Daniel looked down at the state of his armor and then at the dead creature on the ground.

His plan had worked for the most part. He had looped the rope around the monster and then yanked it off the branch.

However, that was where his plan went sideways.

The monster’s wings had unfurled, lifting the loop of the rope up to its neck.

Daniel’s constant tension on the rope had caused it to tighten around the creature’s neck and it had hung upside down from the tree limb, tail still firmly wrapped.

It released its grasp on the branch and flew at him, and he finally got a good look at the creature.

With the head and torso of an old woman, he was horrified for a moment that this may not be a monster at all, but a sapient creature.

The creature opened its mouth well past what seemed possible and released a scream of rage as it flew at him and latched its talons through his leather armor, piercing his shoulders.

Rows of teeth in a mouth that could easily fit his entire head had darted at his face, only halted by his baton, which he had wedged between himself and the harpy’s slavering maw.

All too late, he had realized what it was. A harpy, an actual dungeon monster that had made its way out of a dungeon due to an overflow.

He had desperately run through what information he had read about the foul creatures. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much, other than a brief description and a recommendation to take them out from afar.

With his hands on either side of the baton, holding the creature’s jaws back from his face, his options were limited.

Then he felt something that made the primitive part of his mind recoil.

Like some sort of fleshy tentacle, the harpy’s tail had wrapped around his waist.

With horror, he realized what was about to happen. With the harpy’s tail now securing it to him, it could withdraw its talons from his shoulders and use them to savage his unprotected throat.

The creature was enormous for a flier, but he still out-massed it as its birdlike frame was considerably lighter than its size implied.

Daniel threw himself forward, pinning the creature beneath him while pushing downward on his baton with all his strength.

A loud crack came from the harpy’s mouth as the monster’s enormous jaw dislocated.

He had then slammed the creature’s head into the ground repeatedly until it finally lay still.

Freeing himself from the monster, he had checked his System screen.

System Points: 3

Health: 8 of 10

While he had lost two points of health to the creature’s claws, it should have been much worse, but his armor had anchored the talons and kept them from tearing further into his shoulders.

Raising his arms up, he felt the sharp sting of pain well up from his recent injuries, and hurriedly brought them down again.

Checking his ring, he pulled out the orcs’ packs one at a time to search.

He found a few vials of what he could only assume was poison and two bottles containing a thin red liquid.

The unmarked bottles were small, and with the carefulness with which they were wrapped, he had to assume they were valuable.

They had to be potions, of course. Nothing else really made sense, but he had no way of knowing what sort of potions they were.

He briefly considered testing one on one of the various small forest creatures that roamed the area, but he deemed it unnecessarily cruel.

He might hunt and eat a forest animal as that was the circle of life, but he would be damned if he would hurt or kill an animal out of convenience. Possibly literally damned, he thought. Honos had given him a minor blessing based on him being honorable; but where was the honor in that?

With a jolt, Daniel came back to his senses. Something was wrong.

Checking his System screen, he scanned his current health.

Health 6 of 10

He had lost two more points of health! He verified he wasn’t bleeding and then bent and examined the harpy’s talons.

Along with his blood, he realized the talons had a coating of green flecks.

Poisoned, he thought. No, wait, he reconsidered. He hadn’t digested the poison, so he had been envenomated? Maybe…

Shaking himself out of the spiraling thoughts, he watched as another point ticked down on his health.

Remembering Polto and his blackened hand, Daniel uncorked one of the bottles, made a small prayer to Honos, and downed the thin liquid.

With a sharp intake of breath, he felt the tears in his muscles knit themselves back together.

Checking his health, he saw it had jumped up from five to nine.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He watched it for a few seconds and when it didn’t drop again; he sighed in relief. It had in fact been a Life potion, healing him for four points and stopping the poison effect.

Not bothering to pack the other Life potion back in the orc’s pack, he simply dropped it into its own space in his ring.

He then returned the sword he had half buried in the ground, as well as the harpy’s body to his ring. Waste not want not, he thought.

Quickly scanning the area, Daniel took a steadying breath and took off running from the forest and into the hills.

***

Daniel had stopped his jog when he began to feel lightheaded.

The hills had gone from small patchy green rises to rocky expanses that were much more difficult to climb.

Small oases of greenery and trees occasionally marred the otherwise barren landscape, and he carefully moved towards one.

In the shadow of a tree surrounded by dense brambles and weeds, he nestled down as he looked through the ring for some food.

He clearly remembered the wine and plates of food appearing as if by magic into the hands of the goblin that had served them.

He now knew that it hadn’t been magic, but simply the withdrawing of the food from the ring.

Amazingly, he found a stack of identical plates of food all in the same storage chamber of the ring.

These rings really were a curiosity, he thought. With one hundred chambers in the ring, he was astounded at the way it stored items.

If he deposited a pack into the ring, it would take up a single chamber, but if he removed an item from the pack and then put it back in the ring, the item would take up its own chamber.

Removing a meal from storage, he ate quickly while taking the occasional sip of water from a waterskin.

For a moment, he looked at the body of the goblin that had served him before hurrying away.

It seemed disrespectful to do such a thing. He knew that the goblin that had served them had a similar ring, and quite possibly the others did, too. Not to mention what items the goblin wizard might have had.

