Conquest

Chapter 17 Sleeping in the red wilderness

Translator: Tchu

Frightened, the pitiful creature shrank into a ball and stared at the red rock.

Increasing his pace, they soon crossed that rock and the pitiful creature could finally see the appearances of those goblins more clearly.

From their appearance point of view, these fellows really put the rumours and fears of Primal Wildfire to shame. At the first glance, those goblins look a bit ridiculous.

Their entire body was covered by a fresh green skin like a frog after summer rain. They had pointy donkey ears and a large nose resembling a carrot stuck on their faces. These fellows did not have any hair or beard. The head was gigantic, but the body was ridiculous thin beyond comparison and did not fit at all. Their height was about 130 centimetres from the looks of it and the proportion between each part of their body was very obviously uncoordinated. Hiding behind that rock, these little creatures bared a mouthful rotten but sharp tooth at them and started at Shaar and the pitiful creature with a strange look.

What especially surprise the pitiful creature especially were the goblin’s long arms. While hanging down, they sufficiently surpassed their kneecaps.

When first seeing those fellows, it would be very difficult to fear these creatures – first, they seemed very thin, small, poor and dirty.

Yes, those goblins were actually more “beggarish” than beggars. Between those fellows behind the rock, only one of them was completely clothed and wore a broken sack (Nobody knew where he got it). Three holes where cut on the sack for the head and both arms.

Another fellow had a weapon in its hand made from some large animal leg bone with a stoned fixed on top to increase the lethality. Furthermore, this creature had an “armor” sewed together by sixes to seven different things.

Oh god, this counted as armor?! Giving this armor a closer look, its composition materials were: Two broken copper plats, one pile of tree barks, several rotten woods and something resembling a rope.

The pitiful creature stared at them for a while and was somewhat suspicious: “Are these creatures really goblins?”

“Yes.” Shaar nodded.

“But, they did not seem terrifying like in the legends.” The pitiful creature was very puzzled.

Shaar smiled: “Goblins are also separated between the strong and the weak. Those you see don’t belong to any tribes and are outcasts. The truly dangerous ones are from the goblin tribes. Don’t think that a single goblin is small, weak and cowardly, if you run into several hundred of them and furthermore if they didn’t have any food for several days ......You will learn their ferociousness.”

Indeed, when Shaar said it, the pitiful creature detected the same look in their eyes as a group of stray dogs surviving in the wild. They acted somewhat cringe and a little timid, but also hid a bit of viciousness and hostility.

Shaar did not pay any attention to those dirty fellows and continued taking his usual big steps forward. When several goblins came too close, Shaar would stop, stand firm and pick up a stone and threw at them while threatening them by screaming – whenever that happens, these goblins immediately dispersed.

When the sky was getting darker, the pitiful creature discovered that those hobo goblins which were following them disappeared.

Before night felt upon them, they discovered a giant skeleton in the wilderness left behind by some large animal. The pitiful creature did not know if it was a buffalo or camel or other animal.

This giant bone structure on the ground had its huge ribs horizontally placed in a line, in a very symmetrical manner. It was impressive that on the entire skeleton, not a tiniest bit of meat was left....Obviously this was not the doing of Mother Nature through decaying, but something removed every tiny bit of flesh of it and plundered it clean.

Approaching the bones, the pitiful creature saw that it had pieces of dense and numerous teeth marks on them.

“It’s the goblins. It’s obviously that only the goblins can manage to clean the meat so neatly.”Shaar conveniently pulled out a bone and weigh a couple of time: “It seems that the animal died ten days ago at most, the bone is still very hard since the water has not completely dried inside yet.”

“Why do I have the feeling that you understood about these things a bit too much?” The pitiful creature gave a somewhat suspicious look towards Shaar.

Shaar did not answer this question and instead took off his Bloodthirsty Great Wolf skin wolf and threw it over on the skeleton of the animal bones which in turn transformed into a natural small tent.

“Tonight we rest here.”Shaar announced his decision.

The supper was of course roasted wolf meat – the meat of that Bloodthirsty Great Wolf Shaar killed. Although the wolf meat was hard, a bit acid and very difficult to bite, nevertheless the pitiful creature endured it.

