Noah was sitting down in front of the bonfire in thought about his situation. With the knowledge he gained about Grand Forge, he knew that was the path that would lead him out of the tutorial cave, but the thought of how he should split between Grand Forge and his stats was confusing. He didn’t know how many enemies there would be or whether they’d respawn, and he needed to make sure he outramped his opponent's growth so he wouldn’t be stuck between living forever in a cave, or dying to a monster.
Thinking about a monster, didn’t he leave, “OH SHIT!” He exclaimed, running out of the doors he didn’t realize were still open and over to the room, hoping that the goblin didn’t respawn before he could get his pathetic shield. As he rounded the corner, he could see the goblin still there. Crumpled on the ground and staring up at the roof lifelessly. As he rushed into the room proper, his sword seemed to vibrate in his core, proper hunger this time flowed through it into Noah’s mind.
“Why would it want to eat the goblin?” He thought, momentarily distracted until his eyes lit up as he remembered. “Wait, it was my first kill with a sword, that’s likely a viable achievement.” He moved over to the goblin, then looking at it became thoughtful. “Considering it’s looking for an achievement, why not use the standard representation for killing a goblin.” Noah reached down as his sword appeared in his hands. It seemed hungry though he could feel that it could be held back, so he kept a slight focus on the weapon as he hacked at the ear of the goblin. It took a few swings but the thing came off.
“Here ya go buddy.” He announced, placing the bloody ear on the weapon and watching it absorb the ear and blood almost magically.
[First kill recorded: lucky parry
Determining boon…
Greater parry cannot be inscribed: energy needed to finish the process.]
Energy? Noah quickly mentally pushed for an explanation of what energy was, hoping the system would explain.
[Energy is the power of the universe and produced by one’s very soul. Energy can be stored and used to empower the world or execute abilities.]
That explained some things. With his sword requiring energy to upgrade, This energy was the equivalent of mana or any other power source. Except energy was how you level up as well as use special abilities. It also explained why he gained power on death. Whatever energy someone has upon death would be released.
Looking up his sheet, a new part appeared under power: Energy. What annoyed him though, was that his energy was 0/0. And to attain energy storage he needed to expend power. “And this system didn’t even explain energy to me until I discovered it.” He grumbled. There might be a lot more about the world he didn’t know, so he would have to explore it later.
Looking down at the goblin and its hatchet, he picked it up and realized. “Dammit I’m going to need a bag if I want to carry much.” Sadly this world wasn’t convenient enough to have an inventory system. “I just have to leave it here.” he threw the hatchet away as he walked towards the exit to the room, another corridor that veered off in a more gentle turn. As soon as his foot entered the passageway, he got a new notification.
[Congratulations on defeating your first enemy. Make sure to spend your new power and remember: the dungeon has limits. Each challenge has only a number of times it can be cleared.]
[remaining goblin clear attempts: 4]
Seeing the notification he took a step back. It seems the tutorial dungeon itself had a sequence and wasn’t monitored that closely otherwise he would have gotten the clear notification far earlier.
Knowing this, Noah would walk back to the recovery room to think about what he had learned. Only then did he notice the door closed. “Wow, the amount of sequence breaks you can probably commit here.” Thinking about it properly, he needed to be more careful about how he conducted himself in this tutorial. Sequence breaks may be fun for speedrunning, but could easily kill him if he did them wrong.
Going back to his status screen, he looked over his extremely limited skill sheet. Another aspect he needed to understand was what counted as skills. A deciding factor in his power was what skills he could incorporate into his paths. So only having swordsmanship limited his ability. The problem was that his thoughts were sluggish even now. The lack of stats was really showing how easily he was distracted.
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The only skill he could think of that he could pick up here and now was to do with flames from the bonfire. He hesitantly picked up one of the pieces of wood that held up the eternally burning blaze. However, the flames didn’t leave much wood to pick up and he barely held it in his hands before he yelped and dropped the wood back into the fire.
