‘They are coming.’

The muted sounds of steps, when emerging from the background of an otherwise silent forest, felt like the noise of a raised alarm.

Theo opened his eyes before fanning his fingers to warm them up again.

‘No half-measures,’ he thought, slightly raising his spear-wielding arm as he took aim—not at any of the monsters, for he could not see any of them yet—but right at where they had to pass through.

And surely enough, within a few heartbeats, the bushes moved before a total of six figures emerged from behind some of the thicker trees.

‘Wait, hobs?’

The dark-green-skinned monsters that emerged onto the path Theo observed weren’t exactly what he actually expected or hoped for. While still classified as a goblin subspecies, they were much tougher, more resilient opponents, dwarfing their lesser cousins by growing as big as an average human, with their heavily refined physiques reaching levels many humans could only ever dream about.

‘That’s a letdown,’ Theo thought, breathing out silently as he pulled his arm back.

A heartbeat later, Theo strung his arm forth, throwing the makeshift javelin straight at the furthest hobgoblin in the group.

‘Still, it only makes sense,’ he thought, rising up right as the commotion of having one of their brethren skewered by a spear distracted the rest of the small pack. ‘Since it’s still a long way before the culling starts,’ he pulled up the next spear off the holster on his back, ‘it only makes sense for them to evolve and try to expand.’

Just like every clan of early humanity would come with a leader, every goblin’s nest came with its own leader.

Depending on the nest’s size, the leader could be as weak as an elder goblin or a class-goblin of any kind. Yet, as the nests grew stronger, so did the strength of their leaders, turning them into hobgoblins, bugbears, noble-class goblins, all the way to the king and emperor goblins for the biggest nests known to man.

Yet, as those nests continued to expand beyond what their habitat could handle, the pack would send off part of its elites to establish a colony-nest.

‘While this trap ended up as a dud,’ Theo thought as he leaned back and waited for a short moment, patiently holding his spear and watching how the hobs started to move, desperately trying to figure out just where the first spear came from.

‘There.’

Wasting no time, Theo waited for two of the hobs to align with his aim before twisting his body as he threw his spear.

This time, however, rather than gripping the wood with all five of his fingers, he left just his pointing finger to rest along the length of the wood. And right as the spear was about to fully leave his hand…

‘Go.’

Theo infused but a sliver of his mana into the tip of his pointy finger, activating it right as the wood dragged against the very tip of his pointing finger, adding a little bit more force to his throw.

Whoosh!

The spear easily cut through the air and several leaves that stood in its way, piercing straight through the first hob’s chest, only to then impale the heart of a second one, driving down the number of the colonizing pack to half its original strength… before those monsters could even figure out where they were attacked from.

‘This might be a dud, but seeing how they are trying to expand, their nest is bound to be really juicy,’ Theo smiled, pulling the last of his spears before dropping his cover and charging in.

By now, the hobs were properly alerted. And with his second throw, he pretty much gave away his direction, losing the advantage of the surprise necessary for something as simple as his crude spears to reach the hobs’ flesh.

‘And so, rather than throwing it from afar and giving them the chance to dodge or reflect the spear,’ Theo thought, giggling in his mind as the adrenaline of the moment burst in his veins, threatening to tunnel his vision down to just his targets.

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Theo ran up almost all the way to the remaining three hobs, only to then step onto the side of a rather large stone protruding out of the ground, using it as a brace as he transferred all the momentum of his dash into the force with which he threw his last spear, twisting his body at his hips to accelerate his projectile even more.

From up close, and with just how much faster Theo’s last attack was, the hobs attempted to dodge, but to no avail.

Theo’s spear cut through the air, then through the hob’s clothes, its tough skin, and then drove pretty much halfway through its entire body, only stopping when the blade appeared to strike the inner side of the hob’s ribs on the opposite end of its muscular body from where it struck.

Already up close, Theo didn’t wait to admire the results of his tournament-worthy throws, pulling out two of his throwing-adapted knives—one for each hand—before jumping up and ahead.

A stupid move when fighting an intelligent opponent, for it deprived the young man of footing and thus the ability to change and adapt his movement. Hobgoblins, however, for all the strength and brawn they brought to a fight, certainly forgot to pack some intelligence in their evolutionary tree.

