Evil Avalon - Volume 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: You Can’t Even Handle Slimes?

With great reluctance, I left Oomiya and Nitta to embark on my first visit to the second floor.

“Okay, time to hunt some goblins,” I said.

Goblins were green-skinned level 2 monsters with ugly faces that stood between a hundred to one hundred and twenty centimeters tall. Their bodies were weak, but they were clever and liked to trick the adventurers they found. Instead of attacking immediately, they clung to walls and waited for their prey to turn the corner. They’d then jump out in a group and assault their prey, making them far more dangerous than the slimes on the first floor. Fortunately, they were no more threatening than a child. If one faced a goblin alone, they wouldn’t pose much of a challenge as long as you kept an eye on their club.

On rare occasions, a goblin chief would spawn. This monster sometimes wielded metal weapons that required caution. However, they weren’t much more powerful than ordinary goblins, if anything. It was good to encounter one because they were level 3 monsters, so they were worth more experience points.

Adventurers filled the main street connecting the second and third floors, like the street on the floor above. I veered off and headed toward the goblin room, where they spawned at a higher rate. The goblins killed here would respawn quicker than in other areas, and rare encounters* with goblin chiefs were more likely.

*TIPS: Rare encounters happen each time a monster respawns. There is a fixed probability that a different monster will spawn in its place. Usually, this will be a rarer monster than the original.

“There’s nobody here either?” I said. “Well, more for me.”

I peeked inside the goblin room and saw two babbling at each other, and I wondered if they spoke an actual language. After monitoring the situation for a while, a goblin happened to pass close by, so I smacked it from behind with my spiked club.

“Back of the head!” I shouted.

After that blow, the goblin sank to the ground and evaporated, leaving behind a magic gem.

That works well, I thought. Taking a hit to that part of the head would down most normal humans.

The remaining goblin let out a piercing shriek, whether in surprise or anger, I didn’t know, and glared at me menacingly, brandishing its club.

“If you’re gonna stay there, I’ll come to you!”

I had the upper hand in reach and strength, so I brought my club down fiercely toward my target. The goblin held its club sideways above its head and blocked my attack. It was putting up a good fight!

“You forgot to guard your stomach, though!”

I drove my knee into the goblin’s belly, sending it sprawling onto the floor. Acting at once to my advantage, I rushed toward my foe and swung my club down again. It didn’t stand a chance this time and turned into a magic gem.

“Phew,” I said. “Killing humanoid monsters is a bit of a downer compared to slimes. I’m glad their corpses disappear, or it’d be much worse.”

Because goblins looked somewhat like people, it felt wrong to kill them. Said feeling disappeared when getting a good look at their faces, which were not like ours.

The magic gems they’d dropped would be worth less than a hundred yen each. That was probably the correct value for a monster that the average person with a day or two’s experience in the dungeon could track down and beat. I needed to keep slaying them, mainly for experience points. The money was just the icing on the cake.

Monsters would generally be defenseless for the first two or three seconds after they spawned from the black mist, which gave adventurers an advantage if they could land an attack in that time. Being somewhere like the slime room or goblin room, where monsters spawned in one specific place at specific intervals, was essential. Three goblins would respawn in the goblin room ten minutes after being slain, which was a nice pace for solo hunting.

There were only a handful of areas like this on each floor. In DEC I could never get one of them all to myself because they would be too popular among players wanting to level up. But nobody was around here in this world. People either didn’t know about it or didn’t care to use it. The room was all mine!

It surprised me how quickly I’d gotten used to Piggy’s weight and lack of strength. I felt bizarre at first, but over just a few days, I understood how to take care of this body, like when it needed a break and how to move around without losing balance.

My figure wasn’t fit for combat. I could counteract the sluggishness caused by my obesity with the physical enhancements gained through leveling up. But fights would only get tougher, so I’d need to work on my energy conservation. Otherwise, I wouldn’t make it halfway through a drawn-out skirmish without running out of steam, which would be fatal. It might be best to increase my workout load, but I’d have to monitor my muscle aches to not overdo it. That was the easy part; dieting was difficult.

