Two months have passed since we arrived in Hoss. For all this time I have been learning this world's language, history and the basics of combat and adventuring, and now, I'm finally going out to slay some monsters.

During those months we couldn't go freely in the city since Hoss didn't want to reveal us so soon, so Oliver and Jane were quite hyped up about going out. I was hyped too, but for another reason. Today I would kill other living beings to take part of their soul and become stronger. This was the first step in my path toward strength.

The only thing that ruined my mood was the fact that I was the only one whose blessing didn't emerge yet.

Right now we were walking through a forest north of Hoss. This forest was home to many weak monsters and a few stronger ones in its most internal part and was used as first hunting ground for newbie adventurers.

Oliver was our scout, his blessing revealed to him the best way to hide in every situation, so he choose to train himself in stealth and archery. His task was to scout ahead of us while not being noticed and then, during battle, support me from behind with his bow. His blessing seemed the right one for a coward but you actually had to have some nerve to choose to be a scout. Scouts had the highest mortality rate among all the classes.

For now, he was using a short bow. It was light, easy to handle and it also made it possible to shoot from a tree but it was quite hard to kill someone with it, at least without the assistance of more advanced magic and martial arts, but it was more than enough for the monsters in this part of the forest.

Jane was behind me, holding nervously a staff in her hands. She choose to be a water mage and her blessing's function was to recognize the strongest being in her sight. Her blessing wasn't too useful while hunting monsters but it could be very strong in a war. She would be able to pinpoint the position of enemy officials, who were often hidden among their subordinates so that high-tier archers could take them out. Her task in our party was to stay behind me and Oliver and shield us from arrows or distract the enemies with her spells.

I was at the centre of the formation, with a sabre in my right hand and a small shield strapped at my left forearm, with my left hand holding a small wand. The wand had a little magic crystal inside, a crystallized lump of pure magical energy that reinforced my spells with its energy, the crystal could run out of energy, but with time it filled up again on its own by absorbing magic energy from the surrounding or could be charged manually. Actually, a crystal that small wasn't enough to justify occupying a hand, the real use of the wand were the runes on its surface, that helped me to direct the mana in a single spot before firing it and helped me cast spells in a straight trajectory, making my spells preciser and faster.

There was also the possibility of tattooing the runes directly on the skin with special materials like monster blood subjected to a special treatment to make it similar to ink, but it wasn't advised to beginners. That was because we couldn't bear the blood of monsters that were much stronger than us, and in this phase where our power rose relatively rapidly we would have to change the tattoos very often and it wasn't a painful and expensive process. I wouldn't have minded as long as Hoss would have paid, but Alua forbid it so I had to give up on it

I chose the path of the magic swordsman, it was a versatile and powerful class but it needed more time and much more training to reach its full potential.

During the last month, I have been learning to use the dark attribute to create illusions and was also learning fire attribute's martial arts and swordsmanship, on top of that I learned the most basic spells for both fire and dark magic: Dark Bullet for dark magic and Flamethrower for fire magic.

Flamethrower did exactly what its name suggested and although it was the most powerful weapon I had, it consumed a lot of mana.

Dark Bullet, on the other hand, was a small pellet that drained all life from what it touched and while it consumed less mana, it needed to hit vital spots to be lethal.

Alua also insisted that we all trained a bit in the holy attribute, so I had to train my holy mana manipulation a bit, probably she wanted us to make a good impression on the people with it in the future.

I suddenly heard a sharp whistle coming from ahead of me, it was very similar to a bird's whistle but it was Oliver warning us of enemies ahead. We stopped and saw Oliver coming toward us, he stopped and said.

“There're five goblins near the pond a hundred meters ahead, four are having a bath while one is guarding the area. The guard has a mace and three javelins but the others left their weapons on the ground. There should also be a goblin hunting pack further away, but I couldn't verify their number.”

He concluded his report and looked at me.

I was assigned as party leader by Alua so deciding what to do was up to me. Goblins weren't to be taken lightly since they were intelligent enough to organize themselves in groups and create rudimental weapons; often newbie adventurers underestimated them and ended up falling for their traps and ambushes.

A group of five goblins at once was very tempting though, I couldn't wait to turn them into sweet exp. But there was also another reason why I wanted to take down a whole group. I was sure that Alua was watching us from somewhere around us, there was no way she let us go alone on our first hunt, she was an experienced scout so hiding from some greenhorns like us shouldn't be hard for her.

I guessed they tried to trick us we were on our own so that they could test us to see how we handled the pressure. I was sure that I was the one being tested the most, being the leader, so I had to demonstrate my usefulness to my masters to gain benefits in the future; then I would use those benefits against them as soon as they would lower their guard.

“This is a good opportunity, we're going to ambush them. Now let me think of a battle plan.”

I started thinking of a plan and soon a strategy came to my mind. I explained it to my teammates and then we advanced towards the pond.

When we were around twenty meters away from the pond, I and Jane stopped, while Oliver advanced silently for other five meters and then used a dark spell to camouflage himself and took aim at the goblin guard. He trained in the stealth spells of the dark attribute, so he could advance more without being noticed.

Now that we were all in position, I had to give the signal, which was to start running toward the goblins as noisily as possible.

There was a small clearing before the pond and I positioned myself right next to the last tree before it. The goblin guard alerted its friends and they started running to the bunch of weapons on the ground.

