Waking quite early the following day, it didn’t take long before Sylvia was on her way into the forest, having gotten enough of just training alone. without even having someone to spar against. So, in the hope to at least level up once, if not twice, she had set off through the forest.

On her way to the goblin area, she considered what to do in a situation where she ran into another enhanced goblin. In the end, she figured that she’d just take it on if it was the only one of its kind, otherwise she’d hurry away.

When she reached one of the spots, she had previously fought goblins, it quickly became clear that there was none around her. Even after checking the surrounding areas as, nothing was there. It was as if they had abandoned the spot in lieu of her recent attacks. “Tsk. It appears figured out this was a bad area for keeping watch.”

Thank to her steadily increasing annoyance at the goblins seemingly having learned to stay away, she completely forgot that she should have at least looked for tracks, but instead she just walked further into the forest, as she assumed that was where the goblin camp was.

As she continued to walk for over half an hour without finding anything, her annoyance continued to grow, until she without really thinking whipped her arm out and hit a tree. For less than a second, a yelp of pain came from her, but she quickly remembered where she was and shut up. Luckily, it didn’t appear that anything had really happened to her hand, except making it fairly sore.

Besides making her scold herself over her dumb action, the pain had also reminded her of where she was, so she took a short break from looking for goblins to calm down a bit, after which she tried to logically go over what to do now.

“It appears that there aren’t goblins close by, so I’ve probably just walked further away from them than anything else. Thus, I should probably return to the spot where I killed the enhanced goblin, but this time actually see if there are any footprints I can follow; it has only been two days since then, after all.” As such, the next half hour was spent getting back to where her search began.

Once she was back there, it didn’t exactly a tracker to find the tracks; the goblins hadn’t exactly made any effort to be stealthy and had traveled in a fairly sized group. So, while it wasn’t the most obvious thing ever, it wasn’t too long before Sylvia was on her way in their direction, almost perpendicularly to her previous path.

As she followed the tracks, she made an active effort to also keep an eye on her surroundings in case any goblins would be moving about. It took a fair bit of time before she spotted anything, that anything being a pair of goblins on her left, seemingly walking in the same general direction as her.

Just as she was about to approach them to end their existence, a risky spur of the moment idea sprung into existence. Instead of killing them, she could follow them and hope that they’d lead her straight to their home, after which she’d back off to avoid being captured. If it were to work, she could end up with the knowledge of where exactly an exp source was located, though if she were to be discovered with a lot of goblins around her, she could end up dead, or worse, captured and abused.

Figuring that if she stayed a fair bit behind them and always ready to run for her life, then she’d probably be able to escape if she got spotted, she decided to follow them. Another benefit of learning their base location, was that she should then be able to get a better idea of where the goblins would have lookout posts, which would give her good hunting spots.

It didn’t take longer than ten minutes before sounds of activity from multiple creatures began to enter Sylvia’s ears, informing her of the impending arrival. As she could now follow the sound, she found a spot to hide for at least another ten minutes, to allow the goblins to get back without anyone spotting her in the distance.

Once she figured the time to be up, she began moving towards the ever-increasing noise slowly, moving from tree trunk to tree trunk, hoping it’d reduce her risk of discovery. Getting close enough to get a fairly good sight at the place, she found a fairly simple village looking thing, consisting of poorly constructed clay huts or tents.

Feeling that she had pushed her luck plenty by getting the this close, she turned around to head back, just in time to instinctively stab her spear into the chest of a goblin preparing to smack her with its wooden club.

Killed Goblin lv. 9. Gained exp

Just behind it, as the club fell out of the dead goblin’s hands, another goblin began to scream up. Deftly, she moved to shut it up as well, doing so with another thrust straight to the chest.

Killed Goblin lv. 8. Gained exp Leveled up Gained: 2 Strength, 2 Vitality, 2 Endurance, 2 Mana, 1 Wisdom, and 1 Perception.

“Phew, good thing I saw them in time. But where did they come from? I never saw someone leave the village and head in this direction.” It then struck her where they had come from and she facepalmed. “Of course. They were heading back home. God dammit Sylvia, you were too focused on the vil… What’s that sound that getting louder?”

Turning around to look back in the direction of the village, she felt the blood drain from her face, as many goblins were storming towards her, far too many to take on, and they were led by three enhanced ones. The scream had apparently been to draw attention to the enemy, her, and it had worked greatly.

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Gripped by a sudden panic at the situation, Sylvia wasted multiple costly seconds standing frozen like a deer in headlights. It took until she saw the three big ones speed up to catch her quickly that she remembered her original plan, and less than a second later, she was on her way away as fast as her legs could carry her.

It didn’t take more than a minute before she could feel herself slow down noticeably, and a couple minutes later she found it tough to continue running. Slowing down to recover her breath, she took a look for a would-be pursuers and found none. Before immediately moving on to laying a plan for what to do as soon as she had recovered slightly. “As soon as possible, -hah- I’ll make course for home, -hah- but this time, -hah- with a more sustainable pace.”

