Chapter 96: Secret

Having a high-tier professional beside him.

For me, the danger level of Mist Forest's outskirts actually had no major difference from River Valley Town.

Both were "eating-training-sleeping." Comparing the two, the food was just cruder—from stewed meat mushroom soup to dried meat and black bread. The training location changed from suburban woods to goblin nests.

I even felt that in terms of sleep quality, this time was even better.

After all, being in uninhabited wilderness, naturally there wouldn't be drinkers shouting loudly, or the "creak" sounds from stairs shaking.

And what should be most worrying—those dangerous monsters that habitually hunted at night—were also deterred by the barbarian Forgan's unrestrained transcendent aura, not daring to approach.

I didn't become overly relaxed in vigilance because of this.

At the end of the day, I was just a novice who'd been on the adventurer's path only two or three months.

During missions, some habits that might not be useful now but would greatly concern my own safety in the future had to be cultivated as early as possible.

For example: night watch and traps.

Regarding the latter, even though the forest-cold chill permeating the air made even the dumbest gray rats in the forest instinctively stay away under survival instinct.

I still pretended properly, carefully and cautiously arranging many warning traps around camp.

From leaving River Valley Town until now, they hadn't been triggered even once.

But my heart felt at ease.

Regarding night watch...

Although the barbarian had never mentioned related requirements to me, I still actively divided time allocation with him.

Forgan was as always silent.

Didn't say agree, also didn't object.

Just soundlessly, from originally staying awake all night, he switched to closing his eyes to rest the first half of the night, then waking on time in deep night.

Half a night's time was also enough for me to recover the stamina consumed during daytime training.

Today, the situation seemed slightly different.

The waning moon concealed under thick cloud layers had only just adorned the treetops, hadn't even climbed to the sky's peak, when the barbarian already woke amid howling cold wind.

Also unlike previous days, he didn't use ice crystals and frost to sharpen that black obsidian small axe of his.

Just quietly sat by the bonfire, gazing at the thin chain in his hand.

Forgan naturally noticed the gaze from the other side of camp.

Also knew his abnormal performance tonight had attracted the still fairly attentive novice's attention.

Had no intention of explaining.

Feeling the cool sensation of metal chain links winding around his fingers, fingertips lightly touching, rubbing the pendants on it, eyes like cold pools slightly losing focus.

Frost Moss Highlands—the violent, fierce ice and snow became natural barriers, isolating people living generation after generation in that harsh territory from the outside world.

Countless years passed. Although occasionally young people pursuing their own paths and traveling far brought changes from beyond the snowfield back to the tribe.

But the Frostthroat clan's barbarians still followed traditions left by ancestors.

Preserving the most prideful prey of their lives as accessories or tattoos.

This crude yet sturdy necklace in hand had accompanied him many years, but was only worn on his body after reaching adulthood.

Regarding the concepts of killing, prey and spoils, Forgan's earliest memory could be traced back to when he was six years old.

An "ice field lemming" that didn't know what frightened it, panicking and scurrying into the small house.

The specific process had long become blurred.

Only clearly remembered when he pierced that ice blade dagger gifted by tribal warriors into the lemming's spine.

The gradually lusterless rodent eyes as it breathed, and the muscles spasming and twitching under its fur.

Wasn't any special feeling, also didn't leave any shadow.

Warriors struggling with ice and snow would sooner or later experience death.

Aside from this, Forgan's deepest memory.

Was only the fragrant lemming meat soup that night, and the rat skin vest that helped him endure that year's deep winter.

Then age twelve.

Having already become the strongest child in the tribe and begun practical combat training under tribal warriors' guidance, Forgan.

On the way home from the training ground, accidentally encountered a famished snow spider.

Chest left side, near the heart, was a bloody wound.

Even now, many years later, scars remaining on the skin surface could still be seen.

And that snow spider chelicera that left scars on him was also shattered by him into a pendant, right now hanging at the chain's outermost edge.

Age sixteen, following the hunting team into the snowfield's depths, he got separated from the main force and was treated as prey by a just-born white dragon hatchling.

As the most unintelligent, most "primitive" kind among chromatic dragons, even filling its belly became difficult.

