Mud Troll
Mud Troll
Mud Troll.
Unlike the typical troll — a giant-kin monster with exceptional regeneration and a distinct stench — the mud troll was a far stranger creature.
Its vision had atrophied, leaving it reliant on smell and hearing. As a result, its eyes were a bloody red and its nose gaped wide and cavernous.
Its ears were long, sharp, and flared outward to catch even the faintest echo.
The differences went beyond appearance. The mud troll's habits, its diet, even its blood diverged from the common troll in every way.
Its blood was acidic.
Aslan held his longsword at an angle in his left hand and gripped his mace tightly in his right.
Against mud trolls, weapons that relied on slashing attacks were nearly useless — the acidic blood saw to that.
Paired with the creatures' numbers, it meant a blade would be compromised in moments, leaving the wielder defenseless.
That made the mace a solid choice. Aslan advanced a step at a time, measuring the distance to each creature.
'Three at fifteen meters. One at twenty.'
Three trolls, each two meters tall and hunched deeply at the waist, with a fourth, smaller one lagging behind. Aslan locked the images in his mind and closed in slowly.
Grruu-ruk.
The low, keening call of a troll.
Crunch. Crunch.
The rhythm of Aslan's own footsteps answered it. The distance shrank. It shrank until the gap between him and the foremost troll narrowed to a bare two meters.
Then Aslan pivoted on his forward foot and sprang backward.
Boom!
A massive troll slammed down onto the spot he'd just vacated, its leap arriving too late. Aslan twisted his body coolly and whipped the mace upward from below.
Crack!
Gruh-raak!
The mace crushed the troll's jaw, scattering a spray of acidic blood as he pulled it back. Rather than drawing the weapon in, Aslan simply rested it on his shoulder and spun.
Shing!
The longsword followed in a shallow arc. Its single edge sliced low, splitting a knee clean apart. The troll staggered, tangling up the two behind it.
Aslan raised his eyes, tracking their positions.
'Enough.'
He brought the mace down from his shoulder — a strike with force and speed that belied his frame.
Crunch!
The troll's skull cratered and split. Brain matter faintly streaked with acid sprayed across the stone, eyes and viscera skidding away.
Grruu-rraak!
Two more trolls charged in behind the corpse. Aslan flicked his gaze left, then right, and moved.
No need even for lesser magic.
He had enough tools.
He thrust the mace into the face of the first troll to reach him. Accelerating from low to high, the strike shattered the creature's jaw. The troll reeled, clutching its ruined face, howling in agony.
"Hup."
Aslan drew a sharp breath and turned toward the troll closing from his right. He snapped the longsword in a short, whip-like motion. The cut came extremely low.
"Hoo."
Crunch. The blade pulverized an ankle. As the troll staggered, Aslan exhaled, yanked the sword back, and kicked the leg out from under it. The troll toppled.
Shlunk!
He swung the freed sword. The edge traced precisely through the nape of the neck, separating body from head as it fell. Acrid blood rolled across the stone, stinking.
Sssss.
The blood ate at both sword and floor simultaneously. Aslan tracked the damage through a sidelong glance, then shifted his attention to the smallest troll — the juvenile — and gave the longsword a sharp flick.
A spray of half-dissolved metal and acidic gore. The searing liquid splashed across the crouching troll's face just as it tensed to pounce, making it flinch.
The opening lasted barely a second. A gap so tiny most wouldn't even consider it one. For Aslan, it was plenty.
Crunch!
He closed the distance in a single bound and brought the mace down. The juvenile mud troll died with barely a handful of brain matter scattered behind its shoulders.
Ignoring the corpse and the sound of something tearing the air behind him, Aslan flipped the longsword into a reverse grip. He pivoted with the motion.
The troll with the crushed face was charging blind with rage, its footing unsteady. A slight shift in momentum would be enough to send it sprawling.
The crossguard, held in reverse grip, hooked the troll's ankle and yanked. The limb flew sideways. The troll smashed into the ground.
Gruk!
It managed one ugly, mangled cry before the mace came down and split its skull.
Three heads shattered. The mace was lightly corroded now, giving off the harsh metallic tang of dissolving iron.
Aslan knocked the residue from the weapon and slid it into his belt.
"...Haah."
Fifteen seconds. That was all the time that had passed since Aslan had engaged the trolls.
No one carried a watch, but every witness understood bone-deep that the fight had ended in an impossibly brief span.
