After getting a feel for the mace I headed back towards the gate of the town. When I reached the gate I spotted Mary, “Hello, Mary. Could you point me towards the direction of the hobgoblins, foxes and goblins?” Mary smiled and then looked at me in surprise, “Foxes and goblins? Have you taken E rank quests? Well you’ve already accepted them so there’s no use complaining to you about it. But next time please be more careful in accepting quests. Honestly what are the people of the AG thinking, giving a newbie two E rank quests! Sigh. Once you leave the gate, go left. You’ll immediately find the foxes in the mouth of the forest. The hobgoblins will fall to the left, closer to the village and the goblins will fall to the right, away from the village, towards the hills. You should be careful. There is a compass in your status menu so make use of that. And run away if you think it's too dangerous, okay?”

I nodded at Mary’s stern gaze, promised her, thanked her and then left. As soon as I left the gate I didn’t go directly to the left. I opened my compass by staring at the compass symbol in the lower right of my status menu. The menu became horizontal and showed an arrow pointing towards the mountains. I turned around and the arrow continued pointing at the same location. So the forest was west.

I wanted to hit the hobgoblins first then foxes then goblins in a line, so I took a small path that led diagonal from the gate, towards the hobgoblins. I noticed two other women or rather girls ahead of me. I followed them into the forest, but they went further left. They were probably doing a different quest. I took the mace in both my hands and got tensed, ready to kill any dangerous creatures. The quest had got the picture of a hobgoblin. They were probably a foot tall and looked like a smaller version of a goblin, green, a long and fat nose, bald, long nails, snake like eyes with a small cloth covering their nether regions. I had to kill ten of them.

I'll try killing one first then work my way into group fights. I was glad I brought the armor. It gave me more courage. I spotted two hobgoblins ahead of me. I guess I would start with two rather than one. I quickly ran towards them. They noticed me and dove at me, with a sweep of my mace I threw them both away. The one which made contact with my mace died instantly while the other was gravely injured. I quickly put it out of its misery. Seeing that no one was around I took out my dagger to dig out the mana stone. I presumed it was either in the place of its head or heart.

Ugh. I did not like this one bit. Steeling my mind, almost puking, I dug at its chest. Success. I found a pinkish purple stone. It was sharp on both ends and was really pretty. I stored it in my item box and successfully retrieved the second mana stone from the other hobgoblin. Both the stones looked identical and both were the size of half my finger. The only reason I found them was because they were slightly shiny.

After putting it into my item box I realized that just like my food, they also got stacked. Like that I found a few more hobgoblins and took care of them. It happened when I killed the fourth hobgoblin ["Level up"] came the mechanical voice... I quickly killed the last remaining hobgoblin and looked at my stats. I had 18 free stats.  3 from before, I got 10 more from the dark one and because of the level up, I got 5 more. I guess I'll allocate it according to the suggestion. So now my stats look like this:

After making all my stats as 17 and agility and stamina as 18, I decided to save my free stats. I noticed two small icons near my name. When I focused on them I saw my HP and MP, HP = 51 (sta*2 + str), MP = 51 (int*2 + luck). I guess I was a balanced player. Also after I made some calculations I realized that the +1 sta from my weapon was not taken into account. So they are calculated based on base stats.

I also realized that hobgoblins gave 5 experience points. So after completing my quest I would have 30/40 exp. I decided to kill two more hobgoblins than required so as to level up. After becoming level 4. I gave all my stats one point each. To reach level 5 I would require 50 exp. Which means 10 more hobgoblins. I decided to rather go for foxes.

When I focused on the compass yet again, the menu became horizontal and showed a single arrow pointing towards my left. When I turned in any direction, it still pointed to that particular direction. So I take it that to my left is north. As the mountains were towards the north, as were the foxes and goblins, I just followed the arrow.

After walking a little while and killing two more hobgoblins, I spotted five foxes. Wow. They were all together. This would be annoying. One of them spotted me and let out a bark (?) and all of them stared at me, two of them pounced towards me, but got hit by my mace instead. This time three of them pounced together but met the same end.

They were faster than hobgoblins and gathered in groups, which is probably why they were E rank. Otherwise I found them as weak as hobgoblins. I wonder where their mana stones were located? I scrutinized them carefully. They looked like foxes and were the size of a regular dog, around two feet if they stood on their hind legs and a little less than a foot tall on their fours. Their fur was rough and orange while their bellies and limbs were white. The tip of their tails were brown like the tip of their ears.

