Chapter 20: Chapter 19 – The colony

I was suddenly woken up by an explosion, pumped full of adrenaline I jumped up, extended my claws and looked around, trying to find the enemy that had caused the explosion. I didn’t find anything as it wasn’t caused by an enemy, this was made clear when I looked at Val as she was just staring at the wooden staff in her hands with a look of surprise on her face. As we weren’t in any danger the adrenaline slowly left my body while I calmed down and walked over to Val.

Once I got to her I gently shook her and asked ‘Hey, what was that explosion, is everything ok?’ Hearing my voice pulled her out of her trance as she realised what she had done and a huge smile appeared on her face. I had a feeling that I knew what had happened so I also had a smile on my face, although it wasn’t as big as hers.

‘I did it!’ she shouted as she turned to me ‘I cast my first spell and received the [Mage] class.’ I was pleasantly surprised that she managed to cast her first spell just two days after receiving a spell focus. It could take up to a week, sometimes longer, for a typical mage to learn their first spell even with a teacher, this lead me to believe that she might be some prodigy.

Unfortunately we were in the wilderness possibly quite close to a goblin colony so, even though I was happy for her, I had to try to calm her down before something came to investigate the noise. ‘That is great, I knew you could do it; we should definitely celebrate once we get back.’ I said, with a smile on face ‘but for now we need to keep the noise down as I don’t want to attract any unnecessary attention.’

Hearing this Val lost some of her excitement and looked a bit sad as she said ‘Oh right, sorry about that’ She was obviously a little embarrassed about losing her composure ‘I completely forgot where I was.’

‘It’s fine, I didn’t mean to imply you shouldn’t happy about this.’ I replied, I kicked myself a little for what I had said earlier as I didn’t mean to bring the mood down so much ‘In fact I wish we could shout and scream to the world about what you had accomplished.’

With Val calmed down I sat down infront of the fire and tapped the dirt next to me while saying ‘Come sit down and we can talk all about it.’ At this Val sat next to as I continued ‘So, how did it feel to cast your first spell?’ I asked, I was really curious about the magic in this world and I was sure Val would be more than happy to talk about it.

‘It is hard to explain,’ Val answered before concentrating for a few minutes and then continuing ‘it kind of felt as if a well of energy had been unlocked inside of me wanting to escape. Before I could do anything to stop it the energy travelled through my hand and into the staff shooting out in a bolt of fire.’

‘That sounds amazing’ I exclaimed with wonder in my eyes, wanting to go straight to trying to figure it out for myself but holding back as I could see how excited Val still was to talk about it. And talk about it we did, we spent what felt like two hours chatting just about magic and anything related to it until the exhaustion finally reached Val and she slowly fell asleep leaning against me. I gently moved her until her head was resting on my lap before slowly reaching over to the blanket behind me, trying my best not to disturb Val, before I covered her with it. Her breathing hadn’t changed so she was still asleep.

I looked up at the stars above me, as I had suspected I couldn’t recognise any of the constellations which confirmed that I was on a different planet, not that I had doubted that for even a second. Suddenly a sad thought crossed my mind as I realised that I was no longer able to experience that same sky as anyone from my previous life.

I shook the thought from my head and instead thought about our day, how we had met and everything that had happened since I had got here. It was certainly something I would never forget, and I was sure that this was just the beginning of our story together. Once I had finished thinking about everything I wanted to I looked down at Val and whispered ‘I am truly happy that I took that deal no matter what happens.’ Before concentrating on my bow while trying to see if I could feel the same thing Val did.

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Morning came and went as I continued to try, and fail, to cast my first spell when Val started to shift in her sleep. I set aside my bow and gave up on it for now as Val woke up and looked around, still a bit sleepy. Val wiped the sleep from her eyes before looking around again and asking me ‘Why was I sleeping on your lap?’

‘Well, last night we talked so much that you ended falling asleep on me and I didn’t want to wake you.’ I replied, mostly truthfully but I didn’t add that I thought she looked cute and liked that situation ‘I had gotten enough rest by that point so I didn’t mind keeping watch.’

