Adventurers

While being cautious, he stared in the direction of the rustling, when suddenly, a human head popped out of the bushes.

It was a girl, probably around 17 years of age, and a bright expression. She hopped out of the bushes and looked left to right, clutching her small metal wand.

On her head was a mage's hat and her body was adorned with a white mage robe with a pink outline.

After making sure the coast was clear, she nodded at the bushes as multiple other people suddenly hopped out themselves.

One was a larger boy whose height was 10 inches taller than the girl at 6'2. He wore some chainmail armor and an ax attached to his back.

The other was a few inches shorter and was of a slimmer build, wearing leather armor and a sword sheathed on his waist.

All three appeared to be the same age and grinned wide.

"Okay, team! Are you ready to take on your first goblin den?" A voice came out of nowhere before an older-looking gentleman suddenly appeared out of the bushes.

He was probably in his early thirties, wearing glasses atop the ride of his nose and a long mages outfit with a wooden staff in his hand.

"Yes!" They all eagerly replied.

Quickly scanning them all, Lyrian noted that the girl had an OP of 2 and the boys were barely on the 3 mark.

The older man on the other hand had an OP of 5, slightly surprising him.

"Now, remember, this den is a very easy one. It's meant for rookie adventures like you three."

The man with glasses, Stafon, said.

'What?' Lyrian immediately thought to himself in confusion.

He was saying that the den was meant for them, but he knew that the three alone wouldn't possibly be able to defeat it and come out alive.

All of them were barely past halfway through breaking into Genesis Layer 1, and so even if they could conjure spells, there was simply no way for them to win.

"At max, there are probably 5 to 8 goblins inside, so don't worry and just know that I will always be by your side to help you in case anything goes wrong. Now, how about we begin?" He grinned.

Lyrian thought he might have been misunderstanding the situation at first, but now, he was slightly suspicious.

'5 to 8 goblins? What a blatant lie. I know from experience that there are easily over 30 inside of that den. What is that man's purpose?' He questioned.

The group entered the den shortly after and after thinking to himself for a minute or so, Lyrian decided to follow them inside.

He was curious about the situation, a main question was whether magic was so powerful that it could overcome such a large gap in strength between the adventurers and the horde of goblins.

He was still skeptical but it wouldn't hurt to see. On top of that, maybe he could learn some stuff from these adventures, and if not, they would still be a help in defeating the goblin den in general.

Before committing himself to go deep inside the cave, he gathered together some sticks and created a small torch.

The cave was quite large and spacious the whole way through, around the size of two entire buses stacked up on each other.

The shape was like a tunnel going downwards.

After ten minutes of walking Lyrian came across a two-way fork in the path with some goblin corpses scattered around as well.

Looking at the bodies, Lyrian noted that a few were burned, some mangled, and some frozen. There was no doubt that the adventurers could use magic after this.

Taking a closer look at the placement of the corpses and the footsteps around them, Lyrian decided to take the right path as the adventures followed the same one.

After walking for another ten minutes or so, Lyrian finally came across a few straggling goblins that the adventures left behind.

Lyrian thought that the purpose of the adventures was to train and also to gain monster materials, so leaving some behind was quite odd, but he quickly brushed it off.

Right now, that wasn't important.

The goblins weren't too difficult to defeat either. Since they were few in number, Lyrian simply ran up to them and sliced the back of their necks.

It was an instant kill since it paralyzed the body and they bleed out soon afterwards.

Finally, he reached what looked to be a dead end.

"A dead end?" He said, noticing the footsteps of the adventurers simply disappear into the wall.

"HELP!" A muffled voice suddenly sounded out of nowhere, immediately alerting Lyrian who quickly put up his guard and scanned the room.

No one was in his immediate vision, and as several other blood-curdling screams resounded, he felt like he was hearing the cries from inside the walls.

Lyrian turned his head to look at the 'dead end' once again.

"The screams sound like they're coming from the other side of this wall… a hidden room?" He surmised, looking for a way to get to the other side.

More screams and booming noises sounded as Lyrian looked around. Thankfully with his new rank, his vision was much better, and he was quickly able to spot what looked to be a lever hidden amongst a pile of rocks in the corner.

He quickly ran over to it and pulled it back as the wall in front of him began to slowly open, dust and debris falling from the ceiling…