They had sharp teeth and claws, longer than hobgoblins but shorter than goblins. I decided to pierce the location between their two arms, that is the right hand side of their chests. Bingo. Got a mana stone. Similar to the hobgoblins except their stone was a lighter pinkish purple. I could clearly make out the difference between their mana stone and the ones from the hobgoblins. I wonder why there was a change in color?

After putting all the stones in the item box I set out in search of more foxes, while continuing north. I found another pack of five, but easily killed them and got another level up. I realized that to get to level 6 I now required 70 exp, instead of the presumed 60. The requirement went up by 20 this time, instead of 10. My current exp was 10/70 and I was level 5. But what intrigued me was my skill menu. It was blinking. When I focused on it:

[Skills:

Mace AoE: Hit multiple targets with a sweeping gesture. 50% chance of knock back. Proficiency: level 2. MP: 10.

Mace CC: Bash a single target with 1% chance of stun for 3 seconds. Proficiency: level 1. MP: 5.]

So now I had two skills instead of none. So one in two hits would blow away the opponent if I used the AoE and one in hundredth chance to stun for three seconds. Both looked like good beginner skills. But why was AoE level 2 already? I thought a bit and guessed that it was probably because I used it a lot.

The skills would take 10 and 5 MP and I had a little over 50. But even without using MP I could use my mace so if I ran out of MP I'd just fight like how I have done so far. Since I want to increase my proficiency, I decided to use the skills as often as possible.

Well, let's move on. I had to kill 12 more foxes to level up. I decided not to. Let's head towards the goblins while avoiding foxes. I'm pretty sure goblins would give better exp. So I checked my compass and headed towards the goblins. I ran into a pack of four foxes so my exp filled up to 30/70. I dug out their mana stones and after a little more walking I finally spotted a goblin.

But it was already in battle with another adventurer. I noticed that he had it under control so I took a small detour and searched for more goblins. I found three of them. They were three feet tall, double the size of hobgoblins and looked the same as hobgoblins. They suddenly spotted me and rushed towards me. I wanted to increase my proficiency of mace CC so I bashed the leftmost goblin in its head. Instant death. I then sweeped my mace using the AoE. Both were knocked back. I followed through and killed both the half dead goblins. Three for three. 

Their mana stones were also located in their heart. I put all three in my item box and continued on my hunt for goblins. They gave me 10 exp each so I had to kill just one more to level up. This time I found two goblins but one was an archer. Before they noticed me I used the CC to kill the one with a club. One hit KO ["Level +1"]. Then before the archer could escape and string his bow, I killed it using another CC. I checked my status after pocketing the mana stones. And added +1 to all my stats.

I've already killed 5 goblins so that means I've completed my quest. I decided to kill 10 more goblins to level up and complete two more goblin quests. I'm sure I can kill first and accept the quest later. I would go for killing wolves but I have no idea where they are. So goblins it is.

After killing eight more goblins while heading east, I leveled up to 7. I needed 110 exp to get to 8. But I was starting to get hungry. I had already finished half a liter of water and stored the empty bottle back in my item box. I had killed a total of 13 goblins so far, but I was sure I'd find two more on my way. I looked up at the sky. It was dyed a hue of orange. The sun was close to setting, so I fastened my pace.

Killing two more goblins, I ran away from another, just to check if I could outrun a goblin. I could, very easily in fact. I finally got out of the forest a little breathless. I walked back towards the village, it barely took a minute. The familiar guard greeted me, "Identification please." I handed him my guild card. When he returned it to me he spoke, "Next time try not to cut it so close to dusk. The forest is scary at night and the monsters have an advantage. So get back before dark."

I thanked him and told him that I would be careful. I made my way to the AG. When I entered I found a few people gathered in groups discussing and saw that both the accepting queues were empty. I quickly went to the notice board and took two more goblin subjugation quest requests and headed to the designated accepting counter.

The female receptionist was different this time. I handed her my guild card and the quest requests. She took my card and frowned, "For a newbie. You should not be accepting such a difficult quest as your first quest. Please pin back up both these requests."

I replied politely, "But I have already subjugated them. I actually accepted other quests but managed to kill 10 more goblins than required so could you add these two quests?"