A few hours had passed, Ray sits on a pile 10 goblin corpses examining his sword which was begging to chip, “There was quite a few this time, must be close to the nest.”, Ray thought. Dungeons, which were naturally generated labyrinths, had 3 main attractions, hidden rooms filled with treasures and artefacts, spawn rooms where the monsters lurk and call their base of operations and boss rooms, the final layer of a dungeon, usually a medium to large size room where the boss of the dungeon lives. Ray pondered on what to do, he was currently level 17, his progression had started to slow down now, he needed to kill a lot more monsters... but could he take on the whole horde of goblins? It would be worth it, goblins are hoarders and love to collect stolen goods, they could have a lot of unknown valuable items and it was almost like free exp... as long as he didn’t make any silly mistakes. “I’ve decided, it's time to rid this dungeon of all Goblins, I will become, the goblin slayer.". Ray continues through the tunnels, the hordes of goblins getting denser, however, they stood no chance against a level 17 unique skeleton. from Rays perception, the goblins he had come across so far in the dungeon couldn't have been stronger than level 10 maximum, however, the nest would be different. Ray appeared to reach a dead end; however, he saw a suspicious plank of wood lying across the floor at the end of the tunnel, “A trap door huh? these goblins are smarter then I gave them credit for.”, Ray thought, impressed by their craftiness, too bad they were going to die, if they weren’t so vile, he may have let them live. Ray, who had managed to level up to level 18, sensed something quite strange from this room, it wasn’t normal. As Ray tentatively opened the trap door and counted, there appeared to be 50 goblins all squatting about, although there was a lot, Ray knew he could win. Without hesitation Ray leapt down the hole. As he landed, he brought his sword down piercing an unexpecting goblin, “1 down, 49 left.”, the goblins, stared at him, startled and confused. As Ray scanned his surroundings, he spotted what looked like a wooden door. Maybe their treasure was behind there?
Ray was now surrounded by all 49 goblins that had formed a ring around him and were snarling and jeering at him. If he had a face, he would have smiled. Using his superior speed, Ray easily closes the distance between him and a group of goblins in front of him, he places the blade against his hip and slashes out words, decapitating 5 goblins at once “6.”, suddenly, a familiar mechanical voice sounds in his head “basic swordsmanship, skill quick slash has been learnt.”, “finally!”, Ray thought. As Ray was an experienced swordsman in the game, he had memorised a few of the basic movements that his character had used and had hoped that by repeating them over and over again, he would finally learn the skill and it appeared that his hypothesis was correct. Everyone in the world of Evoden has mana, however depending on what route in the game they took, mana would develop into combat skills, that enhance the weapon and the characters movements using mana or would become stereotypical magic spells, this allowed those who chose to fight with weapons or their bare fists a fair fight against those who used magic. The goblins enraged now began screaming and chanting, like true Neanderthals. As a horde of goblins, 5 in numbers charged Ray, he bent down and touched the floor, “Earth wall.”, this was the only earth spell he currently knew, so far, he only knew one earth, water and wind spell along with his two fire spells. Earth wall summoned a defensive wall of earth, the more mana put into the spell, the thicker and taller the wall became, Ray used this to divide the room in half, there was currently 20 goblins in front of him clutching at their little daggers. Ray was confident that he could beat all the goblins in this room, however he still had the uneasy feeling, there was something in this nest that will prove more of a challenge, he resumed his assault by shooting a fire bolt through the heart of one of the goblins, “7”, the goblins swarmed Ray, chipped and rusting daggers in hand.
Ray put his blade to his hip, as it began to glow red with magic. Ray darts forwards and slashes through 5 goblins, from behind them another goblin jumps up, clearly trying to catch Ray off guard, however, Ray thrust his blade forwards through the goblins head, “basic swordsmanship, skill piercing strike has been learnt.”. Piercing strike, similar to quick slash, was a move where you darted and thrusted forwards, in the early levels of the game it’s quite a good skill, it was known as the Defense breaker as it would pierce through low rarity armours and weaker monster’s tough hides. “13.”, a goblin that had snuck up behind him stabbed him from behind, however completely missed his spine, Ray elbowed the goblin, breaking his nose, touches the ground and creates a pillar underneath the goblin which rocked it towards the sealing, squashing it, “14.”, Ray sees two goblins flanking him from left and right, he throws his blade into the air which confuses the two goblins. Ray jumps up and split kicks the two goblins simultaneously, knocking them off balance, he then blasts them both with a fire bolt, ending them both, “16.”, Ray catches his sword and looks at it, chipped and damaged, the sword won’t last long at all, luckily, he was almost done here, just ten more to go it was time to end this. The 10 goblins were cowering in front of, after seeing their friends and family be completely decimated, they had clearly lost any hope, Ray stuck out his hand and a ball of flame spawned in his palm, “I wonder if I was to boost this fire ball, if I could wipe them all out? Kind of like ten pin bowling.”, Ray closed his eyes and focused on gathering more fire magic into the ball, a normal fire ball was about the size of his opened palm, he was hoping to go bigger. “Fire magic: basic spell, fire blast. Learnt.”.
