บท 21: The First Proper Boss Fight

[Happy birthday!]

[Body Mod obtained: Flap-Flop]

[Boons obtained: Machine Learning, It Only Takes One]

Well, not too bad, though I'm a little sad that I didn't get any new magic or skills this time.

[Flap-Flop: You now have a pair of retractable wings!]

Mother absolutely gushed over my wings when I revealed them. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but I realised my wings were exactly the same as hers in both colour and material.

Both of us had leathery black wings that sprung out from our shoulder blades, big enough to wrap ourselves up in a cocoon if we wanted to.

I also learned that I received my wings early, since normal Mesletars would only have their wings sprout when they are six years old. Even then, the wings will start out small and useless first before growing bigger over the years.

But for me, I was given a fully mature pair of wings that was proportionate to my current body right from the start.

Definitely a cheat.

Speaking of mother… She really went and got me a dress.

It's not a simple one either, it's the kind of dress you might wear to an especially formal function, which means I doubt I would wear it aside when mother requests me to. She did say that she would start dressing me up real soon when I hit my next growth spurt, whenever that may be.

[Machine Learning: Your mind is now in learning mode. It will pick up issues with anything you're doing and try to incorporate solutions into the next time you do it. It's mostly subtle and subconscious, like readjusting your sword swing a few times to find the most optimal way to strike. However, this accelerates your learning far beyond what most can manage, even with diligent focus.]

[It Only Takes One: You cannot be one shot. Any attack, any magic, any poison or illness. No matter what it is, it cannot kill you in one go. It will instead put you close to death, in a very weakened state and dissipate. If anyone else were to attack you in this weakened state, you would be easy to kill. But if you are able to recover and heal, you can return to a healthy state. Once you've done that, this boon will return and you'll be able to take another lethal blow without dying again.]

[Machine Learning] would definitely help me with speeding up my learning process, so I'm quite confident that by next year, I will gain even more progress than I did last year.

[It only Takes One] is more of a safety net for myself, just in case I meet with some bullshit enemy or situation like another giant truck falling on top of me again, I could still survive that.

Naturally, I don't intend to do anything stupid even with this skill since it does leave me weakened at the end, but it's still nice to know that I have a backup for the worst case scenario.

Of course, when one gets new stuff, you would definitely want to test it out!

By now, mother isn't too worried about me going out on my own, even when it was night time. In fact, night time is currently where I'm at my best so there's even less things to worry about.

For tonight, I plan to hunt some monsters to help get my [Mana Management] and [Umbramancy] to finally reach tier two.

During my hunts, I found a small cave that gave off the scent of monsters so that's where I'll be heading tonight.

It's unfortunate I couldn't get it to tier two before my birthday like I thought I could, but because I didn't get any new skills, I can still focus my time on increasing my proficiency for this magic.

With my new wings, I'll be able to simply fly there without worry too, so reaching that wouldn't be a problem.

I mean, it's just flying right? Mother already acclimatised me to the feeling of flying already so it shouldn't be that hard right?

FLYING IS HARD!! ARGHHH!!

I raised up my hands to protect my face as I smashed through the tree canopy for the sixth time in a row.

Thankfully, my endurance is high enough to prevent me from taking too much damage.

Ugh… I thought flying would be simple… Just flap your wings and you should be able to fly, right?

Turns out there's a lot more to flying than just flapping your wings… I need to take into account the wind, the strength of each flap of my wings and even the currents too. If I don't, then I'll get thrown around like right now.

At least [Machine Learning] is helping quite a bit but I still need to try a few more times before I get it.

I guess… I guess that's enough flying for now… Maybe I'll ask mother to teach me how to do it if I still don't get it tonight… The cave is already nearby… Just need to walk a few more metres and I'll be able to see it…

I checked my stats again.

