Merlin stepped out of the city and onto the wide paved road. The land that immediately surrounded him was a vast field of barley. There were a couple farmhouses dotted around in the distance.
Merlin continued down the road, there were a few diverging paths off the main road, although they weren't paved at all. They just seemed to be easily traversable paths through the vast fields that allowed access to the farmhouses, they were quite wide and could easily fit two wagons that were both on the larger side.
As Merlin continued down the road, he noticed that the field abruptly stopped, leaving a large dirt path separating the farmland from the wide river that cut through the road.
There were plenty of fishermen who were sitting along the dirt path, quite a few were fishing from the stone bridge that connected the road to the other side of the river. Merlin received a friendly greeting from many of the fishermen as he crossed the bridge, to which he responded in kind.
He noticed that several of the large baskets the fishermen were using to store fish in were almost full, it seemed the river had an abundance of fish, or they were just very active this early in the morning.
Gazing down the river, he could see that a lot of the field was built alongside the river, and it continued down as far as he could see. There was even more farmland on the other side of the river, although it seemed to be more than just a large field of barley, there were even pens full of livestock.
Merlin eventually made his way past the farmland, and while continuing down the paved road, the surrounding area shifted from farmland to vast rolling hills. This area was considered a safe hunting ground, as much like the grasslands that spawned wild hares in the beginner village, this area spawned nothing but wild boars, and there weren't any obvious threats of other monsters in the area.
The wild boars respawned fairly quickly and were a great source of meat and hide. But unlike the wild hares, wild boars weren't pushovers, and would grievously harm any unprepared individual who approached them while believing they would be.
There was also the threat of a giant variant of wild boar occasionally spawning, which would prove a challenge for a single individual that struggled against the regular variant.
Merlin noticed that a small group of individuals were running around the area killing the boars. Based on their clothing and pieced together equipment, Merlin identified the individuals to be players.
Fortunately, they seemed to be busy doing their own thing, and even after noticing Merlin walking down the road, they briefly glanced at him before continuing on with their hunt. Merlin was always on edge when he came across people in the field. He believed that he held the world record for the most attacked individual in the past, which was odd because he rarely ever participated in PvP outside of guild activities.
Walking past the group, he followed the road down until the rolling hills slowly started shifting into yet another forest. Fortunately due to the two cities being diligent with maintaining the safety of the road, every tree within ten meters of it had been chopped down and uprooted.
A few merchant wagons drove past him as he slowly walked down the road, and Merlin started really missing having a mount, or even just a wagon of his own.
Mounts weren't the same as just buying a horse, mounts were more akin to a soul-bound contract or summoning pact with a creature that was usually mythical in nature.
There were a few ways of acquiring a mount, the most common method was a tedious process called incubation, where you'd create one from scratch utilising harvested souls from the creature you wanted to make as a mount.
The next method was by throwing money at the issue, and purchasing the end result from someone who went through the incubation method for you, although this was generally the most expensive solution and it was much cheaper to just do it yourself.
And the hardest method out of the three was to form a bond with a creature in the wild. But the chances of that happening were slim, and it was likely that someone would kill the creature you were trying to bond with well before you reached the stage where it'd even consider forming a pact with you.
There was also quest rewards, but those were barely worth mentioning, and often times they'd just fall under the third method anyway. Very few quests were ever publicly known to give an already incubated mount egg as a reward, and the ones that did were generally not worth it.
The benefits of a mount over just a bought horse, besides bragging rights, was the ability to summon and dismiss it almost at will. And unlike horses that permanently died when they were killed, mounts were practically immortal, and their only punishment for death was being sealed away until their spiritual bodies regenerated after a certain amount of time.
Merlin checked his quests as he walked. "Destroy the Goblin Camp" mentioned that there was a large camp of goblins somewhere north within the forest, and his task was to annihilate them all and the leader of the camp.
"A Hobgoblin's Heart" was a quest where he had to retrieve the heart of a hobgoblin for an alchemist, it was simple enough and it seemed that it overlapped well with his first quest.
"Goblin Exterminator" was your typical murder a certain amount of things quest, although it specifically mentioned to collect their ears. The quest overlapped with the first quest as well, but he may have to kill stragglers to make up the numbers if the camp wasn't as big as he expected.
"Killing Kobolds" and "Gnoll Gangs" both mentioned that the two were rival races fighting for territory south in the forest, it seemed that the gnolls were forced out from their territory north of the forest due to the goblin infestation. His quest was to cull their numbers a bit so neither races posed a risk for a while.
He decided to get rid of the goblins first, although the forest covered quite the distance and north was rather vague for the camp's location, so he had to rely on luck and his prior experience to find it.
He slipped into the forest and began heading north-west. It took him less than seven minutes to encounter his first group of goblins, unfortunately they just seemed like random goblins, not a hunting team of a large camp.
They seemed to be fighting over a dead squirrel, not paying any attention to their surroundings. Merlin hid his presence and slowly crept up on the group, and when he felt the opportune moment come, he pounced.
Merlin suddenly dashed out from a bush with his daggers drawn, plunging them both into the neck of the unsuspecting goblin that had its back to him.
The other two goblins were startled, but quickly readied their pointed sticks. One lunged towards Merlin, but the stick that barely qualified as a spear was easily pushed away. The other tried a similar thing but it suffered the same fate.
Merlin played with the two remaining goblins like they were incompetent, he was much more comfortable fighting with two daggers rather than a sword and shield, although he did enjoy the feeling of invulnerability that the shield offered him.
Merlin finished the goblins off with ease, and as his quest asked, he started roughly cutting the goblin ears off. Due to the active quest, once the ears left the goblin's body they started faintly glowing as if they were items, allowing Merlin to throw them into his inventory. It was a similar effect as to what would happen if he had used an animal harvesting skill.
「Goblin Ears Collected: 6/140」
Once he was done, he quickly cast cleanse on himself to rid his hands and his weapons of the goblin's blood. After one last check he found that unfortunately there was no loot once again.
Merlin continued his journey through the forest, and not long after his first encounter he seemed to have found another group. As he stared at the group of four from the distance, he noticed that they were much better equipped than the goblins he just killed. But the most glaring detail was that they all had similar looking body paint, indicating that they were from a tribe.
Merlin hid his presence and began stalking the group. He wasn't sure if they were going to eventually lead him to the camp he was targeting, but he decided that it was worth the gamble. It was much better to have a guide than to wander blind after all, and even if he was wrong, he still had to kill plenty of goblins anyway.
