Chapter 109: Not Even A Challenge

Honestly, there wasn’t anything that exciting about fighting the goblins.

The next group Julius found was much of the same. There were six goblins this time around, but not that made much of a difference. They all died just as quickly as the last group. It was a bit anti-climactic. Then the next group came along and Julius hunted them down the identical way.

Julius knew before going into it that he wasn’t going to be having some thrilling fight. But he still thought it would have a little more excitement. So far he has hidden behind bushes and trees from a far distance and sniped the poor goblins before they even got a sniff of him.

His perception skill made it practically impossible for the goblins to get the drop on him. It would take Julius getting his face bashed in and knocked unconscious for him to not be aware of the goblin’s movements.

On the bright side, he could say that Declan was definitely approving of Julius’s success so far. However, Julius also knew that Declan was an archer and used similar methods to hunt monsters. It wasn’t that Julius didn’t appreciate that way of fighting. It was actually a little bit satisfying in many aspects. Being able to one-shot every target was more gratifying than Julius would have expected.

The ease with which he was clearing this rift was an indication of how much work he had been putting in lately. Although he didn’t think the old Julius would have failed to clear the rift, he did not think would have been able to take out so many goblins with such casual ease. It was proof that he was getting stronger. Strong enough that Tier 2 opponents were nothing more than targets to shoot at. But was he getting stronger fast enough, that was the question.

There was a part of him that wanted to go right into the middle of the goblins and use his hands to beat them up. Unfortunately, Julius didn’t think that Declan would approve of such a needless risk. As such, Julius had to keep on reminding himself that today was about convincing Declan to let him delve alone.

Not long after, Julius spotted another patrol of goblins. This time it was a large group of a dozen goblins. There was also a goblin who stood out from the others at the helm of the pack. This goblin was taller, broader, and had nice equipment on him. His spear actually seemed sharp and he had some metal armor pieces protecting his vitals.

He wondered if this was some sort of theme to monster species or rifts. Was there always some sort of hierarchy where there were the grunts, then there were the pack leaders, and then there were the big bosses?

He didn’t take too much time to think about it any further. He created another four needles of razor-sharp mana. He already had eight by his side from his previous attacks that he was reusing, so he only needed several more. After he was done creating them, he sent them whistling at the pack, carefully controlling them, and speared the goblins right through their skulls.

They didn’t stand a chance and neither did their pack leader. A soft slick was all that was heard before the sound of their bodies hitting the ground came after. Even that was softened. Julius had siphoned some kinetic energy from their falling bodies to reduce the noise they made upon dropping to the ground. He was sure he could have made it almost inaudible if he was closer, but at this distance, it was already admirable that he could even have the effect.

The worst part about hunting monsters was undoubtedly the removal of the cores. It was a gory and smelled like shit. It didn’t help that he didn’t really need these cores and was only removing them because of Declan and because he thought it was a good habit to get used to.

He tried his best to avoid using his bare hands to retrieve the cores but it was inevitable that he would need to get his hands dirty. He ended up using way too much fire mana to burn away any goblin remnants he had on his body. Previously, when he had read about adventurers having designated skills for monster core and material retrieval he thought it was an absolute waste of a precious skill slot. He had even inwardly insulted the people who had chosen to acquire such skills.

However, he would like to take the time to apologize to all those people. He now understood why many adventures chose to have a looting skill of some kind. He was seriously considering how beneficial a skill like that would be or at least having someone around with such a skill.

Julius and Declan eventually ran across several other large groups the further they went into the forest. Julius dealt with all of them with casual ease. The goblins were only Tier 2 and weren’t even able to activate the limited amount of skills they had. Perhaps if they had more time to prepare they would put up more of a fight, but at the moment they weren’t even able to retaliate.

The most challenging part was just creating the needles of mana. They were constructed of several skills and required a good amount of concentration. Not as much as they might have a few days ago, but still enough to force Julius not to lose focus.

Several hours passed by without any big occurrences. Most of the time was spent as the two of them walked around the forest, searching for goblins to hunt down. Well, at least Julius was. Declan was more of a passive observer and was following Julius around.

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Declan hadn’t even talked that much, he said that he wanted Julius to pretend that he wasn’t even there. It wasn’t until it was getting pretty late that Declan finally spoke to Julius.

“Maybe one more group and then we should pack it up for the day. How does that sound?” Declan asked Julius.

Julius didn’t turn back to look at Declan who was walking behind him, but he still shrugged and said, “Yeah, that sounds good to me.”

Julius was fine with that result. He was getting a bit bored by now and he felt like he had succeeded in the original goal of this outing. He could tell after the first group that Declan wasn’t as worried about him delving as he initially had been.