Awarang, a small elven town in Gretharea Kingdom, 56 Gearro 3982

I stopped my silly wild dance and took a deep breath. Alright, that was enough for celebration. I finished learning [Matjiwa] and understood the basic information of the skill, but I still needed to learn more about its detail.

The way my [Monster Magic Mimicry] worked was pretty much similar to the way people in my old world acquired data from the quantum-network. It was basically separated into three stages: browsing, downloading and decrypting. When I used my 3M magic to observe a monster’s magic at first; what I did was mainly browsing.

After doing that for many times, a magical pattern would appear in my mind, which meant that I would basically enter the stage of downloading. Only when I finished downloading did I get the basic minimum knowledge of the ‘downloaded’ skill.

To completely understand the features of the skill, I needed to enter the third stage: decrypting. The only way I could do that for now was by submerging my mind into deep contemplation.  

Alright! Now, I had better check this [Matjiwa] magic skill that I acquired. I quickly focused my will and instantly entered the library-like personal space within my mind.

I looked at the newly acquired skill which manifested itself in the form of a glowing dark-purple orb. This orb, along with two other glowing orbs and many more non-glowing ones, revolved around the big purple crystal in the center of the room.

I exerted my will and the new marble-sized glowing orb raced into my open right hand. Once the orb touched my hand, more detailed information about the skill entered my conscious mind.

[Matjiwa] was in essence very similar to an [Identify] skill from RPG games. However, unlike the skill in the game, which conveniently transferred the knowledge into tables, texts, and numbers which could be read by the player, [Matjiwa] didn’t work like that.

With this skill, it was like... well, let’s say… I looked at a strange plant and knew nothing about it without the skill. After I used the skill, I would somehow know whether the plant was poisonous or not, how rare it was, how it would taste as a cooking ingredient, what effect it would have as an alchemy material, where it could normally grow, and so on. The information would not appear in front of me as a blue screen with text or anything like that, but I would just… in some unexplainable way, know about it.

This [Matjiwa] I had here would only let me identify the internal attribute, quality, and possible functions of the object appraised. So, assuming at first I didn’t know the name of the plant I identified, after I used the skill I would still not know about the name.

It was the same thing with when I used it on people or monsters. I would be able to know in general about the level of their strength, the estimated amount of their health, the nature of its skills, the weakness if there was any, and other internal qualities of the target. Yet, I would not be able to know their names, their titles, or the names of their skills.

That was because names were simply additional attribute, and they were strongly dependant on languages. What was called ‘x’ in one language could be called ‘y’ in another. Even I wouldn’t have known that this skill was called [Matjiwa], if I hadn’t learned its name from the book I’d read before.

Anyway, this [Matjiwa] skill I had was quite efficient in term of mana usage. It only used a tiny amount of mana, probably less than one percent of my current mana. Unfortunately, I could not really abuse it since its cool-down was a little problematic. For the beholder bug, the cool-down was only about 200 seconds. In my case though, it would be tripled. I could only use this skill once in ten minutes. It was not bad, but not really good either.

Done with inspecting the skill, I quickly retracted my consciousness back to the real world. Alright! Now, it would be time to test this skill…

But before I could do that, a loud rustling sound interrupted me. It was the sound of something quite big moving through the bushes… into this place.

I quickly drew my hammer-axe from its sheath on my waist… I knew that I was still a blundering amateur in wielding this weapon. What could a merely nine-day training do? But, it was still much better than being bare-handed facing the unknown threat.

Suddenly, the bushes in front of me were split apart as a short burly creature dashed out into the clearing.

I lowered my weapon, and returned it to its sheath. It was not a monster… just a dwarf. And I knew this dwarf. He was Wal’gon, a miner from the western district, the supplier of metal ores to my uncle’s smithy.

Ignoring me, the dwarf dashed to the spring and drank the water directly from it.

I observed the dwarf. He was short, yet had a thickset body build. With pickaxe on his waist, as well as long curly hair and thick beard, both black in color… he simply looked like a classic dwarf from my old world’s stories.

However, there were few features of the dwarves in this world that were not really in the description of dwarves in my old world’s stories. Here, the gearrone, the dwarves, had huge hands and feet… probably twice as big as the biggest size of adult human’s hands and feet. They were so big that they looked really weird at first time I saw them.

Other than that, dwarves always wore sun-goggles outside their underground caves, especially during the day, since their eyes were extremely sensitive against strong light. Their preference to live in the dark underground caves made them able to see well in the darkness. But, as a consequence, they were helpless in bright places without their goggles.

After drinking the spring water for a while, Wal’gon, the dwarf, let out a satisfied belch and turned around, ready to dash out again when his sight found me.

