Chapter 96: Secrets

Accompanied by a high-level professional at his side.

Half the night was enough for Xia Nan to recover the stamina consumed by the day’s training.

Over countless years, although there were occasionally young men who, in pursuit of their own path, traveled far afield and brought back changes from beyond the snowfield to the tribe,

A warrior who wrestled with ice and snow was bound to encounter death sooner or later.

After all, in the deserted wilderness, there were naturally no drunkards shouting at the top of their lungs, nor the creaking of shaking stairs.

And those dangerous monsters that hunted at night, which ought to have been the greatest concern, were cowed by the unrestrained Extraordinary Aura of Barbarian Fogon and did not dare approach.

Xia Nan did not relax his vigilance because of this.

After all, he was merely a newcomer who had been on the adventurer’s path for only two or three months.

During a quest, some habits that might not be useful now but would greatly affect his future safety had to be cultivated as early as possible.

For example: night watch and traps.

As for the latter, even the chilling coldness permeating the air made even the dullest gray rat in the forest instinctively keep its distance to survive.

He still seriously and carefully set up many alarm traps around the camp.

From leaving Valley Town until now, it has not been triggered even once.

But I felt at ease inside.

In terms of the night watch…

Although the Barbarian had never mentioned any such request to Xia Nan, he still took the initiative to define the time allocation with him.

Foggon was as silent as ever.

He neither agreed nor objected.

He simply changed his routine in silence, from staying awake all night to closing his eyes to rest in the first half of the night, then waking up again at a fixed time in the deep hours.

Half a night was enough time for Xia Nan to recover the stamina he had spent during the day’s training.

Today, the situation seems slightly different.

Under the cover of thick, dense clouds, the waning moon had only just hooked itself on the treetops and had not yet climbed to the top of the sky when the barbarian awoke amid the howling cold wind.

Nor was it like the previous days, when he honed his obsidian axe with ice crystals and frost.

He simply sat quietly by the campfire, gazing at the thin chain in his hand.

Of course, Foggon noticed the gaze coming from the other side of the camp.

He also realized that his unusual behavior tonight had caught the attention of that relatively attentive newcomer.

There is no intention to explain.

Feeling the coldness of the metal chain coiled around his fingers, his fingertips lightly brushed and rubbed the ornament upon it, his ice-lake-like eyes slightly unfocused.

In the Frost Moss Highlands, the raging, violent snow and ice became a natural barrier, separating the people whose ancestors had lived for generations in that harsh territory from the outside world.

Countless years passed. Though there were at times young men who set out to seek their own path and travel far, bringing news of the changes beyond the Snowfield back to the tribe.

But the barbarians of the Frost Throat Clan still follow the traditions left by their ancestors.

Preserve the most prideful prey of one’s life in the form of accessories or tattoos.

The simple yet sturdy necklace in his hand had accompanied him for many years, but he had only begun wearing it after reaching adulthood.

Regarding the concept of slaughter, prey, and loot, Foggon’s earliest memory can be traced back to when he was six years old.

An “Ice Field lemming” that had no idea what had frightened it suddenly dashed in panic into the hut.

The specific process had long since become ambiguous.

He only clearly remembered the moment when he thrust the icy dagger, gifted by the tribe warriors, into the lemming’s spine.

He watched as the gray rat’s eyes gradually lost their luster and the muscles beneath its fur convulsed and twitched.

It was nothing special, and it did not leave any shadow on me.

A warrior who struggles against ice and snow will sooner or later experience death.

Other than that, Foggon’s deepest memories

are only that fragrant mouse meat soup from that night, and the mouse-skin vest that helped him survive that harsh winter.

Then came age twelve.

Having already become the strongest child in the tribe, and under the initial guidance of the clan’s warriors beginning real combat training, Foggon

unexpectedly encountered a starving Snow Spider on his way home from the training ground.

On the left side of his chest, near his heart, there was a bloody wound.

Even now, many years later, the scar left on the surface of his skin can still be seen.

And the Snow Spider’s fang limb that left that scar on his body was split and made into a pendant, now hanging at the outermost end of the iron chain.

At sixteen, when he followed the hunting party deep into the snowfield, he was accidentally separated from the main group and was taken as prey by a newly hatched white dragon whelp.

As the most primitive and least intelligent among the chromatic dragons, even feeding itself was a problem.

It only, driven by hunger, fought and wrestled with Foggon in the snow like a beast.

Bathed in dragon blood, he kept one segment from the tip of the white dragon’s tailbone and made it into a bone charm on his necklace.

