The Kelekona mountains were a wide mountain range located northwest of the city. None of the mountains there were particularly tall, but the expansive area that it spans is more than enough to build cities multiple times over. Of course, with its jagged terrain and infertile soil, no sane person would want to start civilization here.

Thanks to the lack of civilization, the mountains should have become a suitable place for monsters or beasts to inhabit, yet none chose to do so. Several people have theorized that it was due to insufficient food sources, or various other reasons, but it seemed that the true answer has finally been revealed.

‘It’s most likely the dungeon’ Kayden thought. ‘Any place the undead touches becomes unsuitable lands to live in.’

The reason for this was because of mana, which can drastically affect the surrounding environment. Young Kayden had always wondered why the Southern Continent was a hot desert while the Northern Continent had freezing temperatures, and his master had explained it to him. It’s because of mana! Fire-type mana makes places hotter while ice-type mana makes places cooler.

“It seems that death-type mana has spread to the surroundings, rendering the place completely inhabitable. Not the entire mountain range, but a large part of it, which is enough to ruin all this land.”

Ezekiel, who could see extremely far distances at various angles, explained. He had most likely just taken an actual good look at the surrounding terrain.

“Oh, something like nuclear radiation?”

The System asked a curious question, which Kayden had no answer to.

“What’s that? New-clear radiation?”

“...Nevermind.”

Ignoring the System and its complicated vocabulary, he shifted his attention to the road in front of him. So far, despite being warned, they had not encountered a single goblin. It had been nearly six hours since they left the city, and not once did those smelly, green runts appear.

‘Man, I was hoping to earn a little bit of money on the way.’

“I-I’m worried…” Cathy whispered to Alice, but Kayden still overheard. “Where could they have gone?”

He considered the question. The most likely answer that he could come up with was that the adventurers before them had already cleared them up. If that was the case, any goblins they might meet would be in far smaller groups than what Kayden was used to dealing with, which unfortunately meant lesser money for him.

‘Oops! My master told me about this. I should prioritize safety over gold.’

Either way, his safety should be assured, for this time he had a party. Having more numbers on his side meant that he could bite off more than he could chew without much worry, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

“Ah~ My legs are hurting~ Can’t we take a break?” Alice moaned, her voice annoying and whiny in the first place.

‘…You aren’t carrying anything! You’re a C-ranked adventurer! You should have already gotten used to this kind of thing! Don’t you have a staff to use as a walking stick? You’re better off than the rest of us!’

Ezekiel didn’t seem to agree with Kayden’s inner thoughts, for he immediately called for a break afterward. Kayden couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow as they walked off the road and into the forest by their side. This was the forest that they would have to cut through, before reaching the mountain where the dungeon is located.

Thanks to Ezekiel’s ability, they easily found some tree stumps to sit on. Judging by the black soot stain reminiscent of a campfire right in the middle, this place seemed to have been used by adventurers quite a while ago. The trees surrounding them made good shade from the sun, though it wasn’t as scorching as it had been a few hours ago.

The party members each found a stump to sit on and gladly took their breaks. Kayden was still giving Alice the stink eye when something caught his attention. On a tree stump not so far away from his, Alice was helping support Cathy to take a seat, and he once again noted their close relationship.

But that wasn’t what caught his attention. What he noticed was that Alice barely even looked tired, only a few droplets of sweat and nothing more. Cathy, on the other hand, was drenched and was panting heavily as if she had just run a marathon.

‘Did she perhaps…?’

Before Kayden could even finish that thought, Ezekiel shot up and shouted,

“Goblins approaching from the northwest! Prepare yourselves!”

Only one thing entered his mind once he heard those words. Money! Following Ezekiel’s lead, the rest of the party followed suit, preparing to engage in battle.

Louis took out his beloved greatsword and held it in front of him, Ezekiel readied his bow and arrow, Kayden whipped out his knives, and Cathy struggled a bit to stand up. Alice leisurely picked up her staff and slowly got her from her stump. She didn’t look the slightest bit fazed about the whole situation and even motioned for Cathy herself to sit down.

Darting between the trees for cover were a group of goblins, charging toward them with makeshift spears in their hands. These little green idiots were a familiar sight to Kayden since he hunted them for a living. They were humanoid midgets with green skin, yellows eyes, and pointy ears and noses. Their clothing was mostly made of rags and scraps of cloth, and their weapons were merely a stick and pointy rock tied together. It has been hotly debated whether or not these creatures were sapient beings or simply monsters, and what most people agreed upon was that they were both.

“There’s seven of them!”

Kayden was about to rush forth to meet the walking bags of copper when the sounds of their shrill battle cries made their way to his ears.

“CHARGE!!!”

“HUMAN! FOOD!”

“SHINYYY!!!”

‘They're speaking… Common? Since when could they do that? They aren’t supposed to be that intelligent!’

That was when a blue notification popped up.

[Translating Goblin to Common…]

“Seriously? W-wait guys, hold on!”

The eyes of his party members were all drawn to him at that one moment. Kayden had an unthinkable idea. Maybe he could communicate with the goblins. If Matou could speak and understand Common all thanks to the System, then it probably meant that other languages weren’t out of the realm of possibility.

“Why exactly are we holding on?” Louis asked.

“I think I can understand them! Let me speak—”

“Oh, not this again!” Kayden looked over at the source of the voice, and surprise surprise, it was Alice. “First, you keep talking to yourself! Now, you are claiming you can speak to goblins? Goblins! For Gods’ sake! They aren’t even intelligent creatures.”

Alice sounded very angry and Kayden couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. Why would she get angry for something wrong over this small issue? He was merely stating a possibility and idea.

