I planlessly stumbled through the silent forest falling to the ground multiple times as my legs gave out to the intense pain radiating from a few broken toes. The slightly clouded sky had long since turned into a dark blue and darkness engulfed the forest around me. My body burned in pain with multiple bones being broken, but that did not hinder me from continuing further into the forest. Searching for something- someone I could kill.

That’s right. Only a single thought remained within my traumatized mind.

‘Kill and level up’

I did not care what it was or who it was. At this moment I just wanted to slaughter my way through something, slaughter until I was no longer a pathetic shit who couldn’t do shit while his allies were being killed by his enemies. Kill until I was strong enough to bring down anything that could threaten me.

Finally, after some unknown amount of time of limping through the woods I heard a quiet rustling sound coming from a group of small brushes a few meters away from me. A greenish being stepped out of the brush and its ugly mouth curled into a cruel smile.

The goblin could tell that I was seriously injured, and it could smell the blood on my clothes and face. Right now, my half-dead self seemed like a very easy target to have a quick snack on.

My eyes widened in excitement as I saw the goblins deformed face. Bloodlust welled up within me as I ignored my aching body and jumped towards the surprised goblin. Acting before the goblin could even realize my actions my sword swung through the air and collided with a wooden club that was hastily thrown into its trajectory. It got stuck in the hard wood and a crazed smile blossomed on my bloodied face.

I let go of the sword and gathered the few remains of my mana in my right hand. Then I smashed it into the goblins nose, breaking a few on my fingers while pushing the goblin’s nasal bone into his brain. A funny noise escaped his lips and he collapsed in front of me.

The smile on my face only widened. I could kill these buggers. My pathetic self could kill them!

I turned around and picked up my sword that was still stuck in the wooden club. With a little bit of force, I managed to pull it out. It was slightly chipped, and a little bend had appeared in the blade, but it could still do its job.

It could still kill!

Turning away from the dead goblin on the ground I once again limped into the darkness of the forest. My body was broken, my mind blurry but a wide smile had plastered itself over my face.

I could still kill and level up!

…

The sun rose above the tops of the tall tree’s around me and slowly began to illuminate the ground around my body. The air smelled like iron, a little bit of decay mixed into the thick stench of blood. I laid on the ground, blood soaking into the remains of my cheap leather armor and the thin layer of torn cloth that had once been a white shirt.

A smile was still resting on my face, but it had lost the desperate madness that had driven me before. It was a smile of satisfaction. Satisfaction to have achieved at least part of what I had set out to do. A faint glint of craziness remained in my grey eyes, but what can I say?

I’m a crazy person who killed himself in hopes to be reincarnated into another world. Calling me sane would be an insult to any normal person who hopes to live another day in peace.

The face of a young girl with red scales scattered on her pale skin appeared, obstruction my view on the clear morning sky.

“Have you calmed down?”, she asked with a slightly uncomfortable smile. Her eyes constantly shot over to the surroundings.

I nodded with a relaxed expression.

“We have to change hunting grounds. Hunting here won’t be too effective anymore.”, memories returned to my still slightly confused mind and frowned. The craze in my eyes lessened.

“I really went crazy, didn’t I?”, a wry expression overtook my face.

Enri forced a smile on her trembling lips.

“Y-you could say so. I’ve seen three goblin villages in a similar state while coming here…”, she was clearly shocked by what she had witnessed.

I closed my eyes before taking a deep breath and propping myself up. My body felt light and the mana flowing in abstruse patterns within my body pulsated in regular intervals. The wounds I had sustained during the past three days had long since healed leaving only faint scars.

My eyes opened and I looked around me.

I was at the center of a big goblin village with over a dozen small shags. An improvised palisade that had surrounded the settlement was halve collapsed with signs of fire visible on most of the buildings. Dozens of corpses, both male and female laid scattered around the village. Over forty goblins, male. Female, both young and old had died horrible deaths their bodies riddled with all sorts of injuries. There were also at least two or three hobgoblins among them, all of them missing pieces of their necks.

Not a single one had survived the violent slaughter that had taken place here.

“…I broke my sword…”, I mumbled as I looked on my bloodied hands. They were coated in layers of dried blood that was slowly crumbling away now.

“You did all of this with your hands?”, Enri seemed truly amazed.

I nodded slowly while more and more memories reappearing in my mind.

“Let’s go.”, jumping up from the ground I began to peel of the broken pieced of armor that the dried blood had glued to my skin. Suddenly my eyes fell on a large figure that was laying on the ground behind me.

Two dead hobgoblins that had been armed in full chain mail laid next to a gigantic mountain of green colored flesh. A foul smell came from the dead pile of muscle and fat. It was a fully grown, heavily armed ogre. Wounds covered its body and hundreds of small injuries had slowly bled it to death. I could see marks of my hands pushing into the Ogre’s skin and tearing out bits of flesh while escaping the lethal blows of its massive two-handed sword.

It had been a fight of attrition that took hours to finally find its end. We both fought with absolute madness continuing to injure the other until we both could no longer stand. I almost lost both my arms with only a sudden burst of speed followed by an attack against the Ogre’s eyes saving my precious limbs.

“What level have you reached after all of this?”, the dragon girl asked me as I stared at the huge body of the dead ogre.

“Statae.”, I averted my gaze from my dead adversary and looked at the table that appeared in front of my eyes.

“Level: 34

Experience: 57

Strength: 230

Endurance: 198

Mana: 210

…. Madness: 12.”, my eyes widened as I realized that a new stat had appeared in my status. Even worse was the kind of status that it was.

