“Ah, why are they not stopping?! They keep following us!”

Oh, players. Also, did they aggro a shitload of monsters or something?

Once Shesmu’s thoughts reached that point, he immediately stopped in his tracks.

“Guys, stop, let’s hide for a bit,” He ordered in a calm tone. Shesmu wanted to first check out the situation before deciding on how to help the distressed players.

Both Leo and Ryan understood the thought process of Shesmu and acted according to his instruction. The trio hid behind the shrubs, waiting for the players and whatever was chasing them to come.

They didn’t have to wait for long, as the moment they hid was when the distressed players came. One girl, one boy, both holding their sword clumsily, ran into the clearing as if their lives depended on it.

Seconds after the clumsy duo came in, three small green humanoid creatures appeared. Goblins? And baby goblins at that? How in the world do these creatures beat you? Shesmu was surprised, to say the least about this situation.

“Do you know who I am? I am the hero foretold by the prophecy of old! The savior!” The guy then turned towards the girl before continuing, “Don't worry, I will protect you from those evil creatures! Just watch my power!”

Looking at this scene, Shesmu, Leo and Ryan thought the same thing, It’s a roleplayer…The trios’ eyes squinted in disappointment that couldn’t be described by words.

“Oh, Ryuuji, you’re so cool!”

So even the girl is in the roleplay.

Once the trio saw this scene, they turned to look at each other. Reaching a silent mutual understanding, they nodded their head. They turned around, and silently made their way out.

“Don’t worry, I will protect you from those vile creatures! Just watch my power!”

“You can do it. I believe in you, kyaa!!”

The trio kept walking as if they heard nothing. They were eager to get out of this place before the two roleplayers noticed them.

“Shit! I got hit! How dare you goblins?!” For a second, the guy dropped his role-playing voice. The pain was clear from his tone.

“Ryuuji, are you hurt?! We should run!”

When Shesmu heard the panic in the duo’s voice, something inside of him made him stop.

If I go, these guys are probably gonna die.

Dying in an MMO was normal, it was part of the experience. However, Shesmu still felt conflicted. It would take no effort from him to help these guys out. However, if he did turn around now, he might not hear the end of their roleplaying speech.

When Leo saw Shesmu stopping, he halted too.

"Are you going to help them?" Leo asked.

"Wait wait, what's going? Let’s get out of here before those two nutjobs notice us," Ryan cut in.

“I’m sorry guys. I probably will regret this the moment I do it, but I’ve got no choice.”

"Don't worry," Leo reassured. "Just make sure to get the hell out of there the moment you kill them goblins."

When Leo and Ryan saw Shesmu stopping, they looked at him incredulously.

"Ahh, we're gonna regret this!"

At the sound of Ryan's lamenting cry, Shesmu ran back towards the two roleplayers. They were already disarmed and the goblins kept hitting them with their blunt knives. But the baby goblins could barely output any damage, only dealing five with each hit.

Really how can a person possibly lose to that? Even your punches deal more damage than them.

In less than five seconds, Shesmu arrived at the clearing. Without saying anything to the duo, he used his skill Dash to teleport towards the goblins.

“Kiri, kiri!”

The screeching of the goblins made Shesmu even more irritated than how he already was. He looked at one of the goblins, and before it could even react, he slashed open its neck using an Empowered Slash Cancel.

The damage was enough to kill the goblin who barely had 100 HP.

Without wasting any time, Shesmu grabbed the second goblin and pushed it to the ground on its head. Its skull caved in, and blood gushed out from its orifices. Seeing its ally being killed, the last baby goblin jumped towards Shesmu, trying to maim him.

That is fortunate. They cannot even make out the difference in our strength.

While the goblin was in midair, Shesmu muttered, “Empowered thrust.” His sword glowed green and he plunged it deep into the goblin’s neck. Blood gushed out and painted Shesmu’s face red. He then took out his sword and with one final slash, he ended the goblin’s life.

Once Shesmu finished his job, he turned around to look at the role-playing duo who were still shuddering in fear. His bloody face cracked into a big smile before he said.

“You guys are trash.”

Shesmu could no longer hold it in his heart anymore. Being a roleplayer was one thing, being so bad was another. At this point, he had mixed feelings of anger and pity towards the couple.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The girl became flustered when she heard Shesmu’s insult, “Hey! Yes, you saved us, but that doesn’t give you the right to insult us!—”

However, before she could even finish her rant, Ryuuji stopped her.

“No, Sakura. He is right. At this point in time, I am simply too weak. No matter how much I want to protect you, with this power, I can’t.”

As he said those words slowly and heavily, pain could be seen in Ryuuji’s eyes. He clenched at his heart in regret before he forcefully looked at Shesmu in his eyes.

“Great master, please, with this power of mine I cannot defend anything or anyone. I beg you, teach me how to become a strong person!”

The light in Ryuuji’s eyes showed the strong will in his heart. However, Shesmu didn’t buy any of that. He squinted his eyes throughout the whole speech. He had a judgemental look on his face that condemned mankind for evolving to this state.

“Nope, sorry. Just learn by yourself, it’s not that hard.” Saying these words, Shesmu immediately turned his back and took off. Want me to take care of you nutjobs? Yeah, right!

But if Shesmu had thought he would get away from this situation so easily, then he was in for a world of disappointment. Before he could even take two steps, Shesmu was stopped by a hand holding his leg. He turned around to look at what the idiot was doing again, only to be greeted by the most anime protagonist smile he has ever seen.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot continue down this road. So that I can protect everyone that I love, for our future, I must be strong.”

“Yes! You get the chance to train the hero of old, how can you not be proud?!”

