He could already feel the bruise building up on his head. The explosive pain had turned into something more dull, but he could already feel the worst headache of his new life building up beneath it. He wouldn’t be able to sleep now, for fear of a concussion. Assuming concussions happened in this “lower resolution” world.

His knee was worse off. He caught his breath and forced himself to his feet. He tried to walk normally, but it hurt too much. He’d have to limp around now. He pulled up his trouser leg and looked it over. He put a hand on his knee and started moving it about. Somehow it felt like he knew what he was doing.

Your skill in Anatomy has increased by 0.1. It is now 50.2.

His kneecap wasn’t destroyed or dislocated or otherwise messed up, but the bruising would be bad, and it would hurt to walk on it for a while.

Why hadn’t he taken a healing skill of some kind?

It looked like he wasn’t going to have any Hit Point indicator. No HP bar had popped up during combat. It seemed like he just had good old fashion injuries and pain.

“Lower resolution my ass,” he spat to the turtle goblin’s corpse.

He crouched down over the thing and looked it over. He tapped at the shell with his sword. “Hmm, what if…”

* * *

Two hours later, and after lots of sawing with his serrated knife, Adrian had a helmet and two pieces of knee armor. He called it “knee armor” because “knee pads” sounded way too lame, like something you’d get made fun of for wearing while rollerblading.

The shell on his head was the leader’s. It had been quite a bit larger than the other two. He had to pat himself on the back for dropping that bastard first. He could only imagine how much worse the fight might have gone if that thing had been ordering the other two around.

The goblins had extremely thick hair that hung in tight braids. He’d sliced that right off and used it to tie the helmets and knee armor tightly to his body. If he ran across any more of these, they wouldn’t be able to bonk him on the head or go for his damn knees again. It figured they’d always go for the knees since they were barely three feet all.

He looked down and frowned. Shit, maybe he should have made himself a cup instead. Those little freaks seemed exactly like the kind of sick creatures that would go for his balls. He didn’t need any skill in Anatomy to know how bad that would hurt.

Speaking of Anatomy, the whole process of dismantling the turtle goblins had increased his Anatomy skill by 0.4, so he was at 50.6 already.

It felt like slow going, but he was progressing steadily. He’d only been “alive” in this world for a few hours and had already gained quite a bit of skill.

Adrian tried to limp on for another half hour or so, but it got harder and harder to walk, and daylight was running out.

It was cold, but he realized he knew how to make a fire, probably due to his Cooking skill. He’d never made a fire on Earth without copious amounts of lighter fluid.

Still, a fire felt too much like a signal flare, announcing to all monsters in the forest that someone was here.

He hobbled along a little further, looking for something resembling a good–and secure–place to sleep for the night. Just when he thought he wouldn’t find anything, he stumbled onto something strange.

It was a bare rock face, entirely vertical. It was about ten feet high. This entire forest was nothing but gently sloping hills, all covered in many layers of foliage. Here was a completely sheer wall of rock. Adrian studied the formation, and it looked almost as if an entire side of the hill had just been cut out with a laser. The top of the rock wall ended with what was basically the rest of a sloping hill. The top of the rocks had roots snaring down into them, breaking some of them apart.

Adrian put his hand on the rock face, and he sensed–somehow–that Red Magic had created this wall. Probably by removing a big chunk of the hill.

Your Skill in Red Magic has increased by 0.1. It is now 50.1.

So that confirmed it. In the tutorial, he’d used Green Magic to manipulate the living things around him. Red Magic could apparently control the nonliving parts of nature, like rocks. Red Magic would probably synergize quite well with his Mining skill…if he could find a damn spell book. He doubted he could even afford one with the handful of silver coins he had in his satchel.

Adrian sat down against the rock wall to rest. He’d find a place to sleep for the night after he caught his breath and rested his knee a bit.

* * *

He woke to the sound of birds chirping and his own head pounding like a drum. The bonk to his head gave him what felt like the kind of hangover you’d get from drinking tequila that comes in a plastic bottle.

Shit. He’d nodded off. He jolted upright, and nearly shit his only pair of pants.

There were four turtle goblins surrounding him. The rock wall was still to his back, and the monsters formed a semicircle around him, trapping him against the wall.

He scrambled for his sword, but it was gone. As was his satchel.

Adrian jumped to his feet, desperately searching for an escape path. He could try to just sprint between them, hoping they missed him. Even if he managed to shove through them without a weapon, he’d have to outrun them with a bruised-up knee.

He froze. There were no options. He wouldn’t make it through, and he couldn’t fight, so he just pressed himself tighter against the wall.

The goblins tilted their head at him. Why weren’t they attacking?

One reached down and held up his satchel. Was it taunting him? They were going to play with him before they killed him?

Please, don’t eat me alive. Kill me first.

The goblin squinted at him, then threw the satchel toward him. It landed at his feet, the coins jangling pleasantly together.

Two more turtle goblins worked together to lift up his sword, and they held it out for him.

“You’re...giving me the sword?” he asked.

He took it, and his first instinct was to cut them down, but…

Your skill in Monster Taming has increased by 2.0. It is now 2.0.

