I entered the dungeon and started sprinting across the formerly very slippery floor of the cave.

I came across a gnoll and took out the blade someone threw at me when I was at the training facility, it was now mine.

I jumped up and slammed it down into the gnolls sternum before staggering back up and continuing to sprint.

These things respawned, that did but a wrench in my plan but I also wouldn’t deny some free XP, if im lucky the shards should respawn too.

After running past and either slashing or bashing a gnoll or a kobold, I saw the first wall of shards, but there were only 3 shards jutting out, it seemed they respawned at a slower rate than everything else.

Maybe that wrench has been taken out of my plans?

I still took what I could get, at least XP shards didn’t force me to wipe organs off my face to get XP

3XP later, I was back in the murder business, just murderin’. At this point I was just playing with the Gnolls and Kobolds, I snatched one of the slings and the kobolds pouch of pebbles, I wasn’t very good with a sling, I was just dancing past the very enraged gnolls, tiring them out while tossing pebbles at em, it was only until I gained the skill [Slinging I] where I was hitting the majority of my shots.

If mind amplified the technical abilities that skills gave me, then what did it do before I had the skill, would I have been the most hopeless slinger to ever exist or does it also affect certain movements before they become skills.

Questions, questions, I should just bash this gnoll’s skull in and rush to the Gnoll King, this is taking too long.

And so I looped the sling around, pocketed it, took out my mace and rushed to the formerly enraged, now terrified Gnoll.

It wasn’t long until I reached the Gnoll king, I had gained quite a lot XP on the way but not enough to level up, the requirement for levelling scaled very high, the next level would put the requirement at 2100, the next one would go to 3400, and then the one after that would be 5500.

That’s quite a lot of XP, I wonder if the Dunas Empire has a vault of XP shards, or a vault with all the XP shard liquid to give to their children when they get birthed into this world. I don’t really know the Hierarchy of the leaders, but I can guess that they’re the greatest example of nepotism, considering you can forcefeed power juice into a baby.

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When Garrick was explaining the hierarchy, he put warrior assigned among the knights, paladins, paragons. That was a good tidbit for me to figure out how the hierarchy of this world was set up, maybe you needed to serve in the military to become a knight. You probably needed to lick the boots of other knights and be high enough level to beat the ever-living-fuck out of any of the people working below you, and then you got promoted.

I’ll ponder more on that in the near future, I see the purple wall of shards, this time, there was only one shard, and the Gnoll King’s body was lying around.

Perfect, if the dungeon boss was like this too then I could retrieve the bullet. Without thinking I dashed over and grabbed the flail, it was heavy in my hands and a bit too big to hold comfortably, but a few points in vitality and strength was ought to change that.

[The Gnoll King will respawn in:]

[10..]

[9..]

[8..]

Oh shit.

The seconds passed by and soon enough, it appeared out of thin air, the dead body disappeared straight away.

I wasted no time and tossed the big flail away and armed myself with the new knife and a mace.

The Gnoll King did his very slow dialogue again and started swinging around his flail, I rushed in and stabbed the Gnoll King deep in his stomach, I slipped the blade out and quickly moved around, throwing slash after slash into the beast’s hide. It kept trying to track me and swing at me, either with its arm or the flail, but I was moving faster than it, and if it got close I’d duck under whatever blow and start circling it the other way.

I didn’t bother to hit much with the mace, I only struck hard areas like the knee, the elbows. Stuff like that, if I hit anywhere else it wouldn’t deal good damage, I used the knife to deal damage to the other areas instead.

When I thought I had this down, I started getting a little cocky. I flexed my muscles, I put my hands in my pockets and dodged, stuff like that, the Gnoll king was extremely pissed off and pushed through the pain of an injured kneecap to spin as fast as possible and slam his flail into my side, I got sent rolling a few meters and I vomited out blood.

“AAAGGH! YOU FUCKING WHORE!” I screamed.

I slowly got up, it approached me but I got up quickly, pushing through the broken ribs and possibly punctured lungs. It dropped its flail and clamped its fist together, before jumping up and slamming the two humongous hands down.

“RAAAGH!” It shouted.

I dashed close to it, its fist hit hard against the floor, and it was low enough for me to give the decisive blow against it.

I plunged my knife into its throat again and again, blood spewed out like a geyser and it gurgled on its own blood.