Chapter 5 – First Blood

The wind roared in his ears as Luke fell towards the ground far below.

Cursing furiously, Luke tried to orient himself, but it was not an easy thing to do when he was falling toward his imminent death.

Another dire bat swooped through the air, this one’s eyes glowing a hateful red as it crashed into Luke, intending to pin him to the side of the tower.

Spotting an oversized window, Luke rolled as soon as the creature crashed him into the stone, but before it could pin him to it. He shattered the window and fell into the darkness of a lower floor beyond.

Somewhere up above, Luke could hear the others shouting and fighting, but he was far beyond their help down here. They likely thought he was dead.

I thought I was too,he admitted, rolling across the glass-strewn floor before the bat creature could get up.

On the ground, it was a gangly, awkward thing, but its glowing-red eyes were unnerving. They should have pinned him to the spot. It was a full-blown monster, not just a large creature like a lizard or something, but something only vaguely reminiscent of its Earth variant.

Luke had long-since decided his course of action and found that his body was already moving well before the dire bat had gained its feet and began to flap its oversized purple-black wings.

The glass covered floor made his footing precarious, but he managed to slide into a proper stance as he thrust out with his sword with one hand and whipped a single throwing dagger out from his belt.

The leading sword was an easy thing for the creature to dodge, even as ungainly as it was, but the dagger nailed it right beneath the shoulder joint.

Luke barreled forward, using [Fleet of Foot] to close the distance as fast as possible. The skill immensely heightened his speed. He noticed that in the corner of his vision, a green bar began to shrink as he used the skill, but it did what he hoped it would.

Now within the creature’s grasp, Luke slashed out just as it wrapped its leathery wings around him. He cut a ragged rent in the creature’s wing and forced it back, causing it to hiss with pain.

Its fanged maw was red with blood and Luke wondered if this was the same creature that had killed the Healer. He focused on the creature and saw something that he hadn’t expected. Its level was higher than the one that had grabbed him.

[Red-Eyed Dire Bat - Level 3]

Not only that, but its name had also changed. But what did it mean?

Luke didn’t have long to ponder. The creature made a desperate bid for flight, but Luke was using his lone Rogue skill to close the gap and slash out with his sword again.

A scimitar was nothing like a fencing foil. The weapon had real weight to it, and it moved solidly, unlike the bendy blades he was used to.

However, the footing required was largely the same, and it was his footing that kept him advancing and slashing as the creature was backed farther and farther into the room and against a wall.

If he let up for a second, it would get away. He had to keep the pressure on.

The moment it hit the wall, Luke let loose everything he had. He whipped out three throwing knives, one after the other, with one hand as the other weaved his sword around in a series of distracting cuts that allowed him to hide the knives he chucked at the creature.

One of the three knives hit the creature on the wrong end, but the other two struck home right next to its bony sternum. It seized and screeched, making Luke’s ears buzz with pain. He pushed through it and lunged forward, driving his scimitar through until the point struck the stone behind the creature.

You have defeated [Red-Eyed Dire Bat - Level 3]. Extra experience gained for slaying an enemy above your level. Extra LP gained for slaying a Red-Eyed beast. 4 LP obtained.

Level Up! Your [Rogue] Class has reached Level 1.

Stat points earned: +2 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +1 Perception, +1 Free Point.

Level Up! Your [Rogue] Class has reached Level 2.

Stat points earned: +2 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +1 Perception, +1 Free Point.

Level Up! Your [Human (G-Grade)] Race has reached Level 1.

Stat points earned: +1 All Stats, +1 Fate, +1 Free Point.

Breathing hard, Luke pulled the blade free and stared at the creature as it slumped to the ground.

He felt amazing. The warmth flooding through his body was unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

No sense in spending mana if he could just recover the knives. He reached forward to pull the throwing knives out of the creature when a notification popped up in front of him.

Would you like to loot the [Red-Eyed Dire Bat - Level 3]?

Y/N

Luke agreed and was immediately sorry for the decision.

A sickly sweet smoke rolled off the creature’s body, cloying and gagging him as it flowed around him like a purple miasma.

He managed to get out of the cloud as it rose to the ceiling and vanished, leaving only the creature’s blood and a small pile of items where it had once been.

His throwing knives were there, but so were two other items:

Item: [Lesser Monster Core (Crude)]

(Consumable)

A small crystalline orb that contains a portion of a monster’s spirit within. Used in a wide variety of magical applications, a monster core can also be used in an emergency to restore a small amount of mana.

Item: [Red-Eyed Monster Meat (Common)]

(Consumable)

A juicy slab of raw monster meat brimming with untapped vitality. Used in a broad assortment of magical applications and crafting purposes, red-eyed monster meat can also be eaten to restore a moderate amount of health with a chance for a greater buff. If consumed raw, there is a debuff risk.

