Chapter 03

  Michael gasped in surprise at the suddenness of the charge, but did not freeze up as the mountain of muscles and spittle propelled itself towards him, trying to flatten him against the solid wall of the dungeon. After a split-second decision, he dropped into a clumsy roll on the fortunately smooth ground, dodging the goblin’s mad charge by a hair’s breadth. Then the gigantic monster slammed into the wall with a grunt, so hard it chipped the stone and its own teeth in the process, making Michael revise his opinions on how smart the mob really was. If there was intelligence behind the creature’s eyes, the rage had overpowered it.

  The flame from the [Candle Light] skill was still shining, not disturbed by the roll or the displacement of air. It singed Michael’s hand in the split second he was upside down, showing just how hot it burned. It was then that he realized that he could use the flame to his advantage. If the boss monster was so stupid or enraged as to slam into the wall, then he could come up with a tactic to exploit the obvious weakness.

  The next time the goblin charged, Michael deactivated the skill giving light to the room and simply sidestepped. Before the monster was on him, he activated the flame again for a split second. The monster’s eyes had adjusted quickly to the renewed darkness, much quicker than Michael’s had, and now the reappearance of the light blinded it. It did not see Michael move out of the way, and slammed into the wall.

  It was surprisingly effective, dazing the larger goblin for long enough to try and hit it from behind. Unfortunately, the goblin was too tall to hit in the neck or back of its head—not that there were any rocks Michael could use as a bludgeon. Any punches to its torso either bounced off its almost solid muscles or were absorbed like Michael was punching an incredibly dense punching bag.

  Then the time window was over, and the goblin turned around with a wild haymaker to charge at him again. He tried the trick one more time, but this time the dash ended at the centre of the room without dazing the goblin, which then exploded in a flurry of powerful blows. Michael concentrated on dodging rather than deflecting the meaty hands, too much force behind them to risk a block. If he broke a bone, he was as good as dead.

  He was too focused on the hands to see a kick coming at him, hitting him square in the stomach and lifting him into the air. He flew for several feet before hitting the back wall, managing to avoid hitting his head by pure luck but getting the wind knocked out of him. A sharp pain as soon as he tried to move added some broken ribs to the damage tally, making it hard to breathe.

  He didn’t have time to heal himself. The monster was on him before he could even activate the skill, and feeling the pain all over again would have left him unable to defend. He redirected a punch with his forearm, but even the perfectly executed technique had his arm exploding in pain, while the punch was deflected by the barest of margins, barely enough for him to step around it. It had felt like he was hitting solid steel.

  Then the goblin went on all fours, preparing to charge again. Apparently, it had gotten quite angry at not being able to squash the interloper like a bug, and charging at enemies seemed its go-to technique when its rage was highest. Michael could use this, he thought.

  But first, he used the candle technique again. It was effective again, which Michael had counted on, leaving the monster dazed for yet another second. This time he didn’t try to hit it, knowing that he couldn’t do any damage to it. Instead, he let the small flame from the [Candle Light] skill hover just above his left index finger. Then, grimacing, he thrust his hand below the hanging bits of the nude mob, which went up and down with its labored breath.

  He knew how hot the skill burned. That flame was deceivingly hot. There was the smell of charred flesh, then a guttural scream of pain, anger and rage. Then Michael cut the flame entirely, using the darkness to reposition himself in a split second close to the opposite wall before summoning it again, the contrast of light and darkness doing more damage to his own eyes than to the goblin’s.

  This time the dash was different. The goblin was still on all fours, moving faster than Michael thought possible for a being so large with an anatomy so similar to that of a human. Despite his misgivings and surprise, he still managed to get out of the way almost in time. As his right shoulder was pinned against the wall by the raging mountain of muscle, the rest of the goblin smashed into the wall at top speed. It impacted the solid stone with its head, but the rest of the body was following behind, having gained an almost unstoppable momentum.

  Michael’s shoulder shattered. Meanwhile, the rest of the goblin’s body continued along its trajectory despite its head being stopped dead by the stone. Its neck snapped to the side as the force was too much for it to handle, the body pulverizing its spine and tearing its muscles before they had a chance to arrest its momentum. In moments, the monster was on the ground, still alive but paralyzed.

