NOVEL WEB Chapter 96 Into The Den
<2 Hours later>
Two hours passed as the group continued to walk through the cave. Following the maps instructions, they traveled away from the main cave pathway and ended up in a smaller one.
It was about 10 feet wide and also 10 feet in height, not feeling too claustrophobic, but not spacious by any means. Still, it had a downward tilt to it, seeming to slope to the bottom quicker than the main pathway.
Looking at the map, Alten noticed something and decided to point it out, "According to this thing, the main cave room is pretty giant. It's highlighted in green for some reason as well... or is that cyan?" He said.
Lyrian peeked over at the map, "It looks close. Almost like we are soon to be there."
Alten knew this wasn't right, "No... we can't be so close already. It probably means that it's far below us, and will still take us quite a while to get there."
*KREEE*
"What the hell was that!?" Alten got freaked out at the sudden noise, turning around to face the direction it came from as the others did the same.
On seeing what made the noise, a slightly irritated expression showed on Lyrian's face, "Another one of these? How many single wandering goblins are there..." He said, staring at the goblin behind them.
Alten was still a little nervous, "How did it even get there... I didn't see any separate cave holes or pathways for like the past hour."
Leon wasn't impressed by it either, similar to Lyrian, "Who cares..." He said, unsheathing his blade before dashing forward and slicing the goblin's head clean off.
After cleaning the blood off of the blade with a swipe in the air, Leon retrieved the core and threw it back to Alten who was carrying most of the cores and keeping track of how many they had in total.
As Alten reached up to grab the core with his right hand, another goblin suddenly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the map from his left hand before beaming it down the cave path at full speed.
"What?!" Alten exclaimed in shock.
"After it!" Lyrian said, enhancing his feet as he instantly began to run, the others shortly following.
"What a sly duo! They planned to take this because they knew it was valuable." Alten yelled in surprise as he ran.
"They probably didn't expect for one of them to die instantly though." Leon retorted.
Although the goblin was indeed fast, this land being its biome, after all, Lyrian was easily catching up. In a few seconds, he was mere feet away from it.
He swiped his hand to grab the goblin off of the floor, but to his surprise, the goblin ducked under and began sliding down the cave. At that moment, Lyrian slