The party finished the entire meal rested some more and then finally returned back to hunting.
With the reveal of Avian’s and Cornelia’s blessing everyone in the party felt far more connected to each other than before, Gabriella especially was asking Avian constantly about his blessing like how many creatures he tamed and if it was better for him to stand back then to fight close up.
Those were reasonable questions, but coming from Gabriella they looked like needless concerns as Avian simply said it was fine while giving her as much information she wanted, compared to his [Hemomancer] blessing Avian hadn’t put much to any time into his [Monster Tamer] blessing, he knew that he would have to do that at some point, but for now he decided to solely concentrate on his [Hemomancer] blessing to grow stronger, though after seeing the gray saber wolves, Avian wondered if he should tame one of those considering how useful one of them may end up being both in combat and other uses such as tracking/sensing other creatures with their enhanced smelling ability.
Avian told everyone about this plan, basically turning their current task into finding a gray saber wolf for Avian to tame, Avian wasn’t actually intending on making everyone explicitly look for them since he wanted to just hunt any random monster in the forest to make everyone slightly more experienced as a party.
This is how they ended up walking for 30 minutes inside the forest, even though they had been walking for a good amount of time they for some reason didn’t encounter any wild animals, at least not wild animals that were aggressive like the wolves, this was still understandable considering the town of Alimdal not being too far from here yet, when the Lord’s inhabitants first made their town here, they had made sure to let the wildlife know who it was that was coming to build a home, a wild massacre occurred through this making the local wildlife aware of the danger the town represented and how people sometimes came out of it to hunt for them again.
The fact they met a small pack of gray saber wolves at the beginning of this hunt was actually a bit lucky, now they were not as lucky anymore, but as they walked and started to explore keeping alert, Dahlia sensed something.
-There are…a lot of things to the right…
Looking to the right, everyone got ready, but as they prepared nothing seemed to be coming, Avian couldn’t see anything approach either with his [Blood Sense], for a moment an awkward silence enveloped everyone, Dahlia sensed that as well as her cheeks couldn’t help but reddened before she corrected herself.
-Ehm…the things aren’t coming to us…they are gathering around 5 other things.
-Is it a fight?
-Only way to find out is go and see for ourselves, let’s go!
And with that everyone started to walk slightly faster towards the direction Dahlia had pointed out.
Avian picked up Dahlia as they walked, this being unavoidable as Dahlia was already slightly exhausted from the past 30 minutes walking inside the forest, since she was a [Shaman] and originally didn’t have a good physique either, her stamina simply couldn’t compare to anyone in the party as she was both the slowest in the party making everyone else need to wait for her if Avian didn’t carry her.
While getting carried by Avian was very pleasant to Dahlia, she was very aware of how much of an hindrance she was becoming to the party with the way she was which didn’t make her feel good at all, while meditating, Dahlia had seen her party members training hard under Gabriella’s orders, she knew what they were doing and wanted to follow along as well to grow a bit stronger so she wouldn’t become such a hindrance, but the thought of being away from Avian her master frightened her so much that she thought she was about to cry, such weakness made her even more depressed which is why when the first they fought the gray saber wolves, Dahlia had given it her best to stay calm and do her job in which she succeeded splendidly while also giving it her all to detect anything that came near them.
Even then she was still scared of Avian thinking of her as a nuisance, Dahlia had been all too used to people treated her like dirt or even less, and even though she believed the warm and reliable Avian wouldn’t do such a thing, her anxiety still made her push herself so she wouldn’t get left behind or thought of as a nuisance.
Avian in reality, didn’t care much about carrying Dahlia around like this, while he did think he it would be nice to have her be able to walk by herself, he understood that currently it was impossible and that things like that needed time, Dahlia had only been a member of their party for a day, and he already thought she was doing very well filling a very important role in their party as the sole magic user.
While walking as fast as they could to the place Dahlia was pointing, the party started to hear some commotion the closer they were getting to the place, some weird and illegible sounds that were similar to words and sometimes growls could be heard, and when they finally came to the place in question, they discovered an open area in this forest, a cliff to be specific where the entrance of a cave lied.
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As soon as they saw that place though the party immediately decided to hide as they realized they had intruded into an already continued play.
The actors in his case or rather monsters, being a large group of goblins that had surrounded 5 humans which were 3 males and 2 females, from their getup and the dog tags they each wore on their necks that were made out of wood, it was clear that these people were adventurers just like Gabriella and Avian, of the same rank as well making them newbies also just like them too.
