Chương 10: A giant battle

I run towards the giant El is moving to attack, hoping to get the Bleeding Strike somewhere important. These giants are a lot bigger than the one we fought in the pizzeria. As I get closer, I see that they are closer to twenty five feet tall. I only come up to its knees, and so I do my Bleeding Strike to its Achilles heel, hoping that it will be as vulnerable in its physical structure as a human being might be.

If the giant is just like a human only bigger, then I might be doing more than just hurting something that has a thousand hit points. I might be stopping it from being able to chase us. The roar of the giant shakes my bones, like standing too close to the bass speaker at a concert, and the crash of him slamming down on one knee shakes me nearly off my feet. If he had turned and attacked me during that instant, there's probably nothing I could have done.

But he's a little bit busy crashing down to the ground, landing heavily and from the looks of it painfully against a car in the street, flattening the car and causing the tires to burst like the sound of gunshots. I stagger back a few steps, trying to get myself balanced, and I see how much damage all that did to the giant. He's down to 841/1000. Some of that was my attack, but clearly not all of it.

I watch as that health goes down a bit more while El chops at him, moving along its downed foot to chop at the knees, trying to take down the giant like she's felling a tree. I step back and start throwing daggers at the giant. I know it's less than three hundred damage, but throwing all twelve of them only takes me about ten seconds, and the giant is so big that it's hard to miss. When I run out of knives, I start throwing flame balls at it, dealing another eleven damage every time one of the fireballs hit.

But I can hit it in the eyes, which distracts the giant from the attacks as El chops, the axe held with both hands. He's down to 436 hit points when he manages a lucky swing and clips me with the back of his hand. My 28 point shell shatters, and I take another 20 damage beyond it, finding myself flying through the air. I twist as best I can and land thanks to years of martial arts practice in a falling position that is not nearly as bad as it could be.

I scrape a bit against the pavement, but roll back to my feet rather than smashing into the ground. I fire another flame ball, causing the giant to roar in pain and frustration, his hands going to cover and protect his eyes. While he's doing that, I charge back in and use Bleeding Strike to his inner thigh, trying to get at the femoral artery (I think that's the one in the inner thigh), hoping to make him bleed as well as take the bleed condition. Maybe he'll bleed out.

I do 69 damage, and am almost thrown back by the torrent of gushing blood that comes from the jagged wound I leave behind. Blood gets everywhere. I taste the dirty coppery blast of it as I swallow some of the blood. It's not much, and I remember from movies that you can swallow a pint of blood without getting sick, so I don't worry about it. I might worry about it having some kind of disease, but that's something for later. Right now I need to try to kill this thing without getting killed myself.

I fall back, slipping in blood, and land on my ass in the middle of the street. Considering how smoothly I landed after being swatted, I'm kind of embarrassed that I just fell on my ass, but it feels like I'm being hit with a fire hose of blood, like the spray from one of those old horror movies where they would just spray blood all over people. It's in my hair, it's in my eyes, and it's completely soaking my clothes. The giant hits me again, sending me sliding along the ground and dealing another 48 damage to me.

It feels like I've been hit by a car, sliding and then rolling on the ground with the force of the impact. If not for the leather of my jacket and my pants, I'm sure I'd be picking asphalt out of my skin with some nice road rash, but as it is I just feel like I've been dragged behind a car after being hit by it. I don't know if anything is broken, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least something was. I'm down to almost half my health, and I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep fighting.

I feel like I'm fighting just to stay awake, pushing myself painfully to my feet to try to get back into the combat. Somehow, miraculously, I'm still holding on to my sword, and I stagger back towards the giant. It has 308 hit points left, but as I watch, they continue to fall without either of us hitting it. It seems like it's losing a hit point every second as it bleeds, the blood still gushing from its leg.

I throw another ball of flame at its face, draining my magic for the duration but I think getting it right in the eye. I get up to the giant and deal 63 damage with one strike, then move away from its flailing arms and doing another 63 damage. Between El and I, we chip away at the giant as it continues to bleed out from the severed artery. Soon, it's holding its leg to try to keep the blood inside its body, giving us both the opportunity to attack it without worrying about a return attack.

When we finish killing the giant, I look over at the others to see how they're doing. Their giant is still alive, but it's missing three fingers from one hand and is bleeding from dozens of little strikes and what seems like hundreds of ice spikes. I step forward and give it another Bleeding Strike. By the end of the bleed condition, the giant is dead, and we're all done fighting. I'm done for at least an hour, preferably two if I want to get all my MP back while I'm at it. You have defeated Giant x2.

