Goblin Cave

Noah back in the eternal battlefield sat in his room looking at his explorer map. He had bought another map locating all the dungeons found in the whole country they were in. They were in Cloud country. It was large and consisted of one-third of the supercontinent they lived on. The explorer map updated and marked all the dungeons onto it.

The closest dungeon he saw wasn't too far, it was even closer than the spider dungeon that they had gone to.

The two dungeons they had entered were both F class. They were currently the only type of dungeons that they both could handle. Anything stronger might be too risky.

Noah scanned the Map. It even showed the location of an A-class dungeon - Goblin Castle.

As he observed the map further he noted that many of the dungeons in the surrounding of his area were goblin related dungeons. It seemed like the main monsters in the surrounding of the town they were in was goblins.

The placement of the goblin dungeons was interesting as it seemed like all smaller goblin dungeons were branching out from the A-class, goblin castle.

Finally, Noah marked a few dungeons that were closest and were worth exploring. They were all F class dungeons.

...

Alice woke up early in the morning. Noah made breakfast and then the two got ready to leave. Now since they had an inventory option they were able to carry more stuff easily.

Noah kept away the Black Estoc in his inventory. Even in his inventory he still had the attributes added on to him. He only had his gun holstered to his left and the potion bag for quick access to his right.

With everything away, the two rented a horse and got on. Alice had gotten much better at horse ridding after the few classes but still wasn't good enough to keep up with Noah and follow him through a forest. So they ended up riding together again.

Luckily the horses in the eternal battlefield were strong and had a resemblance to a warhorse. Carrying two people didn't affect them.

Noah held the reins with his arms around Alice as they galloped to their destination.

It was another cave. The dungeon was an F Class dungeon called the Goblin Cave.

Noah and Alice got off the horse and walked into the cave. They had already entered two dungeons before this one so they were familiar with the feeling of entering.

Noah had an E Class weapon equipped. His attributes had increased by a lot. His agility had an especially large increase. He already felt lighter, and quicker on his feet. With his current speed, he would be able to run circles around the Mutated spider queen, so he felt invigorated.

The cave was similar to the dungeons before with torches lining the walls to light up the cave. The two soon encountered a group of goblins.

[Green Goblin]

F Class

Level 6

Noah stood back as Alice rushed forward and attacked. Noah At the back holding the magic gun in his right hand shot at the goblins held back by Alice. His shots were a lot more controlled now, he was getting his bullets in a lot closer to Alice. The increase in attributes helped a lot in his hand-eye coordination.

Alice fought with a dagger in one hand, slicing and slashing at the two goblins that attacked her holding daggers as well. She dogged hits and sliced back. Her feet were in constant movement as she moved the goblins around giving Noah the space to shoot them down.

They cleared the group of goblins and moved on to the next one.

Like clockwork, the two cleared off the whole dungeon. Although the goblins were higher level their combat skills were amateurish. They stood in front of the door leading to the dungeon lord.

Noah noted that as he fought he had an all-around boost in his shooting skills from speed to precision. The Steel Magic Gun shot mana bullets, which had a fixed amount of damage, so having greater speed in shooting helped him take care of monsters and react even faster to their attacks. Compared to before the fight was smooth sailing where he felt he was multiple steps ahead of the goblins attacking Alice, ready for their every move.

However, the fixed amount of damage was holding him back. As Mana Bullet was a skill attached to a weapon it wasn't affected by his attributes, which was why it had constant damage. The damage was lacking, as it was harder to kill goblins unless he focused on vitals.

It was also why he started to focus more on helping Alice deal with the crowd of monsters rather than kill the monsters. This meant he was aiming for goblins that were attacking Alice from her blind spot or attacks Alice wouldn't be able to defend. Having the bullet he shot deflect or delay the attacks.

The two then entered the Dungeon Lord's room. It was a large cave room with a wooden tribal style chair set on the opposite side to the door. A carpet made from animal hide lead to the chair.

On the chair, an old goblin sat with his eyes closed. Looking at the goblin Noah was reminded of the goblin chief he had fought in the goblin village. They both wore similar clothing, it was just that the dungeon lord had this stronger and intimidating presence. It had more elegant features and seemed a lot more vigorous to the old goblin he fought in the village.

