Golden Experience

The woman with the hood is indeed strong. Moreover, that spear-like equipment is a considerably high-ranked item. It’s likely made of Mithril or a high-quality metal similar to it.

However, judging from her speed, I knew that her overall abilities wouldn’t be as high compared to mine.

Back when I was a Hobgoblin Great Shaman, I suffered a straight defeat due to the difference in size and standing, but with this Deovoldraugr, I won’t easily fall behind.

In spite of myself, I marvel at how strong I’ve become.

Bamb recalled the beginning of the game service.

＊

Goblins are weak.

It’s so weak that one might wonder if there are players who choose such a weak race other than me.

However, precisely because of that, the initial experience points one receives are the highest.

Having a lot of experience points means having many choices. In other words, it can be said that goblins are the most free race.

Bamb sought even more freedom and increased his experience points by taking disadvantages with inherent traits. Examples include [Bad Eyesight] and [Gluttony]. Gluttony doubles the rate at which the hunger gauge decreases, but in return, it grants a unique effect depending on the race. For goblins, it allows them to increase the satiety level beyond the maximum even in a full state. Essentially, it’s an effect that allows food hoarding. Bamb happily acquired it, considering that despite receiving only 5 experience points, it wasn’t a real disadvantage.

He also liked the act of eating. It seemed like a trait prepared just for him. That’s what he thought.

However, this game world wasn’t so forgiving.

There were hardly any things goblins could eat.

It wasn’t a matter of dietary habits but rather a problem of the natural hierarchy.

Bamb couldn’t secure food.

The hunger gauge quickly bottomed out, and Bamb died.

Despite starting with a considerable amount of experience points, he lost some because he had more than the minimum guaranteed value that wouldn’t incur a death penalty. All that remained for Bamb were disadvantages.

Bamb chose a forest environment for the initial spawn point, but it seemed to be a goblin settlement. There were many goblins around, similar to Bamb, but some of them were corpses. Furthermore, some of those corpses had turned into skeletons. In other words, this settlement had been in this state for a long time.

The reason for the poverty of the settlement was its inability to survive the competition.

In this forest, there were also settlements of higher-ranking hobgoblins. Although it was rare to be killed by hobgoblins, they had a similar diet. If they could eat, goblins would starve.

That’s not all.

Near the forest, there was a human country. Many beastmen seemed to live there. It seemed to be a country of the beastman country mentioned on the official site, probably called Pearl.

Humans occasionally entered the forest from that city, defeated goblins, and then returned. The goblin settlement was on the edge of the forest.

Even if Bamb wanted to escape deeper into the forest, it was occupied by hobgoblins. He was cornered.

For a while, Bamb continued to play, defeating small animals for meals and experience points, losing them due to starvation, and repeating the cycle. It was uncommon to starve multiple times a day, but here, it was a common occurrence. Although there was some mercy from the developers, starting with about 10% recovery, it would deplete until something was eaten. For Bamb, that 10% was very little.

While doing so, the other goblins in the settlement continued to decrease, and before he knew it, Bamb was the only one left. Everyone else had become corpses. Well, Bamb was technically their comrade, but being a player, he managed to avoid death.

This settlement had maintained a precarious balance, miraculously avoiding complete extinction. However, the arrival of players into the forest and their killing of goblins upset that balance. The outcome was already decided when the game started.

Bamb thought while looking at the skeletal goblins. He wanted a body that didn’t get hungry.

At this point, he regretted his choice during character creation. However, he couldn’t bring himself to start over. What would be the point of starting over? He wanted to make hobgoblins and the beastmen in that city bow down to him. However, even if he reset, it wasn’t certain he could start again in this forest.

Once he became a corpse, he wouldn’t need food anymore. Undead probably didn’t need to eat or drink. Magical creatures were likely the same, but there didn’t seem to be a way to become a magical creature now. However, becoming undead was not impossible.

Bamb acquired the skill [Necromancy].

In the skill tree, there was another skill called [Necro Revival]. It was a bingo. However, he didn’t have enough experience points to acquire it. He needed to earn more.

Bamb allocated all the remaining experience points to STR and AGI, relying on his own hand-to-hand combat skills to attack players entering the forest.

Rookies who come to such a forest aiming for goblins are fools. If they were solo players without caution, even a goblin in almost its initial state, especially if STR-specialized, could defeat them. He would attack them by surprise, and if he couldn’t defeat them, he would rely on the increased AGI to escape. It was a series of gambles, but doing nothing would only result in starving to death.

It was unfortunate for players entering the forest with goblins as their target, but there wasn’t a single goblin left for that purpose. Bamb was surprised as well; he never expected that the game’s monsters would be hunted to extinction.

*

And so, by repeatedly gaining experience points through the process of climbing two steps of the stairs and descending one step, and fulfilling some unclear conditions several times, Bamb finally stood at the pinnacle of this forest.

Originally, Great Shamans are more of a magic-oriented race. However, due to Bamb’s playstyle favoring melee combat even in other games, he had a tendency to allocate more points to physical stats even after gaining experience points.

Hobgoblins themselves are fundamentally a physical-oriented race. The effect of [Gluttony], which was a stock for the hunger gauge during the goblin stage, now, as a Hobgoblin, allowed Bamb to consume additional experience points for each extra meal, enlarging the size of his body.

In primitive clashes, naturally, the bigger one is stronger. Forgetting that he was a Great Shaman and allocating points to the physical stats wasn’t entirely unreasonable.

However, thanks to that, Bamb was able to annihilate the player party ahead. If he had been an ordinary Hobgoblin Great Shaman, it would be hard to imagine engaging in a proper battle without any subordinates on hand.

