Raine petted Myu and stared at the forest. The trees blocked his view of the fighting, but he heard blades clash, people shout, and goblins shriek.

Kayden stood nearby, holding Guard’s reins and watching the forest like him. A few new hunters from other teams were outside the forest as well with their horses.

The loggers were some distance from the hunters. They looked relaxed, although they were obviously keeping an eye on the trees.

“You think everyone’s fine?” Raine asked.

“Probably. Ava didn’t seem like she broke a sweat fighting the elites earlier,” Kayden said. “By the way, how much did you get to see them fight?”

“Very little,” Raine said.

“I didn’t see much either, but they looked damn strong,” Kayden said. “They parry. It’s ugly as hell, but they parry. It’s nuts.”

Raine imagined what it would have been like if one of the goblins he’d fought had parried some of his blows. Maybe Hopkins would have one more dead newbie. Not a pleasant thought.

“Do you think you could fight one?” Raine asked.

“Yeah,” Kayden said. “With 150 yards, a bow, and an open plain. Otherwise I’m dead meat.”

Raine smiled. “Well, we won’t have to fight anything that dangerous anytime soon. Hopefully.”

Kayden nodded. Then he sighed and said, “God, I’d love to have a rifle right now. It would make things so much easier. No, even a pistol would be awesome.”

“If making guns isn’t Hopkins’ number one priority, it’s screwing up,” Raine said.

“Yeah. If we all had flintlocks, it would be goddamn easy to kill goblins.”

“Let’s hope Hopkins is close to making some.”

“I hope the guns don’t blow up in our faces, though.”

“That would be bad. But I’ll just leave the early testing to others,” Raine said with a shrug.

“Nah, I’d use one with a full suit of armor on.”

“Daring.”

“Damn right.”

. . . .

Ava whipped the metal ball in her hand at the elite’s chest. The monster raised its shield. Ava took the chance to swing at its legs with her metal staff. It hit the goblin’s shin, and the monster fell. She wasted no time—holding her staff with both hands, she smashed the goblin’s head.

Nearby, June was fighting two regular goblins. She parried a sword strike from one and countered with a backhand blow to the chest. The blade sliced through the goblin’s shabby gambeson and drew blood. Before she could deal a finishing blow, the other goblin thrust its spear at her. She knocked it aside with her shield.

Ava quickly approached and smacked the injured goblin’s helmeted head with her staff, sending it reeling. June closed the distance on the other goblin at the same time. She swung her sword at the goblin’s hand, and it dropped its spear. She finished it off with a low feint and a high cut, beheading the goblin.

“Nice,” Ava said. She finished off the goblin she’d hit.

“Thanks,” June said, breathing hard. She slowly rotated her right arm with a painful grunt.

“You hurt?”

“It’s nothing.”

Ava nodded and looked toward her other teammates. Edgar and Cecily were joining three other hunters in ganging up on a few regular goblins, who looked battered and exhausted. The experienced hunters nearby were finishing off the last elites. Over thirty goblin bodies lay on the ground. To her relief, all the Hopkins members were alive, although some were injured.

“Argh, fuck,” Marco groaned, cradling his arm.

“Suck it up. You’re barely bleeding,” Edgar said. The hunters he helped had just finished off the regular goblins.

“Fuck that. I probably broke a bone, you ass.”

“Then pour a potion on it already, moron.”

The pot calls the kettle black, Ava thought while she scanned the trees. There were no more goblins in sight.

June approached the quarreling newbies and split them up by telling Edgar to help her pick up the goblins’ weapons. Marco’s team leader, having just killed an elite, came and healed Marco’s arm with magic.

“This is going to take a while to fully heal,” his team leader said, looking far more tired after using healing magic. “Maybe a week.”

“Shit, really?” Marco asked.

“Yeah.”

Marco sighed.

Meanwhile, Ava approached the body of the elite she’d killed and picked up its long sword. It looked brand new.

Huh, not bad, she thought, inspecting the blade. Decent money, I guess.

She got down on one knee to take the scabbard off the dead goblin’s belt. Just as she finished unstrapping the scabbard from it, someone let out a cry of surprise.

On instinct, while she turned to face the direction of the sound, Ava snapped her fingers and made a steel shield she immediately used to cover herself. Her gaze landed on Marco, who was pointing at the trees with his shield in front of him.

“What is it, dumbass?” Edgar said flatly.

“There was someone up in a tree, man,” Marco said.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“Oh shut the fuck up. Someone was there just a second ago.”

“A goblin or a person?” Jared asked.

