My Parasite Skill System

And so they had to go.

Bumped took care of the looting, as usual. The lacking-manner human wasn't grossed out by searching and digging through the monsters' bodies.

Was that part of adventuring, then? I observed him. It was interesting to me.

Sniffing about the four dead goblins, he found copper coins, tiny weird-looking metallic plates, a dagger of actually good quality, and that was about it.

He complained there wasn't much. Others didn't. He complained alone and wasn't complaining reluctantly. So as to add balance to that, I complained alongside him, too.

We went on exploring again. Redoing that one formation we'd been organized in all the while, we proceeded and marched on.

More than ever, we were wary of our surroundings. The threats to our lives could be lying about anywhere. No real threats, though. That's why they could be confident and stay relaxed.

At every turn, there could be a group of goblins hiding around. And so, at every turn, there could be a need to fight. They readied themselves perfectly knowing this.

In any case, Leader often repeated, if there so happens to be too many of them, or if they, even so, happens to be even slightly unsure about victory at all; they would retreat at once.

Everyone trusted Leader. The weight on his shoulders was heavy enough. He accepted and embraced all of that weight.

Going like this–the leader and tank keeping the front; me, the priestess, and the other support behind; and the damage dealer in between us all–we advanced deeper.

Like Leader had so wisely remarked, the monsters were scarce.

Scarce, scarce, scarce…

Up till they weren't so scarce anymore: we encountered goblins again.

It was a group of four all together. Three regular goblins. And one of the goblins had gotten himself a bow with arrows.

Since they didn't ask, I didn't bother wasting myself using 'Mana Perception.'

So the arrow surprised me, too. It had been shot to us diving directly from the front when all the other three goblins went rushing to the Party, screeching and jumping around.

The three little ugly creatures proved to be swift, as usual–but Leader was even swifter.

When the goblin using the bow had let the arrow plunge in our formation–clang!–Leader only had to bring his shield to his shoulder to make it bounce off.

The arrow wasn't even usable anymore. It bounced off of the wooden shield and shattered instantly.

In his swiftness, Leader didn't even have to tell the tank was to do. On his own, he took them all by himself.

Leader only had to turn to the sorceress, indicating her to restrain the archer goblin. Which she did pretty quickly.

After he quickly nodded to Bumped, now … this latter was sent rushing towards that last goblin. He could spot it, so he went to deal with it since the sorceress still would support him, restraining it.

And in the meantime, Clumsy applied her usual shield spells to the tank.

This was that, and they all danced like this for no more than two minutes. I could make further observations on how the teamwork that was stronger than strength worked out, but that was it.

❮ Goblins deal with: 8/10 – Angry wolves dealt with: 0/3 ❯

The Party was proud. They could fight pretty much well (according to their own standards).

I wasn't proud. I couldn't fight at all, even though I wanted to.

But there was no time for me to complain. Bumped handled the looting, as usual, stuffing every piece of good stuff he could find into his back pouch.

And then we continued on … again?

Did we?

Are you sure we did that?

Can you know?

I snatched one of the dead goblins' rusty daggers away (nobody saw me?) … and only then did we go.

With this little thing, I'll be able to fight if need be. So it made me happy a little bit.

And we continued.

Under Leader's lead, as usual. Nobody was wounded, it was surprising. The confidence the Party possessed was growing tougher and tougher as time went by.

We could go on like this for only a few minutes when we immediately bumped into another group of goblins.

Or rather, another group of monsters.

There only was one goblin with one wolf. The goblin I already knew. The wolf, though, it was a new discovery. It was gray and furry, of roughly half the height of the goblin, and equipped with long, menacing fangs and claws.

It growled when he saw us. Its fur stood erected. And its master goblin reacted after the dog.

Jolting in place, he screeched at us. His demeanor, after that, was a hesitant one. And slowly lifting his little, hideous body up without taking his eyes off of us … he immediately engaged in running away.

He jumped on the muscled wolf's back–and it started to run to its fullest … but Sorceress got him.

Both the goblin and the wolf were abruptly stopped as if halt.

This negative effect didn't last more than one second, but it left enough time for both Leader and Bumped to go deal with the two monsters.

❮ Goblins deal with: 9/10 – Angry wolves dealt with: 1/3 ❯

And time passed.

At the end of the four hours of hunting they did, they had hunted so many monsters the quest could've been completed twice.

Everyone was tired, and the sun indicated late afternoon.

After one of Leader's so full-of-life, motivating, and short speech about; how we did our best, how we are progressing very well, how after the big quest issued by the Guild at the time of the battle of Ladafar about hunting orcs and whatnot we had realized how weak and unfitting we all had been when dealing with powerful foes, how even though all that went down we still are willing to give our best today, and finally, how, soon enough, we will be given another chance and will carve our way to the top, somehow, because we're survivors; the Party departed out of the forest.

We went out of the forest.

Everyone was happy about today's hunt. They really had been giving their best, apparently. And everyone decided to end it happily by being casually chatting about any triviality they could think of.

What kind of food they wanted to eat, what kind of clothes they'd be buying themselves, what kind of jokes they laughed at, and so on so forth; trivialities, mostly.

They were relaxed, and to them, they deserved to be.

Yes, we had hunted enough.

So much so, that the quest could've been completed twice.

But it didn't, though.

It was only completed once, and that was it.

And in the end, I was disappointed since I couldn't play with them. Only I had been left behind.

But it was okay.