Chương 4: Chapter 5: Fighting the Giant

It's about ten feet tall, hunched over near the ceiling of the pizzeria. It has what looks like a giant curved blade held in one hand, a blade that is usually used to cut the pizza into slices. It looks sharp, especially as the giant swings it around. The girls form a defensive formation, the two shields held out in front of them, their long swords held at the ready, waiting for an opening in the wild swings to get their own attacks in.

I still have a few saw blades, and I have all my throwing knives, so I figure the best thing I can do is provide ranged support. I start moving to the side, so that I won't accidentally throw anything into my allies, and I throw the first saw blade like a frisbee. It does 11 damage, and draws the giant's anger towards me. I was the first one to hit it. I guess I kind of ruined any chance of their being a dialogue. Maybe we could've talked him down.

Then again, he was identified as a monster, not as a creature or something like that, so I have my doubts that he could've been talked to. The giant swings his makeshift sword at me, and I jump back out of the range. Gigi uses the movement to stab him in the stomach, while El slashes for the extended hand holding the weapon, hoping to disarm him.

They both make contact, both doing damage, and they draw the aggro of the giant away from me and towards the two of them, where there are shields to mitigate the amount of damage the giant does. I keep throwing razor sharp saw blade discs at the thing for as long as I have them, switching over to throwing knives after a short time, and watch as the giant's health slowly begins to go down.

It hits Gigi with a swing of its makeshift sword, and while she blocks with her shield, it knocks her back several steps and disrupts their formation, leaving El unprotected as she stabs the giant in the gut and then wriggles the sword, trying to do extra damage. The giant hits El with a wild haymaker, sending her flying back several steps. I catch her before she can hit her head on anything, and she thanks me before getting back into the fight.

I briefly consider picking up a table to use as a shield, but it seems like that would be so unwieldy that it wouldn't allow me to actually attack. So maybe something to keep in the back of my head in case the giant knocks someone down and I have to rush in to be a hero, but not exactly a plan A. Plan A needs to be throwing the rest of my throwing knives into the giant, peppering him with them and making him look like a bit of a porcupine.

I don't have good grouping, but I hit him more often than not, and always with the blade side poking in. I consider that a win. He's down by about a hundred points when he roars. Something about the roar makes the muscles in my entire body tense up for a second, and I nearly fall over. I see that I'm not the only one to have that reaction, as Gigi has dropped her sword and Vinny has actually fallen over. The giant grins evilly and lifts a foot to stomp down on Vinny while chopping down on Gigi.

If it had focused on just one of those two attacks, it might have been devastating. Vinny could've been crushed, Gigi could've been cleaved. But because it split its attention, Vinny was able to roll out of the way and Gigi was able to raise her shield up over head and catch the blade on it. It knocked her down to one knee, but didn't split her in half. And while Vinny rolled away from his sword, he also rolled away from the stomp of the giant, which probably would've crushed his head like an egg.

I throw my last dagger and grab a table, charging forward to use it to push the giant back a step, trying to give Vinny the chance to grab his sword. He does, and the giant's kick to his head is forced off balance, bleeding out most of the force when it clips his forehead. He's still stunned, but he isn't killed, and I call that a win. The giant wrenches the table out of my hand and tosses it aside, where it shatters against the wall. Not a great shield, as I suspected.

But it does leave the giant open to my sword strike, and I cut him right at thigh level, hoping to cut that big artery that runs down the leg, the one that will cause him to bleed out in about a minute or so. I don't know that I caught it, but there is a lot of blood, and I see that I dealt 42 damage, so I assume it was something bad. He does bleed pretty heavily for about five seconds, so I'm counting that as a win.

And his health goes down almost another hundred points in doing so, which makes me think that I got him to bleed the same as that lynxith made me bleed. I can check the battle notifications later if I want to. Right now, we've got him below half health, but we can't afford to let up. The girls start to spread out, surrounding him rather than presenting a wall of defense against him.

I can see the use of this almost immediately, and move to take up some of the empty space so that we can attack the giant from at least four directions. Five when Vinny shakes off the stun of being kicked in the head by size thirty boots. But for now, we can each attack him while he's facing someone else. So El darts forward to swing at him, drawing his attention and bringing his sword to attack her. While he does that, Gigi stabs him in the leg, I cut at his back, and Ashley slashes at his other leg.

