After turning in the slingshots, Zen expected to receive a quest requesting goblin helmets or chain mail. However, the Shady Merchant presented him with the most puzzling request.
“Are you sure?” he asked in disbelief. “I’d never seen them carrying staffs.”Honestly, it wasn’t all that surprising. Unlike the other players, Zen had a different method of collecting his war spoils. He only encountered the lower levelled goblins in the forest. Naturally, the sight of a staff was unfathomable to him.“Yes, they do. You can ask your goblin friends about them. Due to the difficulty of the request, we only need 5.”Zen completed the first three missions and received new skills. However, he had questions about the staff. “Won’t it be useless in the hands of a non-magic user?” Zen asked the quest-giving NPC. He understood the appeal for daggers, shields and flimsy slingshots. Those wereWasn’t there a rule about priests abstaining from worldly sinful pleasures such as sex and alcohol? This priest that the young Baron brought back to his territory resembled a hooligan more than a holy man. Father Clarence would be shocked to see this heathen.“Oi! Are you the lad with impressive medical skills?” the drunken priest greeted and threw another sack of coins on the table, gambling his hand of cards with ladies in his lap.The underaged chef grimaced at how this NPC was sucking tongues with the local barmaid. He didn’t want to think about their complicated sleazy relationship as he wasn’t here to play cupid.“Gunter told me I could find you here. Can you tell me more about your encounter with the goblin shamans?”Sensing that his party for tonight would be cut short, the drunken priest quickly sobered and lost his interest in poker. The barmaid on his lap was rudely shoved aside, and the holy man stood up, towe
Although not much time had passed in reality, Zen spent the next few days in the dungeon hatching his plan by gathering information, pee and poo.“Hello!” Zen greeted as he ‘snuck out’ with a sack of fruit bread he made by borrowing the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult to gather wild berries and some flour to bribe these monsters.Judging from the unusually clean goblins, Zen blinked twice. Were these green monsters usually so hygienic? Then again, his plan must have been working.“Halfling, you have no idea what happened to us. Everyone in the camp, including the shamans and the leader, has been taking baths every day, even if we haven’t taken one in years!”Zen clapped his hands in an enlightened manner, praising their neat and handsome appearance. Almost immediately, a goblin closest to Zen slapped him over the helmet.“Fool! We don’t want to look handsome! We’re goblins, the scary monsters who
Heaving a sigh of relief, Zen thanked his lucky stars. Cursed trees and cursed items were very different. The shamans couldn’t harness the full power of a staff created from a cursed branch without a blood ritual.“I can’t believe you made such a risky plan without knowing the consequences,” Lorren clicked his tongue with annoyance. This was the hero from the prophecy, and he turned out to be a reckless kid. “I don’t know if I should praise your wisdom or marvel at your luck. How did you get this far without knowing anything?”Zen wisely kept his lips sealed. He had a cheat that allowed him to undo most of his mistakes with his death. It was the same cheat that almost killed him, and Liu Feng was right to knock that nonsense out of him in their nightmarish stealth training.From the side, Venedict remained silent. He thought Zen was the least crazy of the three lunatics he knew. However, he was wrong. The runt had to be the mo
Five days passed very quickly in the game, with Zen coordinating internal constructions for a new well. The soldiers toiled without a break in preparation for a huge mission to restock their fortress’ food supplies. Even the women offered to help weave hunting nets and dig trenches for water irrigation.The goblins were rather silent as they prepared for the ritual. According to Zen’s advice, the scout leader made many petty attacks at the side entrance near the forest, leaving deliberate animal carcasses at the fortress’ doorstep for the humans to discover. Zen was nowhere to be seen, and the goblins worked hard to build a floating raft.Eventually, the night of the new moon arrived. As planned, the goblins held their ritual upstream. Gunter sent some of the most talented scouts to confirm the goblin numbers and troop condition. Zen waited by the river with Venedict to intercept the raft while the soldiers went for an all-out night hunting trip to restoc
“This…”Too stunned to formulate words, Gunter could only clutch the paper with trembling hands. He did not speak for a while, and even Venedict was worried. He’d never seen their garrison commander looking so flustered before.Staring at the adventurer in goblin chain armour, Gunter wondered how the heavens chose such a hero to guide humanity. Zen was the epitome of cowardly with his underhand tactics. Yet, they were brilliant beyond understanding. It made the garrison commander wonder if the difference between a genius chosen by the heavens and an ordinary man was the level of insanity to proceed with a mad plan.“Is this why you wanted us to mine out a quarry?” he asked.From the beginning, Zen told the commander he needed them to mine a large quarry big enough for a hundred men with only one entrance that could be easily sealed with a large boulder that not even ten men could move. He thought Zen needed a quarry because he
“Gyaa! It’s the hero again! Retreat!” the goblins screamed and pelted pebbles at the suit of metal as they ran into the dense cover of the forest.Zen watched from a gap in the fortress wall and nodded at the strategy. Venedict fitted the role of a hero more than he did in that suit of armour.Thanks to all the blacksmithing, Zen’s proficiency with armour and weapon repairs increased again. Although he was still a beginner, he was able to repair them significantly quicker using his portable workshop. Ben must be proud of his speed. If Zen ever decided to retire within the game, he could always sign up and work at the grouchy blacksmith’s workshop as an assistant.Who was he kidding? Blacksmithing was tedious, and Zen’s hands would be numb from all that metal pounding if he weren’t in a game. On the bright side, the human army was able to fight better against the goblins despite their inferior numbers. The stones mined from the
The ‘ancient dwarven weapon’ was finally completed. It took everyone’s effort to bring it into the quarry, where Zen added the finishing touches to the newly crafted masterpiece. It weighed too much for anyone to carry alone, and even the wagon they used to transport broke.Zen crafted a decent handle sticking out of the more hideous bottom half of the ‘weapon’. Honestly, it was just a lump of metal he melted together after collecting daggers and broken armour from the battlefield that the goblins left behind. The handle was coated with something sturdier so it wouldn’t break under the hobgoblin’s crushing grip.“Why are we burying the weapon in soil?” Gunter asked, unable to make sense of Zen’s directions.The soldiers toiled away doing landscaping work in the quarry to make it appear like an abandoned dwarven workshop. Zen helped with carving designs and littering tools all over the place. Old kegs and brok
“Gobo?”“Gobo! Gobo-bo!”Gathered around a fire in the middle of the goblin’s main camp under the stars, the hobgoblin and his shaman advisers listened to the new scout leader report his information. Whoever this halfling was, he was rather capable. Unfortunately, the hobgoblin hated tainted blood. There was no way they would accept a half-bred loser into their camp of elites.“Gobobo gork!”Raising their weapons, the goblins who heard their leader’s decision cheered. After the frustrating appearance of an elusive hero who always fought in circles, they were finally one step ahead of him!Thrilled that Zen’s plan worked in their favour, the scout leader couldn’t stop grinning. That halfling worked hard to find critical information for them after receiving meagre hunts from the forest. While that starving child was eating scraps, he would be promoted to lead the way for the future.With the new