Just driven by hunger, in ice and snow, wrestling and fighting with Forgan like a beast.

Bathing in dragon blood, he kept a section from the white dragon's tailbone tip, crafting it into a bone pendant on the necklace.

Age twenty-two, it was a juvenile centipede beast.

Battle details already forgotten, but that winter wolf that fought alongside him at the time, whom he could feel at ease giving his back to.

Right now had already been nailed into his chest by bone spikes, still using its soft, warm fur to block wind and frost for him.

Finally, age thirty-nine.

When Forgan in the wind and snow filling the sky, forcefully enduring the terrifying howl capable of sweeping ice peaks and triggering massive avalanches.

Lifting the "Abominable Yeti's" goat-like curved horns, chopping its head from its neck.

He also finally satisfied the last condition, stepping onto the transcendent path.

And didn't as once planned, under ancestral spirit protection, inherit great power from the north, frost and nature, class-changing to become an 【Ice Crown Warrior】 with a clear advancement path who could freely release barbarian fury.

The homeland reduced to ruins, over a hundred corpses buried with his own hands—revenge's shadow had long filled his heart.

With faith and post-death soul as the price, Forgan obtained from the 【God of the Hunt】, 【Blood-Soaked One】 "Malar," the power he most urgently needed.

Advancing to 【Mourning Frost Oath-Bound】, letting oath shackles bind his heart, using wolf spirits under ice and snow's sorrow to search for enemy traces.

And this was precisely why he could cross half the continent, all the way from the north's Frost Moss Highlands to Mist Forest.

Twist that beast's neck, fill the space Forgan specifically left for it at the necklace's center with thorns wound with fungal threads.

He would also under the Hunt God's gaze complete advancement class change, taking the last step before "Legend."

......

I sat by the bonfire's edge.

Warmth released by burning dead branches dispelled the last trace of cold in my body.

Long used to it—after all, these two days practicing 【Fang Hunt】 also needed the barbarian's frost coordination and guidance.

Even without the flames before me, if I found a place to practice another ten-plus minutes, the heat in my body would be enough to melt the cold.

Night deep, but time was still early for me.

With my current physical fitness, if I lay down now, before dawn broke I'd already have recovered stamina and woken naturally, inconvenient for doing anything.

So wasn't in a rush to rest.

Instead, from the backpack behind me, I took out the small box found from the goblin nest during the day, savoring it carefully.

Casually grabbing a gold coin from within, pinching it in hand, reflecting the campfire, I squinted to examine it.

Pitch-black eyes reflecting the golden coin, my face showed a thoughtful expression.

Had to say, the hobgoblin's daytime performance completely shattered my stereotypical impression of goblinoid creatures.

Almost another species entirely—it had neither ordinary goblins' mad frenzy, nor was it crude and reckless like its cousin the bear goblin.

Tactical literacy sufficient for field command, and leadership ability making vile, low-intelligence green-skins obey commands...

I didn't doubt at all that if there really existed a hobgoblin with sufficiently powerful strength, ruling and merging large amounts of goblin settlements.

It might really pose a threat to nearby human towns.

Of course, on the other hand.

Hobgoblins' intelligence far exceeding their kind, although making them more difficult to deal with than ordinary goblins or even bear goblins.

But to a certain extent, also benefited adventurers making a living hunting this type of monster.

Understanding accumulation, storing gold coins and useful equipment.

Adventurers clearing nests didn't need like before to forcefully endure nausea, searching goblins emitting stench one by one for possible gains.

Only needed to find the hobgoblin's treasure cache to easily sweep up the entire green-skin settlement's spoils in one net.

Even the environment inside caves was much cleaner than general goblin nests.

No feces accumulated under urine mixing, merging with muddy ground. Also rarely saw half-eaten rotting bones.

Even those green-skin brats I'd seen before...

Thoughts suddenly paused.

I instinctively frowned, sensing something wrong.

According to information I'd learned in River Valley Town this period.

Goblins in this world were almost the most numerous among all bottom-tier monsters.