With a sigh, he turned his attention back to his food. While the items might prove beneficial to him, it was grave robbing, no matter how he tried to justify it.

They hadn’t been enemies, and while he found the idea of taking from the bodies of his enemies as justified, he still found it distasteful.

More of that naivete Polto had warned him about, he decided.

He set his jaw; there had to be a line.

He would pass on the bodies of the party to their people so their belongings could go to their families. That was what honor meant. You didn’t do things because they were easy; you did them because they were right.

Daniel removed his amulet of Honos and stared at the head of the white stallion that was the god’s symbol.

It was the reason he had accepted the minor blessing of Honos. He agreed that Honor and Justice were worth dedicating yourself to, but it was also why he refused to worship the god and try to walk the Path of the Divine.

To walk the Path of the Divine meant power. Power that he could do wonderful and heroic things with, but it took the decision of how he used that power out of his hands.

He would become a tool for the god, sent to deliver justice to where the deity saw fit. While it was, without a doubt, a noble endeavor, he thought of his family.

No divine benefactor had come to save them. He had to make sure that he could always make his own decisions, and while he wouldn’t have the reach and power of a god, he would not allow himself to be pulled away to what was deemed a more important task, if there were people in need in front of him.

It was a debate he had worked through over the past year, ever since he first took the blessing. Grinning to himself, he looked around. Nope, no gods appearing to offer him the Path.

He chuckled to himself, and made a prayer to Honos, changing the focus of the blessing from blunt weapons to unarmed combat.

With his class, the minor blessing didn’t really do anything anymore for his Blunt skill, so moving it to another useful melee skill seemed worthwhile.

Reinvigorated, he stood. Time to get moving.

***

Daniel wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a hidden cave at the base of a mountain.

It had taken him four days to get here, and now, staring into the inky black entrance of what could only be a dungeon, he was seriously debating his life choices.

He still had the three System points. It was enough to take either a general class or a skill, but he had been hoping to save up a full six points to raise the tier of his blunt weapons skill.

Going into a possible dungeon with a weighted baton that wasn’t even designed to kill seemed incredibly stupid.

He could use the three points to take either the Swords or Axes skill, since he had plenty of the orcs’ weapons in his ring. And either of those options would give him a literal edge over his baton against any monsters inside.

Thinking for a moment, there was a safe option he could take. While not as good as a bladed weapon, he could use the three points to raise his Strength score.

He was already pretty fit, but increasing your strength with a skill point gave an exponential increase to the stat and would effectively double his current strength.

System points were rare, with most people only getting a few their entire lives, and his plan didn’t account for any wastage.

No, it was the right call. Especially if he planned to focus on blunt weapons. Strength was king.

Without debating it further, he brought up his System screen and added a point to Strength.

Power flooded into him, and after a moment, he felt the weight of his armor noticeably decrease.

Daniel felt flushed. The feeling had been indescribable and for a moment; he felt like he could take on the world…or hopefully a dungeon.

He stepped into the dark cave.

System Message: You have entered a dungeon.

He saw the System message flash and quickly willed further messages away.

Through whatever odd quirk of the System, System messages were easy to ignore, only appearing in the corner of your vision, then disappearing after a few seconds.

However, they tended to draw your attention when in the dark; the text standing out with no light to dull their glow.

This was why many people closed their eyes when receiving messages. A bad habit that could lead to death on a dungeon world.

It was nearly pitch black in the dungeon, and he couldn’t even spot the sunlight that should have been coming from the cave entrance.

Reaching back towards where he had entered, he felt around for the exit, but his hands only felt the cold stone of the cave wall.

Slowly his eyes began to adjust to the near darkness and after a moment, he realized he could see after a fashion.

Glowing blue lichen on the walls gave him just enough light to see by.

What had the troll said to him, “…those that don’t require light to see.”

He could appreciate why many of the monster races were comfortable in the dark caves of the mountains. Darkness meant the unknown, and the unknown could kill you.

The ability to see in darkness would reduce their reliance on light and provide a strategic advantage over anyone that needed it.

He had flint and steel on his belt, but the orcs, unlike humans, had packs had contained nothing as useful as a torch.

That wasn’t to say he couldn’t make one. He could wrap some cloth around one of the orcs’ swords and then light it, but immediately vetoed the idea.

The spark from his flint wouldn’t be enough to set unprepared fabric alight without something highly flammable.

Nothing to do but press on, he decided.

He crept down the tunnel and as he came around a bend, he could see the warm light of a fire painting the tunnel walls.

Holding his baton out in a guard position, he stepped out of the tunnel and into a cavern.

The walls and high ceiling of the room held more of the blue lichen, but the two beings sitting by a fire transfixed Daniel’s eye, not to mention what towered behind them.

A goblin and a kobold seemed to be watching the small fire intently, completely ignoring the white marble shrine that towered above them.

The polished steps of the shrine led up to an altar with a symbol of a divine glyph he had never seen before.

A mountain, a chalice, and two circles set in a metal disc, high up on the marble wall behind the altar.

Frozen in place at the sight, Daniel was unprepared for the kobold’s reaction to his presence.

“Hiya,” the kobold said with a wave.