The forest the goblins occupied was around an hour away from the city.
Even though I never asked, by now I knew through my map that the name of the city was Greatfield.
Zooming out the map one could see where that name came from. A large area around the city contained only farmland. The forest I was heading into was the at the edge of the fields.
After entering the forest I treaded down the main path.
I could just fly above the goblins and swoop down to kill them.
The problem with that was the absence of weapons in my arsenal.
I could only rely on my claws and fangs.
Even though I was anticipating the fight, that would be my first fight in this world. And also, within my wolf form.
For my first kill I would hunt something different. The forest had enough animals that I could train with.
To change into a being meant taking on certain characteristics of the form.
In the case of my seraphim form it meant being able to fly without being told to. Just by instinct I could do that. It just took some instinctual trigger to do that.
My wolf form behaved similar. No one had to tell me how to walk on four legs.
Or how to wag my tail. That came purely out of instinct.
Now that I was readying myself for my first hunt, I could feel my body fall into place.
I crouched on the ground and took in the world around me.
My senses sharpened as I waited. Every sound made by nature blended into one and I could hear the different sounds that only animals made.
The rustling of the leaves and a snap of a twig could be heard roughly 200 meters away from me.
Still crouched, I started prowling towards the noise of the snap.
I locked onto a target. Focusing on the smell that came out of that direction I could tell that it was a small mammal. Not too large.
The closer I got towards the target, my speed declined.
I walked silently. Not needing to know, how I walked like that, I made my way into the range of what I could now see was a rabbit.
It was munching on a bush filled with berries.
Walking in on a blind spot of the rabbit, slowly entering the kill range, everything happened within an instant.
I pounced into the air and my fangs landed on the back of the rabbit. Pinning it down with my left paw and clawing it with my right, I ripped a large chunk of flesh out of its back.
It was not the instant kill that I wanted, but I killed that rabbit within a few more bites.
I thought that the raw flesh of the rabbit would taste bad. Who would have thought that I would absolutely love the taste?
I ravished that rabbit's body until I was sated. That meant not leaving a single trace of meat of the body. Flesh was one thing, organs another. Eating away at the rabbit I couldn't care less of what entered my mouth. I was hungry and the rabbit was my meal.
After finishing my meal, I made my way slowly through the forest. Killing everything in my path mercilessly.
Some animal started to run as I walked by. Others would openly challenge me. I was a wolf that was imposing on their territory without a care in the world.
The largest animal I fought was an aggressive moose with huge antlers. It charged straight at me and tired ramming me.
It was fast, but I wasn't that slow either. I jumped towards my side and as it passed me, I reversed the situation.
I ran after the moose and jumped on its back. The same tactic I used on the rabbit worked somehow against the moose.
Clawing myself into its body and gnawing at its spine through the back worked wonders.
The pain of being bitten into its neck slowed down the moose and it frantically tried to get me off of the back.
Through nimble positioning I held myself with my fangs and front claws in place, while my hind legs did the dirty work and clawed through the upper front chest area of the moose.
After hitting an artery of the moose, it was done.
It had no power left and fell to the ground.
I gave it the rest as I bit through its neck.
[You have leveled up. You are now level 2]
I killed roughly 6 small critters and 8 larger mammals. By far the largest was the moose.
leveling up after 14 kills could be considered quite good.
From the forum posts I read so far, players who have grinded for a few hours would only kill a few creatures safely.
Most animals would try to run away if they thought they would lose, so a lot of people had problems actually killing them.
The majority of the players had no hunting experience.
I could see some people die even to the moose I fought. It would just run through them with high speed and puncture them
Now that I was done, the fun part of hunting began. The moose tasted good even as I fought it.
It was thoroughly dead by now, so I started eating away at the belly after turning it around.
The moose, being bigger than anything that I killed before had a lot more flesh that I could eat.
I did not know why but eating 14 meals in a row until only bones were left was weird for me.
After the first few I noticed that I could just eat more than what I was used to.
It wasn't that my belly was larger, but somehow the things I ate got converted into energy that I could use.
I slaughtered through a kilometer of forest without getting tired.
More interesting right now was my level up. I did not examine my whole status the last time I looked at it.
'Level Status'
[Name: Alexander
Level: 2
Str: 15
Int: 15
Agi: 15
Dex: 15
Con: 15
Wis: 15
Remaining stat points: 5
Remaining skill points: 1
]
Through others, I knew that it was luck how many starting stat points someone had.
Ranging from 50 to 100, everything could be possible.
Counting my points together resulted in 90 total points. My points being in the upper range of possible points made me happy.
Hunting rabbits with low stats would be possible, but the moose would have killed me for sure if I would not be careful.
'Skill Status'
[
Abilities: Change at will(MAX), Ethereal Form(MAX), Bottomless Pit(1)
Skills: Pounce(2), Claw(5), Bite(5), Stalk(3), Howl(1)
]
The difference between abilities and skills could be easily summarized.
Abilities being something I could always do and inherently use, while skills were active and the main difference being that a resource was needed in order to activate them.
Change at will had no cooldown or resource needed to activate.
I could even use it mid fight to change and fly away.
Biting or pouncing were active things, I needed to move my body for.
Both took my own energy as a resource and couldn't be done endlessly.
'System, show me the abilities Ethereal Form and Bottomless Pit'
[Ethereal Form: Return into a soul state of the currently used form.]