Like cockroaches and mosquitoes visible everywhere in grass and floor cracks—no matter how you killed, couldn't kill them all clean.

Even sending professional adventurers to regularly clear some area.

Probably only peaceful for a while.

Seemingly all killed, not leaving one.

Actually after ten-plus or twenty days, didn't know where from but a large batch would emerge again.

As if growing from the ground.

In this situation, combined with their racial characteristic of having no females, for goblins to maintain such a massive species base, they had to extensively plunder opposite sex from other races.

Just,

The goblin caves I'd cleared these days weren't few, but the imagined alien females breeding offspring for them under green-skin ravaging...

Not a single one!

Even juvenile-form goblins were rarely seen.

As if all were assembly-line, same-mold copied production.

Strange, too strange.

Doubts in my heart grew like weeds, unable to suppress them anymore.

I glanced at the barbarian across the bonfire, rubbing the necklace in his hand.

Seeing he'd already woken with no intention of resting again.

I organized language in my belly, unable to resist asking him my confusion.

Originally thought that with Forgan's taciturn personality, even if he knew some inside information, he wouldn't say much to me.

Unexpectedly, perhaps the mushroom growing on the hobgoblin's body during the day stimulated somewhere in his heart.

Facing my question, the barbarian slowly spoke of a certain secret circulating among professionals, from ancient times.

Supposedly, in "long ago" with millennia as time units.

Goblins, or rather goblinoids.

Had no difference from other creatures in this world—had male-female distinction, could reproduce normally.

Although temperament was equally vile, incidents attacking passing caravans and pedestrians occurred from time to time, but far less frequent than now.

Just a common, ordinary bottom-tier monster.

Until that battle encompassing the entire continent, affecting countless kingdoms and races, involving several divine pantheons.

Human "legends" standing at the creature pyramid's apex were like ordinary adventurers under bear goblin claws—corpses could pile full of the dwarven underground kingdom's most spacious Holy Forge Plaza.

Every night you could see meteors streaking across the sky—those were gods falling and perishing from heavenly kingdoms above.

【Supreme Chief】, 【Lord of the Deeps】 "Maglubiyet," as the goblinoid pantheon's main god, was naturally also drawn into this battle.

The situation development's specific process had long been buried deep in history's river.

But the most critical turning point within, under countless people's oral transmission, was preserved.

Legend said at some time point, enemy gods' siege made the goblinoid race almost fall into desperate straits.

Goblins across the entire continent were swept clean, leaving only a small portion lingering under their deity's protection.

Maglubiyet, wielding "war," "rulership" and other domains, possessing powerful divine might, also gradually lost those authorities in fierce battle with the gods.

And just when the pantheon collapsed, when goblins as a race were about to completely perish.

Maglubiyet suddenly disappeared.

Taking the few hundred goblinoids remaining on the continent, completely disappearing into the multiverse.

"Ran away?" My face was full of incomprehension and confusion. "Then where did the green-skins I chopped during the day come from?"

Regarding this, Forgan just shook his head.

"When goblins appeared before the world again, the battle had already ended several hundred years ago."

And the goblinoids' main god "Maglubiyet" also returned to His divine kingdom.

No one knew what happened in between.

Why newly returned goblins to the continent suddenly lost the concept of "gender," why Maglubiyet could smoothly reclaim his authorities and become even more powerful, why the gods in heavenly kingdoms seemed to tacitly accept all this without any reaction...

The air in camp became incomparably silent for a time.

Only the "crack pop" sounds of firewood burning remained.

I digested the large amount of information suddenly surging into my mind, not knowing what to say.

Originally just a casual question—didn't expect there really seemed to be some story inside.

Didn't overthink, just silently memorized this knowledge in my mind.

Right now I wasn't even a professional yet. Rather than worrying unfoundedly about these high-level matters my current strength couldn't even touch the edge of.

Might as well think about when I could truly get 【Fang Hunt】 started.

Shaking my head, I looked at the barbarian Forgan before me who'd already put the necklace back on.

"So the current meaning is, first send me to the nearest town, then you go handle your own business?"

"Mm."

"Back to River Valley Town?"

"Too far."

"Then where?"

"Karanfor."