Early the next morning, the four adventurers finished a hearty breakfast consisting of boiled eggs, oatmeal porridge, goat cheese, sheep's milk, and marinated lamb chops. They prepared their weapons and gear, took the simple map drawn by the village chief, and set off towards the mountains where the goblin tribe was located.
Goblins are humanoid creatures, mostly similar in height to dwarves, with long pointed ears, protruding noses, and dark green skin. They are short, ugly creatures with red eyes, known for their greedy and despicable nature. They tend to be evil, cunning, and adept at deceit.
They primarily inhabit underground caves and deep jungles, with a unique social order and system. While not highly cultured, they have insights into mining and constructing underground structures.
Although goblins are weak in combat, their reproductive capabilities rival those of rats, making their numbers vast. They often compensate for their lack of individual strength through mass group actions.
These green-skinned creatures prefer meat and are particularly interested in shiny objects like gold coins, silver coins, and diamonds. Occasionally, they gather wild fruits but do not engage in farming; their food sources mainly come from hunting and plundering.
In forests, when goblin tribes are small in number, they generally keep to themselves. They tame wild wolves, craft simple weapons, and as a group, hunt rabbits and deer. They can even engage in friendly interactions with passing adventurers and travelers, exchanging food for shiny metal coins.
However, once goblin numbers grow, their audacity expands accordingly. Led by their chieftain, they brazenly attack villages, plunder crops, ambush adventurers, and even kidnap lone individuals. Those captured by goblins, mostly women, rarely return alive unless rescued by adventurers or knights from nearby castles.
Despite their weak combat abilities, a seasoned adventurer can easily handle three or four goblins at once. For someone like Barrett, killing goblins is as simple as exterminating mice.
However, due to goblins' cunning nature and some degree of organizational discipline, many novice adventurers have stumbled in their encounters with them.
Typically, when rookies are assigned goblin-hunting missions, the Adventurer's Guild recommends a mithril-level adventurer as the leader.
After trekking through rugged and muddy mountain paths for hours, the "The Last Defender of the Way" adventurer team finally arrived at the cave entrance marked on the crude map. This cave was highly likely to be the nest entrance of the goblin tribe.
With a lineup including an orichalcum-level, a mithril-level, and even a platinum-level adventurer, this team was nothing short of luxurious for a goblin extermination mission.
The only silver-level cleric, Stella, obeyed EeDeChi's command. She removed her elegant cleric uniform and donned heavy armor, topped with a great helm. Wrapped tightly in chainmail from head to toe.
If it weren't for the silver-white staff in her hand, anyone seeing her would probably mistake her for a heavy-armored female warrior.
Luckily, Stella had previously enchanted her chainmail with lightweight magic; otherwise, she would have suffered greatly climbing up the mountain.
Brandishing his shortsword and clad in Gorgon leather armor, Barrett ignited a torch of tallow. He led the way into the cave. EeDeChi followed closely behind, Stella's staff emitting a bright magical glow as she trailed behind EeDeChi. Sean, holding a crossbow and a torch, brought up the rear.
"I heard goblins are creations of the gods. Is that true?" EeDeChi asked curiously as the torchlight flickered around.
"Hmph, where'd you hear that nonsense? If goblins are creations of the gods, then squirrels are the chosen ones!" Barrett shook his head in disbelief at their captain's strange ideas.
Approaching a fork in the path, the seasoned adventurer crouched down and sniffed the cave wall, carefully searching for signs of goblins. He gestured behind him to the three companions and chose a path at the fork.
Dark and damp cave entrances often harbored malicious traps, such as bamboo spikes coated with dung, stones hanging from the ceiling, and bone shards concealed under loose gravel.
Barrett easily identified and dismantled these traps. Despite goblins' cunning personalities, their traps were no match for Barrett, a mithril-level adventurer.
After traveling a distance, they descended a crude stone staircase strewn with gravel. On the cave wall, they spotted a bone decoration made from a goat skull and a cross-shaped wooden stick.
Barrett's expression turned serious. He fastened a light crystal forehead guard and signaled everyone to stay alert and prepare for battle.
As they turned down a winding path, they caught a strong whiff of blood, distant cries of humans, the sound of torn fabric, and the sharp laughter peculiar to goblins.
The four adventurers tightened their grip on their weapons and maintained their formation as they moved toward the source of the noise.
Suddenly, from the depths of the dark cave, a rustling sound filled the air, with stones, spears, and hammers raining down on them.
Barrett grabbed a small oak shield and wielded his shortsword, deflecting the barrage of stone weapons.
The crystal on his forehead guard lit up brightly, illuminating the path ahead like a miner's headlamp. In the glare, a swarm of goblins armed with spears, daggers, and obsidian axes charged toward them.
Stella waved her staff lightly, casting a gentle glow, while Barrett's shortsword burst into flames of red.
Barrett held his small shield in front of him, wielding his enchanted flaming shortsword. He unleashed his Martial Art technique, effortlessly slicing through the goblin horde, severing their jugulars and chests, harvesting the lives of three goblins in an instant.
EeDeChi leaped forward, his long and broad giant sword unaffected by the narrow cave terrain. After slashing deep marks into the cave walls, she sent six goblins flying with a single sweep.
Sean released the tension of his longbow, arrows of steel flying forth without missing their mark, felling goblins swinging hammers.
Stella softly chanted her incantations. A massive sphere of holy light burst from her staff, hovering at the cave's ceiling, dispelling the darkness. Simultaneously, she fired several 1st Tier magic fireballs, knocking down several goblins.
In the shadows behind her, a goblin wielding a shortsword stealthily approached. The cleric girl was focused on casting her spells and completely unaware of the goblin's intended ambush.
Drawing near, the goblin leaped and thrust its sword towards Stella's waist. Sean, noticing the ambush too late, couldn't react in time.
The sword merely glanced off Stella's sturdy chainmail, staggering her momentarily. Before the goblin could comprehend why the cleric was so hard, Sean's arrow of wrath pierced its head, pinning it to the ground.
This wave of goblins swiftly met their end, leaving only a few survivors to flee shrieking deeper into the cave.
Limbs of goblins littered the cave floor, blood dripping and pooling along the rocky crevices. Most of the dismembered bodies were the work of Barrett, while EeDeChi had merely sent them flying intact.
The adventurer captain wrinkled her brow in disgust and said to Barrett, "Just a heads-up, try not to be so bloody and violent. Like me, one hit should do it. No need to chop them into pieces, got it?"
"Uh..." Barrett reluctantly agreed on the surface, but inwardly scoffed. What a strange request. I don't have your superhuman strength, just smacking them dead would leave a whole body. There's no need for such niceties in combat. Besides, absolutely more than double the goblins you smack down.
The four adventurers continued deeper into the cave, arriving at a stone hall where the faint sobbing of a human woman echoed. Before they could investigate the direction of the cries, a green mountain appeared on one side of the hall, trembling and roaring angrily.
"What in the world is this? Goblins can get this big?" EeDeChi exclaimed in astonishment.
"It's a Goblin Giant, a throwback mutant," Barrett explained, but before he could finish, EeDeChi leaped forward, her giant sword smashing into the Goblin Giant's head.
The massive creature staggered forward a few steps before crashing to the ground, lifeless.
"Damn humans! Damn adventurers! AHH, I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!" a furious, hoarse voice erupted from behind the fallen mountain.
Under Stella's illuminated magic light sphere, the figure of an elderly goblin with a feathered crown, nose and ears adorned with iron rings, became visible. Gripping a green bone staff, it pounded the ground furiously, its face twisted in a savage and insane rage.