ALL NOVEL Chapter 8: The Wild Beasts
The flames of Flamer continue to burn underground, so William decides to check his inventory as he wonders how to retrieve the loot from the dead goblins. The group of adventurers left the area long ago ever since he gave an evil laugh. After taking a seat and going over the inventory, William found something interesting in the corner of the screen, an option to turn on the 'Auto loot' ability.
'Is this what I think it is?' William decided to turn on the 'Auto loot' ability, and suddenly, his inventory started to stack up with bolter rounds, frag grenades, flamer fuel canisters and an increasing number of goblin ears. By the time it reached 122 goblin ears, the flame in the underground slowly died off and inventory stopped receiving the loots from the fallen goblins.
'I guess I'm done for the day. It is late afternoon so I better get back and turn this in.' William stood up and before he left the area, he pulled out two frag grenades and tossed it on the goblin cave entrance. After three seconds, grenades explode and cave-in the entrance, no goblins or small monsters will make a nest on the cave again for a while as long as the entrance is blocked.
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Greenhill Adventurer's Guild,
William turned in the goblins' ears and received a decent amount of rewards. He decided to spend his earnings on food as his inventory will store it without decaying it. Greenhill is a lumber town and middle stop for many travelers such as merchants, for this reason, it has various shops dedicated to the road food and ingredients. By the time William finished his shopping, he spent most of his gold and purchased three months of food, with that William decided to go back to the inn so he can prepare for tomorrow's departure.
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Next Morning,
William left the inn and found himself outside of Greenhill as a large number of knights on horseback and infantrymen waited for the order from their commander. Before William could ask anyone where adventures gather for the march, a group of adventurers approached him first.
"You must be William the Giant, the hero of the Greenhill. I'm Gale, leader of 'Western Eagles', this is our mage, warrior, healer and ranger." Gale introduced everyone to William but for some reason, they didn't give a very strong impression to William (I'm not giving them names, they are just NPCs).
"Nice to meet you all, I'm William and I will be joining to fight vampires in Deron. Where is Sir Dolven?" William asks the group as he looks around but unfortunately, the army starts to move and another group of other adventures can be seen in the front line.
"The army is moving now, we have to move quickly if we want to earn our reward. Let's go." Gale said to everyone as they also moved quickly to the front side of the army.
"William, our job is to scout and kill any monsters blocking the marching army. You can find Sir Dolven after we finish our job today." Gale said to William as he started to run ahead. William, seeing this, decided to join Gale's group instead of searching for a knight commander.
'I guess I'll just talk to Sir Dolven later. It's not like I'm that important, just extra muscle.'
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4 Hours Later,
Nothing happened on the road for hours, no ambush from the bandits or monsters happened so it was an uneventful morning. But thanks to constant questioning from the Gales's group it turned into an interesting conversation in which William learned few things about this campaign.
William learned that his entire job until they arrive at their location will be nothing but scouting and vanguard for the army. From what Gale explained, the adventures are hired solely because they are much more expendable, unlike trained soldiers and knights. Still, the military pays very well so many highly skilled adventures tend to sign up for this kind of war campaign and retire after.
The army will schedule to meet with the second army, who are specialized in brand new types of weapons. This interested William but unfortunately, none of the adventures knows what these new weapons are. The only thing they know is that they will meet them four days later, at the border of vampire land which the City of Deron is located.
Just as William was about to ask about the kingdom and it's leadership but it was interrupted when the party reached the top side of the hill. They saw a bloody fight between another group of adventurers and a large group of wolves. About 13 wolves were attacking 6 members of adventures who are losing the battleground as wolves' attacking coordination is unnatural for normal animals.
Seeing the trouble, William and Western Eagles jump into action to help the other adventures. Because William was equipped with a power sword and bolter pistol, it was no problem for him to eliminate the wolves in melee or short-range fights. Thanks to William's space marine biology, he was able to run past the Western Eagles and reach the adventures first, which he fired his pistol to kill 10 wolves, emptying the entire magazines.
The two remaining wolves looked scared but the third wolf stood strong. The third wolf is much bigger and has darker fur compared to other wolves, but one thing that interests William is its red eyes. The eyes are supernatural as if it was possessed by something else, which leers William with hate and bloodlust. William seeing this decided not to take any chance with the wolf with the red eyes as he slay two other wolves and charge towards the last remaining wolf.
"Die!" William shouts as he swings his power sword at the wolf but to William's surprise the wolf dodges the attack and proceeds to counter-attack by opening its jaw. To block the incoming bite attack William uses his left arm and manages to block it. The wolf, without any regard to its safety, continued to bite and didn't retreat, which William used his sword to slay the beast.
"What was that? That beast was very unusual, it was as if it didn't care if he dies or not." Gales said to William when he reached him. The battle was over when his party arrived but they didn't mind it because they were fascinated by William's magic tool (Bolter pistol). As William turns his head to say something, the corpse of the dead wolf starts to glow red and starts to transform into something else.
"Everyone retreat! Something is happening to the dead wolf's body!" William gave an order to everyone as he pulled back and reloaded his pistol. 'It seems we have a chaos problem.'