Chapter 18: Chapter18-Fighting With the Goblins

Allen spoke again, his tone quieter now but somehow even more terrifying. "I’ll ask you one last time. Who are you?"

Shit.

He knew. Somehow, he’d figured it out.

But how?

For the first time since I’d woken up in this world, real fear took hold of me. Not the nervous unease I’d felt around the goblins. This was something deeper. Primal. The kind of fear that locks your body in place and makes everything else disappear.

And it kept growing. Every second felt heavier than the last.

I tried one more time, my voice shaking. "Allen... please... it’s me... I’m Mich..."

I didn’t get to finish.

*Shing.*

The sound was clean. Precise. The whisper of steel cutting through the air.

And then everything felt wrong.

My perspective shifted. The world tilted sideways, but I wasn’t falling. I was... rotating. Slowly.

Wait.

"What... why am I...?"

Then I saw it.

My body. Standing there in front of me. But something was missing.

The head.

Blood was pouring from the neck in thick, pulsing streams, pooling on the ground below.

Oh.

That’s my body.

The realization hit with a strange, detached clarity.

He actually killed me.

Just like that. Without hesitation.

I’d thought I could finally do something meaningful here. Build a life. Get stronger. Maybe even thrive in this world.

But I guess not.

My luck hadn’t changed at all. Even in another world, it followed me like a shadow.

I stopped fighting it.

There was nothing left to fight for anyway.

My vision darkened at the edges, the world folding in on itself. Sound faded next, the distant drip of blood and hum of the cave disappearing into silence.

Then there was nothing at all.

***

"Young master, Michael, wake up. Young master?"

Someone was shaking me. A voice calling from somewhere distant, muffled.

What’s happening?

I know that voice.

"Young master, wake up! Michael, wake up!"

It came again, sharper this time. Clearer.

Wait. That’s Allen.

But why would he be calling me? Didn’t he just kill me? Wasn’t I dead?

Unless...

The thought hit me like cold water.

My eyes snapped open.

Above me was the glowing rocky ceiling of the cave, its faint blue light washing over everything in soft, eerie waves.

I was alive.

"Young master, it seems you’ve finally woken up."

Allen’s voice came from directly beside me.

I turned my head toward him. He was sitting there, close, watching me with that familiar calm expression.

But the moment I met his gaze, something twisted inside my chest. Unease. Discomfort. Something I couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore either.

I pushed myself up quickly, moving back a few feet to put some space between us.

"Allen," I said, my voice still unsteady. "What happened? Why was I on the ground?"

Allen rose to his feet slowly, brushing dust off his sleeves as he answered. "You lost consciousness, young master."

I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"You fainted," he said calmly. "Collapsed just a few moments ago."

I fainted?

That didn’t make sense.

So everything I had just experienced, the sword at my throat, the cold look in Allen’s eyes, the sensation of my head being severed from my body, was... just a dream?

But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. Every terrifying second of it.

The fear. The weight of the blade. The sight of my own headless body standing there.

How could something that vivid not be real?

But apparently, it wasn’t.

"Right," I said quietly, still trying to process it. "Okay."

Allen studied me for a moment, then gestured behind me toward the goblin-filled cavern. "In any case, young master, I’d suggest you act quickly. The goblins won’t last much longer."

Shit.

I’d completely forgotten why I was here.

The moment Allen said that, everything snapped back into focus. The whole point of entering this dungeon. The reason I’d brought him along in the first place.

Kill monsters. Collect essences. Level up.

I turned quickly toward the goblins sprawled across the cavern floor. They were still writhing, struggling weakly against their severed limbs, leaving dark trails of green blood wherever they dragged themselves.

I held out my right hand. "Allen, I need your weapon. I didn’t bring one."

"Of course, young master."

Allen reached toward his left hand, and with a faint shimmer of light, a sword materialized from his storage ring.

Storage rings. They looked like ordinary jewelry, but they were far from it. Crafted from the body of a rare rank monster called Gluttony, they contained vast internal dimensions that could hold nearly anything. And whatever you stored inside stayed perfectly preserved indefinitely. No rot, no decay. Frozen in time.

I took the sword from him, feeling its weight settle into my grip.

Then I walked toward the nearest goblin.

It was dragging itself forward with its remaining stumps, smearing green blood across the stone as it went.

The moment it saw me coming, it started moving faster. Desperate. Frantic. Trying to escape.

Nah, nah, Not a chance.

You’re experience points now. All of you are.

I raised the sword above my head and brought it down hard. The blade cut clean through the goblin’s neck, and its head rolled a few feet away before stopping.

