No matter how annoying Keros was with his RP stuff, at least he had the decency to allow me to kill the goblins on our way towards the goblin warlord. He did whine a bit about how it would endanger the poor village if we delay, but he still went along with it.

And, oh boy, there were goblins!

In just an hour trek through the forest, we had already encountered four different groups of six goblins each! We did try to see if I'll be getting any xp if he killed them, and he did actually intervene one or two times so as to minimize the damage and the downtime, but all in all, I had already killed twenty goblins!

Killing creatures was really the premiere way to xp it seems. In just that hour I had already gained more xp than the reward from the six-hour long quest to copy that damned parchment. Plus, I had literally doubled my stash of crystals, having twenty three now.

Alas, sacrifices had to be made eventually...

"Brother!!! What did that poor branch ever did to you?"

"What could POSSIBLY a branch do to me?"

"Then why did you break it?"

"...to light a fire?"

"YOU'RE GOING TO LIGHT A FIRE IN THE FOREST? Using its very own branches?!"

"Yes, that's what firewood is used for usually."

"I cannot allow it. We're here doing nature's work, cleansing the forest. We're not here to burn the forest down ourselves!"

"Look, firstly, I'm not THAT incompetent to light a forest on fire with just a tiny little fire. Secondly, no matter your rp bs, I do need a fire to bring Flame-kun back to life. So... deal with it."

"With a flint?!"

"You have a better way?"

"Look brother... I did take you under my wing, and together we will vanquish this plague from our forest. But... with all this delay with you killing the goblins, we can't also afford to wait for you to gather wood, and start a fire with flint. It'll just take too long."

"Nah, I can do it in like five minutes, tops. Don't worry."

"Brother... choose, goblins or fire?"

So, he really was just bored just slowly following me around as I cleared the goblins and wanted the quest to finish quickly... I could get behind that, I'm not THAT unreasonable.

"...They seem to have good magic defense, don't they? Dirt-kun is fine afterall!"

And simply as that, I was relegated to run three Dirt-kuns and a Rock-kun. Liquid-chan? That will leave me with only one full waterskin! Killing goblins was a man's job afterall, chans had no reason to be here!

It took another ten minutes or so, and another group of goblins, before we noticed a cacophony of squeaking voices up ahead.

The good thing with our composition was that both of us could sneak closer to take a look. The bad thing with our compositions was... we both could sneak, ergo we lacked either a tank or a healer.

In front of us laid a huge, thirty or more meters wide, area of complete devastation. A horde of filthy goblins was scurrying along huge, chopped, trunks of trees.

We were in the deep part of the forest, with pines reaching upwards to ten, fifteen, meters high blocking the sky, lush undergrowth full of color and life, animal sounds echoing all around us. And like someone had pulled a curtain, the scenery changed.

It wasn't like someone had cut the trees and cleared the place. It was more like a bomb had dropped right in the middle of the clearing. All sounds of life replaced by the annoying, continuous, high pitched screaming of the goblins.

Shrubs laid upside down, the trees were messily chopped down, falling one on top of the other, the flowers and the rest of the low vegetation trampled down, being reduced to muddy piles of waste. The very ground was riddled with holes, merging with the fallen trunks to make sloppy residences for the horde.

Right in front of our eyes, the devastation was evolving. The goblins were digging more holes using their hands. Breaking branches to make clubs. Using rusty hatchets to further mutilate the trees surrounding the area.

And right in the middle a huge, two meters high, brute, was sitting on top of an uneven stump which was at least a meter in diameter, surveying his army with his left hand resting on a rusted fireman's axe that was even bigger than my total height.

Unlike the normal goblins, he was wearing a patchwork of furs and badly cut, thick, leather covering his whole body except his face. And what a face that was. His hairless mug was distorted even worse than the goblins. So much that in fact, I doubted it counted as one of them anymore. What's worse was that it was altered in a way that goblins were rare beauties compared to him.

