‘So, hunting goblins, how hard could it be. It was posted on the public board, after all, so we shouldn’t have much trouble dealing with them’ I thought as Eshanai, and I trudged through the woods. Well I trudged, Eshanai seemed to have little trouble navigating all the roots and mossy rocks in our path, she simply glided over them on her long sinuous tail. I had brought Eshanai straight to the forest and brought with us little in the form of supplies, thinking that we could have this done quickly and be back in Yhester before the sun went down. That turned out to be a mistake as the sun got lower and lower on the horizon I still hadn’t found any sign of goblins, my stomach rumbled in protest, but I didn’t want to waste time by going back to town to get some food. We had limited time to prepare and I wanted to use all the time we had efficiently. ‘Good job Lubus, goblins might be easy prey but you still need to find them first, being an adventurer might be harder than I expected’. We didn’t really need to fight goblins for experience, maybe I could ask the guards if they could spar with us, but I didn’t want to test my spells on them and risk injuring someone. This was a pretty dumb idea I could just set up some targets and practice on those, I had thought that real danger would be better practice and it would, but if we couldn’t find the monsters we were just wasting time out here.

As the thought of going back to Yhester got more and more appealing to me, Eshanai suddenly froze and lowered herself to the ground. I had shown her the drawing of the goblin, and she seemed to understand that we were out here to hunt them. By the way her tongue flickered out to taste the air she seemed to have picked up their scent. She set a quick pace forward, sliding over the ground silently. I was having a lot more trouble now when I was trying to be quiet and watching where I placed my feet made me even slower than before. Eshanai got further and further away from me, and when I stumbled on some slippery moss to land on all fours, I could find no sign of her when I looked back up. I got back on my feet and dusted myself off trying to be quiet, how had I thought that I could be an adventurer if I couldn’t even handle a little walk through the woods? I hoped she wouldn’t leave me here, I didn’t think she would, but without talking to her, I couldn’t really get to know her. We had slept together, so she must feel something for me, what did I feel for her? She was half snake half woman, her upper body is incredibly beautiful. I had found her tail a bit weird at first and to be honest it still was, but I had gotten more used to it by now. It helped that Eshanai wasn’t some monster as I had first thought, she seemed to experience all the usual human emotions, and she could be reasoned with. If only I could talk to her, it would make everything so much easier. Part of my attraction to her had been the mere fact that she had paid attention to me. I had some awful experiences with women and to have one as gorgeous as Eshanai pay attention to me was a bit intoxicating and overwhelming.

My thoughts were interrupted by what sounded like a branch breaking to my left, something was out there, but I didn’t want to call out to Eshanai for fear of attracting the goblin's attention. ‘I should have prepared some spells beforehand than I could at least defend myself’ I thought as I looked all around me for whatever had made the noise. I found nothing, and the forest was quiet with no birdsong or sound of insects, I had just begun to find that weird when Eshanai burst out from the trees towards me. She picked me up in her arms saying something in her language that I didn’t understand and raced up the tallest tree she could find at great speed. She could beat a spider monkey when it came to climbing, and she didn’t even use her hands. She settled on a branch further up the tree and wrapped us up in her green tail. At first, I didn’t understand what she was doing, but when she ducked down to wrap herself up together with me, I suddenly got it. Her green coils would camouflage us against the green leaves of the tree.

Eshanai put a finger against my mouth in the universal sign to be quiet and directed my eyes towards the ground. We weren’t completely covered in her coils, and I peered through them to look at where she had pointed. Goblins, at least seven of them were passing by below our tree. There might be more that I had missed before I looked down, but there couldn’t be many more than that. They passed by quickly, but I could see that they were carrying rusty or broken weapons. I could see a bow here and there, but they had passed us and disappeared into the woods before I could count them. Now we had a clear trail to follow, and with little light left in the day we had to do this now, I didn’t like the idea of fighting in the dark. We waited a bit before we climbed down from the tree and I started to prepare my spells. I had decided to go with magic missile this time instead of fireball. They were easier to cast and cost me less mana to maintain. I stammered through the spell while Eshanai watched and on my third try the see-through blue tinged ball of magic appeared in my hand. I did the same with my other hand, and it worked on my second try. Ok, now came the tricky part, I had to channel the mana in the empty air without using my hands. I found it helped to imagine an invisible arm stretching out from me that the magic could travel through. I did just that, and it was surprisingly easy for the mana to travel up my intended path and form the missile above my head. I managed one more before the magic simply refused to build, four spells for seven or more goblins didn’t sound very good. I would have to focus on the archers while Eshanai dealt with the others, it seemed a bit risky, but with her new armor and weapons I thought she could handle it, it was a public request after all.

