#wip swunday

[january-summers]

WIP: Skill Issue

Tags: Female Protagonist, regressor in a death game but it's not the protagonist, death game flavour: kidnapped by 'gods' and sent to 'dungeons', humour?

Word count: 1,200 ish

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So initially I was thinking about a young(ish late 20's early 30's) woman in the usual teleported to a tower/forced into a death game against monsters like a dungeon scenario, and I was like: What if her unique skill was turning a book (series) into a skill book so she could copy a characters powers, and she picks something like Sailor Moon or D&D Player's Handbook (which has no real characters so the spells list just becomes her 'auto earn these as you level up' spells list) But then I started writing it and the character, Noelle, doesn't feel like she wants to move in that direction. I Dunno, maybe I should change her special skill and save that one for another lady?

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Bullshit. It was bullshit. Things like this just, didn't happen in real life! Kidnapped by celestial beings and forced into a death game?! That was some webtoon bullshit!

“To give you all a fighting chance, you've all been awarded a random low level skill.”

[Skill Book]

What they hell kind of skill was that? Skill Books were items, not a skill itself.

⌜Absorb the skills of a chosen character from any book you read⌝ ⌞Current Character Slot: 01/01

“Now let the game begin!”

There time to worry about useless things. Noelle had goblins to kill. Somehow. But how? She had no weapons and there was a lot of goblins charging the group?

Several people broke from the group, rushing to meet the goblin horde over the open plain, some fell as soon as they reached the goblins, but the others managed to start killing them, stealing weapons from the front line goblins and turning the blades back on the monsters, a trail of bodies being left in their wake.

A trail of bodies and free weapons.

Afraid, and still not entirely sure this was really happening, Noelle raced forward to scoop up one of the makeshift short swords. More like an extra large knife in her hands, the weight of the poorly forged metal was unbalanced, she hefted it to get a feel and then flung it with all her might at a goblin racing towards her. The weapon tumbled end over end in a controlled arc through the air and sunk into the goblin's unprotected chest with a crunch-squelch.

It was still a very sharp chunk of metal after all.

“Right,” Noelle said to herself, “I can do this.” Because whether it was real or not, it was better to act as if it was and protect herself. She picked up more discarded weapons, following after the group of humans who were cutting their way through the horde, trying to keep ahead of the rest of the people who were finally finding their courage.

Weapons left lying on the ground she picked up and threw immediately, weapons that were stuck in the goblins she put into her inventory if they didn't slide out cleanly. Sometimes she'd pull them out before they'd finished transferring in after she accidentally discovered doing so would effectively let the blade clip free from the dead body.

Every now and then she'd also stash a piece of jewellery the goblins were wearing. Bracelets made of shiny beads, necklaces with strange pendants, the occasional ring. Only when she had the seconds to spare, there had been so many moments where she almost died already.

Her arms were sore by the time she received the alert she'd killed enough goblins to progress. 58th on the leader board. But there was still an hour and a half before the hordes would stop coming according to the system window hovering at the corner of her vision, so she kept going. Ignoring the experience read outs, the notifications about gold, focused only on surviving the next few moments and the next few moments and the next.

And then, just like that, there were no more goblins to kill.

Noelle was heaving, breath difficult to drag into her lungs and she slumped to the ground, her knees making a slight squelching sound as she landed in the grass. It had all been green when they'd first arrived, now it was stained a strange purplish colour, red in some places, from the mix of human and goblin blood, the dirt beneath turned almost muddy.

There was blood on her hands, Noelle realised as she stared down at them, a ringing in her ears drowning out the too fast sh-sh-sh of her pulse. It must have been from the few times she'd had to slash an opponent at close range, unable to throw enough projectiles to maintain a safe-ish distance. Or from the splatter on the weapons she'd pulled from their bodies as she'd raced through the field.

She turned her head from her hands and noticed a bracelet on the wrist of the goblin corpse beside her. It was a chunky thing, brassy looking with interesting scroll work. She wasn't sure if any of the items she'd been looting would have buffs or if she could sell or trade them later, maybe they were just macabre trophies she'd been collecting on impulse. She reached out and phased it into her inventory.

⌜Loot Rat Lvl. 01/10 | Loot 100 Items from the battlefield. | *Automatically distributed loot is not counted ⌞Your automatically distributed loot has increased in quality and quantity

'Huh,' Noelle thought listlessly. 'I should check my messages while I have a moment.'

⌜Level 001 Complete | Your placement: 29th out of 2,700 survivors ⌞Kills: 394 Goblins (382 Goblin soldiers, 4 Goblin Mages, 8 Goblin Archers)

⌜Level 001 Completion Rewards are being calculated and distributed ⌞Please standby for delivery

⌜Level Completion Auto Healing and Restoration now in progress ⌞Please standby while you are healed

⌜Return to Hub World in Five (5) minutes ⌞Please standby for transfer

⌜Players 28-42 are within 30 kills of 400 | Would you like to remain and play a ten minute bonus room? ⌞ [Yes] [No]

“Bro, what do you reckon? Should I do the bonus room?” Noelle barely heard over her pulse as the ringing dulled.

“It would be good, 400 kills gets you a slayer title, and a bonus skill, but there's 30 goblins per player invited to the bonus room. Do you think you could handle it?”

“It's ten minutes though, right? I could survive for ten minutes.”

“If you feel confident, then go for it.”

'30? That's what, 420 Goblins? … How do they even know...' It was becoming easier to think as the pale green light that was surrounding her eased the pain and lessened the tiredness. She was still tired though, worn out. 'Webtoons ass bullshit,' Noelle decided, then settled in to flick through as many messages as she could before the transfer happened.

She had undistributed status points. Unsure what would be most helpful she distributed them as evenly as possible, though she knew she'd potentially just screwed herself over.

'Ten minutes? Could I do ten minutes?' Noelle lurched back to her feet, scrambling to collect as many throwable weapons as possible. 'Screw it, it's only ten minutes, in this sort of thing...'

People and corpses and fallen weapons flashed away in a glitter of like as the five minute mark hit, the transfer back to the real world leaving the blood stained field almost completely empty. Noelle looked around.

Nearby was the young man she'd heard talking just before, and further away were two others. The duo in the distance seemed to spot Noelle and the young man, and made their way towards them.

“Where's the others?” The young man of the duo asked as he and his companion, a young woman with a blood spear, got close enough to talk without yelling.

“Looks like it's just us,” the young man who'd been by Noelle said. He had a sword. Noelle could hear rumbling, like hundreds of overlapping thumps repeating infinitely.

“Hey,” she said, “your friend who knows things, did he mean 30 goblins per person who accepted the bonus room, or 30 per person who was invited?”

"Uhhhh, why do you ask?"

"I'm just trying to figure out if that's the rumble of One-hundred-twenty goblins, or four-hundred-twenty goblins."

[lancelotslair]

Swindle Swunday this week is this WIP of a dragon au drawing based off a cover of the book Dealing With Dragons :) because he s in it yay