While I was collecting daggers and waiting for Saresh to heal, I peppered him with questions about Goblin phrases that Rabbit had told me to ask. By the time Saresh recovered, he had drunk the entire potion, returned the vial to me, and I had stored all the daggers. Additionally, Rabbit had a pretty decent understanding of Goblin.

  Saresh was initially surprised when I spoke to him in Goblin, but once I explained that it was an Ability, his astonishment diminished.

  I traded some pieces of armor from the dead soldier. It wasn’t much because his equipment was even more damaged than mine. It seemed as though someone had a terrible aim with a bow and arrow and hit everywhere. The fall on the floor didn’t help. Nonetheless, this body gave me a new sword, some silver, and a ring I had been debating about putting on. When I equipped it, I got a pleasant surprise.

  You have equipped Minor Ring of a leader. Your Charisma increases when leading.

  You have gained level 2 in Analysis.

  “Hoho, a full level for just putting on a ring,” I celebrated.

  “I doubt that. I bet it was the last little bit to move you over the hump,” Rabbit responded. “I mean, you have been using it the whole time. Every injury you got gave you prompts that I dismissed. It seemed like your Analysis helped stop the fear status on the Rokus. I bet that was the main factor in increasing the level of the skill.”

  “Wait. What prompts?” I asked.

  “You know, like ‘142 points of blunt damage’ when you impacted the wall. Nothing helpful,” Rabbit replied. Seeing as I had a technology called nerve endings, I thought he was right, and I didn’t need to look into the details. I mean, what was the point of knowing a number damage when I could feel when my lungs were being crushed.

  I decided to check my other statuses after the battle.

  Experience

  One level 29 Human. You have gained 73,080 experience points.

  One level 28 Human. You have gained 21,924 experience points.

  One level 27 Human. You have gained 19,656 experience points.

  One level 24 Human. You have gained 13,800 experience points.

  Congratulations, you have leveled up! As a Grey Elf, you received 1 ability point in Agility, 1 in Intelligence, 2 in Constitution, and an additional 2 points to distribute each level in any category. You have reached levels 26 and 27 and received a total of 4 freely distributable ability points.

  “I’m surprised I received experience from soldiers killed above,” I said.

  “Well, it’s because of your actions that those people died. I don’t think it’s always a one-to-one correlation. Remember, you didn’t get any experience when fighting the hippo. That was because you didn’t make a difference in the fight. Here, your actions generated the battle and the deaths, even if you weren’t killing the people or were aligned with the monster that was attacking. But as you can tell, there is a limit to it.”

  Rabbit was referring to the fact that there were a whole lot more deaths above that for which I didn’t get credit. I had only gotten credit for three additional deaths than the one I killed down here. I guessed those were the soldiers that I ran directly through while getting away from the beast. Once the Rokus had lost line of sight of me, it wasn’t my actions that were causing the deaths but rather the beast’s rage at being attacked.

  “Well, I am surprised I received two whole levels from those deaths, while the giant spider gave me five levels. This fight was child’s play compared to that battle,” I said smugly like I was the brilliant tactician who made it happen.

  “Even if that were true,” Rabbit said with derision, “you aren’t taking into account all the factors. You didn’t use Soul Absorption when the spider died. That severely limited the amount of experience you received. If you look back, the other three that you didn’t fight gave you less experience in total than the one you used your Soul Absorption on. Additionally, that spider should give good resources if you could harvest it.”

  I guessed I wasn’t looking at it holistically. It was not like in a game where you could find an easy enemy and farm them for effortless experience. There was a balance based not only on experience but also on the challenge and resources provided.

  “Lastly,” Rabbit continued, “you barely made the second level here. It’s not like you have two solid levels. Just because there is a change in level doesn’t mean that there was a meaningful increase in experience.”

  Done with the conversation, I decided to redirect Rabbit. “Climbing up isn’t going to be easy. The holes are in the middle and have difficult places to latch onto. Do you think if I drop my four distributable points into Strength or Agility, I can hop out of here?”

  “You don’t want to go up there. It will either be the Union soldiers or the Rokus you’ll be dealing with. Probably both, and I doubt you would survive against any of those. It’s best to find another exit out of this place. Maybe we can find some more holes somewhere else, and we can climb out of those.”

  Since the hole in the ceiling wasn’t a viable option for me, we started walking down the only way we could go. It was through a chain of narrow passages that forced us to squeeze through tight spaces. Saresh had an easier time than I did since I had disarmed him for safety reasons.

