Chapter 48: Goblin Manor
Crimson pushed his way through a wall of white fog, thick enough that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He felt almost like the fog was entering his body as he moved through it, chilling his bones and cooling his organs. It perturbed his [Mana] too, so the sensation likely wasn’t in his head.
On the other side of the fog wall, he stepped out to see a valley with towering mountains forming a tear drop shape around it. The ground of the valley sloped upwards, toward the tip of the tear drop on the opposite end. At the tip of the tear drop was a large manor house, partially built into the side of the mountain with three distinct stories as determined by the windows, but each floor was two or three times the height that a typical human dwelling would be. Criss-crossing the area between him and the manor was large gouges in the ground, chasms filled with murky darkness.
[Goblin Manor]. The first dungeon Crimson had set foot into. His sense of urgency went to war with his excitement at finally entering a dungeon. He felt like he’d just gotten out on summer break and could finally play to his heart’s content.
He stepped to the side to allow Verity through. The fog wall was big enough that she likely wouldn’t have run into him even if he remained where he’d been, gaping at the sight like a fool, but it was polite to give her the proper space.
He and Verity surveyed the area together, and she said, “It’s weird to see the sky like this.”
He glanced at her, “Do most dungeons not let you see the sky?”
She tilted her hand in a so-so gesture that he’d taught her a while ago, and said, “Well, typically the dungeon is in a Castle, or a Cave. Sometimes it’s an underground village. So you sometimes get peeks of the sky, but being under it like this is rare for [Godmade Dungeons]. It’s nice.”
Crimson grunted in response and asked, “Our goal is to reach Lv.5 today, I have a general idea about what’s effective for leveling, but you have more experience. Any thoughts?”
Verity gave him a sidelong glance, then said, “The stronger the things you fight, the faster you become stronger. If you fight something that’s too weak, you won’t get any stronger, but I bet you already knew that, right?”
“In different terminology,” he responded, and waited, hoping she’d have more to add.
After a moment, she said, “Well, I always found that progress came in bursts for me. I would sometimes spend forever to level up once, while other times I could blast few a few levels in a single day. I always get very tired after a day of leveling, whether it’s my mind or my body, it’s all tired, and it frequently hurts.”
Crimson nodded once more. She reminded him of the experience he’d had when he raised his mental stats - INT, WIS, and PER - too quickly in a short amount of time. It took a major toll on him, giving him headaches and messing with his ability to function.
He was fundamentally a preparation fiend. He pushed himself as hard as he did to try and be ready for every possible situation, so he carefully filed this information away. If they pushed too hard today, they might get too exhausted to continue and lose all the progress they’d made. They might not actually die in a [Godmade Dungeon], but the penalties for dying weren’t light.
“About how much leveling can you safely do in a day?” He asked.
“I’m not sure. When I first started out, I got in a bet with one of my party members and picked a fight with a group of monsters two or three levels above mine. Managed to get 4 Levels from the situation, went from Lv.6 to Lv.10 in one day. I couldn’t move for a day after that.”
“When did the tiredness set in?”
“Most of it hit after leaving the dungeon. I started feeling it a bit before we left, but it wasn’t unmanageable.”
Crimson considered that. He was currently Lv.2. Lv.10 was the minimum level to get his first [Sub Class]. While there would be some value in rushing to Lv.10, there was also a lot of value in gradual progress, getting used to new strength as it was accumulated.
He was actually facing that issue at the moment. He hadn’t had a moment to slow down and focus on himself, adapt to his new [Skills]. He’d been recklessly charging from one task to the next, and felt half baked because of it. Certainly, he’d had opportunities to use his new [Skills] - sans-[Defense Pierce] - in live combat, but the value of training the [Skills] in a controlled environment was superior in his opinion.
A blade was forged in fire by a craftsman, not in blood by a warrior on the battlefield.
