Chapter 16 - [Gathering of Goblins!]

[Skill: Sleep

Rank: E

Effect: Creates a smoke based on the user's MP, that puts everyone around into a sleep state. For every 5 points of difference between the user and the opponent's Wisdom stat, the effect is 60 minutes of sleep.

Mana Cost: 6MP per 60 minutes of sleep paralysis the user wants to create (Max based on the wisdom stat difference).

Restrictions: The skill does not work on opponents with [Resistance] based skills of [Grade-E] or above!

Cost: 6000 Points!]

The idea was simple. To put everyone into sleep for 3 more hours and kill all the monsters in the area as much as possible. It will take away a little bit of their chance to kill monsters in exchange for their increased chances of survival, so while it was evil it was also an act of kindness. Probably.

In the rare case of events if someone had [Mana Resistance!] among the players, the chances of them waking up early is low, especially because of the fatigue everyone built up yesterday.

Plus if they find everyone else in a deep sleep, chances are they would either sit quietly for others to wake up or just go back to sleep themselves.

Buying that skill, I had about 17000 Points left, of which I bought 5 mana potions for 2500 points, both for this 'event' and for the future. A little bit of waste, but you can also call it an investment.

"Let's see. There are 53 students here, and 3 hours of sleep so that should be around… 900 MP? A little bit more than that," I then stretched as I looked at the goblin and made sure of one thing,

"Nobody will die in the safe zone, right? Even if a player tries to kill them?" 

He looked at me with a mysterious smile and answered,"no. As long as they have 'hours' left in the safe zone, nothing will harm them."

I nodded as I moved closer to one of the people and used [Sleep] skill on them.

At first I was a bit worried that I might need to move them outside the safe zone and then use the skill, but it seemed like non-lethal skills were allowed within the safe zone. 

"One sheep. Two sheep. One sheep. Two sheep," I kept singing as I put them all to sleep. Cost me one mana potion to finish the task and another to refill my own mana.

And 10 minutes later everyone was in deep sleep as I yawned and stretched before moving out of the safe zone. 

-Whoosh!

I then vanished from there as I began running towards the North-East area where Luke's party went yesterday. Given their previous hunting speed, I believe most monsters will be there.

'Found one,' and pretty much as I expected, I found some goblins immediately. Though to my surprise, this time the goblins weren't the only monsters there. A few wolf-like monsters were also among them, on which the goblins were riding.

'Interesting.' 

I put on my cloak and took out the dagger. Just in case, I also bought a [Stealth] potion before I went into battle.

'This should be fine,' I thought as I ran towards those monsters, while keeping an eyes on the wolves. 

-Whoosh!

Dashing as soon as I reached 10 meters closer to them, I reached the first goblin in an instant.

-Slash!

[You have killed an F-Grade Monster: Goblin!]

And then one on the left most side.

-Whoosh!

-Slash!

[You have killed an F-Grade Monster: Goblin!]

The monster on my instant right was the wolf on which another goblin was sitting. He looked in my direction with an alarmed expression, almost ready to use his dagger on me.

-Slash!

-Slash!

Taking out the other [Trusty Steel Dagger!], I killed the wolf and goblin in one go.

[You have killed an F-Grade Monster: Goblin Rider!]

[You have killed an F-Grade Monster: Tamed Fanged Wolf!]

Taking a brief look at the notification, I sighed as I then went to the next monsters and…

[You have killed…]

[You have killed…]

[You have killed…]

[You have killed…]

And within the next minute, I wiped the entire group before a crisp notification rang in front of me!

[You have killed 250 Monsters! The previous Sub-Quest has been updated!]

[Tutorial Sub-Quest 1: Kill

Difficulty: Insane

Objective: Kill 1000 Monsters

Current Progress: 250/1000

Reward: Skill Upgrade [Hunt (Grade C -> Grade B)!]

I was surprised that the [Quest] was updated as I already knew all the quests of this Tutorial. It seemes like some of the quests are [Chain-Quest!] type, which made me wonder what would happen if I save another batch of NPCs?

"Hehe," I laughed sheepishly before shaking my head as I focused back on the main task.

'Let's first hunt as many monsters as we can,' I thought it would be better to clear the way before I look forward to saving more NPCs. And with that thought point, I began running even faster than before.

