Chapter 307 Goblin Lair and Gravity Core?

Dead silence.

The frigid air, usually filled with shrieks and bizarre howls, had fallen completely silent after a brief chorus of wailing.

A campfire crackled. A skinned wild boar roasted over the flames, its surface slightly charred. It was cooked to perfection—provided one could ignore the foul stench of uncleaned guts mixed in with the aroma of the meat.

Wisps of mist drifted gently in from outside the cave, carrying a faint reddish hue, as if the overwhelming stench of blood in the air had physically manifested.

"Plop."

A small, cloudy yellow-green eyeball—looking much like the frosted crystal candies favored by the nobles of Nym City—rolled out of a half-shattered skull. Trailing behind it was a chewy, viscous "mochi" of tissue, garnished with bits of minced meat like red spices. A few drops of milky, sticky "soy milk" drizzled over it, before it was finally glazed with a warm, freshly brewed crimson "hawthorn syrup," completing the gruesome confection.

However, the farmboy standing in the cave clearly had no appetite for such a delicate "dessert."

Squish—

A mud-stained leather boot stomped down heavily, crushing it with a faint, brittle pop.

As he lifted his leg to take another step, a sticky, tearing sound followed. Blood mixed with unknown cloudy fluids dripped slowly from the sole of his boot.

Standing on a floor carpeted in blood and severed limbs, Xia Nan pinched a piece of gauze, carefully wiping down the silver-white longsword in his hand.

A faint, almost imperceptible afterglow of relaxation lingered on his face, like someone who had just indulged in a deep pleasure.

Even though this was merely a transitional weapon used while his Decapitating Longsword was being reforged, the good habits he had cultivated over a year as an Adventurer compelled him to fastidiously wipe the remaining blood from the blade after every battle, keeping it as dry and clean as possible.

A more thorough maintenance session would take place when he set up camp for the night, alongside the care of his armor and greaves.

To be safe, Xia Nan didn't sheathe the sword. Instead, he carried it loosely in his grip.

His gaze swept across the lair.

He had anticipated the scale of this lair back when he was navigating the incredibly complex and deep tunnels near the entrance.

But actually standing inside, he was still amazed by the sheer, cavernous expanse of the space.

It was like a green-skinned ant colony excavated by countless goblins. Densely packed holes, varying in size, peppered the walls on both sides.

The shallow ones could be seen to the end with a single glance, while the deep ones offered only a pitch-black abyss, leading to who knew where.

The tunnel entrance he had come through was merely the most inconspicuous of the dozens of holes.

It was hard to imagine just how massive a goblin community had to be to hollow out a lair of this scale.

The number of goblins inside would be staggering.

Only now did Xia Nan truly grasp what the high-level Adventurer Squad—the one that had lost members here—must have gone through.

The lair was far too vast. The goblin tribe he had just wiped out, consisting of fifty or sixty goblins, occupied only a fraction of it.

Furthermore, the gloomy environment meant low visibility, significantly slowing down Xia Nan's post-battle looting. The walls held the charred remains of spent torches, likely left by the cave's original owners. This usurping goblin tribe had only lit the area near their immediate roost; everything else had to be navigated by the faint bioluminescence of fungi clinging to the walls.

Fortunately, his Perception was exceptional. His enhanced physical attributes also slightly boosted his night vision. After about twenty minutes of searching, he unearthed a hobgoblin's stash from a hidden nook in the wall.

A few scattered coins, along with some sparkling little stones.

'Maybe these can sell for over thirty gold?' Xia Nan guessed.

Lacking any mineral appraisal knowledge, he could only take them back to the general store in Rivervale Town to sell.

When it came to goblin extermination rewards, there was a counterintuitive truth: the loot found in the lairs of small goblin tribes on the outskirts of the Misty Forest was normally far richer than that of the large colonies in the core region.

The reason was quite simple.

Although the actual combat power of the small goblin tribes on the forest outskirts was much weaker, they frequently encountered low-level Adventurers exploring the woods. They even had opportunities to raid outside villages and passing merchant caravans. Even if they lacked the concept of actively hoarding treasure, the gold coins carried by the corpses of intelligent races added up to a significant sum.

In contrast, the goblin communities capable of securing a foothold in the core of the Misty Forest possessed noticeably more elite individuals and superior combat strength.

