(Gavin)

"Is this your first time seeing a goblin settlement?" Braden asks me, and I nod. "Even with as much as you trained in the woods?"

"I never went into the deep woods," I tell him. "All of the goblins built their camps deeper in the woods than I would travel."

The goblin camp is surrounded by walls of logs and branches tied together with roughly-made rope, with goblins outside of it watching for attackers. I can see some of their stick-and-mud huts beyond, tall torches stuck into the ground, blazing to allow for better lighting than the forest allows.

Even if their camp takes up a fair bit of space, this part of the forest has massive trees with wide spreads for the branches. The canopy only breaks towards the middle of the camp.

"What's the plan?" Zack asks from where he's watching us in a tree.

When we spotted the camp, Zack suggested the four of us take it ourselves. He could do it alone when he was much weaker than us, so the four of us shouldn't have any issue handling it. Max is currently holding Luca by the back of the healer's tunic to prevent him from charging in alone and bopping everything on the head with his staff.

He was holding Luca by the cloak, except Luca slipped out of it.

Since Zack didn't actually say anything, I'm assuming that means Luca could handle this by himself. That gives us a good gauge for the fight – it means that there's nothing too powerful inside. No Bounty Beasts or Elites.

They were probably in the horde, slaughtered in the pass or the valley. Or turned to nothing by a giant meteor. That's a little different from being slaughtered.

"We'll go in and attack," I say. "Braden, you handle the long-range stuff. Cover our backs from a tree. Luca, make sure to keep Max and I healed if we need it. Max, you target the strongest monsters present, but stay within Luca's perception so that he can heal you. Luca, provide me magical support, but don't forget to keep up the Heals if we need them. We probably won't need any Blessings, so don't bother with those unless it becomes evident we do."

Everyone nods, and I look at Zack, who gives me an approving nod. I quickly look back to the team as I realize that Zack wants to see how we work together and how good I am at leading things. He might be our leader, but in something more simple, he'd rather prefer to leave it to me. If he doesn't have to get involved, he'd rather give us the experience.

Even with the end of the Boundary coming within a year.

Our plans made, we wait as Braden leaves, disappearing into the shadows. A minute later, I hear one of Braden's bird calls, his signal that he's ready. His speed always impresses me, and I wish I could match it.

"Let's go," I say.

"Me first!" Max charges forward as Luca and I move towards the camp. "DIE, GOBBIES!"

Max draws his sword and beheads both of the goblins at the camp's entrance, continuing into the camp. Luca and I reach it a few seconds later and pass through, and I draw my sword, deflecting an arrow with it. I ignore that goblin, Braden will handle it.

Max continues his charge into the camp, killing any goblins that draw too close to him as he targets a Goblin Giant towards the back of it. I begin attacking the regular goblins, using Wind Blade for a little added damage.

A Goblin Shaman begins to send a Fireball at me, only for a Water Jet to pierce through the Fireball and rip off the shaman's head. Terrifying. I thank Luca as I continue to cut through goblins. Max is entertaining himself by stabbing his opponents a lot, even if he can use his magic to kill them more easily.

Whatever suits his amusement, since this fight is rather easy.

I have to go into a few of the houses to kill goblins, while Max starts to hit others with Flame Lances. That's one way of dealing with the goblins which have taken cover.

After completing a full loop around the camp, I begin killing the stragglers. Braden covered both exits and took out all of the ranged ones we couldn't handle or shouldn't have needed to handle, and Max just continues his stab-fest, using his knife on the smaller goblins.

Once the battle ends, the four of us gather in the center of the camp, beside the bonfire blazing in a ring of stone.

"Good job," Zack claps as he approaches us. "Swift, smooth and efficient. Braden, excellent job at preventing any escapees and the few who arrived as backup, as well as dealing with some of the ranged ones. Max, nice stabbing. Gavin, excellent job at dispatching goblins, and Luca, you don't need to hit them once they're dead."

Luca inspects his staff, pretending to either not hear Zack or not know what he was talking about. I did notice the healer whacking a few goblins in the head after they were dead. A bit disrespectful to the dead, but I think he was a little put-off by the lack of fighting he was involved in and was hoping that he was just missing the Status so that he could get more kills in.

"Now you have two options," Zack says. "Do you want to inspect the corpses for any loot that might be of interest? Keep in mind that we aren't selling anything anymore, so it's not loot that's sellable that you'd be looking for, but stuff we could use or something that's just interesting. I've already located and collected all of their marbles, and won't tell you what else they might have."

Of course you already collected their marbles. Did you zip in and grab them as we were killing things? Max would probably be the one to know, since his Agility is a third of Zack's, allowing him to keep track of faster-moving objects.

"Me want inspect loot!" Max exclaims.

"I do as well," Braden says.

"Let's loot the corpses," Luca says.

"I guess we're doing the loot," I sigh.