But the stark difference here was that among these 5, none of them were rank 1’s as they all were clearly unranked, the reason Avian thought so was because if anyone of them were rank 1 they would easily be able to escape from their current situation from being surrounded by this large group of goblins who were all unranked as well since none of them looked special or had defeated this party of adventurers just yet with the way they were still hanging on.
For all intents and purposes, the strength of a goblin could never equal the strength of a human, 2 goblins couldn’t either while 3 was barely enough with 4 goblins being the bare minimum amount required to defeat 1 human.
This didn’t take into account blessings as blessings were the decided factor to many situations that didn’t just take into account base power, unfortunately with the amount of goblins present, it was clear that no matter what kind of blessing these people had, they wouldn’t be able to defeat these goblins without being overwhelmingly stronger.
Even Avian who had Gabriella who was a rank 1 [Knight] couldn’t help but consider walking away from this one after seeing how many goblins there were, Avian stopped counting after 50 making him understand that this tribe of goblins was at least 50 strong while not going over 100.
From his research Avian knew a tribe of clans of this size would be considered a small tribe, asking people in the town, Avian was also aware that there did exist a large tribe of goblins in frontier before the Lord’s Knights came and annihilated all the monsters and wild animals that were threatening.
While Avian wasn’t completely sure, he guessed that this small tribe of goblins may have been the remnants of the previous large tribe that was destroyed upon the founding of Alimdal which made this even stranger for Avian as he looked around trying to find a eye-catching or different goblin among them.
Having done his research about this world’s common sense and much more, Avian knew about goblins as any other person who studied them, from this Avian knew that for a small tribe like this to gather, the goblins would have to have a leader among them that wouldn’t be anything bellow rank 1 in strength, goblins by nature were cowardly and treacherous, the only thing that could make them unite was the presence of a very powerful goblin or creature who could control them, this was an iron clad rule, but the fact Avian could see such a creature made him unsure on how to act as he didn’t want to step into a trap and end up in the same situation as those suckers bellow.
-Master…do we act?
Gabriella whispered, momentarily waking Avian from his thoughts as he turned towards her, seeing her expression Avian immediately knew what Gabriella was thinking, but since Avian was her master and the real leader of this party, she would never do anything that would put Avian’s interest in jeopardy, even if she disliked it she had listen to Avian no matter what as that was what the deal she had made with him when becoming he became her master and she his [Knight].
Avian returned back to the situation down below, from a tactical point of view, they actually had the advantage considering they were on the high ground, but from a numerical point of view they simply had too many goblins, on top of that an unknown rank 1 creature as a leader.
Everything about this pointed at them just leaving and report it to the town for them to deal with later, but Avian also thought about the future, looking at this party, he spotted among them a who wore a robe and a pointy wizards had with a magic staff to boot.
Avian didn’t see much from her face, but looking at her state it was clear she was exhausted, still raising her staff with much difficulty, she chanted and started to move her other hand in specific manners before shouting out.
-[Fire Bolt]!
A bolt of fire materialized from her staff and upon finishing her chant the bolt of fire was immediately released from her staff easily hitting one of the many goblins that surrounded them killing the goblin instantly as the goblin who got hit burned to death while crying out horribly.
Seeing this Avian knew for certain this woman was a rare [Wizard]!
The surrounding goblins were terrified seeing this and immediately stepped back in fear, but they didn’t run, while these goblins weren’t very intelligent at all, they still possessed some amount of intelligence, knowing that magic users couldn’t infinitely shoot out their magic, the goblins insidiously waited until the magic user ran out of mana before going for the kill.
While this in a sense was smart, the goblins were also idiotic as they could have just the same charged all together and smothered these adventurers with the [Wizard] before they could even act, the reason they didn’t do so wasn’t because they didn’t think of it, it was because every single one of these goblins by nature was selfish and cowardly, not wanting to sacrifice their lives for the betterment of their group, this is why goblins in this world were never truly considered a intelligent race even though half of the world seemed to be populated by them, their innate selfish, cowardly and treacherous nature didn’t allow for them to build proper societies as they constantly fought among each other and oppressed the weak while fearing the strong.
Unfortunately for this group of adventurers this was irrelevant even though this female [Wizard] was successfully deterring the stupid goblins, it looked like this wasn’t going to go on for too long as the [Wizard] was clearly running out of mana.
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