*ding! Level up!*

*ding! Level up!*

*ding! Level up!*

*ding! Level up!*

Without the light to keep them at bay, these little shits kept coming at me. Always the same song and dance of trying to sneak up on me, completely oblivious to the fact that I could see them. I hadn't run into any other kind of living thing down here, so I had no idea how they survived to begin with. My eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness now, but it had its limits. I’d guessed I could see maybe thirty feet away, but even that didn’t feel perfectly correct. It felt like my brain was combining my limited ability to see in the dark with my keen senses of scent and hearing to composite together the image I was experiencing. If I simply pinched my nose, suddenly the image of the monster and my surroundings became fuzzier, more vague and indistinct, as if I needed glasses again. Even color would disappear if I deprived myself of one of my senses. It was strange, and even that description didn’t feel completely accurate.

They almost always noticed me before I noticed them, I guess by my smell or the noise I was making. By the time I noticed they were carefully stalking me, creeping up slowly and masking their movements with mine. But I could always see them as clear as day once they got within thirty feet. I would wait until they came to about ten feet, and just before they pounced, I would attack, catching them off guard. They had roughly the same anatomy of a human, or any mammal for that matter, and a stab between the ribs and into the heart would put them down quickly. I was surprised at how little I felt when I killed them.

Maybe it was the immediacy of the moment. Perhaps when and if I get out, the trauma of what I'd done would hit me. I mentally was not in the circumstances to feel guilt. Maybe I felt nothing because they were trying to kill me, and indeed, I couldn't help but feel a cruel satisfaction in killing them. Or maybe it's simply because they looked so monstrous. Nightmarish, even. They were the grey, horrific sort of thing that would give you nightmares if you just happened to glimpse them outside, in the bushes, just as you were throwing away the trash.

Whatever the case, 11 of them had thrown themselves at me, and I had begun to level up in self-defense. Level 4 now, and the status menu had new information.

+++

Name: Loiel Krieger

Class: Lord of Tyranny (Slave Knight)

Species: Ursine Therian

Level: 4

HP: 48/48 FP: 10

Attributes: Vigor: F-, Mind: F-, Endurance: F-, Strength: F, Dexterity: F-, Agility: F- , Intelligence: F-, Faith: F-, Luck: F-

Equipment: -Torch, -Sack Clothes, -Broken Sword,

Effects: -Slave Mark

Class Features: -Unarmored Defense, -Reckless Attack, -Fury, -Danger Sense, -Undying Crusader

Proficiencies: -Simple Weapon Proficiency, -Martial Weapon Proficiency, -Shield Proficiency, -Light Armor Proficiency, -Medium Armor Proficiency, -Heavy Armor Proficiency,

Skills: Perception: F, Athletics: E, Survival: F, History: F, Religion: F, Medicine: F-

Racial Traits: -Dark Senses, -Relentless Endurance, -Untrammeled Savagery

+++

If it was anything like Otherworld Online, then Martial and Simple Weapon Proficiency meant that I could use the gamut of weapons. That would explain why using the broken sword felt far more natural than before. I could swing this lump of steel as effortlessly as I could write with a pen, or drive a car. On the other hand, Fury was a class feature of the frenzied zealot that let them go into a battle trance for one minute where they would do more damage and take less. I didn't know how to activate it, and frankly, I didn’t want to try. The game had described it as going through an emotional and mental heightened state that looked unpleasant, to say the least. I figured I’d pass out if I did go through something so intense.

The other class features, Danger Sense and Unarmored Defense, added up with how I’ve been better able to notice when the gremlins were trying to ambush me. A couple times I’d only ever caught them at the very last moment, and killed them in mid-pounce. Reckless Attack was another thing I wasn’t keen on trying out, since in game it left you very, very vulnerable, and 48 hp was still well within the range of getting one shot by anything mundane, if memory of Otherworld Online meant anything.

Besides that, I'd found a small gleaming gem inside the bodies of the last two gremlins I'd killed. Since these types of things tended to be valuable in games, I hung onto them, using some torn cloth from a body I'd found to make a small pouch and tied it to my rope belt. Otherwise, I’d found no supplies or equipment, no conveniently placed corpses with something to loot in my moment of direst need.