Nilbog rested his back against the wall in the corner of the gloomy room. He could not sleep on the bed, its soft cushions a foreign oddity to his back. The ground was hard and cold but felt more comforting than the exposed bed. The door was to his right, leaving him in its blind spot. It felt safe.

  After he finished talking with Lady Viss, he had made his way into one of the more far off locations on this floor, though activity still echoed around him. The streets were abuzz with combat.

  He looked at his hands, the skin on his palms peeling horribly. The back of his right shoulder pulsed with pain, and a small piece of flesh on the side of his stomach was missing. It burned badly.

  All in all, Nilbog was in a fine condition. His Status Effects screen did not show any injuries, meaning with the recovery of his HP his body will heal naturally. Sleep, if he's cunning enough to catch any tonight, will apply a Rest bonus, increasing his body’s base regeneration by 50%. His base regeneration was his Constitution over the duration of an hour. He had Constitution of 13, with half of that being roughly 6.5.

  So in total, I would have... somewhere around 24 HP per hour, when he added all of his other regens.

  The necklace Lady Viss forcibly placed on him also helped. The gem was an orange-yellow pebble in the shape of a tear connected to a thin silver chain. It rested deep within the heavy layers of his clothes, its coolness a comfort.

  He Soul-Bound it when he received it. It allowed him to equip and unequip it in seconds, letting him hide it in case he gets captured.

  Got to prove myself to her, I guess. That wasn’t too surprising.

  Currently, he had a more imposing problem--what skills was he going to get with his 50 points.

  From the basic information Nilbog was born with, The Pre-Game was a period that lasted around half a century, give or take. There were no Phases, but people could still gain experience and attempt Dungeons. There was nothing beyond that, however. No one could buy skills, and the experience gain was significantly lower. Plus, only the basic skills were learnable, with the higher rarities needing an absurd amount of training. Only people that dedicated their lives to growing stronger could become powerful during the Pre-Game.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  There were also people like Lady Ovalia, a survivor of the previous Game. The Game automatically transfers the victories to the “Abyss,” a place that Nilbog knew nothing about, but some with special skills are allowed to stay. The skills and limitations of that were something Nilbog did not know either.

  What he did now, was that things were just going to keep getting harder.

  You can run away from people and monsters, but you can’t run away from the Phases. Rooms would become Dungeons and entire cities would be locked, if he wasn’t straight out transferred into another dimension. There was no way about it--he had to prepare himself for battle.

  The issue, of course, was always his Shapeshifter race.

  Without fixing his body, Nilbog will never get experience. To do that, he needed to Soul Siphon 4 more humans. It didn’t matter if there were corpses— It wasn’t just about killing Sentients. He could Shapeshift into a different monster, if he wanted. All he needed was to Soul Siphon five corpses and to create the “Husk.”

  The issue was the Shapeshifter’s powers itself. The way he got it, and what it does and what it meant, it was everything Nilbog was taught against. Justice would be meaningless if he used such a corrupt power.

  Setting that hopeless issue aside, Nilbog next opened dreadful class, as the issue went hand in hand.

  A large screen opened in front of him. At the bottom was the Sentient Killer title, connected to three separate paths.

  It was by no means poor; in fact, it was quite an amazing class. The buffs it offered were astronomical, with an offensive, defensive, and utility branch. Enforcer’s Belief was useful in every situation, Lethal Strike guaranteed major damage if he could connect with it, and Hunter’s Sight kept his guard up and reduced effects such as stuns, slows, blinds, roots, and whatever else tried to immobilize him. Debuffs were also weaker on him. He was like a mini-boss when fighting Sentients.

  The only issue was that he wasn’t a psychopath. Going around murdering people for no good reason wasn’t something he was planning on doing. He didn’t know how Sentient’s gained their classes, but as a monster he had no choice. He had it ever since he became a Shapeshifter, and he didn’t know if he could even change it.

  Should have asked Lady Viss about it. He could hardly ask anyone about this sort of thing.

  He motioned over the blue reticle, opening the Shop. Other than the settings blinker, which had a cog turning, and held simple settings such as the way tables showed information and his notification preferences, the Shop was the last button open to him. After he pressed it, another screen opened. The only available option was the Skill Acquisition tab.

  Four separate options were available once he pressed that.

  Nilbog started with the easy ones. The Mana button was grayed out, and there was only a single available skill in the Life Force category.

  Nilbog has never used Life Force before. Today was the first time, and it was by blind luck. Surprisingly, it came with an Add-on. Usually, he needed to buy Add-on for skills, but sometimes they come bundled depending on how the skill was unlocked. In his case, defending against someone much stronger than him caused The Game to deem him worthy.

  That was generally how skills were unlocked, as far as he knew. If someone threw a single rock to kill a monster, the experience gain from that will increase the chances of the Game providing a skill that increases the power of throwing a single rock. If they killed the monster by throwing multiple rocks, then they might gain increased Speed and lower the STM cost. If they tried to infuse it with Life Force for increased durability, then an option might be to make add an explosive element to their Life Force.

  That was a large reason why rankers had an undisputable advantage—their family’s decades of knowledge allowed them to train towards specific skills.

  This posed another problem Nilbog. People were born with 1st Life Force. The higher their Life Force went, the higher ranked skills they could use. Nilbog having no Life Force rank meant he didn’t meet the requirements for any of them—Even if he did need All Or Nothing at some point, it might not even function correctly.

  Because of that, and the fact that Sentient Killer provided more than enough Soul Defense against Sentients, he left it aside.

  That only left only his Class and General skills.

  Nilbog wasn’t even mad—this was genuinely hilarious. Apparently, the Game did not like his general policy of not murdering people and consuming their Souls with relish. Considering he did not make good use of his class, no other skills became available to him.