Goblin archers were rare.

  Dennis didn’t know why exactly that was the case, after all it’s not like making a bow is harder than making a sword. But it was a fact, for every twenty goblins they encountered there was only one archer. That, in turn, implied that there was a rarity to goblins. Some were more common than others.

  They had a problem. A few problems.

  Apparently goblin wizards were a thing.

  Also, they were surrounded. That fucking fireball that almost turned him into a crisp? It came from behind.

  Their group missed the goblins that were hiding as they passed them, and the goblins were smart enough to not only coordinate and prepare an ambush, but also to lay waiting so they would be able to attack their group from all sides.

  A moment of silence stretched as people were trying to come to terms with what they saw. Then goblins started pouring.

  Dennis was frantically looking around, trying to take it all in and picture the battlefield in his head.

  They were on a straight road, with small houses on both sides and a few abandoned cars here and there. They had a total of seven small parties spread out more or less equally from each other, giving him a short straight path to reach most of them without trying to circle one large group. Two of those parties were ranged and experienced, while others were varying degrees of useless but had weapons. Two big groups of goblins surrounded them, blocking both sides of the road. He could see archers peeking from the windows on either side. A goblin with a staff was standing behind the group of goblins that snuck up on them.

  They were outnumbered at least twice.

  The wizard goblin grinned as he started waving his hands and muttering something. A shimmer appeared in front of him, slowly forming into a ball of fire.

  “Archers cover both sides!” Dennis yelled. “Spread out!”

  The fight started. Goblins rushed at them from both sides. Arrows flew and Dennis had to constantly move in a zigzag pattern and hope to not get hit. The wizard finished his casting and the fireball flew at Dennis somewhat slowly.

  Why the fuck was everyone focusing him?!

  Well, that was at least flattering. He jerked to the right, making the fireball miss and hit the ground behind him. People started engaging in fights everywhere.

  Everyone was overwhelmed.

  He was a bit lost on what to do because this was not going according to the plan at all. There weren’t some groups that struggled and needed his help. Everyone needed his help.

  Worse than that, he was heavily focused by both the archers and the wizard. If he gets near some group to help them then they would eat a fireball.

  Fuck.

  Okay.

  Dennis took a deep breath.

  Triage.

  He can’t help other groups while any place he goes to gets exploded. The wizard had to go first.

  With a sword in one hand and dagger in the other, he started creating his path of carnage, moving towards the wizard while killing everything in his way.

  At most, killing a single goblin took around two seconds. The creatures were as good as dead the moment they were in the reach of his sword. It could’ve been faster but he needed to hold back some of his moves in order to not fumble them.

  But moving in a straight line between the different groups? That was simple. It pushed his concentration to the limit but he could run in a straight line very fast.

  Casting a fireball took about six seconds on average.

  Dennis moved in bursts, developing a pattern. Run stupidly fast to one of the groups that were closer to the wizard. Swing his sword a few times to kill anything that he could reach. Burst away to an empty spot as he saw the wizard finish his casting so the fireball would not fly into some unfortunate party. Dodge the fireball, simultaneously moving towards the next group that was even more close to the wizard and kill one or two goblins there.

  It wasn’t fast enough or efficient enough, and people were dying. But it was working. He was slowly repositioning to the wizard while helping as much as he could without endangering people even more.

  The archer squads tried to take out the wizard, but both arrows and bullets got stopped in midair by some sort of translucent shield. They switched to trying to take out the enemy archers after that and it did help. At least Dennis had to dodge less arrows and that gave him a bit of a breathing room. The kid with the silenced gun was the mvp, clearly trying to cosplay the overpowered grandpa and almost single handedly suppressing the archers from one of the sides.

  In a display of unexpected bravery useless people weren’t useless as they tanked the goblins before those reached the archer groups, bleeding for the extra seconds of uninterrupted firing.

  Dennis dispatched a few goblins in the closest group to the wizard after his sixth burst, finally seeing a clear line between him and the creature. He tensed his muscles for the last one dash to finally reach the fucker, but the moment he did that it seemed that some goblin that he cut down before finally bled out.

  The world froze.

  Dennis couldn’t move, or breathe, or hear anything.

  He could see an arrow frozen in place nearby, aimed somewhere behind him, but even rotating his eyeballs was impossible.

  Being unable to breathe was a bit trippy, but he wasn’t suffocating at least.

  Level up.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Free points +6

  Skill selection available.

  Warning:

  The available pool of skills that the host is qualified for was severely (97.2%) limited due to the host possessing 0 mana.

  Generating backups with reassigned conceptual distribution.

  Warning:

  The available pool of skills contains a Sovereign-tier skill.

  Warning:

  Attempt to notify The Soul Devouring Sovereign failed.

  Select a skill:

  Uncanny Dodge.

  Passive. Part of The Untouchable.

  It’s not that hard to move away a little.

  Effect: Minor precognition and intuition for evading harmful effects.

  Heroic Dash.

  Passive. Unique.

  Just save everyone. Maybe apply a bit of triage.

  Effect: +1 Mind, +1 Dexterity while reaching an ally to save them.

  Sword Saint.

  Passive. Sovereign. The apex of The Sword Saint.

