“Yep, Jarr won’t know what hit. Just as soon as I can find the damn blighter.” At the moment Jason is wandering along the edge of the forest. It had taken him only a day and a half to get out of there. However he had now been wandering for another day and a half trying to find his target. There were a lot of goblins around but none of them were even worth his time.
Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own. Too bad for the goblins, most of whom were lower level than Jason, that only goes so far. The first half day he spent here since getting through the forest were calm enough. Now though Jason can’t seem to walk half an hour without some gaggle of goblins charging him. For someone who didn’t even have a problem fighting all the tutorial goblins at once this was a joke. Sure every group had at least one goblin at level ten or so but still.
As of this morning Jason had jogged. Stealth doesn’t matter when you're just as likely to hit a goblin as not when you throw a rock over your shoulder. This isn’t even hyperbole. The previous day around noon Jason gotten bored and tried it. Out of five throws he hit a lone goblin three of the times. They infested this place beyond belief. The only reason it is still a plains instead of a desert is they seem to avoid eating the kneehigh grass. Not that Jason can blame them. Stuff is tough as boot leather and textured like sandpaper.
Noon has come and gone while Jason wanders. His only lead is that Jarr likes to go it alone. Something that must be quite hard in this place. Non-sentient goblins naturally gather around stronger goblins. As Jarr is a boss any goblin within a mile will swarm on him. To be alone would mean he must be not only avoiding others but killing those that find him as well.
That in mind Jason has been going in whatever direction had less goblins. Now at sunset on his second full day in the plains, he was close. No goblins had attacked him in the last hour and the ever present noise of lone goblins scratching the dirt in search for bugs was gone. With how late it was Jason makes camp with the plan to finish things tomorrow. The night passes peaceful enough. Only twice did Jason have to get up and kill some goblins. Much better than the last two nights which where more fighting than sleeping.
Jason stretches and lets Lily out to eat and frolic. He hadn’t even bothered to take her out with how hostile the area was. Jason was honestly safer here than in town but a level one rabbit? Not so much. He feels bad for her as she isn’t getting enough exercise but will have to make it up to here later.
Now ready Jason sets out at a ground eating jog. Though soon he finds that his estimations on how far he needed to go to find Jarr was quite wrong. Something seems to have cleared the area of any goblins. It does make some sense. After all, if the moment you find a goblin free area Jarr was in the middle he wouldn’t catch anyone. For the guild to put up a quest he would need to make a nuisance of himself.
Noon comes and goes before Jason finds something. There is a goblin corpse underneath a tree. With how the game works that means this is a fresh kill and by how there is nothing else here it had to be Jarr. While goblins are aggressive and will fight each other, this area doesn’t contain enough of them to have that happen.
Jason crouches down by the corpse and examines the area. By the blood marks that have to fade it seems the goblin died by being flung into the tree. With that Jason finds were the grass has been knocked over. It looks like the fight took place a decent distance away from the tree but the goblin tried to flee at some point. There are a couple marks that might be where some dead bodies had rested till they despawned.
Jason turns back to the tree and the goblin body that was there took the chance to disappear while he had looked away. He shakes his head at this; the System loves to despawn stuff when no one is looking. Then Jason sighs, with the sudden despawn this was an older fight. Though things are looking up. While bodies and such go away, the grass will stay bent and blood takes much longer to go away. For this very reason actually. Hard to track something if the tracks magically disappear in a few minutes.
The tracks lead back the way he had come from. Jason has a desire to facepalm. They had at some point passed right by each other. For all he knew Jarr might have been asleep in the grass just steps away at some point. With a sigh, he follows the tracks. As luck would have it though he soon catches up with whoever left them.
Jason can hear something in front of him that moves in a very unstealthy way. He ducks down and approaches whatever it is. Through the grass Jason spots a goblin. Not close enough to inspect but that doesn’t matter. The two defining features he was told about Jarr was one, he liked to go it alone. Lack of other goblins fawning over it covers that base, and two, a full body tattoo. While Jason cannot tell if the goblin’s tattoo is fully full body as it where. He can see it covers everything visible. The goblin in front of him has to be Jarr. A goblin warboss stuck at the third bottleneck. Best of all it doesn’t know Jason is behind it yet. Jarr won’t fall to a single sneak attack of course. The game isn’t that realistic but this provides the best chance to beat it and survive.
TFTC!