Eisen swung his sword sideways and immediately cut through the thin neck of one of the five goblins in the group, causing its head to fly through the air while the other goblins were trying to figure out what was going on.
As soon as Eisen could, he used some of the natural force created by his heavy sword and slashed the Zweihänder down toward the next Goblin"s shoulder, creating a gaping wound while the sword got stuck in its flesh. Eisen pulled the sword back upward and jumped to the side while the second goblin dropped to the ground and two others jumped at Eisen.
One of them held a thick branch and the other a rock that they were using as weapons. Quickly, Eisen managed to dodge the incoming attacks and returned them with another side slash at one of the Goblins" chest.
However, in return for his attack, the Goblin holding the branch managed to hit his side, draining a whole 50 Health Points from him. Eisen held up his leg and kicked the Goblin away, using that chance to finish the Goblin with the rock off.
While this was happening, the leftover Goblin ran up to Eisen and slashed at him with a sharp rock, taking another 60 Health from him.
Once more, Eisen jumped backward and at the same time slashed his sword down toward the head of one of the Goblins, killing it instantly as its head was split in two.
The last Goblin was staring at Eisen angrily and once more tried to slash at him, but Eisen slashed his Zweihänder upward with a bout of strength. He cut off the Goblin"s arm and pulled the sword back, then stabbed it forward again while the Goblin began staggering and stabbed the sword through the Goblin"s throat.
Now that the first group of Goblins was taken care of, Eisen squatted down onto the ground. This was really exhausting to him, so he was slowly starting to feel bad for Brody, the Original of Combat.
That reminded him that he meant to send everyone a mail to see how they are doing and ask them about their experience in the game so far. Either way, for now, Bree came up to Eisen with a gleeful expression.
"Wow! Good job! But here, to recover your damage~!" She said happily and held one of the health pills over to Eisen.
With a smile, he placed it in his mouth and cracked it with his teeth, then continued to chew on it until it turned into a powder which he then swallowed.
"Thanks, Bree." He said and opened his status, then tapped on his level.
[Level - 13][93%]
Eisen found this not too long ago when he was trying to figure out how much the 50 Experience from the Boars actually meant. For whatever reason, it wasn"t displayed in his status normally, but at least there was such a way to find out how far he was to the next Level.
It seemed like the Goblins were nearly enough to push him over the edge. With the next group of Goblins, he would probably be able to get to Level 14. Although at this rate, it might be quite hard to gain enough levels to get his stats up enough for the quest.
However, he would only continue to become stronger, faster, and Bree would use support spells on him from now on as well, making things far easier as well.
The first thing that Eisen would try when he saw another group of Goblins would be to send out his Mana Doubles and see how he could use them in combat.
But for now, Bree kneed down in front of the first Goblin corpse and stabbed her knife into its chest. While Eisen thought that image to be kind of disgusting, Bree happily pushed her hand into the slit in the heart and pulled out the tiny rice-grain sized Mana Crystal.
She repeated this for the next four corpses as well, and then cleaned them up with the help of the Self-filling Mana Crystal cup that was stashed away in her backpack.
But just before she could put away the Mana Crystals as well, Eisen stopped her.
"Wait, how about we use them on your dress? These small ones can be pretty useful, but only when we have a lot of them."
"Huh? Are you sure?"
"Yeah, why not? I also really want to see how much stronger the Dress can get. Might be a good reference if I want to make any more Items that can grow. And of course, you need to have good defense in case something attacks you while I"m fighting other monsters."
"Okay! Thank you!" Bree smiled brightly and handed Eisen the Mana Crystals. He held one of them between his fingers and poured his mana inside, then pushed the Crystal against the back of the dress. Due to its small size, the crystal was nearly instantly completely absorbed. Eisen did this again for the other four mana crystals and then asked Bree how much that did for the level of her Dress.
"Hmm, it jumped up 20%! It might be Level up soon~!"
"Great! So even these helped that much, huh? Now, shall we continue?" Eisen suggested and looked east. The both of them walked for a few minutes, and then saw a small group of three Goblins sitting near a tree, apparently talking to each other in a rudimentary Goblin language.
Eisen summoned one of his Mana Doubles, and equipped it with mana leather armor he copied the night before and then handed it the actual Zweihänder. Eisen didn"t know if you could actually use mana copied weapons like their actual version, so he decided to try it out like this.
Right off the bat, Eisen noticed that the Double was having more trouble holding the heavy sword up with the right form since its body seemed to be weaker than Eisen"s own.
However, it was still able to hold it somewhat, so Eisen had it go forward and attack. If he wanted to use them in combat, maybe giving them lighter weapons like daggers would be a good idea.
