Nest

Dean kept casting Life Detection Magic, suppressing its fluctuations as much as possible to avoid alerting those he scanned. By now, the four of them had skirted around the main goblin force.

They had been incredibly lucky, really. The battle between the adventurers and the main goblin force was so frenzied that whenever a goblin fell, its Left Fang Evidence would be forcibly snapped off within ten seconds.

From what Dean could sense, more than three hundred goblins had stopped responding to his scans, meaning at least that many had died. The adventurers were not necessarily faring any better.

Around fifty adventurers lay on the ground, their lives slowly draining away. All they could do was wait for death.

Goblins had relatively little killing power and often could not deliver a fatal blow in one strike. Since they were being forced steadily backward, quite a few adventurers had been rescued by the skin of their teeth. Even so, more than fifty adventurers had lost their lives.

Fifty-odd people really were not that many. Their deaths did not frighten the other adventurers into retreating in the slightest; instead, they stirred the blood in their veins.

This was the news Dean brought Kana and the other two. Even hearing his account made all three turn a little pale, to say nothing of Dean himself. Not only did he look sick, but his stomach was churning too.

"About eighty meters ahead, there's a small squad of goblins moving something. Should we go around them?" Just then, Dean made a new discovery.

"Moving something... Come on, let's take a look. The fighting between the goblins and adventurers is already so brutal, yet they're still hauling something away. It has to be valuable!" Kana said after some thought. The other three had no objections.

Yanxi rushed ahead of the others and soon drew close to the goblins.

Gak gak gak!!! Gak gak gak!!!

But when they came within about thirty meters, the goblin squad seemed to notice something. They all grabbed their weapons and began yelling wildly in every direction.

Gak gak gak!!! Gak gak gak!!!

"Shh! Don't move. From the looks of it, those goblins still don't know where we are!" Kana whispered. The four lay motionless in the grass. Thirty meters away, the stunted goblins could not locate their enemies at all.

Five minutes passed, then ten. The goblins remained just as vigilant, never relaxing for a moment, as though facing a formidable foe.

Only Dean could barely detect a faint fluctuation roughly once every minute.

"Dean, do you know what that is?" Lamore seemed to have spotted something and spoke to Dean.

"What? Where?" Not just Dean, but Kana and Yanxi had also failed to see whatever Lamore was talking about.

"That little thing like a mung bean, in that strange goblin's hand." Lamore continued, "Wait, why am I getting dizzy? No, I can't keep looking. That thing makes my head spin."

Lamore had looked at the little mung-bean-sized object for less than ten seconds altogether, yet the world was already spinning around him, and he felt sick enough to vomit.

With Lamore's guidance, the other three found it too. But that little mung-bean-sized object was so tiny that probably only Lamore, a half-elf, could have spotted it at all.

Just like Lamore, Kana and Yanxi grew dizzy after looking at it for less than ten seconds. Only Dean managed to last around twenty.

"Soul Stone!" Dean blurted out. Even he had not realized it; the words simply escaped his mouth without warning.

A Soul Stone was an extraordinarily rare thing. Never mind a small town—even an entire empire might not possess a single one, not even one as tiny as the mung-bean-sized stone before them.

The Soul Stone was one of the finest vessels for a soul. Of course, it had many, many other wondrous uses, but Dean could only learn a portion of them for now.

Unlike Dean, who knew little beyond its name, or Lamore and Yanxi, who had no idea what a Soul Stone was, Kana was different. She knew very well about certain treasures recognized worldwide for their extraordinary value, and the Soul Stone was among them.

Kana's breathing grew rapid. Of course, she had never seen a Soul Stone before, but Dean's words brought back descriptions she had heard of this treasure. It was almost certainly the real thing. What puzzled her, though, was why Dean remained so calm.

A Soul Stone was useful to anyone, but it was most useful to a mage. Any mage would spend their entire fortune to buy a Soul Stone the size of a mung bean—provided, of course, that someone was willing to sell it.

As for Dean, he had only just learned what a Soul Stone was from the Infinite Eye, and then... that was it. Since Dean was still a level-one magic apprentice, the Infinite Eye could only give him this tiny scrap of information, which was practically useless.

"Let's take it!" Kana said firmly. Dean and the other two nodded without hesitation. Since the goblins were of another race, there was no need for scruples, especially with a race as evil as theirs.

Adventurers were happy to do anything that hurt goblin interests, even if they did not earn a single copper coin from it, let alone when there was something to seize.

"That strange goblin holding the Soul Stone should be a goblin shaman, the highest-ranking and only one of his kind in a goblin tribe!" Dean said.

When the Infinite Eye had passed him information about the Soul Stone, it had also supplied information about goblin shamans, in far greater richness and detail.

"He's the equivalent of a mage among us adventurers. But the chances of a shaman appearing among goblins are extremely low. They essentially follow a single line of succession," Dean added. This point was particularly important.

"No wonder that old goblin has the Soul Stone! By the way, what level is this goblin shaman? If he's level two, we could give it a try!" Kana said, clearly tempted.

"Let me think. Goblin shamans have far less magical aptitude than humans. An ordinary human mage's aptitude would mark them as a genius among goblins!" Dean said. "Judging by his detection spell's range of about thirty meters, this shaman should be at least around level two!"

The difference was enormous, far too great compared with Dean's hundred-meter range. The frequency of his scans did not seem particularly impressive either. Of course, the Demon Horn made Dean somewhat different from ordinary people.

This goblin shaman was at least level two, yet the detection magic he cast was barely on par with that of an ordinary level-one magic apprentice.

Finally, another ten minutes passed. The goblin shaman seemed to have tired. He simply stopped bothering with the enemies he had yet to find and cackled at his guards, urging them to leave at once.

"Where are they going?" Yanxi asked timidly.

"I don't know what they were doing on the battlefield earlier, but this squad must be retreating to the Nest now." Dean suddenly had an ominous feeling.

(End of chapter)