Tutorial Rewrite 45 (Patreon)
Content
I wake up. I’m back in the darkness of the dungeon.
The clock screen hangs in front of me. Like it’s always been there.
<Top—Status—Community>
<02:20:12
Day 85>
<The fourth attempt will begin in
5:21:39:48>
I don’t know how long I’ve been on this floor, or how long I’ve been in the capture of these creatures, or how long I’ve been in this darkness. I can’t remember. My brain feels fluffy. Flurry. Fuzzy.
I… I need to get out of here. If I stay here any more, I don’t know what will be left of me anymore. I don’t think there will be anything at all.
King. I need to king the kill. Kill the king. He… if I just kill him, then I’ll be out of here. That’s all I need to do. It’s so simple, and easy. That’s all I need to do. It’s so simple, and easy. Kill the king. He’s kind of old anyways. Who cares.
I just need to get out of here first.
I begin by breaking every bone in both of my hands. Once I pull them out of the barbed shackles, they look more like shredded shredded meat than shredded meat human hand meat. I look at the bars of my cell. In order to get through, I need to break my pelvis, ribcage and skull. The rest will get through easily. I bash my pelvis against the bars until it's in pieces small enough to get through. Then I just squeeze my rib cage through. Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch went a few of my ribs but that’s okay. Then my skull gets stuck but that’s okay. I just bonk my head against either sides of the bars like the metal donger inside of a metal bell that going dong dong dong dong and my head is the donger that goes dong and the bell are the bars and after dong dong dong dong donging enough the plates that make up my skull shift and my skull slips through and I’m free.
<You have learned:
Brain Damage Resistance Lv.2>
<You have learned:
Fracture Resistance Lv.3>
<You have learned:
Brain Damage Resistance Lv.3>
<You have learned:
Fracture Resistance Lv.4>
<You have learned:
Fracture Resistance Lv.5>
Once I’m out I lie down and pull myself into a ball that resembles what a fetus inside the belly of its mother might look like.
My body slowly heals in the darkness. Once my brain is in the right way and place a again, I start to move. I’ve thought of a thing. You don’t have to lie down to be in the fetus position. You just need to be balled up. So if I just crouch down, and pull my knees to my chest, then it works, even if I’m not lying down, in a ball, like a fetus, then I can still not be seen. Then I can roll like samus metroid man and get through the castle. Roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll.
Roll past the guards and the knights and the magicians and the royals and out into the outside and the darkness but the bridge is up so I crawl up to atop the fort and jump cannonball into the waters below and then I swim to shore and go up onto land.
Okay. How do I best completely clear the stage?
I think for this floor, the entire city is considered to be part of the stage. I just need to defeat all of the goblins in the city. Easy. What’s the easiest, quickest way to do that?
I’m going to assume that the floor will be considered fully clear so long as there is no one here when I clear it, which means that goblins who flee will be counted as defeated. If this isn’t the case, then it’s honestly unfair to expect me to defeat all of these goblins with anything less than an organised nuclear strike. But since I don’t have access to that, biochemical warfare will have to do.
I have only a little over five days to do this. It isn’t much, but it will have to be enough.
My first step is to fill every single freshwater reservoir with corpses. That way, disease will be spread like the plague at Ratlickers Anonymous. It could really be any old corpse, but I think I’ll make new ones just for this purpose, since I do need to grind my level a bit. Hm. Oh, wait, that said, I do actually have some rancid meat in my inventory! Man, I’d almost forgotten about that one. I forgot to pick up the meat from the goblins I’d killed in the forest for a couple of days, so when I got there it was already half-rotten and bloated, but I still harvested them because it might be good tolerance training. If I hadn’t cleared the forest of animals so fast, they might have gotten to them first.
Anyway, since I already have enough corpses to pollute the biggest water sources, I might as well get to it.
My problem is the way I look. The goblins don’t see me as one of their own, but that can be changed.
It’s late at night, but that doesn’t mean the streets are empty. It’s just that there are fewer roaming goblins, and that the ones that are there are weakened by being inebriated.
Merging with the shadows, I watch these drunkards tumble here and there. After a while, I notice a goblin at my own height, if an inch or so shorter. As soon as he leaves the safety of the light, I ambush him and drag him into an alley where I disassemble him fully with only my fingers. New world record! The extra sharp claws are way more useful than I had expected. Nice!
With a new hide in hand, I dress up and set out. My first order of business is to get my disguise level high enough to make it viable.
Wearing the hide, I wander around the streets in areas that are visible enough to get me noticed by the goblins, but not to the point where they can see exactly what I am. And, like a charm…
<You have learned:
Disguise Lv.2>
<You have learned:
Disguise Lv.3>
<You have learned:
Disguise Lv.4>
At around six in the morning, I finally reach the fated level.
<You have learned:
Disguise Lv.10>
<You have learned:
Impersonate Lv.1>
Perfect. I have no idea what that does differently, but it will be good enough. During my walk, I was able to find a couple of public-use wells, into which I quickly dumped all of the rotted meat I have. Since this was so early in the morning, by the time the sun went up, almost every single well in the city was completely unusable.
Since part of my goal is to just scare the goblins out of the city, I obviously also took the time to violently eviscerate a couple of night-time goblins and strew what I got from them here and there. Since my last wish is to be discovered, once the morning arrived, I made my hideout by breaking into some random house along one of the streets, defeated the goblins inside, and just used that as a hideout. There were a few goblings too, and their meat was just as soft as I remembered.
At noon, I got bored of being inside, so I snuck out while wearing my disguise. I kept to the back streets, but a few goblins still spotted me, but it was worth it to see the horror and confusion taking a hold of the mobs.
To make sure my day wasn’t wasted, I spent my time quietly emptying each goblin house one by one without alerting anyone. I even took the time to break into a few taverns to place spoiled meat into their larger barrels of beer. I have no idea if that will do anything, but I certainly hope it will.
And then night fell again. Apparently, during the day, some goblins had illogically banded together to help clean out the wells, but they’re easy to poison again. I was able to save up a lot of goblin innards by taking them out so effectively, so I just filled the wells to the brim with organs, if only to prove a point. And since I still had quite a lot left, I just threw it here and there just about everywhere. And then to make the situation just a little spookier, I made sure to defeat every goblin I encountered. And if only to make sure that they knew it was the same person, I disassembled each goblin I defeated while still leaving what I got out for everyone to find.
By the time morning arrived, the inner city was a bloodbath. Screams could be heard, but I didn’t really care. No sleep for the wicked, as they say. Not that I’m wicked or anything.
And now, finally, I’m starting to get pop-ups about the goblins dying from the poisoning of the wells. But it isn’t enough. Only a few hundred are dying, and the experience I get from it is greatly diminished.
I need to do something drastic.
The following night, it seems the king finally got the memo, because not only are the regular goblins not roaming the streets, but it’s instead filled with armed guards. It would be a mistake to attack them, so instead, I just hop from house to house, defeating all the goblins and leaving their bodies unbutchered to rot. The city is starting to stink pretty bad, but I can still smell the goblins above it. I’ve been able to do away with maybe a tenth of the complete population, mostly through the water. But it isn’t enough.
Another day, another night, and right as I’m about to consider changing my strategy…
<Top—Status—Community>
<00:00:01
Day 89>
<The fourth attempt will begin in
1:23:59:59>
<The Day of Grand Conference
will begin in 23:59:59.>
I no longer have time.