Beating and beating… I forgot about everything and just concentrated on one task. To kill the one who dared to kill me. My short limbs began to feel heavy as a burning sensation started to emerge from my abdominal muscles. What I am doing was way beyond my body’s capability. At that time, however, I was not in a position to hear the screams of my body.

Because my mind had already blanked from extreme bloodlust driven by desperation.

You have killed a Juvenile Goblin.

+2 EP(Evolution Points)

It was only after this notification did I regained enough control over my body and sprawled on the ground beside the pummelled monster. Its head was already beaten to an unrecognizable shape with pungent green blood leaking from its seven orifices. I was too tired from the intensive action and lied there to recover my energy. Although one threat to my life was eliminated, another and the most prominent one remained.

After this fight, my hunger only increased. All of a sudden, the late goblin gave off a very tempting and aromatic smell. The blood and brain matters were smelling disgusting as it was before, but it’s flesh however was very tempting to the ‘feral’ me. With hunger blinding my logical thoughts and the pile of ‘meat’ before me, the choice was as obvious as it could be.

…

I came to my senses halfway to my sumptuous meal. Looking at my bloodied hand that held a half torn meat, I blanched for a moment there. Looking down, I saw blue bones of the dead goblin’s left hand. I have eaten its whole left hand in a matter of a few minutes.

That appetite was really something, considering my full height was shorter than the hand’s full length. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel the rejection of consuming a monster’s meat. Since I was a monster too, I wonder if it could be considered cannibalism. Anyway, after I had my fill, I hastily retreated from the place with my stubby legs carrying my tiny body. As for the killed goblin, I didn’t care about that. I was in too much hurry to return to my “hole” to escape meeting any other monster.

While consuming the goblin meat, my HP gradually replenished above the danger zone, which reflected on my wounded face. The bleeding had stopped and even the broken bones had shown signs of healing. The pain had already alleviated somewhat. My HP had increased from 4 to 6, two points from just consuming the goblin’s meat.

With my stomach full, my objective, for now, had achieved and I retreated to my hole. The moment I arrived, drowsiness enveloped my being. I found the comfortable corner where I was “born” and laid there to take a nap.

…

The first thing I did after waking up was checking my own status that hovered perpetually on the corner of my field of vision.

Name: Alex Race: Infant Imp(?)

HP: 20/20 MP: 5/5

STR: 1.02 AGI: 0.6 INT: 2 WIS: 1

Evolution Points: 2/50 (?)

Skills: Infrared Vision(Lv 0.2), Cast Illusion(Lv 0.02)

I saw a few changes in there. Especially the numbers behind my stats, including the skill stats and physical attributes. It was my first time seeing something like stats increasing in decimals but I guess I can’t just follow whatever I read in fantasy books blindly. There was another thing that astonished me and worried me somewhat and it was my unchanging maximum HP and MP. They were still at 20 and 5 respectively. I don’t know why but I felt like I will be a weakling unless I evolve from an infant Imp to something more.

The good thing was that I am back to normal in just a single round of nap.

The concept of time, day and night and even climate didn’t exist inside a dungeon. There will always be a perpetual darkness inside this gloomy place with those light crystals being the only source of illumination. After waking up from my nap, and checking out my status, with nothing better to do I began to inspect my “battle spoil”, the white pole that the damned green thing used to beat me and nearly killed me.

After a brief observation, I figured out its usage. It was as I had thought, just a normal blow dart pipe, only the difference was that instead of darts with feather ends, a type of needle-like thing used as its ammo. After the goblin used one to numb me, there were still a few needles left inside.

If I remember correctly, after getting hit by the needle, a negative status effect called “frozen” was generated while as I lost all bodily control, as if experiencing a case of paralysis. While it was not a life-threatening case, when surrounded by an enemy and on the way to retreat, it would prove fatal if one of those landed on my ass… again. On the other hand, the needle’s negative status effect was broken after a few seconds under the stimulation of extreme pain. Besides, if I use this stick was a normal stick, it gave me 1 attack power, which was a good thing for me.

Overall, this time my victory over my first ever opponent made me extremely pleased. With my confidence was boosted and morale restored somewhat, I started to feel less despaired.

…

While I was celebrating my victory and spoil of war, a very troubling thing was occurring on the place where I abandoned the goblin’s body. By killing the goblin instead of running away, I was unaware of the fact that I had stirred a hornet’s nest.

Two goblins, of the same build and facial feature as the one I killed stood around the body of the fallen one. Like the one I killed, they too were naked and possessed similar pipes strapped to their backs. After they inspected the body, which involved a series of smelling and licking, they looked at each other and made some unrecognizable noises before lifting it up and running towards a different corner of the hallway.

…

A few hours passed since I woke up from the nap, and I started to feel bored. With nothing better to do, I started to observe my status closely. With all the tragedy that happened with me, I began to reminisce about my past, about my life back on earth. At the same time, I wondered if Coco, my adorable golden retriever was still all right. He was pretty smart, and could take care of himself for a few days… but what about after those days? I also wondered if he missed me, now that I was already in this world for more than four days, I wonder if he was able to find himself comfort in my absence. He tend to growl a lot if I don’t return home in two days. Often the neighbors had reported me to officers because of him.

At the thought of Coco, I smiled unintentionally.

It was a hideous smile, as my stretched lips constricted my face and eyes narrowed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see it then or else I would think twice before smiling in the future. Thinking about Coco also dampen my mood somewhat, so pushed it to the back of my head.

Then my eyes landed on the status screen that perpetually hovered to the left most corner of my field of vision. The moment I set sight upon it, the small characters instantly enlarged so that I could read them without any trouble. The first thing that drew my attention was the decimals that increased beside my meager stats. It was just in decimals, but the improvement was evident. There were a few thoughts on why the increment was on decimals instead of whole numbers, I couldn’t confirm it yet.

The physical stats, just from one fight with my life on line and I already got this much improvement. Recalling that time when I was so close to death again, I felt a cold shiver down my spine. If not for me using that skill in the nick of the time, I would have died at the hands of that disgusting creature.

Speaking of skills, I saw the two skills, Infrared Vision and Cast Illusions also increased by a few decimals. Only one use and it increased my Cast Illusions by 0.02 points. At this rate, I would need fifty more usages to level up by 1. If I remember correctly, the illusion had trapped the goblin for two minutes… two minutes was a lot of time. If I had more than 1 attack power, I would have killed it with a shorter time, or I could have run away for self-preservation.

I categorized this illusion skill as a form of self-preservation against a stronger opponent and a form of attack for weaker opponents. Still, I didn’t blindly believe that the effect would last for two minutes for all the monsters equally, maybe it was dependent on their intelligence as often in games such a condition existed.

With this system, and my rapidly increasing strength… a thought that I didn’t dare to possess before this emerged. A fire was lit in my heart.

The fire that wished to burn the kingdom that brought me this despair to ashes.