CHAPTER 5: GOBLINS. AND A NEW ITEM FROM HIKIVI

“The path ahead is clear.”

Puvi said as he patted away the leaves on his shoulders.

“Alright then, lets speed up a bit.” Yimso said as he picked up his pace. They all started walking faster, Puvi taking position at the back. They moved in this formation to keep the mages protected.

If they left the mages unguarded at the back while travelling through the jungle, the mages would easily be taken out in the case of an ambush. If that happened, they may as well commit suicide.

After a few hours, they reached an open area without trees towards the edge of the outer perimeter of the forest. This was where they had previously battled the wolf. It was a naturally formed gap between the trees in the forest, bathed with sunlight and the grass looked exceptionally green and lively here. “Let’s set up camp here for the night, what do you guys say?” Yimso stopped and said.

“Alright.”

“Fine by me.”

“I’m okay with it too.”

Since everyone had agreed, they decided to set their tent here. It was a big tent with more than enough space for four people to sleep in.

“Hey Titus, I need your help with this thing here.” Puvi called out to Titus while setting up a campfire. “Coming!” Titus came over and lighted a flame over his finger, using it like a lighter. “There we go.” Titus said as he got up.

‘Now all we need to do is wait for Yimso and Hikivi to….’

Bam

Titus’ thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of something hitting the ground. He immediately turned back and saw that Hikivi and Yimso had come back with a fat boar, 1.2 meters from head to tail.

“Hey, quick, pass me a knife.” Yimso said as he got down on one knee and extended one hand towards the two who were setting up the campfire.

After processing the boar, he took large chunks of the meat, skewered them on a few sticks, sprinkled some condiments, and placed them on the grill.

Having had dinner, Yimso, Puvi and Hikivi entered the tent to sleep while Titus sat crossed legged by the fire alone, thinking of how to better utilize his skills.

**Two days later**

“HAAA!!!” *BAM*

Yimso charged towards and enormous bear and slammed into its ribcage with his shield, while it wasn’t paying attention, making it stagger a bit.

Instantly enraged by the sneak attack, the bear stood up on its hind legs and growled angrily at Yimso. The over 3 meter tall bear, towered over everyone in the party.

At this moment, dark purple chains burst out of the ground beneath the bear, binding it. The bear tried to struggle its way free but found that the chains were too tough.

“ROAR!!!”

Seeing that he couldn’t free itself from the chains, it gave out an earth shaking roar.

*Slap*

Just then the crisp sound of a whip was heard and the bear’s roar stopped halfway.

“Shut up!”

Hikivi scolded the bear who now had been roaring nonstop until now. He had just whipped the bear in the face with the [Mana Whip].

“HAAA!!!”

Just then, Yimso and Puvi, who had already rushed towards the bear, landed their attacks on the bear.

Yimso twisted his body as his heavy sword moved in an arc and hit the bear in the face, which pushed the bear’s head away, exposing its chest to Puvi, who had just reached the bear’s feet. He changed his form and pierced one sword into the bear’s chest, after which they both moved back, but not before high kicking the bear’s jaw shut at the same time just as the bear opened its mouth and was about to growl at them again. Poor bear.

Over at the back of the party, both Hikivi and Titus’ mouth twitched as he saw the scene that looked like two people bullying a ‘helpless’ animal play out just now. ‘These two are crazy.’ they thought to himselves. But they didn’t forget their roles though.

Titus had just finished casting [Fireball] and shot it at the bear with one hand, while the other hand gathered and shot a gust of wind, which upon reaching the fireball, caused to grow bigger and speed up, hitting the bear in the face.

The gust of wind was not a skill he had learnt. He had only used the mana in his body to gather the wind element in one hand, shooting it forward as a gust of wind that would never do damage to the bear they were fighting but could make the fireball he casted first to grow bigger by combining the two, doing more damage.

*Note: As simple as ‘fire+ more oxygen= bigger fire’.*

The bear finally collapsed with that last attack at the same time the chains shattered and disappeared.

“Whew. That felt pretty good.” Puvi and Yimso high fived as they sighed out and started walking towards the bear. Puvi dug out a slightly brown crystal, similar in size to the one from the wolf they fought a few days ago, out from the chest of the bear, wiped away the blood and then tossed it to Titus.

These crystals were found in the bodies of the ‘monsters’ in this world.

These crystals or ‘monster cores’, as people call it, contained energy within it and was used by the intelligent races in this world in many ways.

The stronger the monster it came from, the stronger and more abundant the energy in the core would be. Thus, higher levelled monster cores were highly valued and could be used to exchange for coins or items.

The two crystals they collected though, were not from high level monsters but were from elite rank monsters, so they were more valuable than normal ones of the same level.

