"I'm a Goblin…" - Regular Speech.
'…So what?' - Thoughts.
{Is the Title} - Voice of Heaven Announcement.
Chapter 5: Versus Humans
Immediately, there was a fuss as the whole cave of goblins started screaming, arguing and shouting. The cacophony of noise really hurt Gobuto's ears.
"[Mana Bolt]!" he shouted, holding his hand up to the ceiling. A bolt of blue light erupted from it and struck the ceiling with a bang, shutting up everyone.
"If you're all done bitching like a group of humans, I'll go out and kick some ass…again!" Gobuto growled, "Gobujiji, is there any way to close the cave mouth?"
The elderly goblin shook his head. "Nope. Used to be, but the device stopped working when I was a runt."
"Great." Gobuto muttered, "Goburimi, Goburyū! You guys stay by the entrance to the cave. Ambush anything that isn't a goblin that comes in. Goburyū, you hit their legs with your club, and then Goburimi stabs them in the face with her spear once they fall over. Got it?"
His two companions nodded grimly.
Checking his equipment, Gobuto set off for the cave entrance, but was stopped by Gobujiji.
"Youngster, be careful." the old-timer said quietly, "This has happened a couple of times in the past. These humans are likely bandits looking to raise their level. None of them will be terribly strong, but they will be relentless in hunting any goblin they can find."
"Thanks for the information, Gobujiji." Gobuto said. He advanced again, only to be stopped by a screen appearing in front of him.
[Quest Alert!]
Hunt the Hunters: Humans have appeared in your forest and seek to hunt your kin in order to gain EXP. Turn the tables on them and drive them out!
Bonus: Kill at least one human.
Quest Reward: +700 EXP, +50 SP, Random Weapon/Armour/Item, +500 Relationship with [Own Tribe of Goblins], [Re-Equip Magic] Skill Book.
Bonus Reward: Human to Devour, +100 EXP per slain human.
Quest Failure: Death, destruction of tribe.
Accept?
Y/N
"Great, another mission when I could die…business as usual for me." Gobuto grumbled as he hit the only key that would actually do anything.
Cautiously, the reincarnated ninja crept out of the cave and hid amongst the foliage as he followed the sound of shouting that had only become audible as he had left the cave. He couldn't understand a word of what was being said, but the person shouting didn't care about being heard, that was certain.
A couple of screens popped up in front of him after a few moments of this.
As a result of repeated actions, the skill [Stealth] has been learned!
[Stealth] (Passive/Active) [LV1, 00.00 EXP]
The ability to move quietly and without drawing attention to oneself is an ancient practice used by the first hunters. It was quickly adapted by others, from children sneaking sweets to assassins approaching their targets.
- Passively raises chance to avoid detection by sound by 5%.
- Passively raises chance to avoid detection by scent by 5%.
- Actively raises chance to avoid detection by sight by 5%.
- While active, running is prohibited.
As a result of repeated actions, the skill [Silent Forest Movement] has been learned!
[Silent Forest Movement] (Passive) [LV1, 00.00 EXP]
One who lives in a forest gradually learns to be able to move through it without making any noise. Any noise that they do make blends with the natural sounds made by the forest and its other inhabitants.
- Passively reduces the amount of noise you make in a forest by 5%.
- Passively blends 5% of the noise you make in with the noises naturally made by the forest.
Useful.
Before moving on, Gobuto checked his status.
Name: Gobuto
Level: 5
To Next Level: 807 EXP
Race: Goblin
Job: None
HP: 300/300
MP: 200/200
Strength: 14
Toughness: 24
Dexterity: 16
Initiative: 10
Wisdom: 11
Leadership: [Locked]
Equipment: Head: None
Torso: [Halfling's Protective Cuirass]
Arms: None
Undergarments: Clean Loincloth/Dwarven Mining Trousers
Legs: None
Feet: None
R. Hand: None
L. Hand: None
Weapon: [Raven Armoury Dirk]
Items: [Wizard's Bag of Carrying]
Attribute Points: 6
Skill Points: 60
Seeing that he had six as-yet unused AP, Gobuto put four into his DEX and the last two into his STR. Turning his attention to his SP, he saw that he had enough to buy one more skill. Opening the Skill Purchase Window, Gobuto scanned the skills, noticing that he had acquired a few outside of them thanks to [Gluttony].
