Slowly creeping her way into the hidden lair she soon found herself within a spacious cave.

Looking around warily, she quickly found that none of the Goblins seemed to be guarding outside the entrance, yet just by going by the stench coming from the inside of the cave, she could tell this was the home of Goblins.

‘Ugh, that stench, disgusting, in the end, Goblins are Goblins no matter how intelligent they may be.’ She mumbled under her breath.

She had no idea if it was just overconfidence or foolishness but the Goblins seemed to have left the entrance completely unguarded.

Cautiously placing her steps she began to make her way into the cave, and soon enough she discovered exactly why there were no Goblins at the entrance at all as she had quickly found a campfire, huddled around it was a group of Goblins happily jumping around the fire as they eagerly stared at the object which was cooking.

Talia identified straight away what the Goblins were preparing on the campfire, it was the severed leg of a human.

“Ah, the scent is delicious, we believe that we have yet to taste the deliciousness of such a succulent human before.” The high pitch voice of a goblin sounded.

“Yes! That women’s meat just looked so tender, we just had to have a taste, so we stole the leg when the elder wasn’t looking!” Said another one of the goblins.

Taking in the appearance of the Goblins for the first time, she could safely say the ugliness of the Goblins remained unchanged, they each stood around three and a half feet tall, with odd, inhumane features, they have long gangly arms like apes with pointed ears, a hooked nose and a large head which seemed too large for their small bodies.

Similar to the look of Goblins in most fantasy settings, their skin tone was darkish green, but with their poor hygiene standards, dirt and grime covered their bodies making them emit a foul stench.

However, unlike your common Goblin it could be seen that they had notable differences as unlike their kin who are usually poorly equipped, the Goblins were decked in good quality gear which although evidently was mismatched with different pieces of equipment, they still resembled a proper unit and not some ragtag fitted group badly armed like most Goblins are.

Also, despite their apparent idiocy, they were clearly more intelligent than your average Goblin, especially because their current carelessness was not as it seems.

The first group of players who had discovered the clues and found the trail of the Goblins leading them to their lair ended up having a miserable fate due to underestimating the mischievous, cunning little green creatures.

Concentrating her gaze in an area in the cave she soon found what she was looking for, a small-thin wire which went entirely across from the cave in front of the group of goblins.

It was extremely inconspicuous and unnoticeable, only if you took the time to fully concentrate on spotting the clever trap would you discover it.

The first group of players who were the one to discover the Goblin den previously had straight away rushed into the cave without paying much attention to their surroundings which ended up costing them severely, when the traps of the Goblins were activated it ended up causing a classic party wipe when the trap alerted every Goblin within the cave to their presence.

A death to players, although an annoyance with the loss of items and having an experience penalty was not considered too serious to players who had the ability to respawn from death.

Yet, the misfortune to the group of players has not ended as straight upon returning for revenge against Goblins they found that they had completely disappeared, with their base moved entirely something completely unforeseen by the players as they had found that not only had they suffered a respawn penalty but all of their hard work had gone to waste.

Nonetheless, in the end, the Goblins were re-discovered but as the previous group did not tell anyone about their experience with the Goblins, this group ended up suffering the same fate.

After it had happened a few times to the players, they eventually all developed a mutually great hatred to the group of Goblins who to no end repeatedly irked the players as they mockingly taunted them after every death making the group of Goblins the number one hated mob in the game.

Therefore, for the first time the players actually banded together, and after finding the impish group of Goblins for the last time, they a brought a much larger party than ever before and directly went into their lair massacring the pitiful group of Goblins who did not understand how so many humans kept finding their location, never mind such a massive group who seemed to resemble the humans they dealt with before.

With the way the Goblins paraded around the players' dead bodies and performed victory dances over the players' corpses, the Goblins had successfully gathered the resentment of the entire server which in the end lead to their demise.

