Hangover?

Jared had a terrible headache. 'Shit! I haven't had a hangover this bad for ages! Did somebody spike my drink?'

Suddenly he heard a terrible noise that could be described as a horde of cats fighting after being run over by a car, if they were capable of fighting in such a state.

Jared was spooked by the noise and it made his headache even worse.

He wanted to curse out loud, but he was horrified to find out that what came out of his mouth were sounds similar to what he had heard before.

'Fuck! Did somebody punch me in the throat too? Damn, I want to see a video of that fight!'

He tried to recall the events of the previous day or night, but all he could remember was crawling through the woods until he reached home.

Jared finally opened his eyes. He saw an uneven ceiling that looked like some sort of a natural stone above him, dotted with large blue lights.

He managed to pull himself into a seated position, but only barely. Every part of his body was in agonizing pain.

'What the hell? Did I get hit by a truck or something? I'm never tagging along with Richie for drinks again!'

Suddenly, a green-skinned face appeared in his view. It had a long downwards-bent nose, large pointy ears and small yellow eyes.

The creature bared its needle-sharp teeth and spoke something in its horrible voice.

"Richie, if that's you messing with me, I'm going to beat your ass so hard you can't sit for a week!", Jared tried to say, but there was still no luck, his words were somehow transformed into growls, gurgles and other strange noises.

Suddenly, he heard a *Dong~* sound and saw a green line of text appear in the lower right corner of his field of view: [System synchronization complete. To learn more about the system, say 'system help'.]

*Dong~*

[Quest: 'Survive!' completed. 1 free stat point gained. 5 exp gained.

Level Up! +1 free stat point gained. +5 free skill points gained. +1 Strength, +1 Endurance, +1 Dexterity]

Jared's hands rose to his face and he touched it everywhere, looking for any sort of VR headgear. He was still hoping it was some sort of an elaborate prank. Jet, there was nothing. Well, not quite nothing. He discovered a huge nose and ears similar to the one he saw before himself.

Suddenly, his hands stopped on his scalp. He screamed: "Nooo! My hair! My beautiful hair! It's all gone!"

The creature in front of him spoke something again and turned to leave.

*Dong~*

[Goblin language learned. Goblin language proficiency +2]

"What the fuck is going on?", Jared shouted out, but this time, he was able to understand his own words.

It took him a long time to calm down enough to start thinking rationally again.

Despite the soreness of his body, he thought: 'Oh, I get it. It must be one of those lucid dream things. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.'

It was only then he remembered the most important thing – he seemed to have something called System.

"System help!", Jared shouted out loud.

*Dong~*

An electric-blue semi-transparent GUI spread out before him. It had multiple lines of text in it.

[Inventory help

Stats help

System preferences

Replay Intro

Note: this is the base version of the System. System will develop according to the user's needs.]

Jared forced himself to stay calm and said: "Inventory help!"

*Dong~*

[To access inventory, you need clothing with pockets. To store an item, think 'inventory' and store the item in your pocket, it will be transferred automatically as long as there is space remaining.

To retrieve items, think about the item you wish to retrieve and put your hand in your pocket, the item will appear in your hand.]

Jared took a look at his body, as much as he could see past the GUI that took up most of his view. He was wearing a tattered piece of clothing that fortunately had one intact pocket on the left-hand side. He noticed that one of the lights, or really a small glowing blue crystal had fallen to the floor.

He picked it up and tried to store it in his inventory.

*Dong~*

[Gained lowest grade Mana crystal.]

'Mana crystal? Those things have to be worth something to someone, right?'

Still, finding out the market value could wait until he was more familiar with the System.

"Stats help!", Jared said.

*Dong~*

[To access Stats screen, say 'Stats'.]

Jared was waiting for a more in-depth explanation, but that was all he was given.

He decided to go through the rest of the help screen before seeing his stats.

He said: "System preferences!"

Instead of the usual sound and string of text, the GUI changed to a different one.

There were controls to adjust notification volume and ten different notification tones to choose from. Jared tried each one of them. For a moment, he thought about foghorn and chainsaw, but eventually settled on the default as it had somewhat grown on him.

There was also 'GUI overlay' which was off by default. Jared switched it on. There didn't seem to be much of a change, but he believed it would become obvious after he closed the GUI in front of him.

There were a few more items, such as Stats to display, GUI color and opacity as well as text color, but Jared left them all to default.

Suddenly, Jared found himself in front of a conundrum, however – he wasn't sure how he could leave the GUI or go back to the previous page, but suddenly, he noticed that there were actually buttons for that. Except, Jared lacked any physical controllers for the GUI. Still, he thought about pressing the 'back' button.

Fortunately, he found himself on the previous screen.

"Replay Intro.", Jared spoke.

###

A few hours earlier.

There was a party of four players walking along the edge of a dense forest, glancing around.

One of them, a Blade Warrior, a burly youth with shoulder-length black hair and a massive sword strapped to his back spoke up: "Hey, Timmy, have you seen any Goblins yet? The forum said they should come out around here."

"Not yet, and we're right next to the Lowland Mountain already. Did some high-level asshole kill them all again?", a rather weak-looking boy, a Wizard dressed in blue robes and a staff in hand replied.

"Damn bastards! They should all just enlist with the Holy Empire and go to the front! The exp is much better there anyway when you get to level 15."

