Not too far into the cave was a set of old wooden doors with big rusted steel handles. Dangling down from the handles was a chain with a small lock on the end of it. “It's locked,” I said in a slightly sad tone. I tried pulling it off but it was pointless. In my previous life when I was young I briefly tried to learn how to pick locks but I quickly became uninterested. What an idiot I thought as I strolled back towards the water.

Up until now I had been using berries as my main source of food and water but it seemed it wasn’t enough. My body was fatigued and I was always hungry so I went out to search for food. I had seen some small bunnies around where I had set up camp so catching one of those was probably my best bet.

I could have tried my luck with a bigger animal but the odds were stacked against me. So I set up a pretty basic trap. It was honestly pretty lousy, it was just a stick propping up a big boulder with a few preshop berries as bait. It wasn’t much but it was the best I could do.

After that I decided to try my luck at getting into the doors again, this time with brute force. I picked up my stick and went back into the cave. When I got back to the doors I raised the stick high above my head and swung down onto the lock as hard as I could. I looked down at the lock to see if I had made any damage but sadly it didn’t look like anything happened. That's when I had an idea. “Inspect” I said while pointing towards the lock.

[Menu]

[Old rusty Lock] [durability: 35/36]

About: used to lock things.

“‘used to lock things’... no shit. But it's ok, this is valuable information” I said as I peered closer at the lock. After a second of pondering I began frantically smashing the lock over and over again. If my thinking was correct, hitting the lock with the stick would take off one “durability” so I kept smashing the lock Until finally… it shattered.

I pulled the chain out from the handles and pushed open the doors. The room was dark and smelled like soggy old farts. I took a deep breath and stepped into the room and as soon as I did, torches lit up all across it. As I took a look around the room I couldn’t help but let out my surprise “woah! Is this someone's house?”.

Around the room there were a couple of bookshelves filled to the brim with books, a bed, a desk, and a chair with a human skeleton in it…. Wait… a human skeleton… what the fuck... “WHAT THE FUCK!!!”

I was surprised at first but this honestly wasn’t the first creepy or messed up thing I've seen here. My journey started by me getting thrown out onto a random grass field, almost starving to death, then bludging a wolf. I haven’t had the best of luck in this shitty world honestly. After a minute or two of freaking out I calmed down and used inspect on the skeleton.

[Menu]

[Locked]

The menu was only there for a second before it completely vanished from sight. “Locked… why?” I wondered. It wasn’t much of a big deal, it's not like it was a rotting corpse or anything so I didn’t really care.

The skeleton was sitting on an old wooden chair leaned over a desk with a quill in his hand. He seemed to have been writing in a small patchy leather notebook when he died. I couldn’t completely understand the symbols he was writing in but at the same time I could. I felt like I knew the words but they were hidden behind a wall of fog in my mind.

I kept trying to read it over and over again but it was no use. The words had become slightly more clear but at this pace it would take hours to decipher what it said. I figured the reason I was almost able to understand it was my skill [Other Worldly Languages]. I'm sure if I leveled it up enough I could become fluent in whatever language it was.

After giving in to my boredom I took a small tour around the room. The bed I had previously mentioned was just a thin foam mattress on an old wooden bedframe. The mattress and the bedframe were both around five feet long and covered in dirt. I hesitated to touch them, fearing that I might get a disease, so I left them alone and went on with my tour around the room.

Just past the end of the bed were two wooden bookshelves filled to the brim with books and scrolls. I'm pretty sure if I touched one it would collapse onto me. Sitting atop one of the bookshelves were a few small green glass bottles. I reached upwards and ever so gently lifted the bottle off. Thankfully the bookshelf didn’t collapse but it was honestly kinda close. After blowing off the mountain of dust on the bottle I used [Inspect] on it.

[Menu]

[Potion of healing] [Grade: A]

About: A potion of healing [Grade F-S] will restore anywhere from 15-400 HP. Specifically a [Grade A] potion of healing restores 300 HP and instantly heals any existing wounds on the body. The only downside to a potion of healing under [Grade S] will leave a scar behind where the wound previously was.

