[Slimy Slime] Chapter 64: An Expedition.

“Tina, wait up!”

“I’m going as slow as I can Jeremy!”

“You-! This is the wolf forest!” Jeremy said, putting emphasis on the last parts.

Tina just rolled her eyes.

“Yes, filled with wolves. We’ve already killed around a hundred of the damn things. Suicidal bastards almost. You’d think they’d learn their lesson.”

“Tina! You know what lurkers deeper into the forest.”

“Yes Jeremy. Deeper. As in, much, much further than we are planning on going. Hell, there haven’t even been any reports of anything worse than Dire Wolves this deep. And even those are rare.”

Jeremy had to admit, she had a point, but he wasn’t about to let her win the argument. She was entirely too blase for this! The wolf forest was not approached for a reason. There was not telling when or if something worse would come lurking out of the woods. It’d been more than a few years since any hordes had attacked anywhere, but it wasn’t that long ago that apparently a nearby town on the outskirts had been entirely murdered by an evolved wolf. Sure, it had only been Tier 2 and come from the earth, but the last thing Jeremy wanted to find was a horde of the damn things. Who says that wolf was the only thing to come out? Worse, what if it had somehow evolved again? Not all monster evolutions were known and recorded, more were discovered all the time, and hidden options existed. The rare few survivors from that had mentioned a [Black eyed-wolf] but if he had to fight a [Black Demon Wolf]...

He shivered. No thank you.

As for Tina, she was currently whistling, feeling on top of the world. Finally! She had been waiting to be released from training for a while. And she had grown stronger, much stronger. She couldn’t wait to test herself out against some actual monsters. Well, some actual monsters that were stronger than just a few weak wolves. The problem? That was all there seemed to be in this damn forest.

She and Jeremy weren’t alone, unfortunately. No, they were with an entire group. But she was the leader. After all, even if the wolf forest had some pretty dangerous things deeper in, that was still deeper in no matter what Jeremy said. The whole point of this was to simply find a challenge and report back. A simple training expedition for a new group of royal knights to be. She had heard rumors of a Goblin Chief given just how many goblins there were. It was practically a guarantee. But strangely she hadn’t heard many, or any, stories of people running into any [Hob-Goblins] so that was strange. A Tier 3 monster would be perfect to test themselves against but she hadn’t even seen a single goblin so far. So, she wasn’t going to her hopes up.

Honestly, Tina was a little worried. She knew, every human knew, exactly what wolves could become. That was why the deeper parts of the wolf forest were more than just a little off limits. But the other options for Tier 3 monsters just weren’t, well, likely or dangerous. No Tier 3 was neccesarily weak but the wolves were either off limits or extremel unlikely, the goblin chief was doubtful but a maybe, and there’d been no rumors of the other things goblins could become. Which was only a little strange, but not too much. She doubted most could survive the wolves long enough to become [Gnolls] or find enough creatures to rape to become [Horned Goblins]. Thank the gods for that.

That left slimes… which she hadn’t seen even one of in this forest since coming, sadly. It only made sense though. They’d already killed over 100 wolves, easy, and slimes were one of the few monsters that seemed to just ‘spawn’ into existence. Not quite though. She… had done more than a bit of research on the topic. They only appeared where there was either some type of ‘mess’ or some type of magic. Usually both. There were reasons sewer slimes were a known thing after all. But it couldn’t be any mess, it had to be one that, strangely, wasn’t too messy. Lots and lots of water was usually needed as well. Some [Researcher]s had even managed to get it down to a science with their mage crafting and it was amazing.

Nature, rarely, just tended to combine the right amount of water, mess, and magic and boom, slime. And then, rarely, that small bit of slime would have just enough magic to become a [Slime]. It was why the second most common spawns for slime was right outside small towns in grassy areas that rained frequently.

And yet nothing! Her hopes had been so high but… but nothing. She sighed.

“You okay Tina?”

“Yeah yeah.”

No one could know about her… desires. She knew it had been a long, nearly impossible shot, to even find a [Liquid Slime] out here, let alone anything else. But not even seeing the normal kind had her feeling depressed as hell.

“We’ll find something eventually Commander.” Said a voice.

Tina looked back, seeing a dozen fellow trainees. No doubt she would get yelled at, they all would, if they were back at the training yards or had their instructor around. ‘Too lazy’ ‘Not enough discipline’ ‘you’re slacking’ and so on and so forth. But they’d all mutually agreed damn near the second they were out the gate that they were going to treat this expedition as a vacation. Well, Tina had basically had to if she wanted to live to see another day. Her, uh, enthusiasm for training meant her whole class had been forced to at least try and match pace. The glares boring into her skull had been particularly strong and she might not have survived the trip if she didn’t let everyone easy up a little.

Being in command, a leader, was almost… wrong. She didn’t care much about being a Royal Knight, she simply wanted more money. And oh boy, was she getting it. She was on the path to be a Royal Knight Commander and that paid almost 3x as much as simply being a Royal Knight. She could practically taste that sweet sweet paycheck. She was looking at buying a [Cleaning Slime] a rare hidden evolution of the [Medicine Slime]. Those things were expensive. But having something where she didn’t need to clean up the mess… and that could heal itself a little… man, it’d be perfect. She felt lust rising up inside her at the thought of being able to go all out, grab it strongly and just-

She shook her head, getting out of the clouds, as she continued to march through the forest. It had been nice and relaxing, if boring. She almost thanked the gods for the wolves. Without them to break up the peaceful monotony, she felt like she might lose her mind just wandering forward for nearly two weeks straight. The fact that it would take two weeks to go back was not lost on her.

