I imagine that the girl behind me is probably turning her head with her eyes tightly shut. I don’t know how long she’ll keep this up, but if it’s just about the Earth Puppy, there’s really no need to rush her.
In fact, even Kang Yeon-su from the White Knight Guild didn’t bother with the Earth Puppy, yet no one dared say she was being soft-hearted.
Ding-!
I focused on the pleasant notification sound and the message that popped up with a bit of expectation.
– Trait [Thievery] activated.
– Randomly steals a skill from the Earth Puppy.
– Acquired skill [Beginner Transformation]!
“Haha······.”
Honestly, I couldn’t keep up with the ever-growing skills, and a hollow laugh escaped me.
—–
Beginner Transformation Lv.1
– Consume the bones of a monster, process and condense them in your body to convert them into a Mana Stone.
—–
“This is really······.”
I had studied countless traits and skills recorded for decades, but nothing was as mysterious as this ability.
“So that’s why there were Earth Puppies in every dungeon.”
It turned out to be a janitor at the bottom of the dungeon ecosystem.
“Got another skill, Il-wol? But… can you eat anything?”
“Yeah, the problem is that I can’t eat…”
I decided to think about that later, as I had one last thing to grab before the goblins caught my scent.
“The leg bones should be good.”
Before my bones were once again crunched, I planned to cut some bones to give to Wang-wang. Now that I had the same skill, I was curious about how it would work out.
I reached out my hand to Yeon-hee, who tilted her head for a moment before handing me her dagger.
“Isn’t this a bit too obvious of a human move?”
But my hand was already accustomed to slicing into a goblin’s thigh and splitting the inner flesh neatly.
Chop-.
Maintaining the quality of the by-products is hard work, but simply stripping off the bones wasn’t very difficult.
Goblins are among the easier monsters to dismantle, so I quickly retrieved the leg bone of one and cleaned up the blood with the random weeds growing on the ground before stowing it in my inventory.
The whole process took only about 2-3 minutes. Yeon-hee, who watched me with her mouth agape and her hands politely clasped, continued to chatter as she stepped away to find other prey.
“How is this possible? The dissection theory that was in my head might be reflected in the summoned creature. If so! If I store as much information in my head as possible!······”
Most of her guesses were far from the truth, but since summoned creatures might have such mechanisms, I just walked silently.
Anyway, the mystery would be resolved when I saw the next summoned creatures after Wang-wang, so I focused on the web of senses, listening to her chatter vaguely.
“Today really feels unusually empty, huh…”
Compared to last time, the number of monsters caught in my net had almost halved.
“I wish I could meet them after growing a bit more…”
There’s a saying among dungeon jokes about the Law of Monster Preservation. If the number of monsters decreases, the chances of encountering more powerful monsters increase — it’s a sort of superstition.
There’s plenty of theoretical backing for it, so many hunters tend to retreat early on such days. Sensing a tense atmosphere, Yeon-hee softly asked me.
“Do you think we’ll meet the goblin boss today?”
That’s really something even the heavens wouldn’t know, so I just kept looking around.
“It seems a bit tough right now, doesn’t it?”
Nod-.
Of course, it would be a good thing if we caught one. After all, the goblin boss is the only one that drops low-grade runes in this dungeon. The drop rate is over 70%.
Despite being called a boss, the goblin boss is simply a lazy guy in charge of a small tribe. However, caution is necessary because only those with a certain level of ability can ascend to such positions.
In other words, it means he’s naturally physically impressive. Plus, he always travels with around ten goblins, making him a tough opponent for just the two of us.
“I should probably avoid him for the time being.”
Wondering whether I should advance my investment in sensing, I moved onward, eventually locating the goblin village. This meant the boss was nearby.
“They’re positioned farther from the center than I expected? Hmm-.”
We took our place on a hill and surveyed the goblin village spread across the broad lowland below.
“There are a lot… We need to call for help.”
Yeon-hee, who was always cautious in her judgments, came to a quick conclusion.
Of course, with just the two of us, we wouldn’t stand a chance; we needed to gather at least 50 F-rank hunters to take them down without suffering significant losses.
Over a hundred goblins were growing their territory within a makeshift wooden stockade they hastily weaved together.
Sometimes, they formed communities, and some groups labeled hunters as invaders. But if we didn’t eliminate them now, they would quickly multiply and cause a dungeon break.
If we didn’t want to see them brutally tearing apart civilians in the city, we didn’t need to hold back on the mercy.
“But right now, we should be the ones asking for mercy.”
It was probably because a strong leader had emerged that it was difficult to find those wandering defenselessly, as they had established some order.
(Il-wol, let’s move slowly…)
As I whispered softly and began to move carefully, she briefly stopped, likely because her gaze fell upon a single goblin.
‘Of course, it’s larger than the other goblins. But it’s still just a goblin.’
Even from a distance, I could see a goblin that was a head taller than the others.
It stretched widely in the center of the village, and I took a moment to size it up.
“If I close in with Stealth, strike first with Acid, then use Slam to go all in, I still don’t think it’ll work. I’ll need a lot more power than I have.”
I needed to invest in magic stats to extend my stealth duration, and also needed to raise my strength stats to ensure I could kill it before being interrupted by other goblins.
In short, the conclusion was to retreat. Yeon-hee also started moving again after hesitating.
After about ten minutes of walking away from the village, I lucked out and spotted a group of goblins.
We proceeded silently, sticking to our set routine. There were three of them.
Kreek! Cough-! Kihok-!
It was done in an instant.
“Wow··· it feels like the world has been turned upside down.”
She began to complain about how hard it was for her to take down three goblins when hunting alone.
Shooting, fleeing, shooting again, and repeating the process.
But now, she had to adapt to a completely transformed combat style. There’s a reason why the vanguard position is precious among hunters.
It’s a tough position that requires one to brave dangerous, messy, and difficult tasks, but with the summoned creatures faithfully charging ahead, Yeon-hee could prioritize her safety and just command from the back.
“I should catch Jo Gi-man while Yeon-hee is still clueless about everything. Even though I still don’t really understand why I betrayed him later…”
I had some inkling, but drawing a conclusion with my personal opinions would serve no purpose.
“This time, let’s move on without dismantling.”
“Of course, that’s a given.”
Since we weren’t too far from the large village, we needed to widen the gap a little more. After moving for about ten more minutes, we spotted a group of twenty or so hunters gathered by a giant tree trunk.
We crept closer until we could hear their conversation, and they seemed to be having quite an interesting discussion.
– Can we really just go in? It’s not common to discover a large village from this position.
– If we gather more people, it might actually be manageable.
– Let’s all charge in together then.
– Seriously, why are you acting like amateurs? Our guild will take down the boss, and the rest can go in from another direction…
It seemed a few of them were gathered for a discussion, but surprisingly few were making rational decisions.
(What are they doing… Surely they aren’t planning to attack that village we just saw, right?)
Yeon-hee watched them with anxious eyes from behind the brush.
‘They can’t be that stupid. It doesn’t seem like they’re a pre-formed team; they probably just gathered here after sensing something was off… I wonder if they’ll get caught? It won’t be easy for them to align their opinions.’
But my expectations turned out to be pleasantly incorrect.
As about ten more people joined from another direction, they seemed to have come to a consensus about attacking.
And after a few minutes of personal prep, they began to move towards the village we had seen.
“Uh-oh, what do we do…”
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