If there was anything that annoyed Shesmu more than the chunni roleplaying hero, it would be the annoying cheerleader next to him. Nope, I’m getting out of here.

Before he could hear any more of their rants, Shesmu used Dash to teleport away from Ryuuji. Then, with all of his strength, he sprinted out toward Leo and Ryan, who were still waiting for him deep in the forest.

“What was that?” Leo asked.

“No time for that, we need to get the hell out of here first.” Shesmu shuddered just remembering what kind of situation he was about to be stuck in.

As the trio continued running away from the terror that was Ryuuji and Sakura, Ryan laughed and exclaimed, “Haha, that must have been the funniest thing I have ever seen in years. For someone to scare you this much, he must be amazing in his own way!”

In response to Ryan, Shesmu just grumbled and muttered under his breath, “yeah, he really is amazing. Just a tad bit too amazing for me.”

While the trio was still running away, Ryuuji and Sakura were still on the ground looking at their backs.

“Hey, Ryuuji, don’t worry about it. That guy was too stupid and couldn’t see your potential. I’m sure that there will be so many others who will.” Declared Sakura. But her shoulders were down and she kept looking on the ground; she was obviously dejected.

Ryuuji looked at the direction Shesmu ran for another two seconds before turning towards Sakura. He got closer and cupped her head before looking straight at her eyes and saying. “Sakura,” he then caressed her hair before continuing, “Don’t feel sad. Every hero has to go through hardships, and this is but the first one. I could sense it, that unless I train under him, it will be meaningless. I will not give up, and you should too.” Ryuuji then stood up before extending his hand towards Sakura, “Get up, we still have a long journey awaiting us.”

Ryuuji then turned towards the direction Shesmu went in, he then looked up to see the Tower of Might. We will meet there, master…

***

Shesmu was also staring at the Tower of Might. He mused, It seems that we’ll only be there by the middle of the night.

“Oh Shesmu, I reached level 2 from your duel before with the goblins, how far you off from 3?”

“Oh, let me check, Ryan,” Shesmu answered. He then looked at the exp bar below his hp and ki bars before continuing, “I got 60 exp from those 3 goblins. Still, 160 more until the next level.”

“Oh, that’s neat. If leveling is so easy, we should start grinding as fast as possible,” declared Leo.

“Yeah, it makes sense to grind first. But I’m not sure about what will happen in the Tower of Might, leveling might make whatever challenge we face there easier. Plus there are still the danger zones that we need to go through, we might want to level a bit first before going through them,” Ryan suggested.

Shesmu listened to the suggestions and thought for a bit before checking his minimap. From there, he could see multiple yellow circles; those were places with high monster density.

“Okay then, let’s go left. We will have our fair share of monsters to fight there,” Shesmu ordered.

The duo was confused for a second before Leo asked, “wait, how do you know that there will be monsters on the left? Is it because of the yellow circle?”

“Yeah, if you focus on them, you’ll see information related to what monster inhabits that area. I deduced that if we go there, we’ll find more monsters,” Shesmu simply answered.

With no questions left to ask, the trio turned left and continued running.

“Kiri, Kiri!”

Hearing the screeching of the goblins, the party stopped in its tracks. From between the trees, Shesmu could see seven goblins on the ground and four hiding on trees. He used inspect on them and found that the goblins on top of the trees were all level 3, while those on the ground were level 2.

Shesmu signaled to his duo to sit down so as to hide.

Ryan inspected the monsters before giving his two cents, “If they’re this weak, then we can definitely kill them. We just need to deal with the goblins in the trees first, those will be a problem.”

Well, I guess that those might be a problem if they just randomly jumped down. I should probably take care of them myself and leave the ones in the ground to these two.

While these thoughts ran in his mind, Shesmu declared, “Yeah, let me—”.

“I’ll do it,” Ryan declared. Shesmu was about to tell him to reconsider, but once he looked at Ryan, his determined eyes stopped him.

Shesmu then just smiled and said, “We’ll leave it to you then.” He then looked at Leo before continuing, “Leo, we need to distract the other goblins so that Ryan can look for his assassination opportunity. Let’s do our best.”

Leo nodded at his words, and Ryan crouched before walking slowly towards the tree on which his first target resided on.

Once Ryan came close to the tree, the duo stood up and ran towards the goblins.

“I’ll take care of the two at the right, deal with those on the left. Be careful of the goblins above, understood?” Shesmu ordered in quick succession.

“Understood.”

Shesmu quickly vanished from his spot using Dash and performed a normal slash towards the first goblin. Before it could even react, Shesmu’s sword slashed through its neck. Green energy flashed from Shesmu’s sword and melted in with the dark red color of goblin’s blood. Without wasting any movement, Shesmu roundhouse kicked the injured goblin and catapulted him towards its ally.

“Kiri, Kiri!”

The uninjured goblin cried as he fell down from the weight of his comrade. Shesmu then ran towards them and activated Empowered Thrust, he then thrust his sword into the piled-up goblins, drilling a hole through both of them.

Blood gushed out like a fountain from their wounds, dyeing Shesmu’s pants a dark shade of red. Kicking the body of the goblin that was on top, the one on the bottom was finally freed.

“Kiri, Kiri!”

The goblin crawled and cried. It tried its hardest to get away from the demon that was Shesmu. It struggled as it tried to run away, falling down every few steps.

Shesmu just stood there, not moving for a little while. Suddenly, his hand twitched. He looked at the pitiful figure of the goblin fleeing and raised his sword. Then he threw it, and it flew with incredible precision towards the monster. Its tip plunged into the goblin’s nape. It tried to cry again, but it could only gurgle. It continued struggling until finally, it stopped moving.

+40 Exp