Post by BreadPudding337 8:34 AM, April 5th, 20XX

All I’m saying is that God gave us free will. By taking away our ability, our choice, to commit acts of violence this Passivity Precept is taking away our fundamental rights as humans. The right to make the choice of sinning or not.

The giant fire-eyed rat had huge yellow teeth that dripped with saliva. It also smelled like old sweaty man-socks. I choked for a second.

“Equip this!”

I turned to Lore who tossed me something black as we backed away from the nasty Rat of Unusual Largeness.

You have received the single-use item, Perfumed Facemask. This item will keep bad odors away from you for 30 min. Would you like to wear it now?

Yes!

Warning! You are in combat! You can only equip items manually at this time.

“Motherfucker!”

Just as I was about to pull it on and tie the straps, the giant rat raised its tree trunk of an arm right above my little head.

I pulled one of my swords and used my other hand to hold the mask in place. As the arm struck down I blocked it and moved out of the way. I glared at Lore, who had just finished putting on his mask. It vanished after being equipped.

He calmly pulled back on an imaginary bow and shot an arrow towards the rat boss, and since we managed to flank the boss that also meant toward me. My eyes widened and my adrenaline spiked. Fortunately, the elf could aim. The arrow plunged into its shoulder. It grunted from the impact.

I was going to ask Lore to distract it so I could put on my own mask and start attacking but he was likely doing more damage to it than I would what with my measly level 1 attacking power.

“Fine, I guess I’m dodge-tanking.”

Using my sword, I jabbed multiple times towards its wrists, heart, and ankles. It blocked most of those assaults and focused on impolitely murdering me.

When it had finally had enough, it yelled its skunk breath in my face and stomped its foot down. The ground cracked beneath me like the San Andreas fault. I lost my balance and fell face-first onto the moist and gritty cave floor. I knew this rat-bastard would step on me given a chance so I rolled away and used my momentum to stand up.

At this point, I was just kiting the rat boss while leaving its death in Lore’s hands so I put my sword away, rolled to the side and tied on my mask. When the boss threw a punch or a kick, I would dodge, and for some reason, it ignored my sexy bard companion. Er, totally normal bard companion. Lore likely had some way to transfer his agro onto me.

I spent what felt like ten minutes, just running around the room while dodging the creature’s clumsy attacks. That lasted until it became enraged and charged after me, tackling me to the floor. My head hit the floor hard and the world dimmed at the edges. I did not have much health left. Was I going to die here again?

The rat boss raised its arm. It was over.

An arrow shot into its hand. The rat boss roared, distracted. This was my chance! I pulled a sword and used both hands to stab into its chest. Thick blood poured onto me.

Infuriated the R.O.U.L jumped off me and I used that chance to get to my feet and start running. Which hurt. Everything hurt. One more hit and I’d die again and have to deal with another time-wasting and annoying death penalty. No. Not again. I couldn’t so I’d do the only thing I could, keep moving.

Fortunately, the boss appeared to be on its last tail, its haggard form erupted with a blast of air. It again became enraged but this time, perhaps having learned its lesson, it stomped with both feet causing the floor to break up and the walls to crack.

My foot landed wrong and I fell on my ass. When I tried to get up, I once again fell, this time on my back. Pain shot through my chest. Was that a rib that cracked?

Whatever, it was a good thing since if I hadn’t, I totally would have missed the random boulders which dropped from the ceiling, one of which fell right towards my face.

With a pain-filled groan, I rolled, then rolled some more, evading the raining earthen chunks.

The rat boss plodded toward me. I jumped to my feet like a real Hollywood martial artist. I pulled out my swords and prepared to continue the fight only to see a magical arrow shoot out of its chest, sending a blast of gore onto my face and down the front of my sweater.

With extreme calm, I put away my swords and wiped the bits of flesh and blood out of my eyes and mouth. When I started to feel better, I jumped from foot to foot. “Oh, my, god. Ew! Ew! Eeeew! This is the grossest thing ever! It’s inside my shirt! Why is this happening?”

I glared at the perfectly clean Lore. He grinned maliciously. I slowly started walking towards him, hands outstretched. His face paled. That made me happy.

“Come here Lore! No, don’t run away! Good experiences like this should be shared!”

I ran after him and just as I caught up, the gore disappeared, items flew into my inventory and I heard fanfare before my whole body glowed. Arcane energy like I’d never felt before moved into me, through me, and spread warmth from my center to every part of my body. To describe it poorly… It was the joy I get from an unexpected tip or the burst of happiness from drinking cocoa on a cold day while listening to my all-time favorite songs. It was awesome and I couldn’t wait to experience it again!

Congratulations! You’ve leveled up! As an Arcane Assassin, you gain 1 to your Athletics score and .5 to your Magic score! This leaves you with 4 points to split between your Strength and Dexterity, and 2 points to split between Wisdom and Intelligence!

Would you like the Passivity Precept to optimize your attributes for your class's current level? You have 5 seconds to decide.

“Wait! What?!”

3!

“You skipped over four, asshole!”

1! 0! We did not specify that it was in-sim seconds. Nor your world’s seconds.

I had a feeling that if the Passivity precept or whatever was writing these game prompts could, it would totally send me a troll face.

“Are you done leveling?” Lore asked somewhere behind me.

“Yeah.” I sniffed sadly. I enjoyed adding points to things though. I opened my character info and realized that they’d already optimized my points the same way I would have. Jerks.

“If you’re done then let’s go. We have a puzzle to solve.” He patted my shoulder.

That was when I remembered that the gore I’d been covered in had vanished. I relaxed.

Then I saw Lore’s happy smirk. “You’re probably thinking something like, ‘Oh, good, I’m no longer covered in blood and intestines, right?’”

My mouth opened to agree but nothing came out. I sensed a trap.

“It’s still there. That grossness. It was just temporarily replaced by a charisma debuff.”

“What do you mean temporarily?”

He grinned and pointed at the room the boss came from. “Come on! We have treasure to find and a puzzle to solve!”

He sauntered towards the next room.

“Lore! What do you mean by temporary?”