‘Oh, ok’ Val answered while blushing a little ‘As long as you don’t mind then I guess its ok’

‘I meant what I said’ I replied, before having a thought that caused a sly smile to appear on my face, ‘in fact, if you ever want to have a lap pillow while you were awake all you have to do is ask and I will happily give you one.’

Val was too flustered to answer so she just turned away and started to walk off. I quietly chuckled to myself as I caught up with her and thought to myself ‘I do have to admit making someone I find cute flustered really is fun.’

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We walked for about thirty minutes before we came across our first standard squad of the day. Now that Val was able to effectively fight I wanted to see what she could do so I stepped back and watched from the side-lines, ready with an arrow in my hands if anything went sideways.

The fight started with her gathering some mana in her staff that glowed red before a small ball of fire shot out at the archer goblin, it was about the size of my thumb and it was stretched into a line by the air pulling back on it. Even though it seemed small the effect was huge, it struck the goblins chest before exploding destroying the goblins chest. The spell wasn’t exactly covert so all three remaining goblins turned in Val’s direction before charging her.

Val was still calm as she channelled her next spell, this time the mana glowed a light blue before the mana was shot out at one of the two club goblins. The goblin was too slow to dodge it and so was struck on the side, instantly being engulfed in ice which I assumed killed it. By my estimates Val only had enough time to cast one more spell before the goblins reached her, seeing this I was about to step in when I saw that Val was still calm so I decided to see what she was going to do.

I could tell that Val was concentrating on something but I couldn’t see any mana emanating from the staff. The goblins were about to reach her and were raising their weapons to strike her down when all of a sudden they stopped moving. I was confused for a second until the goblins fell to the floor in two separate pieces each, Val must have used a wind spell that was typically incredibly hard to see and even a favourite of assassins as it was great for sneak attacks.

Seeing this I walked up to Val while saying ‘Well done, that was a good fight’ I clapped Val on the back in congratulations before continuing ‘How do you feel?’

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Val took a second to take in her surroundings before turning to me and saying ‘that felt great, I never thought I would be able to do something like this but now I can protect the people that I care about and love’ she then started gathering the loot like I would while continuing ‘just a couple of weeks ago I was running away from them scared for my life and now I feel like I could take on another two squads separately before needing to rest.’

‘That’s great to hear’ I replied with a smile on my face ‘Now we can properly fight side by side and take on bigger threats that we couldn’t before. We might even be able to go on quests together some day.’

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We continued chatting and fighting more goblins as the day went on, and I even got to see some of Val’s spells. It turned out that she got [Minor elemental magic], which gave her an easier time channelling her mana into any spell that had one of the main four elements as its attribute, these were fire, wind, water and earth. The class had also given her the knowledge of how to cast eight spells, two for each element, one strong that required a lot of mana and one weak that could be spammed. Some of these spells were purely utility spells and so couldn’t be used in a fight but they were still good so we were happy.

As the day dragged on and more and more encounters would require the both of us to fight I was starting to get a bit worried that we would end up stumbling across something we couldn’t deal with. This was due to two reasons, firstly the goblins were getting stronger, probably being a higher level than the ones we had fought before although I couldn’t tell what their exact level was as I could only do that with monsters I create. Secondly we had started running into more of the Hobgoblin squads, which showed that they probably kept the stronger squads closer to the village in case of a proper attack.

Fortunately my worries were unfounded as about an hour after we had eaten our launch we had found the colony. Although finding the colony just gave me more worries as it wasn’t a colony, it was a village. There were at least two hundred huts that I could see, I estimated that they could comfortably house four goblins each so that was eight hundred goblins but it was also attached to what looked like a mine that could house more goblins so the village had to have a thousand goblins at least.

