He waited for the monster to walk past at the edge of the wall. The silhouette materialized into a skeletal figure with ragged cloth and a club on his hand. It continued ahead without realizing Jack’s presence as he hid behind the wall. Its movement was sluggish. He focused his God-eye monocle on the monster.

Skeleton Thug (Basic monster, Undead)

Level 2

HP: 250

The level increase by 1 but its HP was almost two-fold. It would take more time to deal with this one.

Once he was sure that the monster really wasn’t aware of his presence, he skulked towards it from its rear. Making sure he stayed out of its line of sight, he slowly getting near to it. It was a good thing this monster was sluggish and just stayed walking in a simple direction, hence it was easy to sneak unto. He held his breath when he was just around three meters from the monster, nervous as to not make a mistake at the critical moment. He dashed and activate his Power Strike.

Sneak Attack! Critical! 62 damage!

Awesome number! It’s the highest damage he ever got till now, it took out almost a quarter of the monster’s health. He didn’t stop to rejoice, he carried on his attack while the monster turned around. Another slash netted him a 21 damage. It was slightly lower than his normal attack on the Zombie, which meant this Skeleton Thug possessed a higher defense.

The Skeleton swung its club before Jack managed to pull away, but he managed to block it using his sword. He received 18 damage.

I blocked it but I still receive damage? He thought to himself. So it’s pointless to block? He had to evade! This monster’s attack speed and power were higher than the zombie monster, so it was more difficult to evade its attack. But luckily its movement speed was the same as the zombie. So once he managed to pull away from it, he could maintain his speed and kited the monster with his ranged spells. Repeating the same kiting strategy against the zombies, he whittled away the Skeleton’s HP.

It took longer but eventually, the Skeleton fell. He received 10 experience points. Five times higher than the experience he got from hunting zombies, but probably this was also due to it being higher level. With these experience points, he reached the next level.

“Congratulations! You have reached level 2 for Fighter class. Awarding 20 HP, 10 Stamina, 2 Strength, 1 Dexterity, 2 Endurance, 1 Reflex, 1 Wisdom, and 1 free attribute point and 1 free skill point.”

He spent the 1 free attribute point onto Dexterity. He would need speed now that he used a lot of kiting methods. While for the free skill points, he left them. He had 3 points now, 2 for Fighter class and 1 for Magician, but he didn’t plan to use them yet. In any RPG games, you will get stronger skills the higher level you go, it would be better to save them for those skills later on.

Although he didn’t spend the skill point, he still checked the skill page. There was one new skill available now.

Parry, level 1/20 (Trigger skill, require melee weapon)

Damage received is reduced by 30% when enemy’s attack is blocked using a weapon

Great! He was wondering why the system didn’t allow blocking damage using weapons, so it had skill incorporated for it. However, only a 30% reduction. It was quite a low reduction, but better than none at all. He thought for a while and decided to spend 1 out of the 2 free skill points of Fighter class into this skill. Parrying was not a skill that would become obsolete, it would still be useful in later progression.

Parry, level 2/20 (Trigger skill, require melee weapon)

Damage received is reduced by 33% when enemy’s attack is blocked using a weapon

It only added 3% for the 1 skill point spent. He would need to add a lot more points for this skill to become significant for blocking. He kept the remaining 1 free skill point in case he needed for something else later.

He was so excited about his level increase that he didn’t realize that the Skeleton had dropped some items. Only now he noticed two small round things where the Skeleton Thug used to be. He picked those items up.

Copper coins? The identification of the items was shown.

“We have coins here?” He mumbled while inspecting the coins. “If we can get coins, doesn’t it mean we can spend it?” But he hadn’t seen any working shop or any person since all this started, only hostile monsters, except of course for the guy who became zombie-snack. But now that he thought about it, if that guy could show up, that meant there were others too. He just hadn’t found them yet. He should find others sooner or later, considering of course if they survived.

He Stored the copper coins into his storage bag, and pondered about where he should go next. He had been spending his time wandering around looking for solo monster to kill, but he hadn’t thought about what he should do in the long term. If he wanted to find out what had happened, he needed to learn the scope of influence of this event first. Perhaps it had only happened in this area. If this was true, then he should head out of town, or to the train station or bus station which had access out of town.

With this thought, he glanced at the parked cars along the street. He approached one of them and opened the door. It was unlocked. Lucky? He looked at the ignition part and then searched all over inside the car. No key, not lucky.

He exited and went to the next car, it was also unlocked. Another quick check at the ignition part, nothing. He went again to the next car, unlocked. After sifting through five cars, he finally found one with a key on its ignition. He tried to turn the key, it won’t budge.

The hell…

He went out and inspected the car with his God-eye monocle.

Car (Junk item)

Ornament

“F**k!” He couldn’t help but cursed out loud.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, then looked around. He could just forget about the train or bus station now. He was in the north part of the town, if he could only walk, then he should choose the shortest part to get to the edge of town. That’s meant he should head North. But currently, the sun was about to set. He should find a safe place to spend the night.

He wasn’t tired yet, but he didn’t know what the current world rules were for monsters at night. Some VR RPG games had their monsters become stronger, or more numbers when the night arrived. He was not curious enough to risk finding out.

He checked his radar, time to find a non-monster populated place again. He weaved around the neighborhood, killing a few more monsters on the way, all level 1 zombies, before finding a suitable place. It was a two-story shop building. There were no red dots in the radius of its vicinity, and the shop had a sliding roller door that should keep other things from entering the building once locked. The shop was also a pharmacy, so he could scour its content for useful items.

He proceeded inside and closed the rolling door. Once that was done, he looked around the shops. His God-eye monocle picked up a couple of items, all marked with green color.

Medicine (Normal consumable)

Recover 10 HP every second for 6 seconds

Energy Drink (Normal consumable)

Recover 50 Stamina or 50 Mana

He found 6 Medicines and 2 Energy Drinks. He put them all into his storage bag and took out 1 bread. He ate on it to recover some of the health he had lost and also to alleviate his hunger. He could still feel hungry despite this world following game system rule. He should have taken those junk bread as well, even though they couldn’t recover HP, but they could be eaten when he felt hungry.