1.02 Learning To Hate Goblins

Chapter 2

Things probably don’t make sense to you right now. You no doubt have some questions about how all this came to be. Like how I ended up in the Tutorial dungeon to begin with. Who are those soldiers, or my friends?

I told you I would make things a bit dramatic, didn’t I?

Everything will be explained. For now, you simply need to know what was going on and why I ended up slaughtering the soldiers inside that cave. It was for my own survival. Pretty cut and dry there, I think.

So, let’s get back to it.

Perez’s body lay in the dirt, and I stared down at Reitlin.

“Stand down, private, that’s an order.”

I tilted my head sideways as I tried understanding why Reitlin looked so shocked and confused. I didn’t assume they were truly stupid; I thought they must have realized the gravity of what they had asked of me and thus understood my action.

It appeared they didn’t.

“I’m not a soldier, Reitlin. It doesn’t matter what Nieve told you. The government can’t reach their fingers inside here.”

“You think you’ll get away with this once we are out of here?” Mathews yelled.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

I stepped over Perez, placing myself closer to them. “Because, who the fuck is going to tell them? You won’t be.”

Understanding finally dawned on them, and I could see it in all of their eyes. They rushed me right after, which was the smartest move they had made that entire day, even if it was futile.

I swung, and my sword struck Mathew’s neck right as he came in first. The blade tore through his flesh and out the other side in one swift motion. The entire left side of his body was covered in slick blood within moments, and he crumpled to the floor to join Perez.

Johnson was next. He attempted to tackle me to the ground.

I lowered my center of gravity and took his shoulder charge before I quickly stabbed down through his shoulder blades. Blood arced across the cave wall as I pulled the weapon back out, only for Reitlin to grab my arm to wrestle the weapon from me.

Slamming my fist into Reitlin’s elbow was all it took to force him to let go. His arm was already bent forward in the wrong direction, white bone sticking out through the skin.

“What the fuck, what the fuck!” Reitlin stumbled back against the cave wall.

The last soldier, Reyes, swung his rifle at me. Again, surprisingly smart on his part, but futile.

I stepped to the side and leaned away from the attack, causing it to miss me entirely. I lashed out with my shortsword, catching him on the shoulder and leaving a large gash. I followed up, trying to slash his neck as well, but he stumbled away.

The short reach of my sword was already annoying, and I wished for a weapon with a longer blade.

Reyes lunged again, swinging wildly. I simply slapped the rifle down to the side that time and rammed the point of my blade into his sternum. It punctured just a bit past his vest, but the second and the third thrust went further until I felt the blade had gone deep enough to hit his heart.

He joined the now-growing collection of bodies that decorated the cave floor.

“Okay, I get it. Let me live, I won’t say anything. Hell, I’ll even say you saved us.” Reitlin was slumped against the wall, cradling his broken arm. His eyes darted from me to the weapon in my hand, and then to the bodies lying around me.

“No, sorry, I can’t risk that. And I mean…”

I mentally brought up my status screen as I talked, looking for what I had expected. I had gained another level for killing Mathews, Johnson, Perez, and Reyes. “You placed us in this situation in the first place. And come on, we both know how this goes.”

Reitlin had sat down on the ground, and I knelt in front of him, weapon still in hand.

“You will keep up your end of the deal for a while. Then something in you makes you think you can extort me, or turn me in for some kind of reward. A promotion, money. Information on a class, or a magic item.”

He looked at me, dumbfounded, when I said that last bit. Which meant his stupid ass really hadn’t figured out anything so far. By then, my mind was already racing ahead, noting the tropes in games and novels I had read in my early years.

The chain of events was obvious.

People would unlock classes, get special powers, and items. The world outside would completely change: markets, power structures, and laws would be utterly rewritten to conform to these new realities. Currency would become whatever those portals, those dungeons, could provide to us. It was inevitable, ironically, as the sunrise.

