Nathan didn’t have any trouble finding the farm, although the burned down barn was a great exaggeration. To Nathan the ashy remains looked more like it could have been a chicken coop, but there was little doubt this was the place. The farm itself was nailed up tight, and it was obvious that it had been abandoned.
He circled the area looking for goblin tracks, while at the same time being mindful of where he stepped himself. He was no stranger to the art of tracking, but his experiences and training was mostly focused on humans. Could he track goblins the same way? Were such things even possible inside the game? He didn’t know, but figured he wouldn’t have received the quest if it wasn’t at least possible. As he scanned the ground, he quickly became aware of several tracks, both human and... something else. Animal-like, but bipedal. He remembered that the goblins from earlier didn’t wear any shoes, so it made sense that their clawed feet would create tracks similar to animals.
What didn’t make as much sense was how easily he was able to see the tracks. It had been some time since the attack, but as he walked around it was like the tracks became more solid when he looked at them, and then faded away when he looked away. The only way he could explain it was that it was a hidden benefit of his perception stat, but he didn’t complain whatever the source. It made this much easier.
After walking around three times, he had a pretty clear picture of what had happened. Between 8 and 10 goblins had shown up from the north-west, probably during the night. A couple of people had charged from the main building and there seemed to have been a struggle. It was at that time the chicken coop had caught fire. Nathan surmised that one of the farmers had set the fire to scare the goblins and light up the area, or to hide the fact that one of the farmers had pealed off. After that the remaining farmer retreated into the farm and stayed there. There were signs that the goblins had tried to set fire to the farm, but they hadn’t succeeded. After a while the figurative cavalry had arrived and killed all the goblins. With two exceptions.
Before the group from the village had arrived, two goblins had gone back into the forest, seemingly following their own tracks back. Nathan, not taking any chances, readied his crossbow and followed.
As he reached the edge of the grassland, the tracks indicated that the two stopped and moved back and forth for a while, before they continued into the forest.
The tracks got a bit harder to follow once he entered the forest proper. He might have lost them if it weren't for all the tracks going the other way as well. His mood brightened, though, as he had always enjoyed hiking, even the times he had done so carrying a rifle, and he hadn’t been able to take a trip into the wild since... He refocused and moved through the forest quickly and silently. He didn’t hurry, but moved as fast as he could without losing the trail.
At one point he crossed the path to the temple, and shortly after that he found the tracks of three goblins diverting northward, proof that the goblins in the temple originally belonged to the same initial group.
After 20 more minutes of following the tracks, a strange noise caught his attention, and he quickly stopped and raised his crossbow. It originated from further ahead, and more sounds followed. Hissing and growling. He stopped following the tracks, and instead circled around to his left. He kept low as he moved, and as the sounds got louder, he dropped prone and crawled the last bit.
There was what looked to be a natural clearing in front of him, in an oval form angled slightly to his right approximately 150 meters long and 120 across. There were still some trees and bushed in the clearing, but far less than in the surrounding area. On the far side of the clearing, a small stream come out from between some rocks and disappeared southward into the forest. All in all, it looked to Nathan like the perfect camping ground.
Which apparently the goblins agreed with, because there were quite a lot of them there. They had constructed what looked to be a small primitive village consisting of tents and lean-tos of different sizes. Most of them were made of sticks and branches, but some also had animal skins along their sides and bones of different kinds as decoration. There was a firepit in the middle, but it was currently unlit.
Nathan focused on the goblins, trying to see how many there were, and what they were doing. It looked to him as if only a small group was actually doing anything constructive, while most of the others were either sleeping or just hanging around doing nothing. He looked for individual details, before he remembered that he could try to analyze them. That seemed to work fairly well, but it didn’t work on those furthest away. Still, extrapolating based on how they looked gave him a good impression of what he faced. In total he could see around thirty goblins, but there might be more in the tents which he could not see. The majority were lightly or unarmed and between level 1 and 3, similar to the ones he’d encountered earlier, but there were also a couple of level 5s. The latter was better armed and also had some bone armor, but the armor didn’t look very efficient. He couldn’t see any ranged weapons.
What was clear was that he was over his head. In a standup fight against those numbers, he wouldn’t have a chance. He could perhaps take one or two with his crossbow, and perhaps one more in hand to hand before they swarmed him. And that was the best-case scenario. Luckily his quest didn’t demand that he killed any goblins, just that he found the camp. It was time to go back and report to Ollie.
Just as he started to crawl backward, the noise in the camp got muffled as a goblin significantly bigger and taller than the others stepped out from one of the tents. Like some of his smaller brethren he was also sporting bone armor, but unlike the others his armor looked fairly solid and had spikes at all the right places. He also had a bone helmet created from the skull of... something, and a large bone club. He really had a full bone theme going on, and it worked. He looked menacing.
Nathan tried to analyze the newcomer, but it either didn’t work, or he was too far away. His curiosity got the better of him, so instead of pulling back he decided to circle around the camp so that he would get somewhat closer. On the way he quietly picked up some vegetation that he fastened to his clothes to change his profile, and also smeared some mud in his face. He didn’t know if it helped any, but it probably didn’t hurt.
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Slow and steady he moved. The goblins didn’t have any traditional sentries–at least not any Nathan could see-but their movement was so irregular that he had to keep a close watch in case one of them suddenly decided to wander in his direction. It took some creative maneuvering, but he finally managed to get close enough to analyze the big goblin. Although he was not able to see the full stats, he saw enough to know that it was not someone to take lightly.