He then checked out the bear’s status using the system. The people in this world could look at the status of others too, but they needed to learn a skill called [Appraisal], which only came in the form of a skill stone.

The people in the world would have the knowledge of skills like [Fireball] and [Binding Chains] immediately engraved into their minds (system) after they used the specific skill book.

Not anyone could learn spells though. For example, to use the [Fireball] spell, a mage needed to be familiar with the mechanism behind the spell and also have an affinity with the fire element, like how Titus had used his finger as a lighter.

Titus just happened to have a ‘high’ affinity with towards the fire and wind elements, making it possible for him to learn both [Fireball] and [Wind Blade].

A ‘spell book’ is a book in which a mage has written down his knowledge on a specific spell directly with mana and becomes useless after a single use. But high level spells can’t be stored in skill books, so the knowledge is embedded in a ‘spell stone’.

GRIZZLY BEAR (Plain n simple)

TYPE: BEAR, BEAST

LEVEL: 8

RANK: ELITE

HP: 0/3200

MP: 100/100

STATUS: DEAD

After they had collected the parts of the bear’s body that they could sell like the claws of the bear, they were about to leave when suddenly Yimso stopped them and pulled out one of the swords on Puvi’s waist. He walked to the bear and cut off its paws.

“Just collecting materials for a pair of gloves.”

He said calmly as if he didn’t noticed his friends looking at him weirdly.

“….”

No one said anything. But they were all wondering how he would look with a pair of bear paw mittens, being built like a bear himself. They thought it would be quite amusing.

Getting ready to leave, they took one last look at the battlefield. A bear with its paws cut off was lying on the ground, surrounded by four black wolf carcasses. Three of them had deep claw marks on their bodies, while the fourth one was slices in half by Titus’ wind blade while Yimso had charged at the bear in the beginning.

The two sides had been fighting for a while before they had come n intervened, taking everything in the end.

Of course, they had collected the cores from those wolves as well. They then headed back toward their camp.

They hadn’t taken down their tent yet as they weren’t planning on abandoning the spot for a while.

They had discovered a cave where a pack of 10 black wolves resided, led by an elite rank alpha wolf. The wolves would be easy to take on as four had perished in the fight just now, leaving only six behind. But it was what they had discovered soon after, that made things difficult; a den of goblins.

According to the observations that Puvi had made, there were surely to be over 50 goblins and they send out teams to hunt for food regularly. They could slowly whittle down their numbers by killing the hunting teams that they send out, but this option wasn’t very plausible from what they knew about goblin society.

Such a large number of goblins, let alone an organised group like this one, would only be able to function if they were being governed by a leader; a goblin shaman or something similar who would immediately call back the members of the group to strengthen their defences, making it harder for them, if the hunting teams disappeared too abruptly.

‘Thank you, Mr. Goblin Slayer.’

They silently thanked a certain someone, who was obsessed with killing goblins that they remembered from their previous world for the knowledge that unintentionally, may have saved their lives.

Most newbies would be shocked silly and escape immediately in fear if they encountered such a large number of goblins, or may become arrogant enough to try and take them down after only seeing a few goblins guarding the entrance and end up dead after entering the den.

But they weren’t an ordinary party of newbies now, were they? With the knowledge of these monsters that they were a little too familiar with, they were confident that they could take them on.

“So, how are we going to be doing this? Everyone can give their ideas and we can cook something up.”

Yimso said as they huddled together around a large rock and spread out a piece of parchment with a rough map of the area drawn on it. The map was drawn by Puvi while he was out scouting. He had proposed that they could wipe out a few hunting teams in the next few days, and then launch an attack on the den. They all agreed to go with this plan, but still had to think of how to carry out the attack on the goblin den, so they all turned to look at the map again.

The location of their camp, the wolf den and the goblins, and the approximate distance in between were marked on it. The wolf den was 20 kilometres away from their camp and 5 kilometres away from the place they fought the bear. The goblins were 30 kilometres away from their camp and 10 kilometres away from the wolf den.

They were surprisingly close and had probably already discovered each other as they would often go out to hunt, clashing often.

So it shouldn’t make the goblin shaman too suspicious about the disappearance of his men.

“Okay now, let’s think about how the fuck we are going to take on such a big number of goblins. Especially in such a confined space.” Yimso said, asking for their suggestions.

Three of them kept comparing strategies, but none of them really seemed plausible when they thought of it.

Hikivi was quietly pondering about something.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You guys, don’t tell me you forgot what I do in my free time. I made something new, and it seems it will be pretty handy this time with the goblins. Check it out.“

Hikivi suddenly interrupted their discussion. He fished out an iron ball the size of a tennis ball out of his pouch and displayed it in front of them. Their eyes lit up when they realised what it was.

End of chapter 5: Goblins. And a new item from Hikivi.