Hell's Glitch (initial draft)

9 Assassin's Forest

Sam's efforts at grinding had been quite taxing at first. He had started his fight against one Forest Barker, like before. And like before, it was completely docile initially. Resting at the Beacon Fire seemed to reset all enemies' positions, so now the aggressive clones were gone. Once he killed the first one with a Backstab, Parry, then Opening Blow, he found that fighting the other Forest Barkers the second time wasn't much easier than the first. Killing them almost seemed pointless as each time you killed one, it would leave its remains and grow into more identical Forest Barkers. Sam was somewhat lucky this time since the Barker he killed had only split into two clones. The splitting was worse than he initially thought, because Sam didn't understand the timing for when the new clones would sprout up. It seemed random to him. He had missed some easy parries and got punished hard for his mistakes. The enemies seemed a little smarter this time around and he wasn't able to hide behind the trees as much as he did before. They also varied their attacks and timing more.

By the end of his second outing, he ended up limping back to the cave, past a grinning merchant, worse off than the first time he had come with hardly any health, a depleted Soulfire Flask, and only four hundred measly souls to show for it. He kept his goal in mind. His next purchase would be that shield.

He rested at the Beacon Fire briefly, instantly regaining full health and a full Soulfire Flask then he went back to the forest for more souls. His timing was a little better now when it came to roll dodging and Parrying. He lost most of that anxious feeling that was over him last time and he was more focused than he was the first time he fought the Barkers. Whenever he rolled, he kept the position of the trees in mind so that his enemy would strike those instead of him. By moving, using cover, and isolating the group of Barkers into one-on-one fights, Sam was now up to two thousand hundred souls. He'd quickly killed four of the Barkers including the first docile one. Getting Backstabs and Opening Blows on each enemy behind cover had helped him greatly and he'd only used one Soulfire Flask amidst those kills. But the odds were quickly stacking up against him and he already found himself facing six enemies at once. His limit was three at a time, he decided. If he was really pushing it, he could maybe challenge four, but six was out of the question. They had too much of a range advantage.

Sam cut and ran and found himself in a similar situation to before. He ran and jumped off the cliff and into the cliffside cave entrance rather than the one that opened in the middle of the forest. He went straight to the merchant and stared him in the eyes. At this range the merchant looked quite weary. There were dark rings under his brown eyes and baggy flesh. Now, his eyes even seemed to sag.

The torchlight covered both men, as Sam made his request, "Inventory please."

The two dimensional dark gray and white grid panel opened up and Sam scrolled over to the shield he wanted and read its stats in great detail.

Metal Crest Shield

Mid Blocking Shield

A wooden shield with a mid-sized iron crest of falcon on the front of it. The crest sits in the middle of the shield and is scuffed from all the times it has deflected sword blows. An iron border around the shield increases its defensive capabilities even more without sacrificing much of its light weight.

ATK 18

Weapon Damage 10

S ATK D = 8

D ATK F = 0

M ATK F = 0

F ATK F = 0

F RAT 0

L RAT 0

P RAT 0