After that, I continued slaying goblins, and after I’d felled my fifth foe—

“Ooh, look at that. This one’s got a metal weapon! Is this my first goblin chief?”

I approached the newly spawned enemy planning to hit it on the back of its head while it remained motionless. Chiefs were vulnerable for the first few seconds after spawning like other monsters. Unfortunately, this one wore a helmet.

So, I switched plans and swung my club at the shoulder of the arm it carried its weapon with.

“Hngyaagaga!” The goblin chief screeched in agony and dropped its weapon.

As the goblin overcame its pain, it clutched at the ground where its weapon lay, but I was one step ahead. I plunged my mace into its other arm and struck the goblin in its side, sending it flying. The monster vanished, leaving behind a magic gem and a rusty shortsword that clattered to the ground.

The shortsword looked ordinary, but it was impossible to tell it wasn’t a magic item without appraising it. I could always pay for an appraisal, but I wanted to get the Basic Appraisal skill to cut down on costs.

“Now that I know they sometimes spawn with helmets,” I said, “I’ll have to come up with an alternative to my back-of-the-head approach for first strikes.”

I continued my raid until dinnertime but didn’t level up, so I was still level 3. At that point, I called it a day rather than push my body past its limits. I’d picked up three beaten-up weapons as loot, but I had no use for them except to sell them for scrap and get some pocket money.

***

The next school day was the start of regular classes. I entered the day confident that my existing high school education would make this a walk in the park. But the assignments were much more challenging than I’d expected from a first-year curriculum. This was truly an elite school.

After homeroom had ended and school was out, my classmates shoved their textbooks into their bags, found their friends, and began planning their dungeon raids.

I’d seen Akagi chatting with Pinky all day, and I wondered whether he was putting as much effort into his raids as he was into flirting. If he couldn’t reach level 10 by the end of the month, he’d have a tough time fighting Kariya. He seemed confident, so maybe he had a trick up his sleeve.

I packed my bag and headed to the door while picturing how my goblin fights would go, but someone called me out with a clear, high, and dignified voice, stopping me.

“Excuse me.”

I turned around to find my fiancée and childhood friend scowling at me with her arms crossed. Kaoru hadn’t used my name, but she never did when we were at school.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I think it’s about time you get back to training.”

Training? I rummaged through Piggy’s memories to check whether I’d arranged to train with Kaoru, but nothing turned up. I did find memories of the two of us going outside to do warm-ups. Perhaps that was what she meant.

But I’d planned to go straight to the dungeon for a solo raid, just like every other day. My legs would get enough exercise on the journey through the dungeon, and I didn’t want the two of us to raid together. Teaming up on weak foes like goblins was inefficient.

I needed to phrase my refusal carefully in case she was genuinely concerned about my well-being.

“No, I think I’m fine. I’m doing some training by myself,” I said.

“Like what?” asked Kaoru, her pretty eyebrows knitting in skepticism.

Not filled with confidence, is she? Then, I responded, “Like, uh, walking? I’ve been walking inside the dungeon over the past few days.”

“You can’t even handle slimes, but you ‘walk around the dungeon’?”

Oof. Her concern for my well-being made more sense when I remembered the rumors about me and the slimes, especially with all the years we’d spent together growing up.

“I was feeling off that day... I’m keeping a better watch on my health now though, and it won’t happen again.”

Although keeping a better watch on my health just meant dieting, that actually increased my risk in the dungeon because my lower calorie intake made me suffer dizzy spells. Still, I should be all right as long as I held back on activating stupidly advanced skills.

“I see,” she said, not showing whether she believed me. So she turned away from me and returned to her desk.

She was guaranteed to become an excellent adventurer while she stuck with Akagi’s party. That would come with many nasty game events, but I wished her the best of luck.

***

Over the next few days I slew dozens of goblins and goblin chiefs, but my level didn’t budge from three. I’d cut down on my time in the dungeon to focus on my diet and exercise. The third floor had fights that would get tough, and I needed to get my body in good condition. Even the bulletin board by the entrance to the Adventurers’ Guild reported several fatalities on the third floor each month. This place was where the real raiding began.