  Michael limped over to it, hand holding his shattered shoulder as the pain slowly trickled to his conscious mind through the fog of shock and adrenaline. He looked at it with contempt, feeling like the monster deserved to suffer for all the pain it had inflicted upon him. Then the thought passed, almost evaporating into nothingness as Michael took stock of just where he was. He couldn’t kill the creature quickly, and getting close to slowly put it out of its misery was a good way to discover that it wasn’t actually paralyzed and lose his life.

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  So he went to sit at the opposite side of the room, watching the goblin look at him with a snarl on its face but unable to move anything below its shoulders. The goblin seemed to realize his powerlessness, snarling all the harder at first, then switching to a low whimper like it was begging to be put out of its misery.

  Michael thought twice before coming close to the monster, even though he was now quite sure it was really paralyzed. The only way he could kill it was by cooking its brain with [Candle Light], and wasn’t feeling like putting his finger within biting distance of the monster. Instead, what he did was simply sit a safe distance away while munching on his rations while he healed, suppressing whimpers of pain of his own as his shoulder slowly rebuilt itself over the course of the next few hours.

  The pain was enough to suppress all sense of empathy he could have had for the monster’s own pain. By the time the shoulder was healed, all guilt at making the monster suffer for a needlessly long time had vanished under a curtain of renewed pain.

  At a certain point during the process, the goblin boss had become a corpse, which had disappeared to be replaced by loot on the ground. A doorway also materialized. There was light coming in from the new opening, and it looked a lot like daylight, making Michael’s heart beat in anticipation.

  Despite all of that, he didn’t leave until he had healed himself as much as he could. Unfortunately, while his mana would come back after a while, his food was a limited resource. It ran out before he was done, leaving his shoulder functional but weak. His ribs were also fragile, but they were no longer restricting his breathing. As for the rest of his body, he got the instinctual impression that most of the damage was fixed, save for some cuts and a couple of nasty bruises.

  He walked over to the loot, limping as each step made his shoulder bloom with pain. It was farther from healed than he had thought, it seemed. But although he was at full mana capacity, he was so hungry that he felt like he might faint if he tried to heal again.

  The loot was a small pile of different items, stacked on top of each other. There were a few copper coins of a make he had never seen before, a dagger, a leather helmet, a small round shield and… he smiled. A skill stone. Almost disregarding everything else, he immediately grabbed the stone and absorbed the power within it. The skill appeared in his mind soon after, making a his smile grow wider.

  He immediately decided to try it. For a moment, it felt like the skill was asking him whether he wanted it to activate over the surface of the shield, or in the air around him. The first option was uninteresting enough: it made the whole shield shimmer faintly, and it gained the ability to repel attacks without him feeling their momentum. A rock was sent flying, shattering against the wall, when he tested this.

  Michael grinned. He knew what the evolution was about. The skill recognized his creative use and was upgraded accordingly. The text now stated that he could use it on a shield to empower it, just like he had done.

  It was more like he had discovered an extra use of the skill, rather than making it evolve, but he wasn’t going to pass on it.

  Then he tried to summon the distortion field in the air around him. A small sphere, like a soap bubble as large as his head and fixed in space, appeared and disappeared in the span of a second. He experimented with it a bit, discovering a few things. First and foremost, the sphere could only be made to appear in the air and not inside solid materials. Not even close enough to them that it would displace them. Secondly, it only worked very close to his body, no more than a foot of distance, but he could extend his arms to make it appear farther away from the important bits. It wasn’t a trivial thing. Lastly: it was strong.

  He didn’t manage to destroy it no matter how hard he tried, unlike with the shield where he had to replace the effect after a couple of rocks. The repulsion effect was very strong as well. He tossed a rock at it and it was repelled with enough strength to rival a gunshot.

  Then it was time to leave. Stuffing the coins in his pockets, he grabbed the dagger and made his way towards the door that had appeared after the boss had been defeated. Daylight blinded him for a second, and then Josh’s voice reached his ears before his eyes had fully adjusted.

  “Out already? What did you see—” his words died in his throat as he took stock of how Michael looked. “Why do you look like a fucking gladiator? Yo, was there a secret stash of stuff in there? Are there more? I want a sick-looking shield too!”

  Michael’s eyes almost bulged out of his head when his vision cleared enough for him to finally see. Josh was running towards the mouth of the cave, greed clearly visible in his face. Unlike himself, Michael knew that Josh would die if he ventured into the dungeon. Even though a sadistic part of him almost wanted Josh to suffer for making him go into the cave, the more rational part knew that he had to stop him before it was too late.