A scar crossed his face just below his uneven eyes. Without eyebrows, his forehead looked huge. A very strong, and very square, jaw was extending from his face, making him look like a chimpanzee or something. From there, two large tusks were sprouting upwards, so crooked that it made you wonder if he could even eat. The rest, extremely pointy and long, teeth were equally warped, accentuating the visage of ugliness itself. But the thing that really drew you in was his eyes. Unlike the goblins' sickly yellow color, his were deep, glowing, and red, like someone had stuck two embers right into the sockets.

I took a breath to calm down, and turned towards Keros, right in time to snatch the loaded arrow from the bow. That was a lucky save.

Keros shot me an angry glare, but I pointed towards the back, my eyes making clear that I won't accept no for an answer.

I walked a good two minutes away from the clearing before I let my anger explode, making certain that my voice didn't exceed that of a whisper of course.

"Are you insane??? We can't kill that!"

His solemn face momentarily caused me to forget I was speaking to a thirteen-year-old.

"We have to brother. You saw what he has done already. It'll only get worse."

"Yes. Yes, we need to kill him. But you see, there is this slight issue. WE CAN'T. What did you do to deserve such an impossible quest?!"

"Well... we were a six man war-party when we did so."

"AND WHERE ARE THEY?!"

"One left for the human lands, the other is Spitha, and the other three, when the Gods told us that we could no longer freely cross the veil to the other world, chose to leave, and stay beyond this world."

"That's it! Message Spitha to come!"

I saw him concentrate, probably messaging her, before he once more turned towards me, making a difficult face.

"What?"

"Err, you see, she said she's... she's..."

He seemed stuck, trying to figure out what to say.

"Use her words, you're just delivering a message after all"

Obviously relieved by the simple excuse for breaking his persona, he spoke in a single breath, like trying to be done as quickly as possible.

"She said that she found the perfect grinding spot and there's no way in hell to leave it before she grinds at least a level."

Dammit!

"Then we'll go the elven village and recruit more people to come and help us."

"Impossible, the village is about two hours from here, it'll take us at least four hours."

"So??? He waited for two days, he can surely wait for four hours more."

"He didn't wait... The druid that gave us the quest told us that we should hurry because the stronger he gets, the faster he'll continue to grow and attract allies. In three days time, he would be strong enough to subjugate the whole forest. And more than two days have already passed."

Checking my map I could see that I was far closer to Grinea, maybe just an hour away. But I somehow doubted that the game would casually allow me to use an obviously OP NPC to clear a starting area boss.

"Why did you even come solo then?!"

"Well, when the druid first warned us we were still newborn Lost souls, our soul strength barely level 3. I thought that now that I've grown..."

"Well, you thought wrong, it's impossible. We don't even have some form of big aoes to deal with minions, there were around fifty goblins there."

"I have."

"What?"

"They did the mistake of butchering nature. Nature will now arise against them! I don't care if I die. I'll use all my strength to take as many as I can to the grave with me!"

He does like big words, doesn't he?

"You have aoe? Some way to kill multiple goblins by yourself?"

"Yes, if I use their own power against them."

"Their own power? You can make them fight each other? Like a confusion or something?"

"What? No! I meant the pieces of their soul they leave behind when we kill them."

"Crystals eh... maybe... well whatever, yolo."

"Brother? I can't understand you."

"Don't mind me, it's a battlecry. "

"Then?..."

"Let's give it a try. BUT, we're doing this properly. This skill of yours, do you use magic attack or physical attack?"

"Both. The initial hit is physical. Then, if the arrow penetrates the target, I use magic for the rest of the stuff like the roots and the poison."

"And the aoe yore talking about?"

"That's magical."

"Gotsa, give me your bow for a second."

If I had a mana potion I could also inscribed his armor like mine, but apparently, he only had 4 healing potions, which obviously I took one of.

With the inscription done, all that was left was experimentation. Even with having given half the crystals we gathered from the goblins to Keros, I still had twenty six of them.

I used magic ink to make an air dart, but nothing extra happened. Then I tried making another while I had a crystal next to it, again nothing. Remembering how magic ink was made, I pulverized it and sprinkled it above another air dart. That failed once more, but I noticed that the ink glowed a bit before the inscription took place. I grounded one more crystal and slowly sprinkled it just above the ink. Seeing the reaction, I slowly continued to do so until the ink was more like a paste.

