New Companion

Sure enough, some green goblins began to be walking by in the distance, chattering to each other in their own language while carrying an assortment of weapons and some buckets of paint.

"Finally, there are living creatures here," Leo spoke aloud, his expression getting excited, "I was beginning to get a little bored."

After finishing his little monologue, the goblins immediately started to notice there was a single intruder in their domain.

They screeched and drew their weapons, but only after carefully putting down the paint buckets in their hands. There were around six of them, each the size of young children.

"Good, you guys are ready." Leo decisively detached the metal string from his forefinger before dropping it on the ground, "Let's see how well my first battle will be."

Feeling a little exhilarated, he raised his magic sword and instantly cast out a fog of smoke from the blade's tip. Thanks to its elemental enhancement, the fog quickly covered the large distance between the two groups.

One of the goblins had a set of bow and arrows. While their quality appeared to be very primitive, Leo still made sure to negate his opponent's distance advantage by blocking their vision.

The dark fog billowed around the six goblins while avoiding Leo completely. He then quickly moved with light footsteps to the side before hearing an arrow being released from the magic fog.

Naturally it missed, and the goblins were gibbering at one another to decide their next course of action. These creatures, although possessing sentience, weren't too intelligent in complicated scenarios. Being blinded, they could no longer decide which direction they should head to pursue the intruder.

As they were wasting time, the intruder in question had already finished chanting a certain spell.

[Lightning Chain]

Several tendrils of lightning burst out from Leo's blade in the direction of the fog of smoke. They quickly spread out from each other, covering a wide area, and started electrocuting all six of the goblins. The dark fog started to take on the appearance of a little storm cloud.

Sizzling sounds travelled through the air, and then the sounds of bodies dropping were heard. None of the goblins had any time to scream, as the electricity had instantly fried their nervous systems. A burning stench wafted through the air.

One reason that Leo used this spell was to quickly prevent these creatures from making any loud noise that could alert their allies. While goblins were usually not very strong, they were still very troublesome to deal with in large numbers.

Although he was confident that he could survive an onslaught of a dozen at once, Leo knew that his current priorities were mainly to explore these ruins as carefully as he can. It would be troublesome to fight more than he had to.

'Better make sure they are dead first,' he reminded himself before dispelling the fog he created.

With a spell, a crude dagger was instantly formed in his left hand.

The magic sword was still currently new and Leo didn't want to waste its high quality. And in terms of mana cost efficiency, it was cheaper to make a simple dagger than to use a spell that could clean off rust.

In just six stabs the small group of goblins were quickly confirmed to be dead. After taking a look at the items on their corpses, Leo found no materials worth bringing back. The paint the goblins dropped was also quite ordinary as well.

'Still though, where did the paint come from? And why exactly did these goblins come to this area specifically?' Leo asked himself curiously.

'From what can be guessed, it appears that these goblins were just coming to have some fun.

'However, based on what I've read about them, goblins rarely like to multitask and happen to be fickle creatures. Whenever they choose to play around, they often ignore doing anything else unrelated. Yet these little guys were on guard with their weapons when they came by. It doesn't seem like something they would bring if they were just going painting. Could they be hiding a big secret?'

As he was making deductions, Leo walked back to pick up the string he dropped earlier before reattaching it onto his left forefinger. He then looked around to see if there were any clues to what the goblins were doing.

However, the current location was quite large. It took one look before Leo felt like abandoning his search. If he were to stay in this area, it would take him several hours before he could eventually find anything.

Nevertheless, he decided to use a quick and simple spell to help detect any abnormalities in the region.

[Seismic Sense]

Placing his palm on the painted floor, a barely noticeable tremor started to emerge from the stone he was touching. It soon travelled to various other stones around him before quickly covering several square yards. After getting no feedback, Leo moved on to other areas and continued to repeat this method.

Seismic Sense had been developed in the past to allow mages to observe any changes in the earth. It sent a vibration into the ground that provided feedback to the user to give them a rough estimate of the earth's current state. It had helped prepare many countries in the past for sudden natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

Fifteen minutes later, an entire acre had been covered by this spell. Yet there weren't any interesting findings. However, Leo did begin to notice that certain stones in random places were more hollow than the ones around them. But after taking them out and carefully observing them, Leo found nothing unique. Some stones were directly broken with magic but there was still no indication of any secrets the goblins were trying to hide.

'Even so, I should probably bring one back just in case. The minister might want to study this.'

After putting one of these stones inside his pouch, Leo continued to travel around the painted area. The further he travelled the more he began to notice that patterns of color started forming in small places. But when he came to observe them again he still found nothing intriguing.

Suddenly, he noticed sounds of clashing metal in the distance. There appeared to be a fierce battle up ahead near his left direction.

Leo dashed forward while keeping his steps as light as possible. One can never know if this could be a special trap designed to lure humans over.

As he got closer, the sounds of fighting began to cease with the screaming of goblins beginning to replace them. Soon, eight goblins lay dead on the ground while a single warrior stood over them breathing heavily.

"Haa... haa... haa..." the warrior panted while clad in his blood soaked armor. Feeling hot and sweaty, he held a gloved hand to the visor of his helmet and lifted it open, revealing a youthful face. The man was a head taller than Leo, with strands of dirty blonde hair sticking out from beneath his helm. His face looked well sculpted and maturely handsome, although there were still some small traces of baby fat on his cheeks.

