Xia Nan studied his attribute panel carefully.
Seeing his abilities reduced to numbers had been a pleasant surprise, but the numbers themselves were nothing special.
All six attributes were “5,” which was probably about average for an ordinary person.
The panel itself was painfully bare-bones, like something pulled from an unfinished third-rate game. There was barely anything on it worth looking at.
The only notable entry was the lonely skill sitting in his skill list:
[Spinning Slash] Lv. 4 (99/100)
[Only one point away from leveling up?]
Xia Nan murmured inwardly.
He knew there was no point in rushing, but he was literally one point of proficiency away from Lv. 5.
The thought made him itch with anticipation. He desperately wanted to know what that final level would give him.
His mind drifted back to the moment his proficiency had increased.
[I wonder if using a move in actual combat gives more proficiency than ordinary training.]
He had only recently transmigrated into this world. He was still a novice adventurer, and the only skill he possessed was the one inherited from the body’s original owner.
There were only a few lines on the attribute panel. No matter how long he stared at it, nothing new was going to appear.
After another quick glance, Xia Nan put the matter aside and returned his attention to his night-watch duties.
…
The next day.
The sky had barely begun to brighten when the ragtag party packed up its supplies and left camp.
Visibility in the Misty Forest at dawn was hardly any better than it had been at night.
Dense fog filled the air, and the lush vegetation all looked the same to Xia Nan. An ordinary person would have had no chance of finding the way through.
After trudging along for quite some time, he even started to wonder if they had been walking in circles.
Yet the two men ahead of him remained perfectly confident, as though they each had a minimap floating inside their heads.
Xia Nan kept his mouth shut and followed closely behind them like a little tail.
When they stopped, he stopped.
When they lowered their voices, he immediately started sneaking around just as cautiously.
As for how low-level adventurers like the members of this ragtag party could wander through the Misty Forest as casually as if they were strolling through their own backyard, and even pinpoint the rough direction of a goblin lair in such complicated terrain…
Xia Nan had a few guesses.
Part of it was probably the experience they had accumulated as “veterans.” Maji and the others could likely read subtle signs in the forest that meant nothing to Xia Nan and use them to keep their bearings.
The other part had to do with the hunter himself.
Every so often, Maji would stop, crouch low like a hound, and sniff along the ground.
Judging by that, he had probably mastered some sort of class-related prerequisite skill, something similar in nature to [Spinning Slash].
But just as Gagu and Maji had never asked about the skill Xia Nan used after the last battle, almost as if they had not noticed it at all, Xia Nan did not ask about theirs either.
He simply filed the matter away.
When dealing with other adventurers in the future, it would be safer not to pry into such things. A careless question could easily stir up trouble for no reason.
After another three hours of weaving through the forest, a small earthen hill finally came into view.
At its center was a mud-and-stone cave that had clearly been dug out by living creatures. Tracks and other signs of activity were scattered all around the entrance.
A faint stench hung in the air.
“We’re here!”
Maji’s excitement was impossible to hide, even though he kept his voice low.
“So what now? We just go in?”
Gagu gripped his iron axe in both hands. His pupils had taken on a faint reddish tint, and he was clearly ready for a fight.
“A cave like this probably doesn’t have another exit.” Maji studied the hill carefully, hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “We can go straight in.”
“You take point. Xia Nan stays in the middle, and I’ll bring up the rear.” He adjusted the longbow in his hand. “Stay sharp. Don’t get careless.”
Xia Nan was about to follow them inside when a question finally escaped his lips.
“This entrance is wide enough for two grown men to walk through side by side without ducking, isn’t it?”
“Do goblins normally dig entrances this big?”
“Uh…”
The question seemed to catch Maji completely off guard.
He fell silent.
For quite a while, he had nothing to say.
“We already wiped out their main force. Why do you care so much!?”
With the goblins’ treasure practically within reach, Gagu’s impatience had become especially obvious.
“If you’re scared, get lost! You won’t get a share of the loot inside!”
None of them stopped walking as they spoke, and soon they had entered the cave.
[Damn it.]
Xia Nan cursed inwardly as he took another look at the size of the tunnel around them.
A bad feeling crept up his spine.
[These two sons of bitches have me boxed in from both ends.]
[If I chicken out now, I’m probably the first one who gets screwed.]
At this point, he had no choice but to keep following them.
The truth was, Xia Nan had only been in this world for a short time. He still understood very little about adventurers.
If he had spent even a few more days around them, he would have understood why bottom-rung adventurers were called “bottom-rung.”
Weakness was only part of it.
There was also their badly timed courage, their “perfectly timed” cowardice, the consciences that could be blinded by a few bags of gold…
And the brains ruled entirely by greed.
Teammates changing constantly.
Years spent adventuring while still wearing battered, second-rate equipment.
An entire party made up of small fry.
And somehow, they had casually let a complete newcomer like Xia Nan join them without much thought.
Any one of those things should have been a warning.
Taken together, they practically screamed trouble.
Unfortunately, realizing that now was a little late.
All Xia Nan could do was tighten his grip on his sword and stay alert.
The cave was not very deep. Before long, it felt as though they were nearing the end.
“Grrrgl…”
A strange sound drifted from around the corner ahead, accompanied by a faint flicker of firelight.
Gagu had long since lost patience.
His muscles bulged. His eyes reddened.
“Raaaargh!”
With absolutely no sense of discipline, he let out a wild roar, raised his two-handed axe, and charged ahead.
Then,
Like a wild dog suddenly seized by the throat,
His roar stopped dead.
Xia Nan flinched at the sound, but his feet did not slow.
He followed close behind.
A moment later, he saw what had silenced Gagu.
As mentioned before, goblins possessed a reproductive system unlike that of most other creatures.
But as a single-sex species, if they managed to abduct females from other races, they were perfectly willing to indulge their basest instincts and inflict their brutal animal nature on those unfortunate victims.
Humans were a sapient species even more widely distributed across the multiverse than goblins.
Humanity possessed an astonishing number of high-end combatants, but ordinary humans were even more numerous, exceeding the common populations of most other races.
That enormous population meant that most victims abducted by goblins for breeding and abuse were human, especially physically weaker women.
Naturally, those vile bastards did not bother giving their victims funerals.
Goblins spent most of their lives hovering around the edge of starvation.
When faced with those unfortunate women, filling their stomachs came first.
And so there was the scene before Xia Nan.
For an ordinary person from modern society, the impact was difficult to describe.
Even after Xia Nan became a veteran adventurer in the future, this sight would remain carved into his memory.
Of course, it was not enough to frighten Gagu speechless.
A half-orc who had grown up around blood and brutality had already seen too much of this sort of thing.
What had truly silenced him was the hulking figure sitting at the deepest part of the cave, hidden in shadow.
Then Maji screamed from behind Xia Nan, his voice cracking like the crow of a terrified rooster.
“BUGBEAR!!!”