Since she could not complain about the bad tasting wolf meat, throughout the entire evening, she sat by the bonfire and continuously nipped on that meat. The surrounding wilderness gave a distinct feeling that countless eyes stared at them secretly. In their looks was a strong hint of greed filled with hunger, ferociousness and a bit cowardliness.

Listening closely, she could clearly hear a “gurgle gurgle” sound while they swallowed their saliva in the dark wilderness. Some sounds of teeth grinding was mixed in between – those sounds crept out the pitiful creature a bit.

“They ......They are peeping at us.”The pitiful creature was determined to remind this hillbilly about his casual negligent appearance while he seemed to show a terrible alertness.

“I know.” Lying down his head on the bones, Shaar closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth coming from the fire: “Left one, right two, in front and at our back one and some sound of movements at the distance ......”

Talking about it, he rolled over and faced the pitiful creature: “Relax, they will not provoke us at the moment. Goblins are very cowardly and have a group mentality. They must reach a certain number before getting the courage to attack. According to goblin standards, to cope with two human warriors, they must reach at least over 20 goblin warriors to gain an overwhelming victory. Nevertheless, the intelligence of a goblin is generally speaking not very developed and they judge thing much simpler: Someone who has a weapon is a warrior and someone who doesn’t is a commoner. We are very lucky that you put on the leather armor while I am carrying the axe, therefore those fellows regards us as human warriors. This means, they will wait to increase their numbers over twenty before launching an attack.”

“How is this possible?”The pitiful creature did not believe him: “If they need to wait this long to cope with only two human warriors, then why did I heard that so many caravans were attacked by the goblins?”

“That is just a rumour.” Shaar gave a disdained look: “In Primal Wildfire, rumours will always be a popular thing. The actual goblin is not that fearful as you had imagined......Although they are very annoying, at the very least they are not as fearful as those legends describe them. Those legends about terrifying goblins were mostly made up by humans. I heard that some large business groups in Primal Wildfire deliberately like to spread those stories. Thus a lot of people are afraid to risk coming to Primal Wildfire and everybody is avoiding this trade route which makes them the only one to dare send caravans to trade! Hmpf ......”

“But ......I heard that those goblins will capture humans and eat them. The bones will be grinded to powder, the hair made into blankets and even the fat will be used as oil to cook ......” The pitiful creature’s teeth started clattering.

“These may be true, in any case for them, we humans are an alien race. Do we humans do not treat cattle and sheep the same way? So what is strange about it?”Shaar yawned: “The truth is goblins rarely attack a team of armed humans. Many people died indeed in the arms of goblins in Primal Wildfire, but the majority were those bold people who like to leave things to luck and wholeheartedly wanted to get rich by taking the risks and bringing a cargo through Primal Wildfire in a small caravan. These small business groups do not have the money to hire mercenaries to protect them and once they meet the goblin, naturally they would be out of luck.”

“But you said that the goblins would wait really long before attacking two people......”

“What I said was ‘warriors ‘, you idiot.” Shaar shook his head: “When goblins target commoners, they become very brave. However for them we look like human warriors! Understood? We are carrying weapons and therefore they regard us as adventurers and mercenaries. In Primal Wildfire, goblins had already suffered countless times under human adventurers and therefore learned to be cautious. If we did not carry weapons with us, they would have already swarmed us!”

“But ......”

“Relax, we are still at the edge of the goblin domain and the surroundings do not have any big goblin tribes. They must thus collect 20 goblin warriors to deal with us and I am certain it will take a while. Those hobo goblins do not dare to provoke us, so sleep in peace ......In the wilderness, I know more than you rest assure. Even I would not take my own life as joke.”Shaar rolled over and started to sleep.

“......” Laying down for a moment, the pitiful creature still heard those creepy sound brought by the cold dessert wind in this wilderness and could not help but to stay terrified in her heart. Enduring for a while, she could not bear and eventually whispered: “I ......Can I come closer to you? This ......Um, it’s somewhat cold.”

Not getting an answer from Shaar, the pitiful creature waited for a little while and finally took her own initiative to lie down beside Shaar. The body of this hillbilly still had the smell of earth on him, but a warm feeling calmed down the pitiful creature’s heart.

Certainly, the more important factor was his abnormal aesthetic standard, which gave the pitiful creature the reassurance that he would not assault her indecently during the night.