Chapter 3

Before eating our fill, we had planned to continue our trek in hopes of breathing some fresh air as soon as possible. Being stuck in this dreary place did nothing to help our collective mood.

Although we did still want to get a move on, our bodies dearly resisted.

After digging into the mystery food a wave of lethargy spread through my entire body. I had obviously felt a food coma before, but this time the effects were much more severe. As energy drained from my body I collapsed roughly to my knees and tried in a vain effort to keep my eyes from closing.

With what felt like a boulder weighing down my eye lids, I eventually lost that fight as sleep overcame my tired body.

The very last thing I saw before passing out was everyone else slumped all over the ground. With the slight comforting thought that it wasn’t just me, the lights went out upstairs as sleep finally took me.

Opening my eyes I immediately sat upright in a daze.

Looking at the scene of four people in a deep sleep-in front of me, a frown etched onto my face as I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about the situation.

After eating the packaged food, we had all been knocked out, had someone drugged us? Lifting my shirt, I had a quick look but didn’t feel or see any abnormalities, it seemed my kidneys hadn’t been harvested just yet at least.

Pushing myself off the ground I tried my best to dust off my filthy clothing to no success, my previously white t-shirt was already stained with blood and dirt.

One thing was weird though, surely after being drugged like that I would be feeling shabby right? But right now, I was feeling good, no I was actually feeling amazing.

There was no cloudiness in my mind and all fatigue had been washed away, and on top of that I was also feeling physically stronger.

May as well test it out and see if it was just my imagination then. With everyone else still snoring away, now was prime time to test this out.

Getting down in a push-up position I repeated the exercise as exhaustion gradually built up, with one final push I felt I was at my limits as my whole body was quivering.

Sitting up in a more comfortable position I couldn’t help the shit-eating grin that was plastered on my face, I was never a massive fan of calisthenics and usually stuck to weight training, but just now I had managed to rep out 67 push-ups.

I may not be breaking any world records, but this was still a clear improvement than anything I would have been able to do previously.

So, it seemed me getting stronger wasn’t just my imagination, and the only realistic thing I could think of as the reason was my stat’s going up. With both my endurance and strength going up as I levelled up, it seemed quite natural for there to be an increase in strength like this, yet feeling the changes directly was certainly different than just thinking about them.

With my little experiment done, it seemed like it was just about time for the others to wake up as their snores had gradually been dying down. It seemed that history was destined to repeat itself as I felt a sense of déjà vu as I went around the group, gently waking everyone and being greeted with flustered expressions.

Although we didn’t really have any control over the issue, we collectively decided to act like this never happened. It was quite embarrassing to think that we had all been slumped dover face first in a goblin-ridden tunnel system, at the very least no one had seen my sleeping face so I wouldn’t have to die out of embarrassment.

With a tacit agreement, we continued our slow march forwards.

Knowing that there would be a good opportunity to test out my newfound strength very soon, I couldn’t help but feel excited.

After a brief walk, we encountered the next group of goblins, yet again their numbers increased as the difficulty continued to ramp up.

Now 6-members strong, the goblin group still sat around the middle of the cave. Hearing their cackles and watching them spontaneously jump up and act out in a quite obscene way, it was clear that these creatures weren’t exactly the pinnacle of intelligence.

Or maybe they were on the correct side of the curve, by the looks of things their lives seemed much simpler.

Regardless of how intelligent they were, the group also had a singular archer who was proudly wielding his flimsy bow, it looked to be made of sticks and ready to snap under the slightest tension, but having a ranged threat made the upcoming battle much more stressful.

It seemed that everyone else also felt a little more hesitant as no one volunteered to rush out first, seeing this I crouch walked over to Rebecca trying to remain as silent as possible.

“Reckon you could take out that archer from here?”

Surprised by me suddenly whispering into her ear, she jumped back stifling a small scream.

Luckily the goblins rambunctious activities were loud enough that they didn’t hear that slip-up.

Shooting me a small glare, she turned back towards the goblins and appeared to be measuring the distance between us and them. After a few moments of silence, she returned with a shake of her hand. It seemed that landing the shot from this far out was going to be iffy.

With about 30 metres separating the cave entrance and the goblins, both Rebecca and the goblin would have ample time to get a few shots off. I think the best we could do was hope that Rebecca was the superior archer.

Not seeing a lot of other options, no one else spoke up so it seemed like we would be going with the tried-and-true method of bum rushing them, what could possibly go wrong with this?

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Ready to go, we emerged as a line of four, Gabe, me, Richard, and Ellie all got into position. The plan was simple, reach them before they have proper time to react.

Holding my sword and running was uncomfortable and went against all the warnings about not running with sharp objects I had received throughout my life, but for now I had to choose to willingly ignore it.

With a silent countdown, I raised my hand and counted down from 3. 2. 1.

With that we were off like hounds in a race.

Not hesitating for a second, I bounded forward. God, I did not want to be on the receiving end of one of those arrows.

Noticing us almost immediately, one of the goblins rose the alarm with a violent sounding scream as the rest of them turned towards us before scrambling for their weapons.

Already with bow in hand, the archer fumbled around for an arrow that it had crudely jammed into the ground. Just about to knock its bow ready to inflict damage upon us, a projectile flew past me and into the goblins foot, piercing it to the ground.

Jumping in pain, the goblin only managed to inflict more pain on itself as it roughly tore at its own wound, dropping the bow to cradle it’s injured foot. Thanks to Rebeccas timely shot, the archer was out of the picture so the rest of this fight should be a breeze.

With my attention focused on the battle between the archers, I barely paid attention to the two goblins in front of me, I had drawn the short straw and had to fight of two of them.

Now just a few metres away I continued my bullish charge heading straight towards the foe to my right.