  You are actually good at fighting with that sword. Unprecedentedly good.

  Effect: The ability to cut anything. Doubles the effective power of all stats while wielding a sword.

  There can only be one Sovereign. Taking this skill will strip the current Sword Saint wielder from it, for they are not worthy.

  Goblin Slayer.

  Passive. Part of The Soul Devouring.

  You are some sort of goblin slaying prodigy.

  Effect: Minor restoration on killing a goblin.

  Selective Focus.

  Passive. Part of The One Mind.

  She’s fine.

  Effect: Minor boost to ignoring unnecessary distractions. Minor ability to edit one’s memories.

  Well…

  It was a good thing that time stopped.

  Dennis didn’t have this cool-ass time stop effect when he reached second level. It seemed that it was something reserved for the skill selection, probably to help sorry asses like him who leveled up in the middle of the fight.

  Actually, didn’t everyone level up during a fight? Fighting felt like a requirement for that sort of thing. Though it was possible to level up while passing someone bullets, so who knew. He would ask Travis later if the guy got experience for carrying him around.

  Will the time stay stopped as long as he didn’t pick the skill? Could he stay like this forever? It felt like he could abuse the shit out of it. Think of all the plans, create a new philosophy, or just daydream like this from now on and until infinity.

  He was technically immortal right now?

  Not like he would use it like that. Sounded boring as hell. He would totally knock that arrow off course though, now that he noticed it.

  He was trying to distract himself, wasn’t he?

  Dennis never was good with sports, and he never participated in any fight.

  That wasn’t really true. He played dodgeball in middle school, and was absolutely unbeatable. That was the extent of his physical activities. He just never cared.

  So apparently his talent with the sword was so great that the system wanted to denounce the current ‘Sword Saint’ and proclaim him to be the very best? That was… a thing. That was a thing that was happening.

  And what did it mean by ‘cut anything’? He could cut anything just fine. Well, anything that could be cut. Did that skill mean that he would be able to cut stuff like time or friendship? If that was the case, the thing was so overpowered that it didn’t make sense. Though he got a feeling that the ‘sovereign’ business was a big enough deal that maybe it was that overpowered.

  It was just… a lot. He wasn’t sure how to process it. There were a lot of implications in the skill, and in all of the skills honestly. This whole skill selection was reeking with implications.

  Let’s at least look at the other skills, yes?

  They were all passive and didn’t cost mana. It kind of made sense in a way that he wasn’t qualified for the skills that did, and so he wasn’t offered any of them. But weren’t passive skills just better? Did he cheat the system by having a big fat zero in his Soul stat somehow?

  Not having a soul devouring something notified about him was nice, though the guy would probably choke on Dennis, funnily enough.

  Let’s go over the skills before he made any hasty saint-angering decisions, yes?

  Selective Focus was dogshit and Dennis didn’t know why it was offered. All of the skills were something that he was doing and providing him a way to do it better, but… ignoring unnecessary distractions? Memory editing? The skill was useless, dogshit, and unnecessary distracting. Skip.

  Uncanny Dodge. He was good at dodging so the skill would make him better at it. Precognition was very fucking tasty, especially since a good half of speedsters got killed by surprise attacks. Danger sense on a speedster was a combination so overpowered that he couldn’t even remember any speedsters that had it. But it wouldn’t make him faster, or give him more endurance, and didn’t fit his theme. It was a bit ninja-ish. A good and smart selection for someone who wanted to build properly and cover the weaknesses. Very good ability for someone who goes for speed and can be one tapped the moment their luck runs out.

  Let’s put a pin on that. Next.

  And really, what was the deal with those ‘The Untouchable’ or ‘The One Mind’ things? Were they like skill trees? Skill evolutions? Sword Saint was apparently the apex, so were there skills that came before it? Or were a part of it? Like, maybe the skills combined into one big apex skill, so the Sword Saint was a passionate combination of Sword Monk and Sword Priestess.

  Goblin Slayer. This one sounded really useful but a bit specific. And the flavor text was very fucking concerning because he distinctly remembered thinking literally that about himself. What were the chances that he randomly quoted a part of the description of a skill in some alien database? It felt improbable. Something was shifty there. Actually, all of the flavor texts were a bit too flavorful, and some didn’t even make any sense. Were they generated by a stupid AI?

  Still, not bad for speedstery stuff. He was very fucking tired of being tired. And if those tags were something like a skill tree then the skill would maybe evolve into the soul devouring? This thing really needed a manual.

  Heroic Dash. The only one that had ‘unique’ tag instead of a vague flowery name besides it. Unique sounded cool, but it might also mean dogshit or no skill trees for you. The effect was nice and simple, get two stats for the price of one under a very specific condition. The fact that skills could be leveled up with stat points meant that the thing could scale. He really liked the name and the feel of it. A strong option.

  Well, it would’ve been a strong option but…

  Sword Saint. He would need to be an idiot to not take it. Even ignoring the vague description and the fact that the skill desperately needed better explanation, doubling the power of all stats? Wasn’t that the same as doubling all stats? That’s about seven levels worth of stat points, now. If the thing scales with levels… and it probably does… just what the actual fuck was that skill?

  His Dexterity would be 40. That was absurd.

  So…