Chương 21

I froze as my eyes met the goblin's. Where did it come from? I tore my eyes off it and looked around. I knew from past experience that goblins don't come alone, but I couldn't see any others. Surprisingly, as soon as I looked away from the goblin, it vanished from my peripheral vision, like it was never there. I looked back and it reappeared, still staring at me. Confused, I looked away again and the same process repeated itself. What's going on? And how is it looking at me when I am in stealth?

I opened up my status and saw my mana ticking down, ensuring me that I really was in stealth. I got up quickly in case it attacked, and immediately heaved over as my ribs loudly reminded me of their injured status. Breathing deeply, I looked up, ready in case of an attack, but the goblin was still there, simply staring. Actually, the longer I stared at it the more surprised it got.

I looked slightly away from it, at a point where it didn't disappear from my peripheral vision, and made a show of being oblivious to its presence. I could just about make out that it visibly relaxed a bit, and then stayed still, staring. Now that I think about it, it looked a bit different from the other goblins we had faced. This one looked a bit smaller, and had sharper features. It was also of a much darker colour, but that could be due to the low light here. I strained my newly powered up senses.

I could hear the wind blowing, grass rustling beneath me, the dying crackles of the fire behind me, and some very slight movement deep from within the kobold burrow. However, I could not hear the goblin breathing, even though it was much closer to me than either the fire or the burrow. It was the same case with smells. I could smell the blood from the kobold corpse, the smell of burning wood and grass, but nothing from the goblin. It was quite similar to something I had become quite familiar with since yesterday.

It's using stealth! I wasn't sure it was using the exact same skill as I was, but I was pretty sure that it was something similar. Which begs the real question – why? Did it stumble upon here by chance when I was fighting the kobold boss? Or was it here since earlier? A chill ran down my spine when I thought that it could have attacked me at any moment and I would have been none the wiser. Is this what my opponents face? Still, my mind kept going back to two fundamental questions – How long had it been here?

And how was it seeing me despite stealth? Come to think of it, how was I seeing it now? The answer came to me immediately. Perception. The increase in perception let me see it, so that probably means that the goblin's perception was higher than 10 as well? I'm not even sure if 10 is the threshold for goblins, it could be 3 or 30 for all I knew. Once again, the lack of information was annoying me.

I was someone who liked to know what was going on, what I was going to do, and what was going to be the response to my action. Here, I had zero idea about any of those questions. Only thing I can do is keep learning, I guess… Thinking about it would get me nowhere, and I had much more pressing things to worry about at the moment. Chief among which was my injury, followed closely by my dwindling mana. I knew I could kill off the goblin here, but I wanted to see what it wanted.

With that in mind, I assigned two more points to perception, feeling the sensory overload for a bit before it faded away. Now, I was pleased to note that I could keep the goblin in my peripheral sight from further away, which was crucial in me learning more about it. Looking at my mana, which had reached 53, below the halfway point I was comfortable with, I knew I had to start moving. Or what if I waited a bit here?

Looking around, there was nothing here save for the dead body of the kobold and the goblin, who could see me regardless if I was under stealth or not. Maybe taking a few minutes to have more mana would be smarter? I had to traverse the forest injured and completely in the dark, after all. Decision made, I undid stealth, noting absolutely no reaction from the goblin, and settled back down against the tree to wait. The minutes ticked by with nothing happening, just me and a nosy neighbour to keep me company.

All of a sudden, the goblin turned to look at the side, its eyes narrowing. It saw something. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Trusting the sight of the little fella, I got under the relative comfort of stealth once again and slowly got up, idly noting that my mana was now at 102. Much better. The goblin glanced toward me, but then went back to looking at whatever had its attention. I had a chilling thought right then.

Had the goblin been waiting for reinforcements? I remembered when the goblins had surrounded us earlier, and hadn't they been content to wait too? Shit! I messed up! Immediately I turned toward the direction of the square and started hobbling forward, though as soon as I crossed the tree I was siting against, I came face to face with monstrous red eyes. A completely silent and dark as the night canine silhouette stalked towards me, red eyes menacingly watching me.

I stepped back instinctively and stumbled a bit, my eyes never leaving the red ones, but thankfully, its eyes had no reaction to my movement. I slowly moved to the side, holding my breath and wishing my heart would stay silent, as the massive wolf moved towards me with eerie silence. It was easily as tall as me at the shoulder, and its claws were immense, capable of easily shredding through me.