Monster Taming? He’d tamed them? But how? He was sleeping. And his skill had been 0.0.

One of the goblins held out its hand. It was holding a raw chunk of meat. The goblin had blood all over its mouth, and when it smiled, he saw the blood staining its sharp teeth.

Adrian reached out and accepted the meat. He forced a smile.

The goblins started to jump up and down, swaying side to side. They looked impatiently and expectantly up at Adrian. There was a puppy-like quality to their eyes, a type of adoration in their expressions. Like they were waiting for his orders. His command.

Shit, they thought he was their leader? He tapped on his helmet, which was still strapped tight to his head since he’d dozed off before taking it off.

They all grunted approval, and they jumped faster and more excitedly. They recognized the shell of their leader, and because Adrian was wearing it, they thought he was their leader.

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Adrian raised his sword, found his pickaxe in the foliage, and put his satchel back on. “Follow me,” he ordered.

And so he made his way through the forest. He limped–though not quite as bad as before–while being followed by four insane little monsters. Monsters smart enough to recognize their leader’s shell, but too dumb to realize that it was just being worn by the man who had killed it.

As the day went on, Adrian’s hunger became unbearable. He’d already gone through his bread, and most of his water too. He still had the raw meat the goblins had just given him, but he’d need to cook it. Shell on his head or not, he wasn’t a turtle goblin and couldn’t eat raw meat.

He ordered the goblins to stop.

Your skill in Monster Taming has increased by 2.0. It is now 4.0.

This confirmed it: skills increased much faster the lower they were. His skills that were all around 50 were often increasing by 0.2 each time, but sometimes only by 0.1. When he’d been at 80 skill in the tutorial, he mostly saw increases of 0.1, except for the time he’d spent hours and hours studying the root spel, which had given him 0.2. It also had seemed much harder to even make a 0.1 increase happen when he had been at 80 skill. This new skill, Monster Taming, was rocketing up with each increase since it had started at 0.

It was similar to how things worked on Earth. If you started learning to play the guitar, learning to draw, or learning to play chess, you always had “beginner gains” where you rapidly were mastering new concepts and quickly getting better. The further and further you got though, the harder it became to make new progress.

This meant he was a lot further from 100 in any skill than he might have thought. He had a long way to go still. The closer he got to 100—which he suspected was the highest possible skill—the longer it would take.

The goblins looked expectantly at Adrian. He bent down and grabbed a stick. He held it up so they could see it, then he pulled it in toward his chest. He bent down and grabbed another stick, then repeated the gesture.

Finally, he dropped both sticks onto the ground and pointed at the small little pile he’d made.

“Do this,” he said.

The goblins dispersed, rushing around to find sticks.

Your skill in Monster Taming has increased by 2.0. It is now 6.0.

He watched with satisfaction as they grabbed sticks and twigs off the forest floor. Then his satisfaction fell when he saw what they did next.

Each goblin lifted a stick up, held it up, repeated the procedure, and then dropped both sticks on the ground at their feet. Satisfied with this, they abandoned the dropped pair of sticks and went on to repeat the procedure again, never forming a pile of more than two sticks together.

“No,” he shouted.

They all stopped and looked. Adrian moved over to where a goblin had dropped two sticks. He picked both up, then carried them to two more. He threw them down together. He did it a few more times for good measure, until he had a nice pile of fifteen or more sticks.

“Gather,” he says. “This is called gathering.”

The goblins hooted and laughed, and they ran off again.

This time they came back to the big pile he’d started, throwing sticks into a giant mountain, until he had way more than he needed.

Your skill in Monster Taming has increased by 2.0. It is now 8.0.

“Good!” Adrian shouted. “Stop!”

He lifted his pickaxe up and searched the rock wall. In the light of day he could see much more clearly. He swung his pickaxe into the rock, chipping off a chunk that was lined with black.

Your skill in Mining has increased by 0.2. It is now 50.2.

He searched through the pulverized rock. Among the softer rock that he’d chipped out, he found some darker pieces that looked like quartz. He collected all the quartz, which was only three or four chips, and picked the piece with the sharpest corner.

Adrian separated the smallest twigs the goblins had gathered and put them onto the ground. He crouched down, held out his skinning knife, and struck it with the chip of quartz. He grinned as sparks flew from the knife.

The goblins all gathered around, beady little eyes widening as much as they could to get a good look at this new kind of magic.

One of the sparks hit just right, and the kindling started to burn.

Your skill in Cooking has increased by 0.1. It is now 50.1.

The goblins all started to cheer. They pounded their clubs onto the dirt and pointed at the flames.

Adrian grinned as he placed some larger twigs on top, and blew gently to stoke the flames.

Soon he had a real fire, and he skewered the meat the goblins had gifted him with a sharpened twig. He held the skewer over the fire with his hand. He rotated it slowly, and held it high enough that it could cook nice and slow. He didn’t want to risk burning his only meat, not after spending so much time getting the fire going.

As the meat cooked, he watched the turtle goblins. They were salivating, staring in wonder at the meat.

Adrian bit his lip. His Monster Taming skill was low, and he figured it was only the helmet that kept these things on his side. What if their hunger overrode their dedication to the leader? He remembered just before he’d killed the leader, they were all fighting amongst themselves. The leader included.

