After the first two groups (those being the initial three plus the group of four the injured one brought back) Leuen had perfected ‘the pull’. Basically, the gremlins are dormant until they have something to investigate, and then they’ll go aggressive if they find Leuen. As long as he keeps leading them on a trail of things to investigate, he can lure them out of their rooms. Throwing a rock at a door and then at the bend can consistently get groups of around three to four to follow him to his little murder hallway free of any archer sightlines.

 

He has no idea why no adventurers have done this. Though perhaps it has to do with knowledge. He’d simply assumed the monsters worked like dumb MMO mobs with linked AI, and he’d been right, but the people of this world flatly wouldn’t understand any of those words in that order.

 

He’d also perfected a method killing nearly all gremlins in a clean three step process. Parry their opening attack (usually an obvious and very poor swing or lunge), kick them to knock them off balance, stab them. The thing he’d improvised on the second gremlin he killed today has since become his bread and butter combo. Basically, with single gremlins, they simply don’t have the skill to not get parried, don’t have the mass to not get thrown off balance, and don’t recover fast enough to not get stabbed.

 

With groups, the kicked gremlins tend to mess up the movements of the others, turning the numbers disadvantage into a positional advantage. Of his current kill count (he estimates around thirty five or so), twenty two were using that combo, enough that halfway through that number Leuen had jokingly begun referring to it as ‘giving them the P.K.S.’ in his head.

 

Pulling his sword out of the head of the last gremlin in the last room of the hall, Leuen laughs softly to himself. The P.K.S. strikes again!

 

He’d leveled up twice in all so far. The automatic rewards had been two Dura and Stamina as usual, plus 5 more CC, but the rest was all optional. Actually, he didn’t check what the options were. He’d been so wrapped up in his own head, fully ‘in the zone’, spamming his P.K.S., and occasionally just sort of genuinely feeling the adrenaline to bother.

 

Now that he’s cleared the same hallway that he and Voran’s group had the other day, he’s more inclined to stop and take a reality check. Leveling up doesn’t restore stamina damage/drain, but it does grant one free point of the stuff, leading to Leuen still having three left out of his now 15 maximum. He’d objectively learned a lot about combat, and not just in how his stats work, but the most important parts were indeed in that category. 

 

For example, he’s got a pretty good understanding of the damage calculations for his sword’s slashes, stabs, his kick, and even his punches, as well as the enemy’s punches and kicks. Punching and kicking using either Hard or Tough as flat damage. That simply. He learned this from the fact that gremlins are fully incapable of hurting him with such attacks. No matter how much they smacked away at his chest, he’d never take stamina damage unless they hit him in the head.

 

That also confirmed that having a Tough of 3 meant, quite literally, ‘you take 3 less blunt damage’. Blunt being the type that punches, kicks, and Leuen assumes stuff like hammers do. Hard therefore is identical but with piercing/slashing. Probably just means ‘pressure’ based damage, in a physics sense. Hard is tensile strength while blunt is shock absorption, something like that.

 

His sword, therefore, was getting its damage reduced by one whenever he struck a gremlin with it, since they have a Hard of 1. But, he could deal varied damage with each type of attack, leading to Leuen developing a theory. Namely, different areas likely have different Hard/Toughs, and the Analyze values are just a summary. Like, perhaps a gremlin’s chest has a hard of 1, its skull has a hard of 2, and its arms have a hard of zero.

 

The reason he suspects this is because of what he noticed when he cut down a gremlin he was also actively analyzing (it had been pinned down by his boot while he was slashing it): Hitting multiple ‘limb’ or ‘appendages’ counts as multiple hits. When his slash connected with it’s face, it did damage, when he dragged it to the gremlin’s chest, it did damage again, but a lower amount, and then a higher amount when he followed the cut through the gremlin’s leg, killing it.

 

He suspects that vital points like the head have higher defensive stats (like Hard), but take a multiplier on the damage they receive. It’ll reduce more of the raw incoming damage, but amplify the amount it couldn’t block, simulating a vital point. The skull is thick and highly defensive, but when broken what’s underneath is rightfully an OHKO if struck. The same way it is for humans.

