As he got back to the cave, he made his hideout. He found himself in a pickle as the number of clear slimes increased.
"Why are there so many now? I was only away for a few hours." He sighed.
With a heavy sigh, he had to move the slimes as some of them were in the fire pit.
"Why were you in there?" he asked, knowing it wouldn't answer.
"Stop giving me sass and stay out of there."
=-= The slime did not respond and just laid there.
"Good, now stay."
He then set his bag down and put two hearts on the slimes to see if anything interesting would happen. Then, he cleaned the fire pit and put new wood in it.
"I could really use that alcohol bottle right now. If I had it, I could use it for boiling water."
He then moved a decent-sized rock next to the fire pit and started a fire. He first cooked and ate some meat.
After that, he put the magic stone into the fire.
'The only annoying thing about magic stones is you need a blacksmith to infuse 100% of the EXP in the rock into your Divine Weapon to level it up.'
'If I remember correctly, the way for a player to do it is to heat up the rock, then break it, roll your Divine Weapon in it, and finally set it in the hot fire. But since I don't have a forge, the best I can do is cover the fire pit with a flat rock, making sure there are gaps so air can get in.'
He thought as he put the large flat rock over the fire pit and let it sit for about an hour before taking the hot magic stone out using two daggers as tongs and setting it on the flat rock.
"Now we need to break it open." He bashed a big rock against it, and after a few minutes, it broke, releasing a multicolored liquid.
Then, he rolled one end of the water staff into the liquid until all of it was sticking to the staff.
'Good, now I need to heat it again. It would have been nice if all I had to do was attach the rock to it.'
He put the end of his staff with the liquid on it into the fire and put more wood in the fire, then covered it with the flat rock.
'There, that should work. Now I just need to wait until my staff starts to boil, then let the fire die down so it will cool. And that should work for now. But if I want to get past rank two, I'll need a professional to do it.'
"Sigh, why can't it just be simpler?"
As he was waiting, he decided to count the slimes.
"Why are there so many? Am I counting wrong? The first time I counted these things, there were 45. I counted again to make sure I didn't miscount, and the second time the number increased to 62." he asked himself surprised at their increase in numbers.
"... why are these things multiplying so fast?"
'Honestly, I'm not that interested to try and find out.'
He then decided to do some training by swinging a stick about the same size as his staff around.
'No, this won't work. The weight is different. The water staff is much heavier. Well, that's probably because it's made entirely of water... Now that I think about it, how much does it weigh?'
After messing around for a few minutes, he remembered the monster hearts.
'Right, I forgot about those.' he thought as he picked up the now-dried hearts and smelled them.
"Well, the smell is gone. I wonder if they will still have an effect?" He then put them in his bag.
'We can test that out later.'
'For now, it's getting late. Following those goblins took a few hours, and making upgrades to my weapon, so it's too late to go out.'
He then went to sleep under a blanket of slimes.
'This is surprisingly comfy.'
The next morning he got up, he packed a slime in his bag then grabbed his water staff.
"Hmm... I can't tell, but I think it's leveled up. In the game, rank 0 leveling only increases your physical and magical abilities by a small amount. Even the rank up doesn't do much, so I won't see any sudden boost in power until rank 3."
'If I remember correctly, rank 0 gives 1 to all stats per level up, and ranking up gives 4 to all stats. Then again, you could only see the status of your Divine Weapon, so I have no idea how they got those numbers.'
'Also, the number increase changes based on the Divine Item you pick.'
'Still, though, I wish it got to rank 1 at least. If it did, I would have a fun skill to use.' he thought as he left the camp to hunt for goblins.
**A few months later**
Running fearfully through the forest was a yellow-skinned goblin. Its heart pounding as it's being pursued.
'Shit, shit, shit! The demon has found me!' It screamed as it tripped and fell down a hill it didn't see.
'Gotta get up, gotta run.' it thought with tears streaming down its face.
'They're all gone.'
This goblin is running in fear after witnessing the quick and violent deaths of its brothers.
It struggled to run as it twisted its ankle when it fell.
'Run, run, keep running. Need to get hel-'
Suddenly, it froze, unable to move, as it saw the thing that killed them. A strange bipedal monster with green hair and grey eyes filled with murderous intent and anger.
Before it could think of running, two daggers pierced its legs as the monster charged at it and, in a swift movement, thrust its strange water weapon at the unstable goblin, jabbing it hard in the chest, and knocking the wind out of it. "Gaka."
Falling to the ground, the last thing it saw was a dagger heading to its eye killing it.
Axel took a deep breath, then let out a relieved sigh.
"If that one got away, I'd be in lots of trouble. Sure, I can take on four yellow-skinned goblins, but more than that is too dangerous."
'I'm also getting really good with these daggers. I should have used them back when I was playing that game; I would have been a menace.'
'Now then, let's see if I'm lucky or not.' he thought as he dragged the dead goblin away.
'It's crazy how strong I am now. I'd say the biggest reason for that is because of my improved mana and mana control. From what I remember, there are NPCs that can knock out dragons with a punch... then again, that's only like a handful of NPCs.' he thought as he went back to his camp.
If others saw what happened here, they would be baffled beyond words as a child who looks no older than 10 hunted and killed the goblins like it was child's play. The speed and power displayed by that child was far beyond normal.
And unknown to Axel, someone was watching from not so far away.
"What on earth did I just witness?" He thought to himself as he looked through the scope of his rifle. 'That can't be real.'