The Female Knight Captured by Goblins

Mission: Exterminate the Shattered Tooth Tribe and rescue the female knight Ailei.

Difficulty: High.

Scale: City-state level.

Base Reward: +2 Intelligence attribute.

Current Success Rate: 0% (Open the dropdown menu to view details).

Hint: If the success rate exceeds 100%, you can obtain additional rewards. The higher the success rate, the more generous the rewards.

So this must be my cheat, Marvin Rodhart muttered to himself.

He had been a draftsman for a design institute, and after ten consecutive days of overtime, he had finally reached his day off, hoping to get a good night's sleep.

Who would have thought that upon waking up, the zero-pressure mattress beneath him had turned into a medieval-style straw mat.

Wait, what about the ritualistic feeling of transmigration?

At least let me have a stroke of good luck.

According to the original owner's memories, this world was called "Toril," and the continent he was on was called "Faerûn."

Here, there were magic, gods, demons, angels...

There were also elves, dwarves, dragons...

And countless dangers and accidents.

The original owner of this body, like Marvin, was a corporate slave.

Since the age of fourteen, he had been an assistant under a high-ranking mage of the Scribes Guild.

There was no formal salary, only a "student allowance" of 5 gold coins per month, which was barely enough to support himself. Moreover, he had to shoulder heavy and tedious daily work, and sometimes, his life was even in danger.

After ten full years, the original owner finally could not bear this exhausting and oppressive life, resigned in anger, and became an adventurer seeking freedom.

Chinese corporate slaves seeking freedom at most listen to "Blue Lotus" and ride the 318 highway. The corporate slaves of another world are much more ferocious, calling the life of an adventurer who fights monsters all day "freedom."

Marvin sighed while merging with the original owner's memories.

Just like the beginning of many cliché fantasy novels, the original owner had met three other novice adventurers and formed an adventuring party with a complete composition of warrior, mage, cleric, and rogue.

And when they were just starting out, they encountered a massive opportunity.

One of the four rulers of the famous trading city of Baldur's Gate, Duchess Belynne Stelmane, had issued a mission to all adventurers in the Southern Sword Coast:

Her daughter, Ailei, had been captured by the "Shattered Tooth" goblin tribe in the Cloakwood Forest.

The duchess offered very generous rewards for the adventurer who could rescue her beloved daughter:

Ten thousand gold coins and a piece of rare-grade magical equipment.

If the conditions were right, one could even marry Ailei and inherit the political resources of House Stelmane.

Once the mission was released, the adventurer circle of the Southern Sword Coast was completely set ablaze.

After all, the name of Ailei Teshir Stelmane was well-known, even to the original owner who had spent years holed up in a mage tower.

Born into one of the four great ducal families of Baldur's Gate, her status was noble.

As an Eldritch Knight, she was able to cast second-level spells at only eighteen years old and had gained the favor of Lathander.

She was a rising star of Baldur's Gate and the next heir to House Stelmane.

She was also the dream lover of countless youths in Baldur's Gate.

Faced with such a heavy reward, who could refuse?

In Marvin's memories, the enthusiasm of the adventurers competing to participate in this mission had completely surpassed that of the elderly people scrambling for free eggs at the supermarket.

The original owner's adventuring party, harboring the dream of "rescuing the beautiful knight, completing a class leap, and becoming a superior being in Baldur's Gate," had embarked on the journey to crusade against the goblin tribe.

Unfortunately, they did not have the destiny of a protagonist.

On the first night the party stepped into the Cloakwood Forest, they were attacked by unknown enemies.

The three companions were killed in action on the spot.

The original owner managed to escape back to the small town by relying on the Expeditious Retreat spell, but he was seriously injured and had no money to hire a cleric for healing.

In the end, he stopped breathing under the dual torture of pain and regret, and his body was occupied by the soul of a transmigrator.

If the original owner had a cheat and knew that the success rate of this mission was 0%, perhaps he wouldn't have acted so recklessly. Marvin sighed.

In fact, one didn't need a cheat; as long as one possessed sufficient knowledge and wasn't blinded by the heavy reward, one could avoid this tragedy.

A female knight captured by goblins...

