Even though he enjoyed how varied his day was, he was happy to see that the adventurers in front of him had stopped to sit and lie down. Particularly, they did this on an upside-down, unfinished canoe under a large tree. To clarify, they were resting since they had been trekking all day through urban streets and the jungle. Moreover, their legs were still a little affected from the past week since they saved and took in Matthew.
Meanwhile, Deathbringer looked around, catching Matthew's attention, as children squatted down next to him. As for why this was the case, Matthew didn't know, but he asked.
Deathbringer answered, "They're my followers."
Flying "WTFs" were bursting around Matthew's head right now. "That's... something..." He thought this situation wasn't logical, but he kept his eyes peeled, though a little bewildered.
Deathbringer smiled, a levitating, holographic map appearing in front of him. "You see this?"
Matthew nodded with caution, having seen the map before, but he never saw it this close. He pointed humbly, expressing his awe.
Taking this gesture as a question, Deathbringer smirked with excitement. "The shapes here are called 'dungeon steps.' That, that, and that is a dungeon flight of steps or staircase, so they're basically objectives... spread all around this map-world. So since the monsters of these steps were dangerous, whoever controlled these dungeons had power in their own regions—the regions they were placed."
"What are the rewards?" Matthew asked, thinking of items like crossbows that could be bought repeatedly from villagers with progressing refinement. If dungeons functioned similar to this, then they would be fountations of loot, providing an exclusive, "only-the-strong" path forward.
In the meantime, while Matthew and the adventurers were traveling in the wilderness, Sophia, the healer, was busy arranging talks with various people back at the city all around. Indeed, it was during this time that she waited for the messengers involving Matthew's malfunctioning system to arrive, delegating her younger brother to stand outside the cafe where the messengers would arrive.
To reproduce Matthew's current circumstances from a combat-focused data view, a list of stats could be drawn.
Name: Matthew Cruz
Species: Human
Age: 25
Skills: None
Spells: None / None
Vitality: 15
Quests: None
Returning to reality, as soon as Matthew and the other adventurers reached the dungeon steps, Matthew wanted to act independently, so he decided to observe and draw his findings as to how he could perform effectively amid the threats mentioned by Deathbringer. These threats included common goblins, skeletons, zombies, and skeletons.
However, Matthew wanted to understand whether these threats were the same across all individuals of each species. Basically, he wanted to see if they were all the same, because according to Deathbringer, individual monsters could spawn with hidden, dangerous attributes such as increased speed, strength, and stamina. Furthermore, strange abilities could emerge, sometimes creating 'trouble-maker'-type monsters that invited swift annihilation.
From another angle, Deathbringer said that these monsters were essential components of their own ecosystem, so they had to obey the 'monster warden' stationed here. Essentially, this warden ensured that adventurers engaged in sustainable monster hunting.
Even with all this assessment, Matthew wanted to address the underlying issues of his predicament. Specifically, he was stuck in a fantasy world, and he wanted to escape out of it. Hopefully, he could get out of this virtual-like bubble and return to his game room back at home. However, no clear option to escape presented itself, so he had to learn how to cope with what was available.
In the end, he could not sit down and continue to watch people engage in all of his action. He was tired of things happening so fast. He had to slow down, as he was already in his twenties when the best thing to do was find a stable job. That attitude extended here to this new world. He didn't want to do something risky like engaging in monster fights without at least having insurance or some stable life to return to even if he got badly injured. He was not going to sit here and pretend that he was invincible. If he pushed himself too much and got sick, he might not be able to exploit healing infinitely. So he wanted to be honest here about his limitations. However, part of him was optimistic that this new world would bring new possibilities that he couldn't even dream of. So he focused on managing his emotions and preparing for anything new that might blow his socks off.
In the distance, a goblin provided a means for him to analyze something. If he could tear into the goblin analytically, then maybe he could find exactly what he was looking for in this world.
However, as he began his cursory glance across the goblin's body, holographic text popped up.
Name: Mawkery
Species: Goblin
Age: 6
Skills: Red Bite
Spells: None / None
Vitality: 8
Matthew stopped following the adventurers, as they closed in on a group of goblins which included the one he was assessing. "What..."
One of the adventurers, Brackern, keen to Matthew's concerns, asked, "Why?"
"I can see things on my screen," said Matthew. "I can see words..."
"That's, that's good!" said Brackern, his blond hair tasting the wind in spate. "It's finally working, guys."
