The past day, Tako and I travelled among the main road. There were no disturbances, and most of the travel was quiet. Tako stared at the clouds while walking most of the time, I guess he was glad that he didn’t have to be cooped up in a cage until he was sold off to someone else. I wonder, was it really a good thing to save him? I was in a predicament, but I could have escaped. I can’t stop thinking that the slaver group has a bigger power behind it.

…….

Tako stopped walking and turned to me, “Hey Dante, Howe Village should be just over this hill.”

“Well, we should hurry then.”, I replied. Tako started walking again, as I followed. Soon we reached the top of the hill, the hill looked down upon a village. It was a small village without a wall surrounding it for protection. There were about fifteen huts, that I would guess that people lived in. There was a bigger hut among them that the village elder probably lived in. There were also a couple of huts that were secluded off to the side, they were probably storage and other things. The village was in bad condition, there were holes in some of the huts and some even had marks were a fire had started but had been put out.

“What a interesting place,” Tako began walking further ahead without me as I looked at the surroundings. The village was surrounded by a thick forest, I have read about goblins before and this village was probably easy prey for them. They could easily come in and get out quickly without being discovered before they did their work.

“Hmm.”, I sighed, I quickened my walking pace to catch up with Tako, who was walking towards the big hut.

…….

“Hey kid, you finally caught up.” Tako smiled, there was another person with him. It was a old man, slightly bent over with a cane in his hand. It seems like Tako already started talking to him.

“This is Dante, he is the one who originally accepted the quest.” Tako pointed at me, the old man’s eyes seemed to brighten, and he smiled towards me. He walked over and grasped my hand.

“I thank you, young adventurer! If no one accepted the quest, we were afraid that we would have to migrate to another area. We have been in this area for so long, and our loved ones have been buried here. We would hate to have to leave!” A tear rolled down the old man’s cheek as he said this.

“Can you tell me more about the goblins?” I asked.

“The goblins… this all started a little over two months ago. One of the villager’s children disappeared while playing with the other children in the forest. The children say the child disappeared after he went to use the restroom behind one of the trees. After that the children looked for him awhile, and then ran back to tell their parents. The parent of the child was notified by the other parents and came to me for help. Originally, the quest was to find a missing child, but it was changed just last month, that was the start of the goblin night raids. They caught things on fire and destroyed parts of our huts. They stole from the storage, we feared that if they continued we would not have a lot of food for the winter. The villagers and I, got together and put our savings towards having an adventurer to come help us. We waited long, and it kept getting worse. Some of the villagers began to lose hope.” Tears rolled down his face as his weak voice explained the recent events.

Tako placed his hand on the village elders shoulder, “Don’t worry, old man. Dante and I, are here and we’ll go out and stop those goblins from causing anymore trouble.”

The old man looked at Tako and began muttering and crying uncontrollably, “Tha-thank you so much!” Tako lead him into the hut and came back outside.

Tako walked towards me, “This is your quest, so where do you want to start?”

I stayed quiet for awhile, “We have no idea where the goblins are, do you have a tracking skill? or should we question the villagers?”

“Hmmm.. I don’t have a tracking skill, but I have knowledge of goblins. I think we should figure out where the children were playing at first. They could have disturbed their territory on accident and caused them to become aggressive. Goblins usually stay away from humans because they know that some of us have power to wipe out their small tribes. If a goblin saw that humans were defenseless, they’d probably bully them. Sometimes this is not the case though, there are some cases that a stronger monster could be behind them.” Tako explained, and I nodded my head.

“I think we should question the parents and the kids first and figure out more about the situation before we get started. We can head out later on after we have enough information.” I said.

“I’ll ask the elder real quick, about the people involved and ask where they live.” Tako walked back over into the hut, disappearing inside. After awhile, he came back outside.

“Alright, he gave me a small list of names and it has the location of the hut described as well.” He held a piece of paper in his hand. He handed the paper over to me. I skimmed over it quickly.

“Alright, let’s start with the Ralph family…” I said, I started walking towards one of the huts. Tako followed me.

