Absolute Shopping Addict 8 Chapter 8

In a life-or-death situation, he was screaming for money.

People around him rubbed their eyes as if they couldn't believe what was going on before them.

Even more so when in the middle of cracking another goblin warrior's neck, another goblin archer sprang up, aimed its crossbow with shaking hands, and with a guttural roar fired it at the bat-wielding madman before it stiffened and crumpled into the dirt, dead.

The Awakeners who weren't paying attention to him before were now looking at him in abject horror, as with a loud thunk, the arrow buried itself in his shoulder.

Those who weren't in battle had to wince and look away from the sound.

"That stings," a voice said.

They looked back to see only a slight trickle of blood on Jake's shirt, as the arrow barely broke the skin.

He pulled out the arrow that was barely clinging onto his shoulder easily, and looked at his shoulder.

"Barely a scratch," he said, and turned towards one of the goblins who was about to strike him, "now I can't say I haven't been shot at in my life before."

He moved his shoulder to see if the wound was impeding his motion, and seeing that it didn't, went back to gripping the bat with both hands, and blew out the knee of the goblin attacking him with one well-placed swing.

After another swing to the neck took care of that problem, Jake took a while to see that all he got for being shot by an arrow was a hole in his shirt and a wound that looked more like a bee had stung him rather than an arrow pierced his flesh.

'So THIS is the power of physical defense,' he thought, thinking about how that little an improvement turned what would have been a painful and debilitating arrow wound to his shoulder into nothing more than a bug bite.

'This changes things.

If before, I was careful to not get hit, now I can take a shot or two and keep going. And that means…'

His grin stretched even wider, and as he took his bat for a couple of spins, both his fellow Awakeners and the elite goblins stopped in their tracks, turning to the source of that unpleasant aura, only to see a man with a bat smiling like a man possessed.

'…The other Awakeners have been fighting defensively ever since the elites showed up. I'm going to take the fight to these guys. More enemies, more kills, more money.'

'I've already taken out five and gained 2,500 points: so if it's 500 points per kill, then I have to kill nine more of these armored nuisances to make enough,' he thought as he pried off the plate armor of an elite goblin and caved in its ribcage with a two-handed swing.

Make that eight.

The moment he hurled himself into where the goblins' position was strongest was when the atmosphere of the battle began to change.

***

"AAAAAAAARGH!"

The yell of one man is enough to snap the Awakeners out of their desperation, so when they see the pressure on holding the line ease up for a moment, they hear, and they see.

One man is single-handedly in the middle of the fray, smashing goblins in a gleeful frenzy with his baseball bat, and not giving a care about anything around him.

Not even the Awakeners could stop themselves from giving him looks as they were also holding the line.

"What is that freak doing?"

"He's laughing… while killing the monsters."

"They're backing away!"

"Their archers are singling him out but he's shrugging those arrows off like nothing!"

"The more they're firing at him the less they're firing at us! They're scared!"

"PRESS THE ATTACK!"

And in the middle of the fight was Jake himself, like the proverbial eye of the storm.

Instead of making it so that he faced fewer opponents, he faced down the entire troop of elite goblins, going after them with the frenzy of those gone berserk.

Jake Smithson liked to believe that when he smiled, joy would radiate from his face.

However, the fact that he was currently brutalizing a bunch of goblins who were not trained on what to do if a berserker suddenly shows up in their midst and starts making mayhem made his smile look, well, frightening.

But right now, he was too busy paying attention to putting his bat to goblin heads and making enough points to worry about something like that.

Thanks to his stunt, Jake broke the elite goblins' formation, and he did not stop swinging the bat all the while.

No strain, no pull, no ache.

He felt like he could do this all day long – that increase to his physical defense maximized his hunting efficiency.

In the corner of his eye, he could see his fellow Awakeners finished the job he started. One line of the goblins had been annihilated.

As they were regrouping, Jake noticed something at the corner of his eye.

[You currently have 7,200 points]

'If my math was right, I killed 14 elite goblins to make this many points,' he thought, and as soon as he realized he could make his purchase then and there, Jake lowered his shoulders, feeling all of the acc.u.mulated fatigue in the battle wash over him like a wave.

"What did that guy in Literature 101 say?" he asked no one after finding a place to take a breather and using a dead goblin as a makeshift seat. "I know what happiness is, for I have done good work."

'Let's get this party started!' Jake thought, the Hidden Stat Extravaganza clawing at the back of his mind while he was recklessly in the thick of battle like a rainbow to chase.

