1 Stab it in the head again
In a not so special place in a forest relatively far away from the closest civilised settlement, there stood a lonely goblin. He was a normal goblin patrolman, not a particularly stupid one that'd decided to go out for a walk in the middle of nowhere, no, he'd simply taken the time out of his watch to relieve himself against the gentle wind.
The goblin found there was a strange sessation on it's back, at the base of his spine, and sudenly he was falling foward, the strange feeling of his still leeking crotch being pressed between the ground and his leather armor was not supposed to be this gentle, it nocided, ready to scream, not that it hadn't yelped already, but either way it didn't matter, Aki quickly took the stone spear out of it's spine and shoved it down on it's neck, twice, before it finally cut most of the head away from the neck.
[Hide presence is now Level 2]
[Spear technique is now Level 1]
[Survival is now level 2]
[You have fulfilled the requirements, would you like to become a Lv 1 apprentice ranger?]
Quickly doing the equivalent or a mental nod, the young man felt much better. Even if his physical stats had basically doubled, that did not mean he'd become twice as well built or anything, but he was most certainly getting near what soldiers and mercenaries on earth would consider acceptable instead of the actual coach potato that downloaded some fitness app and only half-assed everything he actually was.
[Nature's Grace is now Level 1]
And that. Jobs gave bonuses other than attribute growth per level. Like adding a determined amount of XP to certain skills when they were integrated and/or giving certain bonuses.
A sword master with enough bonuses could probably cut someone with the flat side of a blade for example.
Back to our Mc though, he was having the great opportunity of stripping the goblin he'd just killed for it's belt so he could carry around the daggers said goblin had.
Urine and blood asside, it was still useful even if it barely fit his much bigger frame.
Proceeding with a recast of the wind shield softening his smell, he hoped, Aki marched to the goblin camp, easily taking the other sentinel the same way as the relaxed one, though pushing his magic to make it think to have spotted an enemy in the dark and focusing it's whole attention to it instead of turning around to look at the small sounds behind it while it did not have a dagger on its left arm pit and one other in his throat.
It was all surprisingly too easy for Aki after finding out how one tracked every other mind was in comparison to his own. He just ussed his brain as an anchor, connected to another with mana and reinforced the differences.
While less surprised by the amount of XP he gained from killing his second rank 3 monster, that did not mean his focus was not momentarily broken from the forty or so levels he'd gained, apparently only a third coming from the actual monster's XP, the rest being the result of bonus XP from the innovative way he'd killed it and the fact it was so much more powerful them him in the system's eyes.
Breathing deeply once, twice, thrice, Aki cleared his mind again and started killing the five other goblin scouts with daggers to their ears and throats while trying to relate his icy calm to the sleep the remaining victims had.
Luckily he'd killed the sleeping magic caster, easily recognizable by the crude tent and bone accessories it used, first, his fear of his untrained magic having the opossite effect on it being well founded.
This way, Aki found himself surrounded by death in his night in another world. He found out that while he quite enjoyed the cool and refreshing feeling of ending a life, nevermind ones he was not even close to comparing to, he certainly, utterly, did NOT enjoy the smell of goblin remains, the second sentinel having already lost his bowels a bit after he started looting the camp for a backpack, holsters, herbs, that tattered leather jacket the biggest goblin wore, anything that could be useful and carriable.
He was not stupid enough to spend the night out in the open with so much blood on himself, but his agent had been reasonable enough to allow him to spawn inside a cave, next to a long dead traveler that had some rags. He still didn't have any shoes or light, while running on a stomach that haused the remains of a bunny he'd hunted with magic almost eight hours ago.
Before he ran back to his cave, Aki decided to change jobs since he'd already maxed out his current one.
[Nature's grace is now level 2]
[Tracking is now level 1]
[Enhanced sight is now level 1]
[Hide presence is now level 3]
That was the correct decision considering that his agility had doubled and a bit more, though he was a bit more interested in the effects of nature's grace, whose effects now started to make more sense as they became more pronounced. It was not some kind of luck or affinity boost as he'd first thought, instead gifting him with knowlege over forests in general and generating a calming aura for those related to nature.
It also came with an appraisal feature.
[Tree: It seems to be a species that lives in temperate climates. Looks healthy.]
He'd test it later on any kind of animal or monster he actually knew about to see if the effects were better, but if what he heard about DeD perks applied even slighlty here, it was worth it to befriend a pack of wolfs to try and level the skill. Or suck a driad's tits, he'd heard wonders about the things that came out of them even if it was also a highly addicting substance to anyone not completly enshrouded in death's aura.
While running.
'Wait, my body is supposed to still be the same, why didn't i have any kind of reaction when thinking of a whole harem of... right, they're driads, worse them succubus with their pets. Fear is still keeping me in check. Hope i can trade for that one day though.'
Some twenty minutes later, while he is preparing to sleep with his new stone pillow.
'There probably is a driad on this forest. Or a whole colony of them. I'm fucked if it is the later, but really, it mostly depends on what kind of driad is here.' He groaned, forcefully stopping the train of thoughts. 'Gods i should probably stop thinking about being raped before sleeping.'
*****
Waking up, Aki was predictably moody, both from his new sleeping arrangements, his nightmares, the hunger and his current level of hygiene.
'Status' He mentally chanted.