The guard was about to throw a javelin at me so I hid behind the tree on my left, but there was no need for it. In fact, right when he was stabilizing his aim, an arrow embedded itself in its stomach.

Then I started running toward the goblin's weapons and while I was passing by I beheaded the goblin guard. Then I positioned myself beside the bunch of weapons and waited until all four of the goblins were there, one arrived first but then I waited for its friends to arm themselves as well, so they could attack me together, not knowing that it would spell their doom.

The other three goblins arrived together and launched themselves on the weapons, then I raised my left hand, gathered all the rage I could in my heart, and said a single word.

“Flamethrower.”

A vamp of flame invested the goblins for a few seconds, it didn't kill them and it actually didn't do enough damage to even fully debilitate them, but an opening was all that I needed.

I started slashing at the goblins. I cut the first goblin's throat, the second one fell, and started rolling on the ground so I had to keep it still with one foot while I stabbed my sabre through its eyes and brain. The third one was starting to pull itself together so I slashed at it in a hurry, cutting his throat. But suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. The fourth goblin hit me using his javelin as a lance.

That was bad, it meant that my performance wasn't flawless anymore.

I let go of the sword and the wand, grabbed the goblin, pulled it to me, and took out my stiletto so that I could stab it in the head.

But then an idea to recover from my error came to me. I smiled and then stabbed the goblin in both legs and dragged him far from the weapons, letting it live.

I felt parts of the goblins' souls entering me as I was waiting for my teammates, it was an exhilarating feeling.

I received most of it, but not everything. Alua taught us that souls were distributed according to merits instead of just giving them to the nearest being. That meant that something was managing the souls, which was very interesting. It meant that here there really was something managing the world, I didn't know if it was a god, a system or if it was just the disposition of the souls though.

As I was putting a healing salve on my shallow wound, teammates arrived and Jane swiftly put out the flames with her magic, so they didn't spread. I looked at them and while Oliver seemed fine, Jane seemed a little fatigued and was looking at the goblin with a sick expression, guess she was a bit scared. Even if she got the cold feet it wasn't a problem, since we had our assurance.

“All right, the first round has gone without a hitch, let's prepare for the second one.”

I started to give orders around. I was going to take the rest of the hunting team too.

A goblin hunting pack was usually composed of no more than fifteen goblins and they were led by a pack leader. We already killed five so there were at most other ten to go. They would be more numerous and armed now but we had the leeway to prepare the terrain since they would need to regroup before they could come here.

I brought the goblin inside the pond, where he barely touched and left it there, still crying aloud for help. In the meanwhile Jane positioned herself in a position opposite to where the goblins were most likely to come, she laid on the ground while touching the pond with her fingers and Oliver launched a camouflage spell on her, then he reached his position as well.

I hid behind the trees near where the goblins would come and waited.

The pack appeared soon after, they were nine and two of them were holding knives, most likely plundered from some unlucky adventurer; one of those two was probably the pack leader.

They noticed the hurt goblin inside the pond and three goblins went to its aid, they had to swim through the pond before they could help him though.

The goblins were swimming in the middle of the pond when suddenly they were brought under the water and started drowning without being able to do a thing about it. Then a water ball flew from the other side of the pond and landed near one of the two goblins with a knife.

That of course was Jane's work. One of the advantages of elemental magic users was to be able to command their attribute's physical form to an extent. She was commanding the pond's water to drown the goblins, and at the same time, she located the pack chief with her blessing and shot a water ball spell near it.

Now I knew who my target was. While the goblins were distracted by their drowning comrades I approached them from behind. I stopped three meters from them, took aim with my wand, and shouted.

”Dark bullet.”

A small black bullet flew from my wand and hit the leader right in his head, killing it instantly.

The goblins looked at me with their guards raised, then they saw their dead leader and hesitated, not knowing what to do. I then launched another bullet but missed. I started running to the woods while launching illusions shaped like dark bullets to stall the goblins that tried to intercept me, making them dodge.

I wasn't able to launch dark bullets while running but dark bullets' illusions were just round balls of black smoke so they were easy and cheap.

There was still a goblin ahead of me though. I launched an illusory dark bullet to make it step to its right, putting it in the right position so I could slash him on the run.

I couldn't hit its neck so I used the fire attribute enhancement martial art, making my arm much stronger for a very brief time, and sliced through its belly, cutting it into two. Then I covered the few meters remaining before any javelin was thrown and took refuge behind the trees. The goblins then started to chase me. There were still four of them, but we could do it.

I passed under a certain tree and when the goblins passed too, an arrow was shot from a branch upon us and injured the last knife holding goblin. The other three goblins still tried to kill me but I started to run around, not wanting to fight and not going too far away from Oliver's tree.

He finished the injured goblin and continued to shoot arrows, missing a bunch of shots before he hit another goblin.

I struggled a bit not getting surrounded by three goblins but with two it was much easier.

I continued to escape until another was shot, then I met the last goblin and easily dealt with it. By now Jane should also have killed the bait goblin and the rescuer goblins.

We managed to hunt a whole goblin hunting pack on our first monster subjugation, yay. But most importantly, I obtained a consistent amount of exp and tested my new techniques in action. We even managed without Alua's help.

Me, Oliver, and Jane regrouped ourselves and since we all exhausted our magic energy, we decided to return home for today. Jane seemed also very tired, she was sweating profusely and was quite pale, maybe she exerted herself too much.