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Goblin Chapter 140: The Goal is 1,000 Kills
🕑 Added 2025-08-10 17:46:32 +0000 UTCWhile the two of them rested, a stray handful of monsters that had fled the main front wandered through—and Gauss, Alia, and Ulfen dispatched them without a second thought.
Gauss followed the line of the nearest corpse with his eyes, gazing into the depths of the forest. His sight felt as if it pierced layer upon layer of green, all the way to the unseen front line.
The fighting there must be fierce.
“I wonder how Guildmaster Eberhard’s side is going?” he said.
“Should be going well,” Alia replied. “From the way these routed grunts look, the main body of the monster army must’ve taken a heavy hit.”
“The only wildcard is that ogre warlock—their challenge rating’s probably eight. But with the guildmaster and several Black Iron–rank adventurers there, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Gauss listened as Alia kept talking—very deliberately filling in the parts he wasn’t familiar with.
He called up what he knew about ogre warlocks. They were born casters; adult specimens wielded spellcasting on par with a Level 9 Warlock. On top of their spell-like abilities, their racial traits made them nastier still: regeneration, magic resistance, and bodies rivaling a Black Iron warrior’s toughness. As leaders of large tribes, they commanded pureblood ogres, half-ogres, and a mass of subordinate monsters; their lairs often hid staggering wealth.
If he could kill one, the haul would be beyond imagining.
Too bad—he couldn’t.
As he was now, faced with a challenge-8 monster, even if it didn’t cast a single spell and only met him with brute force, his body—however much stronger than a commoner’s—would be paper-thin in its grip. He even suspected that if the ogre warlock stood still and let him attack, his spells still might not punch through its magic resistance.
“No wonder they run winter hunts—striking first to thin the monsters.”
He finally understood why, on the cusp of winter, humans took the initiative. If an ogre warlock with that kind of power were allowed to marshal a large raid into human lands, even a ‘victory’ would be bloody and costly. Fortunately, low-tier monsters were lax by nature; mustering took time and made noise, which gave the Adventurers’ Guild room to prepare.
“What level is Guildmaster Eberhard, anyway?” Gauss asked, unable to help himself.
“A year ago, when I joined the last winter hunt, I heard he was a Level 9 magic swordsman…”
“So specific?” Gauss was surprised—people knew both his class and level?
“Mm. For someone as renowned as the guildmaster, the info spreads,” Alia said, a touch of envy in her voice. No one disliked the idea of being a famed professional—her included. “His name’s big beyond the region—he’s well known even in Barry City. They call him the Crimson Blade.”
Gauss listened in silence, and found himself a little taken aback. He’d thought Grayrock Town and its neighbors were all much the same—but judging by Alia’s tone, their guildmaster was something else. And the level bore that out: a Level 9 specialist. As far as he knew, a branch guildmaster had to be Black Iron rank—i.e., a master-tier professional at level 6–10—vetted by the provincial capital. Pass the exam, and you’re assigned to a branch.
Level 9 put Eberhard at the top end of Black Iron.
“Give it a few more years and he’ll probably push for 10th level, then prepare to step into the Transcendent tier. Once you hit Transcendent, you’re someone whose name carries weight across the kingdom.”
Transcendent meant level 11.
Levels 1–5: from first steps to a seasoned adventurer—making a name in towns and dealing with local threats.
Levels 6–10: master tier—your weight starts to matter; these folks answer crises spanning multiple towns, even cities.
Levels 11–15: the Transcendent domain—beyond the reach of most professionals; they face disasters that threaten whole provinces and more.
This winter hunt fit the second category: if an ogre warlock were allowed to gather an army unchecked, you could be looking at a crisis that sweeps through several towns.
“Rested? Let’s move to the next one.”
Once he’d caught his breath and checked in with Alia, Gauss didn’t linger. The raven Echo took off from the spot, winging ahead to guide them.
He didn’t know how other teams were gathering intel, but Echo’s efficiency was the real deal—and he was privately grateful. Good thing Alia had bonded with an aerial scout before they left; if it’d been just the two of them searching, their efficiency would’ve cratered.
The woods were dim; insects droned without pause. On the way, Gauss casually cut down a few monsters they bumped into, barely slowing their pace. The goal was clear: race the clock while keeping themselves in good shape. If they wanted to “support” anyone else, they had to purge their own assigned sector first.
They reached the second monster holdout.
When Gauss saw the target, he felt a twinge of disappointment: the leader was another half-ogre.
Then he thought about it and nodded to himself. In an ogre warlock’s host, you were naturally more likely to meet pureblood ogres and their half-blood kin than any other elites—and more likely to meet half-ogres than purebloods.
Pureblood ogres bred slowly, with long intervals; half-ogres, thanks to crossbreeding with other races, existed to replenish the ranks quickly. Weaker than a challenge-2 pureblood ogre—but faster to produce and far more numerous.
Same plan as before: drop the leader first—ideally by ambush.
He watched from afar.
This half-ogre was a lot warier than the last. No napping in a haypile—he sat there broad as a boulder, a gore-stained cleaver clutched in one hand, a massive, thick shield at his feet, eyes like knives raking across the subject races under him. A few goblins crept up to lay roasted scraps on a plantain leaf before him; one that moved too slowly got backhanded into a tree and slid down without a sound.
“As vicious as advertised…”
From a distance, Gauss filed the scene away. Half-ogres could manage some broken Common, but at heart they were brutal monsters—incapable of living in harmony with civilized beings, seeing them only as meat, tools, or slaves.
