With a slight noise, a blue portal suddenly crept up in front of Hiro.
"What is that? Should I enter that again?", he questioned as he had to decide whether he could trust this new portal or not.
It was vastly different from his other portals. This one was reeking of mud and sweat. But he saw no other choice but to eventually enter it.
"This should better be something useful. Or else, I will sue the developers of this portal" he made his way into it and found himself on a training ground.
As he entered the blue portal, he felt a growing tinge of fear in his fingertips. The usually nimble fingers, froze in shock.
Mud and rain. It did not matter where he looked, everything was filled with a brown mixture of dirt and an unnecessary amount of water that came from the heavens. The only barrier that contained the slippery mud looked like a handmade excuse of a fence.
"Where am I?" he uttered. "This looks... like a battleground mixed with a place to train?" he added, as his legs have barely been able to hold their own. The muck carefully wrapped around his ankles. It was almost, as if it wanted Hiro to fall.
Time was of the essence here. He had to get used to the unstable flooring, or else he would get dirt on his already wet favourite shirt.
He knew he would be unable to wash out the mud. Not because he assumed that the mud would keep being stuck to his shirt. But because it was disgustingly white and he sure as hell was not going to buy the expensive detergent.
"There seems to be a village a few hundred meters away from me. Other than that... There isn't that much to see here", he assumed. However, he did not know how wrong he was.
Something spawned in front of him, adjusting to his presumption. A large amount of heavy longswords were now elegantly presented on a weapon rack in front of him.
"What?" was pronounced by his mouth hesitantly. Without any time to react, he heard a squealing voice approaching him.
It was a green goblin. It had a small physique. Yet, this was what made them so pesky. Due to their agility, it was hard to defend against those without any proper skills. It was one of those monsters that Hiro had never been able to defeat.
"Oh, if it was not for this one monster, he could have beaten everything else", Hiro narrated himself to improve his confidence. However, he knew that he had never defeated a single monster during his days as a backpack. While the other Divers defeated the monsters, he played the human backpack thanks to [Dimensional Pocket].
His heartbeat rose as high as it possibly could, without leading to his demise.
As he neither had fighting skills, nor any helpful abilities outside of the system, he feared for his life. "Fake it 'till you make it..." rose up as a small thought.
"Oh, great now I have to think about one of those sayings elder people used to post online" he said to himself.
The goblin had trouble to traverse through the mud. It had to balance a fine line between slipping into the mud and mustering the strength to move its legs. Hiro could see how much it struggled.
This was his only chance. He had to catch it off guard. A glance to the weapon rack forged his plan.
Kicking the mud away, he ran to the stand, aggressively ripping away one of the longswords. As he unsheathed it, his stance oozed of incompetence.
A scream escaped his mouth as he almost ran into the goblin, with the sharp longsword in front of him. The goblin's struggle gave Hiro just enough of an opening to slice into it. For some reason though, his weapon was stuck in its flesh.
The sounds that have been created by the sharp metal that met the goblin's meat felt revolting to Hiro. He had to fight both the goblin and his own senses, as he desperately tried not to vomit.
An excruciating scream attacked Hiro's eardrums as well. Barely able to listen to it, he kept twisting the weapon in order to either kill the goblin or to pull out his weapon.
"Why can't I pull it out? Is that the strength the other Divers are able to apply?", Hiro questioned.
Eventually, he had to let his blade be stuck in the goblin, carefully waiting for him to bleed out. He occasionally kicked the goblin away, when he felt like it came too close.
Hiro was full of disgust but also in awe, as the monster did not mind going deeper into the longsword, if it meant potentially killing Hiro. "It has an impressive survival instinct", he thought.
After a few minutes, the goblin died. Because it felt like an eternity, Hiro was unable to feel any sense of pride. He barely managed to defeat that thanks to the terrain. He was shaken by what happened.
It was not that he was unable to take a life. He knew that he had to do it eventually during his days as a Diver. But he never thought it would be as hard.
[You Have Defeated A Goblin]
"Well. More or less."
[You Have Received 10 Coins]
"Oh, now we are talking"
[You Have Received 400 Coins For Your First Kill As A Bonus]
"THIS MUCH?" he screamed in joy. "Is all of that really for me? I can almost buy [Dimensional Teleport]"
[Commencing Teleportation To Original Place. We Advise You To Open The Shop]
Just like that, the moment was over. The mud still clung to him - but for once, he did not feel like a human backpack.