“You… Kerbruan’s kid… Damn it! What the hell are you doing here, Kid?”

“Um… taking a break?” I asked back in confusion. What was wrong with him today? He was usually so laid back and cheerful. “Why are you here, Wal’gon-ka? Er… other than drinking the spring water, I mean…”

“Goddammit, Kid! This place is not safe. Those crazy corpse lovers will…”

The dwarf stopped his words as the atmosphere around us suddenly turned sinister. The sky turned dark in an instant despite the fact that it should still be mid afternoon; the temperature dropped significantly that I felt chill all over my body; the dogs howled creepily from the distance… Shit! Why would everything turn into something from a horror movie now?

“Damn! Damn, damn damn! It had started already. I thought I still got more time,” Wal’gon cursed vehemently. “Run to the library, Kid! Run as fast as you can. With Lashom there, it should be safe.”

“Wait… what is actually happening?”

“Damn it Kid! It was not the time to ask question. Run! Follow me!”

Since the dwarf dashed away once he said that, I had no other choice but to follow him. Both of us went through the bushes as fast as we could. Our direction was clear… eastward, to the library.

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Our destination was not that far, we could probably reached it in less than fifteen minutes, or ten if we kept running all the way there.

But when we reached a wide meadow on the way there…

“No! No no no no no…!” Wal’gon suddenly swore in panicked voice and rushed faster forward.

Looking at the sight in front of us, I could not help but feel cold shiver down my spine. There, in a fair distance in front of us, was a sight worse than my worst nightmare. It was a sight of a group of children surrounded by grotesque undead monsters.

Wal’gon and I dashed forward as fast as we could. But we were too far away.

I could only see hopelessly… an undead wolf bit the head of a little boy off. The spurt of blood… the scream… the horror…

“Goddamnit!” Wal’gon screamed in frustration and dashed forward even faster.

I roared something incomprehensible while rushing behind him as fast as I could.

Meanwhile, other victims kept falling. A tiny girl was overwhelmed by humanoid zombies… leaving her helpless cries as a final farewell to the living… Another girl was decapitated by a sword wielding skeleton. Her head, with contorted face full of fear, flew away form her body…  A screaming boy was torn apart by many gigantic undead rats… leaving the mess of torn flesh, blood, and bones…

My left hand gripped my slingshot blade tightly and took it out, while my legs did not stop running. Those damn shitty things… Fear, frustration, and rage battled furiously within me. And rage just won…

Without stopping my run, I took a piece of ammunition, drew my slingshot, and shot at a zombie trying to attack another girl. And it was… a miss. The bullet flew a few centimeters away from the zombie’s head. Damn!

In front of me, Wal’gon hacked the head of the zombie that tried to stop us with his pickaxe. He did that while still running forward. Without stopping, he dragged along the zombie whose head was stuck in his pickaxe.

I took another shot with my slingshot. This time it hit the temple of the zombie which was trying to bite the girl with great impact, bashing its head… foiling its effort. Wait… that girl was… Lashom’s daughter.

But, while I could save one, another became a victim. A tiny elven girl, who could not be more than six-year old, was torn apart by a pair of undead wolves, screaming helplessly as she disappeared into chunks of bloody meat. Damn it!

“Die, you damned stinking corpses! DIE!” Wal’gon shouted furiously, crashing his zombie-latched pickaxe into one of the wolves. He had managed to reach them, while I still had quite a distance to get there.

I used my slingshot blade again. This time, the bullet pierced the skull of a sword wielding skeleton which tried to attack Wal’gon from his right side. The shot dropped it down into a pile of useless bones.

But suddenly, my survival instinct blared loudly inside my head. Yet, before I could do anything about it a nasty thing tackled me from the side, sending both of us down to the ground.

It was an undead sragalla. Looking at the nasty sight of a rotten wolf head trying to bite my head off on top of me, I got panicked and reacted reflexively… stabbing the blade part of my slingshot blade in my left hand to the right eye of the wolf… while screaming as loud as I could.

Once my blade pierced the monster’s eye, straight to its brain, the monster crumpled lifelessly. Yet, I kept stabbing my blade to its head in frenzy… of rage and fear.

A piercing feminine scream woke me up from my berserk state. I quickly pushed the carcass of the dead monster on top of me away and stood up. The repulsive look of the decaying corpse… the nasty smell of the rotten dead body… That was… disgusting… and scary… I would never want to experience it again.

Yet, it was not time to complain about such thing.

I drew my hammer axe from its sheath. I saw my hands and feet trembled a little from fear. But I gritted my teeth, tried to ignore the fear, and rushed to help Wal’gon who was now attacked from almost every angle by many undead monsters.

