9 Goblin Harvest

Clearing the goblin village was pretty fun.

I was worried about how it might affect me, as I've heard that killing can do great harm to the soul, but I felt nothing. I thought that when I was fighting to protect the village, I wasn't feeling anything because I was busy with thoughts of protecting the village and staying safe, but now that I was fully immersed in killing, I realized that it wasn't so.

I didn't feel much from killing goblins. The whole ordeal was fun because I felt a sense of accomplishment when I obtained experience points and my skills leveled up.

I don't think I can really be blamed for this. While interacting with the villagers, the world felt real, but fighting goblins, it felt like nothing more than a game. Only hostile goblins within 20 meters or so charged at me, while the rest of the goblins didn't react, even with the sounds of fighting and death filling the village. The goblin children, marked gray, didn't react even when I was fighting right next to them and blood has spilled on their faces.

The whole experience was surreal.

At first, I charged straight into the village with a blade in hand. With plenty of mana, I was certain that I'll be able to heal myself even if I can't leave combat, so I didn't mind the danger and rushed as though I was a legendary berserker.

I wanted to use this chance to level up my physical skills which were starting to lag behind. I kept Enchant Weapon on, but decided to not use Enchant Armor at the moment – I hoped to increase my Constitution by tanking a few hits.

With Double Slash, I constantly dropped goblins by pairs. The skill used 2SP, so I was limited to 11 uses, but since I was instantly leaving combat after each use, the recovery was so fast that I didn't really have a limit.

Every slash dealt between 47 to 78 damage, due to the stacking of pure strength, magic and martial skill, and the occasional critical hit could even deal 94 damage. I didn't have anything to compare these numbers to, but considering that the weapon I was using was a rusty short sword, I believed that I'm quite impressive.

Double Slash was providing a small bonus, but the skill improved fast once used on living targets, which further increased the damage. My Martial Prowess also increased by a few points, and even Strength that was at level 24 rose to 25.

It was somewhat disappointing that there was not much loot to be obtained from the goblins, neither through the system nor through physical looting. Both only allowed to get low quality weapons and leathers, or the occasional goblin part, such as their ears and hearts. I ended up storing the bodies whole, just in case.

But the most disappointing part was the experience. A level 1 Goblin gave 1 experience. In addition, I met the Goblin Chieftain, and this time it was only level 2. Perhaps the last raid happened because it reached level 3… This Chieftain was still using a club, too! How shameful. Not only that, it provided only 3XP!

The fight was somewhat long because there were a lot of goblins, and they didn't charge at me, so I had to pull aggro myself. My Dexterity was too high for them and I ended up evading their attacks unintentionally. To get hit a couple of times, I had to purposefully stop my body from moving. My frustration only grew when I remembered that their attacks deal 1 damage, so I doubted that I'll gain much from letting them hit me.

I considered sparing the goblin children, as they should grow up quickly enough that I could eradicate this village once again before I'll be leaving to the city. Eventually, I decided against it. If the goblins respawn through some game mechanic, then that will be good enough. This is a chance to have live target practice for my non-fire elemental magic. Slash, smash and pierce! I managed to not laugh maniacally while tearing through the goblin nuggets.

It wasn't even essential! The quest was cleared once all of the awakened goblins were dead. My future as a human being did not seem too bright.

'Maybe I should have tried naming one of the goblin children?' I thought to myself as I was leaving the ruined village, where only shabby huts, blood and the bodies of children remained. All the adults were stored in my inventory.

Was my future not too bright, or actually dark? I'll need to actively work on my personality if I don't want to become a total monster…

I leveled up from the slaughter of the village, but there weren't enough awakened goblins for me to level up once more. Once I've reached level 2, to level up once more I needed 200XP. With how little the goblins are worth, and under the assumption that the other low-form monster species will give similar levels of XP, it's going to be tough to level up quickly.

The kid practice was enough to level up my three elemental magic skills by 2 levels each, so aside from the loot and experience points, my first slaugh- subjugation quest was quite rewarding.

While I didn't really need to claim the reward straight away, I wanted to return to the village to sell the various loot. I didn't expect much from it, but I did want to know how it would work. I had a lot of stuff to sell, and things would work well only if selling works the same as it does in games. If it's realistic, people will find the amounts I bring to be suspicious, especially since I have no backpack.

Extradimensional storage is something that's very common as an ability in Isekai stories, but in most worlds, including this one, it's the result of magic. Dimension magic is hard to train, so to have a pocket dimension at my age and level would be odd, to say the least.

There were also other elements that I needed to test. I could oversaturate the market with a flood of meat if I were to go out hunting and returns with stacks of food, for example. There's also how much gold the merchant has on hand to consider, or how much of an item they are willing to buy.

While I worked in the shop, I never experienced selling myself, so I was nervous. I considered investing in the Social Manipulation skill as well, since it covers diplomacy and haggling among other things, but decided to go in raw and see how it goes.

Shop Owner greeted me warmly as I approached the counter, but before I could reply, the thing that I hoped for happened. In front of my eyes, a trade menu opened! It displayed my inventory on one side, and the shop's inventory on the other. At the center was an empty space for what will be sold and bought.

There didn't seem to be any indication of the shop's available Ursa, so I safely assumed that there is no restriction. In RPGs there is often a limit, but in MMORPGs it isn't implemented, as there are many issues concerning it and making such fake immersion too bothersome.

If one would set a limit for the shop itself, then not many players would be able to use it. If the limit was set for each player, then players could simply give someone else the items they wish to sell and abuse the system that way, or create new accounts for the sake of selling. Besides, as grinding is an essential part of many MMORPGs, setting a limit would be counterintuitive.

The fact that there was no set limit, among other clues I've gathered so far, hinted that the system is supposed to be used for an MMORPG, but the MMO part was extremely lacking.

As I was very familiar with the stock in the General Store, I wasn't too excited about going through what it offered, so I did so halfheartedly. I was pleasantly surprised however, as it seemed that the two stocks – the real and the game stocks, were not the same.

There were many similarities, as the term "General" applied for both stocks, but the system store also included perishables, which weren't offered in the real store. Also, the prices in the system store seemed to be slightly cheaper; Not enough to be able to turn in a profit by buying in the system store and selling in the real one, but I could save some money this way at least.

After a few tests, I was able to confirm that the system store doesn't effect the real store at all, and that there was no reaction from Shop Owner to anything that I did, not even to the fact that I seemed to be standing there and staring at the space in front of me.

The goblin bodies were only worth 10 Ursa each. Even if an adventurer party went out of their way to carry all the corpses from the village to sell, they wouldn't be able to reach the quest's reward, which was rather small for a party. It was decent for a single adventurer, but there weren't many low level adventurers that would be able to undertake such quest.

The goblin parts that I looted through the system could be sold for a higher price, so if I could salvage the goblins I could get some profit out of it. But even with triple gains, unless I can instantly harvest the bodies, the time needed would make any such gains simply irrelevant.

Eventually, I decided to keep everything in my inventory for now. If I find something that I really want to buy, I might end up selling them, but I wanted to keep the option of dumping a mountain of corpses in front of people.

I… Should really consider the direction of my character growth.