You gain (2000/5) 400 experience. Somehow not enough for level ten. But I'm done. I'd rather spend the rest of the night working on my items or on skills. I'm done fighting. That was too close. It doesn't take much to convince everyone to go back to the occult shop at that point. We move with as much stealth as possible, not wanting to get into another fight on the way back. I check my notifications and see that I've gained a level each of dodge, sword, sneak, and throwing in the last several hours.

That puts me closer to my next class. I need one more level of scrounge and three of pick locks to get the thief class, one scrounge and three bow for the pathfinder, and one scrounge and one throwing for the investigator. I can probably get at least some of those by the time dawn comes around. I might be able to qualify for all three of them before the end of the tutorial. I wonder what will be available to me after that.

While I'm thinking about this, I almost don't notice the shadow wolves between us and the occult shop. There are only three of them, but any one of them could howl and bring more. I have to hope that we're strong enough to take on however many show up, while at the same time hoping that there are at least a hundred and twenty five experience worth of them for us to still fight.

I sneak up one one of the wolves and get a sneak attack with Bleeding Strike, my hit being the signal for the rest of them to charge forward. In the time it takes them to charge, I get bitten, but only for seven damage, which does not pierce through my Shell. A notification pops up, but I don't pay it any attention, working on the shadow wolf in front of me and continuing to chip away at its hit points. I do 21 damage after the bite, and I stab the wolf along the mouth as it tries to bite me again.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. For having three hundred hit points, the shadow wolves fall pretty quickly to the five of us. None of them howl for help, and they seem too easily distracted by the banging on the shields to be able to focus their attacks on any one of us. There are a few more scratches and bite along the way, and my Shell does go down, but I don't end up taking more than four points of damage after all is said and done.

Most importantly, three hundred experience each wolf means one hundred and eighty total experience, which is enough for me to level up to level ten. You have reached level ten! You have 6 stat points to spend. You have one Talent available. Your spell Shell has improved to level 2. It now creates a shell equal to 40% of your total HP. That second one was the notification that I got during the battle. I don't know why that spell leveled up but my flame ball didn't, but hopefully flame ball will improve soon.

As for the six points that I have to spend, I put three into willpower, two into presence, and one into agility. I'm feeling much more survivable now. But I want to see what the other notifications say, and what kind of talent I can get. The next notification tells me something that I unlocked as being a level 10 rogue. It tells me that my sneak attack will now do x4 damage instead of x3.

It's the only skill that I have based on my class, but it's definitely been a game changer so far, and now it's just going to be that much better. When I open the Talent menu, I find that there are dozens of them for me to choose from. Dark vision, exemplar, regeneration, survivor, and toughness all jump out at me as possibilities. Dark vision does just what it says, giving me the ability to see in the darkness.

Exemplar heightens my connection to one stat of my choice, giving me more points in that stat and making it easier for me to improve it through regular training. That tells me something important. It is possible to improve stats through use. That's important. Regeneration allows me to pick one of the three categories of HP, MP, or Stamina, and provides me with regeneration for that one category during combat. I almost take that one immediately, but I want to see what survivor and toughness do.

Survivor gives me a bunch of skill based survival skills, and makes it easier for those skills to improve. Toughness gives me a bonus to my hit points, making me tougher to kill. I have to think this through. My initial reaction is regeneration. It will do better than toughness over time. Though toughness means I will survive a greater hit, regeneration means I will survive more of them over time. And combining that with Shell means that I'll survive greater hits, just like I would with toughness.

But toughness will effect Shell too; what if it doubles my HP? There's no description for exactly what mechanics each talent provides; it could easily do something like that. Also, as good as regeneration sounds, night vision might be more useful. We were able to see because the moon was full and the sky is full of stars, but if we had been inside a building, it would've been pitch black. There's no electricity anymore, so there are no sources of light other than those of the natural world.

Would I be able to see something that wasn't in the middle of an open street without dark vision? As tempting as that is, what about exemplar? I already know that agility is going to be my go to ability score. It improves my ranged damage and my defense, giving me a really good reason to have it get higher. What if Exemplar doubled my agility score? Just making it easier to improve on its own is pretty impressive. I'd do more damage from range and be less likely to be hit.