The witnesses — Harod Claw, his two subordinates, and Angie — stared at Aslan with varying expressions. Only Harod, whose draconic facial muscles betrayed less, managed to hide his shock.
But it was Harod who felt it most keenly. Harod Claw glanced at the dead monsters, then down at the weapon in his own hand.
A deeply curved, single-edged, two-handed blade. A perfectly serviceable weapon. A type he had wielded many times before.
'If I had fought them...'
Even with that weapon, Harod Claw knew he could not have fought like that.
Not with raw strength. Not with any special ability. Neither would have enabled a performance like that.
What he had just witnessed was, fundamentally, an extreme of efficiency.
From the countless tactical options available in any given moment of combat, Aslan had selected the most effective, the most economical — every single time.
And the result of choosing and executing flawlessly was what stood before him now.
The thought reached its conclusion, and the words fell from Harod's mouth before he could stop them.
"Master of Combat..."
Aslan looked up at the sound. Harod's subordinates looked up as well, faces tight with something close to alarm.
Ekul, the dark-skinned man, had grown up in a village under Count Warpol's domain. To him, a Master occupied a clear, undeniable place in the world. Karlsen came from elsewhere, but he understood just as well what the title meant.
A Master, given only a sliver of opportunity, could slaughter every person on the continent.
A Master could face a priest bare-handed.
A Master's skill defied comprehension.
Rumor and legend flooded their minds. Ekul and Karlsen looked at Aslan again, properly this time.
Aslan stood in silence, longsword still in his left hand, watching them. A faint weariness moved in his cool teal eyes.
He watched, and he did not deny it.
The silence of confirmation. They staggered inwardly.
"Have you decided?"
It was Aslan who spoke first, after a moment. He flicked the longsword clean and slid it into his belt.
"If you're rejecting the offer, I'll need to dispose of you as well."
The words were so flat, so profoundly detached, that a chill crawled straight up their spines. They flinched.
"You're the Master of Combat?"
Harod was the exception.
He asked the question with a new, strange calm.
Aslan studied the dragon-kin's face.
Close enough to hit with a thrown punch. But Harod Claw's tail lay low and still on the ground. Any will to fight had long since drained out of him.
"...If it helps you make a decision, then yes."
Eyes that seemed almost languid swept over them again. Then Aslan added:
"I am the Master of Combat."
Harod took one step forward.
He could accept his defeat now.
He understood the gap.
He closed the remaining distance and bowed his head.
"I accept the offer."
*
After that, they pushed deeper into the mine tunnel, fighting trolls as they went.
Harod Claw threw himself into the battles as if his earlier reluctance had never existed. His subordinates, at minimum, did what was asked of them.
Even Angie, sporadically, buried her axe in a troll's skull and brought it down.
[LEVEL UP]
They stopped only after Aslan's level rose.
Aslan stood over a freshly killed troll, his half-dissolved longsword still embedded in its head, staring at the system window floating before him.
'Finally.'
He had lived for twelve years at Level 1 — ever since falling into Eternal Dominion.
The monsters that roamed Geladrion were not forgiving. Aslan had survived by scraping through death's door again and again.
The process had been grueling. Miserable. Agonizing.
So what he'd finally earned was precious. It hit him hard.
Aslan closed his eyes and tipped his head back.
Eternal Dominion was a game that only allowed you to raise your main level while progressing the main quest.
For all those years, Aslan had never once glimpsed even the trail of a main quest. That was why he'd been forced to survive at Level 1.
'But from now on, that changes.'
As your level climbed, a player's character began to transcend human limits.
Even at Level 1, he had silenced countless priests and lived to walk away. Knowing that from this point forward he would no longer be prey but predator — that thought filled him with a quiet joy as he turned to the group.
"We'll stop here for today. Time to start setting up camp."
"...Here?"
The dragon-kin's tone had become almost unnervingly polite. He glanced around.
A broad, open cavern. Long tunnels branching off to either side.
Not an ideal campsite by any normal standard.
The fact that they were in a mine tunnel to begin with only underscored that.
"I don't mean to question your judgment, sir, but isn't this space a bit too open?"
If enemies came swarming in... Harod trailed off. His subordinates wore awkward expressions.
It was strange, seeing the dragon-kin — a man who had spoken down even to imperial guards — address someone with such deference.
Still, the concern itself seemed reasonable to the two men. They glanced around nervously.
Only Angie showed no reaction at all, simply watching Aslan.
