At that very moment, Andric was studying a map that had been spread out on a round table. On the map, markings with green and grey pins had been made sporadically across the map, and lines of different colours were drawn in a seemingly unstructured fashion.

To the people not involved, it would be difficult to decipher the value of the map, but to the eight people crowding around the table, the map was something that can help them to decide if they were going to live or perish. And at the moment, the odds were not good.

The place that Andric was current at was the meeting room in the Wivendale Guild. The people surrounding him were all high ranking Adventurers of B+ and above.

To explain the reason why he was currently at such a place, the time will need to be rewinded to three days ago...

While Elise was resting at the inn, Andric had not been idling around.

Since the first day Elise fell sick, he had been going around to ask if there were anyone who knew Elise.

On the first day, he had asked the Guild Receptionist if she knew a young lady by the name of Elise. According to her, there hasn't been any female Adventurer by that name who came by recently. Although Elise did not find any Adventurer pass in her bags, he thought there was a chance that she might have lost it somewhere, hence he felt that there was still hope by enquiring at the Guild. However, the answer was a resounding ‘no’.

When he asked the elderly shopkeeper the same question, he too, had shook his head and replied that if Elise was a townsperson, most of the townspeople would recognise her with her caliber of looks. However, the townspeople treated her as a stranger, so with that, the chance of Elise being a townsperson was striked out.

On the second day, he headed out early to the guard post to ask if they had seen someone who looks like Elise enter and exit the gates recently. The guards had gotten slightly suspicious, so he lied that he quarreled with her and she had walked off, so he thought that she might have went out of town. Luckily there was a guard who saw the both of them entering the day before, and their attitude became slightly friendlier.

Andric’s mind whirled as he attempted to ask the same question again. Giving a sad smile, he had said woefully, “She is quite headstrong so she will run off on her own sometimes when she gets angry. I haven’t seen her this morning so I am afraid she might have done the same again. Have you seen her exiting the town recently?”

The guard had patted in his shoulders sympathetically. “No, I didn’t see her going out today. But I was quite worried when I saw her walking into the forest around a week ago. Good to see that you managed to bring her back.”

“Yeah, she is quite reckless so I always need to keep a watchful eye over her,” he replied calmly.

However, deep in his heart, he rejoiced at the fact that he had managed to find out she went out of the town a week ago. As she was not an Adventurer, she should be a traveller. But why would she go all the way to a secluded lake on her own? And was she really there to commit suicide?

After he left the guard post, he was considering where to go to next when a familiar person with moss green hair ran up to him.

“Miss… Guild Receptionist?” Andric asked with a raised eyebrow as the small figure in front of him stopped to catch her breathe.

“You are Andric Kennings, right?” She asked excitedly. Before he was able to react, she grabbed his hand and started running. Being pulled by the small figure, Andric had no choice but to run behind her. “Please follow me to the Guild! We will answer your questions later.”

What surprised him more was not the fact that the Guild Receptionist was looking for him urgently, but rather how, despite her small stature, she had the strength to drag a 180cm tall adult male across two streets without losing her grip.

They approached the Guild door at such a speed that he was almost convinced that she was going to crash into in. However, she reacted in time and swung the door open widely with a loud resounding bang.

“Guild Master! I’ve brought the Adventurer I was talking about!”

“Fiore… How many doors are you planning to destroy this week?”

Inside the Guild, Andric saw that there were seven people standing around the lobby of the Guild. In the center was a well-built, middle aged man with swept back brown hair. Beside him was a man in his thirties with steel grey hair, and three other Adventurers in their twenties. A pair of Adventurers with black hair that looked similar to each other stood slightly away.

The person who had spoken out was the commanding man standing in the middle.

The young lady who was called Fiore retorted back, “This is such a critical time and you still want to argue with me about a door?” “The first time was your fault anyway!” She said angrily as she pointed a finger at him.

Hearing their exchange, the man with steel grey hair said wearily, “Guild Master, if you don’t mind, is it okay if we go to the meeting room to sit down first?” Turning to the girl, he continued, “Miss Fiore, I’m sure the young man behind you have a lot of questions to ask as well. Let us sit down, so that we can discuss things more easily.”

