Bart’s life felt like it had ended. After being brutally killed as soon as he spawned, he had to wait another two days to come back to life again, only to find that the town had been ransacked. Worse still, his store had been totally destroyed. Without a store to his name, his special class of Shopkeeper failed to garnish the same clout it had when the System had initially appeared. Even his own team disowned him, their knowledge of Mike's location combined with their unwillingness to engage him yet again meant that Bart was on his own.

He had spent several days trying to convince others to join him, but with similar results: everyone now knew the approximate location of Mike’s valley and no one felt confident in their ability to defeat him, especially after he had led the hobgoblin horde to a total victory over Noobtown. This town-wide fear only grew worse as reports came in of parties being handily defeated by hobgoblins if they went even remotely near the valley. What had once been easy prey were turning into troublesome enemies.

Being a store owner in a small Montana town had never been easy, margins were tight, and locals always wanted a deal, but being the only store in town for most goods, Bart had been able to turn a profit. He had found himself in a much better situation after the System arrived. Adventurers could trade directly with the System for most products, but the cost was often inflated. The higher Bart’s Shop License level was, the greater the discount he could receive on items when trading with the System. He could then turn a profit by pricing items somewhere between his cost and what the System offered everyone else. It was a good gig, and before his shop had been destroyed, he had easily been the richest man in the town.

While the rest of his former party had been training hard and increasing in skill levels, he had been focused on making money. Money had a way of solving all of his problems, and he quickly found that people would party with him for a discount at his store, allowing him to take some of the last hits when they went out hunting. This had led to him progressing all the way to level 5 quite quickly…. But he had developed no real combat skills.

His lack of combat skills and lack of money formed a set of circular problems that he saw no way of remedying individually. He couldn't make money for another investment into his store because he didn’t have any combat skills, and he could no longer easily increase his combat skills because he didn’t have any money.

Unwilling to put himself in danger to remedy his situation, Bart took to pilfering garbage around town that had even the smallest value and trading it into the System. Whatever profit he made each day was used to get himself totally hammered. Then each day he would wake up and repeat.

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Two weeks of trading in trash had yielded a few results. He had earned the Slink ability, which basically just allowed him to go less unnoticed from people and monsters that held no animosity towards him. This had made it slightly less embarrassing to dig in trashes each day.

This ability would have been super useful if he could just take things from others, but robbery and murder both resulted in System induced titles that would ensure he was no longer welcome in the town. Less useful was the ability he earned called Detox, which boiled down to him needing more money to get wasted as alcohol had less of an effect on him.

The System apparently knew what it was doing though, as one night both skills became useful. He was at his usual spot in the corner of Jody’s, three cups in and barely buzzed, when a small party sat at a table next to him and began to talk loudly about their current exploits.

“We are so close to defeating that fire lizard hord. Tomorrow we will for sure complete the quest.” The largest of the men said in a russian mobster voice.

“We are down a man though after you used Buchanan as a shield today though, boss. Wouldn’t it be better if we waited for him to respawn?” A man with a strangely thick Italian accent asked.

“No, and I will tell you why…” the first man said, leaning closer to better ensure his group's privacy. Nobody noticed as Bart slowly Slinked next to the group, eyeing the bulging muscles and exposed chest hair of the lead mobster with trepidation.

“Buchanon was just a means to an end…. High Toughness made him the perfect meatshield….. At least 48 hours according to what we have seen in the past… Dealing with the more agile Magma Mambas… Huge loot with the split peas…. Meet at dawn.” Bart only managed to catch bits and pieces of the conversation over the next few minutes, but one thing was clear, they were after a big haul and were meeting up the next morning.

Suddenly the leader seemed to notice Bart listening in on the conversation, without missing a beat, Bart allowed his not entirely sober self to crashed onto their table, spilling their drinks everywhere, but hopefully throwing suspicion away from the fact that he had been eavesdropping.

Jeers sounded around him as rough hands grabbed him and tossed him out of the bar and into the night.

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What little muscle Bart had put on when he had initially started training under the System had been erased by a few weeks of cheap food and even cheaper ale, causing him to sweat disgustingly as he drearily followed the party into the woods the next morning. The work hadn’t been without its benefits though, as he had already increased the Slink skill to level 2, giving him a brief boost of confidence that quickly died over another few miles of hard country.

Finally the party came to a large hill with a small cave leading inside. Bart watched as the group entered single file. For the better part of a half hour, he internally debated whether or not he should follow them. Telling himself that he needed to seize the moment, he slunk after them.

For the first few minutes, the path in front of him was completely obscured by his body blocking the sunlight, causing him to stumble around and fall twice. Eventually a soft glow came from in front of him that matched the now distant light of the surface and he was able to proceed forward on more sure feet.

Ten minutes later, he found where a battle had taken place. Lizards the size of his arms lay strewn about the cave floor, their bodies still in the dim light. A sudden rustle of movement caused Bart to fall back in terror, before he realized that a small nest of baby lizards was the only living thing in the cave. Angry at the beasts for making him feel foolish, he grabbed a rock and crushed all five of them.

