Infinite Realm

"Yo. Stonehead!" Lu Zhen yelled at the Rock Golem.

*Grruuuum.* [1]

The Rock Golem was actually a creature made up of rocks of different sizes, clustered together to take on a humanoid shape. Due to the different sizes of rocks attached to one another, each time a golem moves it's body or takes a turn, it's movement is not only impeded but also sounds are generated from the impact between the rocks.

The Rock Golem stared at Lu Zhen with it's expressionless glowing red eyes.

"Huh? What are you looking at? You've never seen a guy as handsome as myself before? In that case, admire me more." Lu Zhen pasted a wide and annoying smug on his face.

"What the hell is he doing?" Sato frowned.

"Beats me. I think he just plans on enjoying himself a little bit after all, he is a level 7 player facing a level 5 common; the difference is as clear as night and day. He doesn't need to worry or be cautious when dealing with it." Fudo replied. It was quite easy for him to figure out why fatuous as even he would do the same when facing a monster far weaker than he is.

The Rock Golem couldn't really understand Lu Zhen's words but as a monster with a little amount of intelligence, it obviously knew that Lu Zhen wasn't like it so it walked towards him. 'Walk' isn't really the correct term as it was actually running towards him but since it's movement speed and reaction speed was terribly slow when compared to Lu Zhen's, it looked like it was walking or maybe even jogging from Lu Zhen's point of view.

"Oh? You want to witness my amazing up close? Come on then. Let me give you a free view. Get a load of my awesomeness right here and right now. Hahaha." Lu Zhen laughed though he still didn't make a move yet.

The Rock Golem was about 5 metres away from him when suddenly it froze as it took a step forward.

"A trap?" Sato narrowed his eyes. With this short display, he had already guessed Lu Zhen's class.

"Hehe. You fell for it." Lu Zhen chuckled before putting his right hand forward and grasping at the air.

As he did so, a dagger took shape in his already enclosed fist, with it's hilt held by his fist in a backhand style. Lu Zhen immediately propelled his body forward with one step and slashed at the Rock Golem. One slash however, wasn't enough to do the job as Rock Golems had very high resistance towards physical attack.

As a regular of sorts, to Black Grill's Cave, Lu Zhen was pretty much aware of this fact and that was why he didn't stop at one attack but went on to unleash a flurry of strikes.

Lu Zhen had the main class [Assassin], which was focused on burst attacks and agility. In Infinite Realm, one could arrange their attributes points based on two ways; the first being by manually placing the points in their desired attributes and the second is by letting the System do it for one's self. Lu Zhen had set his arrangement to be done automatically by the System. Not just him though but almost 70% of all players did the same; only a very few like Sato, bothered to arrange their attributes manually. The path of an assassin is one based on speed and high burst damage. With the System's automatic setting, his [Agility], [Dexterity] and [Strength] were his highest attributes.

With most of his attribute points in his [Agility], [Dexterity] and [Strength], each attack of his that made contact with the Rock Golem's body took a little bit of it's HP. A little bit of HP in exchange for one attack didn't sound so great but what if he attacked more than once in each second? With his almost absurd attack speed, Lu Zhen was able to land 3-5 strikes on the Rock Golem with each second that went by. He maintained his constant assault on the Rock Golem for at least 4 seconds before it's resistance kicked off and it retaliated aggressively with a punch sent his way.

This of course, wasn't much of an issue to Lu Zhen, whose reaction speed and movement speed was quite high; higher than the Rock Golem's at least. Lu Zhen easily dodged the fist attack and pierced his dagger at one of the Rock Golem's eyes.

Being an inanimate creature, the Rock Golem couldn't feel pain but that didn't mean that it felt comfortable with a dagger stuck in it's eye.

The Rock Golem used it's right hand to send a slap towards Lu Zhen. Upon seeing this, Lu Zhen retreated a few steps backwards. He studied the Rock Golem and from his system interface, he knew it had only about 60% HP or so left.

In 4 seconds, Lu Zhen had actually reduced it's HP by almost 40%! And this was even with the high resistance to physical attacks! And Lu Zhen still achieved this, what's more, with his regular attacks!

From the data Lu Zhen had sent Fudo and Sato on level 5 common ranked Rock Golems, they usually had about 250 HP. To have reduced it's HP by almost 40% in 4 seconds meant that the damage Lu Zhen could deal to this monster in each second was sizeable and shouldn't be underestimated. If the somewhat high physical attack resistance and high defense weren't there, Lu Zhen might have already killed off this monster.