Skills Available for 50 SP: - [Presence Perception]
- [Lesser-Improved Slashing Power] (Owned)
- [Evasion]
- [Endurance] (Owned)
- [Lesser Life Increase]
- [Luck Up]
- [Humanbane]
- [Lesser-Improved Jumping Power]
- [Lesser Shadow Magic]
- [Rest]
- [Force of Will] (Owned)
Reaching his finger out, Gobuto pressed [Presence Perception].
[Presence Perception]
The ability to register the locations of all living beings within a certain radius of oneself. While useful against most beings, it is useless against someone who has mastered masking their presence.
Do you wish to purchase this skill?
Y/N
"Perfect." he whispered and purchased it.
[Presence Perception] (Passive) [LV1, 00.00 EXP]
The ability to register the locations of all living beings within a certain radius of oneself. While useful, it is useless against someone who has mastered masking their presence.
Detection Radius: 5 Meters
OK, so a bit short ranged, but still useful. Right now, Gobuto could feel numerous insects, a couple of birds and a badger within his range. Doubtless this would be useful when worrying about people coming from behind him.
Moving through the bushes surprisingly silently, Gobuto then remembered that he had three silencing effects on him; [Silent Movement], [Stealth] and [Silent Forest Movement]. Combining their effects made him fairly stealthy by the standards of a beginner.
He stiffened as the sound of large boots smashing their way through the undergrowth started coming closer, and the presence of a human came into his range. Gobuto peered through the leaves of the bush he was in to see his first human in this world. He wasn't impressed.
The man stank to high heavens and had long greasy black hair tied back into a ponytail. He wore what looked like boiled leather armour, also filthy, and held a rusty-looking sword in one hand.
['Smiling' Booker's Crew]
Brand LV3
[The Con Artist]
How this filthy person could be a con artist was beyond Gobuto. The new line above the man's name confused him for a moment, but he assumed it was the name of the group he belonged to.
The man shouted something to his side, and then listened as another human shouted something back at him before laughing and stomping off again.
Looking around, Gobuto was disappointed to see no other bandits other than Brand. Were they so overconfident that they neglected to keep each other in line of sight with two other members of their group?
'Well, they ARE bandits…' he thought and shrugged slightly. Quietly drawing his dirk, he trailed the man until the bandit decided to take a piss. With a hissed cry of "[Backstab]!" Gobuto leapt onto the bandit's back, clamped a hand over his mouth and stabbed him through the neck with his dirk a couple of times.
Blood gushed from the wounds as Brand choked before falling over to lie twitching on the ground. He fell still seconds later. Gobuto dragged his body deeper into the undergrowth to conceal him before wiping his blade clean on the grass next to the corpse.
{You have slain the bandit Brand the Con Artist! You gain 75 EXP!}
'One down.' he thought and headed off to track new prey.
Over the next few minutes, Gobuto discovered that, including the deceased Brand, there were ten bandits in the forest. Most were Level 5, with the leader, 'Smiling' Booker, being Level 6. All of their names were just plain weird; Bryant the Spider, 'Numbers' Nilsson, Ryan the Sly, 'Pegleg' Reggie, 'Pickpocket' Cooper, 'Swindling' Alex, Jordy the Twofaced and Carter the Serpent.
Most were equipped with swords, knives and leather armour like Brand had been, but Jordy the Twofaced had a crossbow at the ready and 'Smiling' Booker had a massive sword over his shoulder, one that he would need both hands to wield. It wasn't anywhere near the size of Momochi Zabuza's Kubikiribōchō, but it was far bigger than any of the other swords wielded by the other bandits.
Quickly making a strategy, Gobuto watched how the bandits moved after climbing into a tree. They were all idiots, as far as he could tell. No predictable patterns to take advantage of, but they also didn't find it odd that they hadn't heard from Brand for a while, which was good.
To Gobuto, aside from 'Smiling' Booker, the most troublesome person of the lot was the crossbow wielder. He hadn't used them in his past life, but Gobuto recalled Inari from Nami no Kuni becoming very proficient with them, able to hit his mark with a basic crossbow at two-hundred paces.
So, eliminate him first.
It wasn't difficult to dodge and avoid the other bandits. Some of them were chewing something that smelled awful. Drugs, likely. Gobuto felt a bit indignant that these idiots were underestimating his kind to this extent.
Another attack from behind and a slit throat later, Gobuto was up another 75 EXP and was dragging another body into the undergrowth when a shout came from the direction that Brand's body had been stashed. He scrabbled up a tree just in time to avoid two of them coming to find their crossbow wielding friend.