The young warrior suddenly noticed Leo cautiously approaching him. At first, he raised his weapons but later held them back after determining that Leo did not possess any killing intent.

'Is he a fellow adventurer?' Leo thought, observing the man closely. The person in front of him was dressed in a similar manner to that of a knight. He held a sword in his right hand and a rounded shield strapped to his left arm.

This was the first time that Leo would be directly interacting with another adventurer, but he wasn't too sure how he would be treated. Thanks to his conversation with the receptionist, he learned that there were always unspoken rules in organizations.

Perhaps on special missions like this adventurers would agree to keep to themselves and secretly compete with each other for resources in private.

While he was still cautious, Leo felt like he should probably probe the warrior to see if he was friendly.

"Um, excuse me, but are you a member of the Adventurers Guild?" he asked.

"Huff... huff..." the young man took a few deep breaths before swallowing some saliva. After finally relaxing his body, he spoke, "Yes I am. My rank is 3, an Expert."

He suddenly straightened his body and stretched his back muscles before letting out a huge sigh.

"My name is Alex," the man introduced himself after feeling less achy, "By any chance, are you one of the explorers that were sent down to study this place?"

"I'm sorry to say that I'm not." Leo shook his head, "My name is Leo, and I am actually another adventurer from the same guild as you. I just got my badge a few days ago.

"By the way, this is also my first mission." He felt that it was appropriate to let Alex know of his inexperience.

"Ah, I see," the warrior named Alex looked slightly disappointed, "Well, it's still good to see another human face around here." He sluggishly sat down and took a rest.

Noticing the subtle invitation, Leo decided to sit across from this newcomer.

"I heard that there were two teams that accepted this mission from the guild. What happened to the rest of your companions?"

"We got separated," said Alex in a depressed voice, "Another team had already entered here several hours before us.

"You see, there were some traps past this painted area. They split us off from each other and left us exploring different places on our own.

"I got lost for a while before finding my way back in this direction. I was hoping my teammates would have been here."

Suddenly, his stomach grumbled.

"Ehhh," Alex looked sheepishly at his cladded belly, "Do you have some food with you? I haven't eaten for hours after losing my team."

Leo wordlessly reached for the pouch behind his waist and took out some provisions.

"It's alright, you can have them." Leo didn't mind that he was giving away food to a stranger. From what he had gathered, Alex didn't seem to be a bad person. He could potentially be a useful ally in this ruin.

"Thank you so much!" Alex cried out in happiness. The constant fighting with these monsters had drained him of his stamina, "Don't worry, I'll make sure to pay you back after I get out of here with my other friends."

Leo raised a hand, "It's fine. I'm not too stingy about the money. You can simply repay me by helping me explore this ruin together. Of course," he hurriedly added, "I am also fine with helping you locate your friends."

"Cheers then." Alex raised a piece of meat to his mouth before biting down.

They waited in the colorful room together to share the food. Leo also made sure to create some cups and produced water with a spell for both of them to drink.

Once he got some energy back, Alex became more friendly to the new person he had just met. He quickly got up and took Leo along while explaining his team's findings.

"When we got to the intersection, we decided to explore the right pathway first." Alex began, "It contained a couple rooms which housed a few goblins that were sleeping around. There wasn't really anything of value in those areas and we easily finished eliminating all of them.

"Then we decided to check out the middle intersection before coming across this painted room. We tried to find any hidden secrets lying around but it proved useless. Eventually we came across mobs of goblins before getting rid of them.

"We kept moving forward till we found a new set of passageways up ahead."

As he was talking, they suddenly came upon a green light at the far end of the painted area.

"This green light came from another location," Alex explained, pointing forward, "But this time, the place we were headed to had multiple intersections."

As he spoke, Leo noticed that there was a wall of green light that separated the area they were recently in from another. It acted like a veil that covered up a hidden section of the ruin.

It took a few minutes before they stepped past it and spotted a huge stone wall just a few meters away. Moving closer, the wall contained countless cave entrances that appeared to stretch endlessly on both sides. The interiors of each entrance emitted a single glowing color from within, a pattern much similar to the different colored stones from the painted area.

"We took a lot of time navigating them," Alex continued, "After we got here, one of my companions wanted to go back the way we came to investigate the left intersection. After a vote, we decided to stay here to explore the caves anyway. But we took hours walking around, and mostly came up with nothing to show for it." Here, Alex sighed in annoyance, "Most of them were very long and contained dead ends.

"It was really very frustrating. We wasted so much of our time here, and we couldn't even find the other group of adventurers that came before us. Even after using several spells, our exploration still wasn't very successful. Once we marked the entrances that were dead ends, we decided to take our companion's previous suggestion and went back to check the left intersection."

"Was there anything special?" Leo asked.

"Nope," Alex clenched his teeth, "Or at least, there might have been. There had been rooms that looked like they were meant for containing storage. But it's very likely that the previous explorers or the other adventurer team had already found them and took it all away.

"We eventually had to go back to this place. At that time, it was already late and we decided to rest before exploring them again."

"Have you guys encountered any other creatures besides goblins?" This was information that Leo became most curious about.

"Not at all," Alex shook his head, "We did find traces of other monsters but so far we only fought goblins in this area. There weren't too many that came often though."