He shut his eyes, afraid and unwilling to process what was about to happen. This couldn’t be real, he was the hero! He had a unique class! What kind of hero dies at level 1? These thoughts were interrupted as he experienced something unexpected. Sam felt the sharp pain of the blunt impact smashing into his skull, yes. But while this was the most excruciating thing Sam had ever experienced, it was expected. What was not expected, was the sudden reestablishment of his link with the System. This led to that same strange sensation, following by him suddenly being able to recall the following information, which he definitely hadn’t possessed even a second ago:
Death detected.
...Respawn initializing...
Encounter generated.
...Calculating debuffs…
Debuffs calculated.
Respawn 1 initialized.
Respawned.
First respawn debuffs:
-1% XP for encounter
-1 to all attributes
This was really weird. He opened his eyes, and started to process this, only to once again see the club inches away and experience that blistering pain, somehow even more agonizing this time around. His link reestablished, and for the first time, he felt like the System actively relayed information to him. The link… wasn’t breaking immediately? This was new. Hopefully the System had finally decided to be helpful for once. Sam quickly parsed through the information he now had access to:
Death detected.
...Respawn initializing...
Restarting generated Encounter.
...Calculating debuffs…
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Debuffs calculated.
Respawn 2 initialized.
Respawned.
First respawn debuffs:
-2% XP for encounter
-2 to all attributes
Grace Period:
1 Minute.
NOTICE: Respawners will only get one Grace Period per Encounter, occurring for one minute immediately prior to their second attempt at a generated Encounter. Use it wisely.
This was insane, really insane. He had no idea how to handle this. Sure, none of this should be surprising. In retrospect, Respawner wasn’t even a remotely vague name, and he’d even considered something like this. But he hadn’t expected something like THIS, or for it to be thrust so suddenly upon him. He hadn’t expected the agonizing pain. The pain that he’d have to live through over and over. The fact that he wasn’t even sure he could beat a Level 12 Ogre at Level 1 with no Skills outside of apparently being really good at dying, or at least, really good at not staying dead.
He thought he’d just be farming slimes or rats or something until he got used to everything. Then he could be cool, abuse his OP class, and save the day. This was way too much, way too soon.
He also realized he felt really strange, stranger than even the situation should warrant, and he couldn’t place why. He then realized it was because his link to the supposed System had been active for this entire grace period so far. He tried to utilize this maintained connection to finally gain some more information about his attributes, class, the world around him, everything. He didn’t even want everything at this point, Sam wryly thought that he’d be happy with anything he could get from the stupid System. He had no luck with almost all of his queries. He did realize though, that he was able to pull more information about the Ogre in front of him from the System.
Pyronix the Ogre
Mid-level member of the Pyro Clan. Elders and high-level members of this clan possess basic fire-enhancement and manipulation abilities. This clan’s strengths are their extreme strength and endurance, though they lack intelligence.
He read this and realized that not only did it not help him out of this situation whatsoever, but that his time was almost up and he had figured out nothing. Panicked, he could barely think straight, all his thoughts kept going back to the 15 seconds he had remaining to somehow beat a gigantic Ogre 11 levels above him. His last seconds were spent on a mixture of wondering if the debuffs would continue to increase every respawn, cursing and feeling indignant while thinking that a unique hidden class shouldn’t have debuffs and that he deserved better, and deciding that whatever happened he definitely had to dodge the second the grace period ended.
He felt there was no need for further planning. If he was able to dodge, he knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to turn around and get as far as humanly possible from this Ogre. And from these woods. And from this horrible horrible class.
But he knew that his chances of outrunning a level 12 monster, that even the literal System acknowledged as having high endurance, were slim. So with almost no time left, Sam tried to come up with a realistic way to not die.