Past the audacious wilderness of the fraudulently dark and wet forest, thrived a community of humans; living in their stone homes, surrounded by cracked crusted roads, which raised enough dirt in the air during times of moderately strong winds to hide everything in its light brown cloud.

It wasn’t a city but a town, with enough manpower encrusting the town’s shallow trenches, and its low walls, to maintain the flow of adventurers and fools uninterrupted.

This town, though small, has everything: three inns -separated based on their price and customers- a separate posh pub, a red district, a business street or market, and an adventurers guild where the most elite(members with the minimum age of five) completed diabolically hard tasks; like, catching rats in granny Shasha’s shop, bringing herbs from the outskirts of the horrifying forest, catching thief’s under the nights curse, etc, etc; to help the citizens of the town and the kingdom or to simply fill their pockets and raise their reputation, and their status in the guild.

Right when the sun was hovering above the town's center, hoarding one of the corner tables of its guilds private inn, a group of men and women sat whispering to each other.

The group consisted of four real adventurers and a rookie; One unusually short girl of age fifteen with silver hair and brown skin, who wore a white, somewhat dirty gown; another girl of sixteen, with red hair tied in a ponytail, wearing tight brown leather shorts with straps hanging from her hips, a white t-shirt covering just her chest, and a black furry jacket with its front open; last female of the group was a woman wearing tight green spandex like pants accentuating her supple thighs and a light red leather armor over her torso filled to its maximum elastic potential by her unmatched breasts, a white bone bow on the table in front of her, and matching metallic arrows in the quiver on the floor by her chair; first of the only two men was a burly man in his twenties, possibly thirties, covered from neck to toe in repaired and polished steel armor, a long but light single handed sword strapped on his back, and a gleaming, yet, tarnished and battered shield lying on his lap; last of the group, a teenager of late, was the most excited of them. He was smiling, making jokes and even punching the shoulders of the archer who was clearly not in the mood.

“Are we doing it or not?” said the burly man, his right hand twirling his grey mustache.

“That’s the idea, but I don’t know if he’s ready or not.” answered the archer.

“Come on Gwen, I told you I can handle some goblins! Besides, you all have hunted them tens of times; so even if something went wrong, it’s not like you all won’t be able to help me escape, right?” chided the teenage, completely unaware of the mood.

“Why do we need him Romana? Why now, when you perfectly understand we are not doing so great ourselves.” said the burly man; his eyes staring between the boy and the girl in a white t-shirt, looking tired.
“I know we are going through tough times,” said Romana the red-headed girl, “but that’s because we challenged the golems even though I was against it, and then you all made perfect fuckups. We lost most of our stash to it, but do you find me complaining? I understand you all were feeling stuffed and strangled hunting the D-rank monsters even though we are already a C-ranked party, but there’s a reason I didn’t want you all to go butt heads with C-ranked monsters yet, let’s just forget about it. You all forced the fight on me, now consider this my retaliation. We’ll help him grow whether you all agree or not.”

“But-”
“Cough…Cough…”
“Ah, forget it. So, for how long is he going to drag us in the dregs of goblins and slimes?” asked Gwen the archer, her face twitching splendidly as the boy winked at her.

“Doesn’t matter; we are going to help him until he can fight for himself.” Romana let out feeling slightly winded.
“Big sis,” The silvered hair girl spoke for the first time. “Why him though? I mean… he’s…”
“Because he’s the horse which will cart us to the top,”

*******

A week or so later, in the middle of the night, with the moon slowly moving behind the cover of glorified clouds, or with the clouds moving in front of the still moon, glowing warmly onto the deep-dark wonder, the noise of nocturnal festival rang and echoed like any other normal night.

But it was in the pit of this flourishing forest where the lantern light of human society struggling at its edges never reached; far north-east from the dungeon, nearer to the mountainous jaws seriating at the valley end, a different, much cheaply evolved group of green-skinned carnivorous animals with monsterish features hoarded the space.

The activity festering in the deeper depths of the shoddy camp couldn’t be observed from outside, but the altogether quiet of the deception which bedded together with the silently echoing moans screeched upon the world, gave enough details to allow any listener to imagine the consequences of moving unarmed into this place, all alone, in the blindness provided by the dark; but, such could only be the thoughts of the weak and the cowardly who hadn’t fought and struggled enough in their lives to differentiate between a death zone and an opportunity.

Meanwhile, people like this group of adventurers -three Ladies: The confident and young leader-Romana, her focused and bountiful archer- Gwen, and a scrawny little priest in a white gown of the name- Cloud; and two men- first one, a mass of muscle tightly packed inside an armor of patched steel, and the other male, a boy who was nervous and created a cacophony louder than the insects roaming around him.

