Chapter 80

The goblin was a puny thing, a near-spitting image of the trash mobs he had mowed through by the dozens in his games before the Merge. It didn’t even wear armor, just patches of thick, rough hide with fur still attached to various bits that stuck off of it in random directions.

Boom!

A blinding flash lit the snow, nearly blinding them both but painting the goblin in stark contrast to its surroundings. Its weapon wasn’t much more intimidating than its armor, a simple sword that would have been around the size of a large dagger for humans.

Of course, he knew that the weapon could still pierce and slice his skin, but as he had envisioned, kicking it would be easy enough.

There was only one problem…

He didn’t even fully realize it until the creature was charging at him over the snow and he found his legs obstructed by the knee-height powder, but it would be almost impossible to swing his leg at the goblin like he was imagining with the extra hindrance.

‘Shit!’

The goblin approached him and swung its weapon down.

Having to choose between his life or potentially his arm, the man chose his arm and raised it to block the goblin’s sword.

“AAAGGGHHH!!!”

The blade didn’t make a sound. There wasn’t an explosion of blood, a flesh-rending ripping sound, or even the thunk of the metal hitting bone.

Instead, there was pain.

Searing pain shot up his arm and through his body, blanking his mind for a moment while the goblin pulled and unsuccessfully tried to extricate the sword from the bone of his forearm.

The goblin let the weapon go, and the young man instinctively drew the injured limb close to his chest, hugging it and falling into a fetal position. His assailant didn’t let the opportunity go and jumped on the man, who tried to ineffectually bat it away and roll to the side.

The goblin bared its teeth and tried to jump at his throat.

Some last-second instinct surged through the man’s body, and he kicked his leg out at the creature that jumped down at him from the snow.

His flailing foot caught the goblin’s little green head right on the side of its temple, and its skull gave in, crumpling as the goblin went limp and fell next to him.

“Ugh…”

A little blue screen appeared through his tear-blurred vision.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

***

The goblins were just that… goblins. Easy enough for even an Unawakened human to kill, the biggest problem was with their numbers.

Finished with killing a small group of them that had diverted their attention toward me while their allies surged around me in a frenzy toward the Unawakened, I looked around to get a grasp of how the battle was going.

Only a few minutes had passed since the ambush began, and the goblin horde had noticeably thinned.

Velle’s storm clouds boomed from time to time and struck goblins dead like some sort of automated turret, creating blinding flashes in the snow every few seconds.

Boom!

I shielded my eyes for a moment, letting them adjust.

At a glance, it didn’t look like any Awakeners had fallen. However, many of the Awakeners had surged forward in a contest to try to be the one to get the most participation and left large gaps that individual goblins sprinted through at the Unawakened.

I already saw a few of the Unawakened lying in the snow, lifeless, while goblins thrust their spears or swung their weapons at them.

Faced with fight or flight, the responses varied.

A few of the Unawakened took their chances with the individual goblins and grappled with them in the snow, but others sprinted away from the group toward the relative ‘safety’ of the Awakeners who were distancing themselves from them.

Unfortunately, the Awakeners could move through the snow far faster than the Unawakened, and those that ran just isolated themselves more.

As if reading my intentions, more goblins streamed toward me from the horde.

There weren’t any other Awakeners blocking the way for a good few meters in either direction, and if I left my position, I would leave an even wider gap for all of the goblins to get through.

If I wanted to help them, I just had to kill the goblins as quickly as possible.

“Come at me then,” I said, flicking goblin blood into the pure-white snow from my wristblade, leaving behind flecks of black-red.

[System Awakened]

[Congratulations on killing your first enemy!]

[Please select your class.]

The little blue window hovered just in front of his eyes.

Staying huddled down in the little pit in the snow he had fallen into, the man’s eyes glossed over the System message and the following class options.

[Please select your class:

《Berserker》

《Slayer》

《Pugilist》]

“Fuck…”

His arm hurt far too much to be thinking critically about his next choice.

Goblin shouts, Awakener abilities, and the screams of the dying still thundered around him, and he was far enough away from the other Unawakened that it would only be a matter of time until one of the goblins stumbled upon his little hole in the snow.

