The next day, I woke with the sun as usual, and opened my eyes to see the other three getting dressed up. Deciding to be tactful, I pretended to stay asleep, but after a small snicker from Lira, I decided I may as well enjoy the view. The others rushed getting their clothes on, but Lira slowed down, giving me a wink when she finished, and didn’t leave with the others, leaving me to dress under her perverted gaze. The girls were wearing their leather armor and weapons, I assumed more because they didn’t want to leave it in the room rather than because they would be needing it. Nera had her short spear tied to her back, while the rest of us had our swords sheathed by our sides as we left the inn to find some way to entertain ourselves.
What soon happened was something that apparently was a commonality between women here and our old world, shopping. The only difference was what we were shopping for. Instead of just visiting clothes stores, the first place we stopped by was a building with a sword and shield carved into the signboard hanging in front of it, covered in a flaking grey paint. There wasn’t any writing of the store name like there would have been back in Janna, which I found odd. It’s not like literacy was an issue, the language imparted by the System gave knowledge on how to read as much as it did how to speak.
Entering the building, it was covered in different weaponry, with a few cuirasses and shields littered here and there. It was terribly organized, only one of the walls sorted out. Prices were only posted for the weapons on the sorted wall as well. The rest were just a bunch of daggers or swords put point down into boxes and barrels, or piles of roughly stacked shields and armor. There were even areas you could barely fit into with how much of a mess the shop was.
The girls instantly split up to look at all the different weapons, while I decided that the best organized area would probably be where the best weapons were. I went over, to see that they seemed to be well crafted, though more decorative than functional. On the other hand, I wasn’t too experienced with what exactly made a good sword. When I was on earth, we had only switched to cold weaponry when we realized that only large scale weapons would harm high constitution monsters, while a stat boosted person with a sword could hurt them quite easily. We’d even tried to nuke the demon king, but it had somehow been detected and destroyed while it was still high in the atmosphere.
By the time factories had been churning out good swords with the new metals that had appeared with the system, I was already using my mana construct sword, so I never learned much about what made a good one, aside from the balance of it.
All of the weapons here were made of simple iron or steel rather than those fancy metals that we had found on earth, which didn’t surprise me. Large scale mining wouldn’t be nearly as easy in a low tech world like this compared to earth, where we had massive machines to do most of the work for us.
Turning away from the horribly expensive swords with pretty patterns carved into them, I decided to go join the girls in the messy portion of the shop. Pretty much every sword there was better than the battered iron one I had been given when told to hunt by the prime muscle monster. Unfortunately, even the cheapest was out of my price range, in the range of a gold, so I simply let out a sigh. I was getting paid two silvers a month from the hunters guild, and would get a bonus for any completed missions, but it would be a while before I could afford a decent sword.
We left with the only purchase being a whetstone and oil for my sword, and I felt left out of the conversation as they discussed different methods of forging, and how this style of sword is better than that style. Eventually, Syn and Jen got into an argument, and I got dragged into it, being forced to use my mana construct skill to make different types of swords to support their side of the argument. By the end of it, I had to plead with them to let me go so I could maintain enough mana to retain my illusion making me seem human.
Then came clothes shopping, and thankfully, they asked each other’s opinions more than they did my own, which saved me the awkwardness of trying to have original compliments for the outfits that they chose. Both men and women wore pants in this world, dresses were occasionally worn by women, but really only nobles.
We stopped for lunch at a small food stall that was selling skewers, unsurprisingly made from horned rabbit that seemed to be everywhere. They were coated in some kind of red sauce, and had a sweet and spicy taste.
I was still savoring mine as we continued to wander the utterly convoluted streets. Alleys and actual streets seeming to connect to each other in random patterns. I was terribly thankful that they were advanced enough to have a sewer system, but wondered how the hell they had managed that with this city. Even with earth magic, it must have been a complete mess.
Eventually the girls were shopped out, which happened far after I was, and we retired back to the inn to have some drinks. After the third beer or so, most of the girls were laughing at pretty much anything, but Lira seemed to have morphed into a shy girl, which I found absolutely hilarious in my slightly inebriated state.
As we retired for the night, I pointedly ignored the fact that Syn and Nera were getting handsy with each other and ended up sleeping in the same bed. Or at least I managed to ignore it after I visited the restroom to relieve some stress.
I totally expected some sort of comment from Lira when I got back, but she just glanced at me, then turned away a bit redder than even the alcohol would explain. I soon went back to bed and passed out.
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The next morning dawned, and with it came an annoying headache. I groaned, and instantly cast healing magic for relief. Looking around I saw all of the girls glaring at me, having noticed the light show that was indicative of light magic. I got a few hugs for my hangover relieving, and then we were back to finding things to entertain ourselves.
The next four days passed with lots of window shopping, and only a couple actual purchases. The day the other hunters were supposed to arrive came, and we were waiting at the message station. When they got here, I was a bit surprised to see two other guys in the group of fifteen people. Looking over them, I noticed Kara was in the lead, and she quickly came up to Lira to discuss what we were going to be doing about the goblins.