“Just remember, we aren’t on a job to eradicate the goblins from the forest. We are only here for the rookie to gain experience in hunting goblins. So if you all can, don’t try to cause too much ruckus and bring the hobo king outside.” Romana said looking at the five goblins guarding outside the wooden fence securing the camp: one was snacking on a human leg, two were grumbling to each other with stone-tipped spears in their hands, one was sleeping without a care in the world, and the last one -the only one wearing enough armor made of suntanned hide stitched with human skin to cover his chest and waist- looked into the forest with a sense of focus which was even difficult to find in humans, much less in goblins.

All of them stealthily peeked at the fidgeting rookie to see his reactions and weren’t disappointed in the least bit with their prediction. If his shivering legs could speak they would tell a tale of how scared he was, but his new friends had enough experience to understand everything without him saying such things. Seeing his nervous self, Romana stealthily nodded to Gwen to start the act- the same one they had used to rope the steel guardian Eric into their group when they were still only a D-rank group of three girls.

“It works for me.” Gwen said and reluctantly added, “I’ll crush his dangling tusk if he dared to come out…”
“You still remember-” mumbled the warrior shying away. His eyes twitched as he animatedly spoke, remembering the night the girls had asked for his help to kill some Goblins. He pitied the boy slightly thinking about the time he spent thinking he was a hero in their eyes, while he had actually been dancing in the tune they played for him all alone.

‘I hope you survive this tribulation. I don’t know how low she will go, I just hope you won’t end up losing your libido to her antics.’

“Nobody forgets being tied to a tree and being stripped naked while being watched by horny goblins ready to pounce on you like animals. My heart isn’t made of stone.” Red crept onto Gwen’s face as she somehow finished her lines; feeling abused, she gave her leader a stern stare, who silently apologized to her, and then they waited with anticipation for the rookie to take the bait.

The rookie, who had been sheepishly withdrawing and helplessly staring between the goblins and them, suddenly jerked his head to look at the Gwen with his eyes wide open.

“Wait, what did you say?” He said. His once nervous gaze now filled with a different kind of struggle.

The warrior gave him a pitying gaze, hiding his concern deep behind the curtain of nonchalance before turning back to pat Gwen’s shoulder and say, “Don’t worry about the past and your old mates-”

“Those animals are not my mates!” She cried. Her voice though not very loud, was strong and harsh enough to rebound rookie’s young heart with a sense of tragic loss.

“You…you were…” they continued their act paying no attention to the joker who now fumed with anger- ready to run into the group of goblins and start beheading them.

“But we are. Aren’t we big sis?” the little priest also made her presence noted before quickly backing away, gleaming with a sense of pride for saying her lines without fumbling.

The archer truly sighed, thinking, ‘We are truly going to hell for deceiving him.’ and ruffled the little priest’s hair.

 “How could they- those pestering sons of bitches!!” The rookie stood up steaming, his sword gleaming with murderous intent under the moonlight. He almost ran toward the goblin guards but was pulled back by the guardian before he could, and was made to sit back down behind the cover of shrubs and thistles.

“Don’t be angry. It happened in the past because of her old teammates… let’s not talk about it. What you need to remember is to kill the goblins. Don’t hesitate. Kill them without mercy, alright?”

Romana almost laughed out loud seeing him acting like a concerned hero ready to save the damsel in distress. Tears in her eyes she looked away to control her spilling emotions. Gwen gritted her teeth and kicked her in secret to make her keep the act, but also felt her stomach tickle upon seeing his serious face.

“Alright, if you are ready-”
“I- I am.”

“Then here’s the plan.”

The young boy was first fed a home cooked pot of malicious emotions to steel his heart to give him a reason, a false sense of righteousness, so he wouldn’t back down when the moment to kill arrived, for he had been just a regular everyday normal farmer; and then, while his sense of false bravado was at its peak, was given a position of enough importance to make him feel in constant dread of death, while also keeping him safe from actual death.

During the silence of midnight, when the goblin guards almost entered a daze under the spell of sleep, the Romana signaled the Eric to commence the attack.

“Let’s do it.” Slowly, they stood up and only just started sneaking toward the goblins when the hero suddenly stopped and looked behind into the tree branches.

“What happened?” Romana whispered.

“I don’t know. I just felt something-” he replied still looking
“Where?” Gwen asked and looked in the direction he pointed, but found nothing out of sort.

“It’s the forest and its spawns, nothing more. Now, come on, we have a hunt to perform.” Romana said, looking with them into the forest sprawling to unknown lengths behind them, before turning around. They had almost sneaked into the cover of darkness provided by the canopy of trees when she looked behind once again toward a specific branch and winked, before turning her head back and walking away with the others for just another night of goblin hunting.