Gathering Points [4]

There are three types of monsters that dominate the entirety of the first level of the tutorial Floor.

Black wolves, goblins, and kobolds. 

And each of these monsters has a leader. 

Among the three monster leaders, we've only encountered one, but Lionel probably didn't realise this. 

It was the wolf leader which was among the pack that ran into the cave we appeared in.

Now that I think about it…..

'Even though she's crazy, it's quite amazing that she was able to kill an elite-level monster.'

The image of a certain crazy woman flashed in my mind.

'If only she wasn't crazy.'

I couldn't help but mentally sigh in shame.

Lionel is the main character of Tower Ascendance, but there's a reason she was also the main antagonist of the story.

If she were mentally stable, she would have been my first pick to partner with.

But alas.

'Such a waste of special gifts.'

In actuality, this wasn't the case. I was honestly just feeling a bit bitter I couldn't use her.

Against someone like her, with her hate of men, if she accepted to partner with me, I would have to be worried instead.

'Yet.'

I couldn't help but have a smile on my face.

'It's kind of embarrassing.'

That crazy woman…

'To think I used to have fantasies of her, haha.'

I couldn't help but laugh out loud a bit.

"Is anything the matter?"

"Nothing. Sorry, I just remembered something funny."

"No problem. It's actually quite enviable you can even laugh in this situation."

This conversation happened between me and Lionel.

Shaking my head to clear thoughts of 'her', I brought my attention back to my surroundings.

'This is reality and not the novel. Seeing her might actually get me killed.'

'Her gifts though….'

I could feel my greed suffocating the life out of me.

"There's something ahead," Lionel's slightly uncertain voice reached my ears.

'Have we gotten there?'

Just like the animals on Earth, we had territorial and sociable animals.

There were animals in the tower too, but monsters were superior.

Superior in species and superior as pets.

Unlike the wolves we encountered running into the cave, those were territorial monsters while the goblins and kobolds were sociable monsters.

Sociable in the sense they didn't mind having different tribes of the same race together.

Might seem normal, but one had to remember even lions were extremely territorial towards the same species.

But what does all this have to do with our current situation?

"Is that a….a camp?" Lionel inquired in an uncertain voice.

Walking forward a little bit, a large clearing in the forest appeared in front of us.

Wooden structures were scattered all around with numerous goblins, some looking slightly different from the ones we've been encountering were littering around.

Some were even in the procreation act.

'Goblins are really lustful creatures.'

Regardless of whatever animals and monsters were sociable, territorial, or not, they always had a gathering spot.

For the goblins, the 'camp' in front of me was it.

Just a rough glance around the camp, I could tell there were at least a hundred goblins.

That was at least 1000 points here alone.

But.

This wasn't even what I was after.

[New Quest Generated]

[Goblins Stronghold]

Goblins are monsters meant to be subjugated. What else needs to be done aside from eliminating them?

[Quest: Destroy The Goblins Stronghold]

[Reward: 1000 points to all participants. More rewards might be given based on performance.]

This was the true opportunity I was after.

One that even the original Lionel couldn't go for due to his limited strength.

Quests.

Missions governed by the tower.

The basic reward ranged from points to valuable treasures.

Regardless of what the reward was, quests were valuable. The only downside was they weren't exactly common.

The common ones also gave lacklustre rewards like this one.

I say lacklustre not because it actually is but compared to rewards you can get from better quests, it was.

In any case, it was a lot for the current me.

"What should we do?" Lionel turned to ask me.

From his tone and the expression on his face, I knew he was also referring to the quest we just got.

"You can see this too right?" Lionel pointed at the empty air in front of me.

Well, I knew we both received a quest but he didn't.

"The quest right?"

Lionel nodded his head.

"What do you think we should do?" 

It was now my turn to ask Lionel a question.

"I don't know," Lionel first stated uncertainly before adding, "I don't know anything about these points but I feel like we should have more of them in case of emergency. There aren't also a lot of goblins, so with our current prowess, we should do well."

Saying there weren't a lot of goblins when there were at least a hundred in front of us could look like underestimation.

But it wasn't.

When the quality of something is too high, quantity could hardly beat it.

In the current situation, though there were a lot of goblins, they weren't strong enough to cause fear in Lionel and me.

After coming out of the purple pond, the only thing the goblins could do was obediently get beaten to a pulp by us.

We weren't as strong as I wanted us to be yet, but in the first level of the tutorial, as long as we were careful, there was hardly anything that could harm us.

All my stats were currently in the F class, which was a significant improvement compared to the old me. 

A minor increase in stats was about 20%, and a major increase to the next class was about 50%.

There were factors that could affect the increase, like mana arts, for example. 

Say a G in strength represented 10 points, G1 was 12 points, G2 was 14.4, G3 was 17.28, till G10 which was 61.9.

A major increase to the next class in strength would be F representing 92.8 points. 

With the basis that 10 points in strength represented normal human strength, an entry into the next class meant I was almost ten times stronger than an average human. 

And the increase only gets stronger as my stats increase. The downside is that it becomes harder to raise.

With my strength stat at F2, using the point system again, it would be 133 points, which meant I was about 13 times stronger than an average human.

Unfortunately, this was just my statistics. How much strength I could output still depended on me.

Lionel, with the same stats, would beat two of me.

"Let's give it a try," I said to Lionel.

"If it becomes too dangerous, we'll run as fast as we can. The goblins aren't fast enough to catch us."

Which was true.

Though I had no skill or ability that allowed me to see the stats of others, I believed the agility stats for goblins were at most G6.

If it was more, then it had to be a special Goblin, but from what I could see, aside from the two slightly taller Goblins guarding the biggest-looking stick house, the other goblins were normal looking.

As long as we were careful, nothing wrong should happen.

The moment this thought came to me, I couldn't help but smile mockingly at myself.

'To think I'd actively take risks like this. I might actually be changing or maybe I'm just adapting.'

Turning to look at Lionel beside me, who shared a calm demeanor with me as well, I figured it was probably the latter.

"Let's go."

With that, Lionel and I made our way out of the bushes to the goblins' camp.

[You have arrived at a Goblin Stronghold]

[You have accepted the quest 'Destroy The Goblins Stronghold']