[Goblin Chieftian] (Dungeon Lord)

F-Class

Level 7

The dungeon lord opened its eyes and stood up, in its hands a wooden staff.

The Goblins held the staff up and pointed it towards them.

Noah sensed the ground changing and jumped to the side. Alice did the same. Spikes of rocks came out of the ground at the spots they were standing.

Noah started shooting at the goblin. The dungeon lord responded by tapping the staff to the ground, a bubble of mana formed around it. This stopped his mana bullets from hitting it, rendering them completely ineffective.

Alice sneaked to the side as Noah distracted the Goblin chief. Because of her trait 'silent', she was able to get close to the dungeon lord noticed. She attacked the goblin from behind just as Noah popped the shield with his bullets. She slashed twice in quick succession sending the goblin forward.

Noah used the opportunity to get in a couple of hits, but the dungeon lord recovered and stamped the staff and quickly chanted a spell.

Hearing a chant, Noah was reminded of the spell the old goblin had chanted before he killed it. He had only heard it once but he still remembered the sounds. A large fireball formed above the goblin chief. It then shot at Alice who was close by. The goblin chief then set up the mana shield again to protect itself from the explosion of the fireball.

Noah had been approaching the goblin chief felt the world slow down as he activated Cold Mind. Alice was already retreating after hearing the goblin chief chanting, but wouldn't be able to completely dodge it. Using Flash Step, Noah was able to move across the whole room as the fireball formed above the dungeon lord. The fireball shot out, Noah appeared next to Alice and putting all his strength into his feet he used Sonic Leap to launch out of the blast radius while carrying Alice.

He had learned Sonic Leap after buying it from the training ground. It was just that using Flash Step was always more effective than Sonic Leap which was why he never used it.

He had to use it now because he couldn't use Flash Step while carrying Alice. although he had used it before while fighting the Alpha Grey Wolf. That was after he had gotten the buff from his talent, Guardian of Love and his talent Blessed Mind had the effect Limitation Break work on Flash Step. Flash step was strictly a single person skill.

Sadly, he couldn't control when Limitation Break activated or how it worked. It worked rather erratically as it would normally remove the cooldown for all his skills, which was why he was able to continuously use Flash Step but rarely in dangerous situations, it would let his skills show enhanced effects such as teleporting with another person.

Having dodged the fireball Noah put Alice down, they both composed themselves and resumed combat with the goblin chief again. The fireball seemed to have taken a lot of mana as the Goblin Chief primarily defended.

...

[You have killed the Dungeon Lord]

Other than copper, a skill book and 3 enhancers dropped.

[Fire Magic: Fireball] (F Class)

Basic fire spell that forms a small sphere of mana that explodes on contact.

Cost: 1 mana

Cast time: 5 seconds

Cooldown: 30 seconds

[Flaming Edge (Silver Rank): increase damage and piercing power of a blade by heating up the edge]

[Boulder Force (Bronze rank): increase in force behind the balde]

[Reduce Casting {Bronze rank): decrease the time needed to cast spells (restricted to staff mastery)]

Noah noticed how useful the enhancers were for Alice. He had already gotten his sword mastery skill to E class and wasn't in a hurry to upgrade it.

'Reduce casting is nice but sadly it's only for staff mastery.'

Alice kept the skill book and two of the enhancers while Noah kept the rest.

They set out for the next dungeon.

...

It was nighttime as the two camped out. They had gone through two more dungeons from which nothing special had dropped other than a few bronze enhancers.

Alice laid on Noah's shoulder.

"I have to go back to school tomorrow." She didn't feel like sleeping since she knew that she would wake up and have to go to school the moment she fell asleep. Two weeks had passed since she had last gone to school, she didn't want to go anymore.

Noah was with her now and with the eternal battlefield taking over their planet soon school didn't seem that important.

"I'll be with you now, so don't worry," Noah assured her.

Alice nodded and closed her eyes and fell asleep on Noah's Shoulder. Noah closed his eyes as well and fell asleep.