The [Skill] he could honestly say he needed to spend the most time with was [Mikiri]. It was a [Skill] that would save his life, so understanding its limitations would be imperative. Certainly, he still didn’t understand [Ul Byrn] properly, but he at least had enough of an idea to realize that it was something he wasn’t able to train yet. It was, much to Crimson’s annoyance, a [Skill] that would have to be refined in live combat or sparring.
He glanced at his [Blessing] to verify the stat increases from the Level he’d been given as a reward from Riskter.
—————
-Name: Crimson
-Race: Half (High Human, ???) -Age: 16
-Affiliation: [Adventurer’s Guild: Brass]
-Active Title: [Holy Envoy] [Sword of the Forgotten Path] [Blessings of Trans'Du'Niir] [Rean] [Madit]
-Titles: Lucky, Linguist, Master, Holy Envoy, Unparalleled, Sword of the Forgotten Path
-Health (HP): 350/350 Regen/s: 2.6
-Magic (MP): 500/500 Regen/s: 5.5
-Condition: Good
-Class: [Sword Savant] 2/25
-Sub-Class: [Locked]
-Sub-Class: [Locked]
-Status:
Strength (STR): 25 Agility (AGI): 26
Constitution (CON): 23 Vitality (VIT): 28
Intelligence (INT): 50 Wisdom (WIS): 55
Charisma (CHA): 7 Willpower (WIL): 27
Perception (PER): 49 Luck (LUC): 90
-Skills:
-Bloodline:
-[Eyes of Change: [Eyes of Will] 9/10] 1/10, [???] 0/0,
[Blade Spirit] 4/10
-Class:
-[Advanced Sword Mastery] 8/100, [Parry] 10/10, [Mikiri] 5/10, [Sword Armory] 2/10
-Sets:
-[System Instincts: [Skill Peak] 10/10 [Class Peak] 2/10, [Locked], [Locked]]
-General:
-[Ul Byrn] 3/10, [Sophisticated Mana Influence] 10/10, [Sophisticated Mana Sense] 10/10, [Intermediate Linguist] 10/10, [Secret Sense] 4/10, [Advanced Calligraphy] 10/10, [Adaptive Footwork] 1/10, [Defense Pierce] 1/10
—————
Crimson noted with some surprise that [Class Peak] had gotten a Level too. He didn’t quite remember when that happened, so he scrolled through some other messages until he found it. It seems that it went up when his Level did, so he might have that one done by the time that he reached Lv.10, which would unlock the next [Skill] in the set.
After a satisfied nod, he turned to Verity, and asked, “So, how do dungeon explorations typically go?”
“Typically, the leader picks a direction, and we go there, killing everything in our way and trying to find some good loot.”
“That’s a bit too simplistic.” He said, a bit exasperated.
She shrugged in return, “You asked. Sometimes there’s more of a process to it. Some scouting or preliminary info gathering, but you rushed us in here too quickly to do that properly.”
He grimaced, then sighed. Of course, he’d read up on the [Goblin Manor] a bit, so he likely knew more about the dungeon than Verity, but she had experience that he craved. She was not being as helpful as he’d hoped, so he dug once more, “Anything else? Something your party would do? Something I should keep an eye out for?”
Starting to look annoyed, she said, “Retreat is always a good option, better to lose an encounter than die.”
He nodded. That one was obvious, and he could see from Verity’s reaction that his thoughts were showing on his face, and she got more annoyed.
“Look,” she growled, “what my party did got them killed. I’d rather you find a better way, one that will prevent us from dying.”
Feeling he was on dangerous grounds, he accepted her words, then said, “Okay, I guess we’ll just go that way and see what we find.”
He pointed to the left, and rather than walking straight toward the manor, he opted to explore the edge of the map. It was typical video game logic to outline an area like this before filling it in, hugging the edge where possible, though the shape of the map was a factor.
