Party Crashers

Sneaking through the forest, Raven arrived at the designated rendezvous point. First, Raven checked to see if Rainheart's backpack was still where it had been hidden.

'Since I don't have a backpack, Rainheart probably got it from putting his TP into the Utility Discipline...'

A player's starting equipment was determined by where their first 10 TP was placed, and a minimum of 3 TP was required to gain starting equipment for a specific Discipline. Out of curiosity, Raven had asked Rainheart where he had placed his TP, and cross referenced their equipment to make some guesses.

So far, he had guessed...

Melee: Sword and Spear

Ranged: Bow and Arrows, Throwing Daggers?

Spell: ???

Physique: Gambeson

Aura: ???

Roguery: Long Knife, Cloak, Throwing Daggers?

Utility: Backpack containing miscellaneous tools.

Raven sat down, laying his back against a nearby tree. 'Filling out a list of potential starter equipment could be quite useful in the beginning. It would be harder for players to trick me, because if I see a cloak I would know they have a knife somewhere. Even better, I could identify where they placed their TP.'

Raven sighed. 'That is of course assuming starting equipment is standardized, and memorizing it will be less useful once players start moving beyond their starting equipment...'

As Raven was pondering, Rainheart came to the rendezvous point. His Gambeson was tattered and stained black. All over his body, he was covered in scratches, and he was drenched in black blood. Both his sword and spear were covered in goblin guts and gore. Despite this, he seemed giddy, and was smiling. "Wonderful, we both made it here alive!"

Raven plugged his nose, scrunching up his face. "Did the game seriously feel the need make goblin guts so smelly?" After a moment, Raven gave up trying to avoid to rotten stench, and unplugged his nose. "Anyways, you seem a bit roughed up! You able to do your part?"

Rainheart nodded. "I got it done. Still, it turns out attacking a dozen opponents on your own is never a bright idea. Lucky for me, goblins are short and stupid! Using my spear, I have a massive reach advantage against them. All I had to do was attack relentlessly, watching my movements so that the amount of goblins in attacking range was minimized."

Raven gave Rainheart a thumbs up. "Nice. Hopefully, that means we won't have any interruptions."

Rainheart wiped some black and green gunk from his face. "If the goblins act how we suspect..."

This was the first stage of the plan: While Raven whittled down the goblins in the base, Rainheart targeted goblins traveling through the forest along any paths he could track. The hope was that the goblins, upon finding corpses along all routes to their base, would become wary of returning home.

The only problem with that plan was finding the goblins to ambush. Since the duo had been stalking their trails without encountering any goblins as they searched for the Goblin King's lair, the goblins must have been able to detect them, and avoided the duo. Luckily, their first solution had turned out to be effective: Goblin manure.

Rainheart had found goblin droppings near a path with lots of goblin tracks, and rubbed it all over his clothes, hoping to mask his scent.

Grabbing a cloth from his backpack, Rainheart sat down, and wiping the gore off of his weapons. "Well, I will rest and clean up for a little bit, and then we can begin the next stage." A fiery determination appeared in his eyes. "Soon, we will make sure those goblins can't hurt anyone else."

Twirling a strand of hair around his finger, Raven yawned. "Huh, you sure are taking this seriously. You really immersed into the game that much?"

Rainheart paused for a moment, and then chuckled. "Well... I guess you're right. However, you have not interacted with any NPC yet, have you? Yeah, AI can be pretty amazing, but it has never been able to replicate the human mind completely before. The people I have met though... I guess I just have trouble accepting them to be fakes."

Raven laid back and closed his eyes. "That so? I am interested to see how realistic they really are."

'It's true, I have never heard of AI being able to recreate a human being. They could become extremely good at one specific thing, but they could never completely replicate a human. Even chatbots were only algorithms that guessed the probability of which words would appear next in a sentence, based on the data provided to it.'

After a moment, Rainheart asked, "So, how many did you take out?"

Raven cracked one eye open. "I fired my bow 56 times, 50 of them were kills. That would leave only a few dozen or so based on our first observations, but who knows how many are in the cave. Some of them could've come out to reinforce the base."

Rainheart grinned. "Just a few dozen? Easy, we got this!"

Raven groaned. "Buddy, you don't say that! And you were just talking about how difficult it was to deal with packs of a dozen goblins..."

***

As the sun began to set, the activity inside the goblin's base slowed down as they prepared for the night. Several fires were lit, and any humans still alive were either eaten or taken away into the cave. The smallest and weakest goblins were beaten and bullied into staying awake, to watch over the base and keep the fires burning. The small ones could only grumble as their fellows went to sleep, as they carefully watched the other pathetic whelps forced into guard duty. If one of them tried to sleep or slack off, the others would jump them.

***

A while into the night, one weak goblin crept towards the exit to the base, looking around nervously. He was missing three fingers and had a nasty cut on his face, which stung every time he blinked. The few neurons in his frail, shriveled brain knew that earlier there had been trouble outside the base, but the danger had long left. So, it was safe!

Reaching the closest exit to the shit hole, he paused before leaving. After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he walked through the exit.

A few steps into the darkness, however, the goblin was suddenly grabbed from behind, a bundle of cloth pressed tight against his face. He tried to shriek, but the cloth muffled the noise. He lashed out wildly, limbs flailing in all directions. He kicked, He scratched, He tried to tear at the arms holding hi-

But then, a knife was dragged across its' throat, slicing deep into the flesh. The goblin spasmed, as a deep flow of blood spurted out, dripping down its' body. As more and more blood drained from the goblin's body, its' spasms and struggles grew weaker and weaker, until finally the life drained from its' eyes.

Hiding against the barricade, Raven gently laid the corpse of the goblin down, and wiped off his blade with the cloth bundle.

Several of the goblin parties Rainheart ambushed had been carrying humans, all of which the goblins had killed once they knew they were being ambushed. Once they had settled on this plan, Rainheart had gone back to gather some of their clothes. Then, he used them to create a bundle that could silence the goblin's cries for help.

Raven carefully walked away from the barricade, making sure he could not be seen through the nearby exit. Once he was at a safe distance, he laid down, and then moved to a position where he could study the goblin camp, without them noticing him from outside.

'With that one down, there are 14 more goblins still awake. If I can take them down, I have a chance to enter the base uncontested, and kill goblins while they sleep. And if Rainheart and I can take control of their base outside the cave, our victory is guaranteed.'

And so, Raven studied the goblins inside the camp, and waited.