All ahead, no fear.

While your new title may be bullshit you already know what you need to do: hunt. Whatever the target, whatever the consequence you’ll keep hunting. You got the feeling your pact with Nire would allow nothing less. To back off now would just invite her scorn.

You’d already taken about half the goblin village out. May as well finish what you’d started. There would be no other chance to fool such a number of them so stealth would probably be your best bet to kill off the others. Stalking your way back to the village doesn’t take long and you spend your time on the outskirts staying out of sight and gathering some materials while you wait for dark.

While you take care not to be seen you’re able to see the goblins from time to time. Interestingly enough their names aren’t all red, remaining the neutral white of passive creatures. The only exception seems to be the chieftess whose name appears in yellow. She did not take your success at leading half her followers off lightly it seems. If you appeared without any of her villagers in your wake she’d likely react very aggressively.

With what you had planned it likely wouldn’t matter. She’d be the last to fall, after you took out the remaining goblins after nightfall. To further that end you see if there are any basic crafting options that may aid you, grinning when you see that you can turn some of your plant fiber into a crude sling and your stone into basic ammo. You set about quietly crafting the new weapon and then fashioning the stones into smoother shot that would fly more accurately than rough chunks of rock.

Finally the time for the hunt arrived. The sun had sunk behind the horizon and the shadows had deepened into the true dark of night.

You approach the goblins’ village perimeter and see that the chieftess had wisdom enough to post a watch. Not that the distractible creatures had the attention span to be effective at the job. The two that were up spent more time chittering amongst themselves than paying attention to the surrounding dark.

“Prey.” You growl softly into the quiet dark as you equip the sling and begin twirling the simple weapon in preparation to loose one of the stone missiles. The chattering goblins were too busy talking to hear the quiet thrum of the sling as you brought it up to speed, nor the soft whine of the stone rushing through the air. They did however react to the meaty thwack of the stone impacting with goblin skull. Or at least one of them did. The one you’d designated as prey fell instantly. The chime of gaining experience coming at the same time as the sound of impact. The solid head shot had been more than enough to end its life.

You hurry to ready another stone and begin once more to twirl your sling, hoping to get off the second shot before the remaining goblin can react. You designate it as prey next and loose your stone just as it begins to cry a keening wail of warning. The sound cut short and followed by a quiet thud of a goblin body hitting the ground. The damage is done however and panicked cries of alarm sound from the rest of the goblins as they rush to face whatever danger has taken out their guards.

“Time to move…” You tell yourself, endeavoring to remain silent as you circle around to engage them from a different angle. You designate another of the screaming beasts as prey and twirl your sling yet again. This shot impacts with the creature’s throat and it’s panicked screaming changes to a gasping garbled cry of pain. You chuckle softly at the pain you inflict it before realizing that this shot hadn’t been quite enough to kill the cursed thing. Your stealth bonus must be gone now that they were aware that something was attacking them, and now they knew where to find you.

The rest of the group charged in the direction you’d last attacked from and you try for a few more quick attacks before they get too close for any more. You’re gratified to hear several impacts and grunts of pain come from the charging group but none of them fall and you realize that you need to leave or try to face the oncoming gang.