As the silhouettes entered the valley, Mike took out his two steel axes and threw them in quick succession, then launched himself from the 10 foot ridge and into the midst of the attackers. As he began his descent, time seemed to slow, and he reviewed his quickly devised plan:

Step 1: Quickly take out Igor and Fen. Fen was too fast to deal with while also trying to fight others, and Igor’s lightning fell into that same category.

Step 2: Quickly kill off everyone other than Jake the Giant, who had amped up his sturdiness with a full set of plate mail, and would need some additional TLC. He wasn’t worried about Bart, who was just a conniving ferret. Mike wasn’t sure what talents the 5th member of their previous party had or even what he looked like for that matter, having inadvertently obliterated his body as he sailed through the air during their previous encounter.

Step 3: Make sure to finish off three other opponents with a thrown ax. This complicated the scenario, but he was only 3 kills shy of getting his Ax Throwing skill to level 3, at which point he should get another Skill Ability based off of everything he had experienced thus far.

Step 4: Loot the bodies. Maybe they would have another spatial storage bag on them, which would be great, but at the very least, their metal weapons could help him make more axes.

Step 5: Go get some food. Over the last few days while he had trained, he had been living off of food that he had taken from the garden and put in his storage bag, and he needed some meat in his diet.

A rebounding ax flew towards him as gravity began pulling his leaping body down, the projectile returning to the tree he had positioned behind him when he threw the ax. The other ax was just behind it. Ducking his head, he evaded the first ax, and his adrenaline fueled hand reached out to pluck the other ax out of the air.

Landing with a thud, he stormed the small crowd, whose faces were still gaping at the fallen body of Fen near the front of their party, not yet realizing that Igor had met the same fate. Pushing forward on the balls of his feet, he flew past the first man, casually flicking out his ax to swipe through his jugular, then leapt forward, his Strength enhanced body arcing five feet through the air as he sailed towards his next victim, a smallish man, who was still registering Mike’s prowess as his life ended.

Stoically taking the ax’s rebound to his chest, Mike pivoted towards the next closest man, who happened to be Bart. The shopkeeper was already backing up in fear, and upon seeing the green eyes filled with malice, his heart failed him and he turned to run.

Sensing impending pain near his upper back, Mike threw the ax in his hand at the fleeing Bart and quickly threw his body into a barrel roll, dodging the rebounding ax to finish the threat from behind while also earning another point towards his Dodge skill. He would never have been able to perform such acrobatics while fighting in his earlier years, but it was a small feat for his current body.

The ground being uneven as he landed, he stumbled and was unable to do anything about the pain he sensed heading for his thigh. An arrow pierced him, the iron head managing to submerge itself fully before his high Toughness score prevented it from going any further.

Breaking off the shaft, his rage-fueled arms grabbed the body of the fallen man next to him and threw it at the archer, a loud crunch confirming the kill.

Materializing his two iron axes from his spatial storage bag, he watched dumbstruck as Jake and the other two remaining enemies charged him. There was no way they felt confident killing him after watching him decimate 7 of their friends, right? Was it the reward promised by the System that made them charge him with no thought of their own lives? Deciding that he didn’t really care about their reasons, he pivoted to avoid a thrust from a spear, then speed-limped sideways up the length of the shaft and struck the spear wielder in the chest.

Looping his arm around the shaft of the spear, an ax still in each hand, he angled the spear towards his 5 o’clock, where a flash of phantom pain warned him the next attack would come from. A gurgling scream testified that the spear had struck home.

A lumbering Jake was now just five feet away, and Mike sighed in defeat, he would have to finish him off with a thrown ax if he wanted to level up his Throwing Ax skill, which wasn’t how he had planned on this going down. Rolling with the punches, he threw Ax #1 straight at the chest plate of Jake’s armor, and was shocked when the ax head exploded on contact, the shards flying up into the underside of Jake’s unprotected chin and ending his life.

Stunned at the turn of events and not expecting the handle and lumpy remains of the ax to rebound, he barely managed to turn his neck at the last second, saving his eye, but taking the blow to the side of his head.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

It had taken a while, after likely receiving a concussion from the force of that broken ax rebound, but he had eventually collected all the loot, which consisted of a sturdy bow and some arrows, some more steel swords, and all the plate mail from Jake’s body.

As he had stumbled about, he had come across the remains of Ax #1. Somehow, his bleary thoughts identified the broken tool as the perfect equipment for skill advancement, and he stowed it in his spatial storage bag for a later date.

Once all of the loot had been collected, he sat down to review his notifications:

[Congratulations! Branching skill unlocked, Body Throwing!

+3 Strength

Would you like to replace your current Ax Throwing skill? y/n]

Was the System just messing with him now? Maybe there had once been some kind of evil overlord in the multiverse that had thrown bodies, but it’s impracticality and grotesqueness made him immediately throw it out as a possibility and move on to the next notification:

[Congratulations! You have leveled up the skill Ax Throwing.

+1 to Strength and Dexterity.

+30% to accuracy and distance when thrown ]

[Congratulations! New skill ability unlocked: True Shot

Once every five throws, your ax will have 50% increased range and penetrate armor]

He was slightly disappointed, as True Shot seemed less amazing than his other skill abilities, but it would have come in handy in the last fight, so at least it was something.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Though he had pulled the arrowhead out of his leg, the wound appeared to have some torn muscle, which made his walk back to his base take longer. Even worse, he didn’t think he would be in a position to hunt some meat until the wound had healed.