With me done we followed the goblins into the woods where they had gone, Eshanai took the lead with her spear and shield raised in front of her, but even I could have followed the goblins by the clear footprints they had left behind. I kept the magic missiles, two in my hands and two above me, they required very little upkeep compared to a fireball and emitted almost no light. There was still some runoff, but I could replace it easily without it tiering me, fire, by its very nature, always required more fuel to keep alive. This, of course, made sense but it wasn’t apparent to many wizards or mages as most of them merely cast their spells and let them fly immediately. A fireball was more expensive to cast than a magic missile but also required more upkeep. I would have to find more spells with low maintenance. Eshanai brought me out of my thoughts with a hand on my shoulder and pointed to a clearing in front of us.

It was the goblins, I couldn’t see them yet, but I could hear them chattering and talking to each other. We got closer and hid behind some bushes where we could get a closer look. They appeared to be setting up camp with most of them piling wood and stick in the middle to create a huge bonfire. I could count only seven of the little green creatures, so I had been right in my assessment earlier. I was just about to give Eshanai the go-ahead to attack, but she had already beaten me to it by sliding out from the bush to stand in the clearing the goblins were using as a camp. When she had their attention, she hissed at them, showing her fangs, before raising her shield before her. The goblins looked at her for a moment seemingly stunned before they fell all over themselves to get to their weapons. Two arrows flew towards her just to ding against her shield and fall to the ground. Two of my magic missiles answered those shots as I found the archers standing on the other side of the clearing. The first one went straight through the little goblins bow, smashing it to pieces, and slammed into its chest. The goblin was thrown backward and hit its head against a tree to lay motionless on the ground. The second missile was less accurate, the archer tried to dodge at the last second and was hit in the arm instead of the chest. The sound of bone breaking could be heard all the way over here, at least that one wouldn’t be using a bow anymore.

I found no more archers, so I instead focused on Eshanai and her foes. Two goblins lay sprawled around her, bleeding from wounds in their throats. The three last goblins tried to surround her, but her long spear was keeping them at bay, they had moved further into the camp, and one of the goblins decided to jump at her from behind. This caused the other two to attack her as well. Without even looking she snatched the jumper from the air and trapped it using her tail. The gobline to her right she simply smashed in the face with her shield and stabbed the left one through the chest with her spear. Once she was out of combat, she started squeezing the trapped goblin until its neck broke and she let in fall to the ground.

I chose that moment to walk into the camp, we had done it, we had actually done it. My hands were shaking from the adrenaline of the fight, well, Eshanai had done most of the fighting, but if I hadn’t taken care of the archers, she would have had a much harder time. Speaking of the archers, Eshanai had gone over to them to finish them off. I thought this was a good idea and went over to the one she had bashed with her shield. It was still breathing I could see but was still unconscious, I took the little knife from its hand and brought it to the creature's throat. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to end its life, was I feeling sorry for it? It was a monster, the world would be better without them. A warm hand was placed over mine, and I looked up to see Eshanai with a look of understanding on her face. The knife was quickly yanked across the goblin's throat, it sputtered a bit, but soon all the life left it as it died. I wasn’t so sure how to fell about that, I had never directly taken a life before, it was probably good if I could keep to the back of a fight before I got myself or someone else killed by hesitating. A loud voice suddenly boomed out from the forest behind us.

“TRIBUTE!”