I hadn’t truly come to understand the depths of a goblin’s advantages until I was hunting my fifth boar. The first the day before had offered me a great demonstration of how so small a body could hold so much raw power and potential, but it was the next two from today that truly sold me on just how potent it truly was. The same advantages that allowed them to alive among the forests and meadows without being found—and summarily hunted—were just as useful offensively as they were defensively, a characteristic the AI had noticeably not tapped into during the beta.
Goblins were rather well-known for their simplicity, and they were even often used as a negative comparison during training or sparring. The saying was that a goblin always attacked from the front and fled from the front, that strategy was so far beyond their skillset that it was laughable. They were the trash-mobs of all trash-mobs, the first stepping stone that even players without equipped skills were expected to handle without trouble. Even a goblin horde was little more than a tide of experience and potential loot, and stories of a person singlehandedly wiping them out were not uncommon on the forums.
As I crept from branch to branch in the forest canopy, however, a shiver of wonder and excitement traveled up my spine. My own experience with goblins during the beta matched up with the others’ tales, but now I was beginning to see just how fortunate the playerbase was. Fingers and toes curled effortlessly into the wood of the tree, and my light weight ensured there was only the slightest of disturbances. Even their balance was catered to such surreptitious acts, and I easily shifted upside down while keeping steady in order to gaze at the target below.
It was another boar nosing about in the dirt looking for its food, this one only slightly less impressive than the first. I’d heard it drawing along the underbrush quite a distance away and had managed to stalk it without betraying even a hint of my presence, and it continued its own search even now wholly unaware. My fingers began to reflexively loosen and squeeze in the mounting anticipation, and I relieved one of my hands from its perch to take hold of the tusk I’d been carrying between my teeth. Even without both hands, I was effortlessly able to keep myself stable as I eyed the beast below, my muscles flexing and tightening in preparation to leap.
Of course, with my mouth no longer gagged, a litany of excited chittering began to escape automatically from my lips, the familiar sound finally alerting my prey to my position above it. Its body visibly tensed, its hair beginning to bristle in uncertain agitation as it searched for the source of the unpleasant vocalizations, and I could only just barely manage to exert enough control to keep the volume from growing louder. My fingers gripped tighter and tighter into the tusk, my breath catching before I finally kicked off of the branch directly down towards the boar below.
Even as the coursing adrenaline finally overcame my restraints—even as the sound of laughter trailed after my descent like the gunshot chasing a bullet—and the boar finally raised its head skyward in recognition of danger, it was far too late. Panic, uncertainty, confusion: all of these things passed through its eyes as it met my gaze, only for its beady eyes to expand in surprise as my weapon found flesh.
The slightly curved tusk felt my full weight and momentum as it was pushed against and through the beast’s hide, the ivory splitting apart the back of its neck with perturbing ease. My other hand pushed itself to the weapon’s base and slammed it deeper like a malformed nail, a sudden, deafening crack echoing out as I fractured the back of its skull. It was then that my body slammed into its back to drive the pressure even further, the blow forcing the beast to the ground in a fit of pained squeals while my hooked toes encouraged it even more harshly against the dirt. Once it was pressed helplessly to its side, my weapon was pulled free from its head and slammed down upon the side of its neck, puncturing its trachea and silencing its cries for good.
Only a scant handful of seconds passed from the beginning of my attack to the boar’s unwilling silence, but it spent several more struggling on the ground as though in defiance of its fate. The creature did not truly recognize what had happened to it, its eyes unfocused and its writhing without purpose. Without its own squeals added to the mix, the sound of my autonomous chittering served as a twisted lullaby beckoning it to its final rest, and it finally succumbed to its call less than half a minute later.
It would not quite be considered perfect by most players’ approximations, but this was undoubtedly an “assassination”. Almost every aspect of the goblin seemed far too suited for such treacherous ambush, and only that automatic, glee-induced chittering worked against its prospects. It was truly fortunate for the playerbase that the goblins were so simple-minded; if they were any different, these forests would become a lot less safe….
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By the time I’d dragged the four boars back to the den, the sun had already begun to set while a crescent moon moved to replace it. The various goblins had gathered around with unabashed eagerness, their previous experience with the meat turning their curiosity into raw desire and gluttonous hunger. I’d been forced to give up the first of the four boars to the greedy lot just to bribe their tentative cooperation and restraint, and I was pleased to find that they largely held to my demands despite my doubts. Whether it was out of genuine acknowledgment of authority or simply preoccupation with their snack, I did not know, but it stayed their hand long enough for me to gather everything I needed all the same.
It took no fewer than three trips for my small arms to gather a pile of sticks, twigs, and dried grasses large enough to satisfy me, and I set about going to work before the goblins lost their patience. The tusk served as a knife’s suitable replacement, and I painstakingly began to carve away some of the bark and cut into the branches themselves. In one, I etched out a pit and canal attached down the side, while the other had its end rounded out with cautious, careful movements.
