"Attributes" Spoke Zeke as he poked the morning embers with a stick.
Strength: 33
Endurance: 32
Agility: 23
Intellegence: 42
Affinity: 24
Hmmm, with 9 points to spend, Zeke could add a huge boost to a stat, either strength or agility.
He narrowed down his choices to either smash goblins, or slice goblins. Smashing skulls with a wooden log held a deep satisfaction, but not be outshone by a stealthy goblin assassination. Quite the conundrum indeed.
Stealthy kills were without a doubt the safer option. Aside from the slicey lizards 'slizards', the forest had only offered relatively weak creatures. Zeke wasn't so smug to believe a stronger monster wasn't lurking around, waiting for a tasty Zeke-shaped treat to tread by. Opting for agility would give more speed for running and footwork for sneaking. To a certain extent agility can also hone one's accuracy, if Zeke ever chose to take up the bow and arrow, or throw daggers.
Strength is self-explanatory, it would be an all-round useful thing to gain. Durability to enemy attacks, power to overwhelm foes, as well as just general survivability. Strength was far more practical to wilderness survival than agility. Zeke could even just split his points evenly across the two attributes and have the best of both worlds.
Without any preference for any specific fighting style, Zeke ended up leaving the choice to fate. A simple gamble, of tossing a flat rock in the air, heads or tails.
Zeke picked up one of the many rocks that littered his little man-cave, a flat rock with a splash of dried blood coating one side, goblin or lizard blood, he shuddered a bit when he realised it was also just as likey to be his blood.
Blood is agility, stone is strength.
With a light toss he threw the rock towards the roof and watched the result with a passive disinterest.
It landed with a soft screeching noise, did a little flip, rolled on it's edge and fell still with the blood facing down.
Looks like strength.
Zeke immediately added all 9 free points in strength before he second guessed any doubts he had with his selection method. His overpowered Avarice skill also hinged on luck so a heads or tails game would suite him thematically, if anything else.
+9 strength (42)
Zeke winced in pain as his muscles grew to adapt to the dramatic change in attributes, his whole body cramped for a split second before adjusting back to normal. He grimaced at the unnatural changes, next time he would add the points bit by bit, not all at once.
Now with the attributes taken care of, time to extract more revenge on the local goblin population.
Zeke rose up, grabbing a few stone knifes, shoving them into his loincloth that he made a little more modest by tying five together, hoisted his club on his shoulder and grabbed a fistful of moss from the wall. He chomped down on the cave-grass and also picked up a handful of red berries, some of the few he collected the day earlier. He'd try each berry type, one at a time to determine which were safe to eat, if he got sick later, then he wouldn't eat these particular red berries again. As he strutted out of the cave he scooped up his makeshift backpack for any potential goodies he might find before heading to the stream.
As he entered the forest and began to follow the marked trees, he activated his Mana concealment. It steadily drained about 1 mana every 10 minutes, with 40 mana he could last for over 5 hours, although he had to keep in mind that the skill removed his natural mana regeneration, so he'd have to make sure to leave a bit of mana for emergencies. With the Concealment active there 'should' be a lesser chance of ambush from mana-detecting things, if a slizard like last night's got a jump on Zeke... it would be a shit-show at the very least.
Zeke softly hummed a tuneless song and popped the last berry in his mouth as he absorbed the forest's natural beauty. Century old trees creaked and groaned under persistent winds, insect buzzed, birds sang, bogs stumbled, bushes bushed and every so often Zeke stopped to observe some other forest curiosities. These included a few mushroom colonies the lined the older trees, glowing with a bioluminescent green, a sleeping bat family hanging from a dead tree, and even a wild lynx.
The lynx was especially exotic, it prided itself with fiery orange fur and sharp crimson feline eyes. it glided through treetops with a wing-like membrane between it's front and hind legs, it's sturdy claws allowed it to effortlessly climb higher before gliding off again. Zeke only noticed it due to the colour of the unique fur, if not for that than he wouldn't even be able to keep up with it's movements.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The leisurely stroll ended up leading Zeke to the stream with little incidents, as the stream entered eyesight Zeke dropped the casual atmosphere, there were goblins to be slain.
And goblins there were... lots of them.
Massive groups of anywhere from 7 to 20, they were hunting down any isolated bogs that wandered stray from their packs. There was one group of gobs that just patrolled up and down the stream keeping an eye out for threats. Zeke mused that his slaughter yesterday had put the Goblin hunters on high alert, but to think there'd be so many!
"Just lambs to the slaughter I suppose" Zeke whispered to himself with a carefree ear-to-ear grin.
He slithered silently through the dense foliage, scouting out an unprepared party to engage. There were roughly 80 Gobs in total along the water, but Zeke was confident that with careful planning he could wipe out a majority without too much hassle. If there were any issues, he could easily outrun any goblin, his cave was too far away to be in any danger either. The goblins walking around might as well just been living bags of experience and stone weapons to Zeke's eyes.