“Madness?”, Enri’s eyebrows rose as she began to think.

“Maybe you have gained a class? There are special classes like berserkers that can only be unlocked by chance and have special stats such as madness or bloodlust.”

I bit my lip as I tried to remember what had happened during the past three days that I had spend in a state of muddle-headedness and bloodthirst. Suddenly my eye reacted, and a blue screen unfolded before my eyes.

Hero has unlocked a new ability.

[A _od_ W__t_]

Ability is sealed until predetermined conditions are met.

Function: [sealed]

Oh, great now I had to play the guessing game and find out what sort of ability I had received. It’s not like I already have enough other problems, right?! I shook my head in annoyance before deciding to put the matter on a hold for the time being.

My divine eyes said that the ability will be unsealed once certain criteria are fulfilled. Since my new Madness stat is most likely one of the criteria it would be best to keep that ability sealed away for the time being. I wasn’t very eager to turn completely insane just to acquire some dubious ability.

“Let’s drop the matter for now.”, I said to Enri.

“Are the others fine? I think Riina and Maira were injured when I left.”

The dragon girl rolled her eyes and pushed her hands against her hips.

“Oh, SUDDENLY you are worried? First you wander off having fun while killing goblins and now you worry about the girls you left behind???”, she shook her head in an overplayed manner.

I decided to ignore her taunts.

“So?”

Enri realized that I was not in the mood for small talk and pouted a little.

“They are fine. Bastard Mellen is taking care of them. Don’t worry though, that idiot is even worse off than you.”, she did not clarify what she meant by being worse off, but I could imagine just how that upright knight would feel after finding out that he was a mere pawn in the hands of his king.

“Then let’s find them and get out of here. The king might send even more killers if we remain in this forest. We need a new place to level up either way.”, with a nod I signed Enri to lead the way.

Her eyebrows rose once again.

“You have truly changed… you are more… proactive? Maybe even a little imperious?”, it didn’t seem like she thought these to be a bad thing.

I rolled my eyes.

“If I’m more imperious than get your lazy pet-ass moving and lead me to the others.”, ups these words were a little harsher than I intended them to be. She liked it though…

Finally getting moving we left the destroyed goblin village and disappeared into the forest. Signs of destruction popped up at random places along our way. Dead groups of goblins, two other slaughtered villages and a bunch of dead horned rabbits randomly stacked up on a spear in the middle of the forest. I decided to stay silent about the other four villages I had pillaged in my insanity.

Funny thing is, I didn’t feel bad for killing these goblins. Even the death of the females and children meant nothing to me. They were pawns that I used to become stronger nothing more. In fact I might not even care if I had to kill some humans in order to gain a level.

Not to say that I had turned into a sociopath, I still felt like it was wrong to kill others without a valid reason, but I wouldn’t feel any moral repercussions if I mercilessly killed a while band of bandits. As for goblins… they were another species and just as they used humans as cattle, I had no problem using them as mobs for levels.

While I was caught up in my own thoughts trying to figure out how I felt about killing all sorts of people and beings, we reached a small clearing on the eastern outskirts of the forest. It was located as far away from the capital as possible without leaving the forest.

Two small tents had been set up on the clearing and an extinguished campfire still had a little smoke rising up from the ashes. A single, familiar figure wearing heavy plate armor sat on a big rock next to the fire and used a stick to scrape around in the remains of the fire.

“Jo, stupid idiot. I found him!”, Enri shouted as we approached the clearing.

Sir Mellen looked up from the fire and I could instantly see that he hadn’t been well in the past few days. His eyes were sunken in and his formerly healthy body had lost some weight. He was pale and looked sick.

I sighed as I saw this miserable sight. He had clearly lost the will to live.

“I’m sorry!”, as soon as he saw me the young knight fell to his knee’s and prostrated on the ground. His hoarse voice trembled as he began to slam his head against the ground.

“I-I’m so….”, he began to weep miserably. As I thought, the two had some sort of relationship with each other. Ilea’s dead had affected Sir Mellen even more than me.

“If you are sorry than you should make sure that such a thing doesn’t happen to Maira or Riina.”, I felt sympathetic for the poor guy, but my voice showed little of that. Instead my words sounded almost like an order, cold and demanding.

Surprisingly this seemed to help Sir Mellen to get himself together. His weeps stopped and his formerly powerless body regained some energy as he propped himself up.

“I will protect them with my life.”, he grimly pledged right at that spot. His expression had turned a little lighter and a glint of vitality had reappeared on his pale skin. As I thought losing his purpose in live and a person who he properly loved had made him lose any reason to continue living.

Making him protect the girls gave him exactly that.

A purpose and a reason. To someone like Sir Mellen this was like a rope saving him from drowning in a sea of his own self-blame and depression.

I turned around and entered one of the tends. Maira and Riina were laying inside, both still sleeping underneath a blanket.

“They are fully healed.”, I head Enri’s soothing voice behind me.

“But recovering from the battle took a lot of their energy so they sleep longer than usual.”, she spoke extra quietly so as to not weak up the two other girls.

Throwing the peacefully sleeping girls a short glance I nodded and crawled out of the tent again.

“We will let them sleep till noon. Then we leave the forest and go to the closest village to buy some provisions and get some proper weapons.”, I lifted my blood crusted hand.

“I wouldn’t like to be nicknamed the crazy hero after all.”

Oh, just guess what sort of nickname I receive only days after I said this…