“Dammit. I’m going to get nowhere like this.” He complained sitting down in annoyance. Though after a moment he realized it was probably his wisdom of 2 making him so impulsive, he sat down and tried to think. Flame was a chemical reaction through oxygen, a fuel source, and an appropriate amount of heat. Of course, he had forgotten what the specific reaction was, or the required heat. But thinking about how fire worked, he hoped he could get a skill out of it. However, it was hardly five minutes before he completely gave up on the meditation on flame out of impatience.
“Fine! I’m healthy, I’ll just go and fight again. Might as well do it before I’ve had any time to overthink the battle and become all jittery.” He announced, walking back up to the door and waiting for it to slowly open. He could feel the stress building inside him from the small amount of time it took for the doors to open. “I need some ways to build confidence quickly.” he held up his shield as he cautiously stepped through the entrance and slowly moved to peek around the corner. That was enough for him to be caught though, and the goblin that was formerly waiting for him raised its hatchet and charged at him.
Realizing that he would have no chance to position or sneak with the hated activating, he rushed forwards to try and get into position at the doorway before the goblin reached him. Seeing the goblin was going for a diagonal slice, however, he had to jump back because taking that strike head-on in such an enclosed space would have led to his arm taking a similar wound as last time.
The goblin didn’t let up though, its next swing was just as wild as the first. The problem was that the goblin’s swing was as wide as its previous one in a far narrower space. So as its hatchet clanged against the stone wall, Noah didn’t hesitate to lash out, going for an uppercut slash that put a deep gash in the goblin’s hatchet arm. Its cry of pain caused it to drop the hatchet, though it was smart enough to avoid the follow-up strike Noah tried to use on it.
Jumping back into the room the creature was now defenseless. It retreated further into the room as Noah stood on the hatchet. It’s pale bone making Noah wonder for a moment what creature it came from. Not wanting to let this situation go to waste though, Noah advanced upon the goblin. As he grew closer he realized its hand was limp while pressed against its chest. He even crippled the goblin. That was a good sign.
Noah brought his blade up so he could step forwards and slash at wherever the goblin would move to dodge, ready to finish this fight again and decide how he would prepare for the next one. However as his blade descended, the goblin launched behind Noah, being close enough that his sword arm brushed against the thing’s ear. Noah took a moment to recover, but as he was turning around, already leaping into action, he could hear the scuffles of the goblin rushing towards its weapon.
As they both ran towards the hatchet, Noah readied his sword for a stab. No way would he allow it to dodge another strike. However, thrusting was harder than it looked as his arm felt like it wanted to tip down, and as the goblin stopped moving, he was a moment slow in his thrust, losing some momentum from his run. His sword sunk into its chest, and from the way it looked at him, it was a devastating hit.
The clang he heard when the hatchet hit the wall informed him that something was wrong. His eyes drifted away from the goblin to the bloodied hatchet that clattered to the floor beside Noah, then at the stinging pain he felt in his stomach. What told him something was seriously wrong was when he felt it being torn open, causing him to grab at his wound.
His sword disappeared back into its seed form as both hands clutched at the red line that was growing. Fuck it felt like it cut his belly open that his guts could fall out. If he let that happen, even the passive healing probably wouldn’t save him. Thinking fast, he sat down as his sword reappeared in his hand as he cut at his shirt in the same place the goblin cut it.He didn’t care about the stinging as he also probably cut into his skin as he leaned forwards, trying to keep the pressure on the wound with his body so his other hands could do their work. When he got part of his shirt cut off, he then separated the ring of shirt and moved to tie it around his waist. His work wasn’t good, but it made holding his stomach together with his hands easier, and if he fainted he wouldn't have his guts spill out so easily.
Standing up, he got a rush of vertigo again. “Damnit. Blood loss again.” he groaned, stumbling as he rushed to the entrance to the safe room again. “Why is it always blood loss?”