Once Raze opened his eyes, he found himself standing in the middle of a vast and deep jungle.
He tried moving his arms and legs a bit, and they moved just like he wanted. It seems his one-hour warm-up session earlier really did pay off.
Next, he moved his attention to the little panel in front of him.
[Welcome climber to the second floor, forest of wild]
[To progress, kill the heir of the most dominant monster clan].
[Time limit:None]
"This is going to be annoying," Raze sighed, realising how he needed to somehow figure out who he was supposed to kill before he could even plan to kill it.
And it seems his previous suspicion was right; his challenges were going to be different from Asher after all.
After a long sigh, he finally decided to stop complaining and start looking for the most important thing.
This was obviously information; if he wanted to thrive in this area and complete the challenge, he needed to know what he was up against.
With a single mental command, he took out his spear and held it in his hand, as well as his gun, which he adjusted in his pocket.
Feeling a bit prepared for any incoming threats now, Raze looked around to observe his surroundings.
Judging from what he saw, he was deep into some sort of lush jungle without any sign of life.
Meaning there probably wasn't any other human nearby for him to ask information from.
So it was up to him to observe the nearby life forms and deduce.
The one saving grace about this was that in the tutorial, he at least didn't need to worry about other climbers, meaning the monsters were the only real threat.
"Now then, let's get moving."
**
Raze did his best to slowly and quietly move through the forest, hoping to stumble upon something useful without alerting his prey to his presence.
Sadly, even after a whole hour, he didn't find anything other than a few small bugs who ignored him, so he did the same.
That was until now. He was hiding in a bush nearby and observing a red wolf-like monster being hunted.
The monster was the size of a regular wolf back on Earth. Aside from its fur colour, the wolf had long yellow claws and fangs, with saliva dripping out of its mouth as it eyed its prey.
Judging by its look, Raze assumed it was probably very hungry and hadn't eaten in days.
Normally, seeing something like this, he would be worried, but he didn't feel that now, as confronting the wolf was a group of five goblins very similar to the ones he had killed on the last floor.
One of the goblins was wearing sort of a leather vest, was at least a head taller than the rest of its comrades, and was holding a short steel sword and shield.
Which led Raze to believe this was the leader of the group.
Two goblins were holding spears and shields, one a dagger, and the last was holding a bow with some arrows.
The wolf lunged at the goblin with a dagger, as it was the closest to it.
Raze expected the archer goblin to shoot and save the dagger guy, but that didn't happen, and the wolf plunged its claws inside the skin of its prey before biting its head off.
~Kreek~
The goblin cried out in pain as it flailed its tiny arms around and tried to pierce the hide of the beast, but it was helpless as it lacked both the necessary reach and strength to pull it off, and before long it had its head devoured by the beast.
Green blood splashed everywhere as the insides of the goblin came out and painted the ground for all to see.
It was an extremely gory sight, which made Raze almost puke, but he held back, as if he did, he would be found out and killed.
Thankfully, the blood wasn't red like humans and was only green, which probably helped remind him that the one killed was just a monster and not a human.
The wolf had a smug smile on its face at finally getting something to eat, but sadly for him, it didn't last long as both its flanks were pierced by spears with an arrow impaling its shoulders.
~Pierce~
~Pierce~
~Pierce~
'So this was their plan; they purposefully sacrificed one of their kin just to create an opportunity'
Raze finally had a grip on the hunting style of goblins, which was definitely going to help him going forward.
Unlike the mindless beasts he and the other humans faced on the first floor, these goblins were sentient and, although very primal, possessed little intelligence.
'This is a bit scary'
He felt a bit unnerved at the idea of monsters possessing intelligence.
This wasn't because he felt bad for killing them, but rather due to how big of a threat they posed.
Non-intelligent monsters were already scary enough, but if you give such beasts intelligence, their threat multiplies many folds.
After all, the thing that allowed humans to conquer and dominate Earth ever since the Stone Age was their numbers and intelligence.
If you gave these same numbers and intelligence to monsters whose bodies were devolved for combat and killing with their claws, fangs, and whatnot, humans would be helpless.
Of course, an argument could be made for humans still coming out on top with our weapons and technology, like guns and nukes.
But what if a threat emerges? Who is immune to it or could just tank it?
This was certainly a very scary possibility to imagine, and if possible, he really hoped it never came true.
'Ah, I got distracted,' Raze exclaimed inside his mind as he stared at the result of the battle he was observing earlier.
A dead corpse of a wolf with various stab and slash wounds lay on the ground, with the red blood of it dying the ground.
However, more eye-catching than that were the four corpses of dead goblins lying around.
As for the last and only alive goblin, as expected, it was the one wearing a leather vest.
It had lost its left arm and looked to be bleeding from various slash marks on its body, but despite all the wounds and the deaths of its comrades, it was smiling at the successful hunt.
Sadly, unbeknownst to it, there was another person who had been observing everything, and he was a far bigger threat than the wolf could ever be.