He turns towards Gigi, and the three of us attack him again. Any way he turns, three of us attack him. It must be frustrating for the giant. I know I'd be frustrated. He has more hit points than probably all of us combined, but he's steadily losing health without doing any real damage to any of us, all because he's trying not to get hit. When he spins from one of us to another, we can't all attack him, but at least one of us still gets the back stab, still cuts off a fair amount of his remaining health.

The way to handle this, I think, would be for him to concentrate on us one at a time. Let the other three hit if need be, trusting in his massive health pool to survive it, and take out one of us, then move to the next. I don't know if that would work at this point; he doesn't have the HP to spare anymore. But if he'd started off doing that, he might have been able to take out at least one or two of us by the time we killed him.

Ashley gets the killing blow, slicing across his stomach and spilling his guts onto the pizzeria floor. He falls to his knees with a loud thud, then crashes over to the side, dead. I feel like I should try to take something from him, the way I've gotten trophies from the lynxith. But I don't know what I can take, and I don't know how I feel about harvesting a giant. He looks human, aside from the whole ten feet tall thing. No, I don't think I'll be upping my animal harvesting any time soon. You have defeated Giant.

You gain (400/5) 80 experience points. You have gained Throwing level 3. You have gained a level! You have 4 stat points to spend. I'm going to put two points into Agility, one into Vigor, and one into Strength, I think. Caleb Strong, level 6 human. XP 55/1000. HP: 84 MP: 72 Stamina: 96 Defense: 23 Magic Resist: 10% Strength: 16 Agility: 12 Vigor: 14 Manipulation: 10 Presence: 12 Willpower: 16 Charisma: 10 Awareness: 10.

Skills: Animal Harvesting 3, Pick Lock 2, Meditation 3, Scrounge 2, Sneak 4, Sword 3, Throwing 3. Secondary skills: Armorer 1, Smithing 1 Looks like I'm just one level of Pick Lock and one level of Sneak away from the rogue class and three levels of dodge away from the fighter class. Hopefully, more will come with the class than just the title that I belong to the class. I don't know what else I expect, but maybe something that will use stamina other than fighting, or something that will use magic points at all.

Either one of those things would be welcomed. Stolen story; please report. There's another safe in the back of the pizzeria. This one is a combination lock, so my lock picks aren't really going to help. Still, I give it a go, putting my hand on the safe so I can feel the ticking of the lock as I go, hoping that maybe I'll be able to feel the tumblers falling. I close my eyes and try to visualize it as I go back and forth. Once again, I'm doing all this with knowledge gleaned from movies.

I've seen people able to unlock safes like this without any special equipment. Safes way more complex than this one, in fact. I know that this one is probably a three number code, and all I have to do is keep clicking it slowly until I feel the tumblers fall. Or I could look around for a combination written down somewhere. Usually, they write the number somewhere nearby in case people forget it.

But I want to see if I can actually get the lock to open this way, so I keep at it, ticking it one number at a time until I feel tumblers fall into place. It takes me maybe half an hour, but it's a pretty cheap safe, and I do manage to get it open. You have opened and iron chest! You gain 250 experience. $5, 000 (junk), recipe – sauce, 25 silver coins, 1 magic crystal. You have gained Alertness 1. You have gained Pick Lock 3. Once again, I share out the silver coins.

I leave the money where it is, and see if anyone wants the sauce recipe. Ashley decides to take it.

"I've always liked cooking," she says.

"And if food can give us buffs, then I want to learn more recipes." Works for me. No one wants the magic crystal, still having no idea what they do, so I add it to the other one in my bag.

"We've got a little less than two days before the tutorial runs out," I say as we all gather together. Everyone looks healthy again, and I assume that means that they regenerated between combats.

"What should we do in that time?"

"We can keep doing what we've been doing," Vinny says.

"Getting bits of loot, killing monsters, gaining levels. Seems like the thing to do."

"I'd like to get a class," Gigi says.

"Seems to me like the class will bring with it some benefits, and I'd like to get one sooner rather than later."

"What do you still need?" I ask.

"I need to learn to dodge, mostly," she says.

"My sword skill is pretty high, as is my shield skill. If I can learn to dodge, I can pick up the Squire class."

"Me too," Ashley says.

"Same requirement."

"I need to learn throwing," El says.