Slowly, the double crept forward and swung the sword at the Goblin with all the force it could muster and hit the center of the Goblin"s head.
Blood splattered around and dyed the Mana Double pure red in a gruesome manner.
At least that"s what Eisen expected to happen, but what happened instead was… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sure, the Goblin felt the attack, but it seemed more like a nut fell from a tree onto its head.
Apparently, Mana Doubles couldn"t be used for combat.
Eisen sprinted up to his Double while it held the Zweihänder out to him by grabbing the blade, and he grasped the hilt of the sword the moment he made his Mana Double disappear. At the same time, he activated A Giant"s Strength, while Bree cast some of her support spells. First, she weakened the Goblins and slowed them down, and in return strengthened and sped up Eisen.
Due to all this, the difference in the strength of Eisen and the Goblins grew immensely, so that Eisen was able to decapitate one of the Goblins and immediately fatally injure another one of them in the same slash.
While the injured Goblin was lying on the ground half-dead, Eisen reversed his slash and killed the last Goblin standing by nearly cutting its Torso in half.
At last, Eisen walked over to the Goblin that was still on the ground while bleeding out and stabbed his sword through its head to kill it outright.
Eisen grabbed his necklace and rubbed its surface, while Bree began to cut the Mana Crystals out of the Goblins" Hearts.
Now he had time to look at the notification that appeared in the corner of his eye just now.
[You are now Level 14]
Happy that he leveled up again, Eisen opened his status and looked at the Stats he could increase. For now, he decided to increase his STR and AGI stats, as these were the most important to him right now, seeing how he was going to fight a lot in the near future.
Noticing that Bree was finished with extracting the mana crystals from the corpses, he walked up to her and grabbed the three small crystals and pushed them into Bree"s dress.
Eisen and Bree kept walking around the forest, killing all groups of Goblins that they saw, getting faster and faster at it each time.
Eisen managed to level up another 10 times, but that"s when the leveling speed significantly dropped, and the experience that he got from killing goblins got less as well. Each and every time that a group of goblins was killed, Bree pulled out the mana crystals which Eisen then used to upgrade Bree"s dress, also causing it to level up five times.
His stats kept rising significantly, and simple Goblins became too weak for him, especially with Bree"s support.
And the combat that Eisen was involved in became much easier once more when his Swordsmans.h.i.+p skill rank up. The sword felt lighter in his hands, and it was easier for him to control its movement. His combat reflexes seemed to have been heightened slightly as well since his body reacted to his will more easily.
However, the day was now over, so Eisen and Bree made their way back to Melroe to plan and prepare for the next day. But of course only after making some food out of the Boar meat that they gathered in the morning.
He was really interested in what he could do with a cooking skill in later ranks, so it wouldn"t hurt to start leveling it up early.
On their way back to town, Eisen turned over to Bree and asked her what they should do next.
"It"s been a relatively productive day, right? My level nearly doubled! If it continues somewhat like this, I"ll reach my goal in no time! But the Goblins don"t seem to be doing as much for my level anymore as before, so should we move on to something else?" He asked, and Bree seemed to think for a while, but then nodded.
"Yeah, that sounds good! We could go further east tomorrow if you want? And fight against the other Goblin type monsters? Once you"re around level 50, we can go west into the mountain range! There"s a Dungeon over there!"
"Oh? A dungeon?" Eisen was quite surprised by this exclamation. Dungeons are prisons, right? So why would Bree be so excited about going to a prison?
"Mhm! Do you know what a dungeon is like?" She asked curiously with her head tilted to the side, and Eisen shook his head.
"Hmm… A Dungeon is like a magical subs.p.a.ce where monsters live. There can be a bunch of chests with treasure inside as well, and Monsters appear and disappear nearly instantly sometimes! There"s not really that many people around her that can get inside of it, so I didn"t get a chance to tag along with anyone, so I also don"t know what type of dungeon it is. But it shouldn"t take long for you to reach a high enough level for it!"
"I see… Interesting. Let"s do that, then! Just for now though, how far away are the next type of Goblins from town?" Eisen asked and changed the topic since he really didn"t know what to imagine of a dungeon. He did come across the word a few times during his research, but he never imagined it to be that kind of thing.
"The Rank 2 Goblins are about two hours away on foot if we walk in a straight line."
"Alright, that"s not too far away. We should still be able to get a good amount of fighting in then. I doubt we should walk any further east than that, though. At least not without something like camping equipment." The old man muttered to himself and was only faced with agreement coming from Bree.