- Turnabout Tactics – You used an opponent’s own limb as a weapon against them. Efficiency? Check. Disrespect? Double check.
- Off With Its Head – You removed an enemy’s head with your bare hands. Sure, it was just a suit of armor, but still—style points.
Rewards:
- 1x Minor Stamina Potion
- 1x Level 1 Treasure Token
- Rust-Covered Gauntlet – Scrap material, but might be worth something later…
- +1 level to Unarmed Combat. For the next hour, the experience gain for Unarmed Combat is increased by 50%
That put my Unarmed Combat skill up to level 3, so I took a moment to inspect it. After reviewing the details, it explained why I hadn’t seen a level up for my grappling ability. Unarmed Combat was a blanket kind of deal, it covered punching, kicking, grappling, and even another subcategory called “Dirty Fighting.” This, at the least, explained why I hadn’t seen any other skill improvements.
Having caught my breath and taking several long pulls off my new enhanced waterskin, I managed to get off the ground. I took a long look out the window, enjoying the view and slight breeze before I went back to combat. I took a second, thought about Beth and what she was doing. I wondered if she was here too, but I hoped not. I missed her terribly, but when I stopped and thought about what I’d been doing these last few days, I grew anxious. Though she wasn’t all too interested in martial arts, she regularly watched LotR with me and understood enough about fantasy that I believe she would be fine. Hell, knowing her, she probably spared some dog-like creature and had somehow tamed it. If she was here, and I prayed that she wasn’t, she probably was halfway down the path of a hunter.
I’d be okay with that, even if my better half was suddenly one of the most shameless classes in all gaming, I’d just be happy that she was alive. On the other hand, if she wasn’t in the dungeon, then she was probably worried sick about me.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if she was here and got hurt, or worse. I kept that the furthest thing in my mind.
After roughly two minutes of this, I was greeted by my next opponent, another suit of Animated Armor. I took a long breath, turned, and dialed in my focus. I think I’ll grind on these for a bit. Glaring, I took up my old stance. Let’s do this.
This is where I do my work. Despite what most people say about competing, or fighting for that matter, you didn’t automatically get better by strategizing. Yes, you would do better against an unknown opponent if you had the ability to watch them ahead of time. Of course you would, but even that didn’t always work out well. The issue was, you didn’t know how you would feel when the confrontation finally occurred, you didn’t know how your opponent’s strength felt or how much their blows hurt. You couldn’t plan for the sense of trepidation with an opening that felt wrong, or when the reward was high but so was the risk. These are factors that people don’t consider when going into a fight with a plan. Sure, your opponent’s stance is too tall, that doesn’t mean you wanted to go for a double leg, especially when your opponent might start throwing lethal elbows at your skull.
With the suits of armor, I took my time. I waited them out, seeing what they did in certain situations. I put work into using my Grapple skill, which helped a lot. Once I had a limb grappled, I could regularly get it removed from the center torso. I didn’t avoid everything, and I was hit excessively hard a few times. I definitely needed to find some more armor because each blow took a solid 20% of my HP. I did manage to develop a little technique to hit the arm as it drew back. If I hit it right, I’d alter the angle and be able to stop the swing at the biceps. It hurt my hand a few times, but it beat the hell out of getting walloped by the heavy iron fist.
I was lucky the game mechanics were leveled out enough that it didn’t completely reflect reality, otherwise I didn’t know if I’d stay up right when I got hit soundly on my head. By all rights, there should have been a greater effect, but the game must have saved me. It was either that, or my body had been adapted to the game. I had noticed that I felt healthier than I had in some time, and it wasn’t just the fighting-for-your-life cardio. I was changing.
Eventually, I realized that if I could get close enough to pick the armor up, they were incredibly light compared to the amount of force they generated. It was odd, when fighting the Animated Armor, it felt like the armor weighed as much as I did. However, once the armor came off the ground it probably weighed about 60 pounds. After smashing the armor into the wall three or four times, it would stop resisting, suddenly getting even lighter. I just rag-dolled them from there, making them an easy source of experience.
