Goblins

【Corrupted Silver-Spotted Rat (Common)】

This pack of Silver-Spotted Rats was even more frenzied than the corrupted creatures she had encountered during the night. There was absolutely no sanity left in their blood-red eyes, only a pure desire for destruction.

Their grayish-black fur was covered in the flocs that had fallen from the trees as they swarmed toward her like a rising tide.

But after leveling up, Wu Yao's spells had grown more powerful. A single Fireball was enough to clear out a patch of empty ground.

These Silver-Spotted Rats only had strength in numbers. A few spells blasted in their direction wiped out a large swath of them.

Yet even more monsters continued to pour out from the shadows.

It was as if the sunlight had awakened the filth sleeping deep within the forest. Wolves, bears, crows, deer, foxes... corrupted creatures of all shapes and sizes rushed toward her location.

Wu Yao even saw a calf-sized corrupted spider descend from the canopy, its eight blood-red eyes locked onto her.

For a moment, the scene was as lively as a zoo. Wu Yao could only cast Earth Wall several times in rapid succession to partition the battlefield.

There was no helping it; too many monsters were rushing in to get a piece of her, and there was only one player.

While the earth walls rising from the ground could block small monsters, they were somewhat inadequate when facing large beasts like bears.

While she was busy on her side, a nearby bear shattered her Earth Wall with a single swipe of its paw, sending stone fragments flying in all directions.

Human and bear locked eyes. Startled, Wu Yao cast two more Earth Walls in quick succession, deciding to clear out these big guys first.

Her Mana drained rapidly, but fortunately, her experience bar filled up just as fast. Right as her Mana was about to hit rock bottom, she barely managed to trigger another level up.

With all her statuses fully refreshed, she quickly allocated 2 points to Mana and 1 point to Intelligence.

“Come at me!” Wu Yao shouted, her blood boiling as she looked at the field full of corrupted creatures.

All of these would turn into a reserve of blue potions in her Inventory. Whenever she ran low on Mana, she could just chug a few. She would show these monsters what an immortal player was capable of!

In the brief intervals between combat, she spread the Corrupted Cores she had snatched amidst the chaos across her palm, purifying them all in one go.

Grabbing a handful of the resulting Mana Cores, she stuffed them into her mouth like jellybeans. Unfortunately, they dissolved instantly upon contact, leaving no taste behind.

【Used Mana Core ×4. Restored 80 Mana.】

“A perfect loop!” Wu Yao thought excitedly as she hurled Fireballs.

Slaying monsters dropped blue potions and granted experience, and using those blue potions to level up made it even easier to slay monsters. She couldn't have found a better grinding spot than the Cursed Forest.

Although daytime was dangerous, the sheer density of monsters more than made up for it.

Spells crackled from her hands. The monsters that emerged with the sunlight perfectly satisfied her craving to level up.

In all her time playing this game, she had never seen her experience bar fill up so quickly. She couldn't bring herself to stop.

The pale sunlight fell upon her high-spirited face, making it hard to believe she was actually trapped in the middle of a swarm of corrupted monsters.

Beneath the very ground she stood on, two goblin merchants were huddled together.

They had just passed their internship to become registered merchants of the Topaz Trading Company, and were heading to Emerald City to make their mark. As for why they were here?

That story began three hours ago.

Thirty feet underground was where the goblin merchant guilds preferred to establish their trade routes. Tunnels wound through the bedrock, tracing the outlines of a massive commercial empire built by the goblins.

The cross-section of the tunnel was a neat ellipse, its inner walls covered in a layer of slick, bronze-colored moss. This was Soil-Binding Mycelium, cultivated by the goblin merchant guilds with the help of witches. It could reinforce the tunnels without damaging the geological structure, while also absorbing toxic gases from the soil.

“Sis, the seniors weren't wrong. This route really is boring,” Tongque said. She squatted beside a buzzing alchemical device, pouring water into it with one hand while absentmindedly twirling a lock of ochre curls near her ear with the other.

As a newly registered merchant of the Topaz Trading Company, her oversized, dark brown merchant robe still bore an unremoved internship badge, with the hem embroidered with the Topaz Trading Company's unique emblem—a fusion of ore and gemstone.

Her older sister, Tiechui—whose name allegedly came from her first cry at birth being as loud as an iron hammer striking an anvil—sat cross-legged in front of the control panel of the automatic tunneling machine, her calloused fingers dancing over the brass joysticks.

The 【Mole Type III Automatic Tunneling Machine】 beneath her feet was equipment provided to them by the trading company.

Its streamlined brass chassis was covered in dense runes, and three sets of runic drill bits at the front were grinding the rock face ahead into fine powder, which was then discharged behind them through a pipe.

The Soil-Binding Mycelium was mixed into this powder; with just a splash of water, it would quickly take root and reinforce the newly excavated tunnel.

“Check your manifest, little Tongque,” Tiechui said, her voice slightly raspy, like sandpaper rubbing against wood.

“The seniors also said it's boring because the Cursed Forest has been dead for over a hundred years. Other than ash and bones, there's nothing here but countless corrupted creatures. Boring means safe, and safe means we'll make it out alive to collect our first commission.”

They were transporting a shipment of alchemical products from the dwarves' Black Iron City to a border black market in the Ulanda Federation.

Goblins fared slightly better than witches in the human world, but not by much.

They were viewed as “magical parasites” and “greedy, black-hearted merchants.” If they were discovered on the surface by demon hunters or patrols, the best-case scenario was having their goods confiscated and being kicked out of the territory. The worst-case scenario was being hanged by the roadside as accomplices of witches.

Thus, they had to travel underground. The subterranean tunnels beneath the Cursed Forest had been left behind two hundred years ago, back when the Cursed Forest still bore a gentler name—the Moonlight Forest.

Although the Moonlight Forest had ceased to exist over a century ago, the underground trade route was still relatively safe.

Until seventy years ago, when a caravan met with an accident here. A corrupted giant mole had breached the tunnel, devouring the entire caravan along with a cartload of Moon-Silver Ore.

Since then, the route had been marked as “High Risk” and temporarily abandoned. However, as it was the most convenient passage to the Ulanda Federation, it couldn't be left idle forever.

Filled with grand ambitions, the two sisters had volunteered for this mission.

The trading company's vice president had even prepared a large quantity of potentially useful alchemical products for them, promising that if they made the round trip safely, they would be awarded Three-Star Merchant badges!

One had to realize that a newly registered merchant usually had to toil for at least ten years and complete over a hundred trade runs just to rise to Three-Star status!

Tiechui remained fully focused throughout the journey, not daring to let her attention drift for even a second.

“But Sis, don't you think...” Tongque suddenly paused, her nose twitching as she sniffed the air. “Something feels off?”

Tiechui frowned. Goblins were ten times more sensitive to magic than humans, and Tongque was exceptionally gifted in this regard, even among goblins.

Although they couldn't manipulate the elements directly like witches could, they were not inferior to witches at all when it came to sensing elemental flows.

Beyond the rock layer, directly above their heads, something was flowing.

It wasn't the nauseating rot of corruption, nor was it the innate dead silence of the Cursed Forest. It was...

Vitality?