“Woah… that's kinda over powered…” I whispered under my breath. The [Menu] had never really led me astray before so I decided to trust it. I yanked off the cap of the bottle and started to drink. As soon as the liquid touched my tongue I cringed and pulled back. “Cough syrup…” I said, disgust leaking out through my voice.

I took a deep breath and started to chug. As the nasty green liquid filled my mouth I could feel the pain in my leg start to fade away. I only ended up drinking about half the bottle before I was fully healed. After almost throwing up a couple of times I slammed the bottle back down onto the bookshelf. Honestly I'm not sure how the bookcase didn’t break.

My leg had been completely healed by the potion and all the pain vanished. The limp stuck with me for a few steps but after that I was fine. I jumped up and down in excitement, screaming “Woohoo Finally!” when suddenly a deep booming voice roared throughout the cave “WILL YOU SHUT UP ALREADY!!!” I immediately froze in fear, the fuck was that? I thought as I slowly turned my head towards the voice… but no one was there. I jolted my head back and forth across the room. Everything was in the same place as before and there were no people around so what was that voice. “Over here idiot” said the voice, “over where?” I responded still in the dark about this whole situation. “I'm the skeleton in the corner over here” when it said that I jolted my head back towards the skeleton and it started to move.

Why is there a living skeleton? Who knows. I didn’t really care. The only thing I could think about at that moment was why I hadn’t started to run yet. When I turned towards the door a dreadful feeling rushed over me. The door was closed.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna hurt ya... probably” the skeleton said as it pushed itself up from its chair. I noticed a long beat up red robe with rips and tears all across it. It definitely hadn’t been washed in a very long time.

At this point I was frozen solid. I mean, what was I supposed to do, sit down and have some tea with this weird skeleton. The fact that the skeleton was moving let alone talking was an absolutely insane concept that I couldn’t wrap my head around. I must’ve gone into shock because next thing I knew I was laying in its bed with a glass of water by my side.

“Have you calmed down kid?”

“Kinda… WAIT NO! HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING RIGHT NOW!”

This still made no sense. Why would it? I definitely wasn’t crazy, a talking skeleton is insane. Have you been face to face with a talking skeleton before? I didn’t think so. If running is off the table then my only two options are; hear it out or fight. And I chose to fight.

I sprang out of bed and launched towards the skeleton. It couldn’t be that hard to kill, it's just a big pile of bones. I got within two or three feet of it before I was thrown across the room and into a wall by some sort of invisible force. It was like a really muscular ghost picked me up off the floor and rammed me into the wall. I didn’t hit the wall that hard so no blood came out but it immediatly winded me. I fell back onto the bed and the skeleton started to speak.

“yo, I’m Ryfux. Please Don’t try to attack me again, I ain’t gonna hurt you. Now... Why are you in my house?'' he Said.

There was no point in trying to fight or run away anymore so I may as well have just heard him out.

“I just came in here looking for a place to stay. I was brought here by some jackass king and then thrown out of the kingdom when I refused to work for him. I swear to god I'm gonna kill that asshole.”

“I see…”

“Well… I guess it's settled then”

“What's settled?”

“You're moving in with me, we start training tomorrow. for now get some rest”

“Wait wha--”

I must’ve been extremely tired because I fell asleep mid sentence. It's either that or he used some sort of magic to knock me out. Not that it really matters.

I woke up the next day to the sensation of cold metal spread out across my body. I couldn’t move nor could I see anything.

“Your first trial is getting up” said Ryfux in his baritone voice. “Trials? What trials bone head? Let me out!!” I shouted. “Did I not tell you? Oops. Well, you see, you will have to complete eight trials with gradually increasing difficulty. This, as I mentioned before, is the first.”

What an asshole! So by “training” this is what he meant. I figured it was just like practicing with a sword or something but what the hell is this.

I tried to move but I couldn't even squirm. It’s like I was being held in place by some sort of external entity.

“I understand… actually I don’t understand but that's a question for later. Why can’t I see!?”

“Oh you know… for fun… heHaHaHAHAHA”

“Asshole…”

So I was stuck without any way of moving when I thought back to my skills. There was one skill that seemed pretty useless at the time so I didn’t think to check what it was. “[Heavy weight]” I'm not really sure what it does but may as well try.