Drawing my sword back, I held back my swing as the goblin on my left took the bait and.

With the goblin fully assuming that I was aiming for its friend, it was left defenceless as I lowered my sword before stabbing it straight into the goblins emaciated body.

Looking down at itself with a look of shock, the Goblin went limp as I pulled my sword from its body. This guy clearly hadn’t learned about hesitated attacks like I had from Elden Ring.

Previously jumping back to avoid my fake attack, the second goblin now tried its best to rush in and take advantage of the time I took to retrieve my weapon. Unfortunately for it, the goblin was still way too slow.

As it swung wide from the right side, I simply lifted the shield braced on my arm to meet it. The connection was jarring and reverberated through my entire arm, but the goblins strength wasn’t enough to overcome my defence. With his posture broken all it took was a simple slash of my sword for the goblins head to lose connection with the rest of the body.

With my fight done, I turned to survey the rest of the group. Gabe and Richard had already finished their battles, Ellie on the other hand was still in a desperate fight against her opponent.

Wielding her short spear, Ellie continued to block each of the goblin’s strikes. Her goblin was swinging a small hatchet with abandon and left obvious openings, yet Ellie seemingly refused to act on them.

Watching the fight for a couple of minutes longer, Ellie continued to block her opponent without attacking it back. It was only when the goblin was clearly exhausted that she chose to strike, easily killing her opponent with a stab to the neck.

Was there a practical reason why she took so long? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. She clearly wasn’t hesitant to kill the feral looking creatures. Left with several questions, I reigned in my curiosity. Maybe I could ask her about it at some other point in time.

Noticing that we had all been watching her fight, Ellie turned her backs on us as her red ears gave her embarrassment away.

With nothing of notice in the cave, we continued forwards once again. Really though, how long did this cave go on for?

It seemed that the answer to my question was not very long.

This was thanks to the next room that we encountered which housed a massive set of doors identical to the ones we had walked in from.

Noticing that we were close to getting out of here, an air of excitement circled around the group. This excitement quickly died down though when we saw our next opponents.

So far, every opponent we had was identical bar a few minor changes, but now a wrench was being thrown in that pattern thanks to the behemoth of a goblin standing before us.

This behemoth was realistically about my height and quite leaner still, but in comparison to the rest of the goblins it was a giant.

The brute was languidly laying down on a pile of dirt fashioned to be an uncomfortable looking lounge. Surrounding him were a group of six goblins all sitting down, and unlike previously these goblins were all quiet and looked to be nervously eyeing the big one.

The reason for their nervousness was quickly shown.

One goblin seemingly had enough of his position stood up in a flurry of hand gestures to its comrades. Unfortunately, it wasn’t convincing enough as the rest of the goblins continued to kneel and averted their eyes. Continuing to let out guttural screams, the goblin drew its short sword before approaching the leader.

Before it could enter striking range, a hand shot out and gripped the creatures head like a basketball.

Now sat up and looking at the defiant goblin, a creaking sound could slowly be heard but it was quickly overcome by the panicked screams from the smaller goblin. As the screams escalated to a crescendo, a loud cracking sound reverberated around the silent cavern. Laying back down, the larger goblin simply closed its eyes, seemingly not caring about the dead goblin in front of it.

Scurrying back like rats trying to remain hidden in the darkness, we finally stopped holding our breaths as we made our way to the previous room.

I needed a moment to process what just happened, so I took a seat on the small rocks in the middle of the room. Also reflecting, Ellie joined me followed by the others as we found ourselves replacing the goblins seated around the middle of the room.

“Well shit. Any ideas?”

The topic was obvious as I opened the discussion to the others.

“No way we can take that thing on one-on-one.”

Running his hands through his messy hair, Gabe said what was on everyone’s mind.

“Yeah, I’d rather not get my head popped.” Richard quipped

Well, those weren’t exactly suggestions but whatever worked I guess.

“From the looks of things, we need to find a way to single it out to take it on. Doubt we can do much with the rest of the goblins pestering us.”

Richard hit the nail on the head. If we could get in a fifth five-on-one then victory seemed much more likely, the only question was how to do that.

Aware of the dilemma, everyone got to thinking of some sort of way to arrange this.

Trying to use my brain I ran through simulations however no matter what I did, everything seemed to end poorly. Noticing the lack of success I was having, my attention turned to the others who were off in their own worlds. Richard had his head in his hands as he muttered to himself, and Gabe and Rebecca were both whispering to each other.

Ellie unlike the others had a small smile on her face. Rubbing at her hands, she stared at the ground with a sparkle in her eyes.

Her performance in the fights so far definitely left much to be desired, but she was also clearly more of a thinker than a fighter.

Seemingly done with her thoughts, she looked up towards the group and raised her hand. She knows this isn’t school right?

“Yes Ellie, you thought of something?”

“Uhm maybe? I was just thinking that if we can distract the Hobgoblin for even just a minute, then we can kill the surrounding goblins and then whittle him down.”

“How would we distract him though? I don’t think anyone’s confident in surviving against him.”

“Well maybe you and Rebecca work together to distract it? If you can split the aggro than all you need to do is run away until we clean the rest of the group up.”

It was nice to see she had confidence in me surviving, but it also wasn’t comfortable thinking that I had to fight that freak. Although it did seem much more possible if I simply tried to run away the whole time, plus I’d have someone raining arrows down on it to help. Thinking about it more deeply, the plan appeared to be sound, and by the looks of everyone nodding, they thought so too.

“Alright, anyone else want to pitch in.”

Not seeing anyone else eager to add in something, it seemed like I would be acting as the decoy. It was a bit of a daunting task, but with my secret weapon I had confidence in handling it.

And just like that we found ourselves just seconds away from our first boss encounter…