Before transmigrating, Marvin had watched many similar plots.

And every time he finished watching, he felt his arms go weak, his body exhausted, and he couldn't help but start thinking about the meaning of the universe's existence.

However, the goblins of Faerûn were very different from the stereotypical, low-level monsters in Japanese fantasy that were always thinking about capturing females as breeding tools.

Although they were stupid, greedy, and cowardly, they were still intelligent creatures with their own language, culture, and beliefs, and they had established a society with a division of labor and cooperation.

Moreover, goblins were divided into male and female, were oviparous, and had reproductive isolation from humans.

Goblins did indeed have the habit of enslaving other creatures and liked to abuse captives to satisfy their base nature.

But generally speaking, they would avoid those who were strong.

In the power system of Faerûn, those below the legendary realm were divided into 20 levels.

The natives of Faerûn were not like Marvin, who carried a panel and had intuitive data to reflect changes in level.

But after hundreds of years of development and perfection, a set of methods had still been formed to judge the level and strength of a professional based on the skills they had mastered.

Take the warrior class as an example.

When you learned the special ability Second Wind, it meant you had shed your apprentice status, become a level 1 warrior, and officially stepped into the world of professionals.

When you went a step further and mastered the Action Surge ability, it meant you had become a level 2 warrior.

So, what was the strength of Miss Ailei, the daughter of the Stelmane family?

As an Eldritch Knight, she could cast second-level spells and had mastered the War Magic skill, which meant she was at least level 7.

If a goblin tribe wanted to kill such a powerful enemy, they would have to pay the price of at least forty goblin warriors.

If they wanted to capture her, this casualty figure would have to be doubled.

Goblins were born to bully the weak and fear the strong. They were cruel and proud when they won, and servile when they lost. How could they suddenly lose their minds and go looking for trouble, paying a huge price to capture a female knight with extraordinary combat skills and excellent equipment?

Just to provoke the wrath of the duchess?

The mission to rescue the female knight likely had hidden secrets.

As soon as he thought that the mission had hidden secrets, Marvin automatically associated it with dangerous and troublesome things like "the mastermind of an ambitious person," "the crazy rampage of a mad mage," "the terrible conspiracy of a cult," or "the planar chess game of the gods."

This was Faerûn, after all, and all of the above were common occurrences.

The ten years the original owner worked in the mage tower were not spent in a daze; he studied in every spare moment. By reading a strange book called Volo's Guide to Monsters, he had mastered a vast amount of knowledge about monsters.

It could be said that in the entire Southern Sword Coast, no one understood goblins better than him.

However, the original owner's mind had lost its calm in the face of huge temptation and had not correctly applied his knowledge to make a rational judgment.

In the end, he still could not escape the fate of death.

"Since things have come to this, I'd better get up first."

The reflection on the original owner's encounter ended here.

Marvin had a more realistic problem to solve: no money.

The mission in the mission bar to rescue the young lady knight was clearly impossible to do. He needed to find another mission to complete so that his shriveled wallet could be replenished.

Marvin was cautious by nature and belonged to the type who wouldn't even run a red light when crossing the street in the middle of the night.

Adventurers who walked in the wilderness, roamed in ruins, fought in dungeons, and actively sought danger were clearly not the profession for him.

Moreover, Faerûn was a particularly dangerous world.

Marvin learned from the original owner's memories that from the year 1358 of Dalereckoning to the year 1490 where he was now, in just over a hundred years, Faerûn had experienced three major disasters: the Time of Troubles, the Spellplague, and the Second Sundering.

The population of the entire Faerûn had not increased but decreased over the past hundred years.

Behind the cold population figures, thinking carefully about what they meant made one shudder.

Fortunately, the cheat gave Marvin confidence.

Ordinary adventurers who chose high-reward missions often had to bear high risks, and if they were not careful, they would return their souls to the divine kingdom.

But Marvin was different.

What if the mission was simple and the reward was meager?

As long as the mission success rate was stacked high enough, even a simple task like collecting herbs could yield generous system rewards, allowing him to grow stronger steadily.

On the first day of his transmigration, Marvin Rodhart summarized his first law of adventuring:

Adventurers must never take risks.