The groups mixed together as the girls in our group chatted with the people they knew from the new arrivals, and I stood there awkwardly while everyone talked. Eventually the girls I had been with started to introduce me, but I doubted I was going to be remembering anyone’s name.
It was only midday, so Lira and Kara decided to head out towards haven immediately. We marched along, with plenty of chatter going around, as there weren’t going to be any threats for a while. Everyone was simply hoping that enough horned rabbits would attack us so we could all have some fresh meat when we stopped for our evening meal.
The meal and night passed in a quiet manner, and I got lucky with drawing lots, not having to keep watch. Once morning dawned, everyone got on a more serious look. We weren’t too far out from Haven, maybe half a days worth of walking, so we were close enough to the goblins to walk with our weapons out.
The tension slowly built, all of us constantly vigilant, even with two of the hunters ranging ahead to scout for us. It was around noon that one of them returned with the news we had been waiting for, the goblins had been spotted.
She gave a quick rundown of the situation, there were maybe two hundred goblins grouped up in an area, with a few groups out hunting for food. The hobgoblin was in the middle of the large group, so we weren’t going to have any sort of easy access to him.
We’d discussed our plan for a bit, which came down to basically sticking to our own groups and attacking at the same time. Hunters weren’t trained like the army. While we could usually work well in the small groups we would form, for the most part we had no clue how to fight in formation, so the fight was going to be a bit messy.
The fight started with one of the other males in the group casting a large spell that made tens of shards of ice bombard the area the goblins were staying in. Judging by how he seemed to shrink down a bit after, it seems he had used up all his mana in one shot.
As we charged in, I heard a quick “Typical guy, no stamina at all” from Lira, and grinned a bit that she was making her inappropriate comments even before battle. Our groups impacted the disarrayed goblins and carved through them with ruthless efficiency. Lira and I fought next to each other, the other four in our group staying together as usual as they covered each other, Nera in the back with her short spear to poke anything that the others couldn’t handle.
My focus snapped back to the fight as I was nearly hit with a meat cleaver one of the goblins had found somewhere, and I reflexively beheaded it, spinning to continue my cut onto the goblin next to it which was poised to stab me. The battle wasn’t a dance, it was simply carnage. I would carve through any limbs that became exposed, diverting what weapons I had to, and taking the rest on my mana construct armor.
We’d gone through about half the goblins before the hobgoblin finally decided to act, and for some reason it decided that I was the person he wanted to fight. It approached, not quite matching my height, but making up for it with its large build. I wasn’t sure exactly how powerful it was going to be, so I went into the fight in a cautious manner, feinting a stab with my sword to gauge its reactions. It easily went to divert the blow with a speed that I wouldn’t be able to match, but the fact that it had bothered to try and deflect the blow as I pulled my sword back made it clear he wasn’t my match as a swordsman.
Its own blow was simple, straightforward, and fast as hell as he chopped towards my head with the only real weapon I’d seen any of the goblins using, a rusty sword. Being unsure of my ability to actually block such a blow, I diverted it to my side instead, yet still felt like I was trying to lift a mountain as it impacted my blade.
I cursed as I returned the attack with my own blow diagonally from the top. I’d expected the blow to be at least debilitating, but he used his advantage in speed to get his sword partially interposed with mine, so what would have been a massive wound turned into a relatively deep cut on his shoulder.
We each took a step back, and it lunged forwards at a speed I could barely follow, but I simply twisted, allowing the blade to scrape along my mana construct armor, which ended up with a nasty gash in it that didn’t quite cut all the way through. I then took advantage of its over-aggression, sliding my sword deep into its neck, and looked on coldly as the life faded from its eyes.
I looked up from my fight, wondering why no one had helped, and saw everyone standing around watching, surrounded and covered in gore, with a few coins changing hands.
“You were betting!?” I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or amused.
“You couldn’t have dragged it out a minute longer?” One of the girls whose name I didn’t remember asked.
I just shook my head. Doing a quick cleaning of my sword with some leaves form the nearby trees, I decided to figure out if we were going to be doing anything else. “So what now? We killed the hobgoblin, but there are still a bunch of goblins nearby, do we hunt them down now?”
“Pretty much,” Kara said “We’ll set up base in Haven and sent out patrols to clean up the rest of the goblins nearby.”
Once we had all finished doing a quick cleaning of our swords, we headed over to Haven where hopefully we would be able to wash off a bit. Once we got there, the town mayor was ecstatic to hear that we’d killed the hobgoblin, and even happier when we mentioned we would be cleaning up the rest of the goblins as well. We all went to the well and rinsed off before we went back to our rooms to change clothes. Once we were done, we all ended up doing laundry, scrubbing our blood soaked clothes together as we chatted.
We went to the bed in the sole inn in the town, a reasonably sized affair painted in a dark green, with a common room half filled with tables alongside a bar, and the other half filled with simple cots on the ground for the people who couldn’t afford a room.
My group ended up getting one of the group rooms, and we were soon passed out. The next few days were more boring than exciting. We would group up and go on patrols around the different farms. I spent more time admiring the scenery, waves of hills covered in green stalks of grain flowing in the wind, rather than being tense about possible fights, and three days later we were back on our way to Janna.