“No, no, NO! If I want to go kill some monsters alone, I will do it a-lone! These stupid guards are just holding me back!” Matheson yelled as he threw a luminous orb against the wall in his manor.
With a bright spark it shattered to pieces, temporarily lighting up the room as if a lightning strike happened nearby.
“My young Lord, please reconsider. We can’t protect you if you go into dungeons alone. Besides..” the nervous butler rubbed the back of his hand with the other “we can just have the soldiers get your exp while all you have to do is wait. It’s safer th-”
“No! I need combat experience! I don’t want to be another clueless noble who doesn’t even know how to swing a sword, still suckling the gold out of their mothers tit like a baby! I can’t even sense mana yet because everything is done for me! I’m sick of it!”
He kicked over a suit of armour, while the butler begged him.
“Please, reconside-”
“I’m going and there’s nothing you can do about it! I don’t care if I get less money. Now prepare a hearty meal and some travel food, or rations, or whatever those peasants call it, I’m going to be training in a dungeon this very night - whether you like it or not!” he yelled right in Hodley’s face.
Hodley had worked as a butler his whole life.
Scared of Mathesons temper, he scurried off into a different corridor of the large manor.
Hodley let out a sigh as he found safety, finally out of his master's glare. He had served Matheson’s father in the capital years ago, but Matheson’s anger was even fiercer than his fathers.
Holdley grew more and more frustrated every day; Matheson simply couldn’t be contained - he did what he wanted, he had no self-control.
Living in Losla was a punishment for the both of them - for Matheson, as he spoke rudely at a noble’s banquet. Hodley was also punished for simply being in the banquet room at the time; he wasn’t meant to be there, as it was considered rude to bring your own servants to someone else’s banquet. Hodley didn’t want to be there, though he was forced to enter the banquet because of Matheson’s threats.
This single incident caused various repercussions for Mathson’s father, so both of them are now exiled here in Losla.
Matheson’s budget for his fine lifestyle was tied to his presence in the Losla manor. If he were to leave, the budget would be reduced or even pause until he returned back to it.
It was a somewhat ingenious idea of his father, as Matheson would be forced to either remain here, living like a child still holding onto his parents, or become a man, making something of himself and forging his own path; of course, Matheson didn’t realise this was his fathers plan all along.
Matheson wasn’t physically forced to stay there, but as a noble without any skills he was purely dependent on the budget of gold that his father provided. It was like an invisible shackle.
Matheson hated it, feeling suffocated - but one day an opportunity came; he turned eighteen and got his class.
While he lived in comfort, he felt an internal struggle - he was restless knowing he truly wasn’t free, and this feeling got stronger every day.
For his independence, he decided he would become an adventurer, slaying monsters to earn a living. Adventuring was now his way out of exile.
In this world, adventuring was something that the peasants did, while nobles would be trained to fight by skilled officers in the military, before going on to command the troops below them.
Matheson knew he would be looked down upon by the nobles if he became an adventurer, and he didn’t care.
To him, being independent was much better than being like a child given an allowance: he would still have his self-respect intact, even if he were to earn less than his father’s allowance.
Matheson started training himself, not taking any shortcuts and using his guards.
Doing pushups in his manor, Matheson repeated to himself as he trained.
He did a pushup between each word “No”.. “one” .. “Is” .. “going” .. “to” .. “own” .. “me.” He repeated this each time, and created this as a workout mantra for himself, eventually he started applying it to every type of exercise he did.
Because his mantra was seven words long, this led him to doing sets of seven repetitions. He didn’t realise it yet but this number of repetitions would create the perfect balance between lean and bulk muscle.
As his training progressed he became better at dealing with pain.
Clenching his jaw, he repeated the mantra numerous times while doing different workouts, even becoming happy when he found new muscles to workout. He could workout for many hours during the day due to his class giving him energy.
Slowly but surely, he was learning to control his anger and channel his rage into his workouts.
Each day he did more workouts, each afternoon he ate like a king, and each night he slept like a log.
Slowly but surely, he was disciplining himself, and he didn’t even realise it - though this was just the start. He still had to practice his sword skills; tonight, he would start going to dungeons by himself.
Hodley even started to notice a change in the young master. Despite Matheson’s increasing muscle, he had less outbursts of anger - perhaps it was due to being tired, or because he channelled his anger into exercise.
While he still seemed angry all the time, it was like it became more regulated.
Holdley wondered if he should report this to Matheson’s father.
