Chapter 32 (1/2)

Goblin Settlement

Hikaru and Lavia left the royal capital on a carriage.

「Where are we headed to next?」Lavia asked.

「I want to take some material delivery requests. I want to get promoted to rank E fast so I can enter the dungeon.」

「Do you really love dungeons that much?」

「I'm just interested in them. That's all.」

Dungeons - a staple in fantasy worlds of swords and magic. There were even games and novels with only dungeons. Hikaru wouldn't have to worry about other people seeing him use his abilities as well.

「You also want to enter the dungeon, right?」Hikaru asked.

「What? I, uhh… If you really insist, I can tag along with you.」

Lavia was clearly restless - brus.h.i.+ng the hair over her ears and stroking her nape. Hikaru knew that most of the books she read in the capital involved dungeons. She borrowed plenty of them because she expected to explore a dungeon soon. Apparently she finished reading them all during their stay.

「We're still novices. We should go about hunting monsters for now.」

The carriage they took first thing in the morning followed a long route towards Pond. They were headed to the forest near the lake where he met Paula and defeated a Goblin Leader. He wanted to go deeper into the woods so he could test a few things.

On the bank of the lake, Hikaru explained to Lavia their course of action.

「First we'll sneak up to our target, then strike.」

「The both of us?」

「Only I will attack. All you have to do is hold my hand and follow me.」

「Okay.」Lavia said without thinking twice.

Lavia trusted Hikaru's abilities even though Hikaru hadn't fully explained his Stealth skill to her at all.

Hikaru wanted to try a few things. First, the party feature. He knew that adventurers sometimes formed parties. But it was actually only more of a formal declaration to the guild that they were going to work together. Nothing more. The members didn't receive any special buffs by being in a party.

What Hikaru was curious about was the soul ranks. Say in a party there's a healer who just stays in the backlines, and someone with a high soul rank. How would their ranks go up after killing a monster? Hikaru's battle with Lawrence was fierce, but his soul rank didn't go up, which meant that the target must at least be killed.

「Wow…」Lavia blurted out.

Green Wolves were prowling about five meters ahead. They were so close, yet the monsters didn't notice the two of them at all. Their ears simply twitched as they continued sniffing roots of shrubs without a care in the world.

「Ssh, be quiet.」Hikaru whispered.

「S-Sorry.」

Slowly, they inched closer to the Green Wolves. One thrust to the nape with Hikaru's Dagger of Strength and the wolf was dead.

Then, Lavia's body trembled. Hikaru quickly plucked off a special kind of plant called Wolf Moss from the monster's back. They only grew on the back of Green Wolves. There was a request that required these materials to be delivered.

Hikaru led Lavia, who was squirming about, away from the Green Wolf's corpse. The other Green Wolves were drawing closer.

「Did your rank go up?」

「I think so.」

Soul ranks going up was widely-known phenomenon.. Upon checking Lavia's Soul Board, her rank had indeed increased.

【Soul Board】Lavia

Age: 15  Rank: 7

1

Lavia didn't do anything and yet her soul rank went up. I guess that means we're in a party right now? I suppose it's safe to a.s.sume a ”party” feature exists in this world. But why isn't there any definitive information about this?

Hikaru considered a few possibilities.

One: Soul rank is not valued that much, so there's not much study done.

Two: Scientific method of thinking is not really applied in this world, i.e. making observations, performing experiments, and drawing conclusions.

Three: The ”party” feature is only available under extremely limited conditions and as such there have only been very few precedents.

Hikaru had a feeling it was all of the above. But they didn't come here today to look into why there wasn't information about parties. Finding out that Lavia's soul rank could go up just by being near him in battles was more than enough.

He opted to save the point for now in case of an emergency.

「Next we're going to test your magic. What happens if you push yourself to the limit?」

「I will lose consciousness.」

「How do you feel after you wake up?」

「Awfully sick, but no one's died from it before… I think.」

「I see. You mentioned you can use Fire Breath thirty times in a row without a break, but that's not really an exact figure, right? It's just a rough estimate.」

「That's right.」

「Then our next experiment is to find out the limit of your mana.」

This was necessary if they wanted to enter the dungeon.

My special skill is Stealth, and Lavia's is fire magic. Not a lot of synergy between the two.

Using magic would draw the attention of enemies. They didn't have any healing abilities, so if she fainted from magic overuse, Hikaru would have to carry Lavia, and that would limit his mobility.

「There's no monsters around to use as target practice, though. I guess we'll just have to pick some random monster.」

With the sun's position as their guide, they strolled through the forest. They had to pay careful attention, since the position of the sun changed with time. They said that the deeper you go into the forest, the stronger the monsters. It was time to find out if that was true.

「Hmm?」

Hikaru spotted the perfect target for Lavia to use her magic on.

「Do you see that?」

「Is that a Goblin settlement?! This is my first time seeing one!」

「I don't think there's any other daughter of a Count out there who'd get excited from seeing a Goblin settlement.」

「You mean former daughter of a Count.」Lavia corrected.

About a hundred meters ahead of them was an open area where trees have been cut down by none other than Goblins. They used the trees they cut to make simple houses. There were fifty to a hundred of them, though Hikaru wasn't sure if they belonged to the same family he encountered before.

Their settlement was as big as an indoor track field. The place looked peaceful, with some of them cooking animal meat, a few playing the pipe, while others danced. But in one corner was what appeared to be wreckage from a human carriage. Pieces of clothes were scattered about. They were most likely killed.