The fat part of the tear drop, the side of the valley he and Verity was on, was clear of the chasms for a little bit, but once the drop started to narrow, the chasms appeared. That gave them a little field to explore. There were some goblins wandering around, but Crimson ignored them. Small fry like this weren’t were the time or energy unless necessary.
Crimson could fight humans up to Lv.10 with extreme effort, his experience and the weight of his [Advanced Sword Mastery] allowed him to overcome the monumentous stat difference. That meant that to actually profit more than just some EXP, he needed to take on harder enemies.
Going around the edge, they eventually found a goblin that looked a little tougher than the others. It was still a skinny twig, mostly naked aside from a loincloth, and it had a big round gut despite all its ribs showing. Green skin, black eyes, floppy ears, and hairless, the thing that made Crimson think it was stronger than the others he’d seen was the fact that this one was armed. A simple club, but it was something.
Crimson stopped before charging, and glanced at Verity, “I was originally planning to hit Lv.5 today, but after what you said about being tired, I’m planning on shooting for Lv.4. Would you be willing to push yourself to that point too?”
3 levels for her, 2 for him. He would likely be fine, but 3 was closer to the limit she’d mentioned, so she probably wouldn’t feel great tomorrow, but he would leave the decision to her.
She waved a hand casually, then said, “That’s fine. Ideally all the members of a party have the same Levels. Tomorrow’s Highday anyway, I’ll just spend the day sleeping.”
He nodded, and turned the enemy before him. It didn’t take him long to feel bad for the thing.
Crimson’s damage wasn’t great but it took 6 good cuts on the thing’s body to kill it. That meant that it just suffered has he viciously tore it to ribbons. It tried to attack him at some point, but a basic parry completely disarmed it.
He was targeting its chest with his strikes, trying to hit places that would be considered ‘solid’ blows, but he avoided critical areas like the stomach or neck. He wanted to see what it would take to kill it with regular blows, but there was a twinge of regret to that now.
Watching the goblin fall to the ground and fade away, leaving some item drops on the ground, all Crimson could feel was pity.
Crimson turned to Verity with a grimace and said, “Too weak to be helpful. Let’s go straight to the-“
He was cut off by her as she wordlessly pointed at the drops, mouth agape.
Looking back, he wasn’t sure why she was reacting that way, then stopped, frowned, and counted the drops. 1, 2… Then recounted 1, 2, 3, 4. There were 4 of them.
That seemed oddly high.
Turning to Verity, he asked, “How do enemy drops work? I’m unfamiliar with this topic.”
With a gulp, she said, “Well, there’s a common drop, an uncommon drop, a ritual drop, and a [Skill Stone] drop. It’s not uncommon to get a couple common drops, but typically you don’t get this many, especially because…”
Crimson turned to look at the drops again. There was 4 of them, and each were unique, which meant…
“Is that one of each?” He asked.
Verity nodded jerkily, then punched him in the shoulder, a big grin blooming across her face, “Look at the [Skill Stone]! If it’s useful, you can absorb it!”
He nodded, then bent over and scooped up the [Skill Stone] and inspected it.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
—————
-[Skill: Cut]
—————
He tossed it to Verity. She looked at him in surprise, then glanced at the description, and her excitement turned to disappointment.
“What’s it say?” He asked.
“It’s an active [Skill], some MP for an attack, but it’s exclusive to claws. Useless to you and me.”
Crimson nodded, thoughtful. He vaguely recalled the goblin trying to attack him with its claws right before he dealt the final blow. Maybe it hadn’t been a trick of the light that the claws had been glowing.
It had died before Crimson could stop to verify, so he hadn’t worried about it.
He inspected the other drops, and was a bit revolted. The common drop was an ear, the rare drop was a tooth. The ritual drop was a [Earth Shard], the lowest ranking [Earth Ritual Material]. That was the only one of the three he was happy to shove into his pack. He put the [Skill Stone] into his [Inventory] though.
Even if it was useless to them, it was still a [Skill].
