I don’t breathe. I don’t move. I don’t blink.
< Goblin Seeker - Level 6 >
The new monster is significantly more slender than the other goblins I have come across. Its lean stature also moves with a fluid grace while it carefully inspects the body of the level 4 I killed mere moments before. Bending down to sniff the body, its back turns to me and I see two hunter knives looped on a dark leather belt around its waist.
I use the time it is turned away to roll onto my stomach with as much caution as I can. As I turn over, I feel a foreign object blocking my path. I tear my eyes away from the new monster for a split second to check what’s in the way.
There is a knife still in my side.
I cuss quietly but decide to leave it be so as to not lose any more blood. The goblin seeker is still examining the body of its friend, so I attempt to get up as smoothly as I can. Before I reach my feet, I decide against it and instead get on all fours. My best bet is to not make a single peep, so I am careful not to step on any twigs as I begin to crabwalk away from the scene. My position unfortunately causes the blade still in my body to move around and burn with pain, but I continue to ignore it and proceed with my sluggish journey. I am almost behind a tree nearby when suddenly some kind of wave emanates from the goblin seeker and rolls over my body. I can feel something inside me become exposed and I freeze in place due to the sensation.
Within less than a second after the wave hits me, the goblin turns around and locks its beady black eyes on my location.
Shit.
I throw caution to the wind and scramble onto my feet while pulling the blade out of my side with my left hand and pressing the heated knife in my right hand directly onto the now open wound. I hold the goblin’s gaze as wafts of cooked flesh stream into the air causing me to wrinkle my nose. Only when I am finished cauterizing the wound does the goblin step toward me.
I ready the two knives I have now, but in the time it takes me to do so, the seeker is already in my face. I quickly slice my blades toward the slender goblin, but it is useless. The monster easily dances around my swings like it is playing with me and delivers a clean kick to the back of my knee. In the midst of me losing my balance, I feel a shove from behind that pitches me directly back into the dirt I had being laying in seconds ago.
A heavy weight places itself in the middle of my back and I grunt in exasperation as the knife in my left hand is wrenched from my grip. I can feel the goblin attempt to grab the one in my right hand, but a hiss escapes from its mouth as it touches the hot metal. I struggle in vain against the goblin, but it has me pinned down in a way that I can’t get any leverage.
A metal clang rings out when the goblin slams the butt of the knife into my other fist, causing my hot blade to fall free of my hand and the chain to untangle from my fingers. It presses its knuckles into my joints to make my grip weaken and then uses the loosened chain to tie both of my hands behind my back.
I let loose and my entire body starts to radiate heat, but I can tell it isn’t enough. Without me using to concentrate the energy in one place, I just don’t have enough firepower to do anything other than warm up the air around myself.
Looking back, it was so stupid to invest every free stat point I had into BDY. Realistically, I started off with a -10 BDY debuff when I got here almost three days ago. That means that every monster at my level would’ve had an inherent ten extra points over me. Going even further than that, the goblins probably started off at a higher stat basis too due to their beefier body makeup. Who knows how much more points they have in BDY than I do.
The goblin finishes binding my hands and then moves down to grab my feet. I flail around like a worm and try to kick the creature, but a quick jab of its fist into my face causes my head to spin. One hand grabs each of my ankles and I let out an annoyed grunt as my body is dragged through the dirt. Small rocks and broken sticks scratch up my face and chest while the goblin pulls me along the forest floor.
“Train! Come an- bleh! Come and get this guy!” I scream as the undergrowth gets into my mouth.
I go to scream for Pawl to help, but my open mouth is met with another punch to the face that makes my eyes roll back. I struggle to remain conscious but my head smacks into a rock buried in the dirt and my vision goes black.
…
I wake up in complete darkness.
My hands are still bound behind my back but given the uneven ground beneath me, I can tell I’m not back in the cave.
“Status.”
[Status of Sebastian Bet]
Pillar Difficulty: Death is Certain
Floor 1: The Last Tribe
Time Used: 03:21:01:57
Time Left: 2186:02:58:03
Level: 5
Body (BDY): 11
Mind (MND): 8
Agility (AGI) : 6
Power (PWR): 5
[Unallocated Points: 0]
Class: Undecided
Form Association: Undecided
Skills:
Emit [Lvl 5]
Polarize [Lvl 1]
Cogitation [Lvl 6]
Condition: Mana Mutation [Permanent]
Over an entire day has passed. At this point, I think I will probably miss out on the majority of this floor due to the amount of time I have been unconscious. Unfortunately, the screen is too dim to light up any of my surroundings either, so I dismiss it and feel around with my feet while I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
I don’t feel as much pain as before and there is the obvious fact that I am still alive, so I guess the beating I got from the goblins wasn’t life threatening and the injuries they left have healed up somewhat.
