The plan was set, and everyone prepared for action, but before they could begin their assault, the mute healer spoke up for the first time.

“Excuse me, but I would like some time to prepare before we begin.”

Griggs nodded his head, “Sure thing, Zander.”

With that, Zander moved to stand in front of Ray and began chanting, a soft green glow enveloping the both of them.

While the rest of them waited their turn, Austin turned to Julie and asked a question, “Hey, how did you get into the camp without being noticed?”

Goblins weren’t the smartest creatures, but waltzing into a camp of so many of them was still no mean feat.

Julie giggled, before poking him in the ribs with her finger, “I didn’t actually enter the camp. I just stood outside of it and used a skill!” She leaned in close to Austin before saying the last part, like she was sharing a secret.

Austin was flustered by her proximity, but his curiosity won over. “I thought you said you were a 1-Star, I’ve heard that not many people that rank have special abilities?”

Julie giggled once more, “Oooh-you know your stuff. Could it be that you’re into Crawlers almost as much as I am?” Before Austin even had a chance to answer her question, she continued her giddy explanation, “My skill is called ‘Far Sight’ it’s pretty common among scouts, but I still make good use of it!”

“Oh!” Austin exclaimed excitedly, letting Julie’s enthusiasm infect him, if only slightly, “I’ve heard of far sight, it lets you observe large areas from a bird’s eye view from a distance.”

Julie looked impressed and poked him in the ribs once more. “I knew it, you are a nerd.”

Austin blushed, but was rescued by Zander approaching where the two of them were standing and wordlessly beginning his spell on Austin. After the magic was complete, he felt stronger, and sure enough his stats confirmed it.

“Must be reinforcement type magic, super useful. My strength has been bumped by 10 points, with this I shouldn’t have a problem against the goblins.”

Austin turned towards Zander as he approached Julie to complete his rounds, “Hey, thanks man.” Austin called to him. Zander turned his head and gave a simple smile.

With their preparations complete, they now approached the Goblin Camp, with Griggs and Austin approaching the rear, Ray and Julie approached from the front.

A horn sounded, the goblin’s way of raising the alarm, and the battle commenced. From where they were positioned, Austin and Griggs could see the two hobgoblins and the chief on his makeshift throne. The chief growled something unintelligible and the two hobgoblins made to move where the action was.

Before they had the chance to, however, Austin and Griggs were upon them. Since the two hobgoblins didn’t see them coming, they were taken care of quickly.

Austin rushed one of them and as it turned to meet him, drove his sword deep into its chest. The hob cried out and swung its club violently at him, and Austin ducked beneath the arc of the swing. As he went towards the ground to avoid the hob’s attack, he also dragged the sword that was still embedded in the goblin’s chest down with him, splitting the goblin from the chest down. It stopped moving after that, and fell to the ground with a crash.

Level Up! Level Up!

Austin ignored the messages in front of his eyes, and turned to where Griggs was engaged with the other hobgoblin. Griggs very clearly had the upper hand in the engagement, fighting like a fencer with his long, thin sword. He either avoided or redirected all of the goblins attacks, and was completely unharmed thus far, however the wounds he was inflicting on the goblin with each thrust were also minimal.

It was clear that Griggs would win if left to his own devices, however with the Chieftain approaching from behind, they didn’t have that luxury. Austin charged in from the side and separated its head from the rest while its attention lay elsewhere.

Level Up!

Griggs looked at Austin and gave him a thumbs up before running off to join the melee elsewhere.

Austin squared off against the chieftain, who was wielding a large greatsword almost as tall as it was and was decked out from head to toe in metallic armor that Austin guessed was iron.

“I want that armor.” Austin muttered to himself.

After a final check that the rest of the group was out of sight, Austin turned towards the large goblin in front of him and with no small amount of embarrassment, called out “Umm, activation phrase!”

He was enveloped by the golden light, and to his surprise, he kept the leather armor on.

“I guess that clothing and armor slots are considered different. My clothes changed but the armor didn’t.”

Austin was quite thankful for that, as he was prepared to fight unarmored when he activated his ability.

As the golden light faded, Austin could feel his strength surge. The doubled bonus really was quite nice. The mask was a bit inconvenient, but he judged that it wouldn’t affect him too much.

“Let’s see what I can really do!” Austin cried, he had never fought with the Avatar activated, and was quite excited to see how he fared.

The goblin chief snarled, and began his own charge, greatsword brandished above his head.

“He’s slow, but there’s a lot of power behind those movements, gotta be careful.”

He decided the head on approach wasn’t the best option, and dashed to the side.

Austin’s speed surprised even himself, and he overshot his goal by no small margin. Now with a lot of distance in between himself and the chief, he had a second to think.

After formulating his plan, Austin charged with more caution than previously, and arrived in front of the goblin. The chief reacted quickly, and swung his sword horizontally at Austin, exactly as he hoped he would. Austin stepped back and towards the direction that the goblin had swung from, effectively putting him out of range for a moment.

Austin took advantage of this, and before the chief even finished his swing, Austin raised his own sword and brought it down hard, severing the goblin’s right arm.

Since his right hand was the one gripping the greatsword during his followthrough, and that hand was no longer attached to the rest of the goblin, the sword went clattering off to the side, out of reach.

Austin saw what he thought was panic bubble to the surface of the chieftain's face, but disregarded it.

“I won’t forgive you bastards.” At this moment, Austin’s normally calm, timid personality cracked. Hatred seethed in those eyes, and this terrified the goblin even more.

