Growth Hero

by Brent Tyman

  I nodded to show I was following her.

  “Clans have their own rules,” she continued. “Clan rules are to be followed by its members, and once you join one, it is normally a lifelong commitment. I suggest you take great care with whichever clan you decide to join.”

  She frowned. “Nowadays, most simply join an existing Clan—though you can also form your own. I wouldn’t recommend it at this stage due to… the lack of appeal in your current status, if I may be so blunt.”

  I wanted to laugh at that, but knew it would be halfhearted, at best. She did just say my stats were crap, in the politest way possible.

  Still though, joining a Clan in order to form a party for the Dungeon seemed like a sound idea to me. It would even mean I could form an attachment to this world and have a place of belonging.

  “Alright, I’ll bite. How do I join a Clan?” I asked.

  The receptionist produced a small piece of parchment, seemingly from nowhere, and handed it to me.

  “Here is a list of relatively new, but established, Clans that you may find to your liking. I haven’t vetted every Clan on here, though, so again… please take care in your decision.”

  I took the piece of parchment and gave it a look. There were six Clans in a list with a general guide of street names to help someone new to the city find them. I could work with this.

  “Thank you for your help, truly,” I smiled at the receptionist.

  “A pleasure to help any able-bodied adventurers. If you need any more help, then please ask for Selina at the reception,” she said politely, returning my smile.

  I offered Selina my thanks again and waved as I walked off, heading out of the building.

  I had done it!

  I was registered with the Adventurers Guild and now all that was left was finding a Clan to take me on, so I could begin my Dungeon grinding.

  It would be nice to actually find a group of like-minded people to grind with. I struggled a lot with finding a dedicated group of people to quest with in the MMO’s that I’d sunk a lot of time into, so this Clan business could end up being a great solution. A permanent group of people to help me out, seemed almost too good to be true.

  I looked down at the piece of parchment that Selina had given me and thanked my lucky stars that it started its directions from the Adventurers Guild hall.

  None of these Clans had been represented by the recruiters I had seen earlier, so those might have been either too young to be listed here or not that good to join.

  I looked at the first Clan on the list and set off to sink my roots in this new world. I couldn’t wait to see who I would be working with.

  6

  “Hey guys! We got another dud here, and he actually has a one in every stat. A one!”

  Laughter reverberated from the house behind the man’s giant frame, clearly audible even from the noisy street I was on.

  “Sorry mate, but you have the same stats as a babe fresh out of the womb. No idea how you managed to get this far without leveling a single one, but you would be useless in the Dungeon.”

  A bubble of anger welled up from within me, but before I could turn that into words, he slammed the door shut in my face. I could still hear the laugher from within. Grinding my teeth for a moment, I considered knocking again and giving the man a piece of my mind before I let out a breath and relaxed.

  And, of course, sighed.

  My attempts to find a Clan had been met with absolute disdain and rejection after firm rejection. It all honesty, it made surprisingly brutal sense. The first Clan I had gone to, gave me a firm no with an apologetic ‘Sorry’ thrown in, but every other one had been similar to the experience I’d just had.

  I never imagined it would be this hard to find a party, never mind a Clan.

  I took the route back to the Adventurers’ Guild as my mind struggled to figure out what to do next. If Selina thought I needed a Clan, did I have any chance of grinding the first level of the Dungeon on my own?

  I suddenly stopped in my tracks. You know what? Screw it! I had planned to do my grinding on my own and wouldn’t let some rude douche bags screw with me. Who needed them anyway?

  Instead of looking for the Adventurers’ Guild signs, I followed the ones that would take me straight to the Dungeon itself.

  Since I had a sword already, I was as prepared as I could be right now. It wasn’t like I could buy any armor with the pittance of coins I’d gained from the bandit. That was assuming it was even worth a pittance, in the first place.

  I just had to make sure I kept a good eye on my surroundings and didn’t overextend, not with the lousy Defense stat I had.

  The route to the Dungeon led through a giant archway out of the city. There were many travelers on the road with me. Some of the faces, or at least their armor, I recognized from the guild as well.

  Keeping a cool head, I followed the path as it led through a giant grass field. The sights here were no different from the countryside back home, and—as long as I didn’t look directly at the city or the people here—there wasn’t any evidence this world was completely different to my own.

  Until you looked up at the moons.

  A short walk later, a mountain rose up before us and the paths began to diverge. I was a little confused at first, as I wasn’t sure who to follow, until I recalled that Selina had mentioned this to me in her description of the Dungeon.

  The Dungeon was one of the largest on the entire continent and had tons of entrances littered around this mountain. It didn’t really matter which entrance I used, once I got inside and moved further in, I should have plenty of monsters to farm for myself.

  Instead of veering off to the side, I followed the most direct path to the Dungeon while around me, half the adventurers changed paths.

  I heard a group behind me conversing with each other.

  “You had a stat increase yesterday, right?”

  “To Speed yeah. Should be able to take down a few more Rats before we hit our limits, I reckon.”

