Walking down the main street of the frontier town, Theo kept getting reminded of the ground-up origins of this place.
Just fifteen years ago, this place was as deserted as every other fragment of this depopulated borderland.
With but a massive, infertile steppe spreading out as far west as one could see, there was little to no incentive for settlers to come to this particular spot of land.
All of that changed roughly ten years ago, however, when a local outburst of monsters led delegate adventurers and fame-seekers to discover a massive complex of ancient ruins, dungeons, and monster lairs, all interconnected in one evolving compound of above-and-underground structures.
Within the last ten years, the controlled expansion of this chaotic mess led to the creation of a huge jungle smack-dab in the middle of what was supposed to be an infertile, endless plain of grass, along with several other biomes necessary to cultivate and interbreed the monsters nested deep within this place's core.
What was supposed to be a terror for the nearby villages and settlers, and a potential threat to the much more developed communities due east, quickly became the source of immense wealth for all those who dared to reach for it.
For the monsters were all too eager to slap those greedily overextended hands, protective of their unnatural habitat.
Still, when it came to this frontier town in particular, one could see the signs of its growth history in everything.
The generally bulky style of the town's architecture was all for the sake of reinforcing the dwellings of the early settlers from the pre-wall era. As soon as Theo moved from the old town to the new districts, however, the buildings grew noticeably more frail, more practical, and cost-effective. Down the main street, there were even some multi-story buildings with several more set to be finished in the near future, now that the town's wall sported robust towers with siege engines ready to shoot down any threat from the air that would dare approach.
This city was a weird mix of the evolving architectural styles, each one adapting to the ever-changing circumstances of the developing city. Yet, if there was one thing that united it all, it was the method locals and immigrants used to build the city up.
Everyone that came to the area would add a small bit of their own, all within the range of their means and ability, building up on what was constructed before. And that's why, as Theo walked down the main street towards the city's outer gate, pretty much all the shops and businesses on its sides catered to those either setting off on a hunt or just returning from it.
Dismantling shops, ready to take off the burden of the bloody, menial task from the adventurers' backs for but a small, honest fee. Butchers dealing with monster meats. Appraisal shops, where one could identify various artifacts and herbs they could find over in the borderlands as the amalgamation of the nearby dungeons came to be known.
The closer Theo got to the so-called "heading" gate, however, the smaller those shops became as the road widened, allowing for greater foot and cart traffic to pass through before spilling over to the rest of the town.
The crowd that gathered at the gate, however, gave this design of the road a perfect and quite obvious justification, given how the closer Theo approached, the harder it was to even pass through the endless stream of people walking one or the other way.
Some were going out of the town, paying their toll on the way out. Others were coming back from their hunts, trying their best to appease the tax-men standing there to take the crown's share of their loot. And even with how, over time, the defensive gate became pretty much a ticketing center for the borderlands beyond it, passing the standard toll queue would still take quite some time.
Time that Theo could no longer spare.
'This is all but a justified cost,' he thought, gritting his teeth as he switched lanes off closer to the center, soon moving beyond the better part of the main queue.
In the end, Theo only had to wait about ten minutes. Yet, this time-save came at a steep cost of the toll raising from the standard single silver coin for passage to a whopping five times as much!
Still, after dropping two entire golden coins on the smithy just to get his weapons and some preparatory information for later, Theo managed to fish the coins out of his purse with only a slight hint of displeasure flashing on his face.
Then, the young man finally stepped through the several-meters-long tunnel of the gate only to finally emerge back where he felt most at home at—out in the wilderness.
There were still a huge crowd of people gathered around, just like it was the case on the other side of the gate. Here, however, the further Theo went, the less and less crowded the area became, all the way to the point where only a few other adventurers remained in sight, with everyone else either staying back at the gate or vanishing into any of the other thousands of small paths one could pick through the borderlands.
Some dove into the ruins, hoping for a quick, lucky shot at finding a piece of lost technology that could be dismantled for the precious materials it was made out of. Others headed straight for the ravine, where the most hunt-optimal monsters nested.
Theo, however, as time-pressed as he was, headed straight for the thinner part of the forest, the habitat outright perfect for the one monster that would appear in the starting area of pretty much every world in every novel, game, or series Theo read in his original life.
The goblins.
'I know I'm punching far below my weight, but…'
Theo heaved a deep sigh.
There was a reason why the borderland goblins became an endangered species within the next three short years. In fact, their culling would begin in roughly thirty months, just half a year away from when one could no longer find a single goblin nest anywhere within the forest.
And it just so happened that Theo's interest in the local, modernizing smithy perfectly aligned with the reason why all the adventurers of the frontier went into a frenzy of goblin hunting. A reason that, according to the novel's generalized timeline, wouldn't be discovered until close to a third of Theo's time at the academy, making it impossible for him to profit off it in his original timeline.
'Which is exactly why I can't let this opportunity pass,' Theo thought, pulling out one of the shortened spears off his back before firmly grasping it in his hand as he lowered himself down on his knees and looked around.
There was absolutely no point running around the forest in hopes of randomly stumbling into goblins. Sure, it was a valid tactic given their current population levels… But why waste time running around, when all one had to do was look?
'There.'
Theo's eyes quickly drew to an uneven animal path marked by the crushed, twisted, and otherwise mangled vegetation. Contrary to literally everywhere around it, there was hardly any grass growing in that thin, jagged line, implying a physical stress on the ground repeated over a long period of time.
In other words, it was a path used much more than what one would expect from a simple animal track.
Theo crept closer, stopping just outside of the path he spotted. He leaned in and took a closer look at the nature of the damages to the bushes and grasses around. Most specifically, which direction were those bent towards.
'To the right, huh?' Turning his head first to the left, Theo ensured no goblin patrol was approaching.
Sure, if he chanced upon one, he could just kill them all… But what if the noise warned the others? What if those pesky, green-skinned monsters were to swarm him?
That would make it harder to kill them off in an efficient and pragmatic manner!
'It should be safe, for now,' Theo thought after taking a few more moments to observe everything he could about the path before finally turning his attention to where it led. 'And that means,' he thought, pinning his eyes in the direction the path disappeared in, meandering through trees, bigger bushes, and all sorts of various features of this once-flat and empty steppe that, under the influence of the borderlands, turned into a thick forest.
Fanning the fingers of his right hand to stretch them out, Theo rose up from his knee and moved down the path, caring not for the obvious marks of his presence he was leaving in his wake.
He was simply too big not to leave a huge trail behind, not when the monsters and animals normally using this path were, at most, half his size.
Still, it mattered not, for by following this simple, narrow path, Theo soon found himself at the crossroads. A place where several smaller paths converged, marking the congregation spot for the goblins for whenever they would set out for a hunt themselves.
A spot that allowed them to form a multi-nest horde, which in this area was the necessary force the goblins needed to gather to match other monsters roaming those woods.
Lacking in personal strength, goblins always made sure to compensate with numbers and the vicious nature of their hunts, making them one hell of a tough opponent for rookie adventurers… But for Theo, who knew their habits and nature like the back of his own hand, they were nothing more than pitiful prey.
'And now we wait,' Theo thought after finding a relatively uncomfortable spot near the place where the trails converged, giving him the perfect vision of the spot while forcing him to stay in one hell of an uncomfortable position, ensuring he wouldn't just doze off to the pleasant, soothing sounds of the forest.