The pain I felt in in my leg prevented me from keeping the knife steady.

As I tried to stop the blood from pouring out of the spike implanted in my thigh, I tried as hard as I could to keep the sharp end of my only weapon pointed towards the green creature standing before me.

The on-screen display gave me some allmost useless information about the creature standing in front of me.

[PUNY GOBLIN] Lv. 4

I couldn’t care less. The expression on its face was all I needed to know that it had been the one responsible for the trap that had put me in this situation.

“Go away.” I said, my voice sounding more high pitched than I wanted it to. The Goblin, seeming to hear the pain and fear in my voice, smiled.

It reached down and came back up with a makeshift hatchet made from a sharp stone tied to a thick tree branch. “Go… Away…” I repeated, my voice pained and trembling. This only made the smile on the creature’s face grow larger and, as he lifted his weapon over his head, preparing to attack, I could see something far more scary growing behind its crude leather loincloth.

At that moment, I knew I wouldn’t have a second chance. If I didn’t do something right away, I would die and my body would go through hell… hopefully in that order.

I saw the muscles on the Goblin’s bare shoulder move as he prepared to plunge his hatchet down towards my head and, at the same time, I lounged towards him careful to put as little weight upon my wounded leg.

I half tackled, half fell onto the creature’s chest, getting close enough to smell the stale odor of old sweat and filth. The hit knocked it off balance and he let go of his hatchet. We fell to the ground together and I could feel it trying to claw its way through the chain mail in my back, but seeing it was unable to, it changed its target to my unprotected head.

There was a surprising amount of force behind those hits. I was sure that, in a battle of stamina, he would win, specially with my leg pouring the blood that was keeping me alive all over the ground.

So I didn’t go into a battle of stamina.

I let go of him and he tried to squirm his way from below me, but I didn’t let him. I raised my knife and thrust it towards its neck.

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I was too close to miss and close enough to be covered in a spray of thick, gooey blood.

The smile on the Goblin’s face faded, making way for the crazed look of a dying creature. In a surprising show of force, it pushed me off his chest and I fell back onto my bad leg, sending me into a whirlwind of pain. The on-screen display showed a small drop of blood next to the goblin’s name. “Bleeding.” I found myself thinking as I saw the life drain from the creature’s eyes… and as I felt my own life force abandoning me through the gaping hole in my thigh.

It tried to scream, but only gurgles came out of its destroyed windpipe.

I didn’t know dying could be so slow.

I didn’t know it could be this scary.

The creature’s hand fell to the blood covered ground and, simultaneously, the on-screen display stopped showing the creature’s name.

Suddenly, what felt like electricity rushed through my body, almost making me scream in surprise. I found jumping to my feet, my eyes darting from one side to another expecting something awful to come out of the bushes. Was I being attacked again?

After a few seconds of silence, I came to the conclusion that the answer to my question was a no. And I also realized that I was standing with my back against a tree.

No pain came from my leg.

I looked down and saw that the spike had apparently dislodged when I attacked the goblin and that, where the hole in my leg used to be, was a scar that felt like it had been there for a while.

“Huh…” I whispered. “Weird…” For the umpteenth time that day, I wished I could see my own status to know what had just happened and, for the hundredth time since I had woken up in this forest, I closed my eyes for just a second and whispered

“Status… open…”.

I opened my eyes slowly, wishing I would find some sort of screen with any kind of useful information, but once again, I found nothing, only the dark forest looking back at me.

Feeling tired all of a sudden, I looked towards the dead goblin and wished that this shitty game would at least make it puff out of existence and give me some useful material I could use, but of course, it didn’t work like that.

“If I had wanted a realistic sim, I would have stayed home playing fucking Lawnmower Simulator or some shit like that.” I scoffed, walking past the body and picking up the fallen hatchet. “At least this is something I can use.”

I turned around and, feeling a bit squeamish, extracted the knife from the creature’s still warm body. I almost jumped back when a blood covered something came out of the wound and fell to the ground.

Having seen what I had seen and experienced what I had just experienced, a parasitic bug that lived inside goblin’s throats seemed like horribly plausible possibility, but to my surprise, the thing didn’t move or squirm, so, driven by pure curiosity, I pushed it away from the body with my new hatchet, sending it rolling into clean ground.

There, I noticed that some parts of it seemed to shimmer under the dim forest light. I walked towards it and took it. “A crystal?” I asked myself as I cleaned the blood off of the oval shaped thing. “A gem?”

I looked back at the goblin and sighed. “They do say you gotta expect the unexpected, I guess.”

I pocketed the gem, and walked away, doing my best to make no sound that could attract any more creatures.