At twenty-two, it was a juvenile Centipede Monster.

He has forgotten the details of the battle, but the Winter Wolf that once fought shoulder to shoulder with him, the one to whom they could entrust each other’s back without worry,

is now pierced through the chest by bone spikes, yet still uses its soft, warm fuzz to shield him from the wind and frost.

Lastly, thirty-nine.

In the midst of a sky full of wind and snow, Foggon forced himself to endure a terrifying howl strong enough to sweep across ice peaks and trigger a massive avalanche.

When he lifted the pair of goat-like spiraled horns of the “Great Evil Yeti” and chopped its head from its neck.

He finally fulfilled the last condition and set foot on the path of Transcendence.

It did not go as he had once planned: under the protection of the Heroic Spirits, inheriting the great power of the Northern Territory, frost, and nature, and transferring to the clearly charted promotion path of the 【Icecrown Warrior】, who could unleash a Barbarian’s rage at will.

His ruined hometown and the hundreds of corpses he had personally buried had already filled his heart with the shadow of vengeance.

In exchange for his faith and his soul after death, Foggon obtained the power he most desperately needed from the 【God of Slaughter】, the 【Blackblooded One】 “Mara”.

By advancing as a 【Grieffrost Oathbound】, he bound his heart with the shackles of oath, and with the aid of Wolf Spirits born from the mourning of ice and snow, he hunted for traces of his enemies.

And this is exactly why he could cross half the continent, pursuing all the way from the Frost Moss Highlands of the Northern Territory to the Misty Forest.

To twist off that beast’s neck, and use thorns entwined with mycelium to fill the empty slot Foggon had deliberately left at the center of his necklace.

Under the gaze of the God of Slaughter, he would complete his advanced Class Transfer and take the final step before “Legendary”.

……

Xia Nan sat by the campfire.

The warmth released by the burning dead branches dispelled the last trace of chill in his body.

He was already used to it; after all, while practicing 【Fang Hunt】 these past two days, he had also needed a Barbarian’s frost cooperation to guide and assist him.

Even without the flames before him, if he just found a place to practice for another ten or so minutes, the heat in his body would be enough to melt away the cold.

The night was deep, but it was still early for him.

With Xia Nan’s current physical fitness, if he lay down now, he would naturally wake up fully recovered before dawn, which would be inconvenient for anything he wanted to do.

So he was in no hurry to rest.

Instead, he took from the backpack behind him the small box he had found earlier in the Goblin Lair and began examining it carefully.

He casually grabbed a gold coin from within, pinched it between his fingers, and, by the light of the campfire, narrowed his eyes to scrutinize it.

The golden coin was reflected in his pitch-black eyes as a thoughtful expression appeared on his face.

It had to be said, the Earth Goblin’s performance in the daytime had completely shattered his stereotype of goblinoid creatures.

It was practically another species; it had none of the madness and frenzy of ordinary Goblins, nor was it as crude and reckless as its cousin, the Bugbear.

Its tactical literacy was sufficient for on-the-spot command, and it possessed the leadership ability to make brutish, low-intelligence Green Skins obey orders…

Xia Nan had no doubt that if there truly existed an Earth Goblin strong enough to rule and merge a large number of Goblin Clusters…

It might really be able to pose a Threat to the nearby Human Towns.

Of course, on the other hand,

The intelligence of Earth Goblins far surpassed their kin, which made them harder to deal with than Ordinary Goblins and even Bugbears.

But in a sense, this also benefited Adventurers who made a living by hunting such Monsters.

They knew how to accumulate, and would store Gold Coins and useful Equipment.

Adventurers who cleared out the Lair no longer needed, as in the past, to force down their nausea and search the stinking Goblins one by one for possible Reward.

They only needed to find the Earth Goblin’s treasure stash to easily scoop up all the Loot of the entire Green Skin cluster in one go.

Even the environment inside the Cave was much cleaner than a typical Goblin Lair.

There was no piled-up Feces mixed with urine and fused with the Muddy Ground, and half-eaten Rotten corpses were rarely seen.

Even those Green Skin brats he had seen before…

His Thoughts suddenly halted.

Xia Nan subconsciously furrowed his brow, sensing something amiss.

Based on the information he had gathered in Valley Town during this period,

The number of Goblins in this World was almost the largest among all Low-level Monsters.

Just like Cockroaches and mosquitoes that could be seen everywhere in the Grassland and in cracks in the Floor, no matter how many you killed, you could never wipe them out.