Ray opened his eyes to see a ball of flame the size of a basketball hovering before his hand, it then launched at the cowering Goblins and then, BWOOSH. On impact the ball of fire had exploded, killing the 3 goblins that had taken the blunt of the attack, their bodies charcoaled black and had severely burnt the remaining 7 who were all screaming and writhing in pain, unable to fight back, and so, they met their end, “26 down, 24 to go.”.
Ray stretched as the notification informing him that he had reached level 23 goes off in his head, “so that gave me 5 levels, I'm starting to level up a bit slower now, even though I still level up quite fast, must be due to me being a unique monster and all, guess I need stronger opponents.”, Ray thought, an ordinary monster or adventurer at level 23, wouldn’t be able to do what he could, his progression followed more of the typical hero, that you would find in many fantasy games and stories, including Evo: online. “I guess Unique monsters are the monsters equivalent of heroes.”, Ray concluded as he walked towards the wall he had created and placed his hand on it, which caused it to descend, “Now, let's commence round 2.”.
The remaining 24 goblins, who had been alerted by the sounds of the descending stone wall readied themselves for the upcoming war. “Let's do this.”, Ray thought as he charged forwards. The battle didn't even last 2 minutes, Ray plunged his sword into the skull of the last standing goblin, “49, that's strange, I swear I counted 50 of them?”. Suddenly Ray felt a feeling he had never felt before, DANGER, he turned around to see a goblin standing on a pile of corpses, it appeared he had hidden amongst his fallen comrades to be the sole survivor, was he perhaps waiting for my guard to drop or for me to tire out Ray pondered as he raised his blade. The goblin smiled and snickered at him as he brandished an axe ¾ the size of himself at Ray. It was then that Ray realised that this goblin was different, although clearly a goblin he wasn’t as ugly, in fact he looked more humanoid, like how a hobgoblin would look, he had shoulder length black hair, and a slim, slightly muscular body and was probably half a foot taller than the other goblins and most importantly, Ray couldn't tell at first due to his red vision, but, the goblin was red. “A unique goblin? To think there would be 2 unique monsters in this low leveled dungeon, if any starter adventurers came across him, they would be killed.”. Ray noticed the goblin had a strange collar around his throat and then a strange voice entered his head, it wasn’t English that was for sure, yet he understood it as clearly as if it was.
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“Can you hear me, skeleton? Are you intelligent or not?”, the words had been transmitted straight into his mind.
“I can hear you, but how?”, Ray responded in his head in perfect goblin.
“Wow you can speak gobda? I was expecting you to reply in human, but you can speak my tongue, interesting indeed.”.
“Tell me goblin, you are a unique monster, right?”.
“That's what the others told me, due to that they quickly made me leader of the tribe in this dungeon, though I don’t intend on staying here long, I'm assuming you are too, a unique monster?”. The goblin said walking towards Ray.
“Yeah, I am a unique monster.”.
“Well, it would make sense, after all you're a red skeleton and apparently all unique monsters have a reddish colour to them.”.
“Interesting.”.
“So, tell me skeleton, what was your reason for coming here and slaughtering my brethren? Could you have once been human?”.
“Once human?”. Ray replied puzzled.
“Yeah, skeletons are created by deceased humans who have become reanimated, which is why they’re thoughtless, I've tried to communicate with a variety of other monsters on the first floors, skeletons have no thoughts in their head whereas slimes have simple thoughts, though i couldn't quite understand them. However, you seem to be different, maybe you becoming a unique skeleton allowed you to retain your cognitive abilities, no?
Ray, who thought it best not to tell anyone he had come from another world, decided to go along with this idea of once being a human inhabitant of this world who had died and became a skeleton.
“Yeah, you figured it out, I was killed in this dungeon I thought I would ascend to the next life or something like that but then I woke up in the dungeon... like this, my goal is to evolve back into a human.”.
“Evolve back into a human? That's impossible, monsters can’t become humans.”, what this goblin had said spun Ray, in the game's skeleton had 4 evolution paths, the skeleton, human, vampire and giant routes, which depend on your choices in the game.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure, well that's the knowledge the elder goblin passed onto me before he died any way, I know nothing else about the outside world, I know nearly everything there is to know about goblins and basic information on other things, but who knows, with being a unique skeleton you may be able to. Thats if you live long enough though.”.