Even now, it was still encouraging him despite his fatigue, and common sense telling him to wait until after the battle to make those purchases.

He opened the Awakening Store in a flash, not even bothering to care if other Awakeners would see packages appearing from thin air in front of him.

'Like I give a c.r.a.p if they see it,' he thought with some disdain and some haste as he navigated to where the Hidden Stat Extravaganza Event was ongoing.

'It's not like they have the same cla.s.s as I do, because the Awakening Store said that I am the ONLY shopper in Nohas. So there!'
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The feeling of buying several expensive items with a discount and a free gift was so close, he could almost taste it.

It was almost like euphoria, how he felt each time he saw a bargain and he could buy it.

If Jake could quantify the joy he got from it with a number between one and ten, he would rate it an eleven, easily.

Rating an eleven came with shivering in antic.i.p.ation, the clouds parting, and angels riding delivery trucks driving up to him and hand-delivering the thing he purchased.

He was giving off an aura of such joy that an elite goblin felt it and broke off from the line to find the source.

And when the goblin saw the target, it roared and charged…

…only to run headfirst into a baseball bat, its helmet caved in and the front of its skull turned into fragments due to its momentum and the speed by which the Shopping Addict had brought out his weapon.

"I am having… A MOMENT HERE!" he yelled with such vehemence that other goblins who wanted to ambush him suddenly had a burst of self-preservation and decided to go after the line of Awakeners locked in battle with their fellows.

"So if you could please, give me a moment," he said, his face shifting from a fearsome demon into a serene angel in mere moments, as soon as a courier box appeared in his arms from nowhere.

"Welcome home, my baby!" he said, his gruff voice incongruous with the motherly tone with which he was addressing the package.

"What in the world is that all of a sudden?" a sword-wielding Awakener asked in confusion, the yell making him look.

"Is that… is that a courier box?" a magic-wielding Awakener – standing behind the swordsman – added.

The scene that they were viewing was surreal. A courier box appeared from nowhere at the scene of the battle, right into the arms of the man responsible for breaking as many goblins as another Awakener.

The Awakener was currently using a dead goblin as a seat, and tearing open the packaging tape, in the middle of a battlefield, right while a battle is taking place.

"Are you kidding me? The package is not sealed properly? What happened here? I'm going to Customer Service and see to getting the idiot who mangled this simple job reprimanded. For the love of, you just had one lousy job!"

The Awakeners who could hear his tirade were all sporting similar pole-axed expressions.

"What's he ranting about?"

"He's angry about packaging?"

It was inevitable that any of Jake's raging was met with confusion and a lack of understanding, since only a madman would find issue with packaging in the middle of a battlefield, while a battle is taking place.

And it was inevitable that Jake did not give a single thought what the other Awakeners thought about him.

"Hi. Customer Service? The last package you sent me? The Hidden Stat Extravaganza books? Yes. I'd like to report something. You seem to have forgotten to stuff your package properly. Yes, the spines of the books have some visible damage while in transit. What is wrong with you people? How are you guys going to compensate this overwhelming dejection?"

All it mattered to him at this very moment was the sense of dejection he was overwhelmed by and the compensation from the store to make this situation up.

Fortunately, the Awakening Store knew how to run their business properly.

- I'm so sorry that we have caused such trouble to our beloved customer. We usually don't make such mistake… but please don't worry. We will do our best to make it up!

It took Customer Service a mere ten minutes to turn Jake's frown from the damaged spines of the books upside down.

***

During those ten minutes, the elite goblins had figured out that the man with the box would only attack them in retaliation, and so they focused on the others holding the line.

The push back was even stronger than before, and the Awakeners were beginning to get overwhelmed.

Liam, however, unaffected by the situation, was steadily taking down the goblins one by one and showed impact just as much as Jake.

However, even though he had gained a level during all the fighting, could not handle the increased amount of attention given to him by the goblins.

So were the other Awakeners, and they were slowly pushed back by the flooding goblins.

"Help, please!"

"Get away from me!"

As more Awakeners began to falter and the healers began to tire, some of them began to a.s.sail Jake with harsh language.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h! What the h.e.l.l are you doing and laughing? Help us! Kill the goblins!"

"What are you f.u.c.king standing around there for?"

As soon as the last of the blue wisps vanished around Jake, he stood up and saw that the Awakeners no longer called for help, as they were gasping to hold the line with their very last efforts.

