While the Evil queen Rosa Rosaria rose in Nivada, the Goblin carriage was heading to a god knows where, well they were given some food and water at times, but in general the service was lacking.
"By the way why did you select the Goblin kingdom"
Vadima suddenly asked.
"Miss instructor if you were given with the choice of staying in a torture chamber or running into the wilds what would you have chosen"
Christopher said, it was of course supposed to be a rhetorical question, he didn't care about her opinion in the first place.
"Probably the wilds, In truth Nivava wasn't always like that, when my father was still general he used to tell me stories of how the army used to pioneer towns and even cities inside the dungeon pillar, but all this stopped with the defeat of the demon king 200years ago when the strongest hero Troika terrorized the world, he was an elf warrior whom was a beast in elven form, he singlehandedly slayed armies and killed without discriminating between humans, elves and other races, at first he had an enemy to fight, the demon king, but after killing him, he became unstable and went up the tower to the gods realm, it is said that there he suffered a tragic defeat that left him dead inside, at those times he barely ate, he didn't sleep at all and even sold his prized weapons for wine and alcohol, but in his drunken state he touched someone he shouldn't have touched and then died in the middle of the night, I only wonder whether he was satisfied dying such a death"
Vadima said, she was very talkative, but Christopher didn't talk at all he simply listened to her stories of old, battles in which she wasn't even present, ages ago before she was even born.
Christopher at the moment wanted to sleep so badly, but he didn't trust neither the goblin emissary nor the woman next to him.
Time passed and the two next to him were sleeping soundly, only he couldn't sleep, he simply wasn't used to sleeping on a moving carriage, but the problem came afterwards when he looked outside his window, he had his suspicions when the road became too bumpy, but when he saw a gobling hunging from the reigns of the horses snoring as if there was nothing wrong he wanted to curse.
"Everyone, WAKE UP!"
His lion roar was strong but not enough to make the two inside open their eyelids, of course he could now hear a faint "Eeeeeeek!" "Help!" coming from outside, from the goblin coachman that had just woke up.
"Just great"
He said to himself and suddnely Vadima woke up.
"What's the situation outside whom is attacking us?"
Vadima asked hearing the cries for help from outside.
"Our driver fell asleep and is now hunging next to the door"
Christopher said making Vadima regret taking the same carriage as him, of course her main reason for doing so was to take revenge from the kingdom that wanted to sell her off, which she succeeded, after that day everyone would know that the Nivava lost a Hero and a Vassal to the Goblin Klan, a humiliation worse than death, even the ogre emissaries whom couldn't recruit a single hero felt like that little goblin emissary was too talented, even they couldn't see through his greatness.
At this moment however a wrecked carriage was in the middle of a swamp, two humans and two goblins were lost in the middle of nowhere.
"Now tell me that you know where we are or at least have a map with you"
Christopher said to the goblins.
"Me has map!"
"Me knows where he is"
The two goblins said nodding their heads.
"Could you hand me the map then"
Christopher asked him politely.
"Map in hotel room"
The goblin emissary said without a single hint of ridicule, he was completely serious about it.
"Then it's your turn, where are we?"
He asked the other goblin but didn't await something helpful to begin with.
"We are right here in swamp"
The goblin coachman said.
"I knew it"
Christopher told himself.
"I think I know where we are, there's a swamp right next to the capital of Nivava, If we walk towards the north there should be a fort, we could ask for help"
Vadima said giving him a hope of finding a path to safety or at least to civilization.
"I only hope that they won't take us for monsters accompanying the goblins is a really dangerous hobby"
Christopher said looking at the two little green idiots, he couldn't even believe that goblins could be dangerous after meating these two.
"It's feral goblins that are considered monsters, they look hairy and..."
Vadima wanted to continue but her words were completed by Christopher.
"...hold wooden stick and rocks in their hands?"
"Shit, don't tell me that there are goblins nearby?"
