Two things. One, this is hail, not rain. Two, can this really be called a marsh? It`s nothing but mud!

　　It`s pretty dark, but I can see plain as day that from the north side to Kentucky, there ain`t nothing but mud. Mudmudmudmudmudmudmudmud. Oh, and the hail beating down on it.

　　So this is what it feels like to get flogged? How novel!

　　I raise my nose into the air. Sniffsniffsniffsniff. Okay, it`s really hard to smell it above the wind and the hail and the mud, but I think I can sort of tell the approximate direction the lair is. I wonder who the lair belongs to? I`ll be sure to find out when I get there, but I`m still curious. Not curious enough to message Moleman—he`ll probably say something wildly different from the truth—but still.

　　Nowhere else to go but towards it.

　　I take a step towards the lair. I instantly slip and faceplant the mud again. The hail beats me into the mud like a hammer. If this isn`t just the perfect metaphor for my entire life, I don`t know what is.

　　I try to get back up to my feet. I slip and faceplant the mud. I try to get back up to my feet. I stand for three seconds or so before I slip again and kiss the mud. I try to get back up to my feet. I slip and faceplant the mud. I try to get back up to my feet. I stand. I take one step, and then one more, and then I fall. Plop. Splat. Eugh.

　　Enhanced Balance Lv.1>

　　Great. Wow. Thanks. You don`t say?

　　Okay, you know what? Normally, I try to do whatever`s best to increase my skills. We`ve established that, right? Yeah, but right now, if increasing my skills requires me to slip around in the mud like some clown-pig hybrid, then I`m not doing it. I`m just going to embrace the pig part and do this on all fours.

　　It`s still slippery, and I still end up eating mud an untold number of times, but if I just do this on all fours, I`m at least able to move forward. And I do so pretty well, until I start noticing hard, sharp things in the mud.

　　At first, I just assumed they were rocks or whatever, but after a bad slip that sent my hand deep into the mud, what I pulled out wasn`t just my hand, but also a skull.

　　A child-sized skull.

　　I blink at it. It doesn`t blink back, because its sockets are filled with mud. Its jaw is missing.

　　In a blind panic, I throw it as far away as I can, which isn`t all that far. It splashes down in the mud a few paces away, leaving me to quietly hyperventilate in the mud. Th-, that, um, that was&

　　My other hand touches something hard, just inches below the mud. Gulp. Slowly, with hands trembling definitely only from the cold and no other condition mental or otherwise, I pull it out. It`s another skull. Small. But this one still has teeth, and that`s the only reason I notice something`s afoot. The teeth look& weird. The canines are just a little bigger, and it`s got pronounced molars. Hm. Suspicious.

　　Curious, I dig around in the mud until I`ve unearthed an at least somewhat complete skeleton. The hail naturally cleans off all the mud caking it, so I don`t have to do any real cleaning myself. And with this complete skeleton in hand, I can say with at least somewhat certainty that this is probably not a child. From what my amazing inductive reasoning can gather, this is probably just a goblin. False alarm, crisis averted, no need to feel any fear.

　　Sighing, I toss the bones over my shoulder. I wish there was something fun I could do with them, but even if I make something cool, it`ll just get taken away at the end of the floor anyways.

　　I pick up a femur. From above, I can feel the hail drumming down on my exposed spine like it`s a xylophone. Hmm. I feel like I read somewhere that you can use bone to waterproof leather, but you probably need some kind of special technique to do that. Frankly speaking, I don`t know any such techniques. I`ll just have to make do, I guess.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

　　Throwing away the femur, I continue.

　　Man, the wind is really becoming a fair bit loud, huh? If I hadn`t heard winds that howled even louder than this, I would have assumed I was surrounded by a terrifying whirlwind of ghosts or something, haha. Haha. Hahaha&

　　Um, it isn`t ghosts, right? Ghosts are—pardon the expression—spooky.

　　I don`t know why, but ever since I was small, ghosts have irked me. You can`t touch them, you can`t kill them—they`re already dead—and they can do anything they want to you. Most monsters you can kill with a bullet or faith in the One God, but ghosts? Nuh-uh. Invulnerable. Unkillable.

　　I know some games have killable ghosts, but I think that`s very unrealistic. Ghosts are already dead. Where are they supposed to go when you kill them? Superhell? Makes no sense.

　　B—b—b—but, I mean, it doesn`t sound all that much like spooky ghost moaning. Only a little. But the wind makes that sound all the time. Oooooooo: that`s the sound the wind makes. Oooohhhhh.