Before long, I had cleared every room in the curving corridor. I knew this area was the arena, and it wasn’t long before I spotted the entrance. Two open gates stood tall, made of what had to be foot wide planks. The gates were large enough to belong to a giant. Despite the magnitude of the doors, the pixies had well informed me that I could go in there and grind mobs indefinitely, and that the one running the show would allow me to leave at the end of each fight. I kept moving because I still had more hall to clear, but it hadn’t been too long before I had doubled back. After it was said and done, I ended up with 4 remaining minor health potions. I didn’t despair about their loss, my defense skill ranked up to level 2. My Grapple and Unarmed Combat skills both ranked up as well. Before I was done grinding on the Animated Armor mobs, they felt significantly weaker, slower too. I also noted that my Flying Fists didn’t hurt them as much as an actual close quarter strike. When that happened, I had to use palm strikes, otherwise I’d really hurt my hand. I had a suspicion that my ghostly projections might count as some kind of magic damage, and if they did, the armor probably had some kind of magic resistance. After a few minutes of standing outside the gate, I realized I must look daft. Then I scoffed, because I was truly alone here.
Putting off the concern and concentrating on the task at hand, I stepped into the arena.
It was a little less than I expected, if I’m being honest. When I entered, the gates shut behind me, leaving me standing in sudden darkness. A little menu popped up in my UI asking me if I’d like to challenge the arena. Unsure, I mentally selected “yes.” The lights shot on abruptly, a dark figure standing at the opposite side of the arena and above the gate there began waving its arms about. A single gladiator rose out of the ground and started slowly lurching towards me. Unsure, I approached the Risen Gladiator and popped him a simple four hit combo. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut.
The creature was on the ground and dissolving by the time I mentally made it to hook. A new menu popped up and it read, “Keep going?” I selected “no” just to be sure what the pixies told me earlier wasn’t some twisted joke. As I did, the gates behind me opened and the lights shut off. I left the arena and re-entered. The menu popped up again, and I started the arena over. This time, after my first foe lie there in a heap, when it asked if I wanted to keep going, I selected “yes.” The sequence started again but instead of one, two Risen Gladiators crawled out of the ground. I dispatched them easily enough, and I selected to continue again. I kept this up until I got to the fifth round where one of the Risen Gladiators had a little star next to its name. PAI informed me that the star represented a higher quality opponent, which had me a bit worried at first. After dispatching the other four, the final opponent took a fair bit more time to take care of. I actually had to use my Grapple skill to disarm it long enough to unleash a fury of combos on the mindless zombie. I got to the eighth round before I decided to restart again, eight opponents at once was a bit overwhelming. As much as I wanted to make good time on my grind, I also didn’t want to die.
I ended up going through this process several times and had honestly lost track of time. My Grapple skill increased, and I took what opportunities were offered to knock down my opponents and grind a bit on my Crushing Hold ability. That was going to be a tough one to level up as the cooldown was thirty minutes, and I doubted I’d run into many chances to use it safely. I decided to stay there until I got that skill to level 2, inadvertently, I leveled up twice and managed to get my Grapple up another skill level. I was now level 6, and that meant that I was able to distribute my stat points as well as choose a new skill. I didn’t want to tinker with it until I was in a safe place, so I began my tired trek back to the safe zone I left earlier that day.
When I got back to the area where the Bogstriders spawned, I didn’t fuck around. I took to a steady jog, only resting after checking the walls closely for hidden foes. I paced myself well and managed to get back to the safety zone in short order. I had to kill a few of the creepy bastards, but I wasn’t all too surprised by that. Respawns had to be a thing, I just hadn’t figured out the timeline on that yet.
Entering the safe zone, I did a little jig, then checked my achievements. I had put them off for a little bit, but I knew I wouldn’t be long for sleep and didn’t want to cock it up like I had last time. PAI was kind enough to narrate as I walked towards the Safety Inn. Many were inane, but there were a few worth noting that read:
- Level 5! – You’ve made it to level 5! You can now distribute stat points! Only 60% of contenders get this far, so count yourself lucky!
- We Rise, You Fall – Successfully defeat the fifth round in the Risen Arena. Maybe you should try to beat the tenth round…
- Smack and Stack – You used Crushing Hold twice in one day. You’re learning, slowly. But it’s happening.
- Got Skills? – You hit level four with one of your combat skills! Let’s see what happens when you hit level five. It’ll be wooooorth iiiit.