They looked around and peeked into the woods but didn't dare to go in – they were well aware that Orcs were often encountered not too far from the edge, and there was no way a group of level 1's would be able to win against a level 5 Orc, not to mention the higher-leveled variants that could be found deeper inside.

Suddenly Cindy, the healer of the party shouted: "I see one! It has a sack on its back! Is that a rare monster?"

The party instantly turned towards where the healer was pointing and saw a Goblin that looked like the rest of its kind, except for one small difference – it was carrying a coarse sack on its back that seemed to be filled with something. Clinking sounds could be heard as the Goblin walked.

A girl in thick clothes, carrying a shield almost as tall as herself and a pike shouted: "What are you still waiting, guys? Let's get the loot!"

"Chaarge!", the warrior shouted, rushing into battle himself. He was closely followed by the girl with a shield and pike while on the tip of the wizard's wand a small ball of fire appeared and was quickly shot towards the Goblin.

The creature was startled and tried to run back into the cover of the trees, but its stubby legs didn't get it far before it was stopped by the shielded Pikeman girl. She struck out with her pike, forcing the Goblin to jump backwards to dodge, only to end up in the fireball's path. The next moment, a large blade cleaved through its thigh, making the goblin crumple to the ground with green blood spurting out of the wound.

Strangely, even after the creature let go of the sack it had been holding onto, it didn't fall away from its body, however, many different coins rolled out of it until it looked completely empty.

"We're rich!", the warrior shouted.

Sparkles appeared around all four of the players and Cindy shouted: "Yes! Level up! I can finally get a healing skill!"

The players counted the coins on the ground and discovered that there was 1 gold coin, 25 silver coins and 73 bronze coins.

"We can get at least a rare grade weapon each and enough mana potions to try and raid an Orc!", Lucy, the shielded Pikeman said.

Brian, the Warrior spoke: "Let's get back to town and camp here after, maybe one of these rare goblins shows up again!"

"Yeah, let's do that!", everyone agreed.

As the party left, the Goblin that had been lying down on the ground, slowly regained its consciousness, then it started crawling back into the forest.

###

After the video ended, Jared closed the 'System help' GUI. If he had to say, it didn't seem very helpful at all, only giving him the bare minimum of information.

However, thinking back to the intro once more a thought struck him: 'Oh, shit! It looks like I'm a rare mob in a game and those bastards just took all my precious money! Just you wait, I'll rob you naked and blind!'

He inspected his body. He had green skin and hands with long fingers with sharp and thick fingernails. He had bare, disproportionately large feet. There was a large gash in his thigh with some sort of smelly paste smeared onto it. The wound was stinging quite a bit but seemed to have healed to some extent.

Finally, Jared decided to get a better look at his situation.

"Stats!", he said.

*Dong~*

----------------------------

Name: Gobric

Species: Sack Goblin

Level: 2

EXP: 3/10

HP: 5/7

MP: 0/0

Stamina: 6/6

Lust: 25/100

Strength: 1

Perception: 3

Endurance: 1

Charisma: 0

Intelligence: 0

Dexterity: 5

Luck: -10

Skills:

Goblin language: 3 (able to get the point across with the help of expressive gestures and sounds)

Common language: 50 (able to converse freely)

Sneak: 14

Speech: 5

Survival: 2

Goblin's libido (Lust never falls below 25, can get it up the moment you see an attractive female)

Goblin's stomach (can digest almost anything without suffering side-effects)

Sack Goblin's Gold Mine (Generates 1 bronze coin an hour for every human in a 100 meter radius from user)

Equipment:

Torn trousers (no stat bonuses)

Torn tunic (no stat bonuses)

Money sack (cannot be removed)

Free Stat points: 2

----------------------------

Jared stared at the stats screen blankly for a while. Seeing the Luck stat he said: "You don't say!"

'So, I'm a goblin. The guy from before must've been a goblin too. That's fine. I can work with that, I just have to level up, right?'

Then he spent another while setting HP, Stamina and strangely enough Lust to be always visible on the GUI overlay. He suspected that he'd need to keep an eye on those three if he wanted to survive.

Once he was done, his stomach began growling.

*Dong~*

[New Quest: Find food! Rewards: 2 exp.]

Jared looked around properly. He was in a cave, illuminated by mana crystals of various shapes and sizes. There were two passages on each end and on grass beds, there were much smaller and uglier versions of the goblin he'd seen before, and the larger goblin going around between them, feeding them something.

Jared limped to the seemingly adult goblin and said: "Is there any more food left?"

The goblin stared at him as if he had brain damage and replied: "You grown goblin. You find food for you."

Jared decided to not argue with the obviously stupid creature and tried to find a way outside instead. He started with one of the passages and after going through a few rooms found himself in a chamber where three human women laid on their backs, only shreds left of their clothes. One of them looked extremely pregnant, her stomach squirming with some kind of hellspawn.

They were all taking shallow breaths, not even making any attempts to conceal themselves, even when their dead-looking eyes had landed onto Jared's pants that now had a visible bulge showing.

*Dong~*

[Lust has increased by 20]

Jared rushed out of the chamber; he had no desire to take advantage of what appeared to be breeding slaves. He figured they had been done by every single male goblin in the village, and that just wasn't to his tastes.

Finally, he made his way outside and saw goblins digging around in the bushes and clearings. Some of them managed to pull out a few muddy roots and ate them right away.

'Yeah, I'm not that hungry.', Jared thought.