  Since I only had four ability points, I didn’t spend much time debating before squeezing through the cave. While I still wanted to invest in magic, I needed to prioritize survival. Plus, Intelligence was increasing with each level, even if I didn’t do anything. I had just reinforced my physical weaknesses before fleeing from the Rokus, and putting more points into that wouldn’t make much difference.

  Instead, I dropped all four into Charisma since it was falling behind the rest. I wouldn’t have considered it with my friends around, but now that I was alone, I was cautious. I had a new companion I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and if I were caught, fighting my way out seemed unlikely.

  After distributing the points, my character sheet was updated to this:

  Stats

  Max Health: 620

  Max Mana:  360

  Attributes

  Strength:   38

  Perception:  10

  Constitution: 62

  Charisma:  24

  Intelligence:  36

  Wisdom:   10

  Agility:    46

  I pulled up my remaining prompts:

  You have developed a mortal enemy. The hate this enemy has is so great that it will attack you on sight, even if it means its own death.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  You have gained levels 2 through 3 in Archery.

  “Well, that is unexpected,” I remarked.

  “About the fact that you shoot arrows as straight as Elton John or the fact that someone else wants to kill you?” Rabbit questioned.

  “The fact that I can’t hit a target to save my life, yet the skill went up.” I put my hand through my hair, ignoring his other comments.

  “Well, your actions in archery are what caused these deaths. You have to learn it somehow.”

  “I mean, every movie I’ve watched and every book I have read made archery seem so easy,” I complained.

  “That’s laughable. If it were easy, no one would have used swords in ancient times. They would’ve stuck to bows, like we use guns today. But no. Even monkeys use clubs to beat each other. Do you think that’ll get rid of the fleas? You know, you can pick off those pests instead of just smacking each other…” As Rabbit continued to drone on about how primitive and stupid Humans were, I tuned him out as I kept moving through the corridor for some time.

  Eventually, the passage opened up into an enormous cavern, dominated by a gaping hole that vanished into darkness with no visible end. Rabbit should have been done with his ranting by now, but he was still going on about fleas being high in protein, so I tuned him right back out again.

  Looking down, the depth of the hole seemed unfathomable. The circular pit was spanned by bridges arranged in a spiraling pattern, reminiscent of a colossal, twisted staircase. Each causeway had openings at both ends, suggesting every bridge had an entrance and exit. We stood atop the cave’s highest point, looking down on a dizzying spectacle. Where we stood was part of nature, slowly shaped by the erosion of time. But the bridges were something else. Manmade? No better than that.

  “What now?” Saresh said, following my lead. I was still in awe before I realized our objective was to leave. Looking around, I realized we were at the end of where we could go.

  “We could jump,” I suggested, looking down. As it was a spiral, the first bridge wasn’t directly below where we were, but further to the left. If we jumped all the way down to the one we could reach, I doubt we would die, but we wouldn’t be walking away from the fall anytime soon, even with my magically enhanced body.

  “Yeah, but I think we could only jump once,” Saresh replied with a bit of dark humor in his voice.

  I put my hand in my bag and summoned a rope. “Can you hold me while I swing?”

  Saresh grabbed the rope and said, “I haven’t put much into Strength. Should I go first?”

  “Your call, but it might be harder if I come down after you,” I replied.

  Rabbit and I discussed for a while, but there were no good options. Basically, we both had to place our trust in each other. Well, that and the rope. If not, neither of us would be getting to that platform.

  After explaining the plan to Saresh, he thought it was a crazy idea as well. We had to tie the ropes at just the right length, ensuring they reached the ledge we needed. The tension had to be taut enough to support our weight, yet loose enough that I could climb down without slipping. The slightest misstep could be catastrophic, potentially causing one of us to fall and pull the other down with him.

  As I lowered Saresh down to the walkway, I was amazed by how effortlessly it was done. My strength had undoubtedly increased because of my enhanced attributes, allowing me to lift him with ease. In fact, I could pull him up to my level if I wished to. The only difficult spot was at the beginning when he was close to me, and his resistance was affecting my Strength.

  Upon safely landing on the ledge, I was half expecting him to take the rope off and run. He could have done so, and there would be nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t like I was good enough at aiming the bow to hit him.

  I watched him carefully, observing what he would do next. I knew I couldn’t trust him completely yet, so I purposely left the rope with slack, giving him the opportunity to flee. This would leave me stuck up here if he did run. But I had to take the risk. It was the only way to gauge his true intentions and see if I could trust him. Not only was this a better test than when I was over an endless cave, but I was hoping to gain an ally.

