Restarting From Genesis

Merlin continued his journey down the tunnel, eventually coming across yet another room. This room was much bigger than the previous rooms, and like the last room, the walls were full of little tunnels that only the kobolds could fit in.

Merlin entered the room, where he saw four heavily wounded gnolls gnawing on the corpses of kobolds. The floor was littered with kobold corpses and the shells and spilt yolk of shattered eggs. There were also two corpses of gnolls that seemed to have fallen victim to the kobold’s attacks.

Merlin turned the corner, his ball of light began illuminating the rest of the room, which caused the gnolls to immediately stop paying attention to their food and turn to face him.

"I really need to get night vision." Merlin complained under his breath before running over to one of the gnoll corpses to grab its spear.

Three of the gnolls quickly grabbed their weapons and began charging at Merlin, one had a long bow and was readying an arrow.

Merlin scanned the group quickly, eyeing the health bar above each creature’s head. He also took into account how wounded each gnoll looked, and if any weaknesses had formed from the damage they took while fighting the kobolds.

One seemed to have a knife in its thigh, causing it to limp. While another had blood pouring out of its left eye which remained closed. The third gnoll charging at him seemed to be fine besides the low health, so Merlin’s eyes locked onto the archer behind the three, as it seemed to be the biggest threat right now.

Merlin launched the spear at the archer, barely missing two of the gnolls charging at him. The spear flew as straight as a bullet as it tore through the humid air, piercing the chest of the archer gnoll at the end of its journey.

Although it didn’t seem to kill it, as the archer gnoll had the highest health amongst the rest of the gnolls, the spear distracted the gnoll enough to miss its first shot.

Two of the gnolls thrust their spears at Merlin as he began chanting. One spear barely scratched him as Merlin twisted his body out of the way, quickly closing the distance between him and the gnoll with the bleeding eye. Merlin slapped the gnoll in the face as he finished his chant, and suddenly small embers appeared on the gnoll’s fur.

「Skill ⟪Ignite⟫ Activated.」

Merlin leapt backwards as another spear was thrust at him, he began drawing his daggers in the same motion. He watched as the fire quickly spread along the gnoll’s fur, it began panicking and running around, but that only served to spread the fire faster.

Merlin dashed towards the archer gnoll while the other two were temporarily distracted. The archer had just nocked another arrow and was getting prepared to shoot when Merlin leapt at it with both daggers, stealing its life away.

「Gnolls Killed: 6/15」

Merlin received a couple notifications as he turned around to face the other gnolls, it seemed the one that was burning had actually died from the fire damage.

「You’ve been granted the title, "Pyromaniac. (Beginner)"」

「Gnolls Killed: 7/15」

"And I haven’t even learnt fire bolt yet." Merlin laughed, thinking it was kind of funny that he managed to get the title so early. Especially when he acquired it only through the use of lantern oil and utility magic.

The remaining two gnolls angrily charged at him, But Merlin ripped the spear out of the archer gnoll’s corpse and charged at them in return.

The fight ended as expected, although the spear broke as it pierced the heart of the gnoll with the limp, fortunately that was all it took to kill it. The last gnoll put up some degree of a fight, but was ultimately cut down.

「Gnolls Killed: 9/15」

"Six more to go, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything left here." Merlin sighed to himself as he looked around.

For a kobold lair, it was relatively small, but this was understandable as it was still a lower level area. Regardless of the lair’s size, the traps were still deadly enough to cause players issues, especially if they didn’t have anyone who specialised in detecting and disarming traps.

Merlin spotted a pile of glowing objects in the furthest corner of the room, it was the kobold’s treasure hoard, although it was a bit lacklustre compared to the kobold lairs he was used to.

After checking for traps, and then double checking, Merlin approached the pile of treasure. A large part of it was junk that weren’t considered items by the system, but just there to make the pile visually appealing. But he found a couple items he could take after making a mess of the pile.

Merlin picked up nine silver, increasing his wallet to forty-seven silver and one hundred twenty-two copper.