There were only a few evolutions of goblin that had enough power to keep a thousand goblins in check and one would require a party of level 40 adventurers while the other would require a party of level 60 adventurers. It didn’t really matter to us which one it was since if we tried to fight either one we would be destroyed immediately. We may have been level 6 at this point but this was way above our paygrade so we agreed that we should head back and just report it so that someone else would take care of it, hopefully before it got to the point that they tried to attack a local village.

However I didn’t want to go back quite yet as I wanted to gain a few more levels plus we still had a few more days before we ran out of food and would need to go back home. I wasn’t too worried as we had gotten into a good fighting rhythm together so I trusted that as long as it wasn’t too bad we would be able to get out of anything.

Seeing the huts and how they were constructed reminded me of the things early humans would build settlements but I knew that they, along with every true monster, weren’t truly civilised, and probably never would be. This was because, even though some monsters may seem smart, they were driven by instinct, attacking anything around them that wasn’t like them.

The main belief for why this happens is because the mana that creates them causes them to be monsters and attack things, this is backed up by the fact that no records has anything detailing one of their people being created by mana at all. But everything that was initially created by mana, including their offspring if they could have any, would attack any non-monster creature that they saw.  So I didn’t feel bad about killing them as they were just a plague on the land that would reap only destruction if left alone.

We couldn’t just go in and start attacking goblins though, instead we snuck as close to the village as we felt comfortable with, waited for any squads to leave the town before following them until they were too far away to call for help before we would kill them. We did this for the rest of the day, fighting three standard squads and two double squads, before going back into the forest and setting up camp for the night.

The next morning as we got to the village we saw a commotion where a leaner hobgoblin was shouting at a goblin that looked like it was a lookout. We went to investigate it but we couldn’t understand what they were saying, I could tell a little of what was going on as the hobgoblin kept on gesturing to the forest while the lookout looked more and more nervous. They had noticed the squads we had killed not returning and were wondering what was going on and while they couldn’t know it was us that were doing it since we hadn’t let any goblins escape they had to realise something was wrong by now.

This was confirmed throughout the day as didn’t see a single standard squad leave the village and even saw a single squad with a couple of hobgoblins and what looked like spellcasters, this new squad looked very strong so we gave them a wide berth. By the end of the day we had managed to get to level 7 so we went back to our camp and rested for the night while on high alert. We kept this up for the next two days, even getting to level 8 halfway through the third day, but each day the goblins kept on sending more of the strong squads and less of the double squads.

This kept on progressing until we both doubted they would send out anymore double squads as the third day we only saw three double squads leave with the rest being the strong squad. This forced us to head back to the dungeon as we didn’t want to mess with the strong squad even if we were both level 8 by this point. Over these three days we had spent so much time waiting for something to fight that I even managed to figure out how to cast my first spell.

Luckily it wasn’t a loud spell like Val’s first one was, instead it had attached to my arrow and when it landed at the target it created a vine that tried to snare anything that was near it, but since nothing was around it it failed. As this was happening I felt knowledge enter my brain in a way that was similar to when I got to this world, except I was conscious this time. By the time that it was done I instinctively knew three new spells, a healing spell, one that let me commune with any plants or animals around me and one that would coat my arrow in an acid similar to what pitcher plants and other carnivorous plants had.

The morning of the fourth day we packed up our camp and left to go back to my dungeon, on the way back I thought over what we had done this past week and I was happy. I may not have completed my quest but I had still made progress plus I was sure that I would be able to get the last two levels well before my deadline was up. I had also gathered more than enough  gotten enough materials to be able to summon my own goblins, maybe even hobgoblins, when I wanted to. Finally I had gotten a lot closer to Val, when we left it felt like she was only answering my questions out of an obligation and wouldn’t ask any questions in return but by this point we could have hour long conversations without any of it feeling awkward or forced at all.

We arrived back home just as the sun was setting as we just spent the whole day walking without fighting anything. Before I could go rest properly I went to the guild house and told them about what I had found, they thanked me for the information and said that they would make an emergency quest to deal with the problem as I left the building. When I got back to the dungeon I said goodbye to Val and immediately went to an unoccupied room before flopping on to my bed and looking at my status page.

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