The adventurers celebrated with a smile and a nod, as they raised their blades in hedgehog formation.
Coming from multiple directions, the goblins began throwing themselves one by one at the adventurers, their bodies becoming skewered against the adventurers' spears. As soon as the first wave of goblins ran out, they retreated, leaving the adventurers to move forward to press the advantage. However, as soon as the adventurers came close enough, hidden and separated goblin archers shot at the openings that emerged during their advance. This resulted in some casualties, leaving the adventurers weakened morally. As for why the goblins were still confident in their victory, it was because they knew the patterns. But the adventurers had magic up their sleeves. As a consequence of this, costly blasts of magic began flying at the goblin archers, denying them comfortable space, disrupting their onslaught of arrows, and killing some of them. The goblins were afraid that the adventurers had enough magic to kill them all, so they withdrew from the fight. The fight ended in a costly stalemate.
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Matthew imagined himself threatening the goblin, but he was rightfully nervous. Even if he was self-confident, he wasn't self-important to overseer issues that he had little to no clue about. The underlying reasons for his nervousness reflected his social intelligence. He couldn't magically know everything through interpretation, assumption. and preconceptions. He needed dispassionately shared knowledge from an author who had little to do with those facts. This was the route of an intellectual living in a world not made to revolve around challenging and rewarding them in an artificial manner.
"What the hell!"
"Arghh! No! No! No!"
"Mama! Aaah!"
"Fred! Fred...!"
The exasperated and extreme voices broke Matthew out of his stasis. The disgusting sound of loss penetrated the air.
Matthew stared.
"Aaaah! God! Why!"
Growling, barking, screaming, wailing, and yelling emerged, as a putrid mix of emotions began to eat up everyone.
In contrast, with the help of some received knowledge from the inn regulars from a while ago, Matthew understood these adventurers to some degree. This made it easier for him to empathize with them. However, he would not overextend by falling with them in grief. He was here to work things out. This way, he could make a system, not the [System], but an organized, systematic lifestyle that worked effectively for his goals. This meant that he needed time, space, and resources. So in order to for him to move forward, he had to find out exactly what these grieving adventurers needed. Ultimately, if he couldn't do anything substantial, he would move on and take on new teammates compatible with his objectives.
By observing the adventurers, he pinpointed an opening in the form of an adventurer named "Brandon", who was quiet and sitting with his arms resting against his hips. He looked contemplative, though carrying a frown on his fixed face.
Sitting down cautiously, Matthew glanced for any reactions from the other adventurers. When he didn't see anything pronounced, he continued. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"Yeah," Brandon said.
After nodding thrice, Matthew waited for a continuation. When he didn't get any, he glanced around again. When nothing particular happened, he resumed his planned approach. Particularly, he repeated a certain gesture. He would stare at Brandon and break off right before it reached that no-no point. This indicated his interest to hear him speak more.
Brandon noticed this and made a slight, brief smile. "I don't remember anymore."
"What?" Matthew understood from the tone, but it was more natural to ask.
"I don't remember what happened with us and how everything went. Where did it all mean?"
Matthew understood a lot from that, so he kept quiet.
On a pragmatic level, he knew that Brandon could be a gateway to further interest among the adventurers in Matthew as a more realized member of the group. But this was merely hypothetical at the moment.
Brandon continued, "I just liked her, you know. My mom. She would always say that I was mad, you know, for always being so sure of myself. Ha! I thought it was funny, too. But it wasn't... funny... Hehe... I.." He snorted in a depressed manner. "I can't speak right now, sorry."
Matthew stopped himself from shrugging and nodded. "Sure, it's fine." Instead of standing up, Matthew waited for the group to stop grieving before he left Brandon. Throughout this wait, he glanced around periodically for an opportunity to arise. However, once the adventurers parted ways, Matthew realized that this group didn't align with his goals, and the effort involved in him helping them grieve would be too much for him emotionally. So this was a perfect time to leave.
Before he left, Deathbringer smiled weakly. "I think we're going to take some time off."
"Okay," Matthew said.
"They're saying we're going to leave for good, but trust me."
"Okay. Okay."
"It's going to be fine."
"Okay."
"You can come back again."
"Okay."
When Matthew left, he returned to the inn where new people and quests were currently. As for the nearby adventurer guild that mainly hosted the quests, this inn served as a subsidary for it.
At the inn, Matthew could identify many groups open to accepting "tag-alongs", or independent agents or adventurers who wanted to tag along with them in their quests.
