Chapter 127 Tagalong

The fight had settled down. The goblins were dead. They had been killed. Then, the tense atmosphere relaxed a little.

The damage dealer fooled around too much, so he was called out. The tank, huffing and puffing, was exhausted and silent, like the sorceress, who wasn't so talkative in the first place.

The only party member still on "duty" was the priestess. Thanks to her Healing Magic, she took care of the party's wounds before the monster hunters' job was thoroughly finished there. Rushing to the leader, she started applying her healing spells, but then, no.

She wouldn't do that. First off, the leader's wound was barely a wound at all, by my standard. Just like the damage dealer. Still, usually, the weak party of adventurers saw to it they weren't even wearing scratches or cuts at all. That was the way of the weak people as they had to ensure they were to win, always, and safely.

Yet, the priestess was told, "No, don't."

The leader rounded the party, which seemed to include me, and confessed. He spoke about his plan, namely what the party would go about doing from now on. The priestess shouldn't heal either him or the damage dealer for a reason: Today, she had to save her mana. Why? Because they weren't heading back home so soon. Usually, that's what they did, but today they wouldn't. From my perspective, of course they wouldn't just go back home after having hunted a little handful of monsters and be satisfied with it… but it seemed that's what the weak party usually did. The priestess needed to save up her mana. This was as simple as that.

When the party grew somewhat uneasy and confused at the leader's plan of action for up until sunset, explanations were given. For a first reason, today, the goblins acted unusually weak and shy. Normally, in the deeper parts of the dark woods, monster-types weren't so meek and absent.

To add to that, as the party knew, even in their usual hunting grounds there were barely any monsters at all. Well, there were actually none, so yes. The leader, exposing his thoughts to the team, explained that, if he was being honest, he didn't know what to think of that himself… but maybe that wasn't the important part. To make the matter clear, all that was important to the leader was that the goblins were unusually scarce, which must have meant the monsters were declining, and so it was a golden occasion for the weak party to make progress and gain experience. After all, they were one party of the weakest volunteers who had participated in "that" quest issued by the Guild, weeks ago. They had volunteered to. That was because, more than anything, they wanted to grow strong. Hence— "Let's try and push ourselves past our limits… why don't we!"

After more discussion, the anxious party decided to be brave and the idea was well received. Today was the occasion to progress deeper into the unexplored woods and map more of this hunting land's area. Selling the mapping to the Guild would earn them better money, and they would make progress for sure.

The ways of people were rather stupid: Hands were lifted up, and the vote was over in favor of the leader's plan. They trusted the majority, but most likely, the majority had to be unsophisticated or plainly stupid. As I was given a voice in their affair, too, I said I was more than happy to explore more of these woods with my humans, and that I "trusted our party leader, too."

I didn't really mean what I said, but some told me I was cute for saying "our leader," and my head was patted.

That was it. What surprised me was that nobody even cared to mention the matter of the Mana Perception skill. To me and all the party, it was clear that was also part of the reason the group of friends allowed themselves to run deeper through danger since the unfathomably extraordinary and uncanny teenage boy, who did actually possess the overpowered sensing skill he mentioned like it was no big deal, was accompanying the group. It was needless to mention the fact that it was the same boy who saved them on the battlefield weeks ago.

But no one mentioned it anyway. The ashamed party didn't make a comment about me. Were they freaked out? Most likely. Were they also naturally a little clueless about how to even address the topic? That was an obvious possibility, too. I did mention it to see their reaction, but a slight crisp crept on their faces and they said nothing, avoided my eyes, and even went as far as turning their backs on me.

At the same time anyway, as per the leader's instructions, they were back at it. Exploring and hunting. We had no time to waste. Already hours had gone by since we entered the forest. They said they could hardly stay more than five hours as they still had the way back home to walk afterward, and they couldn't do it at night because of bandits.

The damage dealer took care of the looting since he wasn't grossed out by searching and digging through the monsters' remains, finding copper coins, tiny metallic plates, a quite decent dagger, and a few gray-claw wolves' fangs.