Nonetheless, to Talia who is not only here without a party of players but cannot count on the ability to revive after death like the players, the Goblins pose a serious threat to her, as not only did the entire cave contained numerous deadly traps but the Goblins themselves were a danger, they were not only numerous but are also are far more well trained than your average Goblins.

Coming up with the best method to both avoid the traps and sneak attack the group of Goblins, she came up with a viable method straight away.

Shifting into the form of her beast-soul she took the form of a Frost Gecko, straight away she made her way up the wall of the cave as she used the Frost Gecko’s natural climbing abilities to grip onto the rugged rocks.

A Frost Gecko is used to climbing up cliffs and glaciers with the use of their sharp claws which provide them astonishing grip strength, so it was natural for her in being able to climb her way up the walls of the cave.

Ensuring that she crept silently along the walls, she made sure to stick to the areas which were pitch black and were more well covered from the Goblins line of sight to avoid being spotted.

Because the Frost Gecko’s natural camouflage was completely not suited for this environment she is not particularly difficult to find if someone looked directly at her, so she wanted to use whatever means she had available to protect herself from being discovered.

As she hurriedly made her way across the wall of the cave, one of the Goblins seemed to have been stirred by something as he suddenly felt he saw movement from the corner of his eye, when he was about to investigate a voice of a Goblin distracted him as it said, “It is finally cooked! We need to savour this meat as it may be the last time we have such good quality food.”

The Goblin who was about to look into what he saw licked it lips hungrily after smelling the tasty meat, decided to ignore what it thought it saw believing it must have been a false alarm deciding that nothing could off get past their traps without alerting them anyways.

Talia breathed a slight sigh of relief after seeing that one of the Goblins who seemed to have been getting ready to walk towards became distracted as it began gauging himself on the severed leg like the other Goblins.

Frowning in disgust from seeing the Goblins behaviour, Talia decided to end the lives of these evil creatures as quickly as possible.

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Talia went over to a suitable place for an ambush, an area which directly blocked the Goblins running away deeper into the cave to alert the others, something she wanted to avoid for now.

Preparing an ‘Ice Spear’ spell she aimed directly for one of the Goblins head, and the Goblins who were happily tearing into flesh were taken by completely surprising when suddenly the head of one of their companions exploded into a gory mess.

They screamed in panic after realising they were under attack and went to reach for their weapons but before they could take preemptive measures a flash of blue appeared and a blue-scaled large lizard was already onto of one of the Goblins who began struggling immediately trying to get the lizard of it.

However, Talia kept a firm grip as she pummelled the Goblins face tearing it into an unrecognisable mess as she quickly ended its life.

The last Goblin seeing that it was facing hopeless odds went to make a break for it to call for reinforcements, but before it could make it far, Talia already speedily approached it, not allowing it to do so.

And the Goblin who knew it could not escape from Talia decided to retaliate as it brought up its sword slashing it heavily towards her.

Talia felt the ‘Ice Barrier’ protecting her body took the full brunt of the attack from the Goblin, but it wasn’t enough to break the barrier so she still did not receive any damage from the Goblin.

Its hideous face turned into shock as it saw the attack it landed did nothing, raising its buckler to defend itself from the pouncing Talia it felt the weight of the strange blue creature press down on it as it fell to the ground with the lizard on top of it.

Trying to cover its face with its shield, the Goblin felt the repeated strikes of the creature tearing through its armour leaving wounds on its flesh, with it paying no heed to its retaliation as it attempted to stab at the underside of the creature with its dagger.

‘What is this thing?’ The Goblin thought as it felt it could do no damage because of the peculiar glowing barrier around the creature, it did not give up though as the Goblin tried to defend itself from the creatures attack.

But, it soon found itself in a losing battle as it was suffering too much damage, ‘We must warn the others!’

It felt knowing it could not last much longer, however even when it bravely tried everything to warn its kin, it was stopped every time by its assailant and eventually the Goblin could no longer move as it laid on the ground lifelessly.

