TWO: HUNTER OR HUNTED?
(Tyrone Lee)
The goblins charged at us as we stood. One guy from another party took the first initiative. He swung a broken piece of the barricade at the nearest goblin. It connected with a dull Thunk! The goblin went flying across and fell into some other goblins as they all lost their balance and fell.
Then the rest of the party, charged towards the fallen group of goblins and started beating them up or stabbing with sharp knives they found in the café kitchen. Dang it! We should have thought of that before. But we couldn't do anything except smash goblins with the tables and chairs.
Alex was doing fine on his own so far. He was incredibly fast for someone who didn't look so athletic. He wasn't obese, but he looked pretty weak. I continued smashing goblins left and right, but they seemed endless.
It was a nightmare. One of the guys from the third group had a telekinetic ability, he used it to pop the heads of some goblins, before collapsing from the strain. And another guy from his group was extremely strong and ripped off goblins with bare hands. The goblins screamed and cried as he tore through the weaker ones and emerald color blood splattered everywhere.
The table I was using was not at all as effective as the ability users. If only there was a fire burning which I could control. But my luck didn't support me this time. I looked around and realised that the parties had coordination amongst themselves, even though they had only met today. I yelled to Alex, "KID, COME HERE AND FIGHT CLOSER AS A TEAM! KNOCK OUT AS MANY OF THESE SHITHEADS AS YOU CAN AND I'LL CRUSH THEIR HEADS"
He seemed to understand the urgency, and dashed to me in a couple seconds. He held a spear in one hand and a blood-red curved knife in another. He threw me the spear and said, "I'm better with a knife, I can carve and kill as many as I can, I hope you can do better with the spear!"
I had never used a spear before. But although I couldn't use it to stab accurately, it made a pretty good staff. Finally, I stabbed a goblin through and two more who were behind it.
DING!
DING!
DING!
+26 XP FOR SLAYING A GOBLIN FARMER
+24 XP FOR SLAYING A GOBLIN FARMER
+25 XP FOR SLAYING A GOBLIN FARMER
This was nice. I didn't know how much XP I needed to level up, but this looked nice. It boosted my morale and I started improving in impaling more and more goblins. Within half an hour I had gained around 540 XP. I still hadn't leveled up. I asked Alex, "Kid, how much XP did you rack up so far?"
"620 something-" he replied while slashing through a goblin.
That little brat had more than me? This pissed me off and I impaled six goblins with one stab. It was obvious our duo had the lowest kills in the room because of those damned ability users. If only I could start a fire. If only I could be around some stoves. Wait stoves?! That was when it hit me. How the fuck had I not realised it yet?! We were in a fucking café, with a damn kitchen and it never occured to me to start a fire using some oil and a stove.
With this sudden idea, I wheeled around towards the kitchen. I glanced back at Alex. He seemed to be handling himself well. I pointed my spear straight and started charging towards the kitchen. I swung around my spear whenever goblins got near me and racked up some more XP. Within a minute of killing and running I was at the kitchen, which was infested by more goblins. I killed more and more till:
YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 2!
ALL STATS HAVE BEEN CHANGED BY +1
+3 AP HAS BEEN AWARDED
Oh finally! I pulled up my Emissary Page and invested two points in Strength and one in Agility. As I was doing that my eyes fell on the Vitality stat. I just realised that so far neither me nor Alex had been injured seriously. I mean yeah we got a few scratches and Alex got stabbed in the hand once, but other than that the goblins were easy meat. Perhaps the System wanted us to level up before some dangerous Quest.
I was brought back to my senses as a goblin jumped on my back and started strangling me. I coughed and tried to stab it, but the spear was too long. I saw the stove a few steps away from me. I stretched out my hand and started moving towards it. It wasn't easy, as two one more goblin had grabbed hold of my left leg and was holding me back.
I spun the head of my spear downwards and stabbed a hole through the goblin holding my leg. Green blood splattered out as the goblin let go of me. I pulled out the spear out of him with a swish. Finally I got to the stove and turned the knob.
A small fire lit up. It wasn't going to do me any favors, so I tried to turn it up but the goblin holding on to my neck was too strong. I could feel blacking out. I desperately struggled against its tight grip. I fell down as it continued choking me. No! I am NOT going to die to such a lowly goblin. I was filled with rage at the idea of being choked to death by the goblin. And then,
WHOOSH!