The lively camp, lit by a large bonfire, quieted as he limped from the tree line, covered in the blood of his enemies, his torn clothes exposing the mottled blue and black bruises from his days of training and a large bump on his head from where his rebounding ax had hit him.

“Big Bossy Boss” the hobgoblins intoned in unison, earning only a grunt in response.

Sitting down to rest, Mike was surprised when a small hobgoblin brought him some garden vegetables, which he silently ate in resignation, the fibrous food doing little to satiate the energy he had expended. Deciding he couldn’t wait any longer to hunt, he used Hands of Healing on the wound and promptly passed out.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

“Meat!” his stomach roared into the darkness, rousing Mike around 3 AM, and taking him from dreaming to completely awake in the time it took for his eyes to open. Relieved that the noise wasn’t an indication of the camp being attacked, he stared up at the darkness above him.

When his stomach made its loud displeasure known for the second time, he decided that he needed to feed the angry beast before he began experimenting with hobgoblin flank steaks. Grabbing a few veggies, he made his way out of the valley, his Dexterity enabling him to ghost through the mountain pines without any trace of his passing. Only an hour later, his swift pace had taken him out of the foothills entirely and he found himself stalking through the high hill grass, straining to see the slightest indication of a four-legged food group. He marveled at how his body continued to adapt to the constant torture he put himself through, noticing that many of his bruises had dissapeared, even though he hadn’t done anything to directly heal them.

Cresting a small hill, he struck gold: a herd of buffalo slept quietly in the grass beneath him. Sneaking closer to the slumbering forms, he couldn’t help but feel intimidated, despite his now superhuman strength and speed. Sure enough, a quick check of their stats showed that they were all at least level 5, some of them being level 8. While none of them had all of their stats as high as his, their stats were high enough that he found himself more timid in approaching them than he had when fighting off the human groups.

Thinking on his feet, he decided it was worth a shot to get one of the behemoths before they knew what hit them. Slinking up to the nearest beast’s side he stowed the beast into his spatial storage bag, or at least he tried to. All he got in response was a mighty bellow that seemed to shake the earth as the whole herd woke at once and began searching for the viper in their midst.

Sprinting away at top speed, Mike found out what it is like to be chased by a stampede.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Six hours later, with the sun at its peak, Mike once again limped into his home base, covered in fresh blood, the hulking monstrosity resting across his shoulders having dripped blood down his body most of the walk back. It was a small female buffalo, weighing around 1000 pounds, and it was about the limit that he could carry. He knew that some strongmen could yoke even more than that, but the difference between slinging a thousand pounds of dead-weight across his back and some nice steel bar, designed to be carried across the shoulders, was immense.

It had been touch and go for a while there, the stampede having caught up to him several times. He had barely been able to fling himself sideways and avoid getting skewered only to have the hive mind of rage pivot and start chasing him again. Eventually the herd forgot why they were running and headed off in a different direction. That is when he had managed to get the small female lagging behind, using True Shot to easily pierce the layers of muscle and fat that usually protected them. The rest of the dumb brutes didn’t even notice her fall.

Depositing the carcass in the center of camp and began dinner preparations.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

As the sun set, a large bonfire roared in the center of the small clearing, creating a wonderful atmosphere. Mike began portioning out the meat to the hobgoblins one by one. He had prepared the meat like a Luau Pig, and narrated the entire process aloud to the watching hobgoblins. Somewhere along the way, they had picked up on the word “meat” and now, with every portion he handed out, a loud chorus of “Meat” filled the glade. Though small, the hobgoblins had large appetites, and he stored some of the cooked meat in his spatial storage bag for a later date, knowing that there wouldn’t be any leftovers, and unsure if he could survive another bout with the bison anytime soon.

The meal wrapped up, but the festivities continued. The small creatures entertained themselves with various roughhousing and jibber-jabber. A pang of longing filled Mike’s heart as he watched the scene. It took him back to the Hawaiian beaches where he had been stationed, and the many feasts he had attended there.

Longing turned to anger as he thought about the System that now prevented him from enjoying such moments with the rest of humanity. He also felt anger towards those who hunted him for sport, who continuously impeded his ability to simply survive in the wilderness. He shouldn’t have to spend so much time training. He shouldn’t have to protect the hobgoblins from harm. He should have all the spices he needed to make the perfect Luau Pork, instead of just salt and pepper. What had happened to the world’s decency?

The way he saw it, his path to live among humanity was gone. That was hard to accept, but he had been slowly coming to terms with it over the past two weeks. What he still couldn’t accept was that he had to kill to survive. He wanted nothing more than to continue teaching bushcraft to his new tribe and honing his own survival skills, but the regular attacks prevented him from doing that. Deep down, he knew that the attacks would continue to escalate. It had started with 5, then 10, how many would Bart bring next?

There was a path forward, but it was one he had been loath to take until that moment. He would go on the offensive. He would take the fight to the village. He would put the fear of Boss into those untrained townsfolk. And he would get himself some garlic if it was the last thing he did.