Instance Dungeon
-22 HP
Although horrific, an eye wound isn't fatal and the rate of blood loss isn't as fast as having the femoral or carotid artery sliced open. However, he had many bleeding wounds and was losing health rapidly.
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
"Agh!"
Elijah pulled the knife out of his stomach. The bites had desensitized him, so the knife wound was trivial.
He slashed at the larger dog's eyes, and it pulled back barking in pain. Then Elijah slipped the knife into the smaller dog's neck above his face. It fell to its side gargling. Blood poured out of its mouth.
The oversized toga dog was blind but could still smell. It took another chomp at Elijah's leg.
-14 HP
He stabbed the dog five times on its side. It still gnawed on his leg. The dog's tenacity surprised him, but pain left no hesitation in him. He plunged the knife into its neck.
Its jaw slackened a bit, but it was still fighting with what's left of its dwindling blood supply.
-5 HP
Elijah dug into its neck and pierced its brain. Only then did it die.
[Hidden Quest completed!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have a new skill!]
[You have a new skill!]
[You have developed a new attribute!]
[You've reached the minimum level to enter an instance dungeon. Will you enter?]
Elijah stood up, but the dead dog still held onto his leg. He grabbed the ends of its mouth to pry himself off.
Elijah didn't have time to look at the pop-ups. He checked his status.
[Status]
LV. 6
Name: Elijah Whitlock
Class: None
Title: None
__________________
HP: 68/450
MP: 0
Fatigue: 68
__________________
Strength: 10
Agility: 0
Sense: 0
Vitality: 7
Intelligence: 0
???: 5
AP: 13
__________________
[Skills]
Passive Skills:
Goddess of Fortune's blessing (luck boost)
Pain Reduction: 50%
Brawler Toughness: 20% damage reduction to unarmed attacks and 5% damage reduction to blunt attacks.
Arbitrary threat level detector
???
Immunities:
???
Active Skills:
Fist of Fury: ???
Elijah saw he was close to death and rushed to allocate more points into his stats.
He could save the points and go to the hospital, but he felt like he had a streak of bad luck. If he waited any longer, someone else might attack him. He might even get killed in the hospital of all places.
He put in 4 points for Vitality, but before he could confirm it…
[The Shop will be unlocked upon entering a dungeon for the first time.]
The shop?
"What shop?"
Elijah was worried about getting himself into a worse situation because it was gamer's common sense that dungeons were full of monsters.
What if the System didn't allow him to leave the dungeon until he cleared it? He could imagine himself being slaughtered by the floor boss. The strongest monster in the dungeon.
[The Shop sells weapons, equipment, and items. You can buy them with in-store credits which can be obtained from bounties.]
'There might be… No, there have to be some health potions I can buy.'
Elijah felt that the System stopped him from wasting ability points on vitality by letting him know about the System Shop.
After all, Elijah didn't have any healing items, and so he was increasing his maximum health to get some more. This was like extending the smoke time of a cigarette by sticking another to its butt-end.
If he kept doing this, he would waste his ability points and have low combat power compared to the opponents he would face. He would get injured more often and be forced to add more points into his vitality attribute, putting himself into a hell loop until he died.
'Credits?'
He looked around and found that he could access the System Menu, the status screen, and the quest menu. From the start menu, he could see all the other tabs in the center.
Elijah couldn't find where the credits were stored but just like how he didn't have an inventory at the beginning, he unlocked it from completing the quest, so he figured that the rest would pop up later.
"Do I have any credits at this moment?" Elijah asked.
[You have 100 credits.]
'Is that how much I start with?' He thought.
"Is that enough to heal me completely?"
Elijah hoped he could get his eye back if it restored him to his full health. He wasn't sure how much health he needed to regrow an eye but surely having two eyes was a sign of full health!
He didn't dare think that he would have one eye for the rest of his life.
It seemed like the System was hesitating, but it gave him an answer.
[Yes.]
"Alright…"
He wanted to get his eye back as soon as possible.
"Then yes. I want to enter the dungeon."
[Acknowledged. Transporting you to the dungeon…]
Brilliant white light flooded his vision, and then it was black.
"!"
Was he dead?
"Hello?"
Hello. Hello. Hello.
He heard someone say that three times in descending volume and then realized it was an echo.
"Where am I?"
The fading echo of his voice made the wait for the System's answer that much more unbearable.
He shuffled his feet. It sounded like his shoe scraped against a rock floor.
'Is this a cave?'
"Status."
There was no time to dawdle since he was bleeding… Elijah realized he wasn't losing health from blood loss anymore.
[You have unlocked the Shop.]
Elijah found a new tab in the System/Start menu labeled "Shop". He opened it. There were three tabs. Weapons, equipment, and items.
He went into items and another three tabs appeared on the top. Consumables, non-consumables, and ingredients.
After picking consumables, a list appeared.
There was a lesser health potion, health potion, antidote, and nothing after that.
It was not what he expected, but he figured that his level was too low to access better items.
[Lesser Health Potion]: Heals 100 HP - 10 credits
The icon displays a small ampule containing red liquid.
The Buy button was at the right end of the tab and underneath it displayed the price.
[Health Potion]: Heals 500 HP - 100 credits
The icon displayed a vial that was bigger than the ampule also containing a red solution.
"What!"
'Why is that more expensive?'
If he spent 100 credits on lesser health potions, he would stock up 1000 HP in his inventory. Why would he ever buy the [Health Potion] if the lesser health potion was cost-effective?
It was common sense that when you bulk buy, they lower the individual prices of the items when you buy in large quantities compared to smaller quantities.
Instead, this situation was the complete opposite!