The three of us trekked through the undergrowth and it was clear we were not alone on this island since we started seeing trails within the forest itself.
Not those kinds of trails that you might find in civilization, but those animal trails that you might see when they keep using a specific path to get somewhere.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t exactly tell us if there were people, monsters or just normal animals here.
Odeta showed her skills in tracking by keeping an eye on the trail, even when it disappeared into the undergrowth where I could not differentiate it from the grass around us.
She then stopped at a tree and started looking around with a serious look on her face.
“There’s two paths here,” She announced after a while. “The one on the left seems less travelled while the one on the right seems to be used more often.”𝒐𝓋𝓛xt.𝒸𝞸𝔪
Emilia looked around before nodding at the left, “We can take a look at that place first to see where it leads. Maybe that’s where these people store their desserts~”
I gasped, “Let’s go explore it first then!”
Odeta took the lead again and we continued following the trail deeper into the forest.
We did not need to get very far as we pushed past several bushes to reach a clearing. Within said clearing was a small lake in front of a cave at the foot of the mountain.
I did not need the tracking skill to guess that the trail continued to the cave.
We continued towards the cave by walking around the lake in a clockwise direction. I took the chance to peer at the lake and nearly screamed when I saw a pair of eyes looking back at me from under the water’s surface.
The pair of eyes noticed that I had spotted it and quickly disappeared down to the bottom of the lake, not even giving me a chance to try and see what it belonged to.
“Girls?! I saw something in the lake! There were a pair of eyes looking at us just a few moments ago!” I cried out, fighting down my panic.
This place can’t be haunted right?
The two of them looked at the lake but naturally saw nothing since the thing had already disappeared.
I was worried they wouldn’t believe me but Odreta quickly turned to Emilia, “Did you do something to get some people to want to kill you or what?”
Emilia was quite confused by Odeta’s question but answered it nevertheless, “Actually, as you might have guessed from what landed us in this position in the first place, there’s always people trying to kill me. There’s even people whom I’ve never met wanting to kill me for both fame and fortune too.”
Ughh… I don’t know if I should be relieved to know that it was possibly just some murderous stalker of Emilia’s instead of a ghost…
Odeta went closer to the water’s edge and tried peering at the water, only to come back while shaking her head.
“I don’t see anything down there, but it may just be because the water is too deep. We should head to the cave and stay away from the water,” She suggested, suddenly sounding more mature than normal.
I guess this was part of her training with Ardi.
Emilia and I agreed with her and we continued our advance into the cave. I gave the lake a few more glances but nothing else weird happened.
Reaching the cave, we peered inside it but it stretched deeper than we thought and completely pitch black inside.
I reached out my hand and pretended to mutter a chant before materialising a ball of light in the air to illuminate our surroundings.
Odeta looked at the light and started clapping, reverting back to her usual self, “Woaaah! Sister Aster is so cool!”
Oh stop it you~ It’s just a normal light ball~ There’s nothing special about it~ Ehehe~
We entered the cave with Odeta and Emilia leading the way in front of me while I took the rear, Emilia had her sword out while Odeta was also in her combat stance, both of them ready to fight.
Meanwhile, I was busy checking on my Shadow Summons and keeping them close at hand in case I needed them for an emergency.
The cave soon proved to be bigger than we thought it was and it looked to be more like a network of tunnels than just a simple cave.
Already, we’ve reached an intersection in the cave that split off into five different paths. One of them had a bunch of rocks piled up to form a wall as tall as me at the entrance and judging by how neatly they were piled up, it was unlikely that this formation was a natural one.
That proves that there was definitely something intelligent on this island.
The other tunnels had nothing else special about them, but that could just be me not seeing any signs of it.
“Normally, they would barricade such places where the good things are right?” I asked, pointing at the pile of rocks.
Emilia looked at the pile thoughtfully, “Or they might be using it to keep whatever that was in there from coming out.”
I didn’t think about that.
“Well, what should we do then? And please don’t suggest we split up,” I pleaded.
“Splitting up is the worst idea right now. Do you think we should check out the blocked off passage first? Worst comes to worst, we just run back here and block off the place again.”
Odeta scoffed, “If this pile of rocks was enough to stop whatever was inside there, then we should be able to handle it.”
There’s some merit in what Odeta said so we decided to first explore that path before the others.
We carefully moved those rocks away until there was a hole big enough for us to climb over, revealing a path that led deeper into the mountain.
Odeta took the lead this time while Emilia took the rear to watch our backs.
As the ‘mage’, I was escorted by the two of them in the middle. The fact that they adopted this position without prior communication showed that they at least have experience in group fights before, something that I didn’t really have aside from using my Shadow Summons.
The biggest party fight I had was with that young noble who I’ve unfortunately forgotten the name of. I wonder how he’s doing now?
Putting those thoughts aside, we finally reached a large cavern big enough for a small dragon to lay down in comfortably.
Inside the cavern was what appeared to be a small village lit up by torches which belonged to… Goblins.
Ah, Cave Goblins, haven’t seen them in a while. Can’t remember how many dozens of them I’ve killed during my Mercenary quests.
Needless to say, they were not happy to see us there.
A few of them immediately started charging towards us with their weapons raised, shouting out alarms to call their brethren to the fight.
“Oh yeah! Time to beat some monsters up!” Odeta roared, already dashing forward with her fists raised.
Emilia was not as enthusiastic as her, “Sigh… Just goblins huh… Not really worth much but I suppose their parts are at least worth a few Decreas each…”
With that, she also leapt into the fray and joined Odeta in slaughtering the monsters.
Any goblin that was in their way were immediately crushed and beaten by Odeta or sliced apart by Emilia, the two of them slaughtering the monsters systematically.
I’m pretty sure that those two could handle those goblins just fine without me but I wanted to gain some proficiency in my magic as well so I started firing off some blasts of electricity to stun and incapacitate a few of the goblins.
The goblins outside of the melee were met with the various [Static Bolt] I was casting from the rear, preventing any archer goblins from firing at my comrades.
There was even a Goblin General who came running out to attack them but Odeta simply kicked him in the knee to break the leg before giving him an elbow strike across his temple, shattering the goblin’s skull and killing it instantly.
In less than five minutes, the fight was over and the entire village of goblins were slaughtered, leaving us to start picking up the Mana Crystals from the goblins.
Emilia agreed to split the materials two ways and Odeta was more than happy to just let me take all of them since she wasn’t interested in money.
Honestly, neither was I but I’m a hoarder so there was no way I was going to say no to these new materials.
We also started looking through the village to find more loot and that was when Emilia suddenly called us over.
“What is it?” I asked, stopping at the edge of what looked to be a farm of sorts. Was she hungry?
Emilia pointed at the farm, “Look… The goblins… They were pretty much self sufficient while being blocked off inside here… If you think about it… They also had the capability to remove that rock wall if they wanted to…”
Odeta raised her eyebrow, “Eh? So what?”
It took me a second but I gasped, “That rock wall… It wasn’t to keep them in! It was to keep something else out!”
Right at that moment, there was a roar coming from the entrance of the tunnel and I knew whatever they wanted to keep out had found the path leading to this cavern, no doubt it was coming here soon.
We should be able to handle it… Right?