“S-slayer.”

He chose based on name alone and the short time he had to think.

His thought process was that a berserker would be pain/injury-oriented, and he wanted to avoid pain and injury as much as possible, while Pugilist would, of course, involve him getting as close to the monsters as possible to strike them with his limbs.

Slayer was the only choice that didn’t seem masochistic.

[Your class is now Level 1 Slayer!]

[You have gained the «Slayer’s Fury» ability!]

[System

Name: Kyle

Class: Slayer

Level: 1

XP: 100/1000

Mana: 150/150

STR: 10(+5)

END: 12(+6)

AGI: 12(+6)

PER: 10(+5)

MAG: 10(+5)

MANA: 10(+5)

Innate Skills:

《Slayer》

Gives the user additional END and AGI as they gain levels.

Current Bonus: +2 END, +2 AGI.

Passive Skills:

«Slayer’s Fury»

The more enemies there are to kill, the better you get at killing. Provides percentage stat bonuses based on how many enemies you have recently killed and how many enemies around you still wish to kill you.

Current ‘Slayer’s Fury’ Bonus: +50% to all stats.]

Almost instantly, the pain in his arm faded, he felt lighter, the biting cold turned to a numb chill, every sound seemed to boom in his ears, a new vitality filled his body, and—despite the sword still stuck in his arm—he felt better than he ever had.

“Ha… hahaha!”

He stood up from the hole in the snow in time to see another goblin running across the snow at him.

Kyle bared his teeth in a smile at the goblin.

‘Come get me, you bastards,’ he thought as he kicked aside the snow in his path and stomped toward the shrieking goblin.

The goblin thrust its little spear at him, which might as well have been moving underwater for how quick it was. He casually batted it away with one hand and grabbed the goblin by the throat.

Strength surged through his body and he tightened his grip, crushing the goblin’s windpipe and ending its shrieks.

‘This could get addicting,’ he thought when «Slayer’s Fury» stacked again and he felt another incremental surge in sensation throughout his body.

Then he felt a brief moment of surprise as something struck the back of his neck before he felt nothing at all.

***

[Monster wave complete!

Calculating rewards based on contribution…]

I didn’t even end up placing in the top three.

Surprisingly enough, Velle actually placed first, with Koise a close second and another Awakener I had only met briefly placing third.

[Experience: 30,500/32,000]

Including the contribution reward, I gained 500 experience from the monster wave. It wasn’t bad, but that wasn’t my primary concern.

[Quest ‘Guide the Unawakened to Safety’ is underway.

Unawakened: 65/76

Quest Percentage: 26%]

Though there were no Awakener casualties, more than ten of the Unawakened had died during the monster wave.

“This can’t happen again,” I said, speaking to Koise while Bernard, Velle, and Rhil attended to the others.

“I agree,” Koise said, “That was a pathetic show of organization.”

‘Of course that’s what he’s worried about.’

“No, I mean we can’t allow any more Unawakened deaths.”

He paused for a second and looked into my eyes, seeming to mull something over before speaking.

“Did you really expect all of them to survive?”

Of course I had expected them all to survive. What kind of question was that?

“You seemed oddly unconcerned,” I said.

“I don’t want potential Awakeners to die unnecessarily, but there’s no use focusing on it now. I’m sure the other Awakened realize their mistake now that they’ve had a chance to look at the deaths.”

‘Live and learn’ he was saying, which was of little comfort to the dead.

My eyes focused on one of the corpses being carried past. The ground was frozen solid, so they were piling the bodies to burn them. It was the most we could do for them with time on the line.

It was the young man I had seen talking about video games right outside of the city gates—the one who had seemed excited.

They’d found his body alone, far away from the central group of Unawakened, with two dead goblins near him and a spear jutting out of his neck where a goblin had circled around and attacked him from behind.

There were multiple circumstances in which he could have lived. He could have stayed with the Unawakened, he could have retreated after killing the first goblin, or he could have kept a better eye on his surroundings, but it was what it was.

As I said before, ‘game freaks’ tended to put themselves into dangerous situations.