Waking up in the morning Donny felt as if he was laying on a cloud, he was weightless, and he couldn’t feel his arms or his legs. It was as if only his mind was left from what he went through yesterday. He tried to command his body to stand up, but no matter how much he wanted to, his body just didn’t listen to him one bit, he could only continue to lie there looking at the ceiling.
After a couple of attempts, he could feel his body come back, slowly, first, he could slightly wiggle his fingers, then he closed his fist, and in the end after nearly half an hour of trying he managed to sit upright. His body flopped forward, almost falling off the bed.
At that moment he wanted nothing more than to just flop back on the bed and go back to sleep. But he couldn’t because…knock, knock.
“You up, we gotta go, the day is short, and you have much to do”
Because his master would not allow that, Donny didn’t want to know what Mark would do if he caught him sleeping in the bed, maybe nothing drastic, and maybe he would wake up while flying to the bottom of the well. He could never tell with him, his face almost always looked the same.
The only way to find what he could be thinking was in his eyes, which to most would always look dull, murderous even, but in their time training yesterday, Donny learned they fluctuated just a tiny bit when he was deep in thought.
He stood up, readied himself for what he knew was coming, and opened the doors.
…………………………………………………………..
Mark watched Donny barely escape from under the goblin’s axe, earning a graze on his shoulder, during his dodge the kid slashed at the offending arm and managed to cut it off at the elbow. He quickly repositioned himself behind the wounded opponent, putting it between himself and the two remaining goblins.
The goblin who was now cradling its elbow, trying to stem the bleeding completely lost sight of Donny, it tried to turn around, but mid-turn a blade penetrated its back from above, practically skewering it, it died almost instantly.
Donny grabbed it by the neck and yanked out his sword. Still holding the creature’s body as a shield he neared the ones left while circling them slightly to once again hold them in a line, incapable of striking him at the same time. The goblins lunged at him with their weapons without much thinking, wanting to tear him apart.
He took a step back while at the same time throwing the body he held at one of the goblins, parrying the short spear coming toward his stomach with a swing of his sword. It was a little awkward but he barely managed to deflect the strike. He lunged forward slashing at the goblin from below, cutting him almost in half from its stomach to its heart.
Donny spun around facing the last goblin, who just managed to crawl out from under its buddy’s body. Without thinking it once again lunged at him with no further thought. Calmly Donny stepped to the side, and presented his sword’s point at the goblin’s chest level, with his much higher reach, there was nothing the goblin could do, it wasn’t capable of changing its trajectory in midair, it could only watch helplessly as the sword impaled its heart.
Donny dropped his sword letting the body slide off his weapon, instantly he once again assessed the battlefield looking for any more threats lurking in the undergrowth.
Overall, Mark was impressed, the boy has followed the instructions he laid out for him yesterday much better than expected, there were still areas for improvement, but Donny had surprisingly high talent in combat, every encounter he did better and better.
Like right now, he was ambushing a scouting party, when another one jumped out in a counter-ambush from the bushes just next to him, he dropped his bow and drew his sword slashing at the incoming goblins in the same clean motion. With his fast reaction, he was able to kill one of the attackers almost instantly, he then dealt with another one before two from the earlier party arrived.
It was very satisfying to watch, taking into consideration how he did just yesterday. Of course, Mark knew of the ambush, and he could take care of it at any time, but it was unnecessary. If Mark were to guess it was a countermeasure the goblins thought of after losing the parties from yesterday. It was a good opportunity, they only made Donny’s training that much more educational. They were essentially doing his job for him.
It was the first encounter of today so they still had a couple more to go before he had the boy do another set of exercises, this time he would have him do that on the edge of the forest. He didn’t need gawkers coming up to him arguing how he should treat the kid.
Seeing that the fight has come to an end he went back to training his Stamina Control, yes he got a new skill to his list. He went back to the morning when he looked at his list to find some surprising news.