You've gained the Infused Elementals talent Soul-infused inscriptions.

Soul-infused inscriptions

By directly using monster stones your inscribed elementals become stronger. Requires magic paste. Purity of the paste required depends on infusion tier.

Alright! Step one done.

Since those don't have duration I made four more infusions, enough for one more trap, bringing me up to four traps, 3 normal, and 1 soul-inscribed. I also made another 3 such darts, reaching 4 and leaving me with a stack of 16 crystals.

There was one last thing to do. I checked again the skill tooltip to make certain that it indeed said that the size of the infused item affected its effect and took out my trusty old stone dagger, my very first weapon since I started playing. Obviously, I had to fake the emotional part since it was actually a crappy weapon that only led me to trouble, but whatever. I used magic ink for a permanent physical attack inscription on it, and then infused a stone burst, using yet another crystal, into it, making the runes glow momentarily before they faded inside the dagger.

Now, elementals time. Given the encounter, I had to decide between Rock-kun for more defense or Dirt-kun for that root skill they did. But since I was positive that the only one who could do meaningful damage was Keros, I decided for Dirt-kun for easier kiting.

I mentally apologized to whichever Dirt-kun would die as I crushed another monster stone on a patch of the ground and summoned an earth elemental there, choosing the extra strength option instead of the longer duration this time.

The only thing that happened was that a normal looking Dirt-kun rose, bringing me up to four and a single Rock-kun.

WAIT A MINUTE! Why there were five elementals now???

I paused momentarily and started searching the forums about elementalism. The new guide had nothing on it, but on the old, now antiquated, beta guide, it clearly pointed to the source of my misunderstanding. It seemed that elementals were area based. Depending on the surrounding locale, the strength and amount could wildly change. Deep in their element, like a volcano for fire, underwater for water, high in the air for air and lastly, deep underground for earth, you could control up to twelve of that kind but severely less, up to zero in some cases, from the others. And then, the rest of the regions were somewhere in between, with examples like high mountain tops for air and earth, frozen tundras for air and water, and earth and fire for desert. Here, in a forest, earth was the dominant element.

Returning my senses back to my previous work, and seeing that this time the powdered crystal had failed me, I just put another one crystal on top of the earthen soil and resummoned. As the elemental rose, the crystal melted inside his form. A Dirt-kun covered with translucent, radiating, blue-green veins of energy running his length appeared.

You've gained the Elementalism talent Soul-infused elementals.

Soul-infused elementals

By directly using monster stones your elementals become stronger and last longer. Requires monster stone. Size of the monster stone required depends on the elemental tier.

Congratulations! For acquiring three different soul-infusion talents, you gain the skill Soulstone enhancement mastery

Soulstone enhancement mastery

Your expertise in using monster stone shows. Increases the power of all of your soul enhancements by a % equal to the skill level.

Nice! I even got a new skill! Although it does looks kinda crappy given that it only gives me a 1% boost on a consumable source of power... but whatever, I'm not one to complain about free stuff!

The downside was that I was now at thirteen stones left, and with a duration of only ten minutes, I don't think that this particular Rad-kun would last that long given the preparations I still had to do. That meant that I would be left with just five stones after all this was done, and all for something that smelled like a failed attempt and a quick way back to the village...

There used to be a time where I would consider the pros and the cons, the expenditure of resources to the potential rewards, the risk vs the rewards. But that time had long passed, now I just focused on the immediate goals, and the immediate goal now was to have Keros stop glaring me and pressuring me that the time passes.

"Keros, add me as a friend and follow me."

"You're done? Finally! Now let's show those filthy goblins what it means to mess with our forest!"

"Yeah, slow your horses. Add me as a friend and then we'll communicate through messaging because we'll split up later on."

xXLegolassXx13 wants to add you to his friendslist. Accept? Y/N

"Good, now follow me and wait." I messaged him, trying to get comfortable with the whole 'type what you think' system that messaging used.