　　"Oooooohhhhhh&"

　　Yup. Just the wind. No need for me to do anything except keep crawling at a nice, reasonable pace. Haha. Hahaha& Erm, is it just me, or is that ghastly moaning that`s totally just the wind coming a little bit closer?

　　In the smattering hailstorm, across the muddy marsh, in spite of the clawing winds and biting gale, I see a shadow stand, almost relaxed in the horrible tempest.

　　My blood freezes to ice and I can feel my heart cease its drumming.

　　"Ooohhhh& Oooohhhhhhh& Whyyyyyyyy&" the shadow moans, its cries conjoining with the weeping wind and the grating hail.

　　Slowly, I draw myself back. But my movement, as driven by sheer fright as it is, only serves to bring the shadow closer to me, for with every step I take, the shadow moves forward by three, its legs only barely moving while still bringing its body forth, sailing atop the mud like a phantom, its approach unhampered by the need for physicality in movement.

　　I try to crawl backwards but the haste in my limbs makes me slip and slip and I can do nothing but slip around like a soap bar in an oiled bathtub as the shadow steps closer, and closer, until it is just above me, and with eyes as wide as saucers, I stare up at it, my jaw trembling and a word hanging just on the tip of my tongue.

　　&Zombie?

　　Its body—flayed by the hail—is skinless, the muscles covering its limbs torn and exposed to such a point where the individual strands of muscle hang like thick hairs from both arms and legs. In various places, bones hiding just beneath the surface of the hairy muscle break through in flecks of white. From within the pried-open sockets of its face, a pair of staring eyes emerge, lacking both eyelids.

　　&Okay, so it`s a zombie.

　　Pheww, that was scary! Turns out it was just a simple zombie, so there`s no need to get hysterical.

　　Man, I really thought I was going to die there! If it`s just a zombie, there`s no need for fright. Zombies are easy to take care of, all you`ve gotta do is bash their brains in and they`re gone. No silver or cross required. Wonderful.

　　The zombie raises its index finger and points it at me. I stare at it. Is it just a common thing in this place to rudely point at people? It isn`t very polite, even if the one doing it is a dead man. Or, in this case, going by the drooping ears and the small build, dead goblin.

　　Its eyes pierce into me.

　　"You&" it says in a long, hoarse drawl. "You did this&"

　　Huh. Did I? I can`t remember dabbling in necromancy, but if you say it, then it must be true. Never doubt the words of a dead guy, that`s what they always say. I mean, they`re already dead, so what`s the use in lying? Then again, if they`ve already died, then it`s not like sinning even more will get them any worse off than they already are.

　　But that`s a sticky subject, and I`d do best to refrain from it. After all, right now, I`ve got a brain to bash in.

　　That exposed skull worn by that zombie goblin looks just right, wouldn`t you say?

　　Since it`s standing and I`m on the floor, my first order of business is to get us both on the same ground, which is easily done by grabbing hold of both of its cold, soggy legs and pulling them out from under it. The zombie-shade-goblin makes a weird croaking kind of sound as it falls into the dirt and mud with a splash. Not waiting for it to recover, I jump on top of it and just kind of start wailing on it.

　　Out of curiosity, I made a mental list of which types of attack could actually kill it and which ones did exactly zilch.

　　Clawing and slicing were ineffective since it didn`t bleed.

　　Dismembering it was also sort of ineffective, as the removed limbs continued moving.

　　Evisceration, disembowelment and similar removals were also useless. It was already lacking a number of internal organs, and the rest were necrotic and mushy, so removing them was actually more beneficial than averse.

　　Blunt attacks didn`t do much.

　　I bit off its head by severing the neck, but it was still going, so no luck there either.

　　Out of sheer curiosity, I used TRT to check what else didn`t do much of anything. Turns out, basically nothing had any effect on it whatsoever.

　　But, by the end of it, I did level up my TRT, so that was nice.

　　Touch of Reversed Tolerance Lv.3>

　　I continued using TRT until I got bored of the whole thing, at which point I was at least able to get it to level up again.

　　Touch of Reversed Tolerance Lv.4>

　　The whole thing would be a lot more interesting if the goblin-zombie-shade reacted by doing basically anything other than limply writhe beneath me, but whatever.

　　I bash its brains in, but it`s still moving. Huh. Is that not how zombies are defeated here? Okay, uh, what about the heart? Oh, yeah, it`s half-necrotic. Nevermind. Hmmm&

　　After a few minutes of careful consideration, I finally find the solution. If I was in a zombie movie or something I`d never do this, but since this isn`t technically a zombie of the viral disease sort, it works, I think.

　　I eat the zombie.