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There were other methods I had discovered for making fires, but those relied on either more tools or more experience than I had on hand; only something simplistic would work, here. The rounded end was placed in the similarly-sized hole of the laid-flat other, and both of my palms moved to sandwich the top of the first while my feet secured the position of the second. The munching goblins looked on with both idle curiosity and outright humor to see what amounted to me playing with sticks, and I myself felt a great deal of pressure descend upon my shoulders. I understood the concepts, but the practice was wholly alien to me, and the eyes of others—even if I knew they were only AI—watching me stretch beyond my expertise steadied my hands and tightened my focus.
A rough grating sound began to fill the air as I spun that stick, slowly at first to grow used to the movement. I had initially believed my size small enough to keep me from kneeling, but I still found myself hunching over as I pressured the branch from above and my palms inched gradually farther and farther down the wood in response. My beady eyes gazed harshly at the wood as though to will it into flames right then and there, my movements growing sharper, faster as I worked with mounting agitation. There had been all manner of details that could complicate the matter—such as having the right type of wood, such as drying it completely beforehand—and the threat of failure bid me to grit my teeth and work harder at it.
This was about the time that the video had shown smoke, yet my efforts did not bear even the hint of such. Faster, faster I went, trying to ignore the goblins that had seen fit to take advantage of my concentration to creep closer to the night’s second boar. I’d been made a fool of and foregone my prize once, and I was certainly not prepared to do so again, but it seemed as though this damnable wood wou—
And then, the hint of smoke.
It was very mild and practically invisible against the cloak of night’s domain, but I could faintly smell and see the signs. My efforts doubled, the tension pushing my body just as thoroughly as the earlier combat had, and I couldn’t manage to stifle the cry of surprise when I saw a faint glow along the canal that revealed the outline of smoke with greater clarity. Yet still I worked, uncertainty bidding me to ignore this potential success for one more guaranteed. The smoke grew thicker, the glow growing more pronounced, until I finally dropped the held branch to the ground and dragged a nearby twig amidst the grooved canal.
A pitch black substance came along with it, but within I could see the glowing embers of my effort. Gathering it all atop a broad leaf, I carefully placed it inside a bundle of the dried grass and began to blow, my heart hammering away at my chest as anticipation scraped away at my unease. The goblins’ attention, too, began to fix upon my weird behavior, cries of surprise filling my ears as the fire caught and the grass finally burst into a steadily growing flame.
I held tightly onto that bundle of grass even with the encroaching heat, clutching it tight and shaking it while forcing out enough breath to leave me nearly blue in the face. Only once it began to lick the tips of my fingers did I drop the bundle of grasses to the dirt below, hasty movements bringing a few other sticks onto and against the growing flame. Satisfaction filled me down to my very core, and it was with pride that I glanced to the other goblins with my arms folded across my chest and chin held high. “See? Fire!”
The goblins acted as though they had never seen such a thing before and drew so close as to nearly blot out the light from the rest of the forest’s view. Innumerable shadows danced upon the forest trunks and canopy while cheers and chatters echoed out into the night-filled depths, disturbing the forest far beyond the pale. With such overwhelming and obvious enthusiasm, I couldn’t help but to order the collection of more branches and logs before digging out a few more fire pits to house them. Each time an ember was moved from my original flame to give birth to another, the goblins around me burst into another round of cheering, so much so that even I was moved to join in with the festive atmosphere.
Laughter filled the air without pause, and the event only grew rowdier when I began to demonstrate the art of cooking firsthand. Those boars they found so tasty before were made considerably more so after I inexpertly piked them on sticks and started basking them in the flames. With such plentiful and tasty food and the star-filled sky above, it was truly a moment worth savoring, and it wasn’t long before I ceded the matter over to those gluttons completely in favor of simply enjoying the end-result of their experimentation. While the rest of the goblins began to pair the pork with mushrooms and various tasty grasses they had found in their search for greater satisfaction, I relaxed myself nearby and began to contentedly work on my second project.
The tusk I had been using had been invaluable thus far, but it was still nothing more than a crude replacement for what I truly needed. With the aid of stones both smooth and sharp, I began to scrape away the ivory in favor of a more suitable shape, paring away their curvature for something thinner and straight. The experience I had with crafting during the beta was limited, but it was still enough for me to understand the general process and steady my hands, and a weapon slowly began to appear before me.
It was slow going—painfully so—but my earlier success with the fire left me confident and unhurried while the occasional pause for jovial chittering kept my joints uncramped and capable. It wasn’t until the night began to brighten into dawn—signaling around four real-time hours since I’d started—and the light fell upon the dagger’s blade that I was truly satisfied enough with my effort to stop. It wasn’t terribly sharp, was a touch too broad in comparison to metalcraft examples, its sole sharpened edge had a few nicks and ridges from my imperfect technique, its origin left it with a still-present curve and a natural “handle” that wouldn’t be easy to grip in times of duress…
But it was lovely all the same.
The rising dawn reflected the light with a very dull, unpolished luster, and it would be far too obvious that this crude dagger was crafted under poor circumstances. Yet to my eyes, it was a dazzling sight. Not as a masterpiece, but as the first step to greater things; where others might only see the nicked blade and crooked craft, I saw the reflection of a brilliant and satisfying future ahead of me. All I needed was to put it to the test.