“XP bar..”

I sighed, tired from the battle. My first kill in the game. I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t exciting. A window opened up, showing the amount of XP that I had earned.

Huh.

I got about 14% by killing one of the balls. Meaning I’d have to kill at least 7 more to get to the next level. 7 more of these battles huh. I’m sure I’d get the hang of it by then.

I waited for my stamina bar to refill as I twirled the knife around in my hand. Suddenly, it struck me. Curious, I checked the skills.

Skill Name:Skill Type:Skill Level:Skill Experience: Knife MasteryPassiveNovice4% Increased damage and effectiveness with Knives.

Novice level : +2 Damage with Knives.

Skill Name:Skill Type:Skill Level:Skill Experience: Sharp EyesActiveNovice9% A racial skill of the Nephilim, Sharp Eyes lets one enhance their eyesight in order to see far and beyond, or enhance the quality of sight. Cost: 1 mana/sec

Hm.. 4% in [Knife Mastery] and 9% in [Sharp eyes]. I quickly need to increase the skill proficiencies. The damage boost from the [Knife mastery] skill is useful. It might’ve helped out in the fight too.

Suddenly, I noticed the state my clothes were in. I didn’t pay attention since they were just the beginner clothes, but the grey tunic was ripped in several places.

I realised how my clothes got ripped due to the attacks from the ball. Meaning the damage is carried over huh. But what will I do if it gets completely ripped? Will I have to wander naked? But I’m sure the game won’t allow such a thing to happen. Also, the ripping of clothes is probably just to bring in a sense of realism.

Noticing that my SP bar had filled up, I immediately activated sharp eyes and looked around for new prey. I needed to kill 7 of these buggers, and I need to do it fast. Bladester reminded me how slow I am in the game.

“All right! On to the next one!”

“Haa.. Haa…”

I gasped for breath as I faced off against the sixth green ball.

I killed five of them until now, and somehow got my experience up to about 70% successfully. But the sixth one was on an entirely different level.

It stood before me, but unlike the others which were green, this one had turned a bright red. It was literally letting off some steam as it rolled about, glaring at me with its now red eyes.

The combat mode did slow down time, but this thing was sort of faster than the others. I couldn’t react as quickly to it, and I got hit twice.

I eyed my HP bar, feeling nervous. I can’t die now! I somehow managed to get sharp eyes to 10%, and if I died, I would lose a lot of that precious skill proficiency.

My HP bar was at 79 now, and dropping. A little droplet of blood was positioned next to it, indicating the bleeding debuff.

And I am bleeding.

I could feel the fresh blood pouring out of the holes it punched in me. The front of my ragged tunic was stained a deep red with my blood. My head felt strangely light headed, but thankfully it didn’t progress too much.

I diverted my attention towards the little white window in the right corner of my vision.

  STUNNED: 00:07

Seven more seconds huh.

My HP bar blinked red and decreased to 72. Damn it. If I moved, the decrease would be even more.

Apparently ending its resting time, the ball rushed towards me, quicker than ever. I tried to do the stab to deal some great damage to it, but the ball had a trick up its sleeve.

It spun at a great speed as it flew towards me. Realizing my mistake, I tried to stop the stab, but it was already too late.

My knife’s blade collided against the spinning spikes of the ball. My hand got pushed away from the ball, my knife along with it. To add to my misery, the knife flew out of my hand, landing a few feet away from me.

The ball continued on its trajectory and rammed into my now completely defenseless chest. I bit back the need to howl as its spikes pierced my chest and spun, digging deeper than before into my chest. Even the goo from the gash I had opened up on it when I first attacked mixed with my flesh and flew with it.

Then with a final push, the ball pressed its spike deep into my chest, imprinting the heat and the sharpness of its spikes on me as it jumped away from me.

I staggered onto my knees, almost blanking out from the pain.

The ball rolled away, standing next to my now out of hand knife.

Damn it. This situation is what’s getting out of hand...

I looked towards my HP bar, confirming my status.

Dang it. I only had about 46 HP remaining. This bugger is really annoying.

The bleeding status had evolved or something, and now showed two droplets. I could check the notifications to see what happened, but I turned it off so that it won’t distract me. The timer now showed 25 seconds, and without doubt, I’m in deep trouble.

Running away is not an option since that would mean I would lose the knife.

The HP bar blinked and then the numbers reduced again. Now a total of 4 HP was lost.

The counter dropped down to 24, and I realised how bad the situation was.

24 seconds. 4 HP per second. And I have about 46 left. No matter how I slice it, in about 12 seconds, I’d be dead meat.

Even if I win, there’s no chance for me to survive. The HP loss would kill me anyways.

Just as I was about to resign myself to death, a new thought entered my mind.

Food.

In most games, food recovers HP right? So if I survive this now, I can hopefully eat some bread and not die. Well, I’d regret not trying anyways.

I struggled back onto my feet, and lurched towards the ball. The AI gave me several warnings on not to do it, but I still went for it.

Just like I expected, the ball rolle- Wait, why is it preparing to jump at me? This wasn’t what it was supposed to do. The spike ball shot forwards, aiming at my face.

This is going to hurt.