Name:
Mark
Class:
Rogue
Level:
13
Experience:
28990/81920
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MP:
32
SP:
60->66
Strength
25
Agility
39->40
Constitution
20->22
Intelligence
16
Skill:
Description
LVL
Novice Bow Mastery
Better handling of weapon: Bow
LVL 9 EXP 1223/2560
Precise Shot
Slight correction of a fired arrow.
LVL 9 EXP 343/2560
Double Tap
Shoot two arrows at the same time, arrows will land very closely together.
LVL 6 EXP 53/320
Charged Arrow
You charge your arrow with more Energy allowing it to do much more damage. The arrow is destroyed.
LVL 3 EXP 3/40
Novice Dagger Mastery
Better handling of weapon: Dagger
LVL 9 EXP 2377/2560
Stab
Executes a powerful stab dealing much more damage.
LVL 9 EXP 1374/2560
Stealth
You are thinning your presence, avoiding the awareness of other living beings.
LVL 8 EXP 3688/5120
Sprint
Run much faster.
LVL 7 EXP 3/640
*Forest Stride*
The art of moving efficiently through a Forest.
LVL 3 EXP 14/40
Quick Step
Make an instantaneous step in any direction.
LVL 7 EXP 877/1280
Lie
Your ability to lie has become much better, unaware folks would almost always believe you.
LVL 2 EXP 3/20
Premonition ^UNIQUE^
You can sense incoming danger.
N/A
*Stamina Control*
You are capable of controlling your Internal Stamina.
LVL 2 EXP 11/80
*Bolster*
Empower your body with Stamina.
LVL 2 EXP 33/40
He noticed that he seemed to be gaining experience much faster than others, at least faster than Donny, not only the Level experience but Skill experience also. He couldn’t think of any reason besides maybe prior experience, or the fact that he wasn’t from this world and something wasn’t working as intended.
He could also already tell that in terms of Stamina usage, he was a little ahead, at least compared to the citizens of Pharia, they didn’t seem to interfere with their stamina workings, merely using the System Skills as intended.
How using Bolster was much easier than manually exerting his will to fill his muscles with Stamina independently. The Skill version automatically took some stamina and spread it evenly throughout his body, though admittedly at a much higher cost, the ability to do so without practically losing your perception of the outside world was a much better tradeoff in his opinion.
But what this signified was much more interesting than gaining just this one singular Skill, it opened a whole new world of possibilities. Also, he had another thought, what if you combined the Skills using two different Stamina paths in one sequence?
Until now Mark found that you could use multiple skills, but it wasn’t possible to do so at the same time for example he could use Charged Arrow, and Precision Shot together, but what would happen internally, would be Stamina traveling into the arrow to charge it and after that travel through his arms and head for Precision Shot. He could not make it happen at the same moment.
Maybe if had a high enough level of Stamina Control he could force it to do so. If he could, let's say, reinforce his dagger with it, Bolster his body, and Stab at the opponent, would it count as those skills separately or would it do something completely different, like with Stealth and Forest Stride?
He found out that using both skills in tandem was indeed what he expected, you could practically pass through the forest not leaving a trace of your existence to be seen, heard, or sensed by anything around you.
Though there was still a slight disconnect between them. He wondered if he could improve the flow, make it smoother, and if it would yield some results in the form of a System Skill.
Where he could previously approach the goblins in Stealth to approximately one and a half meters before they could realize he was next to them, now when he connected to the forest during stealth they could stand hand in hand without the goblins knowing anything.
That was his next agenda, making the Stamina flow following different Skill paths looking for possible combinations that would exert much more strength than any one of them separately. He could fail, but there was always a chance something would happen and he would gain another asset. He didn’t lose anything as he could recover his stamina, while the tradeoff was worth it in every meaning of the word.
He continued following Donny while from time to time falling into Stealth and Forest Stride trying to discern the problems with the Stamina paths and any modifications he could make to improve them.
There is still a long road ahead of him, but he knew he could become one of the most powerful creatures in this world.