[Do you wish to proceed?]

It was such a simple, nearly obvious question. And for anyone with even a shred of experience with RPG-styled games, it would be the first instinct to just go through with all of this and get whatever power-up likely hid behind those notifications.

That’s how most people would react, especially in the face of the charging monsters.

‘Yeah, fuck this system.’

Following nothing more but the instincts he developed throughout his long years of experience, Leo cast aside all of those notifications.

He cast aside the desire to unlock as many cores hidden at the bottom of his soul as he could. And with the mana he obtained from the first, solid breath of this magical world, he limited himself to prodding just the very first of his cores.

Pulled up to the surface of reality, the core embedded itself in the upper strata of Leo’s soul… Only for the young man to bash all of the remaining mana straight into it.

The monsters charged forth. The closest few were now mere meters away, already swinging their weapon to strike Leo down.

‘Three goblins, two caps.’

A quick glance was all Leo needed. And before the fissure behind his gap could spit the two friends of his siblings’ group, he jumped ahead.

Injected with mana, Leo’s core irradiated his body with simple and straightforward strength.

Just like his fifth core, it came from a lifetime where Leo was pretty much unable to use magic in its true form, limited to merely reinforcing his body with magic’s raw fuel: mana. Unlike the advanced fifth core, though, the legacy of Leo’s first lifetime was simple… crude, even.

But for those green abominations, it was more than enough.

‘Left.’

Leo landed and stepped to the side, allowing the spike of the green-cap’s pick to pass an inch off his abdomen. Despite being right-handed, Leo still used the momentum of the turn to twist at his hips, and the very moment he took a tiny step with his left to rebalance, he threw a sucker punch straight into the veteran goblin’s guts.

“Guh!” A muffled moan came out from the fiend’s mouth as it spat all the air out of its lungs in the short moment between getting struck and when he suddenly shot to the back, thrown away by this simple punch.

The power of Leo’s first core was crude, straightforward, and unsophisticated. And while bearing some serious limitations, it also allowed him to unleash all of the energy of his mana in its simplest, raw form.

‘Energy can never disappear, for it can only change its form.’

Stolen story; please report.

A silent voice called out in Leo’s mind, a brief reminder of the principle Leo based his growth during his first lifetime.

‘Left.’

Before his inner voice could fade, Leo already took yet another step to the left, narrowly escaping from two daggers, one thrown by an adolescent goblin from behind and the other held by the second green-cap.

‘Well, that will make this encounter easy.’

Not standing on the ceremony, Leo lowered himself on his knees while already reaching out for the green-cap’s wrist.

The goblins were slow. Even the green-caps were like children who only understood the idea of swinging a stick in a given general direction. And while that wouldn’t make the injuries their weapons could inflict any less threatening than the fangs of a dragon, any level-headed adult or teenager could easily avoid the jagged edges of their knives.

‘In that sense,’ Leo turned his eyes over to the goblin that threw its knife right when his upper body swung on his hips, souring the power of his punch directly from the ground on which Leo firmly stood.

Contrary to the first attack which served more for Leo to let out some of his stress, this was an actual attack aimed to do damage. And the corner of his slightly tilted first struck directly against a softer spot on the side of the green-cap’s head…

By grabbing its wrist, Leo mercilessly pulled the poor goblin into his own punch. A punch that caused the goblin’s head to literally explode into pieces and carried enough strength to throw its entire body with such force, that its wrist nearly slipped from the grasp of Leo’s left hand.

“Now then,” the young man muttered, waiting a second for the goblin’s corpse to fully relax before he reached down with his right and pulled the simple knife out of the dead green-cap’s grasp.

Leo raised his eyes.

By dealing with the two veterans, he effectively chased away the three smaller goblins. Deprived of the protection of their front-liners and faced with how easily Leo dispatched those… Their animalistic instincts prevailed, making them opt to flee rather than fight.

Still, the commotion was big enough for the fiends further away to take notice, indicating the moment of peace Leo bought with the green and sticky blood of those goblins wouldn’t last for long.

‘Thirty seconds.’

Leo’s combat sense allowed him to relax a bit.

There was no point chasing after the running adolescent goblins. Even if monster cores existed in the world of this portal as they did in his past lifetimes, rather than cores, those mobs would merely possess mere shards. That fact alone made the trade-off between the effort necessary to chase them down and the reward for doing so greatly mismatched.

And so, instead of wasting time chasing small-fry around, Leo decided to use his thirty seconds of peace in a much more meaningful way.

Namely, by raising the corpse he still held the wrist off, before using the deceased green-cap’s own knife to butcher its rib cage open.

The mastery in the use of the knife allowed Leo to cut at such an angle, that when the disgusting, green filth started to flow out of the wound, none of it fell down on the young man’s clothes.

‘I would want to scare the girls… And I don’t think it would be a good thing if the guys saw me covered in this shit once I’m back home.’

Leo shook his head before throwing the dissected goblin down on the ground and kneeling down on one knee only to dig the point of the knife directly into its exposed, still heart.

*Ting*

A familiar sound came from within the bloody mess, indicating Leo’s guess to be correct.

‘That’s kind of a relief.’

Leo used up all the mana he gained from breathing alone to reinforce his two attacks. And while with time he could regenerate more of it…

This place wasn’t all that keen on giving him the time to restore his reserves. And in that situation, using up the condensed mana from monster cores was the only viable way to reliably bring out the powers of his cores.

Leo pulled the knife out and dug into the opened monster’s heart with his finger, quickly grasping at a small, perfectly round stone.

For some reason, goblin’s blood didn’t seem to stick to it, as opposed to literally every other material in existence, as he experienced when spending hours trying to wash it off in every newbie period of his lifetimes. And because of this quality, Leo only needed to shake it a little to cast all of the green blood aside, revealing the shiny, crystal-like structure.

“Woah!”

A few steps behind, the fissure in space finally spat out the two youths who apparently decided to follow Leo inside of the portal.

Not sparing them a single glance, Leo simply hid the monster’s core within the palm of his hand before closing his fist and crushing the delicate crystal.

And then, with still a few seconds to spare before more monsters would charge him down, he raised his eyes to inspect the three new notification windows that once again attempted to clutter his vision.

[You’ve killed a green-cap goblin!]

[You’ve gained experience!]

[You’ve killed a green-cap goblin!]

[You’ve gained experience!]

[Pending decision regarding critical circuits]

[All changes will be withheld until critical circuit disputes are resolved]