Awakening: I Ascend As A Legendary Ranked Necromancer-Chapter 58: Our hunt

Temur set a fast punishing pace with the goblin at the front while Dile put a short rope around its neck like a walking dog. After witnessing the way they killed the whole tribe without issue, the goblin made no fuss and led us obediently.

"Aren’t we there yet?" Litha demanded again for the twelfth time that day. She wiped sweat and blood from her face and grimaced. "I don’t like this. What if the main goblin tribe is closer to the castle?"

I nodded along with her. She has a point. For the last three days, we have been walking in the zone, and I knew we were getting closer to the center. That itself wasn’t a bad thing, but it meant the monsters we were encountering were getting more and more powerful and dangerous.

Temur grunted as he tore the exoskeleton of an insect monster that looked like a cross between a cricket and a dog. He fished in and brought out a dull brown monster core. "Then we finish off the goblin and head towards the castle." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"We’ll be too tired. Already we are hurrying towards the castle as fast as we can. Also fighting monsters and hardly sleeping. Now we’re about to take on a tribe of goblins and then the castle? Where we will fight other Awakeners?!" Cele shook her head.

Litha, Temur, and I shared a look. ’Apparently, Thayer’s team hasn’t heard about grinding.’

Temur pointed at the goblin. "We move!"

And so we did, following behind the green goblin and trying our best to stay alive as more and more monsters got in our way. It’s not like most of the monsters are particularly strong, but they come in large numbers.

The day blurred into fighting monsters and running in the zone, even our night was the same as we tried to make up for any lost time by moving in the night. We used a lot of stamina potions this way, but it couldn’t make up for the lack of sleep.

So, by the fourth day, everyone was cranky and irritated. Even the goblin was walking like a dead thing. I felt as if I had been dragged through a rough ground, my mouth was dry, and my eyes itchy.

The sun was just starting to warm the air when the goblin suddenly jerked to a stop. He raised a trembling hand and pointed, and we followed it with our eyes.

What we saw were massive trees that grew close to each other and formed a natural wall. Temur loomed over the goblin. "This is it?"

But he received no reaction because the goblin collapsed and started to twitch on the ground. Temur sighed. "Dile, check it out."

The beastman nodded and walked towards the wall of trees. He found a gap between them and disappeared. I walked towards the goblin and kicked it. "What are we going to do with this one? It has little energy left."

Even as I asked, I had already transformed my hand, but I waited until Dile returned before I dispatched it.

"Vermins." I muttered.

"I see what appears to be a fortress on the other side," Dile said.

"We should do this quickly then," Cele said, glaring at everything. "So we can focus on why we are here."

No one disagrees with that.

The fortress turned out to be a small mountain that had been carved out. It has been molded into a fortress with a large wooden gate at the front.

’It looks impenetrable,’ I hissed. ’The only problem is that the wooden gate has been smashed in.’

The gate had been crushed, and around it were the bodies of dead goblins scattered around. Someone or something must have done some really heavy work here.

My eyes darkened. Someone had just stolen our hunt, and I wasn’t really happy about it. "What are we going to do next?" I asked.

Litha scowled. "What else? Let’s go, we should focus on the castle now that the goblins have already been busted."

"No. Let’s go in. Worst case it’ll be Awakeners inside." Temur said. He brought out a sword, the length glinting in the sun.

We all breathed a sigh of relief. Haven’t we been chasing the goblins for four days now? The least we could do was know what went down here.

With Dile in the lead, we began to walk towards the gate; everyone was ready for their role in case of trouble. But nothing happened even as we reached the gate. "Do you notice that there are no enemy bodies? Just the goblins," I pointed out.

"You’re right, and they haven’t been dead for more than a day," Dile crouched by one of the bodies and sniffed the blood. "And it’s only goblins I can smell too."

We all exchanged weary looks. If there are only goblins, then how did they die? Who or what killed them? We turned towards the gate and began to walk.

We picked our way over the broken gate and entered into the castle. Whatever we were expecting, it wasn’t pitch darkness, but Cele’s fireball quickly illuminated the place.

Her light flared and showed the courtyard. I marveled at what I saw. The inside of the mountain has been hallowed out, and then they built a kind of village.

"I don’t know, the goblins are this good," I said, almost in accusation.

Everyone agreed with me.

But Litha was frowning. "So all the goblins here are dead? Look around, there’s no life stirring in this place. There should be light and stuff, but this place is dead. Look at all the bodies on the ground just lying there... ?"

I waved and pointed to the biggest building. It was made of the same stones as the mountain. Atop the balcony were five goblins who were looking at us intently.

It was too far away to notice much, but the goblins were red and bigger than the others.

"That must be the war-chief’s building. Whatever happened here, I’m sure we are going to find there," I said. "Or from those goblins."