He understood their unease. Had he not played this game himself, he never would have suggested camping here so confidently.
If this cavern hadn't served as the campsite tutorial location in the game.
He couldn't exactly explain that, so he fabricated something plausible.
"The creatures don't come this far. The underground miasma is too thin here."
"Is that so? Well then..."
At Aslan's offhand remark, the dragon-kin offered no further objection. Exhaustion was rolling in.
His subordinates still looked around anxiously, but neither spoke up. The transcendent martial prowess Aslan had displayed on the way here weighed too heavily for that.
No one argued. Camp was set up, humble as it was. They couldn't build a large fire inside the tunnel, so they only dropped their packs and spread blankets to rest.
Once the group had settled onto the blankets and fallen asleep, Aslan, who had volunteered for the watch, closed his eyes where he sat.
What he did was meditation.
Meditation was a perk unlocked by reaching Level 20 in the Survival skill — the absolute limit. Four hours of meditation, half a normal sleep cycle, provided the restorative effect of a full eight hours of rest.
Knowing that no monsters would attack this spot certainly helped, but it was meditation that allowed Aslan to take every watch himself.
To his conscious mind, it felt like a brief moment; in reality, four hours had passed. When Aslan opened his eyes again, his vision was clear. A background hum of mental fatigue lingered, but that was chronic — and unavoidable.
He checked the position of his weapons immediately upon waking, then scanned the group.
Harod lay with only his back barely on a blanket — it was far too small for his frame. Angie thrashed faintly, small sounds of distress escaping her, apparently trapped in a nightmare. Aside from those two, nothing seemed amiss.
Aslan looked from one to the other, then lifted his gaze.
He was fully rested. Now came the truly important moment.
He opened his system window.
The misty pane materialized, filled with text, symbols, and collapsed menus.
[Ongoing Main Quest]
[Escape Prison with Angela Tail]
Aslan ran a hand absently over the floating quest text — as if it were something he could touch — then dragged his finger down and tapped the list item labeled Character.
'Best to raise Strength and Health first.'
A single level-up granted three stat points. Aslan studied the newly opened window, weighing which of the six attributes to increase.
A pale, simplified human silhouette. Beside it, a series of elongated bars.
Basic metrics: HP, MP, Stamina. Finer details: fatigue, hunger, thirst. Aslan placed a finger at what should have been the appropriate section and pulled downward.
What he found was nothing like what he had expected.
So completely unexpected that his eyes flew wide open and his hand froze in midair.
"Huh?"
Eternal Dominion had six core attributes.
Strength, governing raw physical power. Agility, covering manual dexterity, body control, flexibility, and reflex speed as a whole. Health, which encompassed bodily toughness and regeneration.
Then Magic Power, which enabled spellcasting and boosted spell efficiency. Fighting Spirit, which expanded the total pool for combat perks and special techniques. And Luck, which governed drop rates, evasion probability, and critical hits.
Six attributes.
[Aslan]
[■] [■■] [■■]
[Magic Power] [Fighting Spirit] [Luck]
[Remaining Points: 3]
But beneath the name Aslan, only three attributes appeared.
The other three were blacked out. Warped. Corrupted.
Aslan stared at them for a long moment, then pressed firmly on the black void where Strength should have been.
'Nothing.'
The remaining points didn't decrease. There was no surge of full-body strength.
Perplexed by the anomaly but keeping his composure, Aslan moved down and pressed the intact label: Magic Power.
[Remaining Points: 2]
The points decreased. Something intangible coursed through him — energy originating in his heart and brain, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Magic Power was functioning normally.
Luck and Fighting Spirit would, too.
He couldn't explain it, but the phenomenon was clear. Aslan was just beginning to accept it when—
"...Hh, hha-aah!"
Angie woke screaming.
The cry was loud, yet the rest of the group didn't stir. Through the translucent pane of the system window, Aslan caught only the sight of Angie, soaked in sweat, jerking upright.
Hahh, hahh. Her breathing came harsh and ragged as she slowly lifted her head and met Aslan's eyes.
What flickered inside those golden irises was terror.
Aslan saw it, and was about to speak—
[Aslan] [Angela Tail]
A new name had appeared beside his own.
'...What?'
The words he'd been about to say vanished. He reached out, almost mesmerized, and pressed the hovering name with his finger.
[Angela Tail]
[Strength] [Agility] [Health]
[■■] [■■] [■]
[Remaining Points: 3]
A window had appeared — its contents the exact inverse of his own.