Hah, yeah right. Just a novice warrior? Jason sneers at the thought of needing stealth for such a small fry. A quick dash at it followed through with a nice shoulder bash causes quite the splash. In the pound behind it that is.

Jason notes that no damage numbers appear. This pleases him quite a bit as he doesn’t know anymore if he didn’t deal any or the setting he changed was just working. With a quick smirk he then deals with the rest of the normal goblins while the little warrior splashes around.

The novice warrior finally gets out of the water and howls. If Jason hadn’t cleared the nearby area, this might be cause for concern. As it is Jason just finishes it off quicker to shut it up. This final goblin runs at him, dagger at ready to stab.

Jason steps in and swipes his arm, redirecting the stab. With the attack prevented he quickly wraps the thrust out arm under his own trapping it. Following through on that Jason brings his other arms elbow right into its temple knocking it out. This leaves the goblin defenseless to a quick finisher.

At this point Jason can feel what that tricky ‘Body/Mind Unification’ bit of his cultivation skill does. Before he was getting hurt by even common goblins. It wasn’t because he couldn’t see the attacks coming but because the game was prevent fine control of his body. The game seems to replicate the body down to the smallest detail but he can now tell it isn’t, really. At least not for low level stuff. It’s the difference between being able to raise your eyebrows and to wiggle them.

Happy with this discovery Jason decides to challenge himself and heads even further into goblin territory to find a village. Not the hardest thing to do mind you. Feral goblins tend to just set up villages like mold on bread.

It isn’t long before a ‘village’ is discovered. Of course only in the loosest of terms. With 5 basic huts set up around a big campfire and a number of holes in the ground it was the classic goblin homestead. Now was the actual time for stealth. Tutorial aside, being rushed by a horde of goblins doesn’t work out well for anyone this low a level.

Through the dying foliage Jason crawls. From tree to tree he circles the place taking a count and the numbers are a bit bleaker than expected. Not a single regular goblin lives here. It seems only once they advance beyond that are they allowed to stay at this village. 31 novice warriors, 8 initiate warriors, 3 novice witch doctors, and the big threat of a single initiate witch doctor, discernable by the human skull he uses for a helmet. Yeah, goblin witch doctor advancement is an interesting path.

‘Luckily this village doesn’t have any support goblins. Just one initiate blacksmith would turn this into an impossible nightmare. Sharp rusty daggers do not a happy Jason make. With this though I need to work on shaving off a few. I have to wonder how they respond to regular goblins running around their place.’. Having thought of something to try, Jason heads back into the forest to find some regular goblins.

Time passes and the goblin village is relatively peaceful when suddenly loud shrieking can be heard. Not far off the novice warriors on lookout spots a lone goblin running all out towards them. Not being the friendly type the warrior shouts at the approaching goblin to make it go away. Seemingly unaware of the threat that regular gob keeps running. The warrior raises its dagger and waves it around but not even this works. This goblin is just out of it and runs straight through the small village.

Not willing to take this affront to their might a nearby initiate warrior points at a handful of novices and yells at them pointing at the escaping goblin. At first they just look at each other proding one another to go first. The initiate doesn’t take this very well. One well placed rock throw and a dead goblin gets them all moving as 7 run off in chase.

Through the woods they go. In no time at all they have left the village behind though they are catching up to the normal goblin. It is already breathing hard and starting slow down but it doesn’t get the chance to recover. The novices have caught up to it and begin to just beat it down with their fists. Far as they are concerned this punk got in their way of lazing about and needs a beating before they finish him.

Unseen by them as they beat up the poor goblin Jason sneaks up on the group. Finally the normal goblin expires despite the attempts at prolonging its pain. At that very moment the novice at the back falls over. The rest don’t notice anything as it gets dragged away by a rope around its neck. Soon it disappears into a nearby bush and a low noise of bones breaking can be heard.

Once more Jason throws his makeshift lasso. This time while he does manage to get it around the goblins neck his target screams in shock. With the element of surprise soon to be gone he gives up on the stealth kill and yanks the rope hard. While not killing the goblin it is out of it for the fight and likely to suffocate if left to itself.

The 5 remaining novices all turn towards the bush and ready their weapons. Sadly one of them won't get the chance to use it as Jason practically flies out of the bush in a leaping tackle. He manages to take the gobbo down and quickly snap it neck before the others can respond.

With the ground not being the most advantageous location Jason grabs the corpse under him and pulls it on top of himself just in time to hear a number of daggers pierce it.

Taking that as a good sign he swings the corpse around like a flail. This doesn’t hit any of them but does force them to back away giving him a chance to stand up. Now not need the posthumously bleeding shield Jason tosses it at the farthest goblin knocking it over. Then follows that up with a spinning kick to the closest goblins face. Its head turning much to far to be healthy.

The three standing goblins finally get to attack Jason straight on. This doesn’t do them much good as he fends off one and ducks away from the other two towards the goblin now under his ‘shield’. Once near the struggling novice a quick stomp to the neck makes sure it won't be getting up.

Suddenly a stabbing pain goes through his back. One of the remaining goblins managed to get a good swipe on his back.

*-3*

Not happy with this Jason swings around with his elbow and rams it right into the offending goblins gut. Pulling his arm back as the goblin folds over he finishes it off with another elbow, this one to the neck which conveniently came down to meet it.

The two remaining goblins both look at each other before running off screaming in fear. Jason runs off after them and manages to catch one but the other gets away. Luckily it wasn’t running towards the village. This likely does put a time limit on thinning the herd. Then again having 7 novices not return would have done that anyway. Sighing in disappointment Jason goes back and finishes off the lassoed goblin.

Akhier

Things I wanted to mention but didn’t:

The literal third eye on non-feral goblins isn’t because of some interesting ingame reason. Literally the reason they have it is that a certain subset of players are very much a fan of the goblins racial trait and so pushed for the eye to make them more comfortable. Basically a bunch of tinkerers with a penchant for self modification. Specifically they cyborg themselves up with a nifty third eye. When humans were first figuring out nerve signals to the level that allows for their VR an interesting quirk was discovered. The brain (in this world, I have no clue about irl) is easier to add to on those basic levels instead of change. Making the brain understand special vision modes from the classic eye nerves took longer at the time to sort out while just adding a whole new eye cut down the recovery and relearning time. Current tech doesn’t have that problem but people, specifically the tinkerer community likes to add a third eye for the looks and tradition.

Anyway civilized goblins have the ‘Mad Tinkerer’ quirk which basically lets them make advanced tech even if it is explained with magic of sorts. Better it is the more restricted to the point where a somewhat decent gun can only be used by the maker. Originally the goblins just had 2 eyes but as the Tinkerer community took hold of them they brought up that ‘losing’ an eye was disturbing for them and so eventually the game made a quest to separate goblins into the ferals and civilized. Overall the community saw it as a positive thing as it made it much easier to know which goblins to let into towns.