As soon as I had visual contact with the clearing, I saw something weird going on. For starters, there seemed to be even more goblins now, maybe ten or so more, and secondly, even though it only took me half an hour for all of my experiments, the monstrosity's skin had a distinctive grayish tone now. The goblin warlord was standing and pacing around a place where motes of energy, similar to what returns to earth when you kill a monster, were floating. In the blink of the eye, the motes settled, transforming into a freshly formed pack of six goblins. The warlord gave them a good look, and with a sneer, he instantly chopped down the four weakest-looking ones, strands of energy floating towards him this time instead of disappearing into the earth. The other two started running panicked, grabbing whatever branch was around as a makeshift club, and disappearing into the chaos of the rest of the horde that was cheering as their warlord's skin turned a bit more gray, and his muscles rippled a tiny bit giving him a few extra kilos of mass.

It seems we indeed were running out of time. I planted my three regular deathtraps in a roughly triangular formation with some distance in between them, trying to put them in between trees that would somehow force the goblins in tighter formations to pass through. Keros was quick on the uptake on how he should kite the mass of goblins towards the traps sequentially.

"I probably won't be strong enough to do any serious damage to the boss. What I'll try to do is buy you some time to clear the horde of goblins by drawing the attention of the boss while you clear them. If you manage that, and he's the only one left in the clearing, there is a slight possibility that we'll actually manage to kite him around and actually beat him. But while there is a horde around him, that's practically impossible."

I renewed the inscriptions on his bow and immediately started sneaking around the camp while still messaging him.

"Now, whatever you do, DO NOT, for ANY reason, attack before I give you the signal."

With the corner of my eyes, I saw him nodding before I was already too far away. Time was of the essence here with the duration of his inscription ticking and the boss getting stronger by the moment.

I circled the clearing, as fast as I could without drawing any attention to myself, thank god for the stupidity of the goblins, until I was about the opposite of where Keros was. Approaching as much as I dared, I planted the last trap, the soul-infused one, and then instantly spend all my mana on renewing my own inscriptions. I plopped down, activating meditation for three minutes, getting my mana back, and summoned eight Rad-kuns as I messaged to Keros.

"Go"

One, I started counting the seconds inside my head.

I saw a single arrow rising up in the air, making a beautiful curve as it gained height and started falling towards the mass of goblins. It flew perfectly up, and, unreasonably, started to pick up more speed as it fell, straight into the ground, piercing it and staying stuck in a small mound of dirt.

He missed???

A second later, another arrow rose to the air, and as I was lamenting the epic failure, suddenly, the area surrounding the first arrow burst from vines violently sprouting from beneath the loose soil, growing rapidly and grasping the goblins around it. The second arrow was already planted a few meters away, and a third one was already in the sky before the goblins even knew what hit them, as one by one, the arrows planted themselves and then grew the vines directly underneath them.

Panic fell on the mass of goblins, but a single high pitched scream from one of them standing near the edge, where he pointed towards the general direction of Keros, changed the mindless horde to a force with a single purpose: rush the intruder.

As Keros position was revealed, I saw him jump down the tree he had previously taken residence on and shooting another twig arrow to the nearest goblin. What I initially thought was the arrow piercing through the goblin, turned out to be a single, slim, pole-like branch extending from the actual arrow, piercing three more goblins before it stopped.

Five

The boss was already on the move, rushing towards Keros alongside his minions. Or, to be more precise, rushing above his minions, without a care in the world if he trampled them or not. Another arrow flew towards the goblins as I finally lost visual contact with Keros, as he probably was moving in position to have the goblins walk over the first trap.

Six

I jumped out of hiding, soul-infused air dart on hand, praying that my aim won't suck.

Seven

The dart flew perfectly straight with incredible speed, but just before it connected, a goblin jumped in front of its path. It dug into the monster's flesh and exploded, blowing it up in pieces. The advancing boss paused for a second, looking back, towards me, and sneered.

Eight.