She wanted curse at their bad luck but she turned to the side Christopher was looking at and her jaw fell creating a large half moon by the sight.
"Oh no Goblins, me should run!"
The two goblins in their group begun running without even caring for them or for the baggages in the carriage.
"Do we fight or do we run?"
Christopher asked, but his hand was already making strange groping movements towards the air.
Vadima didn't know what he was doing, but she knew that against this horde they had no chance of survival, she could only leave him behind as bait and run away like the goblins did, after all his physique was still too slow to outrun these goblins.
As she was about to run away she heard screams from the distance. They were like the screams of a dying animal but she knew that they were the voices of the feral goblins.
At first she thought that someone came to save them, but what she saw afterwards made her understand the blunt truth of the matter.
The goblins that were running till now were now crawling, as their legs were cut, they were teleported next to Christopher.
Christopher now had 37.1 magicality, meaning 37.1% chance to succeed in teleporting something, that something however could be biological material, through his experiments with the bandits and a question he had made to their teacher during a random day, he had learned that unless the creature's magicality is higher than his own, his spell will not fail, meaning that the goblin had to be a goblin mage to not have his feet cut during the teleportation, since he had no desire to teleport the whole thing anyway, not that he could even if he wanted.
Of course with a 1/3 chance to cast the spell the goblins were being mawed down like ants as the fell to the ground and then found their heads missing the next moment, only problem was calculating the distance, if only he had some skill to assist in that he would have been realy happy.
While massacring these creatures wasn't enjoyable, he tried to vent his negative emotions on them, imagining them having That prince's head and then making their feet teleport.
The most however troublesome thing was that they were throwing stones at him, well it wasn't like they could hit him from such a long distance.
"Shouldn't you be running as well?"
Vadima said as she saw him stay at the same spot while using his power.
"What's the difference, either way I will probably die, so why not taking them all with me"
Christopher said while continuing to cast his spell, there were still around a hundred of them and stones eventualy hit him each stone wounding him deeply, but he didn't even care, he continued to cast his spells as if he didn't care about it, this was the result of his toughness skill.
Vadima had also unsheethed her sword and begun slashing at the goblins that approached them, creating a wall between him and the goblins.
Vadima was relieved each time she saw a goblin fall dead to the ground either by her sword or due to missing a head.
The closer they got the easier it was to kill them, of course since there was no shaman or mage amongst them, the fight ended in a rather legendary 2 vs 200.
In the end they simply executed the crawling footless goblins, with sword and magic.
Christopher was a mess, he could feel his body bruised and battered, but he didn't care.
He walked clumpsily towards the carriage and opened the baggage, took some food and ate it, the bag with the food he raised and threw onto his back, there were also money inside, but he didn't care at the moment, he was simply too exhausted.
"Where are you going?"
Vadima asked seeing him taking the bag and simply walking away.
"I Don't know"
He said and neither did he care, what he knew was that he didn't want to stay there.
"Wait let me inspect the bag, goblins like to put useless trash in their baggage, you might even be carrying rocks in there or inedible stuff"
Vadima said, Christopher didn't know about it, but on second thought it wasn't a bad idea.
The inspection revealed that she was right, half of the bag was filled with stones, of course some gold or silver ore was good to have, but there were also some stones that had no value at all, at least not in the human territories.
"How come the bag is too light, we could put some stones in to make it more plessible on my back"
Christopher said, but he earned a kick that send him flying right into the swampy waters.
"I'm so sorry, I forgot that you were so..."
She wanted to say weak, but then remembered the goblins, she had made the count and had discovered that out of the 200 plus goblins they fought, he had killed 150 of them, meaning three times what she had handled.
Of course the reason why goblins are feared when in a small group isn't because of their strength, it's because they chink at your health until you die from bleeding,pain or exhaustion.
"I swear that if you were a bandit or a goblin I would have your head for this"
Christopher said as he rose from the swamp water.