One of the goblins had broken into one of the knights' guard, opening a gap in the line of Awakeners defending the city, and they were poised to move in triumph…

…only for the goblin to see a black blur speeding towards its face before its life got snuffed out in one swing of a bat.

Witnessing the scene, the language coming out from the Awakeners suddenly soften up, but in a greater desperation.

"Please help us! I beg you!"

"Sir, please! Spare our lives!"

As if reacting to their plead, Jake began to take down the goblins with couple swings, but oddly enough, there was a delightful smile on his face.

'I knew I could get a compensation from it. Even though this is the place I can only shop now, still I have to remain strong and take the upper hand…'

'…that's how you get compensation when things go awry upon ordering something,' Jake thought as his experience with online shopping had come through for him yet again.

Just as expected, the Awakening Store compensated Jake, with a reward now sitting in his inventory that was more substantial than what Jake expected

'But for now, let's go for more points. Who knows when the next package will be, and what it will cost?

This is exactly why I take extra hours. More kills, more money, more points, MORE SHOPPING!'

Into the breach he flew in once more, not out of concern for his fellow Awakeners, but because those goblins were so sure they'd win that they failed to notice him jump into the fray and start swinging his bat like mad.

"I'm saving for a rainy day so you armored misfits can all just curl up and die!" he yelled as his bat began finding goblin joints to break once more.

However, when one was about to hit him from the side, he turned his upper body to dodge the blow, and swung when he turned back in one smooth motion.

The result was when the goblin was. .h.i.t, it took one step, began bleeding from the nose and ears, and promptly dropped dead.

"Okay, THAT never happened before," he mused. "Could that be due to the Luck stat I gained from that book? Status Window, please."

While he was still in the fray, he continued to fight with the status window in the corner of his eye, sneaking looks towards it whenever he could.

[Name: Jake Smithson

Level: 1

Cla.s.s: Shopping Addict

Basic stats

Strength: 16

Agility: 14

Intelligence: 14

Mana: 2

Physical Defense: 2

Magical Defense: 2

Luck: 2

Skill: Shopping (Awakening Store currently in beta)]

He noticed that there were three new stats he gained, and Jake smiled as his skill in bargain hunting carried the day for him again.

'And this is why I never quit when shopping for events: the special items.'

For some strange reason, though, the elite goblins he was facing suddenly decided to retreat. Could it perhaps be to escape, or regroup, or…

An unearthly roar rippled through the battlefield, and Jake's thoughts about what to do with the first elite goblin he got his hands on were interrupted quite rudely.

Something was coming, and it sure wasn't one of those goblins – armored or not.

***

Jake turned to the source of the sound and heard the earth rumble as the source approached.

And he turned back to his fellow Awakeners, several of whom were already on their last legs.

The rest of them – along with most of their back line, their healers and supporters – were flung by the force of the roar into the town Brino, and were lying on the stone pavement, blood leaking from their ears.

'What kind of roar was that?' Jake asked. 'Just one was enough to break through all of them!'

As the tremors grew stronger and stronger, Jake and the rest of the Awakeners still standing were continuing to strike at whatever goblins they could find.

Jake reached an understanding as a fellow magician had mistakenly shot a flame spell at him for a second, but for that second the most he felt was a slight warmth.

'That's it,' he thought. My Magic Defense stat! 'That explains how I was still standing while everyone was messed up by that monster's roaring. Now, what to do n-'

His thoughts were interrupted as another flurry of arrows came sailing towards him.

None of them did any damage to him, but when Jake looked to the source of the arrows, even he of the implacable goblin slaying felt a giant ball of fear in the pit of his stomach.

The giant monster loomed ma.s.sively over the town of Brino, a group of elite goblin warriors and archers at its sides, sizing up the opposition to it.

And then it laughed.

Jake marveled at the monster – it had the head, tail and armor of a crocodile, but instead of green, its reptilian hide was a deep brown hue.

Growing on what appeared to be its hands were compact bony outgrowths that looked like skeletal gauntlets it used for pulverizing its foes.

That was frightening enough, but it looked like it was about ten feet tall, causing its already fearsome arms to become even more than that – each fist looked like it could take a single Awakener and crush it!

Jake's wonder had snapped the moment the voice in the sky spoke.

[A Boss Monster has arrived. All Awakeners, join forces and defeat the Werecrocodile!]

Another ma.s.sive roar that almost shook the foundations of Brino later, and Jake was glaring at the beast with eyes containing nothing but distilled anger, bat in his hand in a vice grip.

The Werecrocodile dropped its tail to the ground, lowered its stance, and began to move.