In a week I went to ten different villages, finding 60 volunteers. I was going to meet them at a meeting point a few kilometers away from my base next week. Also I hired 3 bards for acting as spies on my behalf, nobody suspected them while they came and went and they were rather willing to work for me the moment they heard the sound of gold coins.

I quickly returned to my village of Bakerville. I needed iron ore, a lot of it. In the mine a surprise awaited me, goblins were made a base out of mine. Last time I left them there were only seven goblins which were at least two months ago. But now there were at least fifty. What surprised me more was they even built their own rudimentary forge. Making crude iron tools there. When I got near the mine goblins got angry they had pointy sticks and knife like tools made out of crude iron and stone. They looked like they were about to attack me but a voice got heard. A bigger goblin among them appeared. He was 1.60 meter tall, and unlike short and stubby goblins he was sleek, just looking like a goblin on the head and on the green body color. Unlike only loincloth wearing goblins he was wearing a hooded cloak and pants. He carried two nicely made black daggers, his eyes looked very intelligently. I assumed he was some sort of metamorphosed goblin from somewhere far away because I never heard anything like him.

I spoke to him “Who are you, what are you, and what you want from me?” He smirked with a cocky and jarring voice he spoke “I, human, I am the master of assassinations, I am the terror of the land of Fullise I am Gezek the killer, assassin of the hobgoblins.” I answered “Fullise is a rather faraway place, why are you here?” Truth to be told I was an uneducated peasant but because I never heard of such a creature or such place I assumed he was from somewhere far away. I thought to myself ‘So there are hobgoblins here on this planet too.’ He said “Enough talk, Hunter don’t talk with the prey”

He extremely quickly gathered mana, and while doing that he quickly turned the white mana with blue hue into a dark black-purple mana, and he stepped. I just released a kinetic push around me when he did that. I read enough fantasy stuff when I see a shadow step, flash step or whatever instant appearance trick called in this world. As expected he disappeared the moment he stepped and appeared behind me but he pushed. My push threw him two meters away. But he gracefully landed. He was agile, I unsheathed my knife and got ready for a fight. He spoke “What kind of mage are you? I’ve never seen an unseen push like this.” I said “I never seen your magic trick too, how do you do it?” He was dumbfounded by my question. “I don’t use magic, mage. I am not a mage. Like the human knights of yours I have abilities.” I didn’t know knights had abilities too. The strongest person I saw fighting was Bruce and I never saw him using anything like it, he probably didn’t need to use those powers against a few thugs though. I was expecting to be overpowered with my magic trick. But if knights having this sort of abilities is the case my dreams of being overpowered is over.

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I needed to learn this knight's special abilities stuff, and learn it quickly. I had no counter against this in my plans. But knights having abilities made sense. If they didn’t have ways to counter mages, mages would have overthrown the knight based nobility and be only nobility. Mages already had nobility positions and power but if anyone couldn't stand against them they would be only nobility.

I started to ask questions “Of course I know about knights, but what I wonder how this powered people thing works for goblins?” He looked at my face and said “I don’t know how this stuff works for humans too, but I never asked a human about that.” I said “ They don’t talk with their prey too” He grinned and said “touche” He said “I assume you know this but goblins are born and grow fast, but we are dumb and weak in the first phase of our existence, among the strong who can successfully get feed enough start a metamorphoses process, and become hobgoblins. And in the true goblin territories we have nothing to do

with these weak creatures you call goblins. We train our weaker of our kind to fight in masses and arm them with sufficient weapons. While they distract the enemy we, the hobgoblins and our further metamorphosed forms do the real damage.” I thought to myself ‘So they constantly evolve like pokemon’ and I said “Does every hobgoblin have the abilities?” He said “Of course not, if that was the case we would erased the human scum from face of this world, even every knight don’t have the abilities, how can every hobgoblin can be that way,” I felt somewhat relieved, Alfred clearly didn’t have any powers so most of his knights might lack them too. I asked again “So how can you have the ability, what is this ability called?” He said “It's called shadow move, and I was born with it, but using it I had to have a hard training, many years of suffering, and I become a hobgoblin assassin, a great title, my dream” I said “What happened?” He was about to cry “They exiled me, I can never return, I had to build a new life here among the savage of my kind, they are like animals.” I said to him, “I assume you would like to have more hobgoblins around you, and for that you need more food right?” He nodded “We can help each other.”