I needed to ensure my body was agile enough to handle the challenge because I’d be going alone, and waiting until I reached level 4 before heading down sounded safest. Going solo was dangerous because there was nobody around to help you, but one could obtain more experience points. Plus, my game knowledge gave me the advantage of monopolizing all the best monsters and hunting spots.

The risks inside the dungeon weren’t all I had to worry about. I also had to make sure that nobody found out that I had knowledge of the game. This world was more savage than my previous one, and there was no telling what might happen here. An endless amount of countries and organizations were willing to abduct people to get their hands on insights into the dungeon. The only people I could trust with my game knowledge were my family; they were the only ones I was sure wouldn’t betray me. My current plan for raiding the dungeon was to get as deep as possible solo while taking care not to leak any information.

To put that plan into action, I was in the goblin room. After an hour of hunting goblins and exploiting their respawn vulnerability, I had reached level 4.

I took a second to gauge my fatigue levels, then cast Minor Restoration on myself and took a short break. Using Manual Activation to cast Minor Restoration alleviated muscle aches and fatigue. It wasn’t the most efficient use of mana, but I had no other helpful skills. That wasn’t a problem as long as I monitored my remaining mana.

Now that I was level 4, the level 2 enemies on the second floor would be worth far fewer experience points and hardly worth the effort. I was probably best off packing up and heading to the third floor. I’d already rented out a metal mace to use against the orcs there. The mace weighed a hefty five kilograms, but my current stats would be high enough to swing it around with little effort.

After level 4, it would become hard to level up. There were two reasons for that issue: the number of experience points required to level up shot up massively, and the enemies from the third floor were tougher. For example, the orcs that spawned on the third floor were as strong as grown adults and attacked with clubs, making them dangerous to face. Goblin mages, on the other hand, used the long-distance Fire Arrow skill. Then there were the fearsome orc chiefs, superior versions of orcs that were almost undefeatable one-on-one if you were level 3 or below.

You could reduce the risks posed by orc chiefs by teaming up with other adventurers, which made the fight relatively simple. The downside was you’d have to share the experience points with your teammates. One would also need to patrol the areas where monsters spawned, searching for your prey. It appeared logical to head to an even deeper floor and fight the monsters there, who’d be worth even more experience points. But those enemies would be stronger and riskier to fight.

Because of this, most ordinary adventurers like my father never got any higher than level 4. I was no average adventurer, though. My game knowledge gave me a few tricks I could use to level up faster.

“Okay then. Time to hunt some orcs,” I said.

I rose and collected my gear to set off to the next floor.

***

The landing at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor had some cafés and food stalls. I purchased a pack of six takoyaki for seven hundred yen and paused to eat my snack and catch my breath.

Ugh, I thought. I won’t be coming here again. The dough was undercooked, with too little octopus inside.

I looked at the adventurers milling around and shopping, then noticed many wearing black leather armor. Seeing that, I figured I should pick up some armor soon.

I threw away the container the takoyaki had come in and headed for the orc room.

This floor was also busy, so I didn’t have to face that many monsters as I walked down the main street. After I turned off the road at the fork leading to the orc room, I became more vigilant. Three monsters should spawn inside the orc room, if I recalled correctly.

The expected monsters waited there when I reached the room and peeked inside. While they appeared like humans, their necks were large and thick, and their humped backs bulged with muscles. There’d be no mistaking them for people if you got up close since they had piglike snouts and would roar, “Ooh gaaar!”

I need to be careful how I start this battle, I thought.

Having leveled up a bit and able to swing a metal mace around, I could just overcome the three orcs with brute force. But doing that risked getting surrounded and wailed by all three if I made a mistake. Thankfully, I had bought a stun grenade and had brought it with me. It had set me back five thousand yen at the shop in the Adventurers’ Guild, but the payoff I’d get from farming orcs all day would give me a good return on that investment. It was a necessary expenditure.

Stun grenades in my old world usually produced a simultaneous burst of light and sound. The ones in this world only displayed light because loud noises could attract nearby monsters inside the dungeon. I’d spent plenty of time the night before reading the instruction manual, so I was confident I knew how to use it.

