Wiping sweat off my brow, I wearily opened the gate to the old mansion. The sun was beginning to set and dyed the already brilliant autumn colours of the forest a fiery red. After six hours of my attempt at "safe" levelling, I needed some rest. Slumping down on the now dust-free floor of the mansion's empty living room, I took a long drink from my water bottle and retrieved my sandwich from my Void. I had dumped all the stuff I brought over from Earth into my Void the moment I returned here. It was just so convenient to travel light and I had become accustomed to retrieving the item I wanted by just thinking about them.

Still, exploring the place and fighting monsters for so long had tired me out more than I expected. I might be completely sore tomorrow at this rate. Nonetheless, I couldn't keep a grin off my face as I checked my status. All that effort had been so worth it! My status now looked like this:

Rynn Tan

Experience: 37% to next Level

Race: Human | Age: 16

Level: 12 | Condition: Normal

Attack: Normal

Endurance: Normal

Agility: High

Speed: Normal

Intelligence: Normal

Mana: High

Skills:

Inspect 1, Swordsmanship 1, Map 1 [Evasion] [Language 1] [Stealth]

Magic:

Light, Class 1 - Healing, Shield [Blessings] [Dispel] [Immunity]

Conjuration, Class 1 - Storage, [Creation] [Multiplication] [Conjuring] [Uncreation]

I levelled up to 12 and managed to gain three whole Skills! Plus I unlocked the Stealth skill and learnt Shield from Light magic too. All these were the result of killing 20 Lesser Goblins, 14 Great Ants (dog-sized ants), 11 Blobs (which I called "slimes" in my mind), 8 Great Slugs (also dog-sized) and 4 Goblins. Yes, I recorded every monster I defeated for future reference. The first four kinds were those I could defeat easily, while the four Goblins were a bit of a mistake. They were almost indistinguishable from the Lesser Goblins apart from the fact they wielded small stone weapons.

Most of the monsters I killed were Level 1, so I had used Eins on them without issues. When I experimented on a Level 2 Blob, the sword just bounced off as if it had struck an invisible wall. I was forced to use Deux and then dealt the final blow by stomping on it. Fortunately, the sticky goo disappeared from my shoes when the monster vanished. It would have been difficult to explain the goo on me when I returned home otherwise.

I was also curious about the disappearing monsters, so I tried killing a regular ant. The carcass didn't disappear. I wasn't sure if I gained any experience points either, since the ant was so tiny. Apparently there was a difference between normal creatures and monsters. I experimented further by inspecting any animals I saw. This was an example of the results:

Mountain Harr

Species: Lepus montanus

Condition: Normal

Attack: Low

Endurance: High

Agility: High

Speed: High

Intelligence: Low

Mana: Low

Not only did it lack a Level attribute, the interface didn't show its skills or magic either. Did that mean I wouldn't receive any experience from hunting these creatures? Well, Feyril did state explicitly that I would level up by killing monsters, and if the Levels of these creatures weren't displayed I would have to use Deux. Most of all, I was highly disinclined to hurt such cute animals. Well, if faced by an angry predator I would be forced to defend myself, of course, but otherwise I decided I would stay away from killing normal animals.

I was somewhat bemused by the fact I now thought about killing in such a jaded manner, but the fact that this system was set up so much like an RPG must have influenced my mindset. I finished off my sandwich and took another sip of water. There hadn't been any obvious changes to my status other than the increase in skills and magic, but I had certainly gained confidence and speed when finishing off my targets. The swords also felt more comfortable in my hands now, and even though my stamina had decreased at the end of my levelling run, I had killed more monsters in a single strike than at the start.

After learning Shield, I was less afraid to approach monsters since I could ward off their first attack with it. This Shield aspect of Light magic was both useful and cost-effective. Invoking it allowed me to block off a single attack from an enemy, whether physical or magical, and apparently it used up very little mana. I could cast it about ten times consecutively before I started to feel a bit of a headache, which I assumed was due to a sudden drop of mana. I merely had to take several deep breaths for the headache to go away.

As for my other skills, Map 1 gave me a sense of familiarity for places I had visited before and enabled me to recognise landmarks more easily.

Swordsmanship 1 let me instinctively know how to hold my sword when striking and aided my movements when parrying a blow. Inspect 1 added a percentage to my experience gauge. I hadn't hoped for much since they were all skills with numbers behind their names, so I wasn't too disappointed. In fact, it made me even more excited to upgrade them further. I wasn't sure how useful Swordsmanship would be in daily life on Earth, but Inspect and Map would surely come in handy.