“Unfair bitch!”

  My frustration reaches its peak when I throw what must have been my thousandth stone.

  And it didn’t glow with white in the air.

  I encountered a problem. I can infuse a rock with null energy, but as soon as I throw it, it’s gone.The moment the rock leaves my hand and flies a meter or so, it turns back into normal boring stone, without glowing.

  It’s unfair - mages can have ranged attacks, so why don’t I. Even though fighting from far away is for pussies, I agree that sometimes it’s needed. I want to be able to do it too.

  “Hmpf!”

  To be honest it’s not actually that bad how it sounds. I at least learned how to throw stones. I’m now confident enough to kill level 3 rabbit from thirty meters away.

  No I haven’t been killing rabbits along the way… just one.

  For all the time I’ve been doing this intro, retro and whatever else spection, my body healed a bit again. I might be able to take on some smaller fights again. By small I mean someone who is not twenty levels above me. Otherwise I should be chilling.

  ***

  I stand on a small hill above the city and enjoy the view of apocalyptic skyscrapers.

  There are a lot of tall buildings in the center, most of them, to my surprise, still standing without any obvious damage… besides the moss, vines and general oldness. And of course they are mostly windowless, with just some leftovers of glass.

  It is our capital city.

  “What the hell is it doing here?! It should be at least half thousand kilometers away from where I live.”

  ***

  I descend from the hill down to the suburbs, clearly aiming for the center - where else should I go?

  All the family houses around are just ruins. I don’t even bother to go in - there won’t be anything useful, only moss and rot. Normal apocalyptic state, nothing special.

  As I’m walking deeper into the city, through multiple squares, around empty shops and tons of rusty cars, the atmosphere starts to affect me. The emptiness and silence around here, disturbed only by whistling of wind between the car wrecks is quite melancholic. But on the other side, it’s also somehow… calming?

  I like it here; this atmosphere is awesome in my opinion.

  ***

  I get further deeper in the city, already getting between the three-story houses - the ones mostly used for offices and headquarters for smaller businesses.

  I enter one out of curiosity. On the first floor, there are two big office rooms. Its computers and tables are fully overgrown by moss and other green crap. I go back to the ground floor and check it out too - it’s 1 to 1 same view.

  As I’m walking past one of the rarely preserved windows, I slow down and slowly turn my head towards the outside.

  There, right in front of the window is something small, green and pissing on the building I’m in.

  He notices me too. We lock eyes and he freezes for a moment, but before he is able to make any sound, I pierce my hand through the glass and grab his face by the mouth.

  I want to take out my new dagger with my other hand, when I realize I don’t have the other hand… What a pity. So I just bash his head against the corner of the window until he stops thrashing about.

  Goblin - lvl 16 (corpse)

  I quickly pull his body inside, leaving it under the window and running to the first floor, picking my dropped sword from the ground.

  And I am right. Soon three others come around a corner. Me breaking the window must have attracted them together with looking for their dead friend.

  I watch them from the first floor as they approach the place where I killed the first one. There was blood on the window, so the newcomers raise their attention, readying themselves for a fight.

  Surprisingly, they look above them, instead of around, but luckily to me, for some reason not into the windows but on the top of other buildings.

  After the quick check, one of them jumps into the building and that’s the moment I decide they had enough.

  Enough of living.

  I land between them, the dagger in my hand goes instantly into the head of the first one. I yank it free, mid swing changing to the backgrip, cutting through the neck of my next target and backwardly driving the blade through his head.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The other two finally realize something important is gonna happen to their lives and give me their full attention.

  Death is important, right?

  The closer one, to my surprise, manages to draw his dagger. Unfortunately for him that’s where his achievements end as I drive my Pale Reaver right through his face.

  The last one tries to run away, but he’s missing something.

  He’s pretty fast, which combined with his apparent knowledge of the city gives him a little hope of a successful escape. Fake hope of course - I catch up to him at any given moment.

  However, instead, I pick up a rock… Why not use what I’ve learnt earlier.

  ***

  Am I the first human, who successfully completed a brain surgery without any previous experiences? …Well, I should probably say amputation instead of surgery, but that’s just a wordplay.

  Now he has a rock instead of a brain. What an upgrade.

  All of them have the same rusty daggers as the one who attacked me the first day and all of them are ugly as hell.

  I drag the body back into the building to hide it and do the same with the rest of them too. Only the Pale Reavers effect made it a bit disgusting - rotten meat awfully smells.

  I suppose they have to have a camp nearby, so it would be unfortunate if someone found their dead bodies and alerted the whole place… Not like it would be much of a problem with their levels.

  At least I have a clear goal - to exterminate all the goblins here.

  ***

  With my sword back, my way deeper in the city continues, only this time I am a bit more wary, not only of goblins but also of whatever they were looking for at the top of the buildings.

  Getting deeper in the city means getting between the taller buildings, thus having to be more careful. By that time, the speed of my walkthrough reduced significantly as I had to check more windows and be more aware of my surroundings.

  The goblins may be only around level twenty, but I have no idea what else could be hiding between, or in, the buildings.

