Hero awakens, his wounds healed and gone, but he does not move from his dying spot. He’s been in a couple of fights in his eighteen years of life, usually pacifying rowdy drunks and defending against bullies from the local boyhood gang.

He knows well enough that all that passive exp, from things like exercising, cooking, reading and more, would fill the golden bar at the bottom of his H.U.D..

Usually it fills slowly, a steady trickle week by week, but there are those very developmental times in a person’s life that tells Hero that there will be an impact on him.

Once he got chased by a boar when hunting alone, got a tusk in his leg and all he could grab was a rock to fight back, that pushed him from the start of 11 to the middle of 12 in a single day. He also took home a boar so big the whole town wouldn't shut up about it for the rest of the month.

All of that is well and good up to his current level of thirteen, but the exp spike is so high from 13 > 14 that it’s practically double the 12 > 13 amount.

No more.

His exp bar is filled all the way to gold, and the left margin of its digit has overtaken the entirety of the bar.

All he needs is to seal the deal with a combat kill. Usually he’d level up unexpectedly by stepping on a bug, or successfully catching a fish. This time, he’s going to get it quite on purpose.

As the mindless undead bastardizations lumber from house to house, looting and searching for the living, Hero tightens his sinew in preparation for instant, fatal movement. He knows he only has one shot, so his timing must be perfect.

In only half a minute, he spots his mark: It’s a smaller undead, once a child, good for little more in combat than being the trigger behind a crossbow set for it by its larger companions. That’s the one. If he can strike it unawares, he’ll grab that sweet 5X crit bonus, an attack multiplier that puts all but head-shots to shame. He remembers the day as a younger lad when he’d sneak up on his classmates and flick them just to see that glorious “5X Critical!” text pop over their head accompanied by a harmless “0”.

That said, it won’t matter how high a level this undead is, there’s no way it would survive if he does the same thing, but with his sword.

As the husk of a boy stumbles along at the back of the now-loose raiding formation, Hero bates his breath and stills his heart in vicious preparation.

…now!

Expending a thick chunk of his stamina bar, Hero leaps up from the ground with sword in hand, looming over the small undead and ready for the death stroke.

In what the undead boy lacks in STR, it more than makes up for with INT. As if neigh-psychic, the undead reflexively turns its loaded crossbow at Hero and pulls.

In a deft, blink-fast DEX check, Hero holds up his buckler to absorb the shot before striking down.

The undead lifts its crossbow up at the last moment to block the brunt of the strike, reducing Hero’s mighty blow to a minor cut and no bleed due to the [undead] life status. As the undead also expected the attack, Hero didn’t gain the crit bonus, thus leading to a trash-mob tally of only 29 damage out from the undead’s 138 total.

No sooner does the land his weak hit does the entire raiding party turn his way. Weapons are raised as Hero dips in for another strike at projectiles fling his way.

The readied undead boy shoves back furiously with his crossbow, again blunting Hero’s strike and delivering an even less-exceptional 12 damage to the undead’s arm. Hero draws back to regain his bearings just as an arrow flies into his side.

Hero buckles into the pain, he doesn’t even see the damage annotation over his head, but his console says 122, about half of his total of 350, along with a minor [bleed] of 3 per second. He can’t take this risk. Hero barrels back into his home amidst a wild volley of arrows, a couple grazing him for 12 and 15 and both attributing a [light bleed] each. He barely makes it inside before the door is filled with projectiles.

He slams down the door’s bar lock, painting it over with his own blood. Hero piles one piece of furnishing after another to block off the door just as one of the undead slams its shield through the nearby window. Hero readies his sword to weigh into his enemy’s arm, but thinks better of it the second he sees the spear man undead directly next to the shield-bearer, ready to lunge through the opening to get to Hero.

Hero realizes he needs to be smarter than this. He backs away and out of the pitch of the window as the undead steadily pound against the blocked door. His father is in the other room, watching in horror as his orphan-found son bleeds along the floor. The old dwarf starts to his feet.

“Ten out of ten, would bang!” Hero cries, pulling [lesser healing] from his immediate memory and bathing himself in a holy light. Thankfully his HP wasn’t the only thing restored by Rondi’s resurrection.

The longer he holds the cast, the more it heals. Before long the green numbers stop jumping as his HP maxes out and his bleed stacks are removed. No sooner does he top off that an undead smashed far enough through the entry door to create a shot-opening, and who would be the shooter but that little bastard himself? The small undead looses a bolt into

Hero’s direction, but it doesn’t touch him.

Hero jolts in the blink fast move of his father, vaulting into the opening just as the bolt flies into him.

“You... idiot!” Hero snaps as he leans in and pulls his dad over out of the opening’s pitch.

“You should’ve listened to me, you dumbass kid.” The dwarf winces as his dark brown beard bristles in a grimace. “Now we’re both fucked.”