The word "Hi" echoed between the walls of the room, the same place Voro had to end up at every floor. Same walls, same roof, same gothic ceiling design...
Almost the same. It was rougher today, scarred with deep groves on the wooden pillars and same on stone ones.
The white haired goblin slowly got up with loud joint popping with cracks. It bent over to pick up the cleaver and grabbed it as a cane.
'This is a problem' Voro was not swayed by the over-expressing old goblin. He saw everything clearly.
His muscles and posture- the back was in such a bend position that any old person would have collapsed, but this one was just holding it easily.
Hands were gripping the handle with strength, burrowing the fingers in the wood with visible veins on his backhand.
That was a sword expert among the goblin race. The sword-goblin recognized Voro too, watching him closely and stroking its beard with its free hand.
After a while of this, they both of them smiled at each other at the same moment.
And lunged forward.
Voro threw the first knife at him. Sword-goblin swayed and pushed on his cleaver, moving swiftly to the side and then forward. All while the tip of his sword haven`t moved yet.
More knives came off Voro`s belt
Cling Clang
Both knives hit the blade of Zazza`s sword, stopping their momentum as well as his own to zero. But the distance between them was closer now.
The goblin continued on forward again, while Voro kept throwing his knives and getting as far away as possible. This was all while he looked at the room closely to find any advantage for himself - any high ground, obstacles, pillars or just things the goblin might trip over.
Nothing. Well except the throne chair that was barely holding on but that was on the other side of the room.
"Krooo`Skraa" a whispering voice cam from much closer and much lower than anticipated, in a condescending tone of an old man with a very severe allergy.
Voro attacked as fast as he could, with both hands on the knife coming down towards the voice, whose owner created a perfect curve of his blade to block the other one with a loud metallic skreech
Goblin sword expert Zazza smiled and his teeth almost got to his hands.
Voro took his foot and put it on his torso and pushed forward.
Now, normally this would maybe pull him out of the bind, un-block their swords and push him maybe a step back. But with Voro`s genius investment of stats into strength and agility, they both turned into massive lower body power, and that went straight into Zazza`s whole body.
Sending him flying back a good few meters.
Voro looked at his foot with a confusion. Then with acceptance. Then with satisfaction.
The goblin also confused, then angry, than rabid started to shake and scream and Voro.
"NRRRGRR, RAAAAAAA" and he changed - he grabbed the cleaver tightly with both hands, he showed his teeth and his eyed opened up finally so that he could see the primal yellow in his eyes, just like any other goblin.
"Hmpf" Voro scoffed and prepared more knives to throw.
This time, the goblin lunged forward swinging the cleaver wildly and quickly.
But Voro stood still and as calmly as he could put his arm behind his head, aimed and....
Whoooooosh
The knife finally hit its target properly , getting stuck in Zazza`s right shoulder.
[Skill acquired]
[Knife Throwing Technique - LVL 1 ]
[Description : Increases accuracy while throwing blades]
[The Tower watches your growth with anticipation]
"NOT NOW PLEASE" as even though the pop-up didn`t cover up his vision fully, it was still annoying to see on the side.
Of course, while he was distracted, Zazza got closer again. But with lack of precision and calm mind, he still only swung at the enemy in front .
Voro didn`t really have a choice now - dodge and [Dash]. mostly [Dash] away.
[Dash] [Dash] and [Dash]
Each one, giving one step away more for Voro. But each one also sent a jolt of pain through his body.
After a brief exchange, Zazza was the one standing proudly while Voro`s ankles wanted to scream, but his lungs didn`t have the breath to do so.
"Ah, fuck that" He threw the last tiny blade he had and took out another chef`s knife. And prepared for the last exchange of blows. And the goblin felt like that was a great idea and started to move to him too. Slowly, step by step.
[Dash] and clang
Both happen at the same moment - Voro dashing forward with his right arm ready to strike, and Zazza blocking with the same curvature technique as before.
"ghe ghe GHEEE" he made some weird goblinish laughter, while having the perfect plan to end the fight - turn the sword so that the enemy has to drop the blade, and with the same movement bring the sword up and down back into him.
Splurrtttt
he looked right a bit and saw that the wound he previously ignored, was now filled with a much larger piece of metal. then he looked left at his sword, and instead of pushing against a knife, it was held tightly by the enemies other hand. Very tightly.
Zazza screamed and wiggled and tried to bite and tried to head but Voro.
"Stop. Being. Annoying" Every word was cut off by his blade getting in and out of the goblins body, stabbing the shoulder, arm, chest and neck.
When Zazza managed to bite his arm, that was enough of it.
"YOU. GREEN DUMB SHIT" and he made a very large swing at his forehead, breaking the skull and pinning his head to the ground, cracking the stone tile beneath it and absolutely destroying Zazza`s face.
The boss was dead. Definitely dead. Hard to come back from something like that.
[3RD Tower Floor Cleared]
[CONGRATULATIONS CHALLENGER]
[Voro Vane lvl 3]
[Please choose your re...]
While the system window was typing itself, it stopped and made a weird noise
[error : please wait]
A second one replaced it with a throbber, spinning around slowly.
Voro stood there, dumbfounded more than ever before.
"Huh????" his tiredness and wound from the bite were like not even there.
After a while the window showed back up with another confusing message
[Due to a system over load on processing power]
[Some rewards had to be re-calculated and set to a default value]
[Sorry for the inconvenience]
"WHAT"
[Tower of ????????????? 3rd floor] - [D rank equipment]
[Challenger Voro Vane [none] Lvl 3 -> 4] - [Skill upgrade]
[Challenger Voro Vane [none] Lvl 4 -> 5] - [Random stat +3]
[Unallocated stats - 4]
[Apology bonus : Recovery potion]
[To see all the rewards please open your STATUS window]
A small red glass bottle and a pair of shoes appeared from the window, that stayed up for quite some time.
Voro drank the bottle without hesitation and slowly, his strength started to come back and the pain, lessen.
[Teleporting in 5]
[4]
[3]
[2]
[1]
Voro was already standing with the backpack and all his stuff, with the new boots included, ready to go back to reality.
And his new boss apparently.