Fishing in my newly acquired inventory, I pull out the most sophisticated weapon I made in preparation for today’s dungeon delve—a Molotov cocktail. I take out a lighter, the cocktails best friend, to burn the cloth sticking out of the bottle’s neck.

‘C’mon, c’mon.’ I grumble, struggling to get my tool of anarchy to work. It looked way easier to light in movies. Eventually, my makeshift fuse is lit, much to my relief. As I look to the battlefield, I ponder over my next course of action.

The goblins are no friends of mine, but I prefer to leave them intact. They’ll lose to the skeletons still, but the more they are around, the better they’ll distract these undead warriors for me. Two bone-men stand close to each other, providing support to their allies by ensuring the goblins can’t outflank them. If I burn them, the tide of battle will shift slightly away from the superior monsters.

I throw a soft but calculated throw. There doesn’t need to be a lot of power behind my lob, as the bottle will crack open regardless. All I need is to hit both my targets. Fwoosh! The bottle breaks open, incinerating one fully while only grazing the other. The flame was not as impressive as I had hoped.

My first enemy falls over, dead, or at least more dead than before. Fire is effective enough even against walking bones. The second one switches its focus on me, seeing me as a more significant threat. A determined charge quickly closes its distance between myself and the reanimated skeleton.

I expected as much, though, waiting for it to approach me just a bit closer. ‘Now!’ I lit up a trail of alcohol I left on the ground. The fire quickly spread, following my carefully laid out path and burning my second mark down, rendering it immobile.

The path to battle is temporarily blocked off for me by the fire I created myself. I’ll have to wait until it dies out a bit before I can rejoin the fight. My attack did its job, however. There are three skeletons left to face four goblins. While the skeletons still held the advantage strength-wise, the goblins now had the opportunity to encircle them or outflank them.

The remaining warriors split up their focus between looking over at me and managing the little green men, trying to whittle them down and capitalize on the shift in dynamics my presence created.

The goblin, whom I recognize as the one I battled to the near-death over the weekend, growls out what I can only assume is an order as its henchmen keep applying pressure on the tall bone warriors. It seems to work somewhat as only one of them kept me in its peripheral vision in case I join in.

Finally, the fire had just died down. No time to waste as I hurry into the field before anyone could adequately reposition themselves to defend against me. My little dagger won’t do me much good, and since I don’t have any proper ranged weapons, the best attack to use is my newly armored arm. Making the best of all those points invested into my strength, I give the first skeleton a mighty whack to the head. It tried to counterattack, but since its speed is much slower than mine, it couldn’t pull off anything substantial before it collapsed into the ground.

Not dead yet, but certainly down for the count. My victim would get up in a few moments if nothing is done to put it down permanently. One of the grunt goblins sensed it too and takes the initiative, jumping onto the immobile foe and mauling it, bringing the third skeleton closer to death.

The fourth one disengages from its battle with the goblin and tries to help, only to be pressed by the leader of the green gang and myself. Our final enemy is in the meantime engaged by the two final underlings of my archnemesis. At this point, the battle seems to be a foregone conclusion. It’s a stalemate but still in our favor.

Though superior in combat ability, the skeleton warriors got cut down in numbers to the point where they were completely surrounded. The final stage would be slower than the first shift, but at this point, the skeletons had no way of victory or even retreat. They can do nothing but take the beating and hope for reinforcement from potential friendly monsters.

Reinforcement never came, luckily. And as the final warrior collapses, I sigh in relief. That was rough but doable. I even leveled up twice. Once during the fire throw and once as we wailed on the encircled opponents. I guess the system rewards not only hard work but also smart work. It’s something I’ll need to keep in mind for the future.

I head the goblins growl at me, and my heart sinks. I expected this, and I will be able to handle it, but somewhere I was hoping they’d cut their losses and go about their way, leaving me to my well-deserved loot.

Bracing myself for my next fight, my hand already on my trusty dagger. “Argh, urkh!” The leader growls out. It doesn’t seem to be an attack order as the grunts pull back slightly, still glaring and growling at me nonetheless.

[Congratulations! You’ve earned the respect of a monster. Establish communications?]

[Y/N]

What? Does it want to talk to me? What does it want to say, I wonder. Eve took the end of hostilities as a sign to materialize since the coast is clear. “Huh, I’ve never seen this. And as far as I know, there’s nothing in my internal guideline that says anything about monster communications.”

That worries me. If the system changes to adapt to the situation eventually, even Eve will be left in the dark. We’ll have to start winging it if that happens. “What do you think we should do?” I’m leaning towards accepting communications. Worst case, we’ll have to end up fighting the goblins, which would leave me exactly where I started anyway.

“Let’s accept it. It’s better than another fight right now anyway,” she says. I agree with her and look back to the notification. I select ‘yes,’ what’s the worst that could happen?

“Oh my, while this one is grateful for thy assistance, one wonders how long thyne pondering would take.” The goblin leader said in a posh tone, reminiscent of the stereotypical accent you would associate with British royalty. “Thou art fortunate, peasant, thyne presence is in that of none other than Duke Theodore the third!”

I regret this.