Roughly a minute later he actually found a stone in the map that he could recognize because he had seen it while strolling through the forest previously.
"Yeah this should be the large rock I saw while following the hunters before." Thiago muttered, while comparing the drawn rock on the map with the one in his memory. The most recognizable characteristic of the rock was that it looked as if it were a statue of a beast. Well obviously the rock only looked like that when one observed it with enough imagination, but still, it did indeed slightly resemble some kind of petrified beast.
After confirming that the stone on the map was indeed the one he had seen before, Thiago was just about to leave for said rock, when suddenly a notification popped up on his system interface which promptly made him halt.
[Received mission!
Find the goblin Village and eliminate every goblin in there.
___
Reward for completion: ?? ]
[Do you accept this mission?]
[Yes] -- [No]
[No punishment for not accepting]
"Wow!" Thiago exclaimed involuntarily and then after a few seconds thought 'This is the first time the System gave me a mission, it seems that I was really lucky picking up this map, or else the mission would probably not have appeared.'
"Huh? The Reward for the completion of the mission is unknown, does that mean that the rewards will be calculated according to how the mission is completed or is the reward random?" Thiago muttered after seeing the question signs instead of a named reward behind the field "Reward for completion".
"Well not that it matters, I had planned to go there anyway." He reassured himself that no matter the reward it wouldn't matter that much, because he could increase his [system points] or strength when he arrived at the goblin village. Coming back from his thoughts he unhesitatingly clicked on [Yes] to accept the mission and seeing that nothing happened like a countdown or something like that, he was inwardly a little glad, in view of the fact, that he did not like to act under pressure due to time restraints.
Now that he was ready to go, he did not waste any time and marched towards the special rock he had previously identified on the map. From there he would only have to follow the map's markings of various easy to spot landscape features.
While he was on his way to the rock, he estimated that he would need around 15 minutes if he ran at moderate speed, which was already quite fast if you put to mind that the forest was absolutely large in reality and it just seemed small because the outside world was way larger. Also the distance Thiago would cover in those 40 minutes is approximately 40 kilometers. This was a speed of around 17 meters per second, which was not even Thiago's top speed, so it can be seen how strong cultivators are truly, because Thiago was just at one of the lower realms of Red Star at the moment, so it can be imagined what kind of speeds can be achieved with a way higher realm.
To pass the time better while he was running, he hummed a little tune and tried to sing a little which turned out to be quite a weird spectacle. Nevertheless, Thiago's singing voice wasn't half bad if one were to be honest and it even sounded relatively good.
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This was what he was singing:
"Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive
It's the eye of the tiger
It's the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all with the eye of the tiger
Face to face, out in the heat
Hanging tough, staying hungry
They stack the odds 'til we take to the street
For the kill with the skill to survive
It's the eye of the tiger
It's the thrill of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all with the eye of the tiger"
This was one of his favorite songs back on Earth and he had unknowingly started to sing this exact song which unexpectedly was quite a fitting one for his current situation.
Then after having been running for quite some time he finally arrived at his destination, the rock, from there it would not take that much longer as he had already seen on the map.
"Alright, now from here I should go straight forwards until I see an old tree that was once hit by lightning and is therefore extremely dark and split in half." Thiago mumbled his next route which the map had depicted.
A short while later he stood in front the just mentioned special tree, and from there he would only need to take a short route and he would finally reach his desired place.
"I guess I will be there in five minutes, no more" He muttered delightful. And it was truly as he had predicted, no more no less than five minutes he stood before an inconspicuous ginormous rock.
Now you might think, why it is said that he has arrived when in fact he stood in front of a large rock instead of the promised goblin village. Well, the reason for this is naturally, that the large rock is in reality the entrance to the goblin village and which was made to be extremely hard to find.
And the problem is that you can't circle around the rock because there are such big rocks inlaid into the ground everywhere next to the large rock, which makes it rather tricky to also find the right one.
The only reason Thiago was able to find it, was with the help of the map, or else the idea of this specific rock being the entrance to the goblin village would never cross his mind. Now the question is on how to enter the village, because the map did not mention this specific important key detail.
Thiago tried to touch the rock everywhere, but after a few minutes there were still no results in sight, so he paused and decided to think first.
'Hmm, if me touching the rock does not cause any reaction, then maybe there is no such mechanism built in and I have to find another way. Well the only possibility that might make sense would be an illusion formation or something like that, which makes me just imagining that there is no entrance, but maybe the entrance is completely open and I just can't see it.'
Having thought of the possibility that there might be an illusion in place here, Thiago praised himself for his intelligence, but then he realized that it didn't matter whether there was an illusion or not, in view of the fact that he had absolutely no idea on how to dismantle or see through an illusion.
Just as he was about to think of something else, he suddenly remembered that in most novels, Soul sense was also used to see through illusions because only when an illusion was of much greater level than the souls sense could it influence the souls sense.
Thinking of this, the "Heavenly Demon soul transmogrifying Art" he had just bought not long ago came him to mind. He had originally wanted to directly try the technique out after buying it, but it seemed as if he had somehow forgotten about this and had then left the cave to test his other skills.
What a blunder from his side...
Well, unusual situations require unusual situations... So, now he was planning on just cultivating this technique here in the open forest, because he thought that it was his only chance to enter the goblin village in the short term.
Obviously, it was by no means a good idea to practice in the open inside the forest without protection, but Thiago was pretty sure that even if he was sneak attacked by some beasts, he would be able to deal with them as long as it was not outrightly the strongest beast living in this forest that attacked him.
The reason he did not just return to his cave and practice the technique there and instead chose to stay here in the open, was because he was very impatient and wanted to enter this goblin as soon as possible, so he could not tolerate the time it would take to first go back to the cave and then come back here to this rock.
No longer questioning his decision he distanced himself hundred meter or so away from the entrance of the village, just in case someone would be coming out and he was practicing in front of the entrance, which would be quite unnecessary trouble in his opinion. Lying down on the floor next to a large tree and covered by many shrubs and bushes, he prepared for the pain that was to come and slowly started to practice the Heavenly Demon soul transmogrifying Art according to the knowledge that had been imparted to him.
"Alright, so it says in the information, that I should run the technique and then construct demons in my mind that will in return temper my soul." Thiago muttered while scanning through the instructions once again.
"And first I need to enter my soul space, or else this won't work." He continued.