Deilus breaks out of the encirclement by deflecting the knife of the goblin on his right with his own while simultaneously blocking the incoming knife of the goblin on his left.
The goblins prepared themselves for his counter-attack.
"Goodbye!" But to their surprise, the human left them a farewell before making a dash into the forest; leaving them dumbfounded for a moment.
Currently, Deilus could take on one or two goblins at a time, but four was asking for too much. Unless he was prepared to die, he wouldn't be able to take all of them down with only a butcher's knife.
Generally in RPG games, whenever a player dies, they can revive at the cost of a penalty such as: losing equipments, EXP/level loss, stats reduction or even getting your game character permanently deleted.
Deilus kept glancing behind his back every so often to check if the goblins were chasing after him. After a couple of minutes, he still hasn't seen any goblins which made him relax a bit.
'Considering how novels about VRMMORPGs death games were the trend lately back on earth, I'd rather not risk it. Although I don't know if the "MMO" part applies to me yet.' The pain was very real aswell; the small wound Deilus received from the first goblin still had a burning sensation. 'Pain is pain after all, everyone would like to avoid it.'
He went into deep thoughts while running through the forest randomly then suddenl-
*Thump*
He ran straight into a tree.
"Nnngh! That huuuurts!" shouted Deilus, as he clutches his red nose. There was a visible crimson liquid trail coming out of his nose with the same red particles as before. The red bar popped up in the corner of his vision again with 5% of it missing.
"Oh well... I guess this is about the right time to stop and continue investigating the book."
He sat down under the tree he ran into then opened the book and went to the bookmark with [Skills/Spells] written on it.
On the page, there were the words [Light] and [Novice] under it near the top of the page and under them was:
Arrow of Light | 10 MP | Cost 1 SP [+] : The user can summon projectiles in the form of arrows made of light.
Shining Steps | No MP Usage | Cost 1 SP [+] : The user borrows the power of light to increase their movement speed.
Aegis | Dependent | Cost 1 SP [+] : The user can use light as a shield to block attacks. The stronger the attack; the more MP it consumes.
Heal | Dependent | Cost 1 SP [+] : The user will use the light to heal minor wounds. The bigger the wound; the more MP it consumes.
And it goes on and on...
"Huh? There's something that resembles a scrollbar near the edge of the page... Don't tell me..." To confirm if his thoughts were correct, he moved his finger upwards across the page. The words actually started ascending, following his finger; revealing new lines of words.
"What the hell is this?! Was there a logo of a certain fruit on the book somewhere?! Has technology advanced far enough to create a multi-layered tablet in the form of a book already?!" exclaimed Deilus while the scrollbar reached the bottom.
"Oh well, there's nobody around to answer me or think with me... I'm getting lonely." Deilus slumped forward, acting dejectedly before going back to the book.
It shown a similar layout as the previous, but this time the [Novice] was replaced with [Divine] and the line of words under it were also different:
??? | ??? | ??? : ???
??? | ??? | ??? : ???
??? | ??? | ??? : ???
...
"Looks like these are the skills that I can learn by tapping the [+] on the page. They were split by four ranks but I can only see question marks past the Novice Rank. That's rather annoying, I would like to know the effects of future skills right now." Like Deilus said, the ranks were: Novice>Expert>Master>Divine.
"Let's choose something that'll let me defend myself." He lightly tapped the [+] mark for the
"Let's try it out." He straightened his right arm in front of him with the palm facing towards the sky, then focused his mind on that hand. His hand felt slightly warmer, like blood was rushing to the end of his fingers.
A brilliant light in the form of an arrow appeared above his hand. The arrow was around 30 inches in length; it was shining but it wasn't that bright where you would have to close your eyes after looking at it. "It was this simple? I thought I would have to chant something or call out the skill's name. Thank God I didn't have to do that, that would've been embarrassing."
Deilus wanted to test the control he had over the arrow and so he moved his hand up and down. The arrow similarly moved up and down, following Deilus' hand. Next, he spun his hand. The arrow started spinning on the spot. "This is rather amusing." laughed Deilus.
