I felt more confident than ever, even Jeremy was excited to see what I had in store, I clenched my dagger and mace tightly and trekked onwards.

“I invested points into Mind, it helps me balance better, but I don’t think I’ll be running like the gnolls any time soon.”

“Good to know, I’ll invest in that next if we still haven’t beaten whatever is in this cave by the time I level up next, which is likely.”

And we continued walking forwards, brushing past where the XP shards used to be, Jeremy was struggling to keep pace.

“I thought you were faster than me, what’s wrong slowpoke?”

“Very funny, piss off.”

After a few more minutes of walking slowly, I saw I kobold and a gnoll chatting in very phlegmy and guttural noises, I wasn’t gonna deny that the linguist in me wanted to research em’, but the rebel in me wanted to KILL KILL KILL

Maybe not that intensely, but I do need levels.

They noticed us fairly quickly, my light bulb was still alight, we were very conspicuous. The gnoll looked like any standard gnoll but the kobold was reaching into a pouch in his side, it was a rock, he then took out a sling from his side.

Imitating Jeremy, I hurled my mace straight toward the dragon-esque face of the kobold, but it dodged and released a pebble from his sling, it soared at incredible speeds and hit me in the gut before I even knew it.

It was a tiny pebble but the wind had been knocked out of me, but Jeremy put down the kobold quickly by tossing his mace into it, it had been too preoccupied with me at that exact moment that it didn’t have enough time to dodge, it got hit across the head and fell back, slamming its head on the jagged rock.

I took multiple deep breaths and recovered, luckily the gnoll was focusing on Jeremy and not me, so even if I was vulnerable, I wouldn’t be attacked.

Jeremy sunk a fist into the gnoll and it staggered back, Jeremy managed to catch himself before he fell.

I jogged over towards the gnoll and headbutted it hard, my hardhat protecting me from any damage that would come from such a manoeuvre. Jeremy punched the gnolls temple this time, this time it died.

“Yes! I leveled up, what was it again, mind? Alright.” he put his points into mind and now he was walking at a slightly above-average pace, which instilled great confidence in him. We went on our merry way and Jeremy picked up the mace he tossed earlier.

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“Perfect,” I said.

“And I got a new skill, pugilism.”

“Hey, how did you even end up a null, you seem capable and you said you were a hunter, there should be lots of XP in that.”

“I suffered from a disease, I was inactive for so long that my levels withered away, I used to be level 10, can you believe that?!”

“Damn, you’re good.”

“I was, yeah, I need to get better.”

“So, you say you were assigned to the forges, then how were you a hunter?”

“Pesky foreigners,” He joked “I’ll explain it to you then. When you are below 18 it is your parent's legal duty to level you up, or they’re executed, my dad and his dad and so on were hunters so it just fell down to me. I got lucky quite a few times and he carried me through some hard fights.” He thought for a second. “You don’t have that term, right? Carried?”

“No, we do, our world does not have levels, you can’t exactly speed level or carry someone through hard fights, but we do have games, they’re played on these magic screens, not unlike the system, and you have a character in there, and it's in a world not unlike this one, you control this character and you can level them up, do all that stuff,” I explained to the best of my abilities how this stuff worked

“So- So, I’m in that game?”

“No, this is real, I can assure you, it’s just a coincidence how similar it is.”

Jeremy let out a sigh of relief.

“I was teetering on the edge, but now that you keep talking more and more, I think I actually, wholeheartedly believe you, or are you just a really good actor?”

“I am an agent for the Dunas Empire meant to turn rebels like you insane-” He gripped my shirt and raised his fist intimidatingly.

“Stop, stop! It was a joke, alright?”

Jeremy let out another big sigh of relief.

“Stop joking around about that shit, you don’t know anything.” He said.

“Alright, alright, don’t worry.”

We hadn’t come across any monsters in a while, so it was only time until more appeared, this time it was 3 kobolds, which I wasn’t that enthusiastic about at all, but Jeremy was amped and ready to dish out damage, he really wanted to recapture his old strength, I knew that for sure.

I replicated his enthusiasm, raising my mace in the air and letting out a battle cry.

“Come get it, bastards!”

They reached for pebbles in their pouches but I rushed over as fast as I could, Jeremy did too, faster than me, in fact. The kobolds tried stepping back and avoiding the blows but his swing still connected hard. Me on the other hand, my strike only just grazed the kobold. Still, I followed through and managed to slash its reptilian scales, though blood didn’t leak, the skin was a little thicker than usual.

Still, it allowed me to get the jump on it. There was one kobold left unattended and it was about to unleash its deadly pebble upon me, but I was ready to deal with it.

I gripped the Kobold I just slashed and pulled it in before turning it towards the kobold ready to sling it.

The pebble hit the kobold on the back and I used the time that the unattended kobold took to reload to slam repeated elbows into the kobold closer to me, It died in a few hits.