Vadima couldn't hold but laugh by the sight of his face turning black by the mud covering his face, of course that only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough for her to engrave the image into her mind and laugh canditly from time to time.
Christopher was sleepy but he still walked forward, they didn't know where they were going, but at least they had enough provisions to survive for awhile.
Finding a place to rest in the swamp was impossible, thus they only stopped for a few minutes to rest before they went onwards.
"You can sleep for a little, I will stand guard, you can do the same for me later"
Vadima said when she was already at her wits end from walking for too long.
Christopher had also discovered that while asleep his level rose up to 15 and his toughness had by itself leveled up by one, probably due to eating the goblin's stones, well he leveled it up for another 5 points, making it reach level 8, two more levels for it to evolve into something more useful.
The problem however was that from level 10-11 he needed 1000exp, from 11-12 another 1000exp, but from 12-13 it became 2000exp, then 3000exp.
If he wanted to level up he had to begin killing more powerful monsters or simply continue mawing goblins, it gave a good amount of experience after all.
When Christopher woke up it was night and Vadima was sadly sleeping. He didn't know what to think, he thought that she was part of the army or something, but she acted more like a spoiled brat than a soldier.
Christopher kept watch till she woke up, but once the sun was up he decided to directly wake her up.
"Where am I, oh yes, we are still in the swamp"
She said and begun walking behind him like before, she tried a couple of times to carry the bag in order to make it easier fo him, but he didn't give it to her. He felt rather embarashed having a woman carry the burden while he walked emptyhanded.
"You know you remind me of the Ecclesis paladins, they are all grumpy and go around shouting about the holy light and stuff about helping the weak, but in truth they are completely rotten inside"
She said while trying to get a reaction, but there was nothing at all.
"You think that acting kind to women will earn you points with them, I will tell you that it's wishfull thinking, most women like being used, they like to think that they are needed, they love it when the man takes the first step into the dirt to kiss them"
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
She said, but to her words there was no reaction, of course she knew that it would have been like that, she had already expected it.
"Awooo!"
A sound similar to the howl of the wolf echoed from not too far away.
"Please make it so that they are not feral wolf riders"
She preyed, but to her prayers Christopher simply hid near a try using his sneak ability, be they feral or not ambushing the would earn him some time.
Vadima did understand that logic, but she still hated the fact that she didn't have any stealth skills.
The large creature that could bearly be called a wolf rushed towards them, there was no goblin on top of it, but it didn't seem to friendly.
Vadima had already gotten used to disappearing feet trick, thus she wasn't surprised when the monster stumbled and fell head first into the mud.
Another large wolf whom rushed at them met a fate worse than missing his feet, he simply fell down and croacked as his brain went for a stroll.
The wolves whom could faintly detect someone sneaking begun to circle around the area, of course that gave Vadima and Christopher more chances to attack, but the large beasts' speed made it very hard to teleport a part of them, even more so because they weren't moving towards him and even as they made rounds around them they still were hard to predict.
Four wolves dies before they decided to retreat, of the original eight only half remained when they left and one was missing half its face, another had a hole on its side, another had lost its tail.
Christopher didn't know but Vadima knew that feral wolves were recorded as D rank monsters, they were very resilient and hard to kill for warriors, well for mages it depened on their element of choice, wind, earth and water are considered useless against them.
Of course goblin wolf riders are even more troublesome, they are considered as rank A monsters and their fast attacks and intelligence make them hard for even veteran adventurers to solo.
Of course there are very few monsters with high magic resistance, typicaly speaking a level 100 warrior will have around 10 magicality, meaning that they will be completely vulnerable to magic, of course that can be easily reversed by puting a general or mage or an enchanter by his side.
