NOVEL WEB Chapter 2
Arthur looked up at the translucent words floating before him, he wanted to be excited by what he was seeing but without anything to reference the numbers didn’t mean anything to him. They could be good, they could be average, they might even be terrible and he wouldn’t know unless he asked someone else.
‘Note to self, ask the first person I meet about this and figure out if these numbers are good or not.’
While he caught his breath Arthur looked over everything the translucent words said, he looked over the “exp”, attributes, his “class”, and the skills. After an uncertain amount of time Arthur sat up again feeling slightly refreshed after the rush of fear from the skeleton.
Arthur slowly opened the door and peeked out from a small crack, seeing nothing he slowly opened it more and more until it was wide open and the hall was still empty. Empty aside from the bottom half of the skeleton that is. Clearly the time it spent down here hasn't kept its bones from starting to go brittle.
With his sword drawn Arthur slowly walked down the rest of the hallway while he looked through each room, unfortunately he still didn’t find anything of interest. When he arrived at the end of the hallway he found another hallway going in the opposite direction with several dull blue crystal things lining the walls that generated light. Not all of the crystals were generating light, and several more were missing, but it was enough to easily see through it compared to the previous one.
Looking towards the left Arthur saw that most of the crystals were either not emitting light or were missing and thus clouding the area in shadow. The right was far more promising with a majority of the way lit. The only problem with that was Arthur could see a few corpses down the right, but odds were there were just as many down the left, he just couldn’t see them.
Taking a deep breath Arthur started to walk down the right side of the hallway and hopefully find someone or a way out. As he walked he passed by a few corpses of these short green creatures with pointed ears. The corpses were thin and practically naked aside from a thin layer of cloth that covered their lower half. Not even what Arthur assumed to be females had their chests covered, not that there was much to cover. Each of them also bore large amounts of stab wounds or signs of blunt force.
Eventually Arthur reached a set of double doors with a fresh corpse of one of these creatures. This one was killed by an arrow through one of its eyes and it apparently was either running away from the area or to the area when it collapsed and died. The nearby door was nearly pristine aside from the effects of time upon the wooden door.
‘That arrow looks like it was made by someone despite its crude outcome. Perhaps they know of a way to get out of here.’ Arthur slowly opened the door preventing the old wood from squeaking from the light stress. When the opening was large enough Arthur passed by and found himself in a dining area of sorts.
The only thing was that the room was a total mess, most of the chairs and tables were overturned like someone was using them as cover. There were splotches of old dried blood all over the area along with several sets of bones all easily the same size of the one that attacked Arthur, quite short for an adult.
But as Arthur stood there he started to get a feeling, it wasn’t bad, not at first at least. It started with a slight tingling down his spine and a slight pull in his consciousness towards one of the far tables. The table was large enough to easily conceal one of those small green creatures, maybe even two if they got close together. Then suddenly the feeling started to get even stronger, and Arthur ducked down behind a nearby table out of pure instinct.
Shortly after that several sets of feet could be heard walking into the room along with what sounded like growls and snarling, the growls and snarls got louder and louder so much that Arthur dared to take a peek to see what was happening. He saw several of the short green creatures standing around two more that based on the bows they carried compared to the lack there of the others had. The two started to point their fingers and eventually started pushing each other until the tallest of the two pulled out his knife that for his size was more akin to a short sword, he quickly plunged the knife into the other creatures chest repeatedly and did not stop until he was certain the other was dead, which took about a minute of stabbing a bleeding corpses to do.
The remaining “leader” of the creatures gave the corpse a kick before it turned towards the remaining creatures and snarled in its crude language. The other creatures appear to understand with half of them dragging the corpse back where they came in from and the rest began to spread out across the room each with their own knife.
Arthur watched as they took up what he assumed was a basic defensive post with about five sentries if he counted the creatures that dragged the body away. The leader sat atop a large chair at the very back of the room while he fiddled with a bone that looked to be from a small animal. The three creatures that were currently standing watch were not at all paying much attention but odds were they aren't dumb, so Arthur would need to play it smart.
Taking a look around where he was hiding for something to possibly use Arthur found several small pebbles scattered throughout the room. It was an old building/place and a good portion of the furniture was made out of stone, when they broke they probably left small bits all over, and since there was no shortage of broken furniture he was left with a lot of pebbles.
‘If I toss one of these I can temporarily draw their attention somewhere else.’ Arthur smiled as he took a small handful of the pebbles that he could reach. Taking a quick peek he noticed that the leader was currently leaning towards the right and his face was pointing towards the left side of the room as he fiddled with his bone.
Arthur took just a small pebbled and tossed it towards the left side of the room creating a small little clack as it bounced a few times. The nearby creature looked over and back towards the others who clearly also heard it before the leader shouted something without even looking up and it slowly walked towards the source of the noise.
The other creatures were watching to see what the noise was, allowing Arthur to slowly creep up behind the one and cover its mouth with his left hand before reaching towards its knife. It was a bit of a struggle to force the creature to let go of its knife but it eventually did and Arthur plunged it into its chest several times and killing it.
/- - - - - -\
+ 50 Exp
+ Sneaking Level 0 (New)
+ Assassination Level 0 (New)
\- - - - - -/