  Instead of running, Saresh positioned himself at a safer distance, prepared to assist me if I fell. Slowly, I put my bottom half out over the void and began climbing down the side of the cavern wall, cautiously lowering myself into the vertical drop. I never had a big fear of heights in this life or the other one, but the sight of the endless abyss below us, with nothing but platforms separating me from certain death, made my stomach clench and my mind reel with a sense of vertigo. Despite the intense feeling of falling, I managed to stay focused and keep my wits about me.

  As I held my body up, holding on for dear life, I frantically searched for a foothold on the wall. It took agonizingly long, but eventually, I found a slight protrusion and carefully shifted my weight onto it. However, as I descended further and examined the wall more closely, my heart sank. The walls were smooth, too smooth, as if they were flat at one point, but over time, they either grew minor imperfections or hollowed out those imperfections into an even surface. That meant it was unstable, to put it mildly.

  I was able to make it down four more footholds before I came to a point where there was nowhere else to go. The next one was two lengths of my body away, according to Rabbit, and there was zero chance of reaching it while holding on. I was deciding how much damage I would get from falling onto the bridge when I started to hear noises. It was a combination of shouting and footsteps that kept getting louder.

  I glanced down to see what was going on and saw that Saresh was struggling with the rope that secured us together. Despite his efforts to untie it, the knots held firm, as they were designed to keep us safe in case of a fall. Without a weapon, he had no way to cut the rope off himself. As the noises grew louder, Saresh abandoned his attempt and flattened himself against the ground, hoping to avoid detection.

  The sound of approaching steps grew louder. A bead of sweat dripped down my forehead. If the people were on Saresh’s walkway or the higher ones, we would be easily seen. If they were on the lower ones, we had to pray they wouldn’t look up as they ran across. The weight of our situation bore down on me as we waited for the unknown to reveal itself.

  Then, two pathways below Saresh, a Human in Union garb emerged, catching his breath. He made it across the bridge and into the next tunnel before the Goblins followed. It was clear that he was much faster than they were. This was my first view of Goblins from even far away, and they looked similar to what I was expecting in certain ways.

  They were short, green, and small of frame. While Dwarves had builds similar to the Human physique with broad chests and muscles, Goblins almost seemed like young teens. The thing about them that I didn’t expect was that they weren’t ugly. They had a small body and a larger head that reminded me of children at a glance. It made me think they were almost cute. They had regular Human-like faces, but pure black eyes, which was an odd combination. I would say it was a mixture of adorable and creepy if I had to describe it.

  Their little legs propelled them slowly to the middle of the bridge, where they stopped and waited for something. That let the human get even further away as he made it through the passageway on the other side of their bridge. A second after they all halted, there was a loud boom as if a cannon had gone off. Another second passed, and then a loud explosion occurred again. By the third explosion, the sound had stopped.

  One of the Goblins then said, “Even his long legs couldn’t outrun the lightning.”

  “I’m just glad that's over. I’m tired. I feel like we were going to be up all day chasing that Human,” another one replied.

  They all began to talk over each other, and with their words echoing in the cave, it was harder to pick out the voices.

  As they started to walk back, I thought, “The lightning? We are underground. There shouldn’t be any lightning.”

  “Remember, you're used to electricity in its tamed form,” Rabbit said. “Before that, people like Ben Franklin were trying to catch lightning with kites, and get their faces on hundred-dollar bills.”

  “I’m certain that was his main goal in life. So you think it is some chamber with electricity traps in it?” I asked my wise AI companion.

  “Yeah, that sounded like electricity, so I assume that person was fried. It seems we need to be careful about which path we take. But about Benny boy, his goal was to be a fashion icon,” he added on a weird and unexpected turn of the conversation.

  “You’re joking. Are you serious? Ben Franklin was a fashion icon?” I asked with doubt. Sometimes Rabbit would say crazy things, but then again, he knew an enormous amount of information.

  “Oh yeah. In France, they loved his fashion. He was known there for wearing fur hats. He was quite popular if you know what I mean,” replied Rabbit, and I knew what he was trying to say. I remember one episode from The Office, saying that he had syphilis and maybe some extra kids.

  I shook my head, trying to block out the image of Ben Franklin seducing French nobles in a fur hat. This wasn’t the time. Below me, the Goblin soldiers were retracing their steps. If they looked up, they’d see me hanging here like a sack of loot. Dropping down might land me on the platform or send me into the abyss. Either way, I doubted I’d recover fast enough to outrun them.

  Thankfully, they didn’t seem to notice. Maybe they were too familiar with this place, or too confident to scan the shadows above. We waited in silence until their voices faded into the cavern’s depths. Only then did I start to move again, knowing the next step had to count.