A woked up around sunrise. I felt good. After laying on my makeshift bed for a while, I got up to eat. I didn’t eat much though, since I wanted to preserve my rations, but I also needed energy for hunting.

Next was checking the equipment. State of the shield was good enough for a few fights more. I thought to myself that I should use it less often. The rest was in decent shape. I spent some time looking at my new pants and admiring workmanship. Well, there was not much to admire, to be honest, but I still felt proud of my work.

When you make something from scratch, and it works, it’s just a great feeling. I tried to push my thoughts towards the more positive side of things. I couldn’t stay negative, but with my pessimistic attitude, it was more of distracting myself, than thinking about happy things.

When I finally picked the equipment up and went to the woods, I found myself thinking more about what’s around. Nice, green trees. Perfect grass under my dirty feet. Everything was too perfect. It made me wonder that perhaps it was not real. Maybe it was just a dream? Well, then why the hell its not ending? – I thought.

This stupid place was so bizarre to me. Like living in the virtual world, except everything around was real. At some point, I had thoughts that maybe we were kidnapped, and connected to some strange machine, which put our minds in virtual bodies living in this data world. I just couldn’t think of a reason why. My brain just refused to accept it.

Anyway, I started my hunt. Since I wanted to make some distance of the paths usually taken by other hunters, I kept heading to the left. This time though, I didn’t go too deep in the forest, so I was able to see city walls at any point. It was a few hours of walking. Then I headed deeper to get some crystals.

Another chunk of minutes passed, and then I found something. A large mound. No, this word doesn’t give out how big it was. It was humongous. Only a few meters high, so it wasn’t towering over the tree lines, and actually was slightly behind them, but the radius was at least a few hundred meters.

[0)ᴠᴇʟ I could see it from afar. Even while being half-blind. I immediately crouched down and started to sneak my way closer, hiding behind the trees and bushes. When I got closer I noticed that there are some creatures roaming around. Collecting sticks and stones. They were putting it inside, using multiple holes big enough for a single man to get in. I almost instantly thought of an ant’s nest, but the creatures were not bugs. When I got even closer I noticed that they had fat, fleshy tails. Like rats. They were slightly smaller than goblins and were covered in fur. Especially their heads. A cross between a dog and a rat would be the closest thing I can think of, to describe them.

They were humanoid creatures. I immediately gave their species name ‘rats’. They were hunched over and had big, fat bellies sticking out. They wore haphazard clothes made of animal skin, that mostly just covered their loin regions.

Compared to goblins they were relatively well-armed. Some had spears with spearheads made of bone. Other knives made of some kind of metal. It looked like iron for me, but I wasn’t sure. A few even had shields and short swords.

I observed them for a few hours, especially curious if they could communicate. Unfortunately, all I could hear from them were some squeals and grunts. So random, that I even stopped considering it as a language, which I did at first.

For me, their behavior looked just like goblins. That’s why I decided to hunt a few of them. Didn’t want to risk a disadvantageous fight for myself, though. So I ended up sneaking my way to the spot with only two. I waited for them to split a bit, then I charged one of them. He panicked but quickly took out the knife. Unfortunately for him, It wasn’t enough to stop my weapon, which smacked him right to the head. The second, to my astonishment, just bolted straight to the hole in the mound. It was a moment of confusion to me. I stood there just looking at the hole he vanished in.

That’s what routine does to you. I was so used to charging goblins, that I never considered something else might happen. After a moment my senses returned back to me, and I picked the crystal off the ground and started to run deeper in the forest.

While I was escaping, the crystal in my hand felt a bit different than what I was used to, but I didn’t stop to check too afraid that a horde of rats is gonna storm out of their, probably, home. I stopped after nice few minutes of a fast run, mostly to catch a breath, and then took a peek. Goblin crystals had two singular points, but this one had one more. It looked like a smaller one was attached at an angle, or part of it was splitting up. Overall the stone was a bit bigger.

I’ve put it in the backpack and jogged even further. At some point, I got too tired, so I stopped. I found a good spot behind a tree with bushes all around it, so I used it to hide. I rested for around an hour taking my time, listening to the surroundings, and eating.

I’ve waited for, I think, around an hour. Then the first noises cached my ear. Squeals and rustle indicated that it was them. I listened carefully for a few moments more, to ascertain how many were there. Although I couldn’t be sure, I thought there were six.

They were moving a lot, probably looking for something, and that something was me. I understood clearly, that their behavior is different from goblins. There was no blind charging, and obviously more teamwork between them.

It seemed very risky for me to engage, but I also was afraid that they might find me, even though I was hidden pretty well. In the end, I decided to fight. I had a simple plan, that never betrayed me against the goblins. Rats were different, but since I didn’t have better ideas, I decided to go with the ambush.

When the time finally came, I jumped out swinging strong. A clean hit took out one of the rats instantly. The next one also was unable to react, and close enough to get killed by the second swing. He tried to dodge but was too slow. Then I’ve found out, that I was actually wrong. There were not six but seven enemies.

All five charged at me spreading out to soround. A quick glance around, and I’ve found a better spot to fight. Between two trees they were unable to get me from behind, and also had to stick pretty close to each other, or go around. Two decided to split, and engage from both sides while the remaining tree attacked from the front.

They were armed in shortswords and knives, so I couldn’t allow myself to get cut or stabbed. Such wounds could be deadly when I didn’t have anything except my precious clothes, to stop the bleeding.

Even though, I decided to jump at them pushing with the shield. They surprised me by dodging and spreading out a bit. I saw an opportunity, and instead of landing heavily, I used the momentum and moved to the side blocking with a shield, and thrusting with mace. The rat got hit straight to the face, but it was too little to kill him. He squeaked and stumbled backward. The remaining two closed the distance. The closer one, that had to move around the tree, also had to stop, and turn which made him lose momentum. Still, he was in a spot to thrust with his sword.

I actually expected him to attack, and twisting my torso smacked him in the hand probably breaking it. The situation looked a bit better. Two were unable to fight immediately, two were in front of me, and one was too far to consider a threat.

I dodged two simultaneous attacks and made some distance. Now I felt a lot more comfortable in this fight. Taking advantage of the distance I just made, I looked for cover behind the tree. It was quite obvious to me they are gonna come out from different sides, and they did. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t expecting me to jump out at the same moment. I used my size and weight to push the rat with my shield and managed to knock him down. Then I smacked the weapon out of his hand and finished with a strong hit, that broke his skull.

The remaining one had no chances. I finished him quickly and turned to the injured two. They were not there. Those cowards ran away, but since they were pretty slow, I still could see them. I caught up and finished them off.

Founding crystals, later on, was a bit annoying and I had to search for several minutes, but in the end, I managed to pick them all up. Now I could clearly see the upgrades in dexterity and constitution working. Previous exhaustion, and relatively easy fights with goblins, where I could predict almost all of their moves, didn’t push me to make risky moves. Moves I probably wouldn’t be able to execute as well as I just did.

I picked my backpack hidden in the bushes and put all of the precious crystals inside. Then I started to head closer to the city walls to camp there. Just as yesterday, I made makeshift bedding, and went to sleep.

Day ended with 808 points on my account, 17 goblin crystals, and 7 rat crystals in my backpack.