Chapter 12 - Level Up! (1)

A few moments ago...

As Ashton walked into the simulation room, it slowly turned into a dark forest. It was so realistic that if Ashton hadn't seen the simulation room with his eyes, he would not have believed that this place wasn't a forest all along.

However, the forest had been unnervingly motionless. Not a single leaf was moving, leaving the forest to be in dead silence. That put Ashton on the edge. His ears perked up and thanks to his enhanced hearing while he was in Werewolf form, he could hear something was rapidly approaching him.

He steadied himself to counter-attack whoever it was, but since it was his first time fighting, he had no idea how was he even supposed to wield the sword or the shield. As the mysterious creature got closer to him, the stench of rotting flesh and blood filled his nostril. The smell was already bad enough and his enhanced sense of smell made it even worse.

Ashton could feel the creature get closer to him, however, by the time the creature appeared in his sight, he had been so disorganised that he couldn't even lift his sword in time. The next moment, he got thrown away with extreme swiftness and ended up hitting the stump of a tree.

The pain would have been much worse if his resistance hadn't kicked in. It was thanks to that, that Ashton was about to dodge the creature's next attack and swiftly rolled out of its way as the creature once again disappeared in the darkness. That was also when Ashton finally got the first look at his opponent.

The creature appeared to be human, only his flesh was rotting from various places as rotten blood oozed out of various blisters that were spread all across the creature's body. It walked on all fours like dogs did a little over a century ago and didn't have a single hair across his body. Numerous bones were protruding through its back which can be used for both defence and offence.

Living in imprisonment for all his life had made it so that he had no knowledge about the creature he was up against. Thankfully, the black light in front of him or the blessing as it was called by everyone else, showed him some information about the beast he was facing.

Just by looking at the beast, a screen popped open in front of his eyes. On the screen, there was a picture of a similar-looking beast while important information about the creature was mentioned underneath the picture.

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Name: Ghoul

Species: Zombie

Status: Mindless Undead

Class: Scavenger

Age: NIL

Gender: NIL

Grade: F-tier

Affiliation: Unassigned

Level: 1

Stats:

HP: 800/800

Damage: 10

Armour: 5

Stealth: 7

Stamina: 10

Agility: 19

Intelligence: 1

Nature:

Chaotic: 5% chance of inflicting 2% additional damage after using a skill.

Abilities/skills/spells:

Terror Bite

Grievous Claw

Pine Attack

Remark:

A disgusting-looking son of a bit.ch which can turn out to be a pain for newbies, if not handled swiftly. Just by looking at its face, one could say it did not have a peaceful end, but then again someone with horrendous body odour like this idiot didn't deserve a peaceful end in the first place. The least dangerous yet the most common kind of undead that can be found munching on the corpse of almost any creature in the wastelands or forests.

As for its weakness, using fire-based spells or enchanted gear are the quickest way to take it down. If you don't possess either of those, powerful blunt attacks from hammers or similar weapons can take care of it as well. However, slashing and piercing weapons like swords and spears do not work against them as they pass right through their rotting flesh and would only do minimal damage to the ghoul.

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***

Back to the present...

The sweat on Ashton's arm made it very difficult for him to form a proper grip around the sword. The situation was so bad that every time he used the sword to attack the simulated beast, the sword rolled away from his hand and no damage was done to the beast. Ashton knew the sword was useless against the ghoul but it was the only weapon he had to fight back the creature.

Also, in hindsight, it wasn't the fault of his sweaty hands that the sword kept rolling away. It was the fault of the sword itself as it had no grip. The hilt of the sword was incomplete, but judging from how old the sword looked, it was entirely possible that it was a sword that was broken and shouldn't have been any longer used to take the beasts on, in the first place.

As for his shield, well, it was a dud as well. Ashton thought he could use the shield to deal blunt damage to the ghoul. However, before he could put his theory into action, just one hit from the ghoul blew the shield into small pieces.

"Damn it!" Ashton exclaimed as he tried to jump back and dodge the ghoul's attack.

But he was too late. His reflexes didn't trigger on time and as a result, the ghoul bit into his calf. Ashton felt like the glass shard once again had pierced his flesh, only this time the ghoul's bite force made the worse for him. The Pain Tolerance helped but it was clear this kind of pain was much above the pay grade of the low levelled tolerance he had.

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You have received 30 HP damage from the ability [Terror Bite].

You have been poisoned from the ability [Terror Bite].

You'll lose 2 HP/sec for the next 5 seconds.

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As if the pain wasn't enough, he got poisoned as well. But Ashton didn't sit there while the ghoul chewed on his left leg. He started kicking the ghoul's head with all the might he could muster, using his other leg. After three or four frantic adrenaline-filled kicks from him, the ghoul let his leg go and rushed back into the darkness of the forest yelping like a dog.

It would seem like his kicks dealt more damage to the ghoul than the sword did. However, with a leg like that, he was in no position to continue fighting anymore. Still, he had received 'orders' from Donovan to kill the beast and only then would he be allowed to come out of the simulation room.

However, it wasn't all doom and gloom there. After all, thanks to the Ghoul's bite, he received two more passive abilities: [Poison resistance (lvl 1)] and [Haemorrhage resistance (lvl 1)]. The former reduced the effect of poison by 2% while the latter ability reduced the blood loss due to a wound by 1%.

'Fck... if only there was a self-healing ability as well.... damn it!'