To illustrate, these groups numbered eight. Moreover, while most of these groups had two or more slots available, two groups only had one available space left. So he had to hurry.
Instead of overthinking, he chose the nearest group, the one where the members wore two complementary colors. These colors were purple for their tunics and yellow for their surcoats. In addition, their surcoats featured their group symbol, a pig wearing a bandana.
As soon as he got accepted, Matthew transitioned quickly to the quest where he arrived at a remote forest location where they had to cross a river. In order to cross, they needed a boat; unfortunately, the river didn't have a paddler and a canoe at a hut next to it. So since they didn't really plan for this, they decided that they should return home to hire a paddler. Though, they didn't know how the canoe was going to be carried to the wide river. Ultimately, when they finally got the canoe to the river by carrying it together, they realized that they didn't really need the canoe. To explain, even if the river was strong in some parts, it was shallow, only reaching the waist.
As soon as they crossed the river, they got closer to the mountain where certain buffalos roamed. What they had to do was protect them for the whole day. As for why their contractors hired them instead of more permanent guards, they didn't know.
In the meantime, they could hang out and give each other pointers on how to deal with threats in their current mountanous environment.
The adventurers who recruited Matthew only to tag along distanced themselves from him, leaving him in a helpless situation.
Matthew ignored his emotional reaction against the adventurers, deciding to learn by observing his environment. If he could be just a little bit more alert and observant than his peers right now, then he would be able to assuage his concerns about their reliability. In other words, if he was one step ahead of them, he would understand them better.
Indeed, Matthew's patience paid off, as he was the first to notice a group of bandits heading by a dangerous, steeper route, using a form of magic to improve their climbing. He alerted the adventurers, saving them ten seconds of time.
This saved time enabled them to secure control of the best positions, signalling their advantage in vision and map control.
As soon as the fight began, the bandits were quickly eliminated since they were forced to face-check blind spots in order to proceed. Also, they trusted their sneakiness too much. This resulted in their swift defeat.
Due to how successful this quest was, the adventurers smiled one by one.
As soon as they returned home, Matthew tucked himself inside an inn, and he checked his [System] once again and wondered if his contributions to the fight influenced his stats.
Name: Matthew Cruz
Species: Human
Age: 25
Skills: None
Spells: None / None
Vitality: 15
Quests: None
Nice job rocking that fight! The gods are totally keeping an eye on you! 😇 Your reward? Way more XP than usual—12,000+!
"The hell does that even mean—"
Name: Matthew Cruz
Level: 0 -> 71
Current experience: 433
Species: Human
Age: 25
Skills: None
Spells: None / None
Vitality: 15
Quests: None
He burst into excited laughter. It was that satisfaction of finally succeeding after thinking that this entire operation was a loss. This entire world was beating down on him, and he made it out alive without so much of a scratch? He was laughing all the way in relief. This was his victory, and no one could take that away from him.
"But this doesn't make sense. Is 71 a high rank? Or is it actually low? And why isn't my [Vitality] moving? I'm worried here. I haven't grown up— Oh, wait, yeah, that doesn't affect.
"I hope this isn't a bad thing. What skills do I get in return? How does this work?"
Since the [System] stayed quiet, he exhaled tiredly and gave up for today, falling asleep.
When he woke up, the daylight scared him for some reason. It was so bright that he briefly couldn't see around the horizon, but when he moved his head, the sun rays moved out of the way enough for him to see some trees and houses. Though, that feeling of infinite expanse made him want to stay inside and process everything. "Why am I here? Who brought me here? Did God bring me here? God, please tell me I'm not crazy. If there's a reason why I'm here, please tell me. I need things to make sense. Things are working out. I'm level 71! Ha! I don't know... Is that enough? Is it enough for me to not go crazy? Am I going to die? I don't even know what it's like to be a child here? I'm like a foreigner stuck in some ancient land with magic. I just can't pretend to know everything, so it should be okay if I sat down here. No one's forcing me."
After staying in the inn for several days, he rejoined the purple-and-yellow group of adventurers on another quest, one that involved a dungeon invasion.
Matthew, having regained some rejuvenation, felt that he needed some long-term alliances, so he hoped that he could prove himself to them in this upcoming mission. If his 71 levels meant anything, hopefully, he could learn to use a spear faster.
As soon as they arrived at the location, Matthew had time to relax, as the adventurers wanted to rest before marching into the dungeon. As for the reason of this, these dungeons could be very deep, wide, and labyrinthine and left little time to rest.