Of course warriors would go full physicality, but talented warriors would be able to reach a level of 200, meaning that they tried to at least have a 30 magicality and mentality in order to be somewhat resistant to weak magic, in general they would take 30 less magic damage, of course whom would be stupid enough to try out whether the mage has 30 magic or more, in general even level 100 mages have at least a 50 magicality, making it pointless to charge towards a mage, of course their cheat abilities require no chant, making them especialy deadly.
Normaly a warrior would try to kill the the mage before he could chant his spell, but there were two things that made mages more difficult to fight against, first being quick chant and second spell skills.
Spells skills are much like their cheat powers, only they are less powerful in nature.
Walking through the swamp turned to be more time consuming than they had throught, but while they were walking through the swamp two goblins arrived at the fort asking for help.
Of course their heads now decorated the Pillar fortress, the first line of defense against the monsters that emerge from the pillar dungeon, a lawless fort where convicts are sent to serve their prison time.
At the moment however a small elite troop was passing through the area and heading towards the the First floor of the Pillar dungeon.
Amongst them could be seen the young Heroes of Nivava and the ex-royalty, while at the helm was Brigs, whom had now become their new Instructor or rather an observer.
"As we have spoken each of you will be given a small foothold village near the Pillar outpost, you will be living there and growing stronger by hunting monsters, you have been given the deed to the villages as well as the permission to recruit people from those villages as your personal army, you have the righ to request weapons and provisions from the outpost through a written form as explained earlier"
General Brigs Explained as he guided them towards the Pillar dungeon.
He could only weep silently when alone for his bad fate, because he was Vadima's subordinate he was given a promotion, a great promotion right to the warfront, to the outpost on the fifth floor, together with a group completely composed of Vadima's ex-subordinates.
Of course the fifth outpost by itself wasn't such a terrifying place, the problem was reaching it, there was 50% chance of being wiped out before they even reach the next outpost as the road towards the next passage is guarded by stronger and stonger monsters, in general there is a natural disaster called a monster wave, Monsters always try to go upwards by one floor, at the time of the monster wave the outposts suffer serious damages, but at the period when there is no wave, the outposts are as idle as it gets, of course there will be times when some adventurer will come running to the fortress with monsters on his tail, but that's nothing to fear.
The main problem as stated is reaching the outposts.
There are two outposts on each floor, one at the entrance to the country floor and another at the exit to the next floor.
The one near the entrance has the duty to defend against the waves, while the one at the exit has the duty to patrol the path connecting the two outposts, meaning a rather risky duty, it was widely known that this duty was greatly ignored, thus leading to the passages becoming very dangerous.
The Pillar dungeon looked like a large pillar stretching into the sky, but as they got closer and closer they could see it becoming more and more domineering, at first it looked like a needle, then like a pillar, later like a tower and in the end like an endless wall covering the horizon.
They could see the openings of caves, as if the pillar iteself was made of swedish cheese, hundreds of holes could be seen stretching through the large wall.
"All caves have long been explored, some are dead ends, others lead to a slime lake, an S rank existance you better not try facing one, after all they cannot move and all they do is produce level 1 slimes, thus making them more beneficial than harmfull for gathering Slime cores, our country's national resource"
General Brigs explained as they headed towards a heavily armored location where they could see a huge gate sealing a single cave.
"This is one of the entrances into the Pillar heading towards the demon world, the ones going upwards are heading towards the Celestial world, you should understand that of all the passages go down, and in the dungeon pillar first floor where you are going, there will be dozens of unexplored holes that might lead to the second floor, stay clear of them, they are extremely dangerous for people whom haven't reached level 100 yet, even level 200 warriors are known to die from monster ambushed in narrow tunnels and armies being wiped out"
His words made the young heroes terrified, at first they thought that it would be a walk in the part to defeat the demon king since they were in a large group, but now they were going to each be responsible for themselves as well as protecting their own possessions from bandits and monsters.
"Don't be so scared, the Queen has given an order that you are each allowed to die at least three times, if you don't die continuously of course, which will mean that you are trash to begin with and will be left dead, so don't go dying too early or to casualy, the Ideal is you establishind yourselves at your..."