"Tch. You're a tough one but today isn't your day buddy."

Slightly disappointed that he couldn't finish it quickly, Lu Zhen decided to go at it again. He dashed at the Rock Golem and before it could react, Lu Zhen brandished his dagger rapidly. He made full use of his speed advantage and circled around the monster while attacking it from various angles making it difficult for the slow folk to retaliate at him.

It didn't take long for this battle to end as it was a total one sided massacre to begin with. When the Rock Golem was about to use a skill, Lu Zhen had ended it with a skill of his own, taking out the last chunk of HP it had in a hurry thereby preventing it from going berserk.

"So, how did I do?" Lu Zhen looked at the duo while stretching his arms as if the short duel was but a warm-up.

"That was a trap right?" Sato looked at him. He was referring to that instance the Rock Golem had suddenly froze, giving Lu Zhen the opportunity to hold the advantage of the battle for himself from the beginning.

It is said that in a fight between experts or a close combat scuffle, one little mistake or an instance of slowing down, is more than enough to change the tide of a battle. The abrupt halting of the Rock Golem had given Lu Zhen the chance to have the upper hand in the fight otherwise, even if he defeated the Rock Golem, it wouldn't be so easy like this.

"Yep." Lu Zhen nodded.

"Impressive. I didn't even see you later a trap down." Fudo exclaimed a bit.

"Hehe. Why would you? My subclass is [Thief] after all." Lu Zhen smirked.

"Thief huh?" Sato pondered on what he had read about this subclass on the forums.

Apart from the three major subclass of [Alchemist], [Blacksmith] and [Scribe], there were a bunch of other different sub-classes. Infinite Realm focused on mimicking reality and so, a lot of different jobs that existed in reality also existed here as sub-classes. Like for instance, [Chef], [Engineer], [Architect], [Teacher], [Merchant] and so on and so forth. There were also a couple of jobs that were shunned in reality like the [Fraudster] and [Thief].

These 'dark classes' were usually taken up by dark players as it aided them in living their life against the law. Very few orthodox players actually chose any of this subclass as the process of learning them is not only special but the classes aren't as useful as the others like [Blacksmith] or even [Merchant]. However, everything has a time to shine on it's own.

The [Thief] subclass was usually paired with the [Assassin] main class. The reason for this is that the [Thief] subclass focuses a lot on [Dexterity] and reaction speed. Regular classes, apart from a few special ones like [Ranger] and [Swordsman], don't always have such a high reaction speed as [Assassin].

The [Thief] subclass of course had it's own specialty. Apart from unlocking treasure chests without the need for a key or a scroll, they could also set traps, passively boost some skills of the [Assassin] class and also had one special skill that was very good for escaping. Because of these features of it, especially the passive boost to [Assassin] skills and the escape skill, the [Thief] subclass is mostly valued by [Assassin] players.

The trap Lu Zhen had set up was actually done with the aid of his subclass. Usually, other classes could of course learn how to set a few simple traps but compared to the speed and proficiency of a [Thief], theirs is extremely disappointing and barely of any worth. While a regular player would need time and perhaps materials to set up a freezing trap like Lu Zhen did, he didn't actually need such, not even any material. Arranging such time traps for a [Thief] is akin to casting a low level spell for a mage; it could be done swiftly.

"Let's go. We need to level up and level 5 monsters like this aren't necessary. We need higher levelled ones." Sato said.

Lu Zhen then replied, "I know. That's why we're following this path. If we go in deeper for awhile, we would encounter a few level 6s or so. If we go past them, we should find a Rock Golem nest."

"A Rock Golem nest?"

"That's what I coined it. Simply put, it's their lair." Lu Zhen replied with a smug.

"Oh? How did you find that out though?"

Lu Zhen awkwardly laughed "Hehe. Back when I was level 4, I wandered in here and found it. Even though I was just by the perimeter, I almost died if not for my subclass' escaping skill. From what I saw then, there were at least 5 level 7s."

Sato held his chin and replied "5 level 7s just along the perimeter...There should possibly be more then. Alright, lead the way."

AN :

[1] Well ladies and gentlemen, this was my terrible but only feasible way of 'wording' the sound produced by the movement of Rock Golems.