Rage in this game wasn't anything special mechanics wise, it builds up slowly from the second a battle starts, and then again in chunks when you were hit, or you hit stuff. Eight seconds of battle and a single successful attack were all I needed to reach 21 rage, one more than the amount required.

"Hiding behind others? What ARE you, AN ELF?" I shouted as hard as I could so as to be heard above the screaming goblins.

Your provoke was super effective!

The boss' eyes flared red as he instantly changed directions and started running towards me. I don't know if it was an ability or my perception since now he was charging me, but he seemed quite faster than what he was a few seconds ago.

I quickly retreated towards the back, barely managing to cross over my trap and gain a few meters of safety before the huge explosion threw me to the ground. Before I even stood up, my own army of Rad-kuns was already rushing towards the goblin giant. The moment I stood up, I had to drop prone once more just to dodge a flying Rad-kun, courtesy of the boss' boot, but thankfully the little guy was somehow still alive and well, it rushed back to his position as a sound of an explosion from Keros side echoed.

You feel a presence watching you.

It seemed that the trap was actually quite effective, with one of his legs being shred all over, black blood gushing out as he hobbled. The warlord tried to simply pass over the tiny elementals in his efforts to reach me but, like one, they all used their ability and a pair of giant earthen hands rose from the ground, grabbing the boss by its boots and keeping him still as the little ones started pummeling. I immediately dismissed the incomprehensible system screen that distracted me from the battle and stood up once more.

As his attention wavered, I found the perfect opportunity to hide behind a tree and slowly circled my way towards its back. Despite being as fast as I could without exposing myself, I saw two of my elementals being dead already, their bodies hacked into pieces with just two or three slashes of his giant axe each. No matter my expertise, it really seemed that he was far superior level wise compared to me.

Despite that, I could do only what I could do. Steeling myself I activated the Hatred control skill for reduced aggro generation and I walked directly behind the distracted boss. I planted my dagger right between his shoulder blades, backstabbing and slashing as I always did so many times already. A second explosion could be heard in the distance. I don't know if it was my skill or if the stronger, and soul-infused elementals, were so much better than me, but he didn't even seem to mind me as he continued to slash at my poor money... I meant elementals. Two more attacks, a stab, and a slash later I could already see blood dripping from his back, seeping into the rugged fur he wore.

All of the sudden, the boss spun around, slashing a full circle around him while holding his axe with both of his hands. For a split second I saw the four remaining elementals being flung to the air, and then I could only see the clear blue sky as I too joined the flying squad. A deep red -50 flashing in front of my eyes.

It was the first time that I actually had managed to reach a full rage bar while in combat, giving me a 10% bonus on all damage but, more importantly and more confusing, also making me actually seethe with rage against the damned boss, making me really want to kill it.

With the elementals out of his way, he casually walked towards my prone body, raised his axe single-handedly overhead, and violently brought it down while yelling an incomprehensible warcry of his own. I barely managed to dodge by rolling towards my right, and seeing as the axe had cut deep into the ground, rooting it there, I found the opportunity to stand up and retrieve a soul-infused air-dart. From point blank, against a target that huge, it would have been embarrassing if I missed. As the dart exploded it dug a fist sized hole into his already shredded leg. Almost in sync with the goblin's pained yell, a third explosion from Keros side sounded.

The warlord unlodged his axe, and tried to rush to me once more. And again, an earthen hand raised itself from the ground, grabbing his injured leg, and forcing him to fall, face first, on the ground, as four really angry elementals surrounded him and started punching at wherever they could find an open wound.

Glancing over the clearing behind me, it was devoid of life, but the sounds of battle somewhere inside the forest could still be heard. Before the giant goblin could react, I was already running as much as my stamina allowed towards the clearing, jumping over fallen logs and dirt pits. As expected, the elementals could not hold him down as he tried to rush towards me, his crippled leg making him much slower than me. I fished another dart, a normal one this time, from my pouch and launched it towards him, but he easily deflected it with the broad side of his axe. Despite that, I could already see the path to victory ahead, that is, as long as Keros actually managed to kill the horde of goblins.