At the moment a rather large side door opened at the side of the large gate and they were led into a dark passage.
"Everyone be on guard, logicaly there shouldn't be monsters at the passage, but there have been tons of times where a few small slimes have made their way through tiny holes in the passage"
General Brigs said warning them and raising their vigilance.
In the end it turned out to be a false alarm, but their nerves were already stretched and due to the darkness of the cave they couldn't relax until they saw light at the end of the tunnel.
The First floor of the dungeon Pillar unlike their imagination wasn't some cave, They could see the familiar endless wall behind them, but above their heads there was a sky similar as the one they had before, only now it was dark and they could see stars in the sky and a moon shining their path.
They could see that they now were in another Outpost, there large gate on this side was undergoing repairs and the soldiers looked like battle hardened veterans, nothing like the riff raff on the other side of the tunnel.
"Wellcome to Starnight Outpost, the first outpost of the first floor, here we have night all the time so no need to be too surprised"
An elderly man whom had approached them with two soldiers carrying torches said.
"Oh, Logan old dog, I see you are still alive"
General Brigs said as he went forth to give him a big hug, one looking like a fat rat and the other like an old bear.
"So how deep are you being sent?"
The bearlike man called logan asked.
"I have to report to the fifth floor within a year"
Brigs said sighing as if in pain.
"Did you kill the king or something?"
Logan asked jokingly.
"Don't even joke about it, I know that here news won't arrive for about a few years or so, but the Country is already under another ruler, the old king croaked of old age and his little daughter Bloom, you remember that retarded little girl that liked to set the horses' tails on fire, now her mother is the new High Queen of Nivava, by the way you might see some familiar faces in the people that I have escorted, read this letter tomorrow lets go to have a drink while the young ones go to rest, they will have lots to do later on"
Brigs said and the two soldiers led all the people both those of his troops and the heroes to some tents, inside there was was food, water and a shining stone that lit the inside of the tent.
"Why do you use torches if you have stones that shine?"
Mina asked out of curiosity.
"These are called Moonlight stones, they charge energy from the moon and emit light, it's not that we don't like to use them, you simply don't know when one will suddenly go out, whereas torches simply need to be lit and then used as a one time thing, although regularly we prefer using light magic, a pity our mage fell ill, also try not to move the stone too much, they tend to go out faster when moved around"
The soldier explained, it was funny how the brutish looking soldier ended up being such a good guy.
There was no sun to signify day and night, at some moment in the darkness of the night a soldier woke them up and led them towards a large tent.
It was a rather beautiful tent that from affar looked like a glowing lamp due to the lights inside.
The tent was located on a hill making it easy to see down bellow, seeing hundereds of tents and fires like fireflies in the darkness.
This was just the first impression they got from the Starnight outpost, inside the tent there was no table and they could see two people sitting on wolf furs.
"I have been instructed to inform you of your accomodations, as you might have been already told there are four castletown which will become your bases of operation, of course that also means that you will be divided into four groups to travel to the Castletown closest to your fief"
Old man Logan explained.
"Don't forget to explain them the basics around here"
General Brigs said visibly drunk.
"Cool down your horses, before we go into survival tips I would like to greet a good friend amongst you, isn't that right his highness the ex-prince Verillio"
The old man's face begun crook with a rather vicious smile.
"If only..."
Prince Verillio wanted to say something, but he stopped midways.
"I'm sure that we can leave small emnities behind as we can leave behind any enmity there had been between us"
"You little piece of shit punk, do you know what living under eternal darkness for thirty years is like, well not that you won't experience it for yourself, All hail the Queen, I'm already starting to like her, well just make sure to stay hidden like in the first time today, even seeing your mug makes my wine taste bad"
The old man said as he took another gulp of his wine, he knew his priorities and since the person he loafed was now a slave of some hero he wouldn't act too beat the crap out of him in order not to offend the hero, but their enmity wasn't something that rules could mend.
