The corpse was already cooling when William leaned back against the shelf. His arm throbbed like a second heartbeat under the bandage. Pain was real, but so was the quiet.
Lesser Goblin. That's what the System had called it.
If that had been the weakest version, then "normal" was still ahead. Stronger ones too. Maybe a whole ladder waiting to chew its way up his bones.
He brought the status screen back. Numbers steadied him. Numbers were clean.
Status: William Page
Level: 1
EXP: 25 / 100
Strength: 9
Speed: 10
Durability: 9
Mental: 12
Social: 5
Luck: 4
At first glance it was just digits, but digits had meaning.
Strength nine. Speed ten. Durability nine. He was fit, sure, but not superhuman. He thought about percentiles, about bell curves. If five was average, then ten had to be ninety-fifth percentile or higher. Round numbers. Base ten. Clean presentation.
So nine and ten put him high on the chart—athlete range, if not professional. Which made sense; he'd always done fine outdoors, carried loads, moved quick - and now he was better than before. But his mental twelve stopped him cold.
IQ test. He remembered it clearly. Score: 130. Gifted, they'd called it. If that was a ten here, then someone with 160 or 170 would show up as an eleven or twelve. Which meant the System was treating him, right now, as one of the smartest processors alive.
Processor. That word stuck. Because he wasn't omniscient. He didn't know. He could just run faster when he did know.
Intelligence without knowledge was just circuits without current.
His eyes slid down the screen again. Strength nine. He thought about tensile strength, about cordage. If nine or ten was athlete-tier, then even most dungeon monsters would be in that range. Which meant breaking his paracord—rated at five hundred pounds working load—was impossible without leverage or tools. Raw force wouldn't do it.
That made the rope an equalizer. Reliable.
A shuffle in the distance cut the thought off. Not claws. Heavier. A gait.
William's eyes swept the toppled shelves, the geometry of the aisle. He reached for the paracord. Twenty-five feet to start. Enough.
He planned fast and clean; spurred by his basic survival skill. First, a snare low across the aisle, anchored between two shelves. That would cinch and jerk the target forward. Then a second loop threaded through a pulley point, angled upward to whip the creature's head into the iron corner of a bookcase. Momentum and tensile strength would do the rest.
Eight feet gone in setup. Seventeen left. He logged it automatically.
He worked the knots with methodical speed, System nudging his muscle memory to tighten each hitch properly. The noose lay across the path like a careless scatter of pamphlets. He weighted the line with a brick-sized book, spine lodged so it would swing hard when tension snapped it free. A guillotine, homemade.
It looked like nonsense. It was physics.
Now he needed bait.
William picked up a thin encyclopedia, lifted it high, and dropped it. The slam cracked through the aisle like a hammer blow. Paper scattered.
Silence. Then movement.
The regular goblin came into view with a different stride than the runt. Taller, chest thicker, claws clicking in sequence. Its grin was wider. The System didn't tag it "lesser."
It sniffed the air. Stepped closer. Another step. And another.
The shin hit the loop. The snare yanked. The goblin pitched forward, arms windmilling. The upper cord cinched, and the weight swung wide, snapping its head against the corner of the shelf with a wet, stunning crack.
It staggered. Eyes rolling, jaw half-open. Not dead.
William didn't give it the chance. He darted from cover, knife flashing, and drove the blade straight across its throat. Clean. Quick. Final.
The goblin collapsed, blood mixing with the black ichor of the lesser.
The System chimed.
[Enemy Defeated: Goblin]
EXP Gained: 50
Loot Acquired: Unidentified Potion (Common)
Level: 1
EXP: 75 / 100
William yanked the knife free, wiped it on the corpse's hide, and crouched to steady his breath. The trap had worked. The rope was intact, seventeen feet left. He flexed his hand, sore but steady.
"Okay," he muttered. "Not just luck. Numbers matter."
But deeper in the stacks, something heavier still shifted.
Status: William Page
Age: 18
System: Unbound Bookeater
Class: None
Level: 1
EXP: 75 / 100
Strength: 9
Speed: 10
Durability: 9
Mental: 12
Social: 5
Luck: 4
Traits:
– Hunger for Knowledge
– Synesthetic Cognition
– Rational Mind
Skills:
– Survival (Basic)
– Mycology (Basic)
– Cooking (Basic)
– Knife Use (Basic)
– Herb Lore (Basic)
– Knife Combat (Basic)
– Medicine (Basic)
Inventory:
– Knife (Common, Durability 92%)
– Trail Mix (Mundane, 340g)
– Water Bottle (Common, Empty, Durability 100%)
– Paracord (Common, 17 ft, Durability 98%)
– Firestarter (Common, Durability 87%)
– Poncho (Common, Durability 90%)
– Goblin Key (Uncommon)
– An Introduction to Occult Practices (Common)
– Unidentified Potion (Common)