their heads.

"..."

Bob stood still and nodded his head together with them. He was never in any danger anyway so he just dropped the matter. Plus, getting angry at total strangers was not great either.

Flap~

"Cluck!"

Lavanuk jumped and flapped her wings. She flew towards Bob's right shoulder and rested her chicken feet on it. She was in perfect shape, literally back to her original shape.

"Oh? You were a summoner as well?" E asked Bob in surprise upon seeing Lavanuk.

"No. Lavanuk is a contracted monster." Bob explained.

'A chicken as a contracted monster? Wow.' E thought of that in his head without saying it out loud.

"Anyways. Join the party."

*Party Leader E has invited you to a party.

*You are now part of E's party.

*Loot priority is set to 'Round robin'.

"Oh? There's an extra person?" Bob asked all of them.

From what Bob could see in the party menu, there was a name that was greyed out.

[E's Party]

->E [Lv 19]

->Minion [Lv 17]

->Enma [Lv 18]

->Blight [Lv 18]

->Bob [Lv 15]

-Annera [Lv 16]

"Yea. Annera is currently offline but she is still in the party. We all knew each other before we played Immersion Online." E elaborated. He explained to Bob properly and any player should understand that properly.

However, Bob was not any player.

"You knew each other before?" Bob asked. He doesn't understand the terms such as 'offline' and 'Immersion Online.' but he asked anyway.

"Yep! We are all Webnovel authors. Our group doesn't have that many people but that's alright for us."

"Webnovel authors?"

"... Yea. We write novels."

"I see.

Clap~

Someone clapped his hand loudly to gather the attention of everyone. It was Blight, the silent guy, and there was only one reason why Blight would ever catch your attention.

"Prepare yourselves!" E shouted and everyone else gathered around him. Bob looked around and he saw that a group of werewolves was eyeing the party.

"Grrrr."

"Kul Kul Kul."

The group of werewolves was surrounding the party. It seems that Bob and everyone else spent their time leisurely within a battlefield just like they were having a picnic.

"Alright! Boys! Let's do this!" E said as he slammed his staff on the ground.

A rift opened on the ground. It was shining blue and it looked like a portal. And out of that portal came 2 wolves that had blue and white fur with red eyes.

"Oh? You didn't have to scream your skill's name?" Minion asked. He used his mana and tried to summon curses from his grimoire but it didn't show up.

"Oh? I did scream the skill's name. I just renamed the skill to 'Let's do this!'. Neat, isn't it?"

In the in-game description of skills. There was an excerpt that was stated as such:

[Skills can be casted by shouting the skill's names and by following certain actions. The only reason why users have to shout the skill names is so that the readers can imagine the scene better.]

[Skills rename kits could also be bought using real currency. But who in their right minds would buy these.]

"Ah. I see." Minion accepted E's explanation and used his focus somewhere else.

"Ruff!"

"Grrrr."

The two summoned wolves barked at the werewolves. The werewolves snarled in response and it looks like they were having a conversation. The summoned wolves nodded their heads then turned their backs towards the werewolves.

"Something is not right." E said. He was horrified upon seeing that his wolves' health bar suddenly turned red.

"Yea. No shit E. Gravity Slow!" Minion casted a curse on the summoned wolves as a precaution.

And soon enough, the wolves jumped towards their summoner, E. Their assault was slow thanks to Minion's quick thinking and ultimately saved E's in-game life.

"Recall!" E had enough time to undo his magic summoning. Recall was a skill that could unsummon your summoned monsters. And soon he saw a prompt.

*It's not very effective.

The wolves were no longer in his control, hence the reason why he could not cast his Recall on them.

"For fuck's sake! E, get out of motherfucking way!" Minion cursed at E who was confused about why his skill did not work. His incessant cursing was not because of his class as a warlock, he just curses a lot.

'Wait!' E panicked in his head. The wolves were about to hit him in their charge-

Slice~

The guy with cool-looking hair used his bastard sword to slice off the wolves' heads to save the day.

"Eazy peazy." Enma said as he swung his sword downwards. And with that action, all of the blood on his sword came off. He stood still for a few seconds to breathe deeply.

His eyes turned cold and his sword was shaking. It was as if the blade could not wait for the next kill. However, that is a misconception.

'Waaa. What was that? I panicked and just hit them!'

Enma's thoughts were far from being cool. He was standing still because he was a nervous wreck. But it doesn't change the fact that what he did was awesome though.

"Wow." Bob exclaimed. He thought that Enma was cool.

The werewolves saw what just happened and they all looked at Enma cautiously. There were 5 werewolves that had levels that ranged from 15 to 20, one for each person it seems.

But that is not how group battles worked. The party was at a disadvantage as the enemies could run them over. Their party composition was utter garbage too.

Their only melee-based attacker was Enma. Whose attack damage and attack speed would rise as his HP gets lower. That's the problem though, he needs to be constantly in low HP to do damage.

He was only able to kill the wolves in one hit because summoned units are always weaker than the real monsters. Plus, the usual crowd-control spell E uses was the wolves, which were killed by Enma.

In other words, they're fucked before the enemies made their move.

Whizz-

A blue light passed through and shot a werewolf straight into the head. It was a one-hit kill. There was only one person with a bow within the party so everyone looked at Blight.

"That's a lot of damage!"

"Nice flex bro, I wish I could have taped that."

The party was cheering for Blight's unexpected damage output. They looked at him as they cheered but Blight was still silent. He opened his mouth slowly soon enough.

"I ran out of mana."

Blight used a skill called 'Charged Shot'. Its damage was directly proportionate to the amount of time and mana invested in the skill. And that was why Blight ran out of mana.

The werewolves, who were cautious of Enma, were suddenly aggroed by Blight's attack.

"Grrrrr."

The werewolves all rushed together.

"We're fucked." Minion said the obvious.