It was long ago when logan and brigs were still soldiers of Vadima's father, a great and reknown general, a day that he would never forget.
That day Verillio's elder brother ignored military orders and rushed towards a horde of monsters by himself, of course he wasn't crazy, he was a level 200 Talented warrior, meaning his class was Talented warrior, because his skills were simply average, even a common warrior could easily be his sparring partner.
Of course he had a rather large ego, he not only ignored the general's advice, but he even commanded another battalion to open a way for him to have a one on one fight against the Wave boss.
Of course the opening only lasted for a few seconds until thousands of slimes like a sea drowned him alive, not even his body remained.
Of course the general knew nothing about it since he was still in his tent making plans with his advisors, at the moment he learned of the Prince's stupid action of moving out with a whole battalion, the general immediately gathered as many as he could to leading a completely unprepared army towards the wave of slimes, no barricades no walls, nothing to protect them.
In the end only a handful survived to return back to tell the tale of the onslaught, the general died having killed the wave's boss in a duel from legends, but dissolved in the monster's acid explosion that happened upon its death.
Logan at the time was one of the lucky few whom survived to tell the tale, but what happened after they returned was another story.
Not only the King didn't honor the general's bravery and accomplishments, he even struck his name from the ranks of generals, demoting him and making him a coward that could not protect the Prince's life and turtled inside his tent while the Prince bravely faced the monsters and had even gravely injured the Wave boss before his arrival and died a horrible death by the acid from the bosses' explosion the whole story was twisted around and make it so that the one whom had acted heroicaly was the brain dead prince, of course that was not the worst thing, the worst thing was that the survivors of the fight were labeled as cowards whom left the prince to die to save their own lives.
Logan and his whole military carrier went down the drain in a single night because of Verillion's brother, of course this wasn't his enmity with Verillion, his enmity came from a small matter that happened after they were sentenced to Serve a sentence at the Pillar outpost on the surface, like all criminals with light charges or great strengths.
But as Logan was walking out of the palace a small pipsquik with red flarry hair that reminded him of the idiotic prince came into his view, Logan simply glared at the child and it begun crying having evidently leeked its trousers.
There was an uproar a few seconds afterwards about how he had dared to threaten a royal offspring to tears and disrespecting the royalty and other bullshit, of course all of this would have been written off if the small child said he forgave him when he apologized sincerely, after all the child was not responsible for its brother being an idiot.
Of course there's a reason why Nivava can change generals like sleeves, the main reason is Classes, the general class is not so rare and although talented individuals are rare, there is still an eccess in generals, after all the buffs given provided by a general cannot be more than one, in other words there cannot be more one general buff in the army, that of the strongest general, the buffs of all other generals in the group or army are negated by that one's generals, thus having a talented general is like a double edged sword for the commanders since their buff will not work while in his army, making them the same as regular warriors if not worse, of course they can still use command buffs,tactical buffs and other temporary buffs.
Of course Logan's enmity didn't spawn just by being sent to the first floor, it was because his each year his petition to return to the surface came back sealed by Verillio's royal seal, refused each time.
For Verillio, Logan was like a black spot in his history, everyone would humiliate him and belittle him, even his credibility as a prince had fallen bellow all his simplings, even little Bloom at the time was more prestigious than himself, of course he wouldn't have ever imagine that the little girl would in the end sit on the throne.
In parts for him the Event with Logan had forever barred his road to rulership, thus he was forced to support some other candidate, each time the petition would arrive to his hands, whom was responsible for logistics and promotions in the army because of his brother's great feat in battle and heroic death, he would send it back rejecting his return to the surface.
Of course now the situation had changed, Logan would most likely be returning to the surface with honors for his thirty ears of service, while he would have to travel into the depths of hell acompanying the weak hero, whom was even weaker than himself.