A Blade Made of Slime

Chapter 13: Core of the Goblin Empire

I hadn't noticed it during the large battle but while we were slaughtering our way through the gigantic goblin horde at Alessa. I had managed to level up from the Goblin General's crystal.

[Rank 8; Crystals: 2901/3600; Skill Capacity: 90; EP: 64]

[It's been a while since I leveled up! The last time this happened was back in the Demon Wolf's Garden!]

Surprised I didn't level up before but considering I didn't devour any crystal on sight and only selectively chose them, it made a bit of sense.

We had continued making our way over to the dungeon on high alert for more goblins but more never came. Although...

[The goblins are just lying outside my detection radius. Each time we get close, they run away.]

(Nn. Cowards.)

[It's not that Fran. There's something else going on... but what?]

(Nn... a trap?)

[It's possible...]

We would just have to wait and see if the goblins tried to swarm them en masse but for now their numbers were extremely low.

It wasn't until we got close to the dungeon that I finally started detecting loads of goblins...

Absolute gargantuan amounts of them...

[There's at least a thousand around here!]

(Nn.)

Fran immediately went to warn Donadrond about what she was sensing. Donadrond immediately took Fran's word and the group halted their activities and set up camp.

"Are we sure there's loads of goblins around here?"

"I don't see any... right?"

"No. There's definitely some."

One of the Scout Class adventurers came over.

"There's loads of them, I'm not sure how many but I could sense them a bit."

This guy had Danger Sense but other than that, his other Skills were poultry. Still, with his word, it erased the doubt about Fran's senses.

A few hours went by as we continued helping construct the camp. Fran was helping out with much of the heavy labor since, despite her looks, she was by far one of the strongest here. Part of it was funny to see a tiny girl picking up a giant crate filled with weapons.

We could still sense large goblin activity but it seemed like they were actively avoiding the area where we were busy setting up our camp.

I questioned why for a bit but it might have something to do with Donadrond now obtaining Goblin Slayer since the last time we met with him. His aura was pouring so obviously the goblins must have noticed it and began avoiding the area.

The number of adventurers we had here compared to back in the guild building was drastically reduced looking at it. It seemed like only the strongest and least cowardly of them came with us but this was still more than enough for the dungeon.

The preparations were going relatively smoothly but there was a point where I could tell something was going wrong.

[Fran.]

(Nn?)

[The goblins are slowly approaching the camp.]

(Nn??)

It seemed like it was barely outside the view of everyone else's detection Skills. I could make out large groups of goblins slightly shifting positions around the camp but they weren't approaching it. It was almost as if they were beginning to plan an assault...