With that, I lobbed the grenade in. A faint hiss escaped the canister, and a blinding flash of light enveloped the orc room. “Ooh gaaar! Ooh gaar!” they all roared. Before they could regain their sight, I crept up to each of them and landed attacks on their heads. Killing all the orcs would make them respawn together. As such, I kept two of them disabled for a while before dispatching them, ensuring a sufficient time lag between them.

I picked up the magic gems they’d left behind and said, “What do I get for these? I think it’s two hundred yen a piece.”

Using my raiding strategy in a party would net us less money than a standard part-time job. Yet the earnings for using my strategy solo would be high enough to justify the additional risks.

***

After a while, my timer beeped, alerting me that thirty seconds remained before the first orc respawned. Right on cue, a black mist appeared.

I scrambled for my weapon, hurried over while it was still open, and attacked its weak spot. The orc’s neck was so thick that my well-aimed first attack didn’t bring it down, though it stunned the monster and knocked it off-balance for a while. During that time, I launched a barrage of strikes to finish the job.

The orc slaying continued with no difficulty, then a goblin spawned. It carried a staff, indicating it was a goblin mage. These mages could pose a threat when in a group due to their Fire Arrow skill, but they weren’t much of a challenge individually. I could kill it in one hit while they were immobile because they had the same HP as second-floor goblins, making them a bonus monster for me.

“Oh yeah! Level 4 monsters have got nothing on me! Level 5, here we come!”

So I began humming as I picked up the goblin’s magic gem, which looked bigger than the one the orcs dropped. I continued hunting, slaying another twenty orcs with a bright smile, slotting in the occasional break. Then, I had my first random encounter with an orc chief.

Just as I’d been doing, I closed in on the monster to get a clear shot at its head, but this orc was wearing both a helmet and shoulder pads, so a strike there wouldn’t do much damage. I immediately switched my target to the arm holding its massive club and put all my strength into the blow.

I got in three more strikes while it roared, yet the orc chief stood unfazed. The look in its eyes told me that the fight wasn’t over yet. There was a brief standoff, but I knew the monster was on its last legs, so I rushed in and swung my mace up from below.

“Hurry up and give me your gem you... What?!”

Despite its weakened state, the orc dodged my blow with a backstep. With the last of its strength, it swung its mace at my side, but the damage I dealt made its movements more predictable.

I crouched out of the path of the blow, and as I stood up, I swung my mace at the orc’s crotch.

“Ooh...gaaar?”

Judging by the feel of the impact, the orc was a male. I cringed in sympathetic pain at the low blow I’d struck against my orc brother. Still, the ends justified the means.

The orc chief clutched at its crotch, sank to its knees, and turned into a magic gem.

“He was quite tough,” I remarked.

I wondered how long it would’ve taken to defeat him if I hadn’t attacked while he wasn’t moving. If a goblin mage spawned during an encounter like that, I’d have a grueling fight. I decided that if any future fight against an orc chief started to take too long, I’d draw it away from the orc room and continue elsewhere. Fortunately, orcs were slow monsters, so I’d have no trouble running away.

Apparently, adventurers often fled from orc chiefs, which made trains* a typical spectacle on this floor. Of course, creating a train wouldn’t make you very popular with other adventurers.

*TIPS: The word “train” usually refers to locomotives. In gaming, it pertains to several monsters chasing fleeing players. Creating trains is frowned upon because if the player leading the train dies, the monsters in tow will attack other nearby players.

My low strength stat and weapon were most likely why I couldn’t one-shot the chief while it was stationary.

A new weapon purchased one day would be as good as scrap the next day when I leveled up. It would be best to try out various weapons using the school’s rental facility at a lower level. One option I had was to ditch the mace and switch to a sword, giving me a wider range of stabbing attacks. Maces dealt little damage to body parts protected by armor. I’d only chosen a mace in the first place because I’d started with a bat, so I decided to try a sword the following day.

I looked down at where the orc chief had fallen and saw a magic gem and shoulder pads lying on the ground. I excitedly grabbed the pads and equipped them. At once, they resized to fit my body, which meant they were a magic item.

