Taking water form I began to rush the goblin I wouldn’t last long against such a high damage, the notched another arrow and fired, but I managed to completely to parry it, as a second came and once again it was parried.

  As I got closer I twirled the sword above my head into fire stance, it really was all or nothing at this point, as I went to strike the goblin launched another, I tried to dodge but it glanced off my shoulder.

  I had learnt quite a bit about the combat system over the past few days a critical hit on the arms or legs would sever them, though I’m pretty sure this only applied to cloth armour as a goblin had crit me in the arm once, but that had only been an injury that reduced my attacks per second by half, I’m sure if it was strong enough or I was wearing cloth I would get a numb or severed arm debuff without losing the actual hand, since the cloak was covering its short arms I judged the head to be a safer bet.

  The head would often stun if hit with a critical, I’m sure if goblins wore helmets it would prevent this but they didn’t really use their heads, otherwise why would they continue to shoot arrows at my sword instead of my legs, lastly was the body, hitting the body or neck with a critical only did damage except if the monster was low enough for the strike or double the damage strike would kill it, the blow was a fatal strike and would do 4 times the ordinary damage, so the blow would have to be capable of killing the creature for a critical hit on the body to have the extra effect of becoming a fatal strike.

  I’m sure you’re capable of counting , fatal strike bonus combined with backstab I would have at some point become strong enough to one shot these no armour goblins, the answer is I recognised that it would stop grinding my other skills so I stopped using it, either way there was one last thing I discovered was that each time you hit the same spot, your damage would go up, it would be hard to implement in combat but while stunned it was free damage, I raised my sword above my head in fire stance to press the attack.

  The blind pup had managed to bite and pull on my leg, I could sense the bond of friendship between man and beast, uh, goblin and beast, goblin saves dying blind pup, dying blind pup saves stunned dying goblin, while I was still stunned the goblin ran to gain distance on me, he tripped either from fear or dizziness but continued to gain some distance., time was of the essence here.

  With two swift attacks I dispatched the wolf pup, and quickly turned to the goblin, its bow was drawn and pointed at me, the arrow gas glowing red, how ominous.

  I had quickly switched into water stance to receive the arrow, but it was powerful, it flew out perhaps 4 times faster than regular arrows so far, I received it with my sword to deflect it but the sheer force drove my sword back a bit, the angle had changed and needless to say I could no longer feel my shoulder, and I couldn’t take my water stance.

  Rushing forward in earth stance, it was all or nothing, the goblin had drawn it bow and taken aim. So far in my experiments with combat I had been more or less been unable to parry arrows in any stance except water stance, trying to do it in other stance felt unnatural, and just didn’t work, so the only thing I had left was a dodge thus I dropped my sword into wind stance, I needed to either dodge either left or right, but rather than shooting straight down the middle arrows would veer to the left or right, my chances were 50:50 it was all down to luck.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  *twang*

  I had begun to veer to the right, but the arrow seeming to have my name on it followed me.

  Luck would really only get you so far in this game.

  What? You though I died? Of course not, 100% skill baby, as the arrow came towards me I dropped my hips and fell backwards, using my sword to keep balance, the arrow flew right over me, I then charged the goblin before it could load another arrow and pierced straight through its heart, causing it burst into light particles, damage wise it seemed that if you were vulnerable to fatal strike yourself it would deal increased damage, but I couldn’t be too sure about it, and it wasn’t something I was eager to test.

  I put my heart on my chest and thanked based Keanu Reeves for watching over us once again, and then I began to check my loot, the yields were good, one item from the pup and three from the tamer.

  I took the egg out of my inventory too look at it, it was just a small, black, bird-sized egg, a tad bigger than a chicken egg, around the size of a duck egg, I put it back in and equipped the cloak, on me it look far more magnificent and larger, it looked as though I had taken the pelt of a rather large wolf and wrapped it around my shoulders, with the head on my left shoulder like a shoulder pad from other games, the head had a red circle inside a red ring on its forehead, the tail hung off the back of my left shoulder, this thing really was amazing, it would help me reach the level I was in my heart, though it had more dexterity than I would have preferred, it’s not a bad thing at all, it didn’t look that good on the goblin, sometimes the clothes make the man other times, a beggar in the emperor’s clothing is still a beggar.

  The final item was just some goblin meat

  …

  Just kidding when I went to inspect the bow an additional windows popped up

  The bow itself was good, but not something I could use for a while even if I wanted to, but if I managed to repair it I might be able to sell it or give to a future guild member, its stats were a good deal above my level even if I only maxed those, it would be much better once repaired. What was really on my mind was the egg, looking at it again nothing had changed but judging from the story it was something really powerful, but it hadn’t been identified, I guess I would have to wait ‘til it hatched before I could see what it was, but it seems that it had been a while since the goblin got the egg, and it hadn’t hatched, I guess I would try asking master about it.

  But the first thing was this merchant, his bag was still there but where was he?