A warm gust of air tickled my hair and went past me. The goblin's grip loosened and I immediately sprang up, took the spear and was about to stab it. All that was left was the charred remains of the goblin. I looked back at the stove and noticed that the fire was burning stronger.
I quickly turned up the knob to highest and then rushed to turn up all the knobs on the stove and then to the ones on the next stove. There were eight beautiful fires in front of me raging high.
I commanded the fires to burn higher and imagined them to swirl around the entire kitchen and burn all the goblins around here to death.
ROARR!!
With a roar, the fires burned bright and the entire kitchen lit up. However I was unscathed. I could feel faint warm tickling around me as the entire kitchen burned down.
My notifications went crazy as I leveled up three more times in a minute. Then a new message popped up:
{Pyrokinesis Lv 2}
You can now control fires at a radius of meters.
You can now protect 1 other people from the fire while this Ability is in use.
Five meters?! That was a lot. On top of that I could protect another person from the flames. This was perfect. With a yell, I rushed out of the kitchen with my flames swirling around and burning down all the goblins I could.
I made my way over to Alex and I cast my protection on him. He looked scared and tried to run, but I grabbed his arm and said, "Calm down kid! This fire won't hurt you. It will kill all the goblins around us for some time before I get tired."
"You have Fire powers?!!! THAT IS SO COOL TYRONE!!"
I grinned at the look on his face as I racked up more XP.
I had just crossed Level 6 and my Pyrokinesis had got to level 3, when the flames finally died out. I felt awfully weak and collapsed on all fours. On the bright side we only had half an hour left to go. Seeing me crumple down, Alex quickly took charge telling me to take a rest for a while. He dashed around me killing goblins faster than they could spawn.
I looked around me and saw that only three others remained. The strong dude who was still ripping goblins, but he had suffered heavy damages and was bleeding too much. He had an eye missing and was limping. He was the only guy from his party.
From the other party there was one girl who looked like she was about to faint from exhaustion. She had some kind of toxic ability. It allowed her to infect a few goblins at a time, before she fell back and let the other guy take charge. He had an unique ability. He seemed to be fighting with a goblin machete. But he could cut through the air and cleave the goblins before he made contact. It was kind of a double hit.
I opened my Emissary Page and started investing my stocked up points. My screen now looked like:
[EMISSARY PAGE]
NAME: Tyrone Lee
AGE: 20
SKILL: -NONE-
LEVEL: 6
GUARDIAN: -NONE-
CLASS: [UNLOCKS AT LEVEL 10]
ABILITIES: {Pyrokinesis Lv. 3}
STR: 20 (+)
AGI: 20 (+)
VIT: 18 (+)
PSY: 19 (+)
SEN: 18 (+)
AP: 0
It was pretty satisfactory. I picked up my spear and got up to my feet. Taking a look at the timer, we had only 10 minutes left. I charged at the goblins and skewered four goblins at once. The goblins screamed out in pain as their green blood started spewing everywhere. I shook off the goblins from my weapon and took a fresh charge again.
I repeated this for the reminder of our time. I got my fair share of kills in these few minutes. Taking a chance, I asked Alex about his stats.
He replied while slashing two goblins down with one stroke.
"Currently I am at Level 5, and my Sprint Skill is at Level 2!"
So that's why he was so abnormally fast! He had a Sprint Skill which allowed him to dash around so fast. It was useful to me though. He was fast enough now to take down multiple goblins within a few seconds.
DING!
[QUEST #1: CONCLUSION]
Slay The Goblin Chief (Lv. 12) To Finish This Quest And Get Your Rewards!
What now? A Goblin Chief? And Level 12 at that?!?!?! We barely survived these Goblins. This guy seemed like the level Boss. I told Alex, "Kid, run to the kitchen and turn up all the stoves. I have a bad feeling about this Chief guy."
Alex ran as fast as he could. He seemed to be running at normal speed. The Skill seemed to have exhausted him. Well he needed time to cooldown before the big finale. As I felt the familiar tingle of fire nearby, we realised the showdown was now beginning.
"WHOOO DARES TO SLAY MY VILLAGE FARMERS?" bellowed a deep loud voice, which sounded like two boulders crashing against each other. The loud thuds outside announced the arrival of The Goblin Chief.