As I shouted an incomprehensible war cry while charging ahead, I noticed that the number of living children was now less than five. Some other kids seemed to have become victims when I was down. And although the number of the monsters decreased significantly due to Wal’gon’s mad attack, there were still many of them left.

Damn it! All of us were probably going to die here. I should have run away instead of charging in like an idiot.

Despite that depressing thought in my mind, I kept charging at the enemies and swung my hammer axe at full power, without any technique. Shit! Where was the result of my martial art training?

The axe part of my right hand weapon hit the neck-shoulder intersection of an elven zombie from behind and continued splitting down to its chest. And it was stuck there…

“DAMN IT!” I screamed in frustration. I had no other choice but to release that weapon and stab the reversed blade in my left hand to the back side of the zombie’s head. It dropped down immediately once its brain was pierced by my weapon. I didn’t need to use my [Matjiwa] skill to know that brain was the weakness of these walking dead monsters.

“Move kids! Don’t just stay there like idiots! Do you want to die? Run away, dammit! Run to the library!” Wal’gon shouted, again in frustration, while he kept whacking the undead monsters around him with his pickaxe.

I ducked, evading a wild swing of a living skeleton… and swept its bony legs with low kick.

“Ouch! Shit!” I swore in pain. The skeleton was still standing. The legs were surprisingly hard as rock and strong as hell. How in the heck could they be that strong? Undead bones were supposed to be brittle.

The skeleton raised his sword, ready to cleave me into pieces, when a pickaxe pierced its skull... causing it to drop down in a pile of bones. Wal’gon helped me. Although I was pretty sure I could evade that cleave, it was still a great thing…

“You… Kerbruan’s kid! Lead them to the library!” Wal’gon shouted. “It’s damn hard fighting with them here.”

“Right!” I agreed immediately.

I took the sword dropped by the skeleton and hacked a cat-sized undead rat which tried to attack me. The sword easily cleaved the rat in two pieces.

I looked at the remaining kids… an elven boy and three girls. The daughter of the librarian was one of the girls. The other two girls were smaller, about six or seven years old. I knew them by sight only. The boy… I knew of him, not that much, but he was one of the students in [Loweld] dojo.

I threw the sword I held to the boy and the slingshot blade to Lashom’s daughter. “Use that!”

Without waiting for their response, I grabbed the handle of my hammer-axe, which was still stuck in the zombie’s body, with both hands and pulled out as strong as I could. With a great effort, I managed to take my hammer-axe back.

Another undead rat rushed to my direction. I swung my hammer-axe like a batter in the baseball field… and hit the rat right at its head with the hammer head. That was… satisfying.

“Goddamnit Kid! Stop wasting time! Go!” Wal’gon screamed as he evaded the tackle of a wolf and, at the same time, hacked the head of an elven zombie with a great axe. Where in the hell did he get that axe?

Ah, I didn’t have spare time to wonder about that…

“Four of you… follow me!” I barked an order and dashed away to the library without waiting for any answer, smashing another rat’s head on the way. Damn! I wished all the monsters were as easy as these rats.

I ran without looking back, constantly reminding myself not to go at full speed. I knew that the four kids were following me because I could hear their footsteps and rough breath. The younger ones would not be able to keep up if I ran in full speed. Besides, it was definitely not wise to waste stamina in this situation.

“All of the monsters were attacking the dwarf. Will he be okay?” The boy asked me… surprisingly in steady voice, as if he had completely recovered from shock and fear.

“He is a dwarven miner,” I said, still not stopping my run. “He will be fine.”

I didn’t need to explain any further. Only a tiny fraction of gearrone, the dwarves of this world, could sense magic and not many were patient enough to cultivate soul technique. But, despite those disadvantages, these short guys were tough people. Most of them tempered their bodies thoroughly. And with their ‘gemstone-implant’ technology, they could fight on par with elven mages or were-beast soul fighters.

Their culture even made them much more formidable in fights. Unlike some games in my old world where dwarves could be fighters or warriors, there was no warrior or fighter class for dwarves here. There was no such term as dwarven fighters or dwarven warriors either. That was simply not needed because… every single one of them was a fighter, a warrior,… yes, every single one, including children, women, and the elderly people.

Fighting was an integral part of dwarven society. They fought each other at work, in training, in their bar, in wedding parties, in religious celebrations, and in many other occasions. Simply speaking, they were a tough fighting race. And among them, the toughest fighters were surprisingly… the miners.

“Hey, he… hey! Wha… what is that? Ar… are they mo… monsters a… gain?” One of the girls I didn’t really know of suddenly shouted stuttered words in fearful voice.

I looked at the direction the girl pointing her finger too. Since the sky turned dark, I could only see that there were shadowy figures coming closer to us. I gritted my teeth and gripped the handle of my hammer axe tightly. Were they enemies?