It was as she was walking, that she began to… hear something.

“Com-”

“Shh.”

She had heard it and she’d be giving Herak a hard time later. He knew his training, he shouldn’t have spoken up. There were hand signs for a reason. She made one now, saying to be quiet as their scout darted out. They all could be scouts to a degree but having one person go out and search what was causing the noise was just intelligent.

As they did so, she focused, trying to tell what the noise was. It sounded like…cheering?

The scout returned not long after, face a mask of confusion. Handsigns quickly flew.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘City’

Not just her, but everyone blinked at that. A city? A city in the middle of the wolf forest? They weren’t even close to civilization, there were no roads, what sort of a city? Unless…

‘Goblin City?’

Not completely unheard of but that was worrying. Not all [Goblin Chief]’s were the same and if they had advanced to the point of building more than shitty huts out of bones and pelts, and into actual woodwork, that could be very dangerous. A [Goblin Chief] with 200 goblins, was not the same as 2000, and that paled to one with 100 [Hob-Goblins].

‘Maybe. Stone City’ The scout answered back.

Tina frowned at that, curiosity getting the better of her, and they moved out to go investigate. Not longer after, she saw exactly what the scout had meant. These weren’t just any walls or just any city… this was stone. Pure, strong, thick and tall walls of stone. That… that was beyond goblins. Almost no matter what. They would need… Tina couldn’t even fathom how long to get to this point. It would take decades to build a wall like this. They’d need to open a quarry, mine it out, have miners in the first place, have a damn legion of builders… and then you had to factor in the fact that they would be starting from scratch almost, not hundreds of years of knowledge on how to build walls and structures.

They walked around the perimeter and Tina’s danger senses shot way the fuck up as it took many, many hours to walk all the way around it. The City was, well, not a town. It could have been, a long wall only says so much. But it encompassed a frankly terrifying amount of space. She saw four different gates, with roads, leading in. She even saw some creatures guarding said gates and they were…

‘Hob-Goblins’ she signed to the others.

Not just any Hob-Goblin’s, ones with full sets of iron armor. That raised the civilization level up a whole tier and the danger up even more. It took half a day to go around the whole thing and by the time they were done, Tina was shaken. This was not normal, nor even possible. Too big, too advanced, this went beyond a mere [Goblin Chief].

They backed away to discuss it, everyone looking just as rattled as her.

The second they did, Jeremy was the first to announce what he thought, that loud mouth.

“A fucking [Goblin King]?” He hissed out.

“Impossible.” Another person said. “Part of our expedition’s purpose is to patrol, which are sent out every few years. Even if the last one, and the one before, and even the one before that somehow missed it… that’s not the work of a single decade.” She said.

“So… it sprung up quickly.” Herak said. He was always a bit slow.

“Too quickly.” Tina responded. “What-”

She stopped herself, closed her eyes, and prevented herself from screaming. She was many things, but a commander wasn’t the normal for her. She was about to ask ‘What should we do’ before realizing that everyone else expected her to know the answer to that.

So… what should we do?

They could go back, report this, have an entire battalion ready and willing to blow the City to smithereens. Hell, they might even send a diplomats and a proper delegation to see if they could negotiate with this city. It wouldn’t be the first monster city or kingdom around, but the problem was that it was way too close to the capital. The wolf forest had always been a double edged bladed, allowing people in the capital ease of meat, levels, and training at a moment’s notice, while also being not that far away from some serious danger. Having a monster city within, what, a three week journey? She could already imagine just how unhappy her generals would be to learn that bit of good news. Worse, a [Goblin King] was a fucking Tier 4. With a whole city surrounding him, he’d probably reached the max too on his stats by just eating a shit ton. Monsters really had it easy sometimes.

And none of that solved the quick development, which was it’s own horror. Starting at literally just [Hob-Goblin], goblins got their special skills, becoming more varied the higher things went. She’d once heard of a [Goblin Chief] that could use [Earth Magic]. That might be at least one factor, one of many, for the quick development. But no, no that alone wouldn’t be enough. This stunk to high heavens. If she had to take a complete shot in the dark, someone or something was helping the goblins, possibly a political rival or a neighboring kingdom. That wouldn’t be a surprise really. Wolf forest was practically perfect for raising a monster army right next to them. Hell, even a reguluar army, but this one would come with plausible deniability.

“Commander?”

Tina breathed out a long sigh and then did what she was probably supposed to do in this situation.

“We investigate. For starters… let’s enter the City. Or at least see if we can… be ready to run at a moment’s notice. We enter tomorrow, fully prepared, fully rested.”

Fighting a fully empowered Tier 4… with a whole army at their back… that was suicide. But a City suggested intelligence and reasonability. You didn’t build fucking roads and also murder every single thing that walks. No matter what, whether the city got razed to the ground or welcomed with open arms as their new trading partners… she would be ripped to shreds if they only reported back its existence and nothing else. They were royal knights, even in training, and that meant protecting the kingdom. It was time for information gathering, one way or another.

Tina smiled though. If this worked out, she might get a bonus. It seemed like that [Cleaning Slime] was one step closer than she thought.