Its jaw was large enough to bite through my torso with ease, and I was thankful that I couldn't see its undoubtedly massive fangs at the moment. I was suddenly painfully reminded of how wolves were famous for their amazing senses, and the already shaken confidence in my stealth skill dropped a few notches further. Please, let stealth work! I gripped my dagger, hard, and crouched a bit, ignoring my protesting ribs. I was ready to launch myself with quick step at a moment's notice.

The wolf reached me, and silently went past. Relief flooded through me as its tail passed me and went straight for the kobold's body. Yes! Good boy, eat it all, it's all for you! I turned around, slowly, and started moving away, before coming to a halt once again. Three more floating red eyes were converging on the scene from different directions. My panicked brain chose the moment to remind me that wolves usually moved in packs. These three were a bit further away from me, with one being quite close to the goblin.

All of them silently moved and joined the two already digging through the carcass. Wait, two? Unbeknownst to me, another wolf had joined the first one at one point. Figuring out that the sooner I hightailed away from here, the better off I would be, I started moving away. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the goblin turn to look at me and start following me too. Any question of whether or not I should kill it was halted at the moment.

Killing it would only bring that pack of wolves right on me, and I still wasn't sure how many of them there were. I moved across the dark forest, slowly putting distance between me and certain death. My goblin companion kept pace easily, looking a bit bored now. Its actions so far made me certain that it was following me to gather information rather than looking for a time to attack. And I needed to think of a way to spin the situation to my advantage.

Right now, I knew that it was following me, but so far it didn't know that I could see it. I needed to think of a way to use this to my advantage, but I was drawing a blank for now. Probably because my mind was preoccupied with the immense pain throbbing within me and my dwindling mana egging me on to reach the square as soon as possible. It took me close to an hour at the slow pace I was moving at to finally reach the transformed square.

I had to stop twice for a few nerve-wracking minutes as I waited for my mana to refill. Thankfully, I had a small companion with sharp senses to act as a sort of early warning system, though luckily it wasn't needed. I also noticed that for some reason my health wasn't increasing, even though it should have been regenerating every minute. Perhaps my injury was serious enough to halt the regeneration somehow? Yet again, I felt frustrated at not knowing all the answers.

I felt immense relief as the sight of the now firelit and surrounded by a small, crude fence square reached my tired eyes. The relief was cut a bit short though, by Lucas's familiar voice.

"Where the hell have you been?" he said in anger, though that immediately changed to concern as he hurried forward.

"Oh my God, what happened to you?" he asked in alarm, seeing my sorry sight. He reached out to support me and I leaned into him, thankful at not having to support myself any longer.

"I'll tell you later, right now, could you please go and get Marcus? Or another healer?" I wheezed out, having surprising difficulty at speaking. I must be in worse shape than I thought. Lucas immediately asked someone to get a healer quickly, and moved me to settle down by the side of a longhouse. Soon, Marcus's face came into view. As usual, he looked at me with surgical calm, lifting my shirt and cataloging everything.

I was painfully aware of the winces of Lucas and a few others who had crowded around to see the commotion, but Marcus showed no reaction at all.

"So, how often do you plan on meeting me like this?" he asked, lifting his hand and starting his spell. Immediate relief flooded through me as I forwent giving a response in favour of letting out a deep groan of satisfaction. I closed my eyes as I felt my ribs shifting and clicking back into place, instantly finding breathing a lot easier. I didn't know how many times he used his skill on me before I heard his voice again.

"There, you're as good as new now. You must have taken a massive blow. A couple ribs were broken and you had some internal bleeding as well from what I could see" he explained in a matter-of-fact way. I opened my eyes and looked at the crowd that had gathered around. With a groan, I got up, Lucas still supporting me, and thanked Marcus seriously. I then motioned to Lucas about the crowd, and he immediately understood my discomfort.

"Let's go! Nothing to see here now, he's alright." A bit more shooing away and finally the crowd drifted away, discussing the injury and the wild theories on how I got it. I was left with Lucas and Marcus, who were both looking at me, demanding an explanation with their eyes. I sighed.

"Let's go inside and speak, I'm tired." My stomach chose the moment to protest, finally able to come into the limelight after the massive injury went away.

"And is there anything to eat?" I asked, hopeful.

"Go on inside with Lucas, I'll get you something to eat" Marcus said. He then turned around and went to the area the cooks had set up. I looked at his back, and then beyond him towards the dimly lit tree line. I moved my sight across the entire tree line that I could see, and noticed an alarming detail. There are others.