I am currently running for my life from the goblin, or should I say “goblins”.

My plan didn’t go as I expected… I didn’t have a plan…

When the goblin first emerged from the bushes I was stunned but I quickly regained my composure because this was a game world.

The goblin seemed surprise to seem also but it soon began to snarling at me.

‘Shit… it must have smelled the scent of cooking fish and followed it here. I should have been more careful.’

We circled each other slowly and the goblin kept on making aggressive faces at me and was snarling.

I held my wooden spear so tight that my knuckles went white. I have to admit that I was pretty scared facing this monster in front of me.

I mean, it was about as tall as I was and had sharp teeth, pointy ears, greenish skin, and sharp claws. It looked like a rabid human, kind of. I could smell that it hadn’t bathed it days… or probably its entire life and it was only wearing a loincloth that

barely concealed anything. So I could see its nasty bulge.

“Guaa!” The goblin came at me with its hands raised and I kind of panicked, not expecting it to charge at me so unexpectedly.

“Ah!” Startled, I closed my eyes and I blindly thrust my spear forward and I felt little resistance and heard a disgusting *squish*.

I opened my eyes and looked into the eyes of the goblin. The light dimmed and it uttered some guttural sounds before it fell to the ground.

*Ding!*

A small bell-like noise came out but I ignored it and I stared blankly at the corpse of the goblin.

*Rustle*

“Gigi Ga?” Three more goblins that looked similar to the one I just killed on accident emerged from the bushes.

“Oh, hey, what’s up guys? Oh! This here, is a complete misunderstanding… It’s an accident… yeah… He scared me and I… uh..”

“Gyah!!”

Luckily, I still had the mental capacity to figure out that I was outnumbered and would probably be butchered by them so I did the most rational thing that my brain could think of that the moment: Run.

And here I am, at the entrance of a cave that I found near the lake that was behind some trees.

I was able to somehow outrun those green monsters and entered the cave. Hopefully they don’t find me here.

A screen suddenly popped up in front of me.

[You have entered the Lakeside Dungeon ☆☆☆]

[As the first person to discover this dungeon, a special reward will be given after completion]

"Wut"

I was seriously confused at what just happened. I tried to exit the cave but an invisible barrier prevented me from exiting. Did I just screw myself over?

‘What the hell do those stars mean that are next to the name of the dungeon? Is it the difficulty level or the rarity level?’

Whatever, I just needed to conquer this dungeon right? How hard could it be?

I realized that there was another screen that was floating around me, but I didn’t notice it because I was too busy running for my

life.

[Level up!]

[3 unallocated points]

“Huh?”

I opened up my status menu and saw that my level and HP went up and I had three unallocated points for usage.

Name: Rane Coult

Level: 2

HP: 12

Strength: 4 Agility: 6

Dexterity: 4 Stamina: 5.5

Intelligence: 5 Luck: 3

Skills: N/A

Unallocated points: 3

How come I only received three extra points? Isn’t it usually supposed to be five? What difficulty is this on? This sucks.

I poured all of my unused points into agility so my agility went up to nine from six. The reason being, is because I thought that it would obviously make me faster so that I could get away from those goblins if I ever meet them in the future.

“Wait… why did my stamina go up by .5?”

I saw that there was another blue screen that I didn’t notice again and it said that my stamina rose by .5.

I guess it’s because of the intense running I did to escape from the goblins.

I speculated that there were ways to increase my stats without leveling up. But I ran till I ran out of breath and I only gained a measly .5 in stamina. It must be hard to increase stats…

Because I had nothing to do and was stuck in this dungeon I decided to explore it. I mean, what else could I do? The cave was pretty dark but my eyes were able to adjust in a few moments.

As soon as I took my first step my foot went through the ground as if there was nothing there and I fell.

“Woah!”

Somehow, I was able to hold onto the ledge with my reflexes and avoided falling into the trap. I glanced down and saw that it was a two meter fall and there were multiple, sharp wooden spikes that were standing erect from the ground.

*Gulp*

With adrenaline pumping through my veins, I managed to pull myself up from the trap hole and was gasping for breath.

That was a seriously close call. That was the closest that I’ve come to dying in this world and I really doubt that I can respawn and I don’t want to experiment with that.

I’ve never missed home as much as I do now.

After resting for a few minutes I got back up and decided to jump over the hole. It was only a meter long so it wasn’t really a problem for me if I had a running start. I realized that my body felt a little bit lighter and faster than before. Maybe those three points that I put into agility really worked?

This time I was more careful of where I stepped and I actually found some rocks on the ground and grabbed a handful of them and occasionally threw them in front of me while I walked to make sure that there were no traps that I fell into.

Luckily, my caution paid off because a trap went off and this time it was into a swarm of snakes, all of whom I was sure were poisonous. I was able to bypass this trap also.

Soon I came across a large room that was filled with something I didn’t expect: slimes.