Chapter 13: Conquest of the Northern Forest
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 13: Conquest of the Northern Forest
“Victory or Death!”
“Victory or Death!”
“Waaaaaaah!”
The bastards charged forward, announcing their presence for all to hear. Normally, I would have reined Goff in and approached more rationally, but after more than twenty days of pent-up stress, it was impossible to stop them. In truth, they had charged out so suddenly that I never even had the chance.
Even I, under the influence of my monster nature, felt my eyes turn bloodshot with the urge to rush toward that ‘battlefield.’
However, in a battle where anything could happen, at least one clan needed to keep its wits. Given the size of our forces, our chances of victory were high, but this would not be our only fight.
“Battle stations! Prepare for battle! Monsters! It’s monsters!”
Since we’d practically advertised our attack, it was only natural that they’d notice. They had probably set up their own defenses. These humans were clearly on a different level from the ones in the southern forest. In an instant, warriors rushed out with shields raised, and archers drew their bowstrings. I could only imagine how many battles they had endured.
If the humans in the south had been completely devoured by goblins, the north was the exact opposite. Here, the humans had completely devoured the goblins. If this ‘achievement’ was truly the work of the Queen of the North, then it only solidified the need to preserve our forces in this battle. Even at a glance, these guys were no ordinary foes.
While our side had a few goblins who had evolved into Hobgoblin Warriors, their side had just as many who had advanced to the warrior class.
“Kraaaaaaaah!”
For now, we had the advantage in numbers. But there was a clear variable. The variable I could see on this battlefield was the enemy ‘mages.’ They were tightly encircled by warriors, securely guarded as they chanted their spells.
“Shit… their response is fast. We’re circling around to the side.”
“Understood, Chieftain! Kireuk!”
“Mev and the other goblin archers, run with your bows drawn on the mages. When I give the signal, fire immediately. You don’t have to hit them perfectly, just send the arrows flying in their direction.”
“Okay!”
I didn’t know what kind of magic they were preparing, but it was most likely ice magic. No matter how strong one became in the Tutorial, a beginner’s area-of-effect ice spell would surely have its limits.
That left them with only two options: either snipe our champion or rare monsters with attack magic, or… simply freeze the ground with a basic ice spell. If it were me, I would choose the latter without hesitation. If the charging Green Skins lost their footing and fell, it would naturally disrupt the ranks behind them. In truth, it didn't really matter what kind of magic they used.
Our job was to buy time and minimize the damage.
Just as the aura of mana around them began to grow distinct, I started to raise my hand toward Mev and the archer unit.
At the same time, the spells the human mages were chanting began to take a definite shape.
Three.
Two.
One.
“Fire.”
The moment just before they finished their incantations, arrows from Mev and the other archers rained down.
The warriors naturally raised their shields to protect the mages, but in doing so, they also blocked the mages’ line of sight.
This meant that the minimal field of vision required to cast their spells was also cut off. It was a basic tactic one would learn upon entering the continent proper.
Of course, the arrows and crude wooden spears launched by the humans still found their marks, and a few quick-witted mages who had maintained their line of sight managed to unleash their spells, felling the goblins at the front.
But…
“Victory or Death!”
It wasn’t enough to stop the tide of ‘Green Skins’ that was crashing down on them.
“Go!”
“Let’s go! The Blood Dagger Clan is on the move!”
“Krrrrrrk!”
“Kireek! Kireek! For Blood Dagger!”
The Blood Dagger Clan smashed into their flank. I, of course, was at the head of that charge, swinging my sword at their warriors.
“It’s an Orc!”
“Shit… Why is there an Orc all of a sudden?!”
An Orc’s strength at this stage was truly beyond imagination. A swing of my heavy sword was enough to make an ordinary human collapse into a bloody pulp. It was the same for those who had completed their class advancements. They simply couldn’t withstand my monstrous stamina and strength. In an instant, my entire body was drenched in blood. My eyes turned crimson, and my breathing grew ragged.
I was definitely being influenced by my monster nature.
A nearby warrior who had completed his second class advancement swung his sword at me, but I simply grabbed his arm, tore it off, and snapped his neck. Blood gushed from the severed head. I threw the head into their ranks, and screams erupted.
“Krrrrrrrrk…”
A beastly sound escaped my lips, seemingly of its own accord.
“Retreat… We’re retreating! Retreat!”
A good call. But the Blood Dagger Clan’s hobgoblins were already in position to ensure they couldn’t escape.
Jung Hayeon’s unique skill, ‘Charm,’ which she had gained after evolving into an Alraune. The humans who had undergone class advancements could resist it to some degree, but those below them fell right into the goblin traps she had prepared.
The screams of the humans who fell into those traps echoed back to us.
“Aaaaaaaargh!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”
“Krrrk. Keep a few of them alive. Keep a few alive.”
After that, the screams stopped. I imagined Jung Hayeon and the goblins were busy gagging and tying up their captives. Still, it was a pretty good fight. A battle where I felt like I’d finally stretched my limbs after a long time. In fact, the fighting at the main front was still ongoing.