He then picked up a strange bracelet that immediately began faintly glowing with a soft blue light, but dimmed once it was kept still. Intrigued, he checked the item’s stats.

┌───────────────────

[Glowing Bracelet. (Uncommon)]

A bracelet that emits light when shaken.

The colour changes based on how fast it is shaken.

└───────────────────

Merlin shook his head before throwing it into his inventory and turning to check the next item. The bracelet glowed green as it flew into the inventory window.

The next item was a small red gem that was warm to the touch. Merlin inspected the gem and as he suspected, it was a magic stone.

┌───────────────────

[Crude Fire Stone. (Uncommon)]

A small red gem that was infused with fire magic.

• Crafting material.

└───────────────────

Merlin threw the magic gem into his inventory as well before he searched through the treasure pile once more, checking to see if he missed anything.

After confirming that he hadn’t left anything behind, Merlin stood up and began walking out of the cave. He loaded up the title he received earlier to check its stats as he walked.

┌───────────────────

[Pyromaniac. (Beginner)]

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

• Fire Damage: +5%

Upgrade Requirements: Fire Damage Dealt (3/200)

└───────────────────

"Not a bad haul." Merlin said to himself as he waved the information window away.

"I should have a couple hours of light left." He mumbled as he stared up at the sky that had started getting darker.

Merlin unsheathed his blades and began sprinting through the forest. He began finding several small groups of both races around the forest, and started noticing a trend of where they were spawning which allowed him to locate them faster.

「You have completed the quest, "Gnoll Gangs", visit the mercenary guild to receive your rewards.」

After killing off enough gnolls to finish his quest, Merlin began avoiding the locations where he expected them to form, although he did check to see if any spawned with a bow. If he felt like he could quickly kill a gnoll without taking any damage to himself, he would quickly leap in and kill the creature before sprinting back into the forest and activating sneak to escape.

He then went back to the scene of the crime to check if any loot had dropped, and through this method had acquired fourteen arrows, but no bows.

Kobolds were the easiest to handle, it wouldn’t take much time to cleave through their small camps. The only issue he had was when they escaped into burrows they prepared beforehand, and at that point he was forced to leave them alone to save time.

「You have completed the quest, "Killing Kobolds", visit the mercenary guild to receive your rewards.」

Eventually, Merlin had completed his last quest. Although it took so long that the forest had become incredibly dark, to the point he had to summon his ball of light and risk giving away his position in order to traverse safely.

Now that all his quests were done, he began running towards the road. He didn’t want to be in the middle of the forest at night, especially in a level seven and higher area.

The forest was almost quiet, the only sounds Merlin could hear were bugs, the ground crunching under his feet and the collective cries of several owls.

’Owls... That might not be a bad idea.’ Merlin thought to himself.

Race souls covered all manners of creatures, not just monsters. If you killed an elf, there would be a chance that you could get an elf soul. If you killed a human, although ultimately considered useless, you could also potentially acquire a human soul.

This meant that critters were also included, although most didn’t give you any bonuses that made hunting them worth it. But out of all the critters, there was one that was considered the best, and that was the owl.

The reason everybody considered the owl soul to be the best critter race souls was because they were one of the earliest sources of the popular night vision passive skill that a player could acquire, but also because they gave buffs to perception stats.

The only issue with the owl soul was that it didn’t have much in the way of combat bonuses, and they were kind of annoying to hunt. So by the time people were bothered or able to hunt them down, they would probably find other sources of night vision or work around the use of torches, lanterns and the light utility spell.

Merlin was considering if this kind of bonus would benefit him, he didn’t know if he wanted to replace one of his souls or expand his number of soul slots to fit another in.

Shrugging the thought off, he quickly made it to the road, where the ground around him was now faintly illuminated by the moonlight, and began his trip back to Macedonia to turn his quests in.

The trees around him eventually opened up to reveal vast rolling hills, and as Merlin took a look at his surroundings, he saw several individuals being chased by horde of wild boars.