However, their enemies were almost exclusively highly dangerous, vicious monsters with a high Challenge Rating.

Their daily hunts were just to fill their bellies; there was simply no loot to speak of.

As for Adventurers...

Suffice it to say, any Adventurer who could traverse the forest outskirts all the way to the core region—like Xia Nan right now—had to possess both strength and experience in spades.

They naturally wouldn't be defeated and dragged off by Green-Skinned Goblins like those so-called "Adventurers" who merely wore an extra piece of armor and held a weapon compared to ordinary commoners.

Unless they had truly rotten luck or ran into some unexpected accident that let the goblins pick up a cheap win, they simply wouldn't fall.

As a result, it was easy to foresee the scarcity of loot in these massive goblin colonies.

For this reason, to promptly exterminate the goblin swarms in the deep forest and stamp them out before their numbers grew unmanageable, the Adventurers' Association implemented targeted measures: they raised the difficulty ratings of the corresponding goblin-clearing quests. They used the gold coins and points rewarded by the quests to offset the Class Holders' losses, encouraging them to head into the core of the Misty Forest to cull the goblins.

This effectively replaced the standard lair loot with commission rewards.

Take the quest Xia Nan had just accepted as an example. Could a mere few dozen goblins truly qualify for an "E" rank quest, rewarding a full three hundred gold coins or ten points?

The bulk of it was a subsidy from the Adventurers' Association.

Once one could truly weather the countless dangers along the way and travel safely between Rivervale Town and the core of the Misty Forest, the goblin tribe targeted by the quest was nothing more than an afterthought.

He happily accepted the haul, stuffing the loose coins and small stones into his backpack.

Still burdened with over four hundred gold coins in debt, Xia Nan naturally wouldn't turn his nose up at this little post-battle windfall. Even if just used for food, it was enough to buy plenty of bowls of mushroom soup.

After double-checking that the severed limbs and minced meat on the floor had no chance of reviving, he finished gathering the loot but didn't rush to leave.

Instead, he began a meticulous sweep of the massive lair, searching for any missed spoils.

With a scale comparable to the grand churches in major cities, there was a chance the high-level Adventurer Squad responsible for the previous purge hadn't picked it clean. If they had left some scraps behind, it might just cover the funding gap for his longsword's reforging.

Unfortunately, Xia Nan's luck wasn't that good, and he had underestimated the search capabilities of high-level Class Holders.

He walked through and inspected the entire lair twice, yet failed to find any more valuable loot.

But he didn't come up completely empty-handed. His acute Perception allowed him to spot an anomaly.

In the very center of the lair lay a patch of ground distinctly different from its surroundings—it was flatter and slightly lighter in color.

It was roughly ten square meters in size, forming a square with rounded edges.

It gave him the impression that a small structure—like an altar or a statue—had rested there for a long time before being abruptly removed, leaving this imprint behind.

Most crucially, around this discolored square patch, Xia Nan found numerous shattered bone fragments.

It was highly bizarre.

Based on certain highly recognizable details in the skeletons, he was certain these bones belonged to Green-Skinned Goblins.

They weren't even from variants like hobgoblins or Bugbears, but the most common, classic grunts.

What was odd, however, was that these bones—which should have been the size of a human child—appeared proportionately magnified. Some had even ballooned to the size of a Bugbear.

Xia Nan had never seen this type of goblin before.

The arrangement of these corpses drew his attention even more.

They weren't haphazardly piled and scattered across the ground like on a typical battlefield.

Instead, they were laid out in a regular, concentric pattern, spreading out in methodical rings from the square patch at the center.

For a brief moment, it gave Xia Nan the illusion of the gravitational outburst from when he had just advanced, which had left similar marks on the grassy meadow.

"High-level Adventurer Squad," "Hunting Day," "Advancement," "Gravity"...

These pieces of information converged in his mind, suddenly reminding him of the rainy day he had advanced into a Class Holder.

The tossed [Fate Coin], and the [Gravity Core] that had appeared out of thin air to block the blade.

There was even that high-level mage he had met once, and the blonde elf who seemed possessed by an evil god.

Xia Nan's expression abruptly turned strange.

He took two steps back, carefully appraising the ground before him.