Goff, too, seemed thrilled to finally meet humans with the ‘will to fight.’ For the humans, this Tutorial was a matter of survival, but for us, it was something to be enjoyed. That was the difference between humans and monsters.
Finally, after the last human had fallen to the ground, a great roar echoed across the snowfield.
“Waaaaaaah!”
“Wooooooah!”
“Kireuk… Kireuk!”
The combined war cry of goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs—the Green Skins—was always enough to send a chill down my spine. The roar announcing the arrival of a new clan in the north blanketed the snowy plains.
[You have received a new quest.]
[Quest - Conquest of the Tutorial’s Northern Forest!: Conquer the northern forest. (0/1)]
A hidden quest.
Hearing that, I couldn’t help but smile.
It seemed that everyone except Jung Hayeon and me thought the voice they heard was a ‘message from the God of War,’ because the victorious group let out an even greater cheer.
“The North! Conquer the North!”
“Conquest!”
Watching them, I clenched my fists. There was no news of an evolution yet, but I had found a hidden quest.
Here, even receiving a quest was a difficult task. Aside from the first and second quests given in the Tutorial, some might go their entire lives without ever receiving another. I, in my past life, had been one of them. The conditions for finding a hidden quest involved performing specific actions or discovering clues scattered across the continent or in the forests.
For example, the quest we just received by coming north. The trigger was likely the annihilation of the humans in the south, or at least inflicting damage of that magnitude. If we’d had more time, we might have been able to trigger quests like ‘Conquest of the East’ or ‘Conquest of the West’… It was a shame we couldn’t.
The reward was random. There was no way to know exactly what we would get. The only certainty was that a reward from a quest was never useless.
The fact that we had all received the quest together was a truly excellent outcome. I turned my gaze back to my clan members. In truth, they all looked so similar that I could only remember a few. First was Mev, and second was Jung Hayeon, who had evolved into a monster. And then there were the five most loyal ones.
I still didn’t understand why they were so fixated on me and had joined my clan, but these five were quite something.
For convenience, I called them the Five Goblin Siblings. Two were male, the rest female. The first, who was showing as much promise as Mev, had just evolved into an Orc Warrior in the recent battle. The second had chosen to become a Hobgoblin Warrior and was preparing to follow a similar path as the first.
The problem was the three females—the third, fourth, and fifth. Funnily enough, these three weren’t pursuing a higher species evolution. Instead, they were continuing to evolve only as regular goblins.
Thanks to that, they were quite strong at this point. They were advancing purely along the goblin class tree: Goblin -> Goblin Warrior -> Intermediate Goblin Warrior. It seemed that after seeing Mev turn into a Fairy, they were hesitant to evolve into a different species. It was as if they were determined to see the goblin path through to the very end.
I had once thought it would have been better if they had chosen to be assassins or goblin thieves, but that changed after I saw how the three goblin females fought. They were small, but because they had advanced through the class tiers so quickly, their overall stats were quite good. It seemed they could even sense a little mana.
Their skill at surrounding and toying with their prey before killing them was a masterpiece, much like Velociraptors hunting massive dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. What was truly amazing was how they fought without taking a single hit themselves. The most overwhelming part, however, was their ceaselessly chattering mouths.
‘Kireuk! Kireuk! Kireuk! Our Chieftain is so handsome.’
‘Anyway, why is this human so scrawny! He won’t even taste good!’
‘I’m flying!’
They were so noisy that I found myself subtly moving away from them.
There were a few others who had evolved, but none had particularly stood out yet. The most glaring absence was a shaman. Jung Hayeon held an ambiguous position, but she had only gained a single skill due to her racial trait. She wasn't a mage, a shaman, or anything else yet.
If Jung Hayeon had been a mage or a shaman in that last battle, she could have decisively countered the enemy mages. The last operation had worked out only because the timing was perfect; otherwise, that reckless charge could have resulted in heavy casualties.
To better protect our group, Jung Hayeon’s evolution was becoming more and more necessary. I had no choice but to give it some thought.
“Jung Hayeon.”
“Y-Yes! Ch-Chieftain.”
“Do you have any other quests besides the one you just received?”
“No.”
As expected. Since she had evolved in a way different from everyone else, she had lost the opportunity for a second evolution during the Tutorial. The trade-off was becoming a rare monster, which wasn’t bad, but the immediate problem was that I needed to raise her strength now.
I glanced over at Jung Hayeon.
“Is it only possible to absorb mana and life force by having intercourse?”
“N-No. As long as there’s physical contact… it’s possible with my plants.”
Jung Hayeon’s face flushed red, perhaps because I had suddenly brought up the topic of intercourse. Seeing her reaction, I decided to do what online gamers call ‘power-leveling.’
“In that case… you will kill all the survivors our clan captures.”
I said it in a rather grim tone, but there was no wavering in Jung Hayeon’s eyes. Instead, what I saw was joy and anticipation. I wasn’t sure if her nature had changed after becoming a monster or if she had always had such tendencies, but when I recalled the sight of her sobbing as she stabbed a survivor with a dagger before her evolution, I had a feeling it wasn’t just the former.
“Yes!”