Leveling up was not easy though. The traffic in the Hall of Beginning was heavy. Due to it being the launching of a new server, there was a massive load of players in this area.  

Although all the players were divided into different villages, receiving quests from NPCs still was not easy. In Phantasia, bodies couldn’t overlap or pass through each other so people were crammed together into a lump surrounding the NPCs. In this situation, even Taeyeon was helpless. 

Killing monsters were hard as well, everyone was looking for the same monsters to kill so it felt like it was very rare to even find a monster. The three of them could only sigh and continue finding monsters. After they had reached level 10, Jonghyun and Heechul had decided to log off from the game. Both of them reasoned that they needed to sleep. Heechul was the boss of the internet café, he still needs to take care of the store tomorrow morning. As for Jonghyun, he was a pro player. He needed to keep a healthy body so he shouldn’t be sleeping late. 

After they had said their ‘goodbyes’, Taeyeon was the only one who was upstairs. She had her character learned a few skills before controlling her character to a dungeon. Beginner’s forest was the first dungeon that a player can run. The dungeon requires the player to be at least level 5 and has an unlimited amount of dungeon entries. Dungeons from higher levels only allowed players to have a certain amount of entries per day. Some dungeons allow players to run them five times, some three times a day while some once a week. 

The current dungeon that Taeyeon is about to enter, Beginner’s Forest can solo-ed but Taeyeon needs to be in a group of five in order for the dungeon’s secret boss to appear. Running a dungeon like this by herself was not a problem but the appearance and materials from the secret boss is way more important so Taeyeon had no choice but to group up with a group of strangers.  

“We need one more person!”  A player had shouted out loud to gain the attention of the others. It looks like they were forming a team to enter the dungeon. Of course, Taeyeon had heard him so she controlled her character to move to where the player’s coordinate was. ‘Let me join’, she typed out instead of talking.  The player, Dizzy Night, leader of the group sent her an invite.  

"I've already found the hidden boss guys." Dizzy Night announced to everyone. 'Great.' Taeyeon typed out. "Why not turn on the mic?" Another player, Dizzy Fireworks asked her. In Phantasia, the sound system was extremely lifelike, the distance greatly influence how loud or quiet the sound would be. In addition, the game doesn’t have any background music. Players are accompanied by the sounds of wind blowing and similar sound effects. 

‘It’s inconvenient for me right now’ Taeyeon replied the player. To be honest, nothing is inconvenient for Taeyeon but she just doesn’t feel like turning on the mic at the moment. “You sure? Or is it because you don’t want to be exposed as a male playing a female account” He replied. Taeyeon’s character was a female but there were many male players who picked the female gender for their characater. A ‘Haha’ was Taeyeon’s only reply to the player. After a while, they entered the dungeon, it seems that the four players were friends judging by their names. All of their names had the word 'Dizzy' in it.  

The leader of the group, Dizzy Night and Dizzy Firework seemed to be veterans of the game though. The both were talking and introducing things to their other two friends who were obviously newbies judging by how they keep asking different things of the game.  

When the first wave of monsters started spawning, Dizzy Night had led the team well. They were clearing wave after wave, enjoying the game while talking about different things. Taeyeon was just silently attacking and coordinating with the group of friends, not joining in on the conversation. 

Halfway into the dungeon, the system had announced that the dungeon's hidden boss had appeared. Hidden bosses are not like Final bosses. Final bosses appear at the last stage of the dungeon but hidden bosses can appear at any stage.  

Announcement: Hidden Boss One-eyed Moon Wolf has appeared.  

The group of five were delighted when they saw the announcement, there was currently no system announcement that a team has defeated One-eyed Moon Wolf so if they did kill it, they would have the first kill. First kill(s) of bosses will guarantee better item drops. 

"Get ready guys!" Dizzy Night said so that they would go into position. He already had things planned out when they were clearing the dungeon earlier. Taeyeon was reading a guide for a level 5 dungeon until she heard something moving behind the thick bushes, "It's coming." She said, warning the other players because there wasn’t enough time to type when the One-eyed Moon Wolf suddenly jumped out from the bushes and decided to attack them.  

"Don’t move and let me handle it!" Dizzy Night had shouted while moving forward to attack the wolf. The plan was that he was going to tank the wolf and establish a steady aggro. After that, only will the others attack the hidden boss. He was unexpectedly doing better than what Taeyeon had thought, defending and attacking the wolf at the same time.  

"You can guys can attack now!" He gave the order and the others started attacking. They were progressing at a steady pace and so far, there was no system announcement of a first kill yet. They were getting even more excited when the hidden boss had finally reached its red blood state. Red blood means there's only 10% health left and all bosses will have a very powerful boost in stats when they reach red blood. Some will even pull out special attacks and skills! 

The One-eyed Moon Wolf was a beginner level hidden boss so the game developers wouldn't make it that hard for the beginner players to deal with. Only its attack speed, damage and movement speed were increased but they could actually deal a lot of damage to low level players. In addition, One-eyed Moon Wolf's aggro can be easily switched during its red blood sate. Something bad just had to happen during the most important time when you needed to have the utmost attention when fighting a boss. Dizzy Rain, one of the two newbies just had to make a mistake, that is, dealing too much damage and had accidentally off-tanked. The aggro of the hidden boss was switched onto him. 

He was using a mage class, elementalist. All mage classes use cloth armour and that means they have weak defence. With only half of his health left, Dizzy Rain was killed by the boss. The others aside from Taeyeon started to panic when Dizzy Rain was killed off. Dizzy Night tried to calm the other two down and took lead to establish a steady aggro but the boss had already attacked its second victim, Dizzy Fireworks. Although Dizzy Fireworks was a veteran player, he wasn’t really good. Dealing with the boss all by himself at such a low level while using a sharpshooter. He managed to fight the boss longer than Dizzy Rain but eventually died. Not long after, the other newbie had also died, it wasn't that Taeyeon wasn’t trying to help but Dizzy Night kept saying that he could handle it but when it was only the two of them left, Taeyeon had enough of it. 

"Looks like it's only you and me left huh." Dizzy Night said, "I'll tank the boss and you deal damage."  

"How about you don't do anything and let me finish off this boss by myself?" Taeyeon responded with her voice and controlled her character to start sprinting towards One-eyed Moon Wolf. She attacked the boss with ease using her marksman character (note: she hasn't decided which subclass to play) to shoot and kite the boss while not receiving a single damage from the boss. 

Dizzy Night was watching in awe as Taeyeon's character moved swiftly around the hidden boss, every single one of her attacks hits and every single attack from the boss was dismissed by her as if it was so simple. A few minutes later, the hidden boss had finally fallen.  

System Announcement: One-eyed Moon Wolf, First Kill: Dizzy Night, Cruel Invader. 

Notes:  

Aggro: Short for aggression. A term used to describe when a monster (and sometimes player) focuses their attention and attacks on a single target. Aggro can be gained by entering a monster's aggro-radius, attacking a monster, taunt skills, or healing damage dealt by a monster. 

Off-Tank: This term is used when the aggression from the Boss shifts from the Main Tank to another player.