However, most of the reliable subordinates had already been slaughtered by that player party.

It didn’t seem like they had that much strength, but perhaps the woman with the hood had done something.

However, for Bamb, having many subordinates killed in a short time was fortunate.

It was because it was necessary for activating the special derivative skill of the [Necromancy] tree, called [Necro Revival].

This skill required preparations through another skill to activate, a so-called combo skill.

The preparation involved using a skill called [Necromantic Ritual] to gather a certain number of souls under one location under the caster’s control.

Although it wasn’t explicitly stated to use [Necromantic Ritual], there were no other means to gather a large number of souls. There were no such skills in the [Necromancy] tree, and there were no other skill trees that seemed to handle souls. [Necromantic Ritual] was probably a unique skill of the Great Shaman, meaning that [Necro Revival] could only be used effectively by races with shamanic abilities or, if they existed, necromancer-type races.

While it was possible to gather souls with [Necromantic Ritual], there was no means to gather the crucial sacrifices.

If the nearby city had been intact, he could have used the city’s residents as sacrifices. However, the destruction of that city was the catalyst for using the experience points gained to acquire these skills.

Giving up on gathering sacrifices from external sources, he decided to use the subordinates already under his control.

He placed them within the range of [Necromantic Ritual] in advance, and when they all died, he would gather the floating souls. Although the subordinates used in [Necro Revival] lost their characters, sometimes you had to make sacrifices.

The subordinates would respawn one hour after death, so the time limit to gather souls with [Necromantic Ritual] was one hour. Other conditions needed to be fulfilled before that.

One of those conditions was the death of the caster, in other words, Bamb. However, naturally, if he died, the skill wouldn’t activate.

Therefore, it was desirable to activate it just before dying and have the conditions checked at the moment of activation. There would probably be a few seconds or minutes of grace period in reality, but this time, thanks to the hooded woman inflicting a status abnormality with slip damage, it was remarkably easy. Counting the remaining LP while adjusting the timing, considering the occasional damage from incoming attack spells, was all he needed to do.

By killing the necessary number of subordinates within a short time and reaching Bamb, a player could potentially kill him.

He had been using [Necromantic Ritual] constantly since acquiring it, planning for such an occasion, but he thought it would take a bit more time for the players to grow to that extent.

If it took too long, he considered trying to kill his subordinates himself and attempt suicide. However, he didn’t know if [Necromantic Ritual] allowed friendly fire, and he also didn’t know if suicide would function as a trigger. Since the territory would be completely defenseless after death, it would be a last resort.

It was fortunate that this achievement was reached at such an early stage.

He couldn’t forgive the fact that the log house he had painstakingly built was turned to ashes, but the results more than compensated for it.

And he hadn’t expected the size of his body to change so much. In any case, reconstruction was necessary.

Just as Bamb thought about the status of this Deovoldraugr and attacked:

He was thrown by the hooded woman.

The damage itself wasn’t significant.

However, being dealt damage by a player who should be considerably inferior in terms of stats was surprising. Bamb knew well how difficult it was to deal even a little damage to a superior opponent without weapons.

Taking damage meant that if the fight continued, he would eventually be defeated.

At the current level of attack, the damage would likely have already disappeared through natural recovery. However, if this attack was just a test to determine the effectiveness of throwing techniques, or if the player had more powerful skills hidden, the possibility could not be denied.

He had thought that only the spear with its strange shape needed attention. Therefore, he had initiated an infight to prevent its use, but it seemed that the hooded woman’s hand wasn’t just the spear and magic. She was definitely not an ordinary person.

Approaching carelessly was dangerous.

Although the spear was left on the ground, there was still a possibility that it was a bluff to make him think it wouldn’t be used. It was not guaranteed that another one wouldn’t come out from the inventory.

Being cautious about the woman’s movements, suddenly, her atmosphere changed unexpectedly.

A premonition of something, and he tensed.

Then, the woman suddenly shouted:

“Eh… Ah, Sa, [Sacred Smite]!”

A skill he had never heard of.

Shortly after declaring the activation key, the space in front of the woman distorted, but it quickly returned to normal.

It seemed to be a failure.

Feeling disappointed, Bamb relaxed his guard.

“A bluff. Something like—”

At the moment he was about to say something pointless, a dazzling white light enveloped Bamb.

The light ascended to the sky, but it was unclear how far it extended.

However, there was no time to worry about such things.

“—!”

He couldn’t even make a sound.

The damage was comparable to the earlier blow to the heart.

In other words, if he took another hit, he would probably die.

To make matters worse, he also had bad statuses like darkness, burn, self-inflicted, and immobilization.

Although it was known when the log house was burned that the hooded woman’s magic skills were high, he hadn’t expected her to have such high-level magic. He hadn’t shot until now because there was likely a time lag between declaring the activation key and the actual activation. There was enough leeway for short conversations. Hitting with this magic during combat would be impossible for a vanguard role. Keeping a distance in caution had backfired.

However, with just one blow, this much damage and multiple abnormal statuses. It undoubtedly was a powerful magic that had a long cooldown time. Another blow wouldn’t come immediately.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t move due to self-infliction, immobilization, and darkness, and he had no idea about the surrounding situation.

If she picked up the spear and aimed for the heart, it would be the end this time.

“Ah, yes. Uh, [Holy Explosion]!”

With that voice, all sensations disappeared.

…

<<Due to special contract terms, you cannot respawn in the game for three hours.>>

T/N: The guy’s name is written as バンブ and I just went with ‘Bamb’, but I guess it could also be ‘Bambu’ (although it’s not ‘Bamboo’ in case anyone was wondering)

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