It honestly wasn’t even a fight but more of a one sided slaughter.
With Odeta, Andrew and myself here, there was no way a couple of goblins could overpower us.
Odeta managed to kill two goblins while Andrew and I dealt with one each, allowing the last two to be handled by our other teammates.
We then gathered the Mana Crystals from the goblins’ bodies, putting us at the halfway mark to our objective for this lesson.
We continued through the forest and I was reminded of Katsuki’s skills in being able to sniff out monsters. If she was here, she could have easily sniffed out monsters for us to hunt.
But on the other hand, Odeta’s tracking skill was also nothing to scoff at. She was able to find tracks of monsters and tell us who we might be facing before we reached them as well.
Those six goblins were a surprise only because they had been moving towards our direction and thus didn’t have any tracks for Odeta to find.
But right now, she was following the tracks of three goblins which led us to a small clearing. Unfortunately, another group of students seemed to have gotten to them before us.
You could clearly see the difference between our two groups from how this group was struggling against them.
For us, we easily decimated a goblin patrol larger in number than our group, yet this group of students was fighting defensively against this smaller number of goblins.
They needed two people just to handle one goblin and the last guy was barely able to hold his own against his own opponent.
“Why are they so weak?” Odeta asked a little condescendingly.
Andrew was the one who answered her, “Umm… For most of the students in this class… This would be their first taste of live combat actually. Most of us have never taken a life before this.”
Ah, that explains it.
They are hesitating in killing the monsters and because of that, they aren’t fighting at their full strength. Rather naive way of thinking though, since the monsters definitely won’t hesitate to kill them.
I guess that was the point of this lesson, to teach us not to hesitate when fighting against monsters.
Good thing that our group was already mostly made up of people who have experience in killing monsters and the last two guys followed our example.
It took a while but the group in front of us finally finished off the goblins.
One of them whom I surmised to be the leader strutted up to us with an arrogant air and stopped a few feet away from Odeta.
“I heard you were talking shit about us, savage. Don’t you know better than to bad mouth your superiors?”
I was wondering why he was so aggressive to Odeta until I realised it was Eugene, the one who challenged Odeta for her special class position. Hey, you can’t expect me to remember every side character right?
𝗈𝑣𝑳xt.𝓒𝒐𝓂
I guess he’s still not satisfied over his loss against Odeta.
“Huh? Superior? The only thing superior about you compared to us is that stupid head that you have,” Odeta spat.
The boy seethed, “How dare you?! You’re nothing but a savage who got lucky in coming here! How dare you talk back to your betters?!”
“Haa? How are you any better? You’re struggling to fight against three goblins while we can take on six without any problems! Get out of my face you weakling! You can’t even beat me in a duel and you still act tough?”
“Ahahaha! You? Take on six?! More like Andrew over there helped you take care of them didn’t he? Not to mention the fact that you cheated in our duel to–“
Odeta moved faster than he could finish his sentence, pulling out her blade to rest it against his neck.
She sneered at him, “Hmph, you can’t even react to something like this and you call yourself superior? Don’t make me laugh!”
The boy gritted his teeth in frustration but he couldn’t say anything with Odeta’s sword resting against his neck.
Seriously though, these Mahun supremacists are really annoying, can’t they just mind their own business instead of bothering other people? The reason why we even stuck around while you guys fought the goblins was to see if you needed assistance and this is what we get for being nice.
It’s a good thing that the other two people in our group weren’t Mahun supremacists like this guy.
Odeta scoffed at him and turned back to us, “Let’s go, we just need four more Mana Crystals and we’ll be done! These losers can continue acting tough!”
The rest of us followed behind her, ignoring the boy who was glaring after us.
Andrew came up to me, “What was that about?”
I raised an eyebrow, “What was what about?”
“You know, that interaction between that guy and your friend. Did she do something to him before this?”
“Oh, you don’t know huh? Are you aware that there are groups of people who believe that the Mahun race is the superior one and look down on all the other races?”