  “Poison Resistance is what’s keeping us back, but it’s so damn expensive in every shop. Every other resistance is much cheaper.”

  “Well duh, you only need Poison Resistance for the first floor and that’s where all new adventures train. Don’t think any of the lower floors even have Rats. Might not even need the potions with our healer though.”

  Fighting Rats didn’t sound so bad when I thought about it, but Rats that inflicted poison might give me a pretty tough challenge. The gamer in me really wanted to stock up on those Poison Resistance potions, but I had no way to buy them right now.

  I had to make sure I didn’t take too many hits.

  No other groups I overheard had anything interesting to say, so I followed silently as a cave entrance appeared in my sight. Adventurers poured into the Dungeon in groups and I felt a bit like the odd one out, as I went in alone.

  There was a brief moment of darkness as there appeared to be stairs in the cave entrance that I used, which eventually led into a corridor with lanterns every few steps.

  It looked exactly like how a cave would look in a typical RPG, with rock walls surrounding me and two directions to choose from at first. I didn’t follow anyone in particular but noticed there were green lines painted in the middle of the corridor.

  Once I chose a route that didn’t intersect with any other adventurers’ paths, I realized what they were for. There were occasionally yellow arrows on the green line that pointed back the way I had come. No doubt these were used as guides to find the entrance again. Fairly neat, I thought, they would make my life a little bit easier.

  After choosing random paths for a while, I was finally alone. There were the occasional sounds of battle just out of earshot, but otherwise, this was it.

  Now the grind begins.

  I didn’t want to chance a surprise attack, so I went ahead and pulled my sword out of its scabbard and gripped it tightly. The corridor I was in eventually extended out into a small cavern. There, my first enemy
appeared in front of me.

  A Rat snarled as it scampered into my way. Its beady red eyes stared up at me as it momentarily rose to its hind legs to let out a shrill squeak. At first, I didn’t really see what the issue might be with this monster.

  I had expected giant Rats, as was usually the case with RPG’s, since normal sized Rats didn’t pose much of a problem. This particular Rat happened to be the size of a microwave as opposed to a shoe, but that probably made it easier to hit.

  Then another one appeared, then another, and then a fourth.

  I should have seen this coming. I now understood why Selina had insisted I look into joining a Clan.

  Multiple enemies at a time was definitely a no-go at this early stage of my Dungeon delving career. I wouldn’t be able to avoid getting hit. Sure, it would be more efficient for farming experience and gains, but I had to know if I could handle one on my own, first.

  Since this would be my first battle, I stubbornly refused to back down and now had four Rats to deal with. Strangely, they seemed hesitant to make the first move, so I slowly edged towards them. They let out the occasional snarl as I approached.

  I couldn’t see any evidence that these Rats were poisonous until I caught a glimpse of their tails. Each one of them were a strange bright white that slowly pulsed light green every so often. Another thing I noticed was that every other breath they blew emitted a foul green mist. Yeah, that was probably where the poison factored in.

  Once I had approached within a certain distance, the Rats sprang to life and darted towards me. Their sudden charge caught me by surprise, but I managed to have my sword ready.

  I thrust my sword down into the first Rat that reached me and aimed for its head. With as much force as my weak Strength stat could muster, my sword slammed down and sliced through its head. Blood pooled onto the ground.

  I tried to pull my sword back as fast as I could, but two Rats slammed into me at full force, almost knocking me off my feet. One of them slid past my leg to disappear out of sight behind me, but the other stopped to bite my ankle.

  And by God, did it hurt!

  It was as if someone had stabbed a knife into my ankle. I yelped in pain and swung my sword wildly in its direction.

  The flat of my sword struck the Rat and forced it off me, but I growled in frustration as it was still alive, while it shrilled in rage at my blow.

  I took a few steps back and wanted to examine the damage to my ankle but knew I had to wait until the end of battle, else that would simply invite more hits on me. With my lousy Defense stat, I wasn’t sure how many hits I could take. I just knew my ankle hurt like heck.

  I looked around for the fourth Rat and saw it had stopped a few paces away from me for some reason.

  In fact, all of the Rats had stopped. Very strange, but I would take the respite while I could.

  They surrounded me on three sides, but I tried to make sure none of the Rats were directly behind me. I didn’t like that they had adopted a half circle formation around me, though.

  This time, I wanted to make the first move and attacked the Rat to my left. It shot towards me as soon as I got close, but as I had done with the first Rat, I thrust my sword down and skewered through its head in one smooth motion.

  Wincing from the pain in my throbbing ankle, I spun on my heel and readied myself for an attack… that didn’t come.

  Again, strangely, the two Rats that were left simply stayed as they were, in almost the same spots they’d been in before, only turning to glare at me. This behavior seemed far too strange to be a coincidence, and I came up with a theory as to why they’d stopped but wanted to fight a few more Rats to be sure.

  I again attacked the next closest Rat, repeating almost action for action the same steps I had before, stabbing down through its head once it charged.

