Thank you for replying. Yes, funnily enough, I just ran past her and found the save point. Then I was able to train on her til I could beat her; and, yeah, it was because of the low frames. (also, I only did it once, but she turned into a male goblin after the drain animation).
And on pausing in background. yes I mean minimized or in the background. Its not a big deal in this game I just noticed it when I first died and had to go through the intro again. Thought I’d let it play in the background, but when I came back it was still on the movie frame, and hadn’t even reached the text.