DAY 23: MORNING — THE CAVE
DAY 23
MORNING
Is this a game where all the goblins get to be kings? That sounds horrible!
THE CAVE
AS USUAL, I had fish for breakfast. However, today I was a different man. I had ascended. Humans were indeed capable of radical change, and my transformation was complete. A new world of sensation—of pleasure—had revealed itself to me. A world with soy sauce. My precious soy sauce! Fried fish with soy sauce, the moment I was anticipating. Going to town wasn’t a mistake after all. This is incredible!
Adhering to cave hermit tradition, I embarked on a relaxing outing to harvest mushrooms and dispose of goblins. The goblins must have been eating those mushrooms. Their population was out of control and ruining my mushroom harvest. Like mold growing in the bath, they needed a thorough and ruthless scrubbing. Mold was technically more like mushrooms than goblins, though. Try not to think about it. I don’t.
I didn’t even bother casting spells. Running and leaping through the forest, I smashed any goblins I saw.
As I went deeper, I encountered drastically higher level goblins. My level, as always, didn’t get any higher. Since I hadn’t killed the soldiers the other day, I didn’t get any experience from them. But despite the mounds of monster corpses in my wake, I was still stuck at level 9.
“I don’t think I’ve ever gone this far out,” I said to myself. “Maybe I could use some gobbo-cide spray on their nest and exterminate the pests for good. Do they carry that at the general store?”
I took down a level 19 goblin. It was impressive for a goblin, with stats higher than some orcs.
Thanks to weapon techniques and the level wall, I’d assumed that level 10+ goblins would be tough, but they were hardly stronger than level 5 ones. They became more challenging at level 15, so I had to start killing them with magic. As long as I dodged, countered with spells, and followed through with a finishing strike, I could survive. I just had to keep my balance, keep my wits about me, run, and fight.
I had a feeling all the spellstones I was collecting would make me rich. They were probably all E-class.
If I tried to sell these stones at the guild, they’d go bankrupt again and kick up a huge fuss about being unable to pay back their debts.
I spotted a huge goblin. Oh, what do we have here? This one’s on another level. I used Appraisal.
Goblin King A
RACE: Goblin
LV: 23
HP: 110
MP: 31
VIT: 155
POW: 156
SPE: 49
DEX: 22
RES: 11
INT: 4
LUK: 25
COMBAT SKILLS: Hammer Mastery Lv7, Great Strike Lv6, Body Slam Lv4, Iron Wall Lv 1, Herculean Strength Lv7, Adamantine Lv2
SKILLS: Intimidate Lv3, Super Horny Lv8, Harden Lv4, Daunt Lv3, Terror Lv2
EQUIPMENT: Club
A king was the next level up from a boss. Does that mean the Queen Bee could evolve into some sort of mean girl empress? That’s terrifying!
The king swung its club at me. This was the first goblin who didn’t just brandish it while running my way. Maybe even the meatheads could evolve to this level of intelligence? They seem dumber with every level, though. Do they have a special “meathead” skill?
I knew that I’d die if I tried to block that swing, but I was fortunately quick enough to dodge. The goblin king was a whole new level of danger.
Flourishing my Sylvan Staff and infusing it with magic, I crept closer. A razor-sharp arc of light crackled along the edge of my staff. In a moment that felt like an eternity, I slashed.
That attack took all of my concentration, and I still wasn’t sure it was enough. That singular instant determined who lived and who died. Before my staff connected, I infused all of my spells into the staff. In the span of a single step, I had swung the Sylvan Staff with all my combined magical and physical might.
I couldn’t tell exactly what happened, but the goblin king tumbled to the ground, dead.
I couldn’t advance if I couldn’t defeat the king. But my attack worked. It was a good sign.
Farther in the depths of the forest, I spotted a potential mushroom growing on a log. It was a long time since I’d seen one of those. I never forgot that flavor. I quickly roasted the mushroom as I plunged deeper into the ancient forest.
“Potential mushroom and soy sauce is the ultimate combination!” I wept. “The flavor! It’s so good!”
From then on, I periodically ran into goblin kings. Was this a normal quantity of kings? Did kings like wandering around the deepest parts of the forest? Was it okay to kill this many kings? I hoped that I wasn’t causing any diplomatic incidents.
My HP was totally full, and I had barely used any MP either. Most importantly, I could defeat the kings. My life hung in the balance every time I used that instantaneous attack, but I still managed to take them out one after another.
I assumed that I was nearing the center of the forest, but the woods seemed to extend for miles ahead. I had been fighting level 25+ kings for a while. Weren’t these supposed to be boss fights? What was a king, anyway? With this many kings, how small were their domains? Was there a king of kings that ruled over them? Did those goblins think of themselves as kings? Were they playing some sort of goblin variant of king of the hill? That sounded horrible! This was too many kings, damn it!
Goblin kings seemed to get a massive strength boost after level 25.
If there were kobold kings, I’d be screwed, I thought. They’d bite my head off!
I imagined huge jaws snapping shut on my head and shuddered.
I could kill goblin kings, but they were so strong that I didn’t feel like I was training anything. I couldn’t block their attacks or land multiple blows, and I had to fight just one at a time. All I could do was overclock myself, close in, and throw all of my power into a single kill-or-be-killed slash. One mistake and I was dead.
Goblin kings hate him! He discovered One Weird Trick to instantaneously slay monsters: the overclocked hiding-in-plain-sight killing slash. I felt more like a one-trick pony than someone with one weird trick.
I probably shouldn’t go any farther today. Maybe start hunting kobolds after lunch? I desperately wanted to avoid meeting any kobold kings. They would definitely bite my head off. I mulled it over as I walked and spotted three level 29 goblin kings soon after.
Yeah, I’d definitely be dead if they surrounded me. I quickly killed one, but the other two were getting too close. If I didn’t do something, they’d flank and kill me. This is hardly a good way to practice fighting!
I took a step forward and caved in the second goblin king’s face. Then, barely dodging with a half-step backwards, I stabbed the last one through the neck before it recovered from its swing.
Holy crap, holy crap, that was close. I’ll definitely die if I try anything like that again. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. That was too close. I had felt the reverberation of the club crashing into the dirt where I stood a moment before. My one weird trick really was a life-or-death gambit. I was a half-step from doom.
Goosebumps covered my entire body. I felt a cold sweat break out on my back and forehead. This is way too much. I’d be pulp if my aim, my distance, or my timing was even a fraction off.
I had slaughtered all the monsters on my way here, so it was much faster getting back to the cave. I should get back by noon. Should be almost there? If I had made it to the center of the forest, did that mean those were the bosses of the forest? In that case, have some damn treasure or something! There was literally nothing!
Although if they had carried treasure chests, they wouldn’t have been able to fight in the first place.