Chapter 22
“The Twins. Part 3”
[Warning: the user has only 10 MP left. Please wait a few minutes before attempting to use any skills again or your health will be severely affected].
[You have gained 110 experience points. ]
[Sleep well: spell that puts the patient to sleep, allowing the saintess to investigate their illness with peace of mind. Helps to avoid convulsions. To be used, the user must maintain physical contact with the target. Spends 10 MP per use (This skill is learned when the saintess reaches level 20 but has been unlocked by the administrator).]
Exhausted by everything that had happened so far, Kalysto leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree and opened her inventory. She pulled out the bottle of high quality holy water her boss had given her and took a swig. She felt her skin tingle as her recent wound healed and she closed her eyes for a moment.
I wish I could sleep for a couple of hours. She thought. But she couldn’t do that. At least not yet.
So, while she waited for the 10 minutes she needed until she could take another potion to pass, she decided to check her stats. So she opened her status window.
[Status window]
Name: Kalysto Luna
Age: 21 years old
Race: human
Level: 5
Fatigue: 98
Class: Wizard (Normal)
Profession: N/A.
Title: N/A
Affiliation: N/A
HP: 180/280
MP: 10/212
Strength: 23
Vitality: 27
Agility: 33
Endurance: 27
Intelligence: 36
Charisma: 2
Luck: 1
Status: healing
Available points: 8
Kalysto looked at her stats and bit her lower lip. Although she wanted to allocate several points to her strength, the truth was that it had scared her how easy it had been for these goblins to hurt her.
Raising my vitality is necessary. She thought and assigned two points to her vitality, so now her HP was 320.
And although she wanted to add even more points, she decided it was best to leave it at that for the time being. I’ll find a way to raise it later.
She added another point to intelligence, another to strength, and another to agility. And then she hesitated.
If she had more strength, she could hunt them more easily. But then she looked at the wound in her side, the same one that was still closing, and remembered how easily the goblin with the hardened skin had almost split her bow in two.
I could have been killed. She thought fearfully. And she put her finger on the endurance statistic.
Two windows appeared before her.
[Endurance: ability to perform an activity or exertion for as long as possible. Raising this stat reduces the physical damage received. This is a basic stat needed for tanks.]
So that’s why his skin was so tough.
Immediately, she spent her remaining 3 points on increasing her endurance.
Then, feeling a little more confident, she picked up the knife that had brought her victory.
“Inspect!” she said, and two small windows opened before her.
[Goblin knife. Class: common. Requires 20 points of strength to use it.
Strength +15
Penetration +20]
I definitely need to find a way to add the penetration stat to my arrows. Decided. It’s unfair that they have such good equipment being mere goblins. Then, driven by her curiosity, she pulled out one of the simpler swords she had stolen in front of the city walls to check its stats.
“Inspect!” she exclaimed, and again two windows opened before her.
[Common sword. Class: common. Requires 30 points of strength to use.
Strength +10]
Not only was the requirement to be able to use it superior, but the additional stats weren’t even as good as goblin stats. If that’s made by humans, shouldn’t it be better than something made by a monster? It didn’t have much logic, yet the evidence was right in front of her eyes.
And then she remembered the way the goblin with the spear had approached to try to help the goblin with the tough skin, who instead of receiving her help, wanted to take advantage of his comrade’s weakness to steal her weapon and attack her with it.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
They are definitely creatures with some degree of intelligence, but to be able to create weapons with better stats? Until now, she had mistakenly thought that being monsters, they couldn’t be smarter than a human, but now she realized that thinking so was a big mistake. As crude as their weapons were, their usefulness far exceeded that of the invading army.
I doubt that I could sell the goblin weapons in the market of a neighboring village.... However, isn’t it better to keep them just in case, and just sell those of the invading army? That sounded like a better idea. And as for her wound, she went about looting all the goblins she had killed, leaving the archer last. And after picking up the bow she had been using earlier, she compared them.
“Inspect!” she said, and two small windows opened before her.
[Common bow. Class: common. Requires 10 points of strength to use.
Strength +5]
[Goblin bow. Class: common. Requires 5 strength points to use.
Strength +10
Penetration +15]
She frowned. Then she did the same with the arrows, comparing one of the ones in her inventory with the goblin archer’s arrow.
[Common arrow. class: common. 5 points of strength required to use it]
[Goblin arrow. Class: common. No strength points are required to use it.
Penetration +10]
How is this possible... Damn, I really want to know how they do it!... I also want my arrows to have a penetration statistic! Then she looked at the knife. And let out a long sigh. Won’t there be a way to transfer the stats from one object to another or duplicate them?
She could almost feel her head beginning to ache at the sheer collection of unanswered questions she had at the moment.
If only I had access to an internet connection. But for the moment she would have to settle for a library, and that was only if she could find one in the nearest town.
And after letting out a long sigh, she took out a Grade 2 revitalizing potion from her inventory and drank it, watching as her fatigue reduced by 50 points.
Yes, I definitely feel much better now. She still wished she could get some sleep, but at least now she didn’t feel her body as heavy as before or that she was going to fall asleep at any moment due to over-tiredness.
