The monster is dead tonight.

John had to react quickly as the beast was charging towards them.
"Sylvia, roots !" he shouted, pointing at the ground in front of the beast. In mere seconds roots sprang from the earth, John used Move to push down the haft of the spear lodged in the monster's throat.

The tip of it got itself stuck in some knotty roots and rammed the razor sharp obsidian blade further in the throat of the creature.

80 dmg

The beast moved its muscular neck until the spear broke, Sylvia was growing another pollen bomb on the vine of her left arm, a green one this time.

John looked at the beast more closely and noticed its hp ticking up, he even checked around for a hidden shaman or healer. Sadly it wasn't that simple, the creature had some sort of regenerative attributes.

"John! Fall back!" warned Sylvia as she threw her pollen bomb. By instinct the creature closed its huge maw on the small green ball, the explosion of the small bomb was confined inside of its mouth and it absorbed very quickly whatever it was she has secreted inside of it.

John chose to cast a Darkness infused Magic Projectile on the creature, hoping to blind it.

64 (crit, blind)

In two jumps John managed to get in range of the beast and strike it twice. with Black Wind. His boots allowed him to move silently and the creature was blind for a few seconds, both hits counted as sneak attacks.

140 dmg (sneak attack)
138 dmg (sneak attack)

The Enraged modifier had disappeared from the beast and was replaced by a Drowsy one. Its neck wound was still open and it had lost a lot of blood, John saw little interest in trying to capture a beast so wounded and impossible to handle in the real world. He might have, if only his Invocation skill allowed him to summon Sylvia or useful creatures....

The creature ended giving up the fight, falling asleep due to Sylvia's tricks and losing health under John's repeated attacks. John climbed on it and stuck the tip of his blade in the spinal cord of the beast, just under its head and pushed hard.

450xp

Achievement unlocked : Jurassic hunter
Congratulations, you just killed a dinosaur. Haven't you no shame, they're almost extinct.
+15% dodge chances against large creatures
+15% attack speed against large creatures
250 xp
200$

Ding!
You are now lvl 9
+20 hp
+20 mp
+6 stat points.

Ding!
Sylvia is now lvl11.

John had now 12 points to attribute and he already knew what to do first. He dumped 8 of them in Intellect, getting himself to 50. As expected a new pop up appeared.

Achievement unlocked : ain't you a smart-ass?
You reached 50 Intellect, it might be time to stop acting so stupidly.
Mana gain per new INT point : 6
Mana Mastery : you get better control over spells using only pure mana.
New skill: mana shield.
100 xp

New skill: Mana Shield, lvl1 25 mp
You can create a bubble of mana around you. Once active your mana bar will act as a health bar. Every time dmg is received 75% will be inflicted on the mana shield and 25% on health.
The spell becomes inactive if the mana bar is empty.
-1mp/min regen while active.

John put his last 4 points in Intellect too, with spells like that he would need more mana and getting 24 extra instead of 20 seemed to be a good idea.

"I... I just gained a level. I don't understand, I never had this before..." muttered Sylvia. Apparently she had fully joined his world if she received such notification

John took a look at the barrier's menu and discovered that he was in a volcanic jungle type of barrier. The creature type displayed Lizardmen and another line of question marks. The crit on the spell had increased the complexity of the place, but there was no proof that it changed the difficulty of it.

John began gathering the loot, looking each of the corpses.

45 units Lizardmen meat
14 units of brown lizard hide
7 units of yellow lizard hide
37 obsidian shards
7 dirty loincloths
1400$

John remembered his Cooking skill and the fact that he would loot some food on most enemies now. He wasn't sure if he wanted to try this meat but he could at least use it to grind Cooking and give it to creatures in his kingdom.

Next was the big dinosaur and the mysterious containers strapped on its side. John looked into the basket affixed to the saddle and found something strange. There were other loincloths (apparently the summit of fashion around here.) but those were not made of thick leather, they were woven from grass and plants, with beads to decorate them. Stranger was the fact that they were the kind with flaps in front and back but nothing between the legs. John pocketed the 12 pieces of clothing and found debris of wooden weapons, all unusable.

One of the jars was cracked and leaked a thick vermillon paste on the ground. John was barely surprised of what he found when he lifted the lid of it. The four feet tall urn was full of pieces of cadavers and blood. They looked human, but were so damaged that it was hard to tell.

What he found in the other three urns was another surprise. In each of the urns he found two girls, naked, caramel skinned with tribal tattoos and body paintings. Each of them had long pointy ears... Elves!!! He had found 6 hot naked elf girls!!

He picked up and stored away the small oil containers that had filled the urns with green smoke to keep the girls **** and picked up the loot from the dinosaur after having laid each girl down on the grass. The urns where too big to carry so he decided to scrap the three without cadavers inside.

15 units of Tarkosaure leather.
20 Tarkosaure fangs.
35 units of Tarkosaure meat.
15 units of clay.
500$

John was thinking about the possibilities while Sylvia checked the elven girls. She used a low power spell to wake them up.

"By the moon! What are you? You're not one of them? Glory to her name, are you the hero the prophecy talked about?" asked one of the girls when they woke up.

"I have no knowledge of any prophecy, I can't answer that. My name is John and this is Sylvia. Could you guide us to a town? I would like to make sure to bring you back to safety, I can't leave six girls naked and unarmed in the middle of the woods." he explained.

"I don't know what a town is, but our tribe is in this direction, maybe half an hour, depending on how fast you are.
All the girls got up and started moving swiftly in the Jungle. Those were the weirdest elves he had ever heard of. The skin color was almost logical in a jungle, the lack of clothes (even giving them what he had taken wouldn't add much) and the lack of modesty was strange. The most glaringly obvious fact was that there was no bow and arrow in the loot captured by the lizardmen, who had ever heard of elves without bows?

Following the girls he chatted a bit with the one that talked to him before (he had no idea why an elf would speak English or how he could understand elvish, but he put it down to the media trope of everyone conveniently speaking the language of the hero...) she was named Cali and apparently was very insistent on the fact she wasn't married yet.

The place was apparently a large rainforest lost between high volcanic mountains, most of which were still active and which explained the use of obsidian for crafting weapons.

The elves and lizardmen had fought there for time immemorial, killing each other in endless blood feuds. Cali knew what would have happened of the males who were hunting with her, it was a common occurrence.