Name: Aki Augustus
Race: Human (Otherworlder)
Age: 18
Title: Reviewer
Job: Ranger
Level: 43
Job history: apprentice ranger Lv 100.
Attributes:
Vitality 65
Strength 71
Mana 32
Intelligence 26
Agility 78
Dexterity 81
Magic:
Wind magic Lv 1
Mind magic Lv 1
Mystical art:
Mana cost reduction Lv 1
Mana manipulation Lv 2
Mana perception Lv 4
No attribute magic Lv 1
Academic:
Strategy making Lv 1
Combat:
Spear technique Lv 1
Sneaking Lv 2
Hide presence Lv 3
Sneak attack Lv 2
Dagger technique Lv 1
Augmentation:
Survival Lv 2
Fast thought process Lv 1
Multiple thought process Lv 1
Nature's grace Lv 2
Augmented sight Lv 1
Detection:
Tracking Lv 1
Unique:
Augmented system
Having organized the whole thing while eating the remains of his food storage and whatever edible root the goblins had.
He'd unfortunately drenched the pack with rations with the mage's blood, which turned out to be even more disgusting then whatever had already been there.
He didn't think humans were supposed to eat goblin meat, and he really didn't have the time to train his poison resistance.
No, he'd hunt some critter, cook it better than last time, and then he'd train earth magic and meditation till he could open a big enough hole in the mountain to tuck himself in. No way he was doing it in one day though.
"Producing steel or magnesium constructs is not something I will be able to easily do for a while yet, so maybe if I use it to make some traps I can level up while training and change to a hopefully easy to unlock geomancer." Murmured Aki while stretching and preparing to use his minor control of wind and ego to identify prey.
And that's what he did. Turns out there were a lot of big wolves, not wargs yet, making their home at a nearby glaive. He was not dumb enough to try and attack the twenty wolves himself, no, it's just that a certain couple of individuals seemed to find his smell very apetitising or something.
Luckily humans are great runners, Aki himself not tripping once during the ten minutes of panic fueled running. His wind blade took long enough to form thanks to said run needing a lot of attention, and the wolf he shot at didn't even need to dodge thanks to his shity aim, but he caught it with his sudden lunge since it was distracted by the spell.
His partner, not knowing how to approach, simply growled and bit air as Aki tried to avoid the bites and scratches of the pinned wolf, taking the chance to headbutt the beast's temple before releasing a dagger of his onto it's side, getting up and barely dodging his other assailant's dash for his neck.
This time, his shity aim didn't really matter.
The poor thing basically had it's jaw and neck split horizontally, falling over what his killer could only call a pain induced shock.
From there it didn't take much to kill the other wolf, raising his level by six.
"Great, now I just need to kill 13 more wolves in life or death combat before I can change jobs again." He sighed, sitting in the ground. "Fuck this, i'm boxing myself. Let's see how much smoked wolf i can make." He expressionlessly murmured as he turned to the two new baits.
*****
[Trap making is now level 3]
[You have reached level 100. Xp will now be partially stored for your next job.]
"It's like these things have never been hunted by anything, yet they die so easily to traps like these, what the fuck?" Aki said, not believing his eyes as the third panther with six legs and four eyes fell for his spiked trap, visibly impaled on the head by the sharp rock spikes he'd spent most of the sun time making.
Having found a clearing with a big tree on the center, Aki imediatly thought this would be a great place to take a rest. Noticing how little sense that made, he pretended to fall for it and approached the tree, took his backpack off and stabbed a small hole on the trunk with his longest dagger, ussing it as a catalist to use fire magic and casting fire ball inside the trent. It wailed, and tried to pierce him with it's roots, gouging out a bit of his side as he left the smoldering dagger inside the thing.
Granted, Aki could have been captured and ripped to pieces right then and there, but having your skull on fire didn't exactly do anybody any favors for their accuracy and control, allowing Aki to only have several lashes over his extremities, head included, by the time the thing died down.
Only through the the new levels did he have enough strenght to even eat the herbs his skill said to be materials for healing potions. So when Aki started circulating mana on his body in the hopes of easing the bleeding as he bandaged his side, he was in for a surprise as the bleeding practically stopped before his eyes and ever so slowly his flesh started to grow back as his mana dwindled. His reserves were not enough to regenerate entirely on one go even though he'd only suffered minor cuts, though almost a hundred of them, and one shallow flesh wound that had luckily not expossed his intestines.
That'd been yesterday. Today, Aki took some injured critters to the clearing with the dead trent and burrowed himself between the roots. There were a few bugs he had to burn away, but the place was actually perfect to use his new trap maker job on. It was more surprising the skill requirement for such job was so low when regarding it's namesake then it was that there were some creatures stupid enough to die so rapidly to his simple traps, but he was a devoted believer of the teaching of the spider:
'If you get cocky there's a great chance the universe is going to throw something bad at you just to see your face, and it will have fun if you win as well, so it will keep sending worse and worse things. Don't get cocky.' He repeated his interpretation to himself as he laid there, blood smeared over his clothes and limbs as he changed jobs before the fourth idiotic cat fell. Hopefully in an area he'd already reset the spikes. 'There's something really wrong with these if they are getting attracted by the smell of their fallen kin, but then again, i'm gonna need a lot of xp to break this wall. Suppose i can't complain since i got three jobs to max level before the first even appeared though.'