That might be better than regeneration, too. Having a lot of hit points is one thing, but not being hit in the first place is far better. I know that I'll eventually get hit, but I'm not sacrificing hit points here, I'm just not increasing them artificially. Maybe I want to have the higher agility. No. No, I think the night vision is the most important. I want to be able to see at night. There are different monsters at night, monsters that are worth more experience and that have more treasure.

If that holds true, I'm going to want to go fighting at night more often than not. And if I want to explore a cave, I'm going to have to either bring light with me, which would take up one hand and would make me a beacon to any enemies, or I need to be able to see in the dark. When I select the talent, my vision instantly changes. Instead of seeing vague outlines in the moonlight, it's like the world suddenly floods with light, and I can see everything.

It's all in black and white, but it's like watching Survivor on TV, when they shoot at night. The background is a light grey, and everything and everyone is other shades of grey. I can make out the stitching on the leather on El's chest, and I feel like I'd be able to see the logo on a t-shirt if anyone was wearing one. I could read in this darkness. Thankfully, when I close my eyes, none of the light follows me into the darkness. So I'll still be able to sleep just fine. I can just see in the dark now. Awesome.

We go back into the occult shop, but I'm too excited to sleep. We only have about three hours left in the tutorial, meaning that the tutorial level will end just after dawn. That makes sense; I'm pretty sure it started just after dawn as well. Three days isn't all that long. But I've accomplished a lot in these three days. I'm level ten, I've completed a number of quests, I've qualified for a lot of classes. I'm not scared of taking damage anymore, and I know I've really learned to fight in these last three days.

I've gained more skill with combat in three days than I did with five years of martial arts training, not that any of that really included weapon training. It was mostly just how to grapple, how to fall, and how to strike and block with bare hands. I don't know that I can fight as well unarmed as I do armed anymore, though. I think that my sword skill is high enough that I can actually pose a threat to someone with a sword. I wonder what the skill levels actually do, as far as that is concerned.

I mean, I know that Sneak reflects my ability to sneak around; the very fact that I was able to move silently while the others stumbled around proves that the skill level has real impact. But what's the impact of having sword, or dodge, or throwing? Throwing makes my throws more accurate. Okay, I know that. Does that mean that sword improves my accuracy with a sword? I have been more able to dictate the types of strikes as I've improved with the sword.

I don't know that I would've been able to cut the artery on that giant two days ago without a whole lot of luck. And while that might mean that I wouldn't currently be covered in congealing blood, it might also mean that the giant would've killed us. I can't be upset about the blood clotting in my hair; I'm too busy being happy to still be alive. I settle down in the shop and take out the swords that I took from the skeleton warriors. I examine the sword and realize that the pommel unscrews.

I unscrew the pommel and spot two pins that go through the handle of the sword and the tang of the blade. I'm able to poke out the pins with some of the tools that I took from the hardware store. Once I pop the pins out, the handle slides off the tang, and the crossbar comes away pretty easily. Soon enough I'm left with just several pieces of sword. You have gained secondary skill: Scrapping 1. That's good.

I take apart all but one of the swords, then see if there's something I can do that will improve the remaining sword. Maybe if I replace the pommel with one of these other pommels that I have, and I make sure that the pins are in there nice and tight. Maybe if I put the discarded blades around the initial blade and hammer them, something will happen. Some of it makes sense from a realistic point of view, like making sure that the sword has the firmest grip and the strongest components.

Some of it makes sense only from a gaming point of view, like trying to combine the blades of the swords. But together, they do manage to upgrade the sword. Bone Blade. Uncommon weapon level 9/10. Damage: 9-19. I run out of components before I can boost it all the way up to level ten, but even at nine it's better than my skull blade. I feel bad leaving the skull blade aside, but I don't know if I can fight with a weapon in each hand. It seems like that would take a lot more skill with a blade than I have.

Though maybe that's the point. I can practice with two swords and see if that improves my sword skill faster. It might also increase my agility if I do it. So I'll keep the skull blade, I just won't plan on using it outside of practice for a while. Better to have it and not need it, I guess. Maybe someone will want to buy it in our new world. There are just two hours left in the tutorial level when I finally drift off to sleep. It might be important to get a little bit of rest.

I don't know if there are exhaustion penalties, but if there are, I want to avoid them if at all possible. So a little bit of sleep will be a good thing.