Ray hoped he could take the human route in this world too, it would make things far easier, not to mention he simply wanted to be human again, but if he couldn’t, he would simply have to settle for becoming a vampire.
“What does that mean? Are you trying to get revenge?” Ray said sternly.
“Nah, I didn’t care about those lot, in fact, if you didn’t kill them, I probably would have to further my progression, they’re weak, dumb, smelly, disrespectful and greedy, I did try making them into an army but they either complained or ignored me and so left them to do their own thing. The reason I want to fight is because we both have a goal to evolve and I’m sure that killing a unique skeleton, user of skills and magic that's strong enough to wipe out a horde of 50 goblins will help me progress greatly.”.
“I see, tell me, what's your level.”, Ray queried.
“I am level 25, and you?”.
“27.”
“Hahaha let's do this then skeleton, the strongest goblin vs the strongest skeleton here. Winner gets to kill the other, this battle will be legendary”
“My names Ray.”.
“And mines Gob-ken.".
Gob-ken jumped up in the air axe above his head and slammed it down hard, however Ray blocked it with his sword, Ken stuck his hand, “rushing winds” a gust of wind pushed Gob-ken, back, “Time to test out a chained attack.”, Rays blade was engulfed in magic as he darted forwards. He slashed at the goblin, whose Axe turned red, “Downward strike”, Gob-ken shouted, their blades colliding, kens sword snapping in half and Gob-kens axe head being severely chipped. However, Ray wasn’t done as his arm finished the motion for quick slash he used piercing strike, that launched him forward, thrusting his blade forward, Gob-ken tried to dodge, however his left shoulder was impaled. As they separated Ray looked at his sword, “Shit, I’m gonna need a new sword now”, he thought as he clutched the sword, he looked over at Gob-Ken who was clutching his wound with one hand, “O’ holy water I summon, basic aqua healing.”. a ball of water engulfed the wound and it slowly began to heal, leaving nothing but a scar.
“You can use magic too?”.
“Yeah, only water magic though.” Gob-ken responded, readying up to continue the fight. Perhaps all unique monsters could use both skills and magic Ray thought, slightly saddened by the fact that he was as special as he had thought. Ray decided it was time to go all out, they may be somewhat close in strength and speed, however Ray had more magic and knowledge then the Goblin. Gob-ken continued his assault, using quick slash to close the distance and land a devastating blow to Rays more fragile body; however, Ray was a step ahead. He held the broken sword like a javelin and threw it at Gob-ken, who slashes the blade out of the way, basic swordsmanship, skill piercing strike has been learnt.”. As Gob ken rushed at ray and jumped up, axe glowing with magic, going for another downward strike, Ray touched the floor and a column sprouted from the ground, taking the brunt of the force, Gob-kens axe getting stuck in the stone pillar. Ray, his plan going just as he had imagined, jumped backwards; arm outstretched, “Fire blast.”, the ball of flame rocked towards the pillar which Gob-ken was near which exploded, sending fragments of rock into Gob-Ken and flinging him backwards, slamming hard into the wall. Ray darted forwards, he hadn’t mastered and hand to hand combat skills yet, but that didn't stop him, as he punched Gob-ken hard in the stomach causing him to cough up spit.
Gob-ken looked up at Ray, “Do it then, kill me, that was the agreement right.” Gob-ken laughed, “I was completely out classed, I held pride in my strength and intellect, and yet I was defeated this easily.”
“You are strong and your probably one of the smartest things in this dungeon, I just happened to be a step ahead.” Ray replied
“I see, I guess I was outsmarted huh, when I saw you had no weapon, I thought I could overpower you quickly, but your reaction speed was faster. I guess my luck ran out when you awoke in this dungeon.”
Ray looked at Gob-Ken, he reconned he would get a great lot of exp from him, however, Gob-ken had potential on par with his, he could become a great ally in the future, he had more potential and use alive then dead. Ray reaches out his hand, “I’m the winner right, so I’ll decide your fate. Join me, lets evolve together and get stronger, in this world, there's nothing better than a strong loyal ally.”.
“But you're a former human and I'm a goblin, our races are at constant odd, there like mortal enemies... and you Wanna team up?”
“Yeah, well I'm not a human anymore, I'm a monster and I couldn't care less if you are a goblin, your strong with great potential, if you follow my orders and don’t harm humans unnecessarily and unprovoked, I think we’ll get along.”.
“Your one crazy bastard, well I lost, and I guess joining you would be better than dying here.”. Gob-ken says taking Rays hand.