Despite the peppy voice of PAI, I felt like things were moving in the right direction. Noc had mentioned that there would be a city in level 2, and I was getting excited. Mostly, I was just tired of being in this creepy ass place alone. As lonely as I felt, however, I was still glad to be rid of Noc. I just didn’t want that dude getting me killed, and I got a distinct feeling that if he hung around, I’d end up getting myself hurt to save his ass. Still, there had to be some normal people, reliable people, on the next floor. Perhaps Beth was there, and that had me filling with hope despite my earnest desire that she hadn’t been abducted.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
By the time I had finished listening to the stupid achievements, simple things that didn’t reward much if anything at all. They were comprised of things that were part of everyday life, but for whatever reason the AI was dishing out achievements for them like it was giving out candy.
I had one embarrassing achievement called “speed boost,” it was given to me because at one point, while grappling with the animated armor, I ducked under its arm to get behind it. On the way, my stomach decided the movement in conjecture with squatting down was enough to push out a bit of gas. It happened, it was one of the dirty things that people don’t usually mention about physical exercise. You will, inevitably, accidently fart.
Now, if it happened again, I’d get a 2% boost to my overall speed for 30 minutes. It was stupid, and I hoped I could find a different way to trigger the ability, because making farts a part of my fighting style was never on the list of accolades I wished to achieve. Still, after she listed all the stupid shit the game was giving achievements over, I had already managed to get into my room at the Safety Inn and was drawing a bath.
Yes, I was drawing a bath. I knew the bed would clean me, I knew I didn’t have to shower or bathe for that matter, but still, there is something so very comforting about taking to a long soak. It was there that I worked through the various rewards, distributed my stat points, and was offered a few new skills.
I was offered three skills to choose from or the ability to upgrade a current skill. As much as I wanted to level up my Crushing Hold, I opted for a new skill instead, figuring that by diversifying my skillsets, I’d have more tools for various scenarios. My options were:
- Shoulder Trap (Passive) – When grappling an enemy, via skill or otherwise, successful head strikes deal an additional 20% damage
- Grounded (Activated) – Instantly transition from standing to prone, while prone with this ability, gain bonus to evasion in close quarters and increase applied weight by 50%
- Momentum Shift (Activated) – When struck by a melee blow, spend your remaining stamina to reverse momentum and throw the attacker behind you.
Despite the interesting new skills, and as great as the Grounded ability sounded, I really liked the passive ability for more than one reason. As things currently stood, I wasn’t terrible at thinking clearly in the moment, but I wasn’t great either. There were multiple times I should have backed off and thrown a knife, or simply activated my Grapple or Crushing Hold, but I hadn’t thought about it when it mattered. Instead, I found myself just closing the gap and taking them out or disabling them in some other way. Until I had worked my current abilities into my routine enough for it to be second nature, I didn’t want to mess around with more activated abilities. So, I opted for the Shoulder Trap ability for the simple damage boost and the fact that I didn’t have to remember the skill to use it.
Then we came to my stats, I had ten points to distribute, two per level gained. For reference, my original stats were Strength 18, Dexterity 14, Constitution 17, Intelligence 13, Wisdom 12, and Charisma 14. Since I was rockin’ my birthday suit at the moment, my stats didn’t reflect the +1 to all from my tunic. Still, I decided that with the stats I’d been given I should keep my options open, with a focus on strength and constitution. I wasn’t going for a tank build or anything, I just didn’t want to die. So, after I was done distributing, my base stats looked like this: Strength 20, Dexterity 16, Constitution 20, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 14, and Charisma 14. I was hoping that wisdom or intelligence would also help me think clearly on the fly. Usually in RPG’s, those stats reflected magical ability, but since I suspected that this place was more of a mix between a game and a simulation, I hoped that the bump in those stats would literally increase my intellectual capabilities, if not just keep my head clear when the heat was on. I’m sure I’d find out in the morning, because now that there was a purpose to leveling, I figured I could grind it out here for a while.
I finished the night by eating what remained of my complimentary breakfast from that morning, with every intention of stockpiling as much of said breakfast the next morning. I was too tired to be tempted by the whisky that still sat in my inventory, so I got into bed and drifted soundly to sleep.