Due to the mild itch I feel, I can tell that had continued running while I was knocked out. I can feel that is no longer active which is odd, but I pay it no mind as I use to help funnel the heat into my hands.
After a few minutes of concentration, a dim light grows in the metal of my restraints, and I learn that I am at the bottom of some sort of pit trap. I wriggle myself up to my feet and stand up straight in the narrow pit. There is a heavy metal grate above me, and I can see the starry night sky through the slits of the bars. I listen to the silence of the night where I can hear the occasional chirp of insects, but nothing else.
Why didn’t the goblin take me back to the cave? Was it too far?
In the end I guess it’s not really useful to question the reasonings behind the creature’s actions. I doubt me being locked up and left alive is good news anyway. For all I know, they will come back and torture me or eat me alive or something equally violent.
This place sucks. First the cave, then the stupidly strong beginner mobs, and now this.
I hate that I realized my errors only while being dragged through the dirt like a dog.
The goblin seeker has me beat in every category. It even has a skill that lets it find me whenever it wants. I didn’t even know monsters had skills, but it makes sense. It was a stupid variable to overlook. I was too blinded by my newfound freedom to think about the dangers that come with it. I should have paid more attention to the behaviors of the monsters before deciding to attack a random group. Furthermore, I shouldn’t have ignored the fact I know nothing about this ‘floor’ or anything else that relates to it. This entire place is an anomaly of logic that I should have spent significantly more time trying to understand.
This is not the time to be wallowing in my own self-pity though. The goblin seeker made a mistake by allowing me to live. A mistake that should have killed me on the spot is now something I will turn into an opportunity.
The one thing I did right in my time on Earth was realize that this life only consists of two things: What matters, and what does not. I will separate this new world the same way I did before.
What matters right now is getting stronger.
Beyond getting out of the hole, I need to be able to beat any goblin I come across. No scratch that- I need to be able to beat anything I come across.
I feel the heat of the chains burning into my wrists. I tug on the metal, but the goblin seeker knew what it was doing when it tied them and I can’t move them an inch. Instead of pulling on them in futility, I turn my attention to my skills. has gotten the chains as hot as I can currently get them already, but it is not enough. Skills are where I can pull ahead of the monsters. Skills don’t need kills to make them stronger. I can raise my skill levels through shear effort.
That is the plan then. Until further notice, I will push to maximize my skill levels and deal with regular levels as they come.
is running at full power alongside , but I know I can do more. I need to push my skills like I push my body through dizzying pain.
I close my eyes and force every single other input out of my mind. Sounds, smells, tastes, and everything but the sensation of my fingers is completely forgotten. When I reach this state, I bend my fingers back and feel the heat of the metal against the tips. Blisters begin to form but I ignore them and just focus on the heat coming from my skin.
I am currently heating the metal because I have concentrating its entire output through my hand. I am not actually pushing the heat into the metal, but rather the metal is heating up as a byproduct of the proximity to my skin. Due to this fact, there is too much waste escaping into the air. I need to eliminate the waste and create a streamlined path from my body directly into the object.
is what is allowing me to create such a focused point on my skin, but I need to forget about concentrating the heat and instead think about what causes the heat in the first place. If it was something that came from me directly, then shouldn’t I be able to handle the energy without it burning me at all? The burning itch I have increases when I don’t use , so that means that the heat or radiation is some sort of foreign energy rather than something my body creates naturally.
So, is the heat some kind of reaction then? Reaction to what?
The potency of is strengthened the more stat points I have in PWR. The itch only lessens as I level .
Higher PWR = hotter reaction. Higher level of = Higher output. Higher output = Less itching.
Theoretically if I am right, then the itch won’t go away as long as my level in is too low to handle the added PWR. It might suck for me, but if I can figure out how to keep leveling my skill while increasing my overall level, then my strength will multiple twofold. Even better than that, if I can handle keeping up with my growing stat, then I shouldn’t itch anymore either.
My attention slips momentarily and I can feel multiple notifications in the back of my mind, but I ignore it and dive even deeper into my thoughts.
I won’t stop until I find out where this radiation comes from.