"Prepare for battle!!!"
Adeline's furious roar suddenly burst from the forest.
Her legs, which had been rapidly retreating, were driven by her body's inertia and left deep footprints in the damp soil.
Two one-handed iron hammers, glinting with a cold metallic sheen beneath the sunlight overhead, were gripped tightly in her palms.
Her mud-spattered face was stiff and taut, and her dark-brown, yellow-tinged eyes reflected the massive creature charging straight toward them.
The seemingly bloated, lazy Petrification Lizard was famous among Adventurers for its deadly and troublesome "Petrifying Gaze," but it was, after all, a Monster with a Challenge Rating as high as Level 3, possessing explosive power far beyond what its build suggested.
That was not something they, who had only just advanced to Level 1, could easily shake off by relying solely on the experience they had accumulated in the past.
Before the purest form of "stats," all so-called technique became nothing but flashy tricks.
Right now, for this hastily assembled Adventurer party, if they had time to think carefully about how to survive the Petrification Lizard's attack, there should roughly be two solutions.
One: scatter in three directions and leave survival to luck.
Pray that the one-third the Petrification Lizard chose was not you.
Pin your hopes on the teammate chosen as the Monster's target lasting a little longer, leaving you enough time to retreat and get away.
Two: abandon all illusions and fight head-on.
The Petrification Lizard was indeed a dangerous Monster. For the vast majority of bottom-tier Adventurers, and even low-level Professionals, suddenly running into one in the wild without any preparation was an extremely perilous situation.
But at this moment, they had long known there was a high chance of encountering this kind of Monster during the mission, had made ample preparations in advance,