While she was recovering, sounds of footsteps suddenly appeared, and they were getting louder. Shortly after noticing the sounds, two enhanced goblins entered her view. ‘Tsk, if they’re gonna continue to follow me, then I can’t show them my home and risk being marched down by the entire village. So, I may as well fight them right here and now. Though, I need to be wary of sudden attacks if the third is hidden.’

By the time she had readied her spear, the goblins had moved within ten meters of her. On her left, the goblin held a rusty dagger in its hand and had a leather breastplate covering its chest and stomach, similar to the one she had previously killed. As almost a complete opposite to its companion, the one on her right had rusty spear and a leather helmet.

‘Time to learn how to fight against a spear.’ She joked in her mind. ‘The one with the spear feels the most dangerous, so I’ll try to see if I can end the dagger one first, so I don’t have to worry about it anymore.’ Keeping her breath as steady as possible, she alternated between having the spear point towards the two goblins, a move that made them slow down once only a couple meters was between her and them.

In the hope to create an opening, Sylvia stepped forwards towards the spear one and stabbed towards its right shoulder. At basically the same time, the two goblins made their move; the spear one raised its spear to its left and swung right in the effort to knock her spear away, meanwhile, the dagger one ran directly towards her, ready to strike.

Thanks to aiming for the right side of the goblin, she had made it swing from the left side, thus leaving the right side open for her next move. That being to twist her upper body hard to the left, making her spear swing directly towards the dagger goblins left shoulder.

To its credit, the goblin managed to react and stop where it was, just in time to raise the dagger to intercept the spear, along with having the free hand fly up and support the one holding the dagger. And its effort could most certainly be felt, with Sylvia feeling her spear have at least half its momentum stripped away all of a sudden, but even with that, the spear still had enough force to break through the defense, and slam into its breastplate, as it had twisted its body to block the strike.

From the combination of forces from slowing down the spear and being struck without proper foot placement, the goblin was having trouble not falling over. Seeing this, Sylvia took her chance and stepped closer, thrusting right above the collarbone, where the breastplate didn’t cover. The goblin noticed the approaching death and attempted to dodge by ducking, but this time its reaction was too late, and the spear pierced through right beneath its jaw.

Killed Enhanced Goblin lv. 24. Gained exp. You have reached the limit of your level. To level up, please select a class and complete the requirement. To select a class, think “Select class”.

In the heat of combat, Sylvia did not read a single thing in the notification, but did recognize that it said something unusual, so she didn’t think it away. The choice to not spend time on reading it was quickly rewarded when she swung her spear right, barely knocking the incoming spear aimed at her chest to the side.

While it could’ve definitely followed through on its attack and hit something, the goblin appeared to understand enough combat that it knew how bad it’d be for it to have a spearhead pointed basically straight at it, and it managed to stop out of her immediate reach before stepping back once.

With an annoyed click of the tongue at its actions, Sylvia considered what to do next, before quite quickly concluding that a feint was in order, as her two other enhanced goblin kills had been from feints. And with their levels having repeatedly been at least ten above her own, she didn’t exactly want to take the chance with a direct contest of strength.

After a couple seconds that felt like an eternity, deafening inaction was finally broken by the goblin. With a step forwards, it thrusted its spear towards Sylvia’s left thigh, prompting her to sweep her own spear downwards while sidestepping the attack, thus barely redirecting the attack away from her body.

In the short time while the opposing spear was fully extended, Sylvia took a small step closer, kept her arms pushed down her left hand while raising her right as fast as possible. Seeing her spear swipe upwards towards its underarm closest to her, and her being too close for it to pull its own spear back in time to defend with, the goblin tried releasing its grip on the spear and moving its hand away, but it was too late.

As her spear impacted and cut into the wrist of the goblin, Sylvia stepped even closer while pulling less than a second after impact. And while the goblin was stunned by momentary stupor at being a bit unsure on how to continue the fight, she thrust her spear forward, directly towards its heart.

Mere milliseconds before the tip impacted, the goblin’s thin, green fingers from its healthy hand wrapped around her spear and it tried to slow it down. To the goblin’s credit, the goblin did mange to slow it down a fair amount, but the slight pause before the instincts overtook its training was too long. So, despite the goblin’s bravest efforts, the spear still had enough force to break through the ribs and injure the heart.

With gasps leaving its mouth one after the other, it moved both hands to where the spear was and pushed it out, though it was obvious that the majority of the effort came from the healthy hand. As it began to wobble towards her, Sylvia quickly stepped away, leaving it to attempt a forced run towards her. But no less than three steps in, it fell over on the ground.

While it was nowhere near as horrifying as it’d have been if she’d seen a human in that situation, seeing the goblin struggle like that in its least breath gave Sylvia the biggest creeps she’d ever had. Not wanting to look more at it and feeling slightly bad for it, she stepped towards it and pierced its neck, killing it.

Killed Enhanced Goblin lv. 23. Gained exp Lack of class prevents level up. Exp is stockpiled until a class is selected.