Stop being a negative Nelly. I don’t know who Nelly is, but don’t be him or her. It is only the first day… or maybe we are into the second day. I don’t know, but this is a marathon, and I need to keep my head in the game. I could be here for a week or two.

I checked my status. Yes, I have Basic Blunt Weapons Skills. That is good and a great start. Now, my classes. I want to be faster and hit harder, and to do that, I need to level my classes, so I get attribute points. Fighting alone certainly means you get a lot of experience points or XP. Duh. What an idiot. Fighting alone means I get all the XP.

Both my classes are Specialised, so they will both give me 4 Attribute points to use for each level. Thief is higher, so it will take more XP to level than Illusionist. However, Thief also gives bonuses to Agility and Dexterity, whereas Illusionist gives bonuses to Intelligence and Wisdom. I need Agility and Dexterity more right now. I feed the XP into Thief and push it up to 13. I don’t need much more to get it to 14. With Thief going up, my total level will rise to 21.

OK, where do I put my attribute points? Agility and Dexterity will collect the bonus, but maybe I need a bit more Constitution. It will help with the injuries and help me resist getting more injuries. I have four points, and I put one in Agility, one in Dexterity, and two in Constitution. My Dexterity is pushed to 40. I am not sure if that is significant. Nothing happened when my Intelligence passed 40. Well, not nothing. I celebrated my brilliance. When I get out of here, there will be a huge celebration. You better believe it.

Right, I need to keep moving. I need somewhere to hole up for a few hours of sleep. That will help my mental state. The two points in the constitution also help. The higher the constitution, the less sleep I will need.

I start jogging again. I am watching the cliff as I am hoping for a cave or something. Some space I can block off so I can sleep.

While I jog, I start working on the new set of cores. Dust, dust, dust, dust. Mana Control up one level, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, and more dust. That is depressing.

I dealt with two more attacks by fleshlings. The same system worked as before, but they are going up in level, as one of them got a claw on my chainmail.

My chainmail jingles and it annoys me. I have been trying to arrange belts to stop it, and I have been partly successful. I know I shouldn’t be worried about it, as the undead hear the same way they see, i.e. not at all, and they have some other skill they use.

The next attack brings something different. There are six Skeleton Warriors, but they have with them two undead hounds. Big ones. The hounds are the size of Dire wolves and have rotting flesh and fur on them. They caught me in a gap between rocks as well, although I don’t think rocks will work that well against the hounds. They look pretty agile.

I speed up. I am really thankful for the Free-Running Skill. The Skeletons angle toward me, but they loose the hounds, and they bound forward and will catch me before the rocks. I activated Dash, but I am not going to make it.

I pull a rock out of my bag with my offhand. I debated getting a knife for my offhand, but even though they have fur and flesh, they are rotting, so something else is making them move, and cutting tendons is unlikely to work. Plus, two of my fingers are strapped together, and I will find it hard to hold a knife.

My only advantage is I had a chance to deal with the hounds before the Skeletons got here. It is a brief chance, but it is the only one I have.

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When I hear them close, I dodge to the side and bring my mace around hard. I catch one of the hounds in the ribs, and I break a lot of them, but I am not sure that will stop him. The other hound changes direction and pounces at me. I don’t have time to dodge again and go down with his claws digging into the chainmail on my chest. His teeth are reaching for my neck. I bring the rock up and use it to club his head to the side. I am sure I broke some of his bones there, too.

I roll with my acrobat skill and kick a hound away, getting back on my feet. I see fur and crash the mace down on it. My off-hand gets teeth biting into it, but the jaw doesn’t close properly, so I broke something with the rock.

I shake my arm loose and bring the mace into an uppercut under the jaw. There wasn’t a lot of power there, but I hope it was enough because I had to throw myself into a backflip to avoid a spear thrust from the lead skeleton. Praise the many gods that I have acrobatics.

Coming back to my feet, I parry the spear with the rock and break some bones with my mace. A sword scrapes the chainmail and cuts some rusted links. As I throw the rock, crushing a skull at short range. One and a half down, four and a half to go.

I dash to the side to make some space and check my opponents. The two hounds are lying motionless, and one skeleton is just a pile of bones. The other skeleton I wounded had a broken arm, and it was trying to use a two-handed spear single-handedly.

I roll my head and shoulders to loosen the kinks and get another rock from my bag. OK, let's do this.

Skills like Basic Blunt Weapons are more than skills. They are a series of skills that flow together, and when you are good enough with them, you can make them flow in different orders and sequences.

I know Basic Short Blades very well from using and levelling it over the years. Basic Blunt Weapons is new to me, and I couldn’t dance with it like I could with the short blades. I know my knives, and I can dance the dance with them, but the mace and the rock were very different, and I felt stilted and stiff.

I got the job done, taking out the axe wielder first, throwing the rock at the sword wielder, and finishing it with the mace while dodging the last swing of the next axe and breaking its legs. Then there was one and a half. I left the half till last and almost got a spear in me for my trouble. I was lucky there wasn’t much power in the strike as it only had a single hand.

I rested briefly. The chainmail was rusted to start with, but now there are more holes in it. It has done its job. I have a couple of blood spots on my chest where the hound’s claws were through the chain and a slight cut where the sword went. It would have been a lot worse without the chainmail.

I start collecting the loot. The loot has improved this time. A skill stone was dropped, which is exciting. I appraised it, and it is the Parry Skill, which is useful and needed. I learn the Skill. Yeah, that is going to help a lot against skilled attacks. Now I am worried that the difficulty is going to rise again.

A one-handed war axe was also dropped. I just put it in my bag. I had no axe skills, and I was only just learning the Mace. I drank the health potion and stored everything else.

While there were only six skeletons, they were at a higher level, and more skilled attacks came at me. I guess that is why the trial is increasing the reward. Then there were the Hounds.

I stayed where I was and worked on the cores. By now, I must have ripped into fifty, and not one had any skills. I knew the odds. I am just hoping to beat the odds.

I figure I have been on the go for at least three days now, maybe four. I looked at my status sheet, and I levelled Thief again, getting it to 14 and putting the attribute points in the same way as before. I need to bolster my constitution or the wounds are going to add up. I need more strength as well, but that might be good for next time.

Half an hour later, I spot a crack in the cliff that I might be able to use to rest. I go and explore. I was worried it was going to lead to a deep, dark prison or something, but it was just a crack that stopped about three body lengths in. I built a wall with rocks and lay down to rest.