Even if Professional Adventurers were dispatched to regularly clear a certain Area,

It would only stay clean for a short while.

It would look as if they had all been killed, leaving not a single one.

But after a dozen or twenty days, a large batch would pop up again from who knew where.

As if they had grown out of the ground.

Under such circumstances, combined with the racial trait of having no females, if Goblins wanted to maintain such a huge population base, they had to seize large numbers of opposite-sex individuals from other races.

However,

Xia Nan had cleared quite a few Goblin Caves over these days, but the foreign women he had imagined, ravaged by Green Skins and forced to bear their Offspring for them…

There was not a single one!

He had hardly even seen Goblins in juvenile form.

It was as if they all came off an assembly line, produced from the same mold.

Strange, far too strange.

The doubts in his heart sprouted like Weeds, no longer to be suppressed.

He glanced across the Campfire at the Barbarian who was rubbing the Necklace in his hand.

Seeing that the other had already awakened and had no intention of resting further,

Xia Nan organized his words silently in his stomach, then could not help voicing his doubts to him.

He had originally thought that with Foggon’s taciturn Personality, even if he knew some inside story, he would not say much to him.

Unexpectedly, it seemed that the Mushrooms that had grown on the Earth Goblin’s body during the day had stimulated something deep inside him.

Faced with Xia Nan’s question, the Barbarian slowly began to speak of a certain ancient secret, said to circulate among Class Holders.

It was said that in the “long long ago” measured in spans of a thousand years,

Goblins, or rather goblins,

Were no different from other creatures in this World: they had males and females, and could reproduce normally.

Although their nature was likewise vile, with incidents of attacking passing Convoys and travelers occurring from time to time, it was far less frequent than it is now.

They were just a common and Ordinary Low-level Monster.

Until that great war, which covered the entire continent, affected countless kingdoms and races, and involved several pantheons.

Those mortal “legendary” figures standing at the top of the biological pyramid were like ordinary adventurers beneath a bugbear’s claws; their corpses could have piled up to fill the broadest holy forge square of the dwarves’ underground kingdom.

Every night, one could see meteors streaking across the night sky—that was deities falling from the heavens to their demise.

【The Supreme Chieftain】, 【the Lord of Deep Darkness】, “Maglubiyet,” as the main god of the Earth Spirit System, naturally was also drawn into this war.

The specific process of how the situation developed has long since been buried deep in the great river of history.

But its most crucial turning point was preserved, passed down by word of mouth among countless people.

It is said that at a certain point in time, the siege by hostile gods drove the goblin race to the brink of a desperate situation.

All the goblins on the entire continent were wiped out, leaving only a small number barely surviving under the protection of their deity.

Maglubiyet, who presided over multiple domains such as “war” and “rule” and possessed mighty divine power, also gradually lost those authorities in the fierce struggle with the gods.

And it was precisely when the pantheon collapsed and the goblin race was about to be utterly annihilated.

Maglubiyet suddenly disappeared.

Taking with him the last few hundred goblins remaining on the continent, he vanished completely into the multiverse.

“Ran away?” Xia Nan’s face was full of confusion and doubt. “Then where did those green skins I chopped down in broad daylight come from?”

In response, Fogon merely shook his head.

“By the time goblins once again appeared before the eyes of the world, the war had already ended hundreds of years earlier.”

And the main god of the goblins, “Maglubiyet,” had also returned to his divine kingdom.

No one knows what really happened in between.

Why did the goblins who returned to the continent suddenly lose the concept of ‘gender’? Why was Maglubiyet able to smoothly reclaim his authorities and even become stronger? Why did the gods above the heavens seem to tacitly accept all of this without any reaction…

The air in the camp suddenly became incomparably silent.

Only the crackling sound of burning firewood remained.

Xia Nan digested the flood of information that had suddenly poured into his head, not knowing what to say.

It had only been a casual question, yet he had not expected there to really be so much behind it.

Without overthinking it, he simply etched this knowledge silently into his mind.

At the moment he was not even a class holder; rather than anxiously worrying about these high-level matters that his own strength could not even begin to touch.

It was better to think about when he could truly get started as a 【Fang Hunt】.

Shaking his head, Xia Nan looked at Barbarian Fogon, who had already put his necklace back on.

“So what you mean now is, you send me to the nearest town first, and then you go deal with your own business?”

“Yeah.”

“Back to Valley Town?”

“Too far.”

“Then where to?”

“Kalanfor.”