'This ought to be useful.' he smirked as he hefted the crossbow he had taken from Jordy the Twofaced, as well as the small quiver of quarrels. He lined up a shot and fired, the bolt embedding itself into the back of Ryan the Sly's head, dropping him like a stone.
{You have slain the bandit Ryan the Sly! You gain 75 EXP!}
Hopping from branch to branch, Gobuto retreated and reloaded the crossbow on the fly. Thankfully, it had a mechanical windlass system to draw the bowstring back, so it was easy, if time consuming.
Finding another target, Gobuto fired, hitting his target in the center of the spine and dropping him. The man shrieked like a woman giving birth.
{'Pegleg' Reggie: Lower body crippled!}
Leaving the crossbow in the tree, as they'd be on guard for it by this point, Gobuto crept along the tree limbs until he discovered himself above one nervous looking bandit. Drawing his dirk again, Gobuto dropped on top of him and once more performed two swift stabs that downed the man in another gargle of blood.
{You have slain the bandit 'Pickpocket' Cooper! You gain 75 EXP!}
A shout from behind him made Gobuto sigh. He'd been seen.
Turning, he saw the remaining five bandits glaring at him from about ten meters away. Evidently, even intoxicated morons like this lot could learn.
He made a 'shoo-shoo' gesture at them, hoping they'd take the hint. They got the message, but seemed to think he was mocking them…which he was, at least in part.
The leader drew his large sword slowly, attempting such an obvious intimidation play that it made Gobuto roll his eyes, and barked orders at his men, making them fan out and attempt to surround the lone goblin.
'This could be tricky.' Gobuto conceded. Up until now, he had handled any enemy bigger than him by using stealth and treachery. In his past life, when this had happened, he had barreled through them using his enormous chakra reserves and sheer willpower, only one of which he had at the moment.
Still, the instincts one learned about fighting larger foes wasn't something he had forgotten. He had never been taller than average thanks to some genetic quirk or other. Sakura-chan had tried to explain it to him once, but had lost him in amongst the techno-babble.
Another bark of indecipherable orders from 'Smiling' Booker had two of the bandits attacking him. Gobuto ducked between the legs of one and sliced the back of his legs, letting blood run free.
The other one shouted something and lashed out with his sword. Gobuto was just slightly too slow to dodge it and received a cut across his left shoulder.
- 50HP!
"[Mana Bolt]!" Gobuto yelled, thrusting his injured arm out. The bolt erupted from his hand and pierced through the body of the man as if it wasn't even there. As the cadaver collapsed, the other bandit he'd cut open collapsed as well, having bled out.
{You have slain 'Numbers' Nilsson! You earn 75 EXP!
You have slain Bryant the Spider! You earn 75 EXP!}
Gobuto, rather magnanimously in his opinion, once again gestured to the bandits, now reduced to three, to leave. The two on either side of the boss exchanged looks and fled.
'Smiling' Booker was the only one of his band left and it looked like he was about to burst a vein. He started ranting something in the gobbledygook that was his language, probably something to do with 'how could a lowly goblin kill all my men?!' yadda, yadda, yadda.
Taking the time to examine his equipment, Gobuto still wasn't impressed. This guy was slightly better equipped than his flunkeys, but that wasn't much. His leather armour had metal plates sewn onto the top of it. His left arm was entirely encased in a steel gauntlet of some kind, while his right was completely bare. He used [Appraise Creature] on the man, and was surprised when it worked.
Name: Adam 'Smiling' Booker
Level: 6
Title: Leader of 'Smiling' Booker's Crew
S: 25
T: 20
D: 17
I: 16
W: 10
Ld: 5
'Smiling' Booker is a small-time bandit chief that leads a crew of nine other cutthroats and operates in the hinterlands of the New Theresa Kingdom and the Grand Theocracy.
Guilty of: Murder, Rape, Theft, Kidnapping, an assortment of lesser offences.
Gobuto's eyes hardened as he read that last bit. Looks like he'd be doing the world a favour by killing this guy.
Returning to the stats, he gave them some scrutiny. As expected, the strength that this guy possessed wasn't to be taken lightly. He was well able to swing that oversized sword around. He wasn't too bad toughness wise either. The rest of his stats were so-so.
Closing the window, Gobuto rapped his dirk against his armour, interrupting the bandit's rant. The man glared at him and Gobuto made a come-on gesture before tapping his foot.