'It couldn't be such a coincidence, could it?'

'Could that fleeting [Gravity Core] back then... have come from right here?'

'From inside a Goblin Lair?'

He found the idea utterly absurd.

Yet all the evidence before him, along with his own intuition, told him this was the most likely scenario.

Thoughts swirled in his mind. In that moment, Xia Nan even felt the urge to stay in the lair for a few more days to thoroughly explore those dangerous, uncharted tunnels.

But right then, a strange noise echoed from a nearby deep tunnel.

It sounded like an insectoid carapace scraping against the ground, accompanied by a faint, high-frequency hiss.

His vigilance flared, instantly clearing the stray thoughts from his head.

Leveling his longsword across his chest, Xia Nan rapidly backpedaled.

He had barely opened up some distance when a deafening boom erupted.

The seemingly spacious cave entrance was violently forced wide open!

A behemoth radiating a stench of blood and rot barged into view.

It looked like a lobster magnified countless times over.

A yellowish-brown chitinous shell covered its entire body, while long, tangled tendrils extended from its mandibles. Its massive pincers snapped at the air, emitting a terrifying, sharp screech.

Xia Nan didn't recognize this monster.

Its physical features looked somewhat familiar—he felt like he had heard someone mention it before—but in the rush of the moment, he couldn't recall its name.

However, one thing was certain: this lobster-like monster was in absolutely atrocious condition.

Only half of its tail remained, and one of its lower legs was broken.

Scorch marks from fire peppered its body. Its left eyeball was missing entirely, leaving only a pitch-black socket oozing viscous slime.

An entire slab of carapace—stretching diagonally from its back, down past its shoulder, and ending at its chest—had vanished without a trace. It laid bare a large mass of fibrous, pale white muscle tissue beneath, which could be clearly seen squirming, stretching, and twitching with the creature's movements.

The most shocking injury, however, involved its incredibly dangerous-looking giant pincers, which seemed capable of snapping steel.

Right now, only the left one remained.

The pincer on the right side of its body had been cleanly severed at the shoulder joint. A few thick, grayish-white nerve cords dangled bare from the stump, leaking a continuous stream of translucent, sticky fluid.

These were undoubtedly critical wounds.

In fact, any ordinary creature would have been on death's door with such injuries. There was no way it could be as lively as this monster, waving its remaining pincer and shrieking relentlessly.

Pushing his Perception to the limit, Xia Nan rapidly estimated its actual combat capability, weighing the pros and cons of retreating versus fighting.

Facing the enemy, his shifting footwork already moved him to a much more open angle.

The massive Goblin Lair lacked the usual dreadful, cramped restrictions. It was like an open plaza, allowing Xia Nan's advantages in speed and burst power to be fully unleashed.

With the [Deathline] ring and the [Tears of Spring Breath] necklace on hand, he had a high enough margin for error.

He would test the waters first. If it was within his ability to handle, that would naturally be best; the materials on its body might fetch a good price. On the other hand, if the monster—despite its grievous wounds—still proved too difficult and tenacious, using [Fang Hunt] to immediately retreat was also an option. After all, the extermination quest was already complete, so there was nothing to lose.

Howl—

A long, drawn-out wolf's howl suddenly erupted, instantly drowning out the monster's hissing.

A pitch-black giant wolf shrouded in shadows leaped out of thin air. With a terrifying speed far beyond human reaction time, its silver-white fangs plunged straight into the stump of the Armored Lurker's right arm.

It twisted violently!

"Hiss—"

A piercing screech, saturated with agony, reverberated through the hollow lair.

The Armored Lurker's entire body seemed to stiffen for a fraction of a second from the strike before it violently swung its remaining left arm to its side.

The pincer gaped wide, but it snapped shut on nothing but air.

With swaying mane, the black wolf had already anticipated the move the moment the exposed muscle fibers on the creature's chest tensed.

With a graceful backward leap, it effortlessly dodged the Armored Lurker's pincer attack, as if it had predicted the strike perfectly.

Translucent, thick bodily fluids dripped from the surface of the blade, while the [Darkscale Coiled Guard] on his left arm refracted a faint light.

It was a fleeting first exchange.

But Xia Nan already had a solid measure of the monster's strength.