They resumed their exploration, and he asked while they walked, “So for the [Skill Stone] drop, is it always the same [Skill]? Is there a chance that I would get a different [Skill] if I killed the same kind of goblin?”
“No clue, that was the sixth [Skill Stone] I’ve seen in my life. This is the only one that’s been a let down though.”
“Well,” he said wryly, “it did come from a low level goblin. If it dropped a [Skill] like [World Ending Slash] or whatever, I think I’d be more worried than excited.”
She bobbed her head in agreement. A few of the smaller goblins attacked them as they wandered, but Crimson didn’t bother to kill them. He just kicked them out of the way and moved on. Even at Lv.1 as a [Healer], goblins of this level were beneath Verity, to say nothing of him.
They didn’t follow, most of them were too winded to get up after his kicks anyway. He could try experimenting with them to see what kind of drops they had, but it wasn’t worth it. He needed to find another one like the first one he’d fought for an accurate comparison, and he didn’t fancy hunting a bunch of these weaklings for his test.
They found a pair of goblins wielding clubs, about at the point right before the chasms began. Verity needed to participate in the fight somehow to get EXP, so she cast [Enhanced Recovery] on him with the duration increased as much as she could, and he went to town.
Since there was two of them, he chose caution over cockiness. He could likely be reckless against enemies of this calibre, but if he messed up, he’d never heard the end of it from Verity.
He took down the first one as quickly as he could, slashing it across the throat and seeing the popup:
—————
-Critical Hit!
-Target inflicted with Rapid Bleeding!
—————
It fell to the ground, gurgling and clutching its throat. Crimson couldn’t see its health bar, that was a [Skill] he didn’t have, but he could see the life draining from its eyes.
The other one had been surprised and froze, watching the first die, then turned to Crimson and aggressively attacked.
Crimson opted to experiment with this one a bit. It took another 6 slashes to the chest to die, so Crimson, with 25 STR, wielding the [Reliable Saber] which gave a +5 to his attack, could deal a total of 30 damage per hit. Adding on his [Blade Spirit] brought it up to 32. Of course, goblins did not have 0 CON, it probably wasn’t high, but it likely wasn’t that low either. If he guessed that a goblin’s CON was 10, like the average of the humans, then that meant he was dealing 20 damage per blow. At 6 blows, that gave the goblins roughly 130 HP. Considering Crimson had started with 100 before getting his [Class], that didn’t seem unreasonable.
He inspected the drops, and said, “That’s disappointing. I don’t see another [Skill Stone].”
That earned him a punch from Verity.
They got two common drops from the first one, and an [Earth Shard] from the second, not a bad haul according to Verity, but infinitely disappointing compared to the first one they killed.
They moved on, Verity’s [Enhanced Recovery] was subtle, but it meant that he didn’t need to stop for a break with this level of exertion. A happy side effect.
Bored of this level of enemy, Crimson suggested heading directly to the manor, and Verity agreed. It seems that he wasn’t the only one bored.
They had to find a path through all the chasms, which took a bit of time with how they snaked around at one point they crawled across a tree that had fallen across a shorter section, and they were ambushed a few times by sneaky goblins. They were of the same quality he’d been killing up to this point, so he opted to kill them.
He also ended up swapping one of his titles for [Lucky] in the hopes that it would increase the item drops, and it did, but not as much as he hoped. They killed 4 more, and not a single one dropped a [Skill Stone], though one dropped three commons, and another dropped a rare and common drop. The other two both dropped [Earth Shards].
Verity chatted at him on occasion. He was mainly listening, so it couldn’t be said that it was a stimulating conversation for her, but she seemed to be using it mostly to kill boredom, so it worked out well for them both.
The tear drop wasn’t too long relative to a straight distance, but with the amount of exploring they did, it took 2 hours to reach the manor. It would probably take a quarter of that on the way back.