It seems like that man was the most reasonable person in the room. “That would be great,” Andric said as he crossed his arms and smiled wryly.

The man with grey hair bowed his head slightly in apology. “We are sorry for bringing you here without an explanation. My name is Rigel, and I am the Assistant Guild Master for Wivendale Guild.” Gesturing to the man beside him, he introduced, “This is our Guild Master, Reuben Wingsley.”

The Guild Master nodded his head. “So you are that young lad I have been hearing about. You have a pair of good eyes. I heard that you killed a bunch of Goblins by yourself?”

“So what if that’s true?”

The Guild Master laughed. “There’s no need to be on guard, lad. You look like you are going to bolt away anytime.”

Andric furrowed his brows slightly but did not answer.

Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere, Rigel intercepted immediately. “What we wish to say is actually; there is something strange going on with the Goblins in the forest, and we will like to seek your assistance in the investigation.”

Hearing this, Andric could roughly understand the reason why. It was the first time he had met so many waves of attacks coming from High Goblins in a forest. Goblins usually attacked in small groups and they would also run away once the situation was unfavourable. However the once he faced seemed like they were targeting him specifically, and their attacks got stronger until the last wave with the Red Goblins. On the other hand, as he was informed that it was normal for Goblins to attack Adventurers carrying Giant Spider thread, he did not think too much into it.

“Shall we head up to the meeting room to sit down and discuss properly?” Rigel asked.

Andric sighed resignedly. “Let’s go then.”

*****

The meeting room was on the second level of the Guild. Andric had never entered the area before so he was slightly curious. There were a total of three rooms on the second level. One was a lounge where special guests could sit at, the other was the working space of the Guild Master and the Assistant Guild Master, and lastly, the meeting room, where all of them entered.

The room was well lit by oil lamps even though the curtains were all lowered. The main furniture in the room was a big, round wooden table with ten chairs placed around it. There was also a large map of the area surrounding Wivendale hanging on a side of the wall.

It was big enough for a group of thirty men to stand inside, so when the nine of them at gathered inside, there were still plenty of space to move around.

Once they had all seated, Rigel opened the topic.

“I'll make this short and to the point. Goblins moving in groups of ten and above in the Spider Forest is unheard of. So after hearing that one of the Adventurer was met with an attack of close to fifty Goblins in a day, the Guild Master decided to send out men to investigate. My men and I had set out yesterday and split into two groups to look for the Goblins’ tracks.”

Reuben nodded. “How was your findings?”

Rigel’s face hardened. “The group that I was with met two groups of High Goblins. Each group had ten Goblins and they were armed with swords and light plate armor.”

“Plate armor?” The mouth corners of Reuben’s mouth raised, however his eyes were cold. “When did Goblin blacksmiths learn how to make plate armor?”

“The craftsmanship was quite poor, so it should be something they started recently. However, the main problem should be where they received the metal from.”

“Are there any working mines nearby?” Reuben asked.

Fiore had been living in the town since she was born so she knew it better than the Adventurers who only came around three years ago. She shook her head. “No. The town has always been in forestry and weaving. While there are mountains nearby, it is heavily inhabited by Giant Spiders so no attempts have been made so far to check if there are minerals.”

Reuben rubbed his chin. The next possible scenario is that there was someone supplying them with metal. But why would anyone do that?

“But that is not the worst. Keith, tell them what you saw,” Rigel said as he looked at a man in his mid twenties with chestnut coloured hair.

Keith stood up. “After we split with the Assistant Guild Master, we went to the east side of the forest. Over there, we saw High Goblins and Forest Wolves drinking at the stream together.”

“Drinking together?!” Reuben thundered.

Goblins and Forest Wolves were natural enemies that would attack each other whenever their paths cross. How could they possibly be drinking amiably together?

“Are you sure you did not mistake it?”

Keith nodded his head glumly. “Yes. Although we were a distance away as we did not want to risk being spotted, we saw them clearly standing side by side. Lastly, the High Goblins rode on the backs of the Forest Wolves when they left.”

Deafening silence swept across the room.

