The Goblin I.D.

John reappeared in the Springfield library wondering what exactly to make of Nancy. On the one hand, the guy was a creep. Yet he also had a strange charm and honesty about him. He’d even helped John a bit. He hadn’t seen Nancy’s Charisma stat, but he imagined it must have been quite high. Who knows what Nancy could have talked him into doing.

‘Is that what a high Charisma would allow me to do?’ John wondered. If so, John would like to have that influence someday. However, John’s thoughts were sidelined when he saw he’d gotten a notification.

Achievement Unlocked: It’s a deal my friend!
You had a favourable exchange with a known trickster. Wait… maybe that’s just what he wants you to think?!
+2 Charisma
+2 Wisdom

John let out a heavy sigh. “Gee, thanks, Gaia, just feed my doubt and paranoia, why don’t you?”

Despite that, John gladly accepted the boost to both his Charisma and Wisdom. With it, his stats looked like this:

With his HP and MP back at full, John was ready to go on the grind again. He selected the Goblin I.D. this time. Goblins were unsurprisingly tougher than the rats, though not by much. Their levels ranged from four to eight. But even those two levels higher didn’t pose much of a threat. The Goblin’s weren’t very intelligent and only seemed capable of aggressively swiping with bare claws or using crude and low damage weapons. Either way, their attacks were heavily telegraphed, and it was easy to exploit Counter.

What made the dungeon interesting was that the Goblins carried cash on them, and when killed, that cash would be added to his wallet. It was a pity then that they carried the equivalent to loose change, meaning John only made $14.50. Occasionally, one would also drop an item called Goblin Ooze.

Lesser Alchemical Ingredient
A syrupy white liquid secreted by male goblins. Works wonders on the skin.

“Seriously?” John had sighed and very reluctantly added the substance to his inventory the first time he’d come across it. He had seven of them now, and thank god, they came in vials.

Then there was Skinflaps, the boss of the I.D. If John thought the Broodmother was disgusting, Skinflaps was something else. He was about a foot taller than the other Goblins, standing at about John’s waist. His leathery skin had a red tinge to it rather than the standard green making his head look like a giant boil, and boy, did the fella look like he’d order the dinner box at McDonalds to eat by himself. When John found Skinflaps, the Goblin had been 4 inches deep into a lady friend. The Goblinette had screamed and dashed away when she saw John, leaving Skinflaps standing in his birthday suit with a befuddled look on his face. Unfortunately, it was an image that would come to scar him for the rest of his life.

But it turned out that Skinflaps was a tad smarter than his underlings. Instead of using claws or a crude weapon, the Goblin boss took out a gun. The catch was that he was still a Goblin, and smarter did not translate to intelligent. He would fire wildly in the hopes of catching John with a stray bullet, but John was able to use Evade to get out of harm’s way and fire off Mana Power Attack every now and then until the boss just careened over and died (let’s just say it wasn’t poop that the Goblin’s body expunged either). Physically, the boss hadn’t been remarkably difficult, but it had been a true psychological battle for John to not throw up everytime he looked at the goblin.

Rather than earning another Skill Evolution Point, his reward for killing Skinflaps was an item called the Token of Greed, which was essentially a coin that slightly increased cash he would earn from monster drops.

Over the course of the dungeon, he managed to gain a level in Counter, Evade, and MPA, and by the end, he had netted enough experience to level up for the third time that day.

But the true reward had been the achievement he’d earned.

Achievement Unlocked: Blue Baller
You gave another living creature blue balls. You are crueller than I believed, John Newman.
+1 inch in dick size.

John had always been insecure about his dick size, but that extra inch put him out of what would be classified as ‘small’ and into the average realm of five inches. And no, he didn’t feel the slightest bit of sorrow for any temporary plight he’d left Skinflaps with.

John took a lunch break when the time hit one o’clock. Deciding a change of location was due, he made his way to a park, where he took a sandwich and can of soda out of his inventory and consumed almost all of it in one breath.

That lunch break took all of 2 minutes, before he’d cast another Rat I.D. (he didn’t quite feel ready for the pain in the ass that ghosts would likely be and was NEVER going back to visit the Goblins) and got notified that Create I.D. had reached level two. Now he could also create an I.D. with wolves or sprites.