‘Damn. The gear these Goblins are wearing is way more durable than the armour I own, that guy took a lot of punishment.’ She thought feeling jealous over the gear of the bunch of Goblins.

Luckily, she could store their items in her storage pouch to sell later, another one of the great things about this quest is that it is a literal gold mine with the number of good quality items she could obtain.

Although she cannot collect any of the armour for her own use, or for most humanoid races for that matter as not many fit the size of a Goblin, the materials used can still be melted down and reforged by smiths who would pay a handsome price for this kind of stuff.

Her storage pouch capacity had already improved after she bought a larger one before leaving the Town, something she prepared specifically for this quest and why she wasn’t too downhearted at spending most of her earnings in coin so far.

Storing all of the sellable items from the three Goblins, she continued to make her way further into the cave.

Carefully avoiding all of the traps from in her memory, she soon came across the next pairing of Goblins, who were chatting noisily as they seemed to be sat playing a card game with each other.

Approaching slowly she was about to cast a spell straight away to sneak attack the Goblin, but luckily for the Goblins one of them seemed to drop something as it split its concentration from the game for a moment consequently allowing its eyes to settle directly at her.

As its face widened in alarm, Talia had already struck, jumping onto the back of the Goblin facing her she bit down onto its neck as it shrieked in pain whacking at her whilst placing its hand over it neck in an attempt to get rid of her.

The other Goblin on the other hand had already drawn its weapon whacking it at her immediately once again causing the ‘Ice Barrier’ to shield the impact of another blow.

This Goblin did not let up though as it kept raining blows with its weapon, not at all discouraged by seemingly not achieving any success.

Talia knew that the barrier was not going to hold for much longer if she continued to let the Goblin wantonly hit her, so she attempted to finish off the Goblin she was dealing with, however, the Goblin seemed to be desperately holding onto life as it had already drawn a dagger from its belt and began stabbing at her despite the wound on its neck continuously pouring blood.

Yet she knew that this would not last, as the Goblins vitality was quickly leaving its body, so she moved away from the Goblin to dodge the strikes from the duo and switched her target to the other Goblin using her strength to knock it over to the ground.

Out of the way of the dagger-wielding Goblin, and effectively disarming the other she used the advantageous mount position she was into full effect as she targeted the non-protected areas on the Goblins body which were not covered by its armour.

The Goblin was in a pinch at it tried various means to try and get out of this unfavourable situation, but it could only make futile attempts as Talia continued to recklessly cause damage on its body.

Now, the dagger-wielding Goblin knew that it was clearly on its last legs as it felt the life drain away from its body so it made one last big attack with crashed into Talia’s ‘Ice Barrier’ for the first time its high-quality weapon cracked the shield into pieces now leaving Talia without its protection.

Nonetheless, this final attack clearly had taken everything away from the Goblin who now lay their unmoving, no longer capable of interfering with the battle any further.

This left the Goblin on the ground and opportunity, something which it took full advantage for as it reached for its dagger stabbing it into Talia’s sturdy scales yet to its shock it met a great deal of resistance as it tried to push its weapon further into Talia’s body.

Talia was amazed as well because she did not realise at how much the ‘Vitality’ attribute grew to the point where it offered a far higher defence than she had within the beginning of entering this World however she also knew this was large. After all, the strength attribute was also not a Goblins strong point.

Although the weapon was of decent quality, the Goblin itself did not have great strength, but she knew that she needed to end this battle quick now that her protection saving her from taking damage was removed.

Finishing off the Goblin before her she tore at its jugular ending the life of the final Goblin.

‘I should make a move, I need to deal with the Shaman as quickly as possible because the more time I take the more likely that the Goblins will discover my presence after all the Shaman is by far the greatest threat here and no matter what plan I come up with, it will be difficult to deal with.’ She thought, as she quickly removed any of the valuable items off the Goblins before once again making her way through the cave.