  The last one didn’t even bat an eye now that three of its buddies had perished and foolishly attacked me once I got close enough.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding as my sword pierced its head.

  “Jeez, that was extreme,” I breathed as the adrenaline pumping through my system slowly faded. I didn’t realize I had become so tense.

  Once I was sure I was safe and there would be no more enemies for a while, I crouched down and examined my wound. The Rat had chomped down hard on my ankle, but I didn’t think I was poisoned, judging from the small trickle of blood running down to my heel.

  At least, I hoped I wasn’t poisoned. I wasn’t even sure how that might feel, other than bad. I rubbed my pajama leg over the wound slowly and pressed down on the bite marks to help it clot before standing back up.

  It still hurt, but not nearly as much, now that I was used to it. If only I had enough coin to get bandages… I sighed. Realizing where I was, I proceeded to head over to the closest Rat corpse and examined it.

  It was supposed to drop something I could trade in at the guild, but that hadn’t happened yet. When I cautiously reached out to touch the cleanest part of its fur, a message appeared.

  Small Grey Rat Corpse Detected

  Would you like to convert this corpse into a drop?

  The familiar blue background blended into the cave floor as I read the message.

  This world gave an option to either let you keep the corpse of your kill as is or allowed you to convert it into a drop that could be sold. I assumed you would only keep a corpse if you wanted to eat it, but I had no desire to bring any part of these Rats near my mouth, let alone eat one.

  Even though, I suddenly realized as my stomach forcefully reminded me, I hadn’t eaten since I’d come to this world.

  I mentally tried to accept the message by saying ‘yes’ in my head and watched as the Rat corpse morphed. It slowly shrank in size until there was nothing left except for a single, impeccable slice of pelt. I picked it up tentatively and marveled at how light it was.

  “Huh, so this is a monster drop? Fairly convenient,” I said to myself.

  “My first drop ever…”

  I never really got excited for receiving loot from such low tier monsters, but this felt quite special. This was me. I had done this, as opposed to my avatar doing it in a video game.

  Shrugging off my thoughts, I placed the pelt in my handy pack that had been mostly empty after giving away that book. The same option appeared on all the other Rat corpses; I accepted each time and placed the resulting pelts in my bag.

  A small problem occurred to me at this point. My pack wasn’t all that big. It basically amounted to half the capacity of a typical school backpack, now that I thought about it.

  It couldn’t really hold many more pelts and I wanted to spend as much time as I could in the Dungeon. That meant either heading back to the Adventurer’s Guild once I was full up on pelts, or skipping the drops entirely once I had reached capacity.

  Neither option seemed particularly appealing to me, both being fairly inefficient.

  I decided I would worry about it later and continued onward to seek out more enemies. The most important goal I had was to improve my stats.

  Another group of Rats appeared soon after, and this time, I scrutinized their behavior in much finer detail to see if my theory was right as to why they reacted as they did.

  Three Rats stood in front of me, side by side. This time, though, instead of simply moving straight towards them, I took a different approach.

  With my sword in hand, I sidestepped around the group of Rats until I was at their flank, with them now standing in a column in front of me. They hadn’t moved to attack, simply turning in place to face me. The two behind the one in front moved their heads to the side so that they could keep their beady eyes on me.

  From this angle, I approached slowly and as soon as I got close, only the closest Rat attacked me. I easily dispatched it with a quick stab through its head. The other two stayed in place and simply shrieked their rage at me. I grinned as my theory turned out to be correct, stepping forward once more.

  The exact same thing h
appened. The closest Rat attacked but proved no match for my sword. Once I performed the same to the last Rat, I almost whooped in victory.

  My theory was correct!

  These Rats had a game-like attack pattern that appeared almost binary in its behavior. They had a clear range where they would become aggressive and aggro on me, but until I got into that range, they would hold the line.

  During my first encounter with the four Rats, when I had whacked one of the Rats with the flat end of my sword, that must have knocked it out of aggro range, hence why it had ceased attacking. I had also backed away when my ankle had been bitten, which explained why the others hadn’t attacked once I had gotten far enough away from them.

  With this knowledge, I would be able to steer each fight so that only one Rat would ever attack me at a time. I had become fairly proficient at stabbing downward with my sword, so this tactic should increase my odds of survival by quite a bit.

  I gathered up the pelts from the Rats I had just killed and continued on.

  I vaguely wondered if any other adventurers had realized this behavior, but as I thought about it, a normal adventurer would most likely attack in a more direct manner and the Rats seemed to behave… well, like Rats once you were in their aggro range.

  In any case, with this simple piece of knowledge, my confidence in my chances at surviving rose sharply. I was quite pleased with my observations.

  If other monsters here had similar game-like behavior, I could figure them out and always head into a fight with a distinct advantage. As long as I used my RPG, video game and manga knowledge, I was sure I’d be able to increase my stats in no time at all.

  This really was a world well suited for me. I couldn’t wait to see what else it had in store.