A Warlock's Ascent

Chapter 4 A Big Porcupine

?Dave sat there for a few minutes, he had a lot to digest as well as get familiar with his status window functions. Although blue windows floating in the air, the strange talking skeleton and high-tech barriers seem like something out of a sci-fi book, but this was his reality for now. And till he finds his way out of there, it wouldn't hurt to get used to all this stuff.

What he didn't understand was, why him? There was nothing special about him, he was a normal man who lived in a small town, he didn't even complete high school, so why these people choose him as their 'player' was beyond him.

He opened his status menu once again. He wanted to see what more this magical window could offer him. He opened his stats tab and another window opened in front of him…

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Stats

Exp-0/100

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Strength- 5 [+]

Dexterity- 3 [+]

Agility- 2 [+]

Arcane- 2 [+]

Intellect- 3 [+]

...

Stats point available-0

......

He knew the meaning of the words Strenght, Dexterity, Agility, and Intellect, but he had no idea of what Arcane meant. He had guessed that this system of his, had somehow managed to quantify his physical capabilities and expressed them in numerals. But how was that possible?

He opened his inventory next, which was a blue window with around 20-30 boxes. All these boxes were empty except for the first one, the first box, which had a small emoji of a shield blinking continuously. He mentally selected the box and a knight shield appeared on his left hand.

The shield in question looked like something from medieval-style Europe, it was very heavy, and was made from a very thick metal, he was not an expert on shields or metals, but this looked like a very durable piece of equipment.

After experimenting with his status window for a while, Dave finally got the hang of most of the functions, with only his mental command he could send stuff to his inventory, but the only condition to send something inside is that he needs to make physical contact with the thing.

As he always stays in contact with his shield, he could send it in, with only his mental command, the best part was that he didn't even have to open his inventory over and over again. He just needs to do a mental command and he could send any stuff he is holding in there.

When he opened the skill tab, he found out that he only had one skill there, when he tried to select the said skill, a new window appeared in front of him…

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Name- Common Tongue

Rank- Common

Description- The bearer of this skill will be able to become fluent in reading and speaking the common tongue spoken in Midgard.

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'Who the hell designed this thing? Language is a skill, you gotta be shiting me.', he thought. He started thinking about it and realized he really did have knowledge of a foreign language. He was 100% sure that in his lifetime he had only learned the English language, now he had knowledge of another language without even learning about it.

He couldn't help but wonder what more surprises this world had stored for him. As he thought more about it, he remembered the Magician class that he was told to choose from, he couldn't help but wonder what kind of things that class would be capable of doing.

****

Tired of thinking and staying put, he then stood up, Dave decided to explore the place. He knew that he was stuck here for now. Sitting idly wouldn't help him at all, and waiting for help to come and rescue him didn't seem like an option that he had.

As far as he could see there was forest all around him, and the shrubbery of the area was so thick that he could see past 50 m, seeing this rich and green environment he couldn't help but wonder whether there are some wild animals in this area.

He didn't know where he should go, so he chose a random direction and started moving. His swords rested in the sheathe dangling from his belt while his shield was back in the inventory. While venturing through this dense forest unknown forest with the sword, he started feeling like he was on an adventure of some sort, and he was enjoying the thrill…

The thrill of an adventure didn't last long, after an hour of walking, he stopped. He looked around and saw, he was still in a very dense forest. He had been walking aimlessly for the past hour and now he was paying the price. He was thirsty and would be hungry as well in a few hours. He could not go on like this.

Seeing his condition, there was a better chance that he would die of thirst or hunger before he could even get to the nearest civilization. He needed to change his strategy, immediately.

While thinking he looked around and soon spotted a tilted tree in distance, it was a huge tree and was pretty long as well, seeing the gave him an idea. He immediately started running towards it.

His idea was pretty simple, he would first scout the area, he wanted to see whether he could see any human establishment nearby, or better yet a river.

The bark of the tree was very slippery, it was covered in a slimy substance that the tree of secreting, because of which he had a very hard time climbing up. He fell on his ass 5-6 times, and only then he got the idea of using dirt to lessen the slipperiness of stuff. But that even work and finally wasting half an hour on the tree, he gave up.

'And people say that we are descendants of the monkeys' he thought. Most of the trees around were standing erect, so there was no way to easily climb them, he only had this tree which was steep enough that a person could climb it. As his mind was working on the ways from which he could try to get up, he get distracted when he heard a scream…

AAAHHHH!!

'It sounded like a female voice. There are other humans around here!' he thought. The idea of meeting another human here got him all riled up, and without giving a second thought, he started running in the direction of the scream.

While running toward the screams, he also started hearing the sounds of explosions as well. He didn't know what was the cause of the explosion, the constant sounds of explosions were frightening him in some sense, but he could just not ignore the screams of a fellow human being.

As he got closer, he eventually found himself standing in front of a small cluster of rocks, they were not very big and he could easily climb over them. He could tell that the sound was coming from behind the rocks, so he quickly got to the top…

In his town, he had come across many kinds of wild animals. One of them was a porcupine, which back at home was easy to deal with. They are usually the size of beagle and one just only needed a baseball bat to scare them away. But the thing in front of him was unlike any porcupine that he had come across.

This thing was big, almost as big as a saint bernard. This creature had a long neck like that of a turtle. But its back was covered with green-colored quills like that of a porcupine.

The creature in front of Dave was bleeding from many places, and it was facing off against a brown man in his twenties. This man had somehow safely trapped himself in a small crevice between two rocks, as its only exit was blocked by the big ass porcupine, he was screaming like a woman.

The interesting thing about the man was that he was holding what looked like a very small wooden cane, it had a blue color crystal at one of its ends and it was glowing, looking very mystical with its blue color. The cane was emitting some sort of energy that had formed a barrier at the entrance of the crevice, thus blocking the porcupine from coming any closer.

SCREE!!!

The monster screeched again, while he on the other hand was shocked. After all, it is not daily you see a giant creature like this. Also, the way that the man was making a barrier to keep the creature at bay was also very interesting as well, it almost felt like a dream to him.

It was then the porcupine screeched again and this time, it suddenly bowed its head and retracted it under its shell. In the next instant, all the quills on its back started vibrating, and in a blink of an eye, they were all launched from its back.

These quills were launched in every possible direction, one of them even wheezed its way right by Dave's ear. The force of the quills formed cracks all over the barrier, and from the looks of it, the barrier would not stay there for much longer. The only good thing was that the porcupine was that it wasted all of its quills. Now his back was bare.

But it was then Dave saw something that send a chill running down his spine. The quills of the porcupine's back started growing at a rate that was visible to the naked eye. If he was right that then the porcupine would be able to do another quill attack within a few seconds, also based on the appearance of the barrier, the man would not be able to sustain another attack.

"AAAHH!!!! KOI BACHAO!!!" the man yelled.

It was then he decided to take action. The porcupine's mind was occupied by the man in front of it, so in a sense, it would not anticipate a sneak attack. Thus he quickly started circling the rock formation, running on bumpy path on top of rocks was difficult, but he didn't back down. While running, he took out his sword He didn't know whether his plan would work or not but he had to try…

As soon as he got a good vantage point near the big creature, he tightly gripped his sword in his hand, took a deep breath, and then quickly jumped on top of the porcupine's head. He wanted to cleave the creature's head from its body.

With the momentum from his jump and the sharpness of the sword, it might have been possible, at least that was the plan. As his blade made contact with the creature's neck, it sliced through the meat portion but got stuck to the neck bone.

The creature went into a frenzy from pain...