A few minutes of spying put Zeke before a hunting party of 10, they weren't actively engaged in a fight but were walking away from the main group to find their own bog. Zeke stalked them carefully from behind, they'd be the first kills of the day.
Zeke watched as the unit of hunters happened upon a lonely bog that strolled from a thorny bush. All three archers knocked their arrows and took aim, five dagger wielders clumsily tried to sneak behind it and two spear 'men' gained its attention from the front. The bog... didn't even notice the ten goblins.
The spear-goblins snarled menacingly and growled towards the bog, gaining it's attention. Four of the five rogue-goblins jumped from behind and stabbed the bog's muscular back, they backed away after striking, but one of them still got a double hoof to the chest, sending him flying. The archers shot their arrows just after the rogue's attack, two missed and one flew in-between the beast's ribs, hanging loosely. The spear holders then charged in and met the bog's own charge, both the spears and snapped on impact but left deep holes either side of the bog's frame, the spear goblins then pulled out their own daggers and joined the melee.
Zeke was honestly impressed by the fluid engagement on behalf of the goblins, they had obviously done this before. But, it seemed the once their first attacked came to and end, the goblins returned to the savage and free-for-all attack style they were known for.
Surrounded in all directions by goblins, the cornered beast unleashed an uproar of squeals and barks as it channeled a beastial fury. It tore at the grass beneath it's feet and charged it's hulking tusks and body at the closest moving enemies. It manage to incapacitate 3 of the green bastards in it's assult and even kill one with a deep gash to the belly . Zeke was quite impressed with the bog's tenacity, it was remarkable, but alas, the mighty bog fell after a minute of rampaging.
The 6 still mostly healthy goblins let out a snickering cry at their small victory. They ignored the crumpled allies on the ground and rushed at the dead bog, skinning the bog seemed to be a higher priority than the fallen warriors to these despicable monsters.
Zeke moved the moment the bog hit the ground, he knew that their guard would be lax once they felt the fight was over, little did they know, the real fight had just started.
He dropped all pretenses of stealth and charge at the back-turned archers with club in hand. They didn't even notice the solid wooden branch untill he had cracked the skull of two archers with one swing. The nine bonus strength revealing it's dividends. The third let out a confused yelp and jumped in the air in shock . Zeke grasped the goblin's throat, suspending it off the ground with one hand and slammed down the butt of his club into its horrified forehead, silencing the weak gurgles. The 5 goblins scavenging the kill didn't even notice the brazen attack on their back line, but one of the injured ones off the side did. It cried out weakly, it's chest had been crushed by the bog's previous rampaging so Zeke summarily ignored it, he would kill the incapacitated last.
Zeke sprinted at the five hunched down figures, crossing the ground in a few seconds and drawing back a powerful swing. He clocked one of the ugliest uglies in the ribs, knocking it's body into the gob next to it, then Zeke used the swing's momentum to wind up another hit which splattered the closest goblin's head on the ground.
If they weren't paying attention before... they were now. Three shocked Goblins stared slack-jawed at the two mangled corpses and the panting man beside them. The momentary pause rewarded them with another dead goblin joining the two one the ground with a stone knife to the skull. This was the last straw it seemed, as the two remaining jumped up and gunned it towards the main hunting party they departed from.
Zeke reveled in his newly acquired power, 42 strength saw that the filthy green monsters either died in single hit or were left dying on the ground, the feeling was... invincibility.
The goblin slayer gave chase to the fleeing scum, they both ran in the same direction so finishing them off was a simple matter. One got a club to shoulder, the other got a few daggers thrown at their back, knocking him down and leaving it open to a specific blood-soaked wooden club.
With a happy sigh Zeke walked at the crippled goblins who had bared witness to the one-sided battle. He gave his shoulders a few shrugs as he pulled out his last dagger, which he used to clean up the stragglers.
9 fresh, green cadavers to absorb and 10 green bastards to loot. It was a shame how easy it was, Zeke had avoided any injuries once again and was somewhat longing for a bit of a challenge.
He collected several more daggers, ten more fibre belts as well as cloths and one crude metal dagger that an archer had sheathed. The dagger was a bit of an oddity as Zeke was sure that goblins didn't have the technology to produce metal items, he guessed that it was stolen from a human who fell victim to the goblins. Which was a good sign because Zeke had no clue if there was any civilization near this forest, the dagger was a strong indication there might be.
With looting done, he moved on to Avarice with a gleeful grin.
+2 Agility (25)
+1 Endurance (33)
+1 Affinity (25)
Three successes, each with different gains. The increase was minor, but every little bit would add up. If he wanted larger increases he would need to slay much more powerful monsters.
Zeke meandered to the nearby stream to wash his bloodied hands and club, killing was messy work after all. With a quick glance at the sun's position Zeke guessed about two had passed since he left home, plenty more daylight to spend abusing Avarice, which is exactly what he set out doing.
He wandered off the way he came, eager to wipe out the green-skinned population.
In his defence, a goblin once attacked him, totally unprovoked and while he was injured to boot. Nothing less of racial genocide would satisfy his revenge itch.