“Four.. no, six again.. Wait, there’s eight this time!” Anya said as she fired her crossbow at a leech imp, the bolt causing it to bend over backwards - though it’s tentacle-like feet kept pulling itself towards them, dragging the top half of its body with it before it sprang back up to normal again.
“S-should we fall back?” she asked after seeing this.
Anya was beginning to panic - walking into a monster lair after finding the massacred village was getting to her. It was clear by now that the village had been massacred, consumed by these leeches. She wondered why her father sent her on such a mission.
“No. Not yet at least.” Jay said confidently as he had his four skeletons form a wall of death between them and the eight leech imps - though the wall wasn’t wide enough, and some of the imps went around the sides.
Without a second thought, Jay began to charge one of his teeth as he prepared an unstable teeth spell. Since it was a spell, it wouldn't count as slash, pierce or stab damage - so Jay could bypass their natural defences with a single spell.
It was the perfect time to use one, since the enemies were all pushed together as they tried to get past the skeletons. For whatever reason, they still couldn’t see the skeletons - they were treated like vines or roots that the leeches merely had to push past to get to their meal.
The leech imps seemed mad; they continued to push against the skeletons even as they took damage.
The unstable tooth spell was ready, the tooth floating in his hand with a faint green glow; visibly vibrating because of the mana forced into it.
Squinting at the imp leeches with a smirk, he released the unstable tooth.
It flew towards the leech imp’s with the speed of an arrow, creating a line of green light in the darkness.
*Boom*
It exploded against the flesh of one of them, causing a horrible crater in its body. Blood and mucus oozed out of the hole.
“Oh yeah, I forgot that spell levelled up.” Smiled Jay.
The explosion was much bigger than before and it released even more shrapnel of teeth - all of which pierced the nearby leeches.
The initial explosion instantly killed the leech, though the fragments hitting the other leeches only counted as pierce damage - this is what Jay concluded after the following damage numbers he noticed:
[6] [15 Exp] [0.1] [0.1] [0.1] [0.1] [0.1]
The leech that died ended in another desperately wriggling mess on the ground; squirming and squirting mucus everywhere.
Unfortunately, since the dying leech leaked slime everywhere, it made the other leeches faster.
“Ok, maybe we should back up a bit - at least until we get outta that slime area.”
Anya nodded, not wanting to be anywhere near the leeches or more of the slime which they had been walking through for most of the day.
As they were trying to back up, they paused in shock. A wall of leech imps were around them - they were surrounded.
Anya nearly walked right into the line of leech imps, the circle had formed around them and it was slowly but surely getting smaller.
“Shit…” Jay pulled out five more unstable teeth, beginning to charge them all.
Anya desperately loaded and fired more bolts at anything she could. The skeletons continued to hack, stab and slash away at leeches.
The leeches that surrounded them were different - they had red stripes on their bodies, and they didn’t recklessly charge at Jay and Anya; instead, they patiently moved forward together and seemed to be quite organised.
There were approximately 35 red-lined leech imps, while about 10 more normal ones were pushing through the encirclement to try and attack Jay and Anya.
The leech imps that formed the circle were letting the normal ones past. They had a single red stripe travelling down their bodies, starting at the mouth.
“Stay in the middle.” Jay gestured, as Anya stepped between the group of skeletons and Jay. She continued to fire her crossbow from cover - though it could hardly be called cover, standing between a single human and four skeletons.
Many of the normal leech imps were dead now, killed by the skeletons. The skeletons wasted no time and quickly moved on to slashing at the leech imps with the stripes.
The five teeth Jay was charging had taken a while since there were so many of them, but Jay was getting close to firing them off into the crowd of leeches.
In the time it took Jay to charge the teeth, Blue had already killed one of the red-lined leech imps.
After the first one died, the red-lined leeches suddenly all stopped moving forward, it was as if they were waiting for something.
The last few normal leech imps that had pushed through the red ones and had been dashed to pieces by now.
Only the red ones were left, still forming a circle around them - new target of Jay’s minions.
Jay took a moment to analyse one of the red-line leeches.
It was level two, nearly the exact same as the other ones except for having more health as well as an addition to its name.
<[Leech Imp Level 2 (Royal)]>
“What makes it royal..? Is it because it’s level two?” Jay was curious as he guarded Anya. He was wondering about this, but his thoughts were cut off when he heard something strange.
A voice from the darkness came from outside the circle of leeches.