He also noticed a reticle in his line of sight for awhile now. It was quite similar to the ones you see in First Person Shooter games. "I'm guessing this is how I aim it?".
He lined up the reticle onto a tree then flicked his hand forward; sending the arrow of light flying towards the tree. The speed was quite impressive, it was slightly faster than an actual arrow shot by a bow. It blasted a hole through the tree and kept going for a few more meters before fading away. "I wasn't expecting it to actually be able to blow through a tree's trunk..." The power surprised Deilus quite a bit. He was only expecting it to dig into the tree and be stuck within the tree.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
There was a blue bar that was emptied by around 10% near the top left corner of his vision after he let the arrow loose. "Hmm, seems like I don't lose MP until I actually shoot it, that's surprisingly generous. I could intimidate someone if I summoned multiple of them without actually using MP, that could end up being useful someday." The reason being is that the arrow was still "connected" to Deilus. Later on, Deilus will discover that he can still control the trajectory of the arrow with his hand through a smaller connection when it has been shot.
"I feel much safer with this now. Onto the next page! Hopefully nothing will disturb me this time..." Feeling satisfied about the skill, Delius was about to flip over the page but-
*Tap* *Tap* *Tap*
Listening closely, he hears footsteps far behind him. He turns around to find out that the four goblins from before were dashing towards him. "Why do I always keep jinxing myself!!!" He face-palmed himself.
"Ugh, oh well, this is actually a good time to test something out." He lifted his arms and four
To control the four cross-hairs, he had to concentrate his mind on each one of them to guide them towards his intended targets. It was easier said than done. It was as if you were multitasking four things at the same time, normally a person would already have problems doing two things at the same time let alone four.
"Nngh, this is hard as hell!" He was squinting his eyes to focus harder. The four reticles were moving across his vision in a haphazardly manner. Deilus was trying to aim for their bodies but it was too straining for him and so he decided to just let them go instead of wasting anymore time. 'I'll practice aiming later.'
As expected, only two of them actually hit a goblin, one in the head, the other in the chest; missing the heart by a few inches. The goblin that got hit had a hole in the head and with a *plop*, the red bar over it got emptied instantly. The one that got hit in the chest was still alive with the red bar missing about 75% of its content and it was still depleting as the red particles kept leaking out of the big gap in his chest.
It got down on one knee, seemingly in pain and breathing heavily. It was already quite amazing that it still held its consciousness, a normal human would've been knocked out because of the shock of having a gaping hole in their chest.
The other two goblins were momentarily stunned due to the unexpected magic that Deilus used. They didn't know Deilus could actually use magic, usually they would run away from such danger, but after seeing their own kind getting killed and fatally injured; they became enraged. The expressions on their pimple-ridden green faces were even more savage than before. After snapping out of it, they yet again started running towards Deilus with killing intent.
"Hmm, That was pretty good for my first time. Guess it's about time I finish this to continue reading the book." Feeling happy that he even hit one of them on his first try, he prepared another set of four arrows. This time he lined all four reticles to the side of a tree, it was much easier than last attempt since he only needed to focus on a single point with all four. With a flick of his hands, the arrows went right through the tree as if it was paper. The tree was fairly large, which was why Deilus used four arrows.
The tree started falling towards the goblins, people with a certain profession would suddenly yell "Timber!!!" if they saw this scene. It crushed two goblins into pools of blood and the last one was still clinging to his life on one knee further away from the fallen tree. With a pierced lung, it was desperately gasping for air. The pain was so unbearable that it didn't even notice the rest of his kind had died.
*Thunk*
A butcher's knife went deep into its skull, putting it out of its misery. Deilus felt a tinge of guilt but quickly dismissed it. "They were chasing me to kill me, so there's no point in feeling guilty." Deilus convinced himself.
"Haaa... Give me a break already, I just want to read this damn book, is it too much to ask?" asked Deilus to no one in particular while surrounded by goblin corpses with his shirt that has "No Violence!" written on it.