Running around the battlefield, I picked up another dart and threw it at him, this time actually managing to hit him squarely in the chest and blowing a piece of his leather armor away. Despite having four elementals on his toes following him and punching him, he was completely disregarding them as he slowly marched towards me. In disbelief, I saw that he was slowly gaining speed instead of losing. His eyes were flaming red now, the embers inside them burning with extreme hatred. I continued to kite around, using another three darts when it finally became apparent that his wounds were slowly, but surely, closing.

As I was about to curse my luck, a twig arrow passed right above my head and lodged itself right on one of the open wounds of the goblin, making it scream in pain once more. Keros was slowly walking towards us, in a state even worse than the warlord, but with an evil grin etched into his face as he started unloading arrow after arrow towards the hobbled boss.

Every arrow that hit an armored part of the boss was simply deflected, as if the leather armor was made out of steel, but thankfully, the bomb, the darts, my stabs, and the Rad-kuns had stripped and shredded enough parts of the armor to actually allow plenty of the arrows to stick, and soon, from most of the lodged arrows a green liquid was oozing out.

It was a done deal by now. He obviously had switched his attention to the elf, but with a mostly gone leg, and poison rushing through all of his body, he could only slowly crawl towards his death.

And finally, the system screen we longed for, appeared.

Quest successful. You vanquished the Goblin Warlord. The forest is once again safe. Rewards: 4000xp, Big increase in reputation with Aerlinth, enchant of your choice from Druid Ermianth.

Congratulation for defeating an enemy at least 8 levels higher than you. You unlocked Achievement Duelist I. You gain 1 skill point.

Now, that was easy wasn't it? Let's see you try tier II and III.

Level up!

You gain 1 ability and 1 skill point.

Skill points were a bit trickier. Elementalism was my highest skill, so a full free level on it should be the maximum xp gain. Plus, getting level 10 would probably have a talent.

Infused Elemental was also awesome it seems, what you would expect from a combined skill. Alongside trapping, it gave us the battle basically, by destroying the boss's leg. Let alone that the darts could blow the boss' armor which not even Keros arrows pierced.

I also liked Elemental playground. In theory. My nonexistent artistic capabilities made it mostly useless since it was just an illusion skill that couldn't fool anyone. Higher level meant more believable, but it was too expensive to grind it, so it made sense to artificially boost it first with level ups, at least until the details became believable enough.

Lastly, Dagger mastery, even though it just leveled on this battle and gave me one more nice attack, was my most disappointing attack skill at the moment. It could certainly use the boost.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumbling noise followed by repeating thunderclaps from behind me.

I instinctively dodged forward, rolling to the ground before looking at the source of the noise.

A gigantic, four-meters high, spectral dwarf was standing right next to us, clapping and laughing heartily.

The only part that wasn't covered by the juggernaut's bulky, full plated, armor was a well woven braided beard that fell over his engraved chestpiece till it reached, and was tucked in, his belt. The belt buckle covered the lower part of his belly, shaped as a big, round, oni head, matching his fearsome oni mask greathelmet.

He single handedly held a huge double battleaxe that's head he let resting on the single shoulder spike that protruded from his right, skull shaped, pauldron.

I knew that fatass!

"Avon!" I shouted in rage remembering all the trouble he caused me back in the forest.

His voice, loud as a storm, interrupted me as it rung in my ears. Almost immediately Keros dropped to his knees like praying.

"Haha! That was a great battle. As expected from the one I have taken notice of! BUT!"

And his voice dropped an octave as I thought that, if the AI was indeed tailored after the real person, he was certainly scowling beneath his helmet.

"But I was unlucky, and didn't get to properly see it from the beginning. So... Let's have a do over!"

And with a snap of his fingers the wounds of the boss closed as its armor repaired itself.

The first to recover from the shock was the goblin. Jumping up he raised his axe, and with an uppercut motion, he sent the still kneeling Keros flying.

I watched in horror as the already beat up body of the elf disintegrated into motes of energy. Turning my head back towards the towering dwarf-god I found him sitting cross legged on the edge of the clearing. Eating what could only be described as spectral popcorn.