  And the carefulness is on spot. As another goblin squad passes me, I finally get to see what they’ve been careful for.

  The goblins are sneaking up on the ground floor of one of the skyscrapers and if I wasn’t on the first floor of another building and wary of the goblins in the town, I probably wouldn’t spot them. They are actually good at sneaking.

  The deer coming out of the corner have zero chance to spot them, even more so he seems to be scared by something.

  The “something” soon show itself too, just not from where I expected.

  As the deer runs down the street, the goblins prepare themselves, but their focus clearly isn’t on the deer.

  The attack is fast and silent, so silent it scares me. A thing with a seemingly human upper body, no arms but wings and claws instead of legs, descend upon the deer. Thrusting its claws into his back, the deer tries to run but the thing pulls him down to the ground.

  Harpie - lvl 27

  That’s the moment goblins have been waiting for as all four of them jump out of their cover and swarm the much bigger harpie.

  To my bigger surprise, there’s a fifth goblin, clearly very different from the others and not just by his level.

  Hobgoblin - lvl 31

  Slightly bigger, browner and a lot more muscular than goblins. He had to be using some stealth skill since he came out of nowhere, seemingly appearing out of the air from under one of the buildings.

  I was bloody lucky, he must have been focusing on the hunt so much that he didn't notice me. I wasn’t even hiding that much, just standing behind a wall next to the window and peeking out.

  Luckily I haven’t been noticed.

  The hobgoblin doesn’t rush, the harpie has already her wings cut off by the goblins. She managed to tear the belly of one of them, but the other three swarmed her and are holding her while waiting for their leader. He wants the kill for himself.

  One of his daggers finds its way into the harpies hearth, while the other one finishes the goblin with the teared belly.

  The rest of the goblins start to portion the deer into bags while the hobgoblin… is playing with the harpies' breasts?

  I’ve seen enough and I only need one goblin to survive. No one else.

  That said, I drop the colossus sword on the ground - it would only slow me down here. It’s time for the Pale Reaver to shine.

  The level and the competence of the hobgoblin clearly shows as, on the sound of my sword dropping on the ground, he immediately turns around, ready to face me as I’m already mid air, surging at him.

  Our daggers meet, my attempt to put a hole through his hearth failed.

  I quickly disengage, jumping backwards. He follows - exactly what I've expected. Turning around my momentum in an instant and thrusting the dagger in front of him.

  He, to my displeasure, just slightly turn his leg and parry with one of his daggers while attacking with the other one. Falling backwards, I amplify it with a surge, carrying myself out of his attack, but he jumps at me again and his experience in this type of combat is clearly giving him a huge advantage.

  It’s no help - I’ll have to play it slowly, gaining experiences in battle with daggers and maybe learning something useful.

  That’s how the battle goes on. Ho pushes on me while I’m dodging his attempts while here and there trying some of my own attacks when an opening arises.

  But he's damn fast.

  Not a single drop of blood had fallen yet.

  I’ll change that soon as an idea starts to form… or maybe he manages to do it first.

  He pushes one me once again, but this time something strange is happening. Usually I’m able to block, parry or dodge all of his attacks, my longer dagger helping a lot. This time, something is different.

  His daggers start to flow faster and it’s way harder to track them as they also speed up, turning into blurred smudges.

  At this point it’s pointless to try to track both of the daggers, so I focus only on one, which I counter with my own weapon, while the other is left to my intuition and dodging skills.

  Then he adds a kick in the mix.

  It takes me by surprise and gives him an opening he needed to land a hit. I, of course, managed to twist my body a bit, so he only hit my already amputated arm.

  It still hurts.

  The first blood goes for him.

  Luckily, his skill goes on cooldown right after and we continue clashing as before.

  By now, the previously bystander goblins are mostly dead. I couldn’t risk any of them fleeing away and potentially bringing back some reinforcements. Only one is just unconscious - I’ll need him later.

  Me and the hobgoblin jump around until the moment comes. I just jumped on the side of a building, while he is still on the ground, but following me right away.

  When he’s mid air, thus doesn’t have a chance to redirect his flight, I surge, leaving his head to fly off.

  Just not quite.

  He may have dodged the lethal damage, but I still managed to get a cut over his body lining from shoulder to waist.

  A horrible-sounding scream fills the surrounding area. The cut starts to rot and probably also inflicts that painful soul damage.

  The whole dynamics of the fight changes; turn around. I am the one with the upper hand now as he fights with the pain.

  He lost all chances to win, if he ever had any. I start to get in more and more cuts on his wrists, arms and legs. With every successful cut, we are getting closer and closer to the end.

  His end.

  At one point he tries to run, quickly disengaging, his stealth skill activates. Even so, I’m still able to see the contours of his body. If I let him get too far away, I might lose him so I do the easiest thing - I drop kick him.

  The power behind my dropkick surprised even me. He’s sent into the wall and I don’t wait before he recovers. I surge right after him, running the dagger through his head.

  He had no chance to recover quick enough, with all those cuts inflicting excruciating pain as his meat rots alive.