It wasn’t instant, but he could feel the resource knitting him back together—mending frayed nerves, smoothing away the weariness. He thought back to the earlier fight, the devastating destruction he’d unleashed with just a handful of spells. All because of this one resource.
“What the hell is mana, anyway?” he muttered, hoping—against reason—that the system might drop him a hint.
Silence.
“Yeah, worth a shot.”
His mind drifted again, as it had too many times since the Integration. There were too many questions with no answers. Was Earth still out there, waiting for him when he finished this “tutorial”? Or would the system dump him on some other alien world? The uncertainty gnawed at him, and he shoved it away before it could dig in.
He lay down on his makeshift bed, but sleep refused to come easy. Every time he began to drift off, he’d snap awake, convinced someone was standing over him or lurking in the shadows. By the fifth false alarm, he gave up.
“So this is what PTSD feels like, huh?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.
Resigned, Max packed up his things. He wasn’t staying in this cave again—too many bad memories now. Everything went into his storage ring, and whatever was useless went straight into the store for credits.
He set out for the opposite side of the island, visualizing it like a clock face. His original spawn point was at twelve o’clock. The three-class-door cave sat at six. Right now, he was somewhere around nine. The opposite side—the area where he suspected another goblin outpost—would be at three.
The journey was anything but quiet. Random forest creatures kept leaping at him—three oversized squirrels and two territorial bucks—each fight pushing him closer to another level-up. Something about the XP gains felt off, though. I feel like I’m getting more experience than I should…
By the time he’d been traveling for eight hours, Max’s optimism had dulled. No goblin camps. No tracks. No sign they’d even been here.
“Maybe they’re avoiding me,” he said aloud.
The universe, apparently, had a sense of humor.
His danger sense flared—sharp and immediate. Max didn’t think; he moved, blinking several feet to his left just as a crackling bolt of blue energy tore through the space he’d just occupied.
His eyes locked on the source.
A goblin in black-and-crimson rags stood in the treeline, a gnarled staff raised high, glowing runes swirling along the wood.
“Well, well. A mage goblin,” Max said, tightening his grip on his weapon. “This should be fun.”
Then the ground ahead erupted.
Five massive goblins, easily half a head taller than the ones he’d fought before, rose from concealed pits. The earth clung to their mossy armor as they hefted axes and jagged blades. Behind them, two more goblins stepped out from behind a pine, both wielding staves and chanting in unison, their eyes burning with unnatural light.
They set this up. The realization hit hard. This wasn’t a random patrol. They’d prepared the terrain, hidden their muscle, and led with spellcasters to force him into reacting first.
The forest went deathly still.
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Max moved first. A flicker of will, and a mana bolt snapped into existence in his palm. He hurled it at the nearest mage goblin—only to watch it splinter harmlessly against a translucent barrier.
“Shields, huh? Cute.”
The frontline goblins roared and charged. Max sidestepped the first, bringing his blade around in a clean horizontal slash that severed the creature’s hamstring. It screamed and collapsed, but two more were already swinging for him.
He blinked again—reappearing behind them—and channeled mana into his free hand. The spell burst out as a cone of shimmering force, catching one goblin square in the back and launching it into a tree with a sickening crack.
The mages didn’t pause their chanting. Instead, the air above Max shimmered—and a rain of crackling blue spears materialized, plunging toward him.
“Not today.”
He dove forward into a roll, the spears slamming into the ground behind him, scorching the earth. Rising to his feet, he thrust his palm outward, forming a compressed orb of pure mana. It whined like an angry hornet before detonating, shattering the shield of one mage and sending him sprawling.
The last standing melee goblin barreled toward him. Max met the charge head-on, using his staff to parry the downward strike. Mana surged through the weapon, amplifying the impact, and with a twist he disarmed the goblin—literally—its weapon and arm both dropping to the ground.
Only one mage remained upright now, frantically conjuring another barrier. Max didn’t give him the chance to finish. He blinked into striking range, drove his staff into the goblin’s gut, and channeled a point-blank mana bolt. The creature’s eyes went wide before the explosion hurled it backward, lifeless.
The clearing fell silent, the only sound Max’s heavy breathing and the faint crackle of fading magic. One by one, translucent blue windows popped up in front of him.
[You have slain: Goblin Brute – Level 15]
+165 Credits
[You have slain: Goblin Brute – Level 15]
+165 Credits
[You have slain: Goblin Brute – Level 14]
+154 Credits
[You have slain: Goblin Brute – Level 14]
+154 Credits
[You have slain: Goblin Brute – Level 14]
+154 Credits
[You have slain: Goblin Mage – Level 16]
+176 Credits
[You have slain: Goblin Mage – Level 16]
+176 Credits
Credits Earned: +1,144
[Level Up!]
You have reached Level 12
Stat Points Allocated:
+3 Free Points Available
Max grinned despite the ache in his muscles. “Guess that explains the extra experience I’ve been feeling,” he muttered. Another surge of strength pulsed through him as his mana pool climbed higher. For now, the free points could wait—he still wasn’t sure exactly where they’d be most useful for the next fight.
Not willing to risk getting caught in another ambush, Max took off at a dead sprint toward the rocky outcropping where he’d seen a small cave earlier in the week. He didn’t look back. His only goal was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the ambush site before anyone—or anything—decided to follow.
For the next twenty-five minutes, he pushed himself at full speed, lungs burning, legs protesting with every step. He wove through undergrowth, splashed across shallow streams, and even detoured through a patch of thick ferns to break up his trail. If there were pursuers, they’d have to work to keep up.
Only when the jagged silhouette of the outcropping came into view did he slow his pace. His chest rose and fell in heavy bursts as he climbed the slanted rocks up to the cave entrance. It wasn’t much, but for now, it would be home.
Within ten minutes, he had a small fire crackling in the center of the space, its glow flickering across the rough stone walls. The warmth seeped into him as he eased down onto his bedroll, letting his body relax for the first time since the fight. His mind, however, refused to follow suit.
Images of the battle replayed in vivid detail—the two mage goblins chanting in unison, the way the sky had suddenly split open, and a rain of shimmering blue blades had come screaming down toward him. It was the first time he’d ever gone up against another magic user, and the memory left his pulse quickened even now.
“What was that spell?” he muttered to himself. “Could I… get something like that?”
Curiosity won out. He pulled up the tutorial store and navigated straight to the Skills tab, anticipation building—only for it to fizzle the moment the interface finished loading.
Nothing. Not a single skill upgrade, not even a basic spell scroll.
“Figures,” he said with a sigh, closing the menu.
Disappointed but not deterred, he lay back and stared up at the uneven ceiling of the cave. Tomorrow, he’d retrace his steps to the ambush site. Maybe he could follow their tracks, figure out where that squad had come from.
And if that led to another camp…
Max smiled faintly at the thought, letting the fire’s warmth and the steady crackle of burning wood lull him toward sleep.