Kayden was about to retort, but Alice didn’t give him the chance to do so. Kayden could see streams of red light flow into the crystal of the staff she held as the surrounding temperature noticeably rose to an uncomfortable level.

“Burn my foes with pinpoint accuracy. Let them feel the wrath of a blazing inferno!”

The red light converged into a singular white-hot ball that was as bright as the sun. Kayden immediately flinched when merely gazing upon it.

“Blazing Serpent!”

In the next moment, what looked to be a fiery snake burst forth from the blue crystal, emanating a wave of heat not unlike the fire he experienced first-hand from Matou. It launched itself towards the goblins like a snake, rearing its head before striking.

Spell name:

Blazing Serpent

Tier:

2

Description:

A concentrated jet of flames that move at the user’s will. Burns any target. Can be used as restraints. Can melt stone.

Alice skillfully manipulated the flames to coil around the trees and directly hit the goblins. Seeing the stream of fire weave in and out between the trees, picking off goblins with each moment, reminded Kayden of a living serpent moving through the brush to hunt its prey.

‘Welp. Guess my plans for a potential peaceful resolution had gone up in smoke.’

[-42!]

[-50!]

[-38!]

The goblins themselves were not having a good day. Their bodies were roasting alive, and a pungent and burnt smell began polluting the air around them. To make it even worse, Kayden could hear their desperate screams… and understood them.

“IT BURNS!!!”

“I HAVE A FAMILY—NOOOOO!!!”

“AHHH—ooh, crispy!”

“You know, if these are the kinds of things I would hear from translating the Goblin language… Maybe I should never have tried to understand them in the first place…” Kayden said, with a blank look on his face.

“R-right…” the System quietly replied.

A single goblin suddenly came bursting out of the trees, its clothes were on fire and there was a look of fear and desperation on its face. The trepidation in its eyes was clear for all to see.

“At least… Take you down… With me!”

With a spear in its hand, it took its final steps towards Kayden, before collapsing onto the ground, the spear still tightly gripped in his tiny fingers.

Thanks to the System automatically appraising things that try to engage him in a fight, he got a good look at the goblin’s stats.

Name:

Gobta

Race:

Goblin

Level:

19

Health:

0/58

Mana:

14/14

Status:

Burnt, Dead

‘She can kill goblins near-instantly, without even breaking a sweat! My fastest record was seven seconds for a goblin… but she took out seven in roughly the same time… She’s pretty powerful…’

Kayden felt a shiver run down his spine. This was the woman she offended? He was lucky that he didn’t get on the wrong side of the staff.

“Well, that was unfortunate. If you had dealt at least some damage, you would have gotten a bit of Exp.”

“Exp?”

“Experience!”

Kayden slapped his forehead. How could he have forgotten? One of the reasons he wanted to fight goblins was to gain experience to trigger more level-ups. That was currently the fastest way to grow stronger for him.

Speaking of his reasons, he also wanted money. One copper is given for every goblin’s right ear, and there were seven in front of them, ripe for the picking.

‘Seven copper ain’t much, but it’s still worth something.’

With a shout of glee, he hopped towards the charred corpses to harvest some ears. With His index finger and thumb, he pinched the ear of a goblin and held the edge of his blade against the root of the ear.

Unfortunately, the moment he applied any semblance of force upon the ear, it crumbled— No, disintegrated into tiny chunks of flesh. That was putting it lightly, it looked more like dust than anything. Kayden stared at the charred pieces within his palm, his face unreadable.

“My… my money…”

“Alright! Now that that’s done with. Let’s get back to our break.” Alice patted the tree stump beside her, “Come here and rest, Cathy!”

And so, the first battle the party participated in together came to an anti-climactic end. Ezekiel didn’t care much, but Louis was as disappointed as Kayden.

“Aw… I wanted to test if my beloved weapon still works as intended. Who knows what the blacksmith did to my weapon…”

Kayden had no choice but to abandon the bodies and went back dejectedly to his stump. He was robbed. There is no fairness in this world. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied on the person who caused all this in the first place. Alice was sitting beside Cathy, happily chatting away.

“Appraise.”

Kayden didn’t miss the side-eye that Ezekiel gave him as soon as he said the A-word. He gave him a small wink before focusing his attention on the blue screen that popped up.

Name:

Alice

Title:

Whiny mouth. Scorched Rose.

Level:

17

Health:

153

Mana:

388

Job:

Fire mage

“Her estimated PMDN is D/B/E/D. As we saw just now, she’s a very powerful mage, but not much else. She’ll be useless against an assassination attempt from you.”

He once again analyzed a member of his party. Strength-wise, Kayden had nothing to complain about. Out of all five members of the party, she was the only one who had a B rank under either the Physical and Magical Prowess categories. She was only considered a C-ranked adventurer because she was lacking in other areas, but Kayden believed that her strength more than makes up for it.

Like the System had said, she was prone to sneak attacks, and fire wasn’t exactly the most versatile element. Fire magic was also not uncommon, which means that she is very replaceable, though you would be hard-pressed to find anyone her level within Dragonsteel city.

Moving on to her personality, which Kayden had grown to dislike, she was very whiny and always complaining, but he had noticed something earlier which may have been the reason for that.

‘From what I can tell, Cathy is not very good at speaking and can be very shy. Maybe Alice is helping voice Cathy’s thoughts, and is disguising them as her own complaints?’

If that was the case, maybe he had judged her a little too harshly. However, she definitely could still have spoken in a more polite tone. Even if she was helping voice someone else’s thoughts, there was zero need for her to annoy the hell out of others.

‘Maybe it’s just part of her personality? She’s also the only one out of the four to not share their last name… Hmm…'