[Name: Aster Nilm

Title: None

Race: Meslatar

Stats:

35 Strength

36 Dexterity

57 Endurance

65 Magic

Skills:

Hunting (Tier 1), Cooking (Tier 1), Martial Skill-(Dagger Proficiency (Tier 1), Unarmed Proficiency (Tier 1))

Magic Skills:

Mana Management (Tier 1), Umbramancy (Tier 1)]

Oh? I realised it doesn't show me the boons I bought from the character creation as part of the base stats. Although if I were to concentrate on it, I would be able to see the boons and the information about them.

Now to check on my progress with the two magic skills…

[Mana Management: To gain proficiency, grow your internal mana pool and claim mastery over it. (Progress to tier 2: 99%)]

[Umbramancy: To gain proficiency, master the shadow and the emotions within it. (Progress to tier 2: 92%)]

I am so goddamned close!

If nothing goes wrong, I'm sure the monsters in this cave will be my catalyst to reach tier two for both of these skills!

Heh heh, I'm already looking forward to it!

Unsheathing my trusty dagger, I once again made use of my [Shadow Wall] and [Shadow Glide] to move through the forest, aiming for the monster cave I found.

I reached it in less than a minute and standing in front of the cave was one of the monsters I am aiming to kill tonight.

[Name: Cave Goblin

Stats:

15 Strength

12 Dexterity

12 Endurance

5 Magic

Skills:

Martial Skill-(Club Proficiency (Tier1))]

Yep, goblins, the bread and butter of every fantasy world, can't go far without seeing these green things.

And yes, I am going to become the goblin slayer tonight.

Though individual goblin stats are low, their power lies in their numbers. I'm pretty sure there's at least about a few dozen or more goblins inside this tiny cave alone. Most likely there's also some kind of goblin boss too, so I'll have to be careful. Fortunately the only armour they're wearing is a piece of rag around their waist and their weapons are rather crude clubs, swords and bows.

Still… For them to only leave one guard outside? They must be either really confident or really stupid. My money is definitely on the latter.

In the blink of an eye, my hand was clamped over the goblin's mouth and my dagger sliced through his throat cleanly, allowing him to drop onto the ground without nary a sound.

This is way easier than dealing with those Hell Wolves since the goblins don't have the wolves' sense of smell. I could have even simply walked past the sentry and he would have been none the wiser.

I slipped into the cave, my dagger ready to claim more goblins tonight. The cave itself wasn't really brightly lit, with a few torches dotted periodically on the walls which was the perfect environment for me.

Turning round the corner in the tunnel, I nearly ran straight into a patrol of three goblins carrying crude spears.

Thankfully, I had kept to the darkness of the tunnel so they did not notice my presence and walked on by.

That gave me the perfect opportunity to slip in behind them and assassinate them one by one from behind.

I drop them onto the ground, leaving a note using my [Screen] on the locations of the bodies so I can claim the Mana Crystals later.

Going deeper into the cave, I kept my senses peeled and killed any goblins I came across, all of them not even knowing I was there before they died.

Thankfully, the cave wasn't a network of tunnels but a simple straight tunnel that had a few small caverns that were dug out to function as rooms for the goblins.

Due to the fact that it was night time, several goblins were also sleeping in the caverns which surprised me a little since I didn't think monsters had basic needs. I'll have to go read up more on them later.

Did I have any remorse killing these goblins in their sleep? Not at all.

There is absolutely no reason to feel anything for monsters, especially since they are akin to recycling waste in this world.

Moving deeper into the cave, I found the tunnel widening into a large cavern at the very back of the cave.

Inside were at least thirty other goblins, each of them holding onto a weapon with a few of them even wielding shortbows.

And at the very end of the cave, sitting on a throne carved out of rock, was most definitely the leader of the goblins.

[Name: Cave Goblin Light Mage

Stats:

10 Strength

10 Dexterity

10 Endurance

80 Magic

Magic Skills:

Lumenmancy (Tier 2)]

Are you serious? They just had to give me a light mage that's a direct counter to my dark magic?!

As though reading my thoughts, the goblin light mage raised his hands and a ball of light appeared at the roof of the cavern and illuminating the area, effectively negating my stealth.

All eyes turned to me.

Fuck.