Moving deeper into the North-West area, I found some strange differences compared to the other areas.

The first was that the number of monsters were higher than usual. At least 2 times higher. Second, they were mostly in groups, with each group having 12-15 goblin monsters with 3-4 fanged wolves.

It was helping me complete the quest faster so it was a welcome change, but it also gave me rather uneasy vibes. I kept looking around, scared if any of the monsters were to jumpscare me. The chances were less given that I was having stealth, but it still didn't lessen the creepy feeling that it was giving.

The third thing was related to the NPCs. There were none.  Either they were hiding so well that I couldn't find them, or something must have happened to them while they were hiding here. Bet it's the second one.

[Current Progress: 547/1000!]

It's not even 30 minutes, and here I was halfway done with the quest. That's just the number of monsters that I found here. I should be happy about this development but I wasn't… Something felt wrong.

'There isn't even a single Goblin Warrior, either,' I thought as I was hoping to find him for additional points. The weirdness just kept growing on me.

And the answer to that lies about 2 kilometers ahead of me. Because of my [Perception!], I was able to see a huge group of monsters collected there. If I were to make a rough guess then there should be more than 50 monsters there. But was even more surprising was…

'All of them are Goblin Warriors or similar,' I looked at them with a bit of fear, with a bit of excitement. I could see them all standing in a circle, guarding something. And a strange purplish light could be made out from behind the goblin hunters.

Getting closer to them, I could make out another type of goblins behind them. Wearing dirty ragged robe, they were a lot more uglier than other monsters, and from their physical appearance, they were anything but fighter type monsters.

'Shamans?' I gave my best guess here. They walked around carrying strange items in their hands, while one of them, at the center, was drawing a strange circle on the road. From the looks of it, they were trying to summon someone… or something.

I observed the goblins warriors, and calculated my chances of defeating them. While I could have let them summon the monster, which would give me more exp in return, but if the monster ends up being [C-Grade!] or higher, I would be royaly fucked.

'Can't let that happen, can we?' I wryly smiled as I called out that white goblin once again. Since we were dealing with so many monsters at once, it's better to be as prepared as possible.

[Armour: Black Leather Armor of Grace!

Grade: D

Durability: 5000/5000

Effects: 

+5 Constitution!

Cost: 8000 Points!]

[Boots: Black Leather Boots of Grace!

Grade: D

Durability: 2000/2000

Effects: 

+2 Agility!

Cost: 7500 Points!]

[Gloves: Black Leather Gloves of Grace

Grade: E

Durability: 500/500!

Cost: 2500 Points!]

[Item: Unloved Ring of Grace!

Grade: D

Effect: 

+5 Constitution!

+Increases the Chance of landing a critical hit on the monsters!

Cost: 5000 Points]

[Item: Unloved Necklace of Grace!

Grade: D

Effect:

+5 Stamina!

+Increases the Chance of finding a monster core while killing a monster!

Cost: 6000 Points!]

A total of 29,000 Points. 

While I could have gone for better equipment than these, I wanted to try out something as well. Given how everything was a game, I was hoping I could get some [Set Bonus!] from these? If I can then their worth would increase tremendously.

With that thought, I then bought everything and began equipping it. 

[You have equipped all the Non-Combat Equipment of the Set: Grace! Partial Set Effects will be unlocked!]

[Set Effect 1: Blessing of Grace: +5 Constitution!

Set Effect 2: Love of Grace: Your HP will regenerate at the rate of 10 HP per minute when in non-combat state!

Set Effect 3: [Locked!] ]

A smile formed on my face, as I then looked at the notifications before, finally looking at my [Status!]

[Name: Adrian John Rodriguez!

Race: Human!

Class: Mortal (Unclassified!)

Gift: [0]

Body-Talent: [Mortal!]

Health: 200/200

Mana: 250/250 

Attributes:

Strength: 7.7 (+5.0)

Agility: 9.2 (+2.0)

Constitution: 5.0 (+15.0)

Stamina: 8.0 (+5.0)

Intelligence: 25.0

Wisdom: 26.0

Charm: 3.4

Free Attribute Points: 0

Skills:

Active: [Hunt!] [Blood Gaze!] [Sleep!]

Passive: [Perception!] [Mana Regeneration!]