Goblin leader
Level 10, Monster
Health 17/17
Damage Resistance: 1
Happy with his reconnaissance he turned back, but he didn’t get far before there was a disturbance over by the lower reaches of the stream just inside the forest.
It was the noise of someone falling while yelling in surprise, followed by a frustrated outburst. “Ah hell, bloody roots. Are you sure we are following the river in the right direction? Feels like we have been walking for ages.”
“There is a clearing just up ahead. We can rest there and consider our options”, a high-pitched voice answered.
“We should... a goblin!”, the first voice yelled out enthusiastically. “Finally, a chance to get some XP. Attack!”
“Wait, we should...” the second voice started, just as a big, tall human man stumbled out of the woods.
The man was bald, with a large beard tied into twin points below his chin. He was half-again as wide as Nathan and was wielding a simple two-handed axe. Besides the axe, his equipment seemed to be lacking. He was shirtless, displaying an impressive physique. The single leather pauldron he had on his left shoulder seemed to only help highlight his large muscles. He also had some drab cotton trousers, and a simple belt with a pouch similar to the one Nathan had. There was little doubt this was a player.
The axe wielder was followed by another shorter but possibly even wider man. The newcomer had no armor, just some dirty cotton shirt and pants. What he did have was a large piece of wood strapped to his left hand –Nathan thought it might be an improvised shield- and a small one–handed club in his right. This one had a topknot, and no beard.
The two didn’t exactly navigate quickly nor gracefully past the remaining threes and along the edge of the stream, but they looked intimidating based on their size and the inevitability of their approach.
The goblin that they first had spotted –a low level one that had been drinking from the stream- hissed at them as they drew nearer, and charged as they got closer. It was met by the tall one's axe, and its life was instantly ended in a brutal fashion.
“Ha”, the goblin killer shouted out as he attacked. Afterward, he set the axe head on the ground and leaned against it while striking a pose and turning back towards his friend. “That was easy. I’m starting to enjoy this game.”
It was at that point they became aware that they were in the middle of a goblin village and had attracted the attention of all its inhabitants. The goblins had stopped whatever they were doing and were looking at the two players seemingly in disbelief. As Nathan had suspected might happen, more goblins popped out of the tents and also some out of burrows in the ground. All of them looking at their attackers.
“Don’t move a muscle”, whispered the shorter one loudly. He eyeballed his adversaries nervously, wondering why they didn’t attack. He seemed to come to a conclusion. “Perhaps... Yes, I think we are outside their agro range”.
As if that was what he was waiting for, the goblin leader let out a high-pitch roar and pointed his weapon towards the intruders. The goblins went wild. They all rushed towards the players, screaming and shouting as they went. The lower-level monsters seemed particularly eager, fighting among themselves to be first.
“I told you this was a bad idea!” the taller player shouted.
“What? No, you didn’t. In fact, this was your idea!”, the wider one answered. “Never mind that. Should we run?”
“No running. We take as many as we can. Try to get their attention while I’ll improve our odds. We can do this!”
The short one stepped forward, club held high, hiding behind his homemade makeshift shield. Three goblins came at him at the same time, two with clubs and one with nothing but claws. He managed to block the two first attacks with the shield, but he was unable to stop the unarmed goblin grabbing ahold of his foot, biting and clawing. He didn’t seem to receive too much damage, though, which was probably why he mostly ignored it.
The other player went wide and with a wild overhand swing he fatally wounded one of the goblins attacking his friend. Before he got his axe back in a defensive position, a spear-wielding goblin stabbed him in the throat. He gurgled as he backhanded both the spear and its wielder so hard that they flew several meters through the air landing awkwardly. He recovered temporarily and did a sideway swing, killing two more goblins, before they managed to swarm him. He lost his balance as he was grappled by several goblins and fell on his back. The last Nathan saw of him was his arm sticking up from a pile of green monsters before it too was lost in the green sea.
In the meantime, the short one’s shield had been totally destroyed after surprisingly few hits. He was now trading blow for blow with 4 goblins -excluding the one still attached to his leg- and seemed to come out ahead. He was bleeding some, but very little considering the punishment he received. At the same time, compared to his buddy, he didn’t seem to do very much damage. He needed several clean hits to kill any of the goblins, and as the number of enemies interfered with his movements, he was seldom able to deliver effective strikes.
Eventually inevitability took over, and he too lost his footing and was buried in monsters, but he managed to get back on his feet and still looked to be in fighting condition. In fact, although he hadn’t killed more than perhaps five goblins, Nathan started to believe that the man could make it and considered stepping in to help.
That changed when the leader growled out some commands and the remaining player was surrounded by spear-wielders. They all took care to stay out of the player's short reach while stabbing him in the back at every opportunity. The wounds on the player started to accumulate, and pretty soon he didn’t look that fresh anymore.
The player himself had apparently seen the writing on the wall, because in his desperation he suddenly did an unexpected backward dodge, turned and tried to flee back the way he came. Unfortunately, he tripped on a wayward spear and fell flat on his stomach, trapping his club beneath him.
At this point the big goblin boss himself decided to join the fight, and subsequently ended it with a couple of quick swings to the unprotected back of the player’s head.
All in all, the graphic brutality of the fight had surprised Nathan. He, having seen more combat than anyone would want, knew that death could be extremely explicit. And even if what he had seen in this fight wasn’t quite on that level, it was still way grizzlier than he imagined he would see in any game, virtual or not. He was equal parts impressed and disturbed.
The disturbed part would probably have won out if he hadn’t left shortly after, missing out on seeing the goblins dismembering and cooking the player’s remains on the fire.