The 1st monsters that Indra finds are Goblins, green humanoid creatures the size of grade school kids. Their intelligence is also similar to that of children, but they are very ferocious. They are usually armed with weapons like daggers, short blades, short spears, or bows.
'So those are goblins. They certainly look weak with those small builds. But they also look very dangerous because of their crazed expressions and the weapons they hold. How should I fight them? There are 8 of them there.'
Indra takes out a pair of knuckles from his inventory and uses them. He bought these knuckles secretly after saving up his allowance. He's not sure whether normal weapons will work on magic beasts, but it should be better than his bare fists.
Indra activates his Stealth skill and gets behind a Goblin sneakily. Then he sends a punch as strong as he can to the back of the goblin's head. His punch breaks the goblin's skull and kills it, but the metal knuckles crack with just 1 hit.
'Damn, normal weapons are really useless against these monsters. But I can break this goblin's skull easily thanks to my level 7 Muay Thai cheat skill that gives +70% attack power if I use Muay Thai techniques.'
He has just killed a goblin that looks like a human and its blood wet his fist. It makes him feel quite uneasy, but he doesn't look perplexed or feel bad, just a bit uneasy. He is very calm as if it's a normal thing, maybe it's thanks to his passive skill, Calmness.
'If I don't have this skill, maybe I will lose my composure which is very bad in this situation.'
The other goblins are already running toward him, so he may die if he loses his composure here. Thanks to Calmness, he can stay rational and respond to the goblins' attacks. There are still 7 of them, but he isn't afraid at all.
A goblin jumps toward him with a dagger ready above its head. It swings the dagger down to stab Indra's body, but Indra can see its movements easily. He dodges and then sends a left hook at the goblin's jaw, breaking his cracked knuckle and the goblin's jaw too.
The punched goblin flies and hits some of its comrades, stopping them in their tracks. Indra jumps in their direction and grabs a goblin's head before slamming it to his knee. His knee attack destroys the goblin's skull quite easily, killing it in 1 blow.
"These goblins are weaker than I thought and I am stronger than I thought too. Even with +70% attack power by using Muay Thai, it will still be useless if my base attack power is low."
Tiger is using his Muay Thai to fight the goblins and he can kill them quite easily with 1-3 hits. His metal knuckles got destroyed, but his fists are fine even after hitting the goblin's hard bones many times. He understands that it's because of his magic power that covers his whole body including his fist, unlike the metal knuckles.
Indra often aims for their heads because they are short, so aiming their bodies is harder. He also aims for their necks and eyes because those parts are more vulnerable than other body parts. Attacking eyes and necks can also incapacitate the goblins so he can crush their heads easier.
Also, thanks to his sense stat, he can sense the goblins' attacks and respond appropriately. But he still gets hit a few times although they are just minor injuries. Fighting 8 goblins alone is not easy. He only ever fights 1 person in sparring, so this is his 1st time fighting multiple enemies.
"Good thing I learned a martial art that's highly effective for combat and often did sparring to hone my real battle skill. If I slacked off and just waited until I got this system, then maybe I couldn't pull it off even if the enemies are weaker than me."
Indra's level rose to Level 4 after killing those 8 Goblins. They gave quite a lot of XP and maybe it's also because he is still at a very low level that he can get a lot of XP from mere goblins. Now his stats have gotten higher and thanks to his level up, all his wounds have been healed, and his fatigue has disappeared as well.
"Jin Woo is really thoughtful to install this healing feature at level up. It will help a lot now when I need to hide my hunting activities. Getting injured will make me exposed because these wounds are different from the ones I got in sparring. Even my HP & MP are filled to full again with each level up. It's really good."
[Name: Indra Smith
Level: 4
XP: 300/4,000
Job: -
Title: Reincarnator
HP: 6,100/6,100
MP: 5,300/5,300
Fatigue: 0
Strength: 22
Agility: 23
Sense: 16
Vitality: 21
Intelligence: 13
Free Points: 11]
"Oh, so I got 1 point for each stat and 2 free points when I level up. Hmm, should I distribute some free points now? I haven't got powerful magic skills, so I won't invest in intelligence yet because I might need these free points so suddenly. My sense stat is quite low, so I will invest in it for now because it's much more useful than I thought."
Indra adds 4 points to his sense stat and makes it have 20 points. With a higher sense stat, his detection range for mapping increases, and he will sense the enemies' attacks better now. It will be very useful in a battle against multiple enemies like before.
Before continuing, Indra collects the 'drop items', the goblins' weapons, and magic cores. But he doesn't have time to take out the cores for now because it's already night, so he just stores their corpse. He can't sell the cores now anyway, so he can just take them in the future.
After storing everything in his system's seemingly unlimited inventory, Tiger continues to go deeper into the cave. He finds a fork path and can sense danger from both paths. But the path on the left feels more dangerous.
"Is it because of my sense stat that I can feel the danger ahead? It really is useful."
Indra chooses to go to the less dangerous path first because he can tell the one that's more dangerous is where the boss is. He should raise his level first before challenging the boss.
Just as he thought, the path he chose is filled with normal goblins. There are 31 goblins here, a lot more than the previous group. He has gotten stronger, but 31 goblins are still too many although he can one-shot each one of them if he hits them at the right spots.
'When I attack 1 of them, the others can swarm at me, which is very dangerous. But I shouldn't back down now because I won't grow if I keep backing down from hard battles.'
Indra thinks of a way to defeat these 31 goblins without putting him at too much risk. Then he gets an idea after looking at his skills and MP.
'I should be able to do it for a few minutes even with this much mana because I'm sure I'll level up a few times by killing them so my mana will get replenished. Hmm, I'm curious how it feels to fight with weapons. I will lose +70% of attack power from Muay Thai skill, but I really want to try it. There's a useful skill that can really help me anyway.'
Indra equips a pair of goblin daggers he looted before. Then he uses stealth and attacks the goblins with the daggers while being invisible. It's actually easy to kill the goblins with these daggers. Maybe because he is still very low-level, so even with great skills, his bare hands still can't beat magical weapons.
'Heh, when I become an S-Rank, I won't even need weapons because my body itself is the weapon.'
He uses the daggers to stab the goblins' heads, and chests, or slash their throats. At first, his attacks are sloppy because he never uses weapons like these. But then he found a trick to use them easily and he started killing the goblins more easily.
Instead of focusing on hitting them with the daggers, he just needs to punch right beside the target. Like when he needs to slash their throats, he just needs to send a punch beside their throats and the daggers will slash their throats.
For stabbing, he just needs to imagine it as a punch but with a different hand position to make sure the tip of the dagger is in the front. Strangely, the +70% attack power is activated. Probably because he imagines his attacks as Muay Thai techniques.
With his good footwork, he can move between the goblins quickly to attack them. He is also invisible, so the goblins are very confused as they can't see him. In just 5 minutes, he kills all 31 goblins without much resistance and raises his level to 10.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I have uploaded up to +30 chapters in my Patreon page.
Uploaded on Patron: Chapter 35. Rank Assessment
If you want to support me on patreon, then this is the link: patreon.com/PeekACoo
Thank you for your support