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill Crush.

+1 to Strength and Toughness

Evoke a powerful execute strike with heavy objects on those weaker than you]

Bart grinned at his first combat oriented skill. It would be the perfect way to assert his dominance when he eventually became stronger than anyone else around him.

The tunnel continued to grow brighter, and Bart continued to find nests, which he quickly eradicated. This continued for the better part of 2 hours, bringing Crush to level 2 before anything noteworthy changed.

Coming around a corner, he found yet another battlefield, although more than just reptiles had been killed here. A body belonging to the adventurers lay against the far wall, blood leaking from savage bite wounds all over his body. Bart couldn’t help himself and hurled at the gristly sight. He had slaughtered cows and pigs growing up, but he had never seen a human so totally deformed in his life. Gathering himself, he whipped his face and drew close to better inspect the body. He found that small spidery lines snaked out from most of the wounds, a clear indicator that they were poison in some way. Next to the adventurer lay a sword. It felt awkward in his hands, having never really used one before, but he needed to be prepared if he came across anything bigger than a salamander.

As he continued further down the tunnel, he found signs that the adventurers had been pushing forward more quickly. Many lizards weren’t fully put down, wounded and unable to move effectively, but still alive. Bart thought he cut a very dashing figure as he finished off the defenseless creatures with exaggerated swings and lunges. Maybe adventuring wasn’t as hard as he had thought, maybe Mike was just an anomaly.

It took time, but slowly his kill count mounted and he found himself on the cusp of a level up. Before he could reach it however, the sounds of metal hitting stone and loud hissing seemed to fill up the tunnel ahead of him.

Creeping around each corner, he eventually found the source of the noise. The adventuring party had made it to the final cavern within the large cave system. Hundreds of lizards were dead all around the cave and all but the leader of the adventuring party had also fallen.

The leader fought valiantly against a 4 foot lizard, but eventually collapsed with his fellow adventurers.

Fear tore at Bart’s heart, and he turned to leave, only to feel a sharp sting on his ankle. Looking down, he saw a small baby lizard latched onto his leg, the fiery sting of poison already coursing through his bloodstream as paralysis set in and he fell to the ground.

He could only watch in horror as the larger lizard moved over to him. He felt the tingle of a small tongue as the Fire Lizard Queen sniffed him out. Every move of her body made him painfully aware how helpless he really was. A notification slowly came into his vision.

[Congratulations! Branching skill unlocked, Poison Resistance!

+1 Intelligence

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

Selecting “yes”, Bart found that his body instantly became mobile again. Maybe if the Queen had poisoned him herself he wouldn’t have been able to shrug it off so easily, but the bite of the baby lizard proved no problem for his new ability.

Acting as if he was still paralyzed, he lay motionless, biding his time until the Queen made her move. Leisurely opening her mouth to eat, the unsuspecting Queen felt the tip of Bart’s sword pierce through her mouth and into her brain before she fell dead.

A small novel of notifications congratulated Bart on his kill, gaining him several levels. More importantly, a small pile of loot lay before him. A spatial bag with 3 cubic feet. A set of high grade armor. A blood red Dagger of Flames. And a large bag of gold coins.

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Bart’s high spirits at his change in fortune made the hike back to the surface seem much shorter than the way down. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t deserve any of his kills. But more importantly, no one would ever know that. No one had seen him. No one could blame him. He was simply walking away much richer than he ever had been before.

Fortune seemed to be smiling upon him as a System notification appeared before him-the way it appeared without prompting and bypassing his usual filters showing that it was likely zone-wide.

[Attention Noob Zone 5: The inhabitants of Noob Zone 4 and 3 are being added to your zone]

[Attention Noob Zone 5: A new feature has been created, Champions Arena.

Fight through the spawned gambit of monsters to receive special loot and titles]

[Attention Noob Zone 5: A new Zone Quest has been initiated.

Quest: Obtain title Arena Champion!

Rewards: One Mythic Skill Ability for each party member]

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Mike didn’t know what to think as he saw the System message telling him that random monsters would now be pulled into an “Arena” to fight adventurers. The System had assured the monsters in the notification that they would be returned to their original location if they survived the fight, but somehow he thought surviving the fights would be easier said than done. He was going to have to increase the training for the hobgoblins if he wanted them to survive. Few of the hobgoblins would provide any kind of challenge 1 on 1 against an adventurer, so he had to imagine that they would be taken in groups.

He would also need to focus more on his own combat training. He had been working on an idea for a while now, and in lieu of spending the next year cutting down trees, he decided to put it into action. Walking through the crowd of befuddled hobgoblins, he found his smiths all staring blankly at the air in front of them, still trying to process the latest development. Taking out the ax that had broken on Jake’s breastplate, he broke the head off the handle and gave it to the hobgoblins, indicating that he would need as many of these made as he could get. He also gave them the supply of iron weapons he had been hording up until this point, not wanting to waste all of his metal on farming tools for the valley. His survival was key to the longevity of the camp as a whole, and it was time to begin taking it more seriously.