Forest Wolves were rated as rank D monsters individually. When they are in a pack of five or more, it increases to rank B and become troublesome deal with as they had good teamwork. On the other hand, normal Goblins were rank E monsters as they were small and only had the strength of a human child. Although after evolving, High Goblins were rank D monsters, they still did not have the power to tame Forest Wolves.

Why would two enemies of the same rank put down their differences and started working together?

Regardless of the reason, it was evident that it did not bode well for them, the humans.

“This requires more investigation,” Reuben said gravely. “No matter what, we need to find out where their base is.”

Slamming a hand on the wooden table, he cursed, “Damn it. No matter how I look at it, a high ranking monster must have evolved from amongst the Goblins. The new monster must be intelligent as well, to be able to make the Forest Wolves work together with them, and to get materials to make armour.”

“Lad, how were the Goblins to you when you met them?” Reuben turned to the russet haired young man who had been silent so far.

Andric recalled his fight with the Goblins, and explained slowly, “They were wearing leather clothes and their weapons looked new. Although their teamwork were lacking, it felt like they put in some thoughts to their formation. For example, some Goblin archers will hide on the trees while others were on the ground.”

Although Goblins were considered a fairly intelligent race of monsters, they tend to have infighting between themselves so it was unusual for them to display such a level of teamwork.

Unless... A more intelligent being had been born amongst them and was guiding them now.

“If,” Rigel started hesitantly, “It is true that a high ranking monster has been born among the Goblins, will it lead to war?”

All eyes looked towards the commanding man in the room.

“History have proofed that that is so,” Reuben said with a sigh. “However, we might be able to control the casualties if we act first.”

With a glint in his eye he declared, “Fiore! Send out notification to all the Guilds in the Kingdom! Let them know that the Wivendale Guild is starting a special subjugation quest. The requirement is that the Adventurer needs to be at least rank D and above. For those who wish to participate, they need to be reach the town within two weeks. The reward will be revealed on a later date.”

“Rigel.” He turned to the man with gray hair. “I need you to inform the capital Guild to send a rank A Adventurer over.”

“Yes, Guild Master.”

Turning to Andric, he grinned. Andric could anticipate what kind of sentence he would say next. “Lad, I will need your help with the scouting.”

Andri nodded. Since he was dragged into this mess, he had no choice but to continue to participate.

And so, that was the reason why he got involved with this group of strong Adventurers with rankings higher than his.

*****

It had been three days since he joined, and he had been going out to the forest everyday to try and find out the base of the Goblins.

So far, they had managed to find out the general direction the base is at, however if they were to head too deep into that area, it would risk alarming the Goblins, hence they had yet to see the base for themselves.

The word regarding the special quest had spread quickly, so Adventurers were starting to stream into town. By the time the deadline was up, it was expected that over 200 Adventurers would reach the town.

“When will the rank A Adventurer reach the town? It’s already evening,” Reuben asked Rigel impatiently.

“He is expected to arrive by today in the afternoon,” Rigel answered. “But as he is returning from a quest in another area, he could have been delayed on the way.”

Reuben sighed. He knew that he was just being unreasonable. It was just that he could not help being restless.

Crash! Bang! The door to the meeting room swung open with a huge noise.

Seeing the green haired girl standing outside the door, Reuben could not control his rising temper.

“Fiore… How many time must I tell you not to destroy the doors in the Guild…?” He said through gritted teeth as a green vein popped out from his forehead.

However, Fiore was too excited to counter him. “Everyone! The rank A Adventurer is here!”

Everyone fell silent as they watched a tall man with long, silky light blue hair walk into the room.

Despite his friendly smile and feminine features, no one in the room dared to make any jokes as they could could feel his imposing aura. The atmosphere in the room was stifling, as if they were held underwater and unable to breath. Even for Reuben who was also a rank A Adventurer, he could feel that there was a power difference between the both of them.

With each step, the man’s boots made a reverberating ‘thud’.

Finally, he stopped in his steps after having come to the front of the room.

“Nice to meet all of you. My name is Seymour.”

Author's note:

Thank you for reading today's chapter! Was Seymour's identity surprising, or was it something expected?

There was no Elise this chapter, but she will be returning next chapter. :D