The doors swung open on their own, and Crimson stepped into the hall with Verity, and a rush of motion immediately occurred, it was an ambush!
The hall had a grand staircase up the center, and balconies branching off on either side, extending all the way around the upper layer. There were 3 goblins up top using slings to throw stones at them. These goblins were of a much higher quality than the ones they’d seen up to that point. Fully clothed, no longer emaciated, and even wearing a few pieces of armor, it was clear that they were also more intelligent.
Actually, it seemed there was 4 goblins. Crimson found that out the hard way when a large rock crashed into his shoulder from overhead, taking 10% of his health with it. He wasn’t wearing armor, and it was a pretty big rock, so he was knocked off his feet by the hit and lost another 1% of his HP to the fall.
Part of the idea behind hitting up the dungeon was to get the funds to afford armor, and this just reaffirmed the necessity.
Two other goblins on the same level charged him, one using a wooden pitchfork and the other using a large rusty kitchen knife. They had clothing of a similar level to the ones up top, and seemed to actually know what they were doing with the weapons they were holding.
The one with the knife went after Verity, and the pitchfork one went after him. Jumping to his feet, his right arm dragging a bit from the blow he’d taken he backed up under the balcony so he wouldn’t get another rock dropped on his head, and moved closer to the corner. Currently, only three goblins were able to attack him from this position. The pitchfork one, and the two furthest of the four goblins up top. He could hear the one right over head running around the balcony, likely to find a place to hit him again, so he needed to take care of this quickly.
In a typical party, he would probably be more worried about covering for Verity, but a glance at her told him that her experience left her a lot better off. She hadn’t taken a hit, and was doing a very good job positioning herself so that the knife goblin was a meat shield. These goblins were smarter, but not smart enough to realize that they could hit their fellows with their stones, so Verity’s meat shield had taken a few blows to the back and was clearly suffering for it.
Crimson fell into stance for [Virrak Tau], deflected the pitchfork with [Parry], and sunk his blade deeply into the throat of the goblin before him. It wildly flailed at him, the blow slowing it and causing it to panic, but not killing it. He also didn’t get the alert for the Rapid Bleeding Condition, so it was likely that his blow hadn’t been enough.
Dodging a few rocks, and glancing back to make sure he wasn’t putting himself too deep into the corner, he found another opening and sliced at the pitchfork, right at where the goblin was holding it.
The wood cracked a little bit, and was accompanied by the wet thump of a saber slicing off the first two fingers of the goblin’s right hand.
Crimson’s own right hand was still useless, the pain was deep enough to keep him from moving it too much. He could still think and act in fierce disregard of the pain, but the pain was a warning that the damage to his right arm was severe. He could heal it himself, but he had the presence of mind to leave it to Verity since it was too dangerous to stop and try to heal himself.
Taking another route, and swallowing his pride, he fired a couple [Flares] at the goblins in the upper balcony, forcing them to duck down, and giving him some room to attack the pitchfork goblin again. It had moved the pitchfork to its other hand, and was cradling the injured hand under the arm pit to try and staunch the blood.
There was some kind of intelligence to these creatures, limited as it was, and Crimson forced himself to suppress his fascination. This was not the time!
He struck swiftly, feinting toward the hand holding the pitchfork before slashing the goblin’s throat again. This time, he did manage to inflict [Rapid Bleeding], but it kept coming at him unlike the other goblins he’d inflicted with that status condition. Clearly, it had a lot more health.
A barrage of [Flares] toward the upper balcony bought him the room for another blow, but his MP was starting to get a bit low. He had a lot of MP, but he’d also been recklessly firing [Flares] to get space to attack.
He called to Verity, “[Barrier]!” Trusting her, he aggressively stepped forward and swept the goblin off its feet with a kick. It’s stance was messy because of the blows he’d given it, and easily landed face first on the ground.