"Can you teach me, Caleb? You seem to do a pretty good job of throwing knives." I've already started collecting my knives from the body of the giant. The saw blades are a bit of a lost cause, but the knives I can just pull back out, clean, and return them to their little fabric sheaths. I've got them laced through a belt like a bandoleer over one shoulder, making it easier for me to grab them and pull them out for throwing. I could use some practice with that too.

"I want to learn spellcraft," Vinny says.

"I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I want to get magic."

"Maybe we can find somewhere that has information on spellcraft?" I suggest.

"Like an occult book store or something? There might be something there."

"I'm all for him learning to cast magic," El says.

"But the rest of us can learn what we need to learn without going anywhere, right? And you can help us, Vinny."

"Help you how?"

"We need to learn to dodge. You can just try to attack us, and we can try to dodge your strikes. Just hit with the flat of the blade though, if you don't mind." We clear away the remaining tables and set up a sparring area. Meanwhile, El and I stand by the ovens and take aim at the body of the giant. It's already starting to decay, pretty rapidly, but there's a lot to get through. We might be able to throw into the giant a few times, at least to get the hang of it.

Turns out that having three levels of throwing is really useful. It's a lot. I seem to instinctively know how to hold the knives now, and flick my wrist to throw them rather than winding up like I'm throwing a baseball.

"It's all in the wrist," I tell her, as I realize that it's true.

"You don't need a ton of power, especially not at short range."

"And knives aren't exactly long range weapons," El says, understanding.

"I'd need something like a javelin for that."

"You think we can find one of those?"

"Maybe at a second hand store or a sporting goods store," she says.

"But let's worry about that later. For now, show me how to aim."

"It's the same as any other throw," I say.

"You look where you want the blade to go, and then you point at it as you throw. Like, that's when you release, with your fingers pointing at whatever you want to hit." It doesn't take her long to get the hang of it. Seems to be taking the others a bit more time to figure out how to dodge. They're used to blocking incoming attacks on their shields, which makes sense. But we just saw how dangerous a much stronger enemy can be if you try to deflect everything with a shield.

You need to be able to get out of the way, and quickly, when an opponent has you beaten in the strength department. And it seems like that's going to happen a lot, unless we all spend our points on getting stronger and stronger. And doing that will just be a detriment to our other attributes.

"I think agility might be more important than strength," El says to me as we collect the daggers from what's left of the giant. We're going to have to start throwing into a table instead of the rotting corpse of the giant. Thankfully, it doesn't smell that bad, just filling the pizzeria with a scent reminiscent of a port-o-potty on a warm day. We could move this training session outside, but we don't know what will interrupt us. The pizzeria is, at least for now, safe.

My throwing goes up to 4 in the time it takes her to get to three. I don't know if that means I'm a good teacher or if it just means that the early levels are easy to get through. I'm guessing it's a combination of the two, though weighted much more to the idea that earlier levels are easier.

"So what other skills do you need?" she asks me.

"I qualify for fighter with a few more levels of sword and three levels of dodge, or for rogue if I just add another level of sneak."

"Oh, you should definitely go rogue," she says. She laughs at the sound of that.

"I mean, we have fighters. You should go for rogue because it gives us more utility. Besides, you seem to be our resident safe cracker."

"Yeah, that seems a bit weird, just how easy it is to break into those safes."

"They probably have an electronic component that isn't working anymore," she says.

"That might be why." I certainly don't mind being the one who opens the safes. I get experience points just for opening it, and far more than I'm getting for combat. I don't know how long that will remain true, but for now it's a good thing. I'm three iron chests away from another level, and that's not counting the monsters we'll have to kill to get at those chests.

"So then I need to practice sneaking," I say. And then I get an idea of how to do it. I have El take Vinny's place trying to hit the other two, letting the three of them try to attack each other and dodge their attacks, and I take Vinny to the back room.

"What are we doing here?" he asks.

"I'm going to practice sneaking," I tell him.

"And you're going to practice your Alertness. You need that for the mage class, right?"

"Right," he says.

"I still don't understand." I hand him an apron from one of the shelves.

"Put this on as a blindfold," I tell him.

"I'm going to leave the room for a few seconds, then come back in. Try to sense me coming, and don't let me touch you. We'll practice for a while until you get the hang of it, until you're aware of your surroundings trusting more than just your eyesight."

"So I just use the force?" he asks.

"Something like that," I say.

"Hey, I'm guessing as much as you are here. I was just thinking that paying attention to your ears is a good way to improve your Alertness. I got a level of it listening to the safe, so I figure it might help."