With a roar of anger, Brooks charged at him with his greatsword drawn back ready to strike. When it came down, Gobuto wasn't there. He had leapt to the side and now jumped at his enemy with his dirk drawn back.
Brooks punched him in the face with his armoured left arm, sending Gobuto staggering back.
-30 HP!
"[Mana Bolt]!" Gobuto sent his only magic attack at the man, who swiftly raised his sword to block it. Sadly for him, the sword couldn't take it and the top foot or so shattered into steel dust.
"Must have been a cheap sword!" Gobuto commented to himself as he surreptitiously felt his nose. It wasn't broken, which was a relief.
Brooks looked at his sword in disbelief before resuming his assault with a savage look in his eyes. The reduction in his range plus the savageness of his attack made it actually easier to avoid him. Gobuto kept scoring cut after cut on his exposed arm before driving his dirk into the arm of the bandit leader, making it flop uselessly.
Brooks' Right Arm Disabled!
Abandoning his sword in his anger, Brooks started swinging with his left hand, panting and cursing in pain…or so Gobuto guessed. He dodged for a while before ending it by shoving the dirk in the bandit chief's eye up to the hilt before withdrawing it, allowing the body to crash to the ground.
{You have slain 'Smiling' Brooks! You earn 150 EXP!}
Frowning, the reincarnated ninja looked around. There were no other bandits around and all of them were dead…except that man he had crippled.
"They ran off and left him here…" Gobuto sighed. He retraced his steps and found the man dragging himself determinedly along the forest floor. When he spotted Gobuto, he cursed and drew his knife, waving it around threateningly.
Gobuto was torn here. He didn't like killing people when they were so totally helpless like this, but this guy had followed a murderer like Brooks. He had to have done something…right?
He used [Appraise Creature] on the bandit.
Name: Reginald 'Reggie' Beaten
Level: 5
Title: Member of 'Smiling' Brooks' Crew
S: 16
T: 15
D: 10
I: 12
W: 10
Status: Permanently Crippled.
'Pegleg' Reggie is a vicious criminal guilty of multiple counts of murder. He lost his leg in a fight with a squire and replaced it with a wooden limb, giving him his nickname.
Resolve reinforced by his new knowledge of the man's crimes, Gobuto blasted his head off with another [Mana Bolt].
{You have slain the bandit 'Pegleg' Reggie! You receive 75 EXP!}
[Quest Complete!]
Hunt the Hunters: You have successfully defended your territory from the human bandits!
Quest Reward: +700 EXP, +50 SP, [Goblin Battle Helmet], + 500 Relationship with [Own Goblin Tribe], [Re-Equip Magic] Skill Book.
Bonus Reward: Eight humans slain: Choose one to eat, + 800 EXP
You have levelled up! LV5-LV6!
You have five AP to spend.
"Whew…" Gobuto sighed, "Now then…"
He started moving all of the bodies into one pile, which wasn't easy. The men were heavy bastards. Finally, the eight of them were in one place. He decided that he would eat Brooks, as the leader had been the biggest pain in the ass to fight, as well as the highest levelled enemy there.
Eating human flesh…didn't taste like chicken, contrary to the rumours. It was more like sweet pork. He was strangely not disturbed by the fact he was eating a human. Maybe it was because he had adjusted fully to the fact he wasn't human any more.
{As a result of devouring a human, the skill [Human Language (Imperial Trade)] was gained!}
[Human Language (Spoken) (Imperial Trade)] (Passive) [LVMAX]
The language used by the Empire of Klaus, Imperial Trade is used for interchange between various human cultures and countries. The name is derived from the fact it was originally used by imperial merchants as a secret language.
- Allows one to speak and understand other speakers of [Imperial Trade].
- Grants +1 to [Intimidation], [Seduction] and [Charming] actions with other speakers of [Imperial Trade].
{As a result of devouring a human, the skill [Evasion] has been gained!}
[Evasion] (Passive) [LV1, 00.00EXP]
The ability to dodge and avoid attacks, whether they be close combat or ranged. Little to no effect on entirely magical attacks.
- 5% chance to automatically avoid mundane attacks.
- ½ % chance to automatically avoid magical attacks.
"Evasion? He didn't do any evading against me!" Gobuto muttered. He then looked at the other bodies piled up nearby. Time to drag them to the cave. No point wasting all that meat, after all.
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Next Chapter: An Old Enemy Appears
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