'That was one heck of a battle that I just finished, and I have miraculously gained two levels somehow.'
Marcus activated his status and looked through his personal log seeing that he leveled up because he completed an achievement recognized by the system as substantial.
'Defeat a group of enemies while outnumbered and out matched in a battle you had no reason winning. Wow kind of rude saying I had no reason winning that fight. I mean yeah, I was horribly outmatched and without their initial blunder and my pitfall trap I probably would have died, but I still won in the end.'
'I should collect all of the shadow coyotes' bodies and head back to base to recuperate and figure out what to do with my new stat and skill points.'
Marcus went around collecting the nine bodies of the coyotes he had killed and stored them in his item box. He also picked up the spears he had dropped during the fight, cleaned the blood off of them and put them back into his item box.
'Okay everything is cleaned up around here let's head back and check out my gains from this battle.'
Marcus trekked back through the forest to where the small logging community once resided. On the way back he encountered a weird monkey bat thing that immediately lashed out at him fangs first. Marcus summoned a spear from his item box and threw it towards the oncoming beast, the monkey bat dodged the spear, but it gave Marcus enough time to activate his iron skin spell for defense. The creature tried to bite Marcus right in the neck put he put up his left arm for defense, however the sharp fangs of the money bat managed to pierce through Marcus's iron skin. As Marcus felt his blood begin drained, he summoned out another spear and stabbed it into the neck of the beast latched onto his arm. The monkey bat tried to fly away after being stabbed but Marcus grabbed onto its leg as it tried to flee and slammed it into the ground.
"After attacking me like that you are not getting away after stealing some of my blood."
Marcus then lifted his spear stabbed through the creature and into the ground to prevent it from escaping. He then took out another spear and jabbed it right into its head as the creature was screaming and flailing about. The monkey bat stopped moving after having its head impaled and the battle was won.
'Damn as much as I thought this world might be fun with its game like system, but it is at moments like these that I really miss my comfy bed and smart phone. That fucker attacked me out of nowhere and if I had not seen it before it attacked, I would probably have been killed. I also feel incredibly weak right now and my arm has not stopped bleeding.'
Marcus checked his status and noticed he had a condition called vitality drain and that his vitality score had dropped by three lowering his HP by thirty.
'Great now I am going to have to wait longer until my vitality comes back up, hopefully I can make it back to my base without being jumped again.'
Marcus then continued on his way back home having to wrap up his still bleeding arm and hoping that it would stop bleeding soon. Once he made it back, he sat down and recovered for a few hours until the wound fully closed, and he felt less exhausted. He then got to work on dismantling the coyotes he had just killed. He tried his best to skin all of them and butcher the meat, but he messed up a few times on the first seven but on the final two he was able to do a respectable job. After dismantling the coyotes Marcus went onto the bat monkey that had attacked him and managed to do a decent job even though it was his first time with such a weird creature.
'At a certain point it just felt like I had a bit of intuition on how to properly take apart the bodies without ruining them. Maybe I got a skill that helps me to carve up beast and monsters that I kill.'
After checking his status, Marcus did indeed have a new skill called disassembly that helped him to take apart corpses with more precision and less chance of ruining the valuable parts of the body.
'That's a pretty nice skill and it only took me getting the blood and guts of around two dozen animals on me to acquire. On another note, the lesser regeneration skill had been my savior. Without it I probably would have died of blood loss from the two battles I just had. I mean it took hours of excruciating pain to get, but it has been invaluable for keeping me alive. I know even if this body was killed, I would not die but having the soul tether destroyed my soul would take permanent damage and I would be without a body again.'
'Now I need to use my new skill and stat points, I need to figure out if it is worth it to try and upgrade my skills or buy new ones.'
Marcus assigned his stat points first going with three points to strength and vitality, four points to agility, and five points to both intelligence and spirt. After that he looked at how many skill points it would take to upgrade his iron magic and was surprised to see that it would cost him all six of the skill points, he currently had to level it up.
'Damn that is expensive even with my blessing of iron that gives me a high affinity for metal-based skills. I guess at level four I am not normally strong enough to have a level two magic skill. I should just pick up some level one skills and I can always train the skill to level it up instead of using skill points.'
Marcus scoured through the massive list of available skills looking for some that would be beneficial for him. There were tons of skills he considered not very useful such as jumping, climbing, whistling, and other random skills. After spending hours reading through all of the skills, he could acquire Marcus settles on two. He choose the stealth skill for two points and the lighting magic skill for three, leaving one point left over since he could not find any skill for one point he really wanted.
'The stealth skill should be pretty useful since I have come to realize just walking around in the open like I have been, is a good way to get myself killed. If I ran into that massive wolf or scaled bear, I am certain I would currently have no way to fight or escape. This lighting magic sounds cool, and I think it could pair really well with my iron magic. I was really close to choosing fire magic but in the end, I think lightning will be more useful and less likely to burn down the forest.'
Marcus spent the next hour testing his new skills learning how to move silently and keep his body hidden with the stealth skill and practicing with the tier one lightning spell spark.. After exhausting himself he crawled back into his temporary bed and fell asleep wondering what the coming days would bring.