Up the Mountain

You really didn't feel like making a pointless walk down into the foothills just to risk running into the various denizens of the forest. Not today. Maybe it had something to do with once again seeing 'Exile' as part of your title on your character sheet.

Quickly walking the cliff-side trail, you took a careful look up and down the more used main path leading from the foothills up to the mountain proper. Mount Imporne was probably better than most locations for a lonely monster, considering the low-level mobs running around and the high level mini bosses that picked their way around the mountain. High level players wanting to fight the bigger monsters usually just flew to the top and ignored everything else, and mid level players got frustrated just by the journey to the mountain, let alone dealing with the scattered bands of kobolds, goblins and fey creatures.

No one liked Imporne, which made it fairly perfect for you.

It didn't look like any other monsters were around waiting in ambush, and no adventurers were prancing their way up the winding, switchback path, so with a huff of breath you started your walk again. It didn't take you too long to reach several more casually disguised offshoots from the mountain path. You vaguely remembered exploring them before, but the update was still a heavy haze in your mind and you weren't sure which led to what. Instead of taking one of them, you kept walking up until you saw the main Y-branch. The right path kept heading up the mountain, eventually leading up to the Kobold lands that served the greater monsters above, along with the Wendigo territory on the north face.

The left path, and the one you took, led out onto a long, lightly sloping plateau scattered with boulders, scrawny pine trees and scrub brush. The south end looked out over the cliff his home was carved into, while the north end eventually curved into a steeper series of mountain rises and the west end, away from the path, continued circling the mountain until it faded into a shale slope at the far end of the cliff.

Wood from the pine trees wasn't the greatest for fires, but it was also easier to harvest than it was to track down goats. You left that task for later and headed further onto the plateau, towards the northern rises were the goats usually congregated.

After about an hour of scampering and scooting around boulders and pine trees, trying your best to track goats that left almost no trace on the world, you eventually spotted a little herd of the white, fluffy buggers bleating away to themselves as they sat about fifteen feet up the edge of a rise, looking like they were clinging to the sheer surfaces of the mountain without a care in the world. The thought of being able to climb like that passed through wistfully as you gauged how to get a couple of the goats. The easiest thing to do would be to get right up to the base of the rise and use a spell to get them to fall off - Thunderclap could hit several, and even Fixate could pull one down. The danger was that if you caught too many, the whole herd might try and rush you. When the goats fell from that height, they wouldn't just die and you were going to need to get your hands bloody.

Also, using your spells would leave you defenseless if some asshole miniboss decided to check out what the noise was, or even worse if some adventurers were out on the mountain for some ungodly reason.

In the end, you decided you were going to need to throw something big enough to knock one goat from his perch and hopefully spook the others into running. Rocks were plentiful, but you knew from previous experience you weren't strong enough to throw a rock big enough to do what you needed. You were going to need to throw your Quarterstaff like a spear.

With a sigh, you slowly picked your way around more boulders and pine trees, doing your best to remain hidden despite your abysmal stealth skill. You got about 20 feet away from the rise, hidden beside a boulder, and peeked around it.

Eight goats stared back at you, blinking and bleating. One made a long, loud bleat that sounded an awful lot like a Player screaming, and also like it was laughing at you.

"Fuck you too," you sneered, standing up and pulling back your quarterstaff and throwing it with all your might.

You might have been an exile, but you were still a bugbear and you had certain instincts. Your throw was true, even if the staff did wobble a bit in the air, and you clocked the goat that had made the laughing scream right on the side of the head. It made another one of those screams, this time more panicked, as it's hooves scrabbled against the rock and it fell. The rest of the goats began their own panicked bleating and took off, hoping up the rock face as if it were flat land.

Your target hit the ground hard, moments after your quarterstaff. You ran forward as it jerked, rolled over and began picking itself up, and you grabbed it by it's curly horns. You were shit at hand to hand fighting. You knew from experience a third level basic Fighter could out punch you.

Thankfully, a goat is not a third level Fighter, and you didn't need to punch it. Slamming the head of the goat into the rock face a couple of times stunned the bleating beast into silence, and another few strikes had it jerking and then going still, it's panicked eyes rolling. You let go and it dropped, heaving and wheezing. You were panting heavily yourself, but you went and found a big rock and raised it over your head.

The goat finally went still.

Looking down at your kill, you took a deep breath and felt the low amount of pride you could manage at killing a 0 level creature. At least it would feed you for about a week, if you lasted that long.

Next problem was harvesting the damn thing. All you had was a quarterstaff, and your not-really-sharp claws. They didn't even rate as natural weapons.

It was going to take you a while to harvest this thing properly, and since you couldn't put a whole dead goat into your inventory, you problem solved and decided on the next best course of action. Carrying the fucker down to your cave.

The amount of time it took you to heave the corpse onto your shoulders was embarrassing, but you got it up there and balanced enough to start waddling back towards the cliff edge. If memory served you correctly, there was a spot you could drop the goat down and land it on the path to your cave instead of carrying it all the way around.

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