Luke’s hands were shaking, but not from fear. It took him a moment to realize he was excited. This was the most fun he’d ever had in his entire life.

The brush with near death had been exhilarating rather than terrifying. He craved more and didn’t even have the self-awareness to be ashamed of it.

His coworkers were likely hurt or dying up there, and instead of rushing to join them, he was basking in the afterglow of his first battle to the death.

Pocketing the items in his cloak and wishing the meat had come in a baggy, Luke oriented himself, found the stairs, and sprinted up them as fast as [Fleet of Foot] would allow him to go.

He reached the upper floor just as a limp body tumbled down the stairs, its throat torn out. That sobered him up a little.

And yet, he couldn’t help the thrill of excitement.

Luke plucked a few daggers from his belt and tossed them into the air with alarming precision. He hardly had to think about it as his other hand darted his sword in and out to stab and cut at an approaching creature.

His ambidexterity had always been good, but now it was unreal. He felt like two people in one body, each arm working in concert but independently at the same time.

Knives leapt into the air to cut through the thin membrane of the bats’ wings, making their greatest strength–their ability to take flight–into their one weakness.

He shouted at the top of his lungs, calling on anybody with a ranged weapon to aim for the wings, to tear the thin membranes so they couldn’t take flight again.

Grounded, they were easily overwhelmed by the remaining people on the top floor of the tower. Luke took down a few himself, issuing the mercy stroke with the curved tip of his sword.

Dancing with his blade, throwing daggers tossed into the air, Luke felt invincible. In the span of just a few short minutes he had doubled his Dexterity, and the difference was staggering.

How much further could he grow in just this battle alone?

Unfortunately, it also went to his head.

He took a nasty gouge across the side for his cockiness, but he kept fighting. A bolt of fizzling magic crashed against the side of a dire bat, causing it to flinch just long enough for Luke to get a dagger thrown into the monster’s chest.

He was aiming for its neck, but that was close enough.

An arrow whizzing by cut a line of fire across his cheek, one he narrowly avoided taking in the eye. The Archer hardly noticed him as he fired blindly, trying to take down any of the monsters.

Fighting in a group was dangerous.

Even with the enemies easy to tell the difference apart, friendly fire from magic and arrows was happening. Luke noticed, even in the thick of things, that the monsters didn’t seem to struggle with that as much as the humans did.

Nobody woke up today and expected to be fighting for their lives that evening. Today was just supposed to be another Friday at the office.

The battle quickly wound down as the remaining bats either fled or were grounded and killed, but it wasn’t without its costs.

Bodies littered the ground. A surprising number of them.

Worse, he had several close calls where he had to rely on his newly enhanced Dexterity to get out of the way in time to avoid being harmed by an ally.

If he had been fighting up here just a few minutes ago, he likely would be one of the bodies lying on the ground.

In fact, he suspected more than one was the result of friendly fire. Luke grimaced.

When it was all over, more than half of the dire bats had fled into the late afternoon light.

Luke’s group had only performed marginally better. Their losses were staggering for their first battle.

Luke hastily searched among his remaining allies for a Healer. We’re screwed if the last one didn’t survive.

Four dead, four badly wounded, and the rest with minor injuries, Luke included. Alice, their lone Healer, was desperately trying to save the worst of the lot, muttering under her breath as a purple-blue light bubbled up around her and flowed out from her hands into the wounded person’s body.

Before Luke’s very eyes, he watched as death sentences were reversed. A nasty gut wound closed up slowly. The bleeding stemmed.

“Magic is amazing,” Dexter whispered hoarsely, staring at where his wound had just been. His armor had a huge rent in it. It hadn’t stood up well to those talons.

Luke kept scanning the sky, making sure the bats weren’t coming back, but they seemed well and truly gone. Still, he would have felt significantly better if they would get below before anything else decided it wanted to come back.

The level below where Luke had squared off against the red-eyed creature wouldn’t be easy for them to get into. The stairway made for an awkward entrance and the windows would only permit one monster at a time.

Alice was sobbing as she pressed her hands to the bleeding stump of the Gladiator that had knocked Luke down. The woman was pale and drawn, utterly unconscious as the former HR manager tried to heal the worst of the injury away.

They managed to stabilize everybody, though it took three mana potions pilfered off the dead Healer. As soon as Luke touched the man’s body, he got the same prompt as before and confirmed.

Much to everybody’s horror, the body vanished into a cloud of smoke, though it didn’t smell quite so foul and was instead a pale greenish-blue color with sparkling fragments in it.

Luke had quickly given Alice the mana potions. She needed them more than anybody else. And though he received more than one disgusted look, the Gladiator and at least one of the Mages would have died without his intervention.

He couldn’t care less what they thought of him, so long as they were alive. He could deal with the social faux pas of looting an ally later.

For now, survival was all that mattered.