 

In fact, Leuen thinks maybe his own body works the same way. His ‘chest’ has 3 hard and 3 tough, but his head might have double that, but take double damage. A terrifying thought considering how close one of the gremlins got to it with one of his own thrown rocks. His sword does 5 damage at base, but again, it calced damage multiple times. Stabbing something seems to deal damage on entry, on fully penetrating, and then again on exit, resulting in a base of 15 per stab separated over three hits if he can properly run something through and then pull his sword out again.

 

That’s why the P.K.S. zero-to-death combos gremlins, he kicks them for 3 (reduced to 2), then stabs them for 15 (reduced to 12), which is higher than their 10 total health with 4 excess damage as a margin of error. Leuen feels proud of himself for understanding the arcane workings of his system, even if he doesn’t know why his sword deals 5 damage at base. Headshots with his sword deal 6 damage, which is why he theorizes it has double defenses but takes double damage (5-2, multiplied by two, or 10-4=6). Arms and legs take the full five, making slashing at both legs at once a viable strategy if he finds the angle for it.

 

Stay in school kids. It’ll help you mathematically optimize mob farming in the afterlife. Leuen pauses at his own thoughts. It’s time to get some proper rest before I start going insane. BUT FIRST!

 

Level Up

Most recent action: Combat

Level: 3 -> 4

Dura: 13 -> 14

Stamina: 13 -> 14

Optional Rewards(Choose one):

--

+1 Stamina Regen/Hour

+0.01 TA

+1 Cogni

+1 Hive

 

Level Up

Most recent action: Combat

Level: 4 -> 5

Dura: 14 -> 15

Stamina: 14 -> 15

CC: 55 -> 60

Optional Rewards(Choose one):

--

+1 Meta.Stat.Skill.Maximum

+0.01 TA

+1 Cogni

+1 Hive

 

Leuen thinks something is up. There is simply no way that level up rewards are random with the way it has been so far. TA, Cogni, and Hive are always on offer for every level but the first, and only level 1 and 2 had more than four offerings… It’s almost like he’s run into a set of unique offers that won’t clear away unless he takes them. But, that can’t be right, he has two level up rewards banked here, meaning he could in theory take two points of Cogni right now.

 

He’s not going to fucking do that, especially when DOUBLING his stamina regen is on offer, but it’s technically possible.

 

Which means his system wants him to have those stats. It just doesn’t want to tell him what they are. He has some ideas, of course. TA could stand for a number of things. Cogni is probably something to do with Cognition (which immediately made him think about having additional inner monologues if he takes more of them, so he’s not inclined to do so), and Hive is… Honestly the most cryptic of all the stats on his character sheet, actually.

 

M.Fission and M.Fusion are… terrifyingly named, but with the context that the Physical stat M.Conductivity is referring to magic, they make sense. Hive doesn’t make sense. Is its full name Hivemind? What would that even do, and what would having more of it benefit? It’s the one stat on his sheet he’s been offered every single level and its the one he wants the least to do with until he’s got more knowledge.

 

Technically not true. Wasn’t I offered H.Limit at level one? I haven’t seen that since…

 

Regardless, his level 4 reward is set in stone, so he claims his additional stamina regen. His level 5 reward is… Also not hard. Explaining his thought process is hard, but the actual choice isn’t. Basically, he doesn’t want Hive, he doesn’t know what TA or Cogni actually do, and the remaining option is offering to put something, anything at all, under the currently blank Meta.Stat section of his character sheet. I’m increasing the capacity for something I have none of, so even if it doesn’t actually give me a skill itself, a net-zero change is WAY less risky than, say, Cogni turning me into two people trapped in one body.

Meta.Stat.Skill.Maximum Increased.

Proceeding to Autofill applicable Meta.Stat.Skill.Custom: Id= [P.K.S.]

Confirm/Deny?

Ha. Nice.

 

(A/N: "But AUTHOR, where's the smut AUTHOR? I was promised romance and smut AUTHOR?")