Immediately, a system notification flashed in front of my eyes.

[Congratulations, Host! You have been rewarded with 1 Monster Essence for slaying a Lesser Rank Monster! The Monster Essence has been added to your Character Profile!]

[Congratulations, Host! You have met the essence requirement to level up! You have advanced to Level 1!]

Uh... Fuck...

Finally.

I wasn’t a zero ranker anymore.

A wave of relief hit me all at once, like I’d been carrying something impossibly heavy and it had just been lifted off my shoulders.

It felt... good. Really good.

But I couldn’t celebrate yet.

I turned my attention back to the cavern floor, still littered with mutilated goblins dragging themselves across the stone.

There was still a long way to go.

***

"Ha... ha... ha..."

I was doubled over now, hands braced on my knees, sucking in air like I’d been drowning.

My entire body ached. My arms felt like dead weight. My legs were shaking. I was drenched in a mix of sweat and green goblin blood, and honestly, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep this up.

I lifted my wrist and checked the time through blurred vision.

***

Name: Michael Frostburne

Total Rules Broken: 0

Time: 12:42 PM

Date: 4th February

Year: 2130

***

12:42 PM.

I’d been killing goblins nonstop for almost thirty minutes.

How many more did I need?

I forced myself to open my character interface, my fingers trembling slightly as I navigated the screen.

---

**Name:** Michael Frostburne

**Race:** Human

**Current Rank:** 0

**Current Level:** 97

**Title:** 0

**Progression to Normal Rank:** 97% (97/100 levels)

**Progression to Level 98:** 0% (0/1 essences)

---

Level 97.

Only three more to go.

That was it. Just three.

I could do this.

I straightened up slowly, forcing my legs to cooperate despite how much they protested.

Not far from me, three goblins were huddled close together, still writhing weakly in pools of their own blood.

I walked toward them, each step heavier than the last, and raised the sword.

Then I brought it down. Once. Twice. Three times.

Until none of them were moving anymore.

The moment they stopped moving, my system screen exploded into view, flooding my vision with notification after notification.

[Congratulations, Host! You have been rewarded with 3 Monster Essences for slaying Lesser Rank Monsters! The Monster Essences have been added to your Character Profile!]

[Congratulations, Host! You have met the essence requirement to level up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have leveled up!]

[Your current level is 100!]

[Congratulations, Host! You have met the essence requirement for a rank up!]

[You have ranked up!]

[Your current rank is Normal!]

[Congratulations, Host! For ranking up, you have been rewarded with 2 Attribute Points!]

[Congratulations, Host! Your "Free Attribute Points" section has been expanded to 10 points!]

[Congratulations, Host! You have also been rewarded with a Lucky Draw for your rank up!]

Oh my god, so many rewards.

This was amazing.

Thirty minutes of exhausting, bloody work, and it had finally paid off.

Then, without warning, three black cards appeared in the air directly in front of me. They floated there, spinning slowly, almost hypnotically.

The moment I saw them, I felt a smile start to form. But I caught it immediately and forced my expression back to neutral.

Then I turned away and kept killing goblins.

Why?

Because Allen was watching.

He’d been standing off to the side the entire time, silent and still, his eyes never leaving me. Just observing. Studying every movement I made.

And it made me uncomfortable.

I’d never felt this way around him before. Not once. But ever since that dream, ever since I’d felt the cold steel of his blade against my throat and watched my own headless body from the ground, something had fundamentally changed.

I couldn’t stop second-guessing everything now.

Allen.

I was almost certain he was suspicious of me. I didn’t know when it started exactly, but I had my theories.

It could’ve been here, in the dungeon. Everything seemed fine before we entered.

But then again... what if it started earlier? What if the moment I asked him to book this specific dungeon, alarm bells went off in his head?

Too many possibilities. Too many unknowns.

I pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the next goblin in front of me, driving the blade down while keeping the spinning black cards in my peripheral vision.

Those cards, by the way, were only visible to me. They were tied to the system somehow, which meant no one else could see them. Not Allen. Not anyone.

That’s what the system had told me, at least.

Anything connected to the system existed only for me. Invisible to the rest of the world.

I pushed everything else aside.

Hmm...

Which one should I choose?

Last time, I’d made a disastrous mistake. I hadn’t trusted my heart or my mind.

I wouldn’t repeat it.

This time, I had to walk away with something worthwhile.

At any cost.

I studied the cards carefully.

One breath passed. Then another.

Hmm... Yeah. This one.