John proceeded to breeze through the rats for the second time that day. Little had changed, except that the Broodmother no longer spawned. Instead, he ended up with more Rat Teeth than he knew what to do with. No, really, he had no idea what to do with them. Maybe if he had a rudimentary understanding of Alchemy, he could do something, but he would probably need to read a specific book or get an actual teacher to do that.

In other news, his baseball bat broke, which was a shame since John had grown quite fond of whacking rats. It was an unforgivable act of negligence that he’d allowed his weapons durability to completely deplete. But it also spoke to the quality of the weapon that it’d shattered in a few measly hours of grinding. Now the bat was just wasted space in his inventory, so John just tossed it aside and turned his attention to the notification he’d received.

Achievement Unlocked: Grinding
Complete three Instant Dungeons in the same day. Can’t you do something more interesting with your life?
+2 Endurance

“Hey, you made the game!” John said accusingly as he closed the window and launched the Wolf I.D. for another period of grinding.

A few minutes earlier, Samantha Cooke let out a yawn as she stretched on the park grass and ruffled her short, raven coloured hair. Her nose curled as she caught a whiff of herself, and she wiped the beads of sweat lingering on her body that had formed during her track practice.

“Here,” a wry smile plastered the face of her best friend, Chelsea, who waved a bottle of water and half a sandwich under Sam’s nose. Today it was chicken, avocado, and mayo.

Sam snatched them with a well practiced swipe and wolfed down the sandwich in one breath. The bottle was reduced to crumpled plastic in another. Chelsea let out a small chuckle and nibbled on her own half of the sandwich.

It was a routine almost sacred between the two of them, and it occured in the city park after every track practice. For Sam, it was a place to unwind after practice, and for Chelsea, it was a pleasant space to read Student-Council reports. That made it a day like any other, as they sat around and made small-talk until, at some point, they wordlessly decided it was time to head home.

As they followed the winding pavement that crossed the park, a boy caught Sam’s eye. Sam lagged a little behind her friend as she peered more closely. The boy sat alone at one of the park’s many benches and, quite frankly, looked retarded. His eyes seemed to be directed forward, and he’d move his arms through the space in front of him. He wasn’t wild in his movements, rather methodical, like he was interacting with something.

Sam immediately recognised him as a boy from school. He lacked the Academy’s identifiable red jacket, but Sam was pretty good with faces. Though she didn’t have a name to pair with said face.

“What’s taking you so long?” Chelsea turned sharply, causing her blonde hair to wave behind her in a cute kind of way.

“Just checking out a crazy dude from our school,” Sam laughed.

Chelsea tilted her head a little to the side. “You’d get along fine then.”

“Look, he’s just over-” Sam blinked. The boy had completely vanished. “-there.”

“Um-hmm,” Chelsea rolled her eyes, unimpressed.

Sam didn’t bother trying to convince her friend, instead skipping to the part where she marched down the hill to the park bench and began sniffing around like a hound trying to catch onto a scent.

“I swear to God, Sam, I will get you institutionalised. I’ve got to prepare for a Council Meeting tomorrow,” Chelsea voiced her complaints, but she followed anyway.

Sam began to make a mental checklist of the clues as she came across them.

• Dusty Shoe Print - man’s size, maybe an eleven?
• Soda Can - stomped flat.
• Sandwich Wrapper - carelessly tossed onto the grass.
• Used Condom - thrown into a nearby bush - probably unrelated.
• Broken Baseball bat - split into two distinct halves - now that was a peculiar find.

Sam picked up both pieces of the broken bat and examined them more closely. Caught in the jagged teeth of shattered wood was a tuft of grey fur. Sam gingerly took a whiff and recoiled at the smell of sewer grime that seized the nerves in her nose. It definitely belonged to some sort of animal. ‘A rat maybe?’ Sam thought. ‘But what rat had fur so thick?’

After a moment of recovery, Sam straightened herself and gave all of the compiled evidence another once over. A few different explanations ran through her head, but nothing was conclusive.