Chapter 323: Goblin Hunting

The following morning, Kalli had been half expecting to hear that someone had already managed to awaken as an advanced form of mage using the spell circles that they were teaching at the Academy to anyone interested in magic.

Instead, what she woke up to was predawn light and a blaring alarm from the watch towers informing her that there was a raid in progress.

The southern coastal tower was reporting a Goblin raid from within the woods. The creatures had rushed out to try to steal food from the fields, and had been caught by the guards’ optics. So, a hail of gunfire had chased the small green monsters back into the woods, but had failed to get them all before they lost line of sight.

But that gave Kalli the perfect excuse to set a quest.

{Goblin Hunting} Easy Difficulty. Find the Goblin encampment and kill at least 3 Goblins. Individual quest, kills will be evenly distributed between group members.

So, they would have to kill fifteen for a five person group to get the reward.

That wasn’t bad, and it allowed every class to go out and participate. Though, the residents of Marimgar were used to doing all things dangerous as a group anyhow.

Nobody worked alone.

But the threat today was goblins, and it would be overkill to send their best teams out to hunt them. Instead, they split them up.

One member at level twelve or higher, and four members below level five. Same composition as usual, with at least one tank and one healer. That way, if there was something dangerous with the Goblins, or the numbers were higher than expected, they had a solid fighting chance.

They had all done the Goblin dungeon if they were going, which was set in Marimgar, fighting in city streets. So, the enemy would be familiar to them, and they had some confidence in their ability.

Likewise, they were under no illusions that the Goblins would put up any sort of fair fight.

They were not strong in a conventional sense, but they were tricky, and they were happy to set traps, lay ambushes, and sacrifice their own to get an advantage. Fighting Goblins was never as straightforward as you hoped it would be.

Still, it felt somehow normal to be sending out teams to hunt Goblins and protect the city’s fields, as if that was something that they were planning to do all along.

It was a difficult thing to explain, but after spending so many days fighting goblins in the dungeon, which simulated the city environment, fighting them outside the city just felt natural to everyone.

It was also the first new mission that they’d had in some time, and the teams headed out were on extra high alert, just in case they had gotten sloppy.

That was everyone’s greatest concern.

To see that the heroes were taking Goblins seriously brought a smile to Kalli’s face. A smile that made the other people in the room very nervous.

"Is there something wrong, Coordinator?" One of the cooks asked.

"No, it’s just good to see that everyone is taking things seriously, even though Goblins aren’t a high level threat. I get the feeling that this might be just the start for Marimgar, now that the ascendancy of the planet seems to have begun.

If I’m not wrong, I think that this might actually be the last of the beginner phase trials.

What comes next is uncertain, but I think that it’s going to be very different than what we’ve been doing. See how the world is normalizing at a higher power level now that we have reached the fifth trial?

That’s our new normal, I think."

The Cook frowned as he realized what Kalli was thinking of.

"But it’s not all bad, is it? If we’re just going to be seeing bacon and goblins, and the world is slowly coming up to a higher level cap. We’re adapting fast enough, I think. If we’re going to have to live in a more dangerous world, so be it.

As long as we have our advantage, and the city of Marimgar, we are on our way to adapting to any world that they send us to."

From the doorway, Gerry laughed. "That’s the spirit. We can adapt to anything. Even when our signature dishes start overloading everyone with energy. Though, if we don’t start getting someone to ascended Rank soon, I’m going to have to start watering down the soup."

Kalli laughed at the thought, because that was something that they were already doing for the vast majority of the population.

But it was changing as more people reached the minimums for System Access, and could absorb the extra energy.

"Keep the recipes as they are for now. I think that the extra energy might actually help. We might need to watch our portions for a while, but I’m fairly certain that eating foods with a high enough energy content for our desired status is part of the optimal path.

Remember what it was like when we got transfers who hadn’t been doing it?

We might become like that, stuck in a rut, if we don’t start to up our energy intake in advance," Kalli explained.

Gerry considered the options, and nodded. "I will put a note on the wall in the dining hall. We all know the food has increased in energy if it’s been harvested in the past few days. Fortunately, we have other options in storage, for those with sensitive stomachs."

"They’ll get over it, I’m sure. If not, they will learn what foods are safe enough. We still use a lot of ingredients from the dungeons, and that hasn’t changed," Kalli agreed.

Gerry nodded. "That is true, the Rat King Dungeon has not changed, nor have the drops in it. The world outside is what is changing, so we can still balance our recipes if we need a specific energy level."

"Then I wish you the best of luck with that. And with whatever those teams bring back, because only a few of them are going to find Goblins, and the rest aren’t going to want to come back empty handed."