Shit, I thought. It would be bad news if these turned out to be a cursed debuff item that I couldn’t take off! I’d look like a reject turning up to school wearing these pads!

I recalled that the Adventurers’ Guild charged ten thousand yen to remove curses. Next time, I wouldn’t equip items without inspecting them first. Lesson learned.

Though I considered taking the pads to the guild and paying their ten thousand yen fee to appraise them, I decided against it. Once I reached job level 7 in my Newbie job, I could learn the Basic Appraisal skill and not waste money. High schoolers couldn’t afford to make impulse purchases!

At job level 5, I’d also unlock the ability to switch to one of the basic jobs: Fighter, Caster, or Thief. Switching at that point would prevent me from ever learning the Newbie skills I desperately wanted, so I would continue to max out my Newbie job level.

I placed the shoulder pads in a corner, planning to figure out what effect they had later, and kept hunting orcs until nighttime.

No other orc chiefs spawned while I was there.

***

“Hey, bro, welcome back!”

As I walked through the door, my little sister diligently took my rucksack and carried my belongings. That was odd... Had she always been so service-minded? Or was she after something?

“Hi, Kano,” I answered.

“This came from the dungeon!” she chirped. “Is it a drop item?”

The shoulder pads were poking out from my rucksack and had clearly caught her interest.

“Yeah,” I replied. “An orc chief dropped it.”

“What?! You’re raiding the third floor already?! Who’s in your party? What role are you?”

Whoa. Take a deep breath and ask one question at a time, I thought.

I collapsed into one of the living room chairs and stretched my legs. My muscles were a little tense from my hours of raiding. At level 4, the physical enhancements made their presence known, but my body was still weak.

“I’m raiding by myself,” I said.

“What?! You’re going solo? Oh, so you don’t have any friends...?”

“Hey, I do!” I exclaimed. Get that look of pity off your face! I have friends! A pair of cute girls invited me to their party...out of charity, but still.

“But aren’t there orcs on the third floor?” asked Kano. “Dad says it’s dangerous.”

Hunting orcs before level 4 would be challenging to do alone. Even at level 4, it could get dangerous if you weren’t exploiting their immobility after spawning or backstabbing* them.

*TIPS: Backstabbing is a technique to instantly kill an enemy by stabbing them from behind.

“I know a trick,” I said, “and an even better one we could try out together when you come with me.”

There was a sweet spot for power leveling on the fifth floor, as long as the technique from the game still worked in this world.

“Really?” asked Kano. “I dunno, fighting orcs seems kinda scary.”

“Soutaaa,” my mother called. “Get your bath out of the way before dinner’s ready.”

“Will do!” I replied.

I planned to have a nice, long rest tonight and prepare for the next day’s raid.

***

“Ding! Level 5! And I got Basic Appraisal at the same time!”

The following day, I returned to the dungeon and resumed hunting orcs. When I was about to wrap things up, I was surprised I finally hit level 5. I initially thought it might take a few days, but a few goblin mages had spawned and gave me extra experience points. Changing my weapon to a sword also reduced the time to kill each orc and had let me hunt stray orcs outside the room. I hadn’t faced more orc chiefs since that first tough fight, so their spawn probability must’ve been low.

Learning Basic Appraisal meant that my Newbie job level had risen to level 7. Job leveling was easier than standard leveling. I quickly put my new skill to use by appraising the shoulder pads and a staff a goblin mage had dropped.

“Let’s see...” I said. “The shoulder pads are called ‘Shoulder Pads of Vitality.’ They give a plus two to defense and plus five to HP.”

I only had seven HP the last time I checked, so this armor was perfect for me because it was a flat bonus rather than percentage-based.

“How about the staff? Oh, this one’s a magic item too. ‘Staff of Smoldering Scrapwood’? Increases Fire Arrow’s power by one percent, decreases HP by eighty percent... Not a keeper.”

The staff had seemed flimsy when I’d first seen it anyway. One of the two items had been good, at least.

Next, I appraised the weird Glutton skill Piggy had started with. I’d expected that it would make me hungry quicker. A worrying sequence of text popped up in front of me.