The ball collided with my face, splattering fresh blood from my broken nose. But bearing the brunt of the attack, I grabbed onto the ball with one arm--The spikes were quite painful as they tore into my skin-- and reached for my knife.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

My HP kept dropping every instant I kept hugging onto that little red ball of agony. My HP dropped to 30, and then I started to get desperate. Finally my fingers curled around the kn- Ouch-- My HP dropped by an additional 2 as I grasped the blade of the knife. Well damn me.

I twirled the knife around, grasping it by the hilt. I struggled to keep the ball under control as it squirmed in my arm, dealing more damage by the minute. Without pause, I drove the blade into the ball.

It squealed in my arms, and renewed its efforts to escape. My HP dropped to 25, and the counter reached 20 seconds. I had to finish this quickly.

I raised my arm again and gave another stab to it.

And another.

And another.

Until it finally burst into little specks of light.

Time sped up again, and I lay there, gasping for breath. My stamina was completely depleted, and my HP was almost getting in to the danger area.

I quickly retrieved the bread from my inventory and tore into it.

The taste of blood and bread filled my mouth as I struggled to swallow it.

“Haa… It works”

Luckily, food did the job. Barely. I recovered about 2 HP from that bite. Without pausing, I kept tearing into the food, hungry and desperate not to die.

I started to notice something as I got to the third loaf. The amount that was being recovered was lessening. Damn it. It recovered by only about 1 HP now, so I got scared.

My HP dropped to 5 and the timer to 2 seconds. 8 HP would be lost if I couldn’t do it. Anxious, I quickly devoured the 5th bread, and the timer dropped to 1 second.

To my surprise, the HP didn’t recover anymore. On contrary, I was greeted with a notification.

You’re full!!

Eating too much, you have completely filled your satiety meter. Thanks to that, the recovery effect of food has stopped.

And the counter dropped to 0.

“What the--”

I couldn’t even complete the sentence as the familiar text came before my eyes.

YOU DIED!

“OH come on!!”

I wanted to break the capsule as soon as I got kicked out of the game.

The hunt was an entire loss as not only did I lose the proficiency I worked so hard to increase, I even lost 5 pieces of bread. That left me with only 4 pieces of bread. And I’d have to consume at least two per day. I could survive for two days at best.

I walked down the stairs, disgruntled at the death.

It was so dissatisfying and aggravating! I could barely contain the urge to throw a tantrum. Now, I’d have to wait till tonight before I could play again.

I glanced at the time as I reached the dining room. It was half past noon, meaning I’d have to play at midnight. Mom and Dad had gone out today to do some shopping, so I was free to do what I wanted.

I took some cookies and began munching on them. Good. Sweet things always calm me down. Resigning myself to my fate, I decided to call my friend.

I waited for him to pick up as I listened to the dialtone.

“Ah! Woojin is it?”

“Hey there Min-jae..”

“What’s up mate? You sound down?”

“Ha...It’s the game…”

“Dude! You seriously got Tharos?!”

Obviously, the only thing that would be called ‘the game’ nowadays would be Tharos Online. Even Lee Min-jae has been playing it for about 2 months. He’d surely be on a much higher level than me now.

“Yeah… I started playing two days ago.. And I died twice..”

There was silence from the other side.

“Hello?”

“..You died twice already?”

After a while, he spoke up.

“Haha… Yeah”

“Here I was excited about finally being able to talk to you about Tharos. And now you died?”

“I just have a different breed of talent..”

“Yeah. The worst breed there is. But hey, you never cease to amaze me!”

I chuckled at his comment. Really speaking to Min-jae was the best way to cheer myself up.

“So, where did you start?”

“Um. Sevillia town in Sevia kingdom”

“Sevia? Why so far off? It’s in the west right? Why did you start there?”

“It was one of the recommended spots for my race actually”

“Hm? What’s your race?”

“Nephilim”

I could hear someone spitting and coughing on the other side of the line. Violently. Did something happen? I waited for a while, waiting for Min-jae to respond.

“...Hello?”

“Ah hey. What happened? I heard some coughing….”

“What race did you say you picked again? I’m sure I heard it wrong”

“The Nephilim”

“The Nephilim? You serious?!”

“Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“Why did you pick a half breed race? And Nephilim at that?! Don’t you know Woojin? The half breeds have real difficulty getting quests since they’re outcasts! You won’t even get quests, and there won’t be ‘home’ places for you! And the Nephilim has it the worst! They’re only good for close combat, and pure close combat is nothing in the game! Even if people chose close combat, they would pick something like magic warrior or something! Seriously Woojin, did you even read about the races?!”

“Huh? There was a post for races? I just checked out the player news.”

Silence on the other side again. Haha, I might have screwed up a little bit.

“Fine… Let’s meet up in the game someday. Mom’s calling me, so I got to go. Tell me when you get Tallius kingdom”

“Oh, ok”

I hung up the phone, and then went to watch some TV. Hm… It might be boring without the game I guess. And Dad won’t hesitate to take the capsule away if my grades dropped.

“Sigh… it’s so hard being a kid…”

I flicked between channels before falling asleep on the couch. After all, I’d have a long night tonight.

Nexus here!

I kinda really enjoyed killing him AFTER he thought he survived I'm so evil! MWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~!!!!

Hope you enjoyed it! Thx for reading! :D :D :D [th_084_.gif]