“I don’t know. They were pretty far.”

Ava squinted in the direction he’d pointed. She saw nothing but trees, grass, and undergrowth.

Jared stared at the trees for a few moments with a frown on his face.

“Forget it,” he said. “If it was an elite, it’ll know not to attack us with our strength. We’ll have four people watch the forest. Two will go tell the ones outside to bring the horses, and the rest of us will gather the loot. Let’s get this over with.”

. . . .

They headed back to Rialis City with bags full of equipment. Everyone had to carry something. Raine was stuck with a gambeson and an extra sword on his belt. Edgar had it the worst, with two shields on his back and a few spears in his javelin quiver. He didn’t complain, though, and instead seemed to be in contemplation as they made their way back.

The money from the job was good. Aside from a decent reward for the job itself, each person in Raine’s team received a little over 300 vurs from the sold loot. He used the money from the job to pay back June and Grant in full for the money they’d lent him to heal his leg.

Then he spent almost the entire evening resting in bed. He was exhausted. He failed to close the curtains, but that didn’t matter. Even with the light of the setting sun shining into his room, he fell asleep easily.

In the morning, the light of the sun pierced his eyelids and told him it was time to wake up and do more with his morning than oversleep.

Raine groaned and rolled out of bed. Let’s be productive. Money magic. I got the money magic; I need to make the most of it.

In the bathroom, he splashed water onto his face and stared at the exhausted face he saw in the mirror. Fuck, I’m tired. But I got this.

After leaving the bathroom, he began practicing his magic. Healing a minor injury had exhausted him the previous day. That was frightening, but it also gave him hope that if he improved as quickly as he could, he would be immensely helpful to his team in the next request. Also, he was pretty sure that if a goblin slit his throat or stabbed his heart, he wouldn’t have the time or mental capacity to leisurely open up his pouch, whip out a healing potion, pop off the cork, and pour the liquid over his wound.

He was hungry, but his eagerness to make money and stay alive overrode basic bodily needs. He pulled out his chair, sat down, and began his two-hour-long practice session.

Or rather, it was supposed to be two hours long. 20 minutes from completion, it was cut short by someone knocking on his door.

Son of a bitch, Raine thought, wiping the sweat off his forehead and staring at the clock. Come on, now I have to come back to this later today and finish that last 20.

He opened the door.

“Hey, let’s do this,” Edgar said without preamble. He passed Raine a piece of paper.

“What?” Raine said. “What’s this?”

He looked at the writing on the paper. It was a request. His eyes skipped right past the introduction. The block of text below began, “Five regular goblins raided a farmhouse a mile from the village of Mirham. All of them are equipped with short swords, makeshift spears, and low-quality gambesons.”

He skimmed the rest of the text. A key requirement of the request was it had to be done before Saturday. At the bottom of the paper, it stated that the reward was 250 vurs.

“We just finished a request,” Raine said. “You already want to take another one? Aren’t you tired?”

“Fuck that,” Edgar said. “While everyone else is slacking off, I’m going to work and pull ahead. That’s what you should be doing too.”

“It’s five regular goblins. Ava and June could probably kill them in five seconds. I don’t think this job is going to help us much.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Ava won’t be with us. June won’t be either.”

Raine blinked. He’s obviously moved on from tequila to some harder stuff.

“I still don’t see how this is going to help us.”

“Look, Hopkins is always trying to find the most promising people so it can throw resources at them. A receptionist told me it’s impressive when rookies take a request like this and succeed on their own this early in the newbie month. Kayden and Cecily agreed to do it. If you aren’t up for it, then we’ll go ourselves.”

Raine wanted to groan. On the bright side, it’s five goblins. Just five regular goblins. Four of us together shouldn’t have too much trouble with them, provided that we’re careful.

He thought about it for a second. Then he said with a sigh, “Alright, I’ll join. Let’s at least get extra protection before we do it, though.”

“Kayden and I bought mail shirts already. We’ll be at the front,” Edgar said.

“That’s good. But still, we need to be well-prepared. We need to know exactly what the farmhouse’s layout is like. We’ve never practiced fighting indoors either, so I’ll call over the other two soon so we can have at least some practice beforehand.”

“Alright,” Edgar said, shrugging. He took back the paper from Raine and headed into his room. “Anyway, we’ll bike to Mirham today at two o’clock.”

Raine wondered if Edgar even knew how far Mirham was. He went to his own room and opened up a map.

What the fuck, it’s almost 30 miles west of Rialis City.

Raine sighed.

This idiot. We’re going to spend hours biking before we even fight the fucking goblins.