Chapter 12: 10% additional loot – potatoes

My first encounter in the dungeon was with a goblin. I know cliché – right? In the anime’s everyone seems to be able to thwack a goblin to death relatively easily so with my blades, I felt confident enough to walk towards it and slash. Ahem! It didn’t work. No one told me that goblins can perceive danger and avoid – damn! I replaced the knife with a rock, which was still in my inventory and smashed towards its head before the goblin had a chance to react and then slashed towards its neck again. I think the element of surprise helped me a lot and goblin seemed to be in a sorry state. It wasn’t dead yet.

Goblin had no weapon so it could just growl and try to hit me with his fist when finally, I ended the fight with another slash. With half cut neck barely managing to hold on goblin’s head, making a rather gruesome corpse. This time the corpse turned into silver particles leaving behind 3 loots. So that’s how it is – monsters in the forest are actual inhabitants and will not provide loot but the ones in the dungeon turn into light on death. Does that mean the wolf I encountered on the first day was also a dungeon monster?

Notification

“Killed goblin (level 1) exp 100”

With every level up I needed 5 times the Exp than the previous level. Level 2 required 500 EXP so for level 3 I needed 2500 EXP – I am glad games on earth don’t work like this or I would never get any wherever. As I gathered the loot, I was flabbergasted.

Loot – 1 torch, 10 copper coins (skill loot – 2 potatoes)

Did I see this right? My golden loot skill 10% increase gave me potatoes. Am I going to get watermelon at level 5 then? Are you serious? I also felt like the dungeon gave me a torch as loot to prevent me from stealing the ones here hehehehe

With 2400 exp more to level 3 and more dungeon to explore, I got over the shock stored everything and decided to keep the thinking for later. For now, onwards you march soldier.

Further down I saw 2 more single goblins and fight went the same. I felt that having slash as a skill made the accuracy higher and the stamina I used was far less. And yes, the additional loot was still potatoes.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The next challenge was when I saw a group of 3 goblins coming my way from opposite side of the pathway. This is going to be tricky as they also had clubs in their hands. With one hand I tried stabbing the goblin coming close to me and slashed out at the one behind him. It still allowed the third goblin to circle around and hit my head with its club. Ouch it hurt dammit! The knife got stuck in the neck of the goblin as he fell dead and the one, I slashed at was injured but not dead yet. I had to use wolf fang as I won’t be able to retrieve my knife until the fight was over. As the third goblin was getting ready to hit me with his club again, I slashed my katana toward its neck and tried hitting the second one with the fang. Katana worked but fang didn’t. multi-tasking in a fight is not an easy thing and experience only builds up with time. The slashed goblin went down with a bleeding neck and now I could focus on the one left, which was just a slash away from death. Phew! That was tiring. The fight didn’t last more than a few minutes but with intense concentration, using two different weapons with both hands and fear of death hanging over my head, I felt as if I just completed the marathon.

Loot was still the same. I was building a little nest egg of copper coins, hopefully there will be a place to spend them as well.

With 3 single and 3 group goblins I had 600 out of 2500 Exp required for my level up and ahem 12 potatoes. If there are 100 goblins in this dungeon cave, I am going to end up with 200 of these things. Sigh! At least I can eat them as staple for a long time.

I took a short break with water and an apple and checked out my status. I won’t bore you will the whole list of things here, but I noticed (finally) that when I leveled up to 2, I gained 2 attribute points that were yet to be allocated. I decided to use them right away. I assigned both points to strength raising it from 10 to 12.

Level: 2 (Exp 600/2500)

Attributes:

Physical

Strength – 10 --- 12 (Physical power and carrying capacity)

Endurance – 10 (stamina and health)

Agility – 6 (coordination and reflexes)

Mental

Intelligence – 12 (deductive reasoning, memory, logic, and rationality)

Wisdom – 10 (self-awareness, perception, and insight)

Charisma – 8 (persuasiveness, leadership, and planning)

I felt a wave of energy going through my entire body and felt my fatigue from pervious fights washing away. I could get used to this feeling – amazing. Did I feel like I could conquer the world – no. I am not insane. Not yet anyway.

The pathway started branching out soon. Since there seemed no difference between left and right and not knowing any better, I entered the right path and walked ahead when I saw something shining in a corner. Was that a treasure chest? Is the dungeon lonely too and luring me in with shiny baubles? I had read about mimic monsters and who knew if they would end up being real or not. Could I use appraisal on it?

Appraisal

Wooden chest level 1 – no abnormality, safe to open.

I really lucked out with this skill I tell you. As I opened the chest, I found a new shirt and a pair of boots in the chest along with 20 copper coins. Considering the state of my wardrobe and worn out shoes, these things were handy. Boots were sturdy and shrank to fit my size when I tried them on. They weren’t any magical equipment but would help with all the walking, climbing, and running that is in store for me in the coming days.

Happy with my find, I decided to go on ahead for now.