So as difficult as it was to do, when the meat was finished cooking, Adrian tore off a big chunk for himself, then threw the rest down for the goblins to fight over.

They dropped their clubs and slapped and clawed at each other. They shrieked and wailed, biting at each other as much as they bit at the meat.

He chewed on his own piece as he watched, thankful that they respected his position enough to not fight him over it. It tasted nice and juicy, and the smoky flavor from the fire had gotten into it. It needed salt though.

The goblins finished with the meat, leaving not even the bones.

Adrian got an idea. He picked up one of their clubs, mimicked himself swinging down at a little animal, and said, “Hunt!”

They jumped up and down, grabbed their clubs, and went off to hunt.

* * *

By the time Adrian had cooked all the extra meat and supervised the goblins’ chaotic mealtime battles, his Monster Taming skill was up to 10.3, and his Cooking skill was 50.4, but he was exhausted.

It was more of a mental exhaustion, thankfully, as his belly was full and his knee was feeling much better. He’d tried giving one of the goblins his water skin, mimicked drinking, and waited to see what happened. It brought him back a skin full with water, which he now chugged carelessly. If he could get a free refill whenever he needed it, he wouldn’t bother rationing the water out.

There was a big difference between 10.3 Monster Taming and 0.0. The helmet really only seemed to make them willing to listen to his orders, but as his skill increased, they seemed more and more willing to follow his orders, and more able to generally do what he wanted them to even when he wasn’t ordering them around.

He taught one of the goblins to carry his pickaxe, though he didn’t trust them enough to carry his satchel full of coins. He doubted they’d know what to do with the coins, and it would be impossible for them to knowingly steal the coins, but Adrian worried more that they might simply lose interest in following him and wander off with his money while he was sleeping.

The rolling hills flattened out as they trudged on. Adrian’s knee felt better as he walked many miles on it. Either it was healing, or he was learning to just deal with the pain. His headache was another story. He wanted to take the helmet off and check how bad the bruising on his head was, but he didn’t dare remove the leader’s shell while surrounded by four little turtle goblins. He was stuck with this damn helmet now. Every few hours he’d get an itch right on the top of his head, but it was impossible to scratch.

As the forest became flatter, the little path they followed widened out to a full-blown road. Adrian clutched his sword tighter, worried that a road meant they were more likely to come across other people. He wasn’t sure what another traveler might think of a man casually strolling down the road with a pack of monsters behind him. Maybe that kind of thing was common in this world? He wouldn’t send the turtle goblins away yet though, they were too useful, and they offered him a good deal of protection.

Just around dusk, they hit a crossroads. There were only two ways to go, and the crossroads was marked by a sign.

It wasn’t in English, or in any language Adrian recognized from Earth, but he could read it. He didn’t know how, he just could.

The road that branched off to the East went to “Longing.” The northern road went to “Antia.”

Adrian didn’t know what “Longing,” was. He knew it only as a feeling you got sometimes, like maybe when he thought back to that first summer he’d noticed how good girls had looked in bathing suits. Or more specifically the feeling that came when he realized those good-looking girls wanted nothing to do with him.

Antia sounded more like a city. He was in Antium, and Antia could very well be a capital city.

“Longing,” he said to the goblins.

They looked at him with furrowed brows and big frowns.

“Antia,” he tried.

Their expressions didn’t change at all.

He didn’t want to gamble with whatever Longing was. For all he knew it could still be many days’ travel away. Antia sounded much more likely to be what he needed. He shrugged and went West, hoping the path would take him to a city.

They camped for the night shortly after the crossroads. Adrian took his goblin horde about a half mile off the path, then built a fire, which amazed them just as much as it had the first time. He ordered them to hunt, and this time they came back all together, working as a team to drag a small deer carcass behind them.

Adrian cooked them up a feast, though it again could have used salt, and they all ate together until their stomachs were about to burst. The goblins fought less this time. Was he domesticating them, or was the deer just enough food that they all got their fill without fighting?

He spent much longer than he’d have liked trying to explain to them that he wanted one of them awake at all times to act as a guard. He was surprised he didn’t gain skills in “Charades” or “Mimicking Like a Big Dumbass,” by the time he was through.

The limits of his relatively low skill in Monster Taming were showing through here. He didn’t think he’d be able to get the goblins to keep tight shifts, especially while he slept.

By the time he laid down and actually fell asleep, he’d gained 0.6 skill in Cooking, 0.9 in Monster Taming, and even 0.3 in Anatomy while dismantling the deer carcass.

He fell asleep looking at his overall skill set:

Swordsmanship 50.4

Anatomy 50.8

Red Magic: 50.1

Mining: 50.2

Coppersmithing: 50

Bartering: 50

Cooking: 51.3

Stealth: 50.3

Monster Taming 11.2

In the morning, Adrian was worried that his Swordsmanship skill hadn’t progressed enough. He’d barely survived his run-in with the first group of turtle goblins.

He had an idea. If it worked, he’d be able to get better at Swordsmanship with little to no risk. If it didn’t work, he’d at least get to put his new armor to the test.