The darkness faded. I was back.
Swing Attack EXP +75. The message lingered in my mind, a phantom echo. It was the largest gain so far, a reward for a plan that was both a resounding success and a catastrophic failure. I had confirmed my theory: the beast could be exhausted. But I had also discovered a fatal flaw in my strategy: its armor was a perfect, unbreachable shell. My sword was useless against it.
This time, as I stood, I felt a subtle change. A new weight, a new balance. My body felt... denser. More solid. The fleshy, loose skin of my belly seemed tighter, the muscles beneath it coiled with a potential that wasn't there before. The EXP was not just a score. It was a physical manifestation of my progress. I was being forged in the crucible of my own repeated demise.
The armored creature stood waiting, its posture radiating impatience. The grumbled complaints about "DEVs" and "beginning creatures" echoed in my memory. It was a soldier, a guard, a piece in a game I didn't understand, and I was an anomaly that was making its job difficult.
My new plan formed instantly, born from the last failure. If I could not break the armor, I would have to bypass it. An attack on the helm was foolish. A swing at its chest plate, pointless. But armor has to move. It needs joints, gaps, and seams. My new classroom was not one of swordsmanship, but of anatomy.
The dance began again. It strode forward, I met its advance. It swung, and I dodged, leaping back, my eyes not on its blade but on its body. I needed to get closer. The first swing, I dodged. The second, I dodged. On the third, instead of leaping backward, I ducked and weaved to the side, staying within its reach but outside the arc of its blade. The wind from its swing buffeted my face. I was close enough now to see the intricate scratches on its gauntlets, the tarnished steel of its greaves.
"Hold still, you little glitch!" it roared, its voice muffled by the helm.
It swung again, a wide, horizontal slash. I dropped to the ground, the blade whistling inches above my head. As I pushed myself back up, I saw it. A small, almost imperceptible gap where the neck guard met the chest plate, exposed for a fraction of a second as it recovered from its swing. It was a sliver of darkness amidst the gleaming steel. A target. It raised its sword for the fifth time, the exhaustion clear in its movement. This was its last swing before it would need to rest. This was my chance.
I wrenched back my arm and loosened it, much akin to a cannon. My blade met its target and a thick spray of red mist moistened my skin. My metal foe let out an ungodly scream. God, if you only knew the half of it, I thought. I felt my stitches pull at the seams, wishing I could share this information.
"What is up with this tutorial creature!" Yet again with words that were alien to me. I allowed our dance to repeat and repeat, however, in the midst of our never-ending duel, the creature paused. I knew that it hadn't had its fifth strike, which puzzled me. It reached into a leather pouch I hadn't noticed before—my vision always laser-focused on its lethal sword—a red bottle was removed and it drank greedily from its contents. "I can't believe I had to use my life potion on such a creature!"
Life potion? The creature, now unharmed, came at me yet again. I went to sidestep, but in my puzzlement, I had lost sight of the middle of the room. The murky wall firmly took the brunt of my shoulder, and its sword struck clean through my body yet again.
As darkness consumed me and voices assaulted my now frustrated brain, I thought, What is a life potion?
Our sickening game continued for many lives after. I found that as I injured this creature it would reach into its leather pouch, reaching for its contents. The wounds I had managed to inflict upon the beast's body would restore as if by magic before my eyes. At first, it irritated me that it was able to sew its body back together, whereas mine was just fleshy and useless against that sword. I knew that if I were to truly defeat this creature, I would need to prevent that hand from reaching into the contents of its bag. A new idea formed as darkness consumed me again.