“Ambush might not fly,” Alia murmured after watching. There were fewer monsters here, but they were on guard; sentries patrolled the edges of the shadowed treeline.
“It’s fine. Then we go in hard,” Gauss said at once. “Save your strength—don’t wade in. Cast Entangle from range; leave the rest to me and Ulfen.”
Alia didn’t argue and nodded.
Gauss locked onto the half-ogre in the distance. No ambush this time, and the brute was plenty alert—but after the last fight, he had a clear measure of himself. Against a lumbering, strength-type Level 1 monster, he had it in hand. Looking at this half-ogre no longer tightened his chest.
All three had the Omni-Armor layered on already.
Once everything was set, his Magic Missiles ripped through the fern-brake and screamed out!
The moment the three bolts left cover, the wary half-ogre noticed. It threw itself into a roll.
Boom!
Quick as it was, Gauss still had initiative. One dart clipped the beast-hide greaves on its thigh—plates burst apart, hide tore free, and flesh split as blood welled out.
“RAAAGH! Come out, you sneaking bug!” it bellowed, starting to duck for its shield.
A gray streak flashed.
Ulfen sprang from the brush, drawing its eye—and then those eyes snapped back toward the direction the spell had come from.
Skkew!
Another bolt screamed in.
The spike of danger made it abandon the shield, stomp off its bleeding leg, and hurl itself sideways. It dodged that one—
—but more missiles were already following up.
Lv4 mastery, backed by the secondary core spell slot—and the freshly gained title effect, Weakpoint Strike—made Magic Missile that much nastier.
The instant it dodged was also the instant its bulk couldn’t dodge again. Hanging mid-move, it had no way out as three darts swept in to cut off every line.
The half-ogre torqued its waist at the last possible moment—muscles knotting, lines twisting—barely slipping one.
Boom. Boom.
The other two hit flush.
One slammed into the front of its cuirass, blasting a charred crater. The other, wickedly precise, punched the newly exposed, unarmored ribs.
Crack.
The break was loud and clean. Several chalk-white splinters punched through skin, jutting at ugly angles.
Weakpoint Strike was even stronger than Gauss had imagined. He’d only half-caught a flash of insight as he cast—enough to line up that razor-true shot.
The half-ogre clawed its way up from the dirt. With its chest torn open, every breath rasped like a broken bellows; even curses died in its throat.
“Looks… easier,” Gauss said calmly, stepping out of cover. It wasn’t a one-shot ambush, but as a straight-up clash it proved the point: against half-ogres, his current strength was overwhelming.
Time to send it off.
Chest shattered, gasping, the brute had lost its last sliver of threat.
Tap. Tap-tap.
Light on his feet, Gauss threaded through the mob, flick-killing strays as he went. Monsters flew from his path—but his eyes never left the half-ogre, now stumbling backward in a panic. With a torn leg and internal trauma, it had no hope of outrunning him. He closed in within seconds.
“Magic Missile!”
Three bolts all but jammed themselves into its face; hobbled as it was, it couldn’t dodge at all.
All three went in, burying deep.
Boom—boom—boom!
Ruthless force poured into its ruined chest, tearing a wider hole. Darkness swallowed what was left of its mind.
[Half-Ogre Slain ×1.]
Once the kill prompt confirmed, Gauss looked away from the corpse.
What remained unfolded without suspense. Headless and leaderless, the rabble collapsed under his increasingly efficient purge.
No new species this time, though.
Chewing jerky, Gauss surveyed the wreckage with a twinge of regret. Still, the hunt would last a week—plenty of chances yet.
[Total Monster Kills: 739.]
He’d taken down fifty-eight this fight, plus nine along the way—bringing him to 739, just shy of the thousand mark.
He reviewed his index in his mind. Common entries stood at fifteen species. Barring surprises, he’d probably hit the thousand-kill milestone before he filled out twenty entries.
As they rested, the raven Echo—sent out early to scout—flapped back to them.
“How is it? Any more sizable groups in our sector?” Gauss asked, resting as he spoke.
After conferring with the bird, Alia shook her head. “Echo says—no.”
“Then we’ll have to move to the adjacent sector,” Gauss said.
“Gauss, can your body keep up?” Alia pressed. She was fine; she was worried about him.
“Don’t worry, I know my limits. Let’s sit a bit longer.” He took stock—aside from being a little hungry, he wasn’t especially fatigued.
Their team’s kill rate was blazing, but because it was just the two of them, they’d been assigned one of the smallest areas. If they wanted extra gains, they’d have to push outward.
It was barely past noon and they’d already cleared two camps of roughly a hundred each—haul probably in the low double-digit gold. No way the average team matched that pace.
By the simplest estimate, most adventurers made 10–20 gold over the whole winter hunt. A four-person team might gross 40–80 gold in the week—call it under 10 gold a day, which equates to clearing a camp and its surrounding stragglers.
Basic multiplication.
The Winter Hunt force would stay in the current region for about two days, then shift to another.
Two hundred-odd kills shy of a thousand… counting the odd encounters on the road, maybe three more fights would do it.
Comments
Benjamin Black
I believe previously you stated Transcendent was after the 20th level. Which is true? Thanks!
SquiddlyWinks
That unique plate armor in blacksmith Gorn’s back room is calling…. How much would it be? 100 gold?
