Luke's katana tore through the 29th goblin's throat, while the last remaining one was sucking on its finger. A clean slash took off its head.
He took a deep breath, the katana soaked in blood, his eyes drifting between the dead bodies and the purplish sky.
"FUUUUUCK!!!"
The scream echoed across the buildings and made the respawned goblins in the distance shiver. A grand total of zero drops had shown up since he started, and there was no way not to be pissed.
"Dude, I've been here for HOURS, do you know how annoying it is to wait for more of these fuckers to show up?!?"
You leveled up!
"Like I give a shit about leveling up! Give me the drops, you thieving system!"
The screen floated toward him.
🖕
And vanished. Veins bulged across Luke's whole face, and he cursed the system's family back five generations.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much point in staying all pissy, so he just turned around and headed home.
He couldn't care less that nothing had dropped, killing 30 and not even getting a goblin thong was rough.
"Sigh, seriously, all this effort for nothing. I'm gonna have to take another Alchemical Energy Drink because of this. Just hope I don't blow up in the process…"
He pressed his eyelids shut as he entered the room. He claimed the rewards and downed both potions immediately, practically erasing all fatigue on the spot.
As explained before, the Supplement Vial wouldn't appear if the basic training mission had been completed first.
In a normal situation, the moment he remembered the training, Luke would've just quit and ignored it, but with the vial's effect still active, it would be a huge waste not to at least do some push-ups.
A second katana fell to the floor. Luke compared his old one with the new. The old one was falling apart from so much use, and it had only been two days since he got it.
"Hey, system, isn't there some smelting or, I don't know, recycling feature in your setup?"
Option currently unavailable.
"How do I unlock them?"
The player can increase their Intellect to unlock new features. Alternatively, they can be unlocked using Skill Points (SP), one is earned every 5 levels.
"Status."
Class: ?????
Level: 6
You're probably the most out-of-shape human alive, but internally you're known as the "Goblin Maniac."
Skill Points: 1
"These skill points can be used for something else, right?"
Skill points can be spent on passive and active effects. Since the player's a dumbass and didn't notice, this feature was unlocked at level 5.
"Sigh, fine, fine. Show me."
A massive screen projected in front of his eyes, countless gray boxes appearing, and three skill trees were divided by white bars.
Above, the name of each tree stood out in color: "Physical" in orange, "Spiritual" in purple, and "Magic" in blue.
Luke crossed his arms. There were a bunch of interesting things there, but the perks were all locked behind two base skills in the tree.
Physical
Power Charge 0/3
The ancient art of standing still for too long while charging your special attack has been passed down for generations through all kinds of media, and now it's yours.
You can hold your attack longer and release it with more power.
I've Got Talent! 0/5
Let's be real: you suck at everything, so we'll give you a way to be good at something.
Pick an attribute. It gains 20% more XP during training.
Spiritual
Golden Pinky 0/3
You've got a pretty lucky pervy hand.
Increases loot drop chance from monsters by 10x.
Mind's Eye 0/1
A fourth eye opens on your forehead, not literally, but if they cracked your skull open, they'd probably find some serious frontal lobe damage.
Killed monsters can be analyzed and have their data revealed.
Magic
Random Gift from the Wizard 0/5
The wizard who hid in a tower for years died of old age, and now you're the only one left to inherit his knowledge.
You gain one random level 1 spell.
Wisdom of the 30-Year-Old Virgin
One day, a man spent over thirty years without touching a woman, then got hit by a truck and gained the trash skill of analyzing anything, and now he has to live his life to the fullest as an item appraiser!
You can read advanced data on acquired items.
"I see. Physical is for, obviously, anything related to my body, spiritual is like the support tree, while magical is for supernatural stuff. Seems like a pretty neat balance. Also, increasing the drop chance tenfold isn't..."
Luke stopped. The increase was way too high, and so far he hadn't gotten a single drop from monsters. That could only mean one thing: the original drop chance must be absurdly low.
He grabbed his half-busted katana and tried to strike the floating screen, which dodged like a ballerina dancing on stage.
"You bastard, you intentionally made the probability that low!"
Didn't matter how hard he tried to hit, landing a blow on the system was conventionally impossible, but that didn't ease Luke's fury one bit, now that he realized it was a filthy trick!
After tiring himself out a little, he just grumbled and disabled the mirror dimension. Birds chirped, and the sunlight graced his worn-out face.
At first, he considered spending the leftover skill point on something useful, like increasing the drop rate or even getting a spell.
'But if I need it later, it might be a problem.'
This kind of thing was meant to be used wisely. Right now, the perks weren't all that strong or directly useful.
The random magic could end up being something dumb, and Charge Strength might end up being more of a liability, given the time it required staying still...
In other words, gathering a few points first and building a decent setup appeared to be the best solution.
Out of all the options, Golden Pinky was the most tempting.
Monsters spawned infinitely, at least from what he'd tested, and if they could drop anything, that technically meant infinite resources.
The urge to see loot pile up sky-high was pushing Luke toward choosing that perk regardless.
He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking this much hurted his head.
The world outside didn't seem nearly as interesting as the train of thought rushing through his head. One detail resurfaced in his memory.
If he increased his intelligence stat, more system options would appear.
The screen had said exactly "Options are currently unavailable," not that they didn't exist, so they were just temporarily locked.
A fusion function would be useful to reduce katana clutter, since it would be beyond weird if his mom walked into his room and found a collection of swords inside his wardrobe.
Thoughts raced through Luke's mind as he wiped the dirt off his weapon with toilet paper and rubbing alcohol — he wasn't some rich swordsman wasting fancy cloth to clean a blade.
He drank the Alchemical Energy Drink and figured it wouldn't hurt to study a bit, if not for one problem: studying sucked.
He couldn't stand reading things on a screen when he could just play something or wait until night time to hunt goblins.
'I can farm a bunch of skill points killing monsters. It's more efficient to stack up as many as I can before diving into the boring part of the grind.'
He remembered the woman who saved him, the masked redhead. She used fire and even managed to keep him from getting burned.
However those special abilities worked, they seemed really powerful... maybe his system counted as one of those abilities, but from what he'd seen so far, nobody else could see them.
He wandered through the house without caring about the open doors, and his mom didn't even notice.
One time, he asked her what it would be like if everyone had some kind of floating virtual assistant. The worst part was the answer she gave:
"Those video games are rotting your brain. You need to go outside and get yourself a girlfriend who isn't crazy like you."
An incredibly lethal and convincing argument, humiliating him in the most beautiful way possible.
Luke changed clothes to avoid wearing the same outfit from the night before, when he'd slaughtered goblins until dawn.
As he reached into the closet, his fingers trembled upon touching the fabric.
"Hm?" He looked closely, a sort of involuntary twitch he was experiencing for the first time. "Is this a side effect from the Alchemical Energy Drink?"
It was made very clear in the item description that it had long-term side effects, Luke just didn't expect them to kick in so soon.
He waited for the tremor to pass and got dressed, ready for another long, painful training day.