Recalling the words that Daniel had said in the cave, in what seemed like a different life, Austin brandished his sword while reciting those same words. “For your transgressions against humanity, I condemn you.” It wasn’t quite the same, but Austin had the feeling that Daniel would forgive him for stealing his line.

With that, Austin swung the sword, and separated both the head, and the arm that the goblin brought up in an effort to protect himself, cleanly. The goblin chieftain fell, and began melting into the black sludge characteristic of slain monsters, before disappearing entirely, leaving behind only his armor and a medium sized mana crystal, slightly bigger than the ones left behind by the hobgoblins.

Level Up! Level Up! Level Up!

“Whew,” Austin sighed, back to his normal self. “Avatar of the Champion, I release you.” he murmured under his breath.

The sound of the chain snapping resounded, and Austin found he was no longer wearing a mask.

“I gotta remember to change those phrases, though.” Austin murmured, his cheeks flushing with slight embarrassment.

He hurried over to where the others were finishing up their fight, and just as he was about to call out to Griggs, he felt a sharp pain in his left leg.

There, with a disgustingly brazen grin on its face, was a goblin. Standing at about 4 feet tall, he looked quite pleased that he had just buried his dagger in the back of Austin’s leg while he wasn’t paying attention.

Austin had no idea how he’d been snuck up on, but before he had the chance to reach out and wring the thing’s neck, a dagger suddenly appeared between its eyes.

Just as suddenly as the dagger appeared, Julie also appeared, and retrieved her dagger from the goblin’s forehead.

Austin pulled the dagger from his leg, but after being briefly assailed by a sharp pain, it quickly subsided. Julie looked at the dagger in his hands imploringly, and when he held it out to her she snatched it up and ran off to go give some poor goblin a present.

“That should have hurt a whole lot, but it only feels like I stubbed my toe.” Austin opened up his stat window, and confirmed that he had only lost 25 health from what would have been a fatal blow to the previous him.

“Thank god for levels, am I right?” he chuckled to himself.

He was then enveloped by a familiar soft green light, and felt the skin on his leg mend itself back together. He turned and saw Zander approaching. Austin thanked him, and after a brief nod, Zander followed the path that Julie had taken.

After Austin joined the fray, it didn’t take long for the rest of the stragglers to be cleaned up, and while Julie was excitedly running around collecting the loot, Austin was looking at his stats.

Austin McKenna, Level 34

Title: None

Class: None

HP: 275

Stamina: 325

Strength: 53

Intelligence: 44

Agility: 53

Abilities:

Quick Learner:

Predecessor’s Guidance:

Ant Slayer:

Sword Mastery NEW (Level 1):

Avatar of the Champion

Warrior’s Sense NEW

Allows the user to distinguish the level of any subject.

Condemn NEW

Allows the user to power up their next attack by 50%. Can only be used once per fight.

Bonus points: 4

Austin quickly put three bonus points into strength and one into agility to round out the numbers and thought about the new skills he had gotten.

“Leveling up sword master is nice, I’m guessing it just means that I’m more comfortable wielding a blade, and condemn could be good to finish out a close fight. The one that I’m really excited about, though, is warrior’s sense. With this I can inspect the levels of those around me to see if I could take them.”

Austin looked over to where Zander and Ray were seated on a log laid out in a central area of the former goblin camp. He thought about activating Warrior’s Sense, and as he did, bars of information popped up above the two men’s heads.

Alexander Westbrook: Level 23

Class: Healer

Raymond Fisher: Level 18

Class: Tank

“Wow, Zander is a pretty high level compared to the rest of this group, but I guess that buff he gave me was no joke…”

Austin turned his head to where Julie and Griggs were,

Trey Griggs: Level 21

Class: Fencer

Julia Green: Level 19

Class: Scout

“Hmm,” Austin thought as the two approached him, “Julie is almost on the threshold of 2-Star, and Griggs is just barely there. I have a feeling that Grigg’s skill puts him a lot closer to 3-Star, though. The way he handled his blade was far from amatur.”

Julie walked up and before Griggs could say anything, began poking Austin again. “Hey, hey guess what!” She was even more giddy than she was before the fight.

“Umm, what is it?” Austin managed, trying to ignore her proximity.

Julie stood taller and puffed out her chest proudly, “I leveled up!”

“Wow,” Austin made a show of whistling, but he really was excited. Due to the fact that he leveled up so quickly, he never got a chance to analyze exactly what one level really meant. “That’s great! Tell me, do you feel any stronger?”

“It’s hard to say…” Julie trailed off. It looked like Austin wouldn’t be getting an in depth analysis after all.

“Anyways,” Griggs cut in, “We have a present for you, as a thank you for taking care of the boss yourself.”

“Really?” Austin asked.

“Yeah, we want you to have that armor the boss was wearing. It would fetch a decent price, but after that showing, you deserve it. The mana crystals we got are still worth way more anyways.”

Austin was dumbstruck, “Wow, th-thank you!”

He made a show of going into one of the goblin tents to get changed to “try it out,” and when he took the leather armor off he stowed it in the champion’s inventory.

He came out of a ramshackle tent wearing the new iron armor, and he had to say, it felt good.

Wearing his new armor, and a smile, the group finished collecting the mana crystals from the small army of goblins, and made their way to the exit. As they stepped out into the now late afternoon sunlight once more, the Door behind them immediately collapsed.

Austin had just cleared his first dungeon.