And she checked her stats one last time before continuing the hunt for the four goblins she was missing.
[Status window]
Name: Kalysto Luna
Age: 21 years old
Race: human
Level: 5
Fatigue: 48
Class: Wizard (Normal)
Profession: N/A.
Title: N/A
Affiliation: N/A
HP: 320/320
MP: 20/226
Strength: 24
Vitality: 29
Agility: 33
Endurance: 30
Intelligence: 37
Charisma: 2
Luck: 1
Condition: a little tired.
Available points: 0
Feeling calmer, she took her new bow and after deciding to use the goblin arrows only with enemies that were more resistant she filled her quiver with the arrows of the invading army. But then she thought better of it, and pulled out another quiver, taking out the arrows that were inside it and storing them inside a single box, that way she wouldn’t waste so much time the next time she ran out of arrows.
And she headed in the same direction in which the other three goblins had come to rescue the one who had wounded her. Fortunately, she was able to find another archer less than 5 minutes later. She immediately hid behind a tree, but the rustling of the branches of the bush nearby gave away her presence, causing the green creature to stand on guard and aim its bow at the side of the tree where she had been before, so Kalysto came out on the opposite side and quickly shot two arrows into its neck. It was almost a full minute before she received notification of his death.
[You have gained 30 experience points ]
Excited at the thought of getting more arrows with the penetration stat, she ran to loot the goblin. And then she put everything in her inventory.
The next goblin was much easier to kill as he didn’t even see her as she approached, about 10 meters away from him. Two arrows in the neck did all the work as well.
Kalysto wandered for another 10 minutes before she decided to turn back the way she had come and try to find the twins.
She walked for another 10 minutes before she could hear the sound of voices in the distance. She had to detour a little to the right before she could find the small clearing they were in.
Gideon was still sitting on the ground and although he no longer had a knife buried in his thigh, the wound was bleeding profusely as he threw stones at one of the two goblins preventing it from approaching him while Gabriel, with a stick in his hands which he used as a strange mixture of bat and sword, kept the other goblin at bay.
Four arrows in the neck finished them off easily.
“Who’s there?” Asked one of them as she came out of hiding and approached the first goblin and took his knife and boots and put them in her inventory.
“Is that the proper way to thank the person who just saved your ass? Because if so, remind me not to go to the trouble next time,” she replied as she approached the second goblin, but this one had no weapons. So she just took off his boots.
“What are you doing?”
“Ka...Kalysto, is it really you? How did you get here?” Gabriel asked at the same time as his brother.
“It was me who killed them, so I have every right to loot them... and if I were you, I’d worry more about those wounds. You’ve lost a lot of blood” then she turned her face to Gabriel, who as soon as she mentioned his brother’s wounds ran to check him-. “And yes, Gabriel, it’s me. I guess I got here the same way you two did.”
“It’s much worse than I thought! I thought you’d only been hurt once,” Gabriel exclaimed with concern as he saw the two deep wounds on his twin’s thigh. He immediately turned his head towards her and, with a face full of desperation, he begged her. “Please do something to save him!”
“What?” Kalysto frowned, annoyed, “I literally just risked my life and saved your asses and you haven’t even deigned to thank me. And yet you have the nerve to ask me for even more?”
“I...“ his cheeks and the tips of his ears turned red. Something quite usual in the few times she had interacted with him in the past.
Kalysto simply folded her arms and watched them silently. Unwilling to give in, even after seeing the grimace of pain on Gideon’s face as he tried to use his twin as a human crutch.
“Thank...thank you for saving us,” then he looked at her, his face full of anticipation.
She scoffed.
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t seem very sincere, does it?” Gabriel ducked his head. Not knowing what to say to refute her words, Gideon frowned at her instead.
“We’re lost in God knows where and there are monsters everywhere that look like something out of a video game! And you’re giving me that crap?” he growled at her. “Yes, it’s true we’re not friends! And if it weren’t for my brother, I wouldn’t even know you existed! But are you seriously asking me why you should help us? Out of basic decency! That’s why!”
“I think that very hypocritical and convenient motivational talk would serve you better with someone else, especially since you’re the kind of guy who ignores women who aren’t part of your future conquests. So putting your hypocrisy aside, I ask you, what have you done for me so far?” she questioned him. “Because from my point of view, I don’t get any advantage for helping you. So please tell me why would I give a couple of potions that I will need to save my life to a couple of guys who have never done anything for me and whom I only know in passing?”
Her words annoyed Gideon, who clenched his jaw tightly. That wasn’t the kind of reaction he expected. Usually women fell easily under his charms and he hardly ever had to try hard to get them.
Kalysto could see the hatred in his gaze.
Surely he is already planning how to get revenge. If it weren’t for Gabriel, I would have been out of here by now. It had been months since Gideon had gone from being an annoying quasi-stalker of her best friend, and he had begun to use the excuse of going to see his brother, Gabriel, practice archery, to interrupt her conversations with Alice while he tried to convince the pretty blonde to accept a date with him. No matter how many times Alice had refused or how obvious it was, how annoyed they both were whenever he came to interrupt them.
Instead, Gideon mumbled back.
“What do you want in return?”