Crimson stomped on its head and reversed his saber to slam the tip into the back of the thing’s neck. The blow landed true, and with a rattling breath the goblin faded away, letting his boot hit the ground. Dimly, he noted a new notification from his [Blessing].
His trust in Verity paid off as a rock bounced off a [Barrier] that appeared just in time to keep him from getting hit in the face. The [Barrier] immediately fell apart. They were taking on enemies above their by seemingly a significant margin, so he was grateful that it held up enough to stop the blow at all.
He moved away from the corner toward Verity and slammed his good shoulder into the goblin holding the knife, knocking it back, and letting him and Verity retreat out of the manor once more.
The door closed once they got a few steps away, and a glance around showed no other nearby goblins, so Verity started using a healing spell on him.
Under optimal circumstances, it would only take 100 or so seconds for Crimson to recover all of his MP, but the exertion and stress of the encounter slowed his MP recovery to a little less than half, so it too five minutes for it to recover.
Crimson could only blame himself, under typical video game logic, enemies wouldn’t ambush immediately upon entering a new location. Devs knew to give players a second to understand where they were before they got attacked.
Certainly not the case here, it couldn’t even be considered arrogance on Crimson’s part, just stupidity and a lack of experience that he would let an ambush like this get him.
Verity had expected it, and she handled the encounter flawlessly, not taking a single hit, and offering support when needed. The gap in experience was clear to him, and he was forced to acknowledge something he’d known for a while: he was overspecialized. He excelled in single combat under controlled conditions, in essence, Crimson was a duelist.
He’d been find during the double dungeon break because Alois had been covering for him, and even in this case, with Verity taking some of the heat off him, if he hadn’t had that support he wouldn’t have gotten off so easily.
He ran through his thought process with her, explaining his thoughts, then waited for her opinion. He didn’t like it.
“You’re being too hard on yourself. Most newbies would have died immediately under an encounter like that.” She told him.
“Rather, I’m not being hard enough on myself. I’m supposed to be this all powerful swordsman, a [Sword Savant], but I get my butt handed to me in a pathetic manner on my first day.”
She shrugged, “Sure, but I didn’t warn you either, I could have, but I didn’t. You still managed to survive and win the encounter. We got away alive, that’s winning, you even managed to kill one of them, that’s excellent progress for today.”
Crimson shook his head, “We’re not calling it here. I got a level off that, and I’d bet good money you did too.”
“So, what? We’re going to take on some other goblins?” Verity said with resignation.
“You know me, we’re going right back in there.”
“I do,” she said with a sigh.
They took a break to let Verity recover her MP again, then approached the door once more.
This time, Crimson was ready. The first goblin, the one he’d killed, hadn’t respawned yet, so he charged forward. It elicited a small cry of surprise from Verity. He’d seemingly put himself in a stupid position by going to the center of the hall, in plain view of all four of the goblins on the upper level, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he dodged the two stones that came at him from the left and the right, while the one that had hit him the first time was focusing on Verity, so with just a few steps before reaching the knife goblin, he carefully watched the goblin standing at the top of the stairs.
It sent a stone right at his face, and rather than dodging, he let it get close, too close, but [Mikiri] activated, and he paired it with [Parry] to deflect the stone into the face of the knife goblin. It had lost most of its force with that maneuver, but it surprised the knife goblin long enough for Crimson to get by and charge up the stairs at full speed. His STR, enhanced beyond the levels of a normal human, when paired with his AGI allowed him to take the stairs four at a time, reaching the top in a flash and allowing him to sever the sling of the goblin before it could loose another stone.
The freed stone slammed into the wall behind the goblin, and Crimson turned, scooping up the cradle of the sling and taking off in a sprint around the balcony to similarly disarm the other goblins. His aggression kept their focus on him, keeping Verity free, and a well timed [Barrier] from her kept the one on the right side from hitting him in the side of the head.
Their accuracy with the slings was remarkable, probably a [Skill] of some kind.