“Heavy weight” as soon as I said it a crushing weight fell onto my body and the bed started to creak. I could barely breath but it seemed to be working. With a sudden crack I smacked onto the ground and started coughing. When I hit the ground the crushing weight vanished and I was able to move again.

“Ah c’mon man!! You broke my bed!!” yelled Ryfux. Even though I could move again I still couldn’t see. “Now unblind me so I can come over there and kick your ass you bone-headed freak!” I shouted.

“Alright, alright, I get it” he responded before snapping his fingers. The veil over my eyes had vanished and I could finally see what had been holding me down. Nothing.

I looked around but there was seemingly nothing out of the ordinary.

Putting that out of my mind I quickly stood up and gave that idiot bone-head a dirty look. As I stomped across the room towards him he started to speak “calm down, you don’t need to be so angry. This was just a fun little introduction to your time here.”

“Yeah? Well I don’t want to stay here if it means waking up blind and not being able to move.”

“Don’t worry, this was a one time thing just to see how you reacted. It won’t happen again trust me”

“It better not because if it does I swear to god I’ll kill you”

“You? Kill me? hahaHaHaHaHAHAHA you can try if you want but I wouldn’t recommend it”

“And why is that, I could take a stupid skeleton like you anyday”

“I don’t think you understand the position you’re in, kid. I hope you realise I'm not some push over. You can hurl insults all you want but don’t overestimate your power”

At this point I was pretty fed up so I swung at him. Just like the first time I was flung across the room into the wall causing me to start coughing up blood. He seemed to have some sort of invisible force field that threw me back the second I got too close. As the pain started to shoot across my body Ryfux muttered something under his breath “heal”. As soon as he said it the pain began to fade. Before I could think about it he started speaking again “C'mon man, I'm getting tired of this, just sit down and have a glass of water” he said while scratching the back of his head.

I accepted, mostly because I hadn’t drinken any water for a while but also because I knew I couldn’t fight him. Suddenly the table he had been sitting at before started to levitate to the middle of the room. I was at a loss for words. I just sat there with my mouth agape when Ryfux noticed my confusion “just sit down, I’ll explain it” he said. Along with the table two chairs floated across the room. I took a seat in one of them and Ryfux placed a glass of water in front of me.

Without even thinking I grabbed it and started chugging. As he took a seat he began to speak “hmmm where to start… ah yes, floating table. That is one of my skills called ‘[Telekinesis]’ I can use it to move objects that are a short distance from me without having to touch ‘em. Secondly ummm… what was it…”

“The force field” I interjected.

“Ah yes, the ‘force field’ is another skill of mine called ‘[benevolence]’ it stops people who are over thirty levels under me from attacking me. The downside is I also can’t attack them. It mainly just helps me block idiot kids who try to pick a fight with me. Now that that is explained let's get down to the nitty gritty, ‘The ten trials.’ As I said before, the first trial was the one you just finished. The secon-”

“By the way, what was up with that? When I could see again there was seemingly nothing holding me down. Where’d it go?”

“Oh yeah! I forgot to say, that's another skill of mine called [Restrict]. It pretty much completely immobilizes the target. It’s almost impossible to break from the inside but it's really weak on the outside and has a really long start time. That's why I put you to sleep before doing it. Odds are it would never work in a real battle.”

“Wait… you put me to sleep?”

“Yeah but that doesn’t matter now, what matters is my explanation so stop interrupting.Your second trial will be ‘getting a job’. Probably the easiest of all of them. All you have to do is go into a nearby town to the local temple and request a ‘Job selection.’ Now, just because it's the easiest doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. You need money to do an out of the blue job selection, I’d say around 100 mild and I’m not gonna give it to you.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because what's the fun in that?”

“Asshole”

“I’ll act like I didn’t hear that just now. Anyways, you’ll need to earn the money yourself.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, find a way. I expect this to take you a couple weeks. For now I'll give you some clothes, rations, and a map to the nearest village but otherwise you're on your own.”

Before I knew it he had kicked me out the front door and I was on my way to a nearby town named Ipphi.