The White Haired Demon Slayer (Part-3)

***Elaina Evreux***

So many battles in quick succession was getting a bit tiring, but at this pace we can easily keep it up.

The last goblin alive of the group we just defeated, fell as my arrow curved past Liam's head and went right into the goblin's heart.

We hid back in one of the corridors to catch our breath as a different group of goblins rushed into the hall, screamed as they saw the bodies of their fellow goblins in the hall and just as quickly went off into some other corridor again.

After a few moments of waiting to see or hear any more movement, we got out of our hiding spot and continued on into one of the other 7 corridors connected to the hall.

This is how we had been moving the entire time. Avoiding goblin troops searching for us and fighting only when needed, though much to the disappointment of Ren who wanted to breeze through with sheer strength... And Liam who just wanted to kill everything in sight.

I swear Luca and I are the only ones with any sense of sound reason. Though he seems to be more cautious than wary.

And perhaps rightly so. The quest rank had gone up to Gold: Multi Raid. Which means it's a quest we are absolutely and utterly not suited for. Especially being just a single party.

Gold: Multi Raid. In our case, three things qualified the quest for Gold Rank. And the worst being that each of the three reasons could raise the quest rank to gold just by themselves. But we had all three on our plate.

First. The number of civilian humans whose lives were at stake in this quest had gone above 100. This qualifies the quest for Gold rank.

Second. Knowledge of existence of a corrupted monster. This raised the rank of the quest to Gold on an investigative point of view. Gold rank adventurers are contracted when investigation to confirm the existence of a corrupted monster is needed. A quest to hunt down the corrupted monster would be at least Platinum rank and could go all the way upto high Diamond, depending on the strength, rank and forces of the corrupted monster.

Third. Raiding a Monster Spawn. Monster spawns are extremely dangerous and pose the greatest threat to humanity. Unlike usual spawns where monsters breed and grow naturally over time. In monster spawns, monsters just... appear. Even the monster spawns themselves, just appear out of nowhere. Eventually we humans realised that this is the direct power of the Dark Lord of Demons.

The Dark Lord of Demons can just create as many monsters as desired.

More and more monsters just appear inside these spawns at periodic intervals. Though we humans still don't know if these intervals are restrictions or intentional, because it's also been noted that the new monsters are trained and prepared for battle during these periodic intervals. We still haven't figured out all the rules and limitations of these spawns.

The nastiest aspect of these monsters spawns are that they can appear whenever and wherever the Dark Lord wants. Especially being used as an infinite supply of monster forces during demon invasions by the direct subordinates of the Dark Lord, The Demon Generals. An absolute Adamantite rank threat to humanity, often faced by the Heroes themselves.

While there are many ranks of monsters spawns, even the lowest rank is only for Gold rank or above. The information regarding this rank of monster spawn is first investigated and reported back to the Guild. Only then at least 5 parties of adventurers are brought together to take down the monster spawn.

That's right. Even the lowest rank of monster spawn raids are done usually with a minimum of at least 25+ adventurers of Gold Rank or above. Thus called Multi-Raid.

And here we are a bunch of silvers sneaking and fighting through an unknown rank monster spawn, trying to save over 100 civilian hostages. While having confirmed information of the existence of a corrupted monster.

AND ITS PAST MIDNIGHT.

Lovely isn't it?

Yeah we are doomed.

Or so we thought. It's been some time since we entered this hellhole. But everything has been going rather smoothly.

The structure of this monster spawn is well laid out and repetitive in some state. When we entered we were directly faced with a staircase that led down to a goblin training area and further down to more levels of this hellish monster spawn.

The training area was an octagonal hall with entrances to hallways at each side of the room, leading off to somewhere further.

There were easily over three hundred goblins, training and getting trained by stronger goblins. They didn't notice us until we already started attacking, but our very first battle was no easy task.

While Ren and Liam would have happily continued to slash and smash, Luca's quick thinking got us cleared and into one of the corridors, destroying the entrance behind us. Visibly annoyed, Luca explained that we can't just go around blowing our magic and stamina fighting needlessly.

The corridors connected to similar octagonal halls of different sizes, mostly smaller than the first training hall we saw, with each hall leading off to different directions through corridors at each side of the room. Much like a labyrinth perhaps but I had already tracked a tentative direction of the humans. So we just followed on in that direction, hoping to avoid as many goblin patrols running around and fighting only when encountering one directly with no chance of avoiding battle.

We were initially worried the carnage of the dead goblins left in our wake as we moved towards the direction of the humans would allow the goblins troops to narrow down our location. But I guess the goblins are just plain stupid and incapable of thinking intelligently. They are just running around randomly in groups, screaming and trying to find us.

The entire monster spawn was in disarray with no need for us to face a large number of goblins at once since there seemed to be no coordinated attempt to hunt us down. Clearly no one had trained them for something like this.

"Stop. Backs to the wall." Luca called out. We immediately did as advised, and sure enough a large group of goblins entered the hall in front of us and looked around for us. Seemingly assured that there was nothing, they started to leave.

But just as their entire group had almost disappeared into some other corridor, a crude piece of armor fell off a goblin at the back, who clumsily dropped it again and kicked it in anger while trying to pick it up, making loud noises the entire time and sending it skidding right in front of our corridor.

A quick arrow silently planted straight into its head as I tried to put it down quietly before it could pick up the armor piece again. But the other goblins had already noticed us.

"Get ready to engage." Liam said as the goblins rushed towards us.

I sighed and notched an arrow on my bow.

Time for yet another battle.