“‘HP and vitality stat increase to a greater extent at each new level... Increased appetite... Minus thirty percent to strength, minus fifty to agility...’ And the last entry is just a bunch of question marks. I guess I can’t appraise that bit yet.”

There was much more to this skill than I’d bargained for. I’d only expected there to be one or two status effects. The bit about my appetite had come as no surprise, but the rest...

The first effect listed was about a bonus to leveling-up stat increases. HP kept you alive, and vitality influenced your ability to defend yourself and your general health. Both were decidedly essential stats in a place like the dungeon where your life was on the line. I wasn’t sure how big the bonus was, but influencing the stat increases gained at each level was incredible.

At the other end of the spectrum were the thirty percent and fifty percent debuffs to strength and agility, which were dire. When I first possessed this body, it had surprised me how weak it was and how sluggish my movements were. I hadn’t expected these fat arms and legs to move mountains, but the extent of my weakness was unusual. Even so, I put it all down to my obesity and a lack of exercise. However, I now knew that no amount of weight loss or exercise would rid me of my handicap unless I erased this skill that was reducing my stats.

I wasn’t having much trouble in fights now that I’d leveled up some. Although I had a lowered strength stat, I could launch decent enough attacks with my new sword. I was also fast enough to outrun orcs despite my reduced agility. What I feared, though, was that a debuff this large might impact my health.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t examine the last effect hidden behind three question marks. If Basic Appraisal couldn’t appraise it, then it had to be an effect on par with skills from advanced jobs or higher. I prayed with all my heart that it was beneficial and not a debuff.

Contingent on the exact size of the bonus to HP and vitality and the nature of the hidden effect, the skill’s downsides outweighed its upsides on balance. I might keep the Glutton skill for the leveling-up status bump when playing the game because it wouldn’t matter if my character died. But that was far too great a risk to take in real life.

“I wish I at least knew what was behind those question marks... Though, I really don’t want to order an appraisal at the guild.”

Certain items and better skills could appraise skills in greater detail, but I had none yet. To determine what those question marks represented, I’d have to use the appraisal device at the Adventurers’ Guild to measure my stats and update my terminal profile. But that information would become part of the school’s database, and any student could then check my stats and level on their terminal.

These details being out there wasn’t ideal because sticking out for being high-level would unleash a heap of awful game events. If the game’s main quest was anything to go by, it would anger the proud students of the higher classes, second and third-year students, and even some ordinary adventurers. I preferred to keep a lid on the information and avoid the hassle altogether.

That said, there was the odd place that would let me appraise my skills without updating the database.

One such place was a shop players had called “Granny’s Goods,” isolated in a hidden area on the dungeon’s tenth floor. It was somewhere I was dying to visit since it sold items for appraisal and even a device that allowed adventurers to change their current job. I’d looked for references to Granny’s Goods in the guild library but hadn’t found any. It should still exist in the dungeon if everything from the game was true, so why was there no record of it? I couldn’t answer that at this point.

At any rate, I was stuck with the Glutton skill until I could appraise it at Granny’s Goods. It was physically impossible to erase it. I couldn’t overwrite it with a new skill until I changed jobs and got access to new skills. So I’d have to put up with this weird skill for the time being.

I sighed and said, “It’s much more than I’d expected, for better or worse. I’ll have to keep at it and push down to the tenth floor, whether I want to keep it or not.”

Nevertheless, I had three main objectives. First, I had to continue my diet and exercise regimen to reach one hundred kilograms or below. I also needed to level up at least to level 10 to reach Granny’s Goods safely. The last thing I had to do was buy an appraisal item and use it on my stats and the Glutton skill.

It would be nice if I could proudly show off how much of a beast I was. But I wanted to get to the stage where I was powerful enough to protect myself from other high-level adventurers before I started showing off.

High-level adventurers in this world were around the level 30 range, so I had to wait until I was that strong... No, actually. In that case, any enemies I had could still target my family instead of going for me directly. I’d have to help them all level up.

After all, I had promised Piggy I would keep his family safe no matter what.