Destroying and retrieving the remnants of the second, then third sling goblins he glanced back and saw he was being chased by the knife goblin and the three formerly sling goblins.
They were just throwing the stones they had as ammo at this point, but their throwing ability sucked, and the stones lacked the force that the sling provided, so there was nothing to worry about. Reaching the strait toward the last sling goblin, he used the [Mikiri]+[Parry] combo to keep his nose from being caved in and got in close.
Having seen that his goal was to destroy the sling, this goblin tried to hide it from him, leaving its neck completely open. Crimson had leveled up, which meant his damage had gone up by 4, and that small difference allowed him to cut deeply into this goblin’s throat, inflicting Rapid Bleeding.
Grabbing it’s arm, he then slung it over the balcony and let it drop to the floor with a sickening crunch. It wasn’t dead yet, but it would be soon. Turning he saw that the knife goblin was bearing down on him, too close for him to use his saber, so sidestepping the knife, he punched it in the face with the finger guard, its nose broke under the impact, and sent droplets of blood flying as it staggered back a few steps. Just far enough for his blade to swing.
By virtue of holding its face, it was protecting its throat, so he slashed across its stomach. Backing up to avoid a few rocks, he stepped back in and performed a series of quick cuts, one to the face, and the rest to the body and gut.
He was forced to back off again. He hadn’t managed to inflict Rapid Bleeding, and it was regaining its senses. If it were just him against the knife goblin, he wouldn’t have struggled. It was a bit tanky, but that was it. It wasn’t that skilled. The issue was that he instinctively kept dodging the rocks being thrown at him, cutting off his attacks.
Some of them hit the knife goblin, so at least he wasn’t the only one distracted by the onslaught.
Fortunately it stopped for a moment and gave him just enough room to disarm the knife goblin and stab it deeply through the neck. With a heave to the side, he left it in a half beheaded state, and it started to fade away before even hitting the ground.
Glancing at the last three goblins, Crimson turned and began to run once more. He needed to kite them to get a bit more space.
It worked out well, the nearest goblin reacted the fastest, and began pursuit.
The second it got away from the group, he cast [Lesser Barrier], keeping it separated from the rest of its group long enough for him to about face and let it run onto his blade, it’s own force shoving his saber through its chest and traveling up to the hilt.
—————
-Critical Strike!
-Lethal Blow!
—————
He sent a mental command to his [Blessing] to stop alerts. He didn’t need those minor distractions right now.
Fortunately, he didn’t need to worry about pulling the goblin off his blade as it started to fade away, letting him immediately prepare to face the remaining two goblins who had broken through his [Lesser Barrier] quite easily.
Two versus one? No problem no that he didn’t have to deal with the hail of rocks.
He took a formal stance, then danced with his blade, letting it sing into openings with grace and ferocity. His footwork kept them out of reach of their claws - which he noted were not glowing - and they both crumbled one after the other.
He leveled up again.
He leaned up against the balcony, sweat dripping down his face, and grinned down at Verity, who grinned back at him, arms folded.
There were likely more elegant solutions to this fight than the one he had used, but experience would be his teacher now, and he could only be satisfied.
—————
-Class: [Sword Savant] 4/25
-Status:
-Strength (STR): 33 Agility (AGI): 34
-Constitution (CON): 27 Vitality (VIT): 32
-Intelligence (INT): 50 Wisdom (WIS): 55
-Charisma (CHA): 7 Willpower (WIL): 29
-Perception (PER): 51 Luck (LUC): 90
-Skill Level Up!
-[Mikiri] 5/10 —> 6/10
-[Advanced Sword Mastery] 8/100 —> 9/100
-[Blade Spirit] 4/10 —> 6/10
-[Ul Byrn] 3/10 —> 4/10
-[Adaptive Footwork] 1/10 —> 2/10
-[Defense Pierce] 1/10 —> 4/10
-[Class Peak] 2/10 —> 4/10
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