Finally, we were off.

We walked onward using the same formation as before. More than ever, the party members were wary of our surroundings. In their mind, the threat to our lives could be lying anywhere. There weren't, though. No threats for now. Still, at every turn, there could be a group of goblins hiding around. And so, at every turn, they steeled themselves for a fight. A warning was given to the party: If there happened to be too many of them, they would retreat at once. Everyone trusted the leader but the burden weighing down upon his back wasn't making him bend; he accepted his comrades' trust and embraced all of that weight.

As the leader had remarked, the monsters were scarce. They were scarce, up until… they weren't anymore. A group of four mobs. Three regular tiny-gobs and one other goblin with a bow and arrows.

By chance, the leader spotted the enemies before they did. The arrow coming flying our way surprised neither the leader nor the Mana Perception-wielder. Diving toward us after the arrow, the three other monsters went rushing to the party, screeching wildly and jumping around like crazy. The three ugly creatures proved to be swift, but the leader was even more swift.

After the piercing arrow was made to bounce by the leader knight's shield, the tank moved on his own, too, and taunted all the goblins, taking them all onto his massive bulk. The sorceress, under the leader's supervision, also got into play and tossed her curses, or negative status effects, to the monsters, restraining the goblin with a bow. The damage dealer quickly nodded to the knight and rushed toward the last goblin. In the meantime, the priestess produced protective mana shields here and there and stuff.

Dancing around for no more than five minutes, I observed them and made further observations on how good teamwork was a greater strength than strength itself. The quest read 8 goblins dealt out of 10, and 0 gray-claw wolves dealt out of 3.

The Party was proud. They could fight pretty well, according to their own standards of evaluation. The damage dealer handled the looting again, stuffing everything in his backpack.

Going off again, this time, it really was weird. The atmosphere was different. To the party, it really looked like something was off. For around an hour, we didn't meet any monster-types and the leader shifted his focus toward mapping the unexplored area. Really, the dark woods were so eerily empty it kind of freaked the party out. As I had mentioned, I had no idea, but I was the cause of that bizarre behavior in the forest's monsters.

Somehow, the magic spell the old man kept placing on me, once a week, in order to hide my overwhelming monster-like aura from the people of the capital, didn't work on fellow monsters, I imagine. And so, the forest felt the monstrous monster's presence intensely enough. Monsters, since they could, naturally retreated deeper into the forest in order to hide from the threat I posed.

But anyway, that wasn't important. Under the leader's steering hand, we navigated more through the dark forest, until we found another group of goblins. Or rather, a group of monsters.

I had already seen a goblin, but I had never seen a gray-claw wolf. It looked like a regular wolf-monster, but it was painted with an off-putting gray color and had imposing fangs. A fight broke out after the wolf growled his hostility at us—this time, the lonely goblin tamer thought it best to straight up run away from the party but was killed anyway.

Time passed again. At the end of today's hunt, they had hunted so many monsters the quest could've been completed twice. Everyone was worn out and the sun indicated late afternoon.

After one of the leader's so full-of-life short motivational speech about how we did our best, how we progressed very well, and mostly how, after the big quest issued by the Guild, weeks ago, about hunting orcs and whatnot, and after they had realized how weak and not fitting they were on the real battlefield, they still were willing to do their best today, and finally, how, soon enough, they would be given a new chance to carve their way to the top of the food chain, somehow, because they were survivors, and that's what survivors ought to do… the party departed from the forest.

Every member was happy about today's hunt. Even the greedy damage dealer was. They truly gave their best, apparently. Out of the dark woods, casually chatting about any trivia they could think of—what kind of food they wanted to eat, what kind of clothes they wanted to buy, what kind of jokes they laughed at, and so forth—the party left work with ease and peace.

The quest from the System was completed, but the System issued "No Reward(s)." So it read. Or something like that anyway.

Only I was left disappointed about today's hunt. What could I do, though, I was just a tagalong.

For now, anyway.