Chris reached the place which was assumed to be the area under the control of Vork and its subordinates. He has only scanned the surrounding areas before and has never been here until now.
Reaching here wasn't as easy as one would think. Though the group doesn't have high-rank monsters, they occupy an area with pretty good resources.
There were a lot of monsters between Frost City and here. He had to kill a lot of monsters in order to arrive here. Sometimes he had to hide too as the surrounding areas were filled with higher rank monsters, which wouldn't go down easily and would attract other monsters, which he couldn't afford to happen.
If he had to fight more monsters, it would only mean that he would have less time to complete the quest. Once the quest was completed, he could fight as many as he wanted.