And so, seeing yet another projectile shooting through the air, rather than taking a closer look to see it was Theo himself rather than just another spear, they braced themselves down and swung with their weapons, more to bounce the projectile away rather than to strike Theo down from the air.

Theo, however, was much slower than the spears he threw. And after the hob swung his club only to miss Theo’s stomach by several inches, Theo fell down upon him like a hawk, resting his feet against the hob’s muscular chest while dropping his knife-armed hands down and drilling the blades straight through the hob’s eyes and into its brain.

No matter how muscular or tough-skinned a monster was, there were always weaker points for a hunter to attack. For all the magic they used to allow all the transgressions to biology that the monsters’ bodies actually were, some laws simply couldn’t be broken with the convenience of magic.

And in the case of nearly the entirety of the goblin’s biological family tree, their eyes allowed the quickest and easiest access to their most vital point, lacking in its primary use as it might be—their brains.

“Aeuk!” the hob uttered a short, silent cry of pain before its nervous system collapsed as Theo twisted his knives, turning the hob’s brain into a bloody mess. He then relaxed his grip on the knives’ handles before kicking against the hob’s still chest, jumping off the monster while already moving to draw his sword.

Despite the death of all of its fellows, the last hob didn’t seem to be bothered or scared in the slightest.

Was it just THAT brave? Or maybe it was too dumb to understand the concept of fear? Maybe its inability to see through the likelihood of its own demise was what allowed it to foolhardily charge Theo down, swinging its sharp-stone-embedded club right at his head?

‘That’s why I hate those bastards,’ the young man thought, diving to the side to avoid the strike and then turning mid-jump, only for his back to crash into the tree, allowing him to regain his mobility faster at the cost of a mild, dull pain in his spine.

The hob waited for nothing, already following up its first attack with another charge, caring not for the fact that as it swung its arm back to take another swing at Theo, the trees now obstructed the path its club had to take to reach Theo’s head.

Still, the hob’s muscles weren’t for nothing. And as feeble as it might look when compared to steel weapons, its club wasn’t made with normal wood either. It was made with the wood local to the borderlands. And with the combination of those two, the hob simply didn’t need to care about anything that stood in its attack’s path.

CRASH!

The hob swung its club down, crushing the young tree in its weapon’s path, ready to crush Theo’s head in one go.

‘They are damn boring to fight.’

Theo dove underneath the hob’s strike, moving as low as if he was walking on his knees, only to finally pull his sword up and then drive it up right as he suddenly stood, pushing his blade right into the hob’s armpit.

“AAARGH!”

A powerful scream filled the forest, likely alerting all the monsters nearby of the ongoing fight. Before the hob could utter another scream, however, Theo pulled himself up on his sword’s handle, driving it to deepen the wound even further, only to fish out his third knife as he rose above the hob’s chest before driving the knife down into its eye to finish the bastard off.

“Phew,” dropping back down to the ground, Theo took a quick look around while arming himself with the last two knives in his possession and taking his time to inspect his surroundings.

‘You can never be too careful,’ he thought, calming down only when, even after quite a while, the forest around him showed no signs of approaching monsters.

“Now then,” Theo put his spare knives away as he grabbed the handle of his sword and stepped down on the hob’s chest, pulling the blade with a powerful jerk while holding the monster’s corpse down with his foot. Yet, as he dropped the bloodied blade down on his shoulder in the habit he picked up from Gracian, he looked down at the remaining corpses in the vicinity before heaving a deep sigh.

“While I might’ve earned quite a bit, this doesn’t really bring me any closer to my goal,” he muttered to himself before moving ahead to retrieve all the weapons he used, only to then drag all the hobs’ corpses to one spot before digging his spears into the ground around them while arming himself with the sturdiest of all his knives.

“God, I never figured out why others like this part so much,” Theo whined as he drove the knife’s blade into the first of the hobs he defeated, carving it open to access its heart where the hob’s monster core resided. Then, once he stuffed the bloodied piece of green crystal into his pouch, Theo moved up the carcass before removing the hob’s left ear and saving it in the very same pouch.

“I know this is literally how adventurers make money, but…” Theo’s face twisted with disgust as he kicked the carved-out carcass out of the way before moving on to the second one, “money be damned, I really can never get used to just how disgusting this part of the job is.”