"Okay," Zack says. "Try to take no more than one or two hours, or we'll arrive at the next City after nightfall."

"Yippee!" Max exclaims, then takes off.

Braden wanders off to inspect the corpses, and I follow Luca around as he pats down the gear the goblins are wearing, looking through their pouches and inspecting their clothes and accessories. I just accompany him, not interested in looting their corpses. Taking things like the staffs from the skeletons was different from this.

Luca seems to pay extra attention to the necklaces, though I can't figure out why. He seems disappointed the more corpses we check.

After an hour, everyone meets back up at the center. Max has a bunch of tooth necklaces he took off the corpses, while Braden doesn't seem to have anything, and I'm not going to ask if he found something of interest. If he did, that's for him to know. Luca didn't find anything and seemed rather disappointed.

"What were you looking for?" I ask Luca. "You seemed like you had something in mind."

"I wanted a necklace like Lord Zack's," he mutters.

"Mine came from a strong Bounty Beast goblin," Zack shakes his head. "It was famous for giving even Adventurers like Nick and Jesse trouble."

Since we're not around others anymore, I guess Zack considers it okay to use Jesse's name now, rather than simply calling him 'Pervert'.

"You won't find one like it on something as weak as these," Zack puts a hand on Luca's head and ruffles his hair.

I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of envious that Zack was able to kill such a strong Bounty Beast as easily as he did. I know everyone says that took luck, especially with the kill method, but still. It's impressive. And then there's Braden and his fight against a white liger Bounty Beast.

Even if I'm not as well-versed in monsters as he and Zack might be, I know that white ligers are naturally powerful. For him to have managed to kill a Bounty Beast version of them, by himself, with little damage to the hide? That's impressive.

Well, I'm assuming there's little damage to the hide, since most of it's been turned into leather in smaller pieces. But from what I know, the hide can't be damaged too much during the fight, even if they can cut it up and stuff after.

Looking at Braden, I realize he's pulled on fur gloves, which have the fingers still. When he wears gloves, they're usually missing their fingers. Now that I think about it, it's getting a little chillier where we are. Didn't he say he has a jacket made from the beast's hide? Will he pull it on if it continues to get chillier? Zack seems to be taking us on a northward direction. We'll leave one City through the western gate, then the next through the north, then the west, then the north. It's been like that for a week and a half, now.

"Zack," I look at our leader. "I know we're nearing the end of the mountains and forest, but… I've been wondering why we're going north?"

"For fun!" Max exclaims, then pauses. "Right?"

"Oh, right," Zack says. "I wanted to check something out. I did some scouting with my sight, and I saw an arctic forest near where we are. Just a few more days of traveling, and we'll be off the mountain, and another day or two, and the forest will turn arctic."

"What did you want to check out?" Braden asks. "We all have coats and cloaks, but it's still nice to know in advance."

"Sorry," Zack says. "I guess I've been thinking about it so much that I forgot to tell you about it and had thought I did. When I was still new here, I fought against a monster called an Ice Lord. It actually would have killed me if Nathan hadn't been there to heal me up. It had followed him into the valley. I think this arctic region is where it came from. I just want to fight one again, since I'm so much more powerful now than I was when I fought it before. The Level Cap there is Level 25."

Now that I think about it, the Level Cap has been increasing over the last few days, which I thought was weird. According to Zack, there's usually a fair distance between where the Level Cap changes. It was Level 10 when we left the pass, then Level 15 after five days of traveling, then Level 20 as of two days ago.

From what he had told us, the cap should change much more slowly.

"Zack," I say. "Isn't the Level Cap changing too fast?"

"Maybe?" He asks uncertainly. "If we had continued traveling straight west, we would still have a few weeks before it hit Level 15 for the cap. I think it's because the arctic forest we're heading towards is a special zone that the Level Cap is increasing so quickly as we draw towards it."

"A special zone?" I ask.

"Like the Valley of Power?" Max asks curiously.

"Yes," Zack nods. "Like the Valley of Power. It's a place where Special Monsters spawn regularly. I'm not talking about Snow Slimes like we had during winter, either. The Ice Lord is a powerful monster, but there are also the Frost Knights as well, though those are weaker, and possibly a few other things. There's also certain Holiday Monsters which spawn as well."

Braden groans, smacking his forehead with his hand, which looks pretty funny considering his outfit and the white liger's head. It sort of looks like the white liger is eating his hand and head, since the movement made his head no longer visible, tilted down.

"You want to see if it'll spawn a Santa Boss," Braden says.

"Yep!" Zack grins. "I want to kill one without having to turn into a Dragon this time!"

Wait. Were the stories serious about him turning into a Dragon just to kill one? I thought everyone was messing around with that!

"Plus," Zack adds. "I don't think I'll actually manage to transform into one again until after the end of the Boundary. So! Who here is interested in heading to the arctic forest and fighting some special bests, and possibly a Holiday Boss or two?"