Walking through the lush undergrowth of the forest was not the most pleasant of experiences, especially for me, I've never gone hunting for prey back in the village, my family farmed the land and tended to the crops, so I bludgeoned my way through thorny bushes and smacking low hanging branches, Fernanda shared my pain, her red hair filled with leaves and clumps of dirt, the others were snickering at our misfortune, sword suckers.

I was also tense, this is my first hunt for anything truly dangerous, back in the village the most frightening thing in the whole forest was a nest of giants rats, the hunters dealt with predators that got too close, mostly timber wolves and brown bears, but here, right now, I'm going to fight something that could and would kill me if it had the slightest chance, these beasts are no animals, but monsters filled with bloodlust, killing not for survival but for the pure fun it could generate.

It doesn't help that a big enough group of disciples will not function well in the forest, the inhabitants will rip them apart from the constant wave of goblins and eagles,  until they retreat or die from the accumulated fatigue and injuries, worse of all they can't even harvest blood cores since they are being eaten up by the other monsters, the older disciple who told me about it grimaced from recounting it, stating that he was so tired after that he slept standing up when they got out of the forest.

Although at this moment I wouldn't have thought that this forest has anything even remotely close to that description, the sparse canopy and abundant greenery gave the forest an ethereal vibe, one untouched by humankind, but that was when we stumbled upon a skittering group of little green children fighting over a bone when we crested a hill, Tog and Nog are the first to move, going in front of us and raising their shields.

One of the goblins noticed the big men in armor and alerted his friends, but any further action from him was stopped by an arrow sticking out of his eye and piercing his brain, the goblins numbering 9 became 8, the little bastards didn't give a second glance to now dead body of their kin but began to run towards us, abandoning their two leggedness for an animalistic trot using all of their limbs.

I let loose another arrow before they could engage the front liners, hitting a goblin in the chest, I would bet that will make him a non-variable for the rest of the fight, Tog and Nog interrupted four goblins from the rest, blocking and slashing at the goblins, they had primitive weaponry like bone spears and stones strapped into sticks that if you squint hard enough you would have called a club, the two brothers distracted them well enough for Randal to flank and cut them down with his greatsword.

One of the last goblins tried to jump on Nog's back, but Foranda dispatched him by a criss crossing slash, the other one ran toward me and Joe, before he could make a proper swing Joe parried it with his staff and continued with a downward swipe resulting in the goblin landing on its back, it only was a matter of time before it got decapitated by Foranda's twin swords.

"Is anyone injured?" Randal asked when the last goblin fell below Tog's sword, I shook my head at him, everyone else gave a no, a good first fight and I did not freak out too much, though my hands are still shaking, it's a small miracle it didn’t hamper my ability to shoot accurately.

Joe sprung into action and started dissecting the goblin bodies, he wielded a butcher’s knife like a third arm, cutting through the still warm dead bodies of the goblins, he struck multiple locations on the goblin body, everytime putting his hands through the cuts to search around, it didn’t take him long before he had 4 nugget sized blood cores in his bloody palms.

“We got lucky, 4 blood cores from 9 goblins, good start for the day.” Sigmond stated, carrying a satisfied expression, the group moved on, leaving the bloody hilltop well rested and ready for another battle.

And battle they did get, one originating from the skies, two eagles had flown close enough for Joe to spot them since he had been keeping his eyes on the sky, so the team huddled around a rather large tree so that the canopy could shield them from any dives that the eagles could attempt.

But that didn’t stop a determined eagle from weaving between the thick branches and slamming his talons into Tog shield with enough momentum to lift him off his feet and throwing him against the tree, he slumped against the tree and dropped his sword, the shield strapped on his arm showed various puncture holes, that's one man down.

The brilliant display of skill made by the eagle ended right there when Nog’s iron fury decapitated it by a single slash of his sword, I didn’t pay too much attention to those two but focused more on the other eagle who had landed and is trying to lift off the ground and from the look in its eyes, it was going to peck my eyes out from its anger.

Poor thing didn’t even get its first flap of its wings before I put an arrow through its small head.

With the beasts neutralized, I brought my attention back to Tog unfortunate state, Joe removed his helmet to check on him, we all sighed in relief once it was confirmed that he only got knocked out from the force of his head colliding against solid wood, the metal armor took the brunt of the damage, appearing quite crumbled up in some places, the talons didn’t hit his arms when they pierced through.

Randal made the decision to make camp for the rest of the day and wait for Tog to heal, a good decision since no one can actually lift such a brute in iron armor, Joe did the dissection and found no blood cores even after he cut the eagles into skewable sized pieces of meat.

We did roast that meat on a fire, it was a bit gamey but overall a good dish of angry eagle, nothing better to end the day than to eat the meat of your defeated enemies.

I set up my bedroll after Randal briefed us on our turns for the nightwatch, lets just say I will not be having a comfortable amount of sleep this night, even more so if I start having nightmares of hordes of little green shits and sun-blocking amounts of oversized birds.

The ever-demanding sleep demon took me quite easily this time, throwing me into the ever encompassing timeless void called sleep.