I took my time the next morning, packing enough of the breakfast meal to last me a few days. I ate too, but my priority was making sure I didn’t need to double back for simple reasons. I did, however, take more time inspecting the various buildings before leaving. There was one building that had tons of pastries, and since I hadn’t graduated from the first floor yet, everything was free. The NPC there wasn’t happy about it, but when I left I had two stacks of 99 meat pies. Why meat pies? Because if you’ve never had a decent meat pie, you haven’t lived. Also, as delicious as donuts and other pastries could be, I didn’t need all that crap to bog me down. Back in my twenties, I had a few vegan friends, Hell, I even knew a vegan bodybuilder, but that was something I just couldn’t ever get on board with. Sure, the science was there, but the diet relied heavily on carbs which didn’t work well with my body. Yeah, there were other ways to vegan diet without the heavy carbs, but that was for a class of people making a whole lot more money than I ever had. Maybe after Beth had gotten established we could manage something like that, but to me, it wasn’t really worth it. Besides, there was nothing quite like a beautiful ribeye fresh off the grill, and to the poor souls that are too dedicated to their ideologies to have ever experienced one, I’m so sorry.
After I inspected the first half of the shops, I found myself back by the crystalline magma bridge, where I promptly turned about to head towards the other exit. On the way, I spotted a little vending machine type thing between two of the buildings. It was tucked back a little ways, but my curiosity got the better of me and I moved to inspect it.
It reminded me of one of the vending machines from Borderlands. I could see photos of the items inside, so I started selecting various combinations of letters and numbers. After the first one, PAI started reading out descriptions of the items, letting me know what I had selected and if I’d like to purchase the items using my treasure tokens.
I let out an audible sigh at that, because I’d been worried for some time about the stupid tokens. I had quite a few now, and I was worried I was wasting them. PAI also explained the actual value of the tokens, which worked on a system of 12’s instead of 10’s. So, the value of a level 2 token was equal to 12 first treasure tokens, and a level 3? You guessed it, 12 level 2 tokens. After my achievements yesterday, I had a total of 61 level 1 tokens and 14 level 2 tokens. I wasn’t hellbent on spending it all, until I came across the following item:
- Novice Fighter’s Wrist Bracers – Equipping this item gives +1 to the “Shielded Block” ability. Once this ability has leveled up, the user permanently gains the skill and this item no longer provides the +1 bonus. +2 to Defense skill (passive).
I looked up the “Shielded Block” ability, and PAI was kind enough to read the description, after adding her own personal comments.
Shielded Block – Have you ever played a fighter game and got all pissy because the other person playing just turtled up? What a douche canoe, right? Well, now, that gets to be you! Better hope Daigo doesn’t find out… Activating this ability surrounds the contender in a small translucent dome until deactivated. This dome can withstand damage equal to 20% of the user’s total HP, but once broken, stuns the user for 5-10 seconds. Automatically activated by gesture (crossing wrists), but may be set to alternative movements or accessible via activated ability.
I didn’t hesitate, the cost on the item was equal to a level 3 treasure token, which would drain most of my level 2 tokens. I didn’t give a damn, however, as the tokens had been doing little more than sitting up to this point. I purchased the item and may have squeed a wee bit after trying them out. I was a little worried about getting stunned for 5-10 seconds and hoped that time would drop off as I leveled the skill up. Ten seconds in a fight was a long time, and I dreaded what would happen if it broke in combat. Still, I had a new goal for the day with every intention of getting ready to get off the first floor. I didn’t know what would happen when I got to the city, but something told me that it wouldn’t be as straight forward as the first floor, which made me doubly concerned about my progress.
My trek back to the arena wasn’t without incident, but it was much the same as I had experienced the day before. I eventually found myself in a rotation of hunting out those Bogstriders and just making sure they were dead before I moved along. I’d have run it like I had the night prior, but I assumed, and rightly, that most of the opponents would have respawned. I was at a higher level now, but that didn’t mean I should be stupid about it.
Upon arriving at the arena, I noticed that the Animated Armor lay strewn about, all of them defeated and torn apart. Some of them were stained with soot, but for the most part, the armor lay about bent if not fully collapsed. Some of the helms I came across were completely crumpled, having more in common with a wadded-up piece of paper than a helmet.
Despite the area being thoroughly cleared out, I still inspected each room to make sure I was in the clear. I was in the last hallway, checking each room, when I noticed something odd. One of the doors was completely gone.
Not like a door being ripped from its hinges or anything, there was a missing archway. As I came to the spot that the archway should be, I noticed a faint shiver. Curious, I pressed my hand against the wall. To my surprise, my hand went right through the wall. Something abruptly grabbed me and pulled me right into the hidden room.