The opening of the cave was fairly quiet. There didn't seem to be any signs of monsters within the entrance of the cave, which was usual for kobolds but that meant that he was probably going to have to be vigilant in his search for traps.
Merlin kept his eyes peeled as he walked into the cave, he quickly summoned his ball of light once sunlight could barely illuminate the area. He followed the only path available to him, which lead him into a small room with another tunnel that led further into the cave.
The room seemed to be empty, besides the strange shadows that formed on the floor on the other side of the room.
Merlin slowly approached the shadows, only to find that it was actually a pit. As kobolds loved to burrow, pitfall traps were one of their favourites.
Within this pit, Merlin noticed a bipedal figure, he couldn't make out many details as the creature was several meters deep in a dark pit, face down and punctured with spikes.
Merlin reached over and cupped the ball of light, slowly dragging it towards the pit to give him more light as he inspected the creature. Upon further inspection, the creature seemed to be covered in fur, and it had strange segmented legs, similar to that of a goat.
"The gnolls have already tried raiding this place." Merlin mumbled to himself as he backed away from the pit and continued further into the cave.
The cave almost immediately split into two paths, and as Merlin began walking down the left path, he began hearing very faint sounds. It seemed like the path he was going down had monsters, he could hear faint growling, and what sounded like laughter.
Merlin began hiding his presence as he continued into the cave. There he saw two gnolls clawing at a small hole on the other side of the room. It seemed the gnolls noticed the light source, as they quickly turned around to see Merlin creeping up on them.
Gnolls were roughly the height of the average human, making them almost twice as large as goblins or kobolds. They were bipedal dog people with a hyena-like head.
Without any warning one of the gnolls charged at Merlin with a spear, the creature was quite fast. As as it got into melee range, it performed a wide sweeping attack that Merlin barely ducked under in time.
Merlin unsheathed his daggers and pounced on the creature, driving both blades into the hyena-like monster's thick neck. Merlin found himself promptly pushed away by the creature before it began its counterattack, and the other gnoll had also just charged at him.
Merlin was unfortunately stabbed a few times in the process of dodging their attacks, but he was able to kick off of the wall and leap over another wide sweep. He leapt towards the gnoll he attacked previously, and as he landed beside the gnoll that was just getting ready to stab him, Merlin sliced at it with his daggers once more.
「Gnolls Killed: 1/15」
Before he could celebrate his first kill, he was forced to roll away as another spear was slammed down on the area he was just at.
Merlin retaliated by charging at the monster, blocking a spear strike with both of his blades as he approached. The gnoll leaned in for a bite attack but Merlin thrust his dagger through the creature's jaw, pinning it shut as he began slicing at the creature's throat.
The gnoll resorted to primitive attacks once he couldn't attack Merlin with its spear, but its claws didn't do as much damage as Merlin's dagger. And within a few strikes, the gnoll fell to the ground as a corpse.
「Gnolls Killed: 2/15」
Merlin was surprised when the quest informed him that the gnolls had been pushed out of the northern part of the forest by the goblins, based on their nature of being needlessly violent and always hungry. But when he thought about it, and considered how many gnolls he had to kill in comparison to how many goblins he had just gone through, it eventually made sense.
Regardless how strong an individual was, superior numbers almost always had an advantage, with the one exception being superior power, such as large area of effect spells. But gnolls typically didn't know how to use magic.
Unfortunately neither of the gnolls had dropped loot, which left Merlin a little disappointed. He quickly looked around the room he found himself in, and besides the small hole in the wall that he wouldn't even be able to crawl through, there was another pit with yet another dead gnoll inside.
"It seems the kobold traps are making short work of the invaders. Glad it wasn't me." Merlin said. He was happy that the gnolls seemed to have triggered most of the traps on the way in, which would make his life somewhat easier as long as he remained cautious.
Seeing that there weren't any other paths to take in this room, Merlin went back into the tunnel he came from and chose the right path this time around. As he continued down this path, it seemed to branch into two more paths.
But as he peered down the right path, it looked like the roof had collapsed in on it, and there seemed to have been some gnoll casualties based on the limbs barely sticking out of the rubble.
Cave in traps were one of the worst types of traps to fall into, especially if you were someone who suffered from claustrophobia, and it was a key reason why some people absolutely refused to raid kobold lairs regardless of how easy they were to kill compared to the quest payout.
Merlin continued down the path which seemed to branch out once more. The left side sounded quiet while the right had the sounds of laughing, growling and a strange hissing sound. Merlin took the right path and followed it down into yet another room.
Within this room he saw three gnolls fighting against kobolds that seemed to be hiding in the walls, only popping out of the little tunnels that littered the room's walls to pelt rocks at their attackers.
Merlin saw as one of the gnolls drew its bow back and shot an arrow into one of the holes, and after a brief moment he heard a pained high pitch squeal.
One of the kobolds dashed out of their holes behind an unsuspecting gnoll and stabbed them in the back before dashing away and vanishing into another hole before the gnoll could retaliate.
It seemed like the gnolls were being rapidly worn down by the repeated assault by the kobolds, and when it looked like one was barely standing up straight, Merlin dashed into the room to deal the finishing blow.
The gnolls didn't react at first as Merlin ran into the room, they seemed too distracted by their current enemy, but once Merlin's light properly began illuminating the room, only then did the creatures turn around. But it was too late, as Merlin had already leapt onto the gnoll that was almost dead and had plunged his daggers into its back, killing it.
「Gnolls Killed: 3/15」
The kobolds continued firing stones at the gnolls, while Merlin quickly avoided their sudden attacks. Fortunately the kobolds continued doing damage to the gnolls, and hadn't started attacking him yet. Merlin watched as another kobold ran out of its hole and thrust its dagger into the back of the gnoll currently attacking Merlin, causing it to flinch in pain and miss Merlin by a large margin.
Merlin took this chance to plunge both of his daggers into the gnoll's neck, fortunately dealing enough damage to kill it.
「Gnolls Killed: 4/15」
The fight continued briefly with the last gnoll, but eventually it too was brought to its knees and eliminated.
「Gnolls Killed: 5/15」
Once the gnoll dropped, there seemed to be a moment of silence in the room. Merlin didn't really want to bother fighting kobolds in their home advantage, he believed it would be more efficient for him to just leave and pick out any kobolds that were hanging around out in the open.
Merlin picked up one of the gnolls spears and quickly walked out of the room. And even after a few moments passed, it didn't seem like the kobolds were going to chase after him.
Once he made it back to the crossroads he took moments ago, he walked down the path he hadn't yet explored, the one that was seemingly silent.
As he walked through the cave, he noticed a pool of blood at his feet, which caused him to instinctively look up, only to see another gnoll corpse. This one was dangling upside-down from a rope a few meters above him. The gnoll's corpse was riddled with puncture marks, which matched the rows of small stone spikes on each side of the wall beside it.
He could have only imagined what kind of torture that gnoll went through moments before its death, and was once again glad he didn't have to be the one to suffer the fate.
as he continued down the path, he saw another gnoll corpse, this one seemed to have tripped over and fallen into yet another pit, but he didn't see any spikes in this pit. It was only once he shined his ball of light over the pit that he saw hundreds of beady little eyes staring back at him.
Merlin shuddered as he backed away from the snake pit. He quickly made his way further down the tunnel, far away from the army of snakes.