“Eh? Why would they even think of something like that? It’s obvious that Amraps are already physically stronger aren’t they? The only thing going for us is our numbers.”
I nodded, “Yeah… But well, some people just act that way because of the past wars with the other races, so children like him inherit their parents’ ideals.”
“This is so dumb. It’s just as dumb as judging someone by the colour of their skin.”
Huh… As much as he was a horny bastard, at least Andrew wasn’t a racist.
He nodded to himself, “Especially when they’re pretty and also a female, then there’s nothing wrong with trying to bed them regardless of race!”
I take back what I said about him… Someone needs to slap him at least once.
Me? I don’t want to get my hands dirty, please.
Odeta suddenly stopped again and bent down to inspect some tracks before turning to us, “We have a pack of Hell Wolves up ahead, do you think we can take them on?”
Hell Wolves were stronger than goblins so it made sense to check with everyone first.
The two extras in our group looked at each other, both of them knew that they were the weakest in our group without question so it really depended on their choice.
“Umm… I would like to try,” One of them decided.
The other one also nodded, “With our group, I think we can take them on.”
With that decided, Odeta continued guiding us towards where the tracks were leading to.
It didn’t take long for us to come across another clearing where a large pack of eight or so wolves were resting there. It seems like we’ll have the element of surprise for this encounter.
Odeta made a quick plan for us to ambush the wolves to deal with as many of them as we could on the first strike, showcasing her experience in these types of hunts.
With each of us having a target each, we spread ourselves out to surround the wolves.
Odeta was the first to jump in, cleaving one of the wolves in half with a swing of her blade.
I joined in right after her, stabbing my sword through the head of another wolf and killing it instantly as well.
The others also jumped in right then, killing their targets easily before the wolves even realised what was going on, cutting down their numbers to less than half instantly.
Just as I joined Andrew and Odeta in corralling the last three wolves to prevent them from escaping, I heard something whistling through the air and I turned just in time to see an arrow embed itself into Odeta’s arm.
The Amrap let out a cry of pain as she fell over onto the ground while grasping at her wounded arm.
I barely caught the sound of something or someone moving through the bushes behind us, as though escaping from the scene after shooting that arrow.
One of the wolves did not miss the chance to pounce on her, baring its fangs and aiming to bite down on her throat.
Panicking slightly, I shot out a [Static Bolt] that managed to hit the wolf in midair, causing its body to seize up and crash onto the ground in front of her.
The Amrap quickly raised her sword with her good arm and brought it down on the neck of the wolf, killing it before it could recover.
Andrew and I then moved to finish off the last two wolves quickly, both of us cutting off their heads with our swords in a single cleave of our blades.
I ran towards Odeta in concern, holding her up as I inspected her wound.
The arrow had penetrated through her arm but thankfully it missed her bone so it wasn’t really that serious.
“Arghh!! That bastard! He shot me!!” Odeta growled, snapping the arrowhead off before pulling the shaft out without hesitation.
I’m guessing that Odeta had already surmised the culprit to be Eugene, but I don’t remember seeing a bow on him though? Maybe he had some kind of artefact that allowed him to store things in an alternate space too?
Putting that aside, I decided to concentrate on the more important issue as I held onto her arm, “Flesh to flesh, knit and repair, heal the incisions and the bruises. [Close Wounds].”
The wound then started to close up slowly until it was as good as new, but I know that it would still take a while more for it to heal completely since my Iatromancy magic wasn’t really that good right now.
She flexed her arm a few times before turning to me, “Wahaha~ Aster really is talented eh?”
I frowned at her, “You’re still not fully healed yet so don’t move that arm too much. Are you alright?”
“Haha! I’m better now! But that bastard really came and shot me huh?! Let’s get the Mana Crystals and go back to the instructor and tell him about this!”
Hmm… I suppose that would be the best course of action. We don’t know if whoever shot Odeta would try that again so it’s better to be safe I suppose.
I really hope no one noticed that I didn’t chant for the [Static Bolt] I fired earlier… I wouldn’t know how to dodge their questions if they did…