My eyes flickered to my status screen, and I saw that my unspent stat points had increased to six and my level to three. So each level gave three points, easy enough to figure out.

I tapped the screen to select my stats, then tapped again to place the points where I wanted. The entire system was rather intuitive actually. I couldn’t understand how those morons didn’t figure it out sooner.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Reitlin sputtered.

“Oh? Just adjusting my stats.” I finished my task and swiped the screen away with a wave of my hand. “But you don’t have to worry about that. Goodbye, Reitlin.”

I brought the sword up and down into his neck, ending him as I had Mathews. His body slumped to the floor rather undramatically, and silence settled into the cave quickly after.

It was over, and I had no regrets about what I had done.

Then I stood and walked out of the cave.

After taking care of the soldiers, laying them to rest in that small cave, I went about my plan regarding the Tutorial Quest. I would kill all the goblins. Simple enough.

It wasn’t hard to find the very first roaming hunting squad. They weren’t smart enough to cover their tracks, nor to be quiet. All ideas around stealth were probably as foreign to them as the concept of soap, or bathing.

The first group I came across was a set of three goblin scouts. I rushed them with the knowledge I was doing a service to the universe by removing them from existence.

A yelp from the front goblin alerted the others to my ambush, but it did little to help them. Mid stride, I brought my foot directly into the lead goblin’s chest with a front kick. The green little freak was sent tumbling across the forest floor before crashing into a tree in a heap of broken bones. Some even poked out its skin, leaking blood into the dirt.

[You have Slain Goblin Scout – Lvl 1]

The other two came at me with small daggers, which was only a minor threat given their already short reach due to their size. My sword was longer, and my arms. But most importantly, I was twice their height; I had the high ground!

A thrust of my blade impaled the second goblin before it could even get close enough to attack, and I twisted as I pulled my blade free. I pulled back, moving out of reach of the third goblin as it swung its dagger at me, missing by a good foot and change.

I lunged at the goblin right after, slashing downward, my blade biting into and through its shoulder. It shrieked and dropped its dagger before trying to jump at me with its sharp teeth barred.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

With a quick backpedal, it landed short with a snarl. I promptly kicked at its head, sending it to the ground in a plum of dirt. Before it could stand again I reversed the grip on my sword and brought it down, forcing the tip through its skull.

[You Have Slain Goblin Scout – Lvl 1]

[You Have Slain Goblin Scout – Lvl 1]

My heart beat wildly in my chest, blood coursing up my neck and roaring in my ear drums as I looked at the results of my effort.

Three down.

It was certainly a start. But that’s what it was, a start. There were many more. And if the thrilling feeling of victory I just had then would continue with every kill, I knew I wouldn’t stop until I had succeeded.

“Gobbly fucks!” I yelled as my sword cut down into the creature’s neck, tearing through the flesh and sinking into its torso, creating a large spray. Droplets of greenish blood splattered my face, which I wiped away.

The warrior squad lay out on the ground, all six of them dead by my hand.

It was only four hours since I had turned on Reitlin and the others, and began my hunting spree, and there was a lot of information I had gained about the Gobblys, the Goblins, along the way.

They had a hierarchy system that helped me figure out how strong they were. The lowest were the scouts, with their shoddy daggers. Then there were the warriors, goblins with slightly more muscle, more fighting experience, and carrying blades that were less rusty and pitted than their lower brethren.

It wasn’t explicitly stated, but I figured out that scouts were a lower level than the warriors. This was further confirmed around the two-hour mark when I realized there was a combat notification log, so I could look back at all the kill notifications I had received so far.

[You have slain Goblin Scout – lvl 1]

[You have slain Goblin Scout – lvl 1]

[You have slain Goblin Warrior – lvl 3]

It didn’t show experience drops, something I found annoying. What game didn’t show experience points?

That was part of the grind for games on Earth. Our stupid monkey brains loved seeing those numbers pop up. We’d sit our fat asses down in a chair and slurp Mountain Dew for days at a time to see those numbers.