….

After awhile, we found a hut that fit the description, I stepped up and began to knock.

Knock, knock, knock

“Is anyone there?”, I asked. After a while, there was a quiet reply.

“Wh-- what do you want?”, a woman answered the door.

“We are adventurers, we came to question you about the goblins.” I explained to her, and she nodded her head slowly opening the door, we followed inside.

“Can you two wait here for a second, I am going to get my husband and child.” She said, and then she disappeared into on the the rooms. She came back a minute later with a man, a child hid behind him grasping onto the bottom of his shirt. I estimated the child to be about twelve years old.

“What would you two like to know?”, he asked.

“We want to know where the kids were playing two months ago. We need more information before we start our search.”, I asked.

“Ah..”, the man looked down at his son behind him and motioned for him to come out, “It’s okay Alex, come out and talk to the adventurers.” The kid seemed to shiver, but soon toughened up, letting go of his father’s shirt. He came out from behind his father and stared at me.

“Wi-Will you save Matthew?”, he asked.

“Matthew… the one who went missing?”, Tako asked.

“Y-yes, he is my best friend!”, Alex shouted, “They took matthew!”

“We will save him, as long as we can find him,” I paused before continuing, “Now, can you tell us where you guys were playing at?”

“We were in the east side forest, I don’t know how far we were in. We never really went far when we went into the forest to play.” Alex said.

“Do you remember anything else?”, I asked.

Alex was about to say something but shut his mouth, there was a long pause, “There was a tree, it was a big tree but it looked different than the others. It was bigger, a lot bigger.”

“You went that far into the forest?”, His father turned to him, “I told you to stay around the rim! You know what happened years ago, when the adults went hunting!” His father yelled at him.

“May I ask what happened on the hunting trip?”, I looked towards the boy’s father.

“It was three years ago, we used to go out into the woods to hunt hogs. We used to go miles into the forest, we began to feel odd…”, he paused, “This would be a little further out passed the tree he was talking about,” he looked at his son before continuing, “Our hunter group was around when the town was flourishing, so you could say we could easily bring twelve adults without any worry, the rest would farm and take care of the town. After a while longer while hunting, we saw something.”

“What did you see?”, Tako asked.

“I think it had brownish black fur, it was about the size of me… It happened so fast, instantly two people died,” he held his head in his hand, “I don’t know why anything would suddenly move into the forest.”, he was led over to a chair and sat down.

“This happened three years ago?”, I asked. This sounds interesting... I looked at the father and used . Level 4, I would estimate the hogs they were hunting to be around the same level or even lower than the adults that went out hunting, but the thing that they saw I would guess to be around my level, to be allowed to slaughter without giving a clear vision of itself. The Elite guard group that was sent with us to the Forest Den could move quick enough, but being heavily armoured they could at most become a blur, that was still somewhat recognizable

“We will start looking around that tree, thank you for answering our questions.” I nodded, and turned to open the door. I walked out of the hut and waited for Tako to come out.

“Dante, this seems like they encountered a Greater Monster earlier. Greater Monsters are dangerous, and are known to kill many people,” he paused, “It may have been establishing its territory.” Tako explained.

“What is a Greater Monster?” I asked.

“Greater Monsters are mutated monsters, so we have no idea what kind of beast it would have taken after. It could look completely different than the monster, or it could resemble it.” Tako continued to explain about Greater Monsters, “They can be harder to face than Elite Monsters depending on their level, Elite Monsters have not gone through a mutation!”

After a moment of silence, Tako took a small breath before continuing,“So where do you want to start, this is your quest after all.”

“I don't think we need to question anyone else yet, we got a lot of information just from them,” I looked towards Tako, “Let’s just go look around the giant tree for now, when it starts getting dark, we can head back.”

Tako nodded, and I began to walk towards the edge of the forest. This quest seems to be interesting.

***************

Authors Note(s):

And there’s chapter 11, hope you enjoyed it!

If anything sounds good, or you believe that it can be worded better, I'm all open ears for criticism and more!