[Bottomless Pit: Feast over your limit. Excess intake of food will be converted in missing energy.]
Abilities could also do something like this huh?
I understand all my skills so far except howl.
'Display the skill How for me System'
[Howl: Impose your presence onto others. Inflict fear into enemies and courage into allies.]
Howling was more useful than I thought.
I howled a few times as I walked through the forest, but I did it out of fun and not because I wanted to intimidate others.
Ethereal Form was interesting though. As I used the ability, my body became the same as in the starting room.
See through and colored blue with a hint of gold.
In this form I could freely fly through the air and even pass-through objects.
The only thing stopping me as I found out the hard way was a tree.
I flew against the tree and crashed into it.
It was weird that only this tree stopped me. Before that I flew through a few trees.
I started sniffing it and as I observed a little bit more, a dim glow could be seen from it.
I knew mana existed so to come to the conclusion that mana stopped me was not too hard.
Ethereal Form could be used to deal with physical objects but was probably weak against mana.
At least until I got better at magic that was.
After observing the mana of the tree in front of me, I looked a bit at myself.
The dim glow was also present in myself. Although much weaker than the tree's mana.
If the one with more mana would repel the other one, I just needed more mana to do the same.
How come I could now see mana? Did I gain the corresponding skill?
'System, did I get mana vision?'
[Displaying the skill Mana Sense]
[Mana Sense: Sense and feel the mana around you.]
I count that as a yes.
'System. Can you please notify me when I get a new skill?'
[Confirmed preference change]
Why isn't that the norm? To let people in the dark about their skills?
Complicated design was not a good idea.
After finishing the rest of the moose I felt finally ready for taking on the goblins.
I would not eat them of course, but ramming my fangs into them and spitting their flesh back out is okay for me.
Looking at the map I could see that the camp of the goblins followed a simple structure.
A few shabby tents were set up around a large tent. That was all.
The goblins were split up in different parts of the camp.
A scout team of goblins that were further away from the camp would be my first target.
The team consisted of two goblin archers and one brute with a club.
I stalked them for around five minutes until the archers were looking in different directions and were in front of the brute.
My tactic would be to swiftly kill the brute and then switch targets.
As the opportunity to attack arrived, I pounced at the neck of the brute goblin.
With a thud, I bit through his neck and injured his spine.
To my surprise, goblin flesh was squishy and had not that much of resistance against my fangs.
My fangs went through the goblin as if he was butter.
The moose for comparison was hard and chewy like string leather.
The goblin brute landed on the ground and alerted the two archers.
I pounced up from the goblin corpse on the archer that was closer to my position.
In the same way, but now from the front I ripped its throat out and before the other archer could knock his arrow in the bow the same fate awaited him quickly.
Even though they were crude, I looted their weapons and stored them in my inventory.
Sadly goblins did not care for money, otherwise I could loot a lot of gold in this camp.
Over the next few hours panic spread through the camp. By now nightfall had arrived and periodically wolf howls could be heard in the distance. Most of the patrol groups went after the howling but only another howling could be heard again.
The howling came closer and closer until it seemed as if it was right outside of the tent of the village chief.
All of the guards went after the wolf. None of them succeeded. With no one to stop this wolf the goblin camp was doomed.
Not a single goblin was spared.
For Alexander these goblins were only exp that he needed to obtain.
Plus the quest that the system gave him also contributed to his motivation to slaughter everyone.
In the end, most of the goblin only stared in fear at the wolf in front of them.
[You have completed the quest: "Exterminating Goblins in the forest"]
[You have leveled up.]
That was exhausting. After hunting close to 50 goblins all alone I was thoroughly exhausted.
Only over 25 of the goblins fought back. The others were struck with fear and couldn't even move properly. What was exhausting were the guerrilla tactics I used while fighting. Only taking some goblins out and then falling back into the forest while constantly howling.
The effectiveness of howl was determined by the distance and how loud I howled.
The further away the target was the less effective howl became.
I looted every weapon of the goblins I defeated and searched thoroughly through the camp.
For me, these goblins posed no danger. To unsuspecting human hunters on the other hand one goblin brute and two archers were enough to kill them.
One tent in particular had the equipment of a few dozen hunters in it.
The humans this tribe hunted were weak. Weaker than any level 0 players at least.
I should focus on getting stronger at least until I reach level 10.
By completing the quest the system gave me I reached level 4.
That should be at least higher than the casual player I believe.
I took in most of the still valuable gear that the goblins had gathered and prepared for departure.
The skill Bottomless Pit worked on nearly everything that was related to the body.
Hunger, thirst and even damage could be negated through eating.
Mental exhaustion on the other hand was excluded from the benefits.
I ran around killing stuff for close to 10 hours.
Everyone would be exhausted by that.
Flying back at full speed took me surprisingly less than 20 minutes.
Not going through the forest and flying over it dramatically reduced the time.
This time I did not want to alert the guards too much. I just ignored them and flew far above the city and dropped down stealthily near my inn.
All I wanted was to log out and go to sleep.
Changing myself back to human form, I hurried back into my room in the inn I was staying at.
Not caring for the other people that were present.
After closing and locking the door, I changed back into wolf form and cuddled into a ball on the bed again.
This is by far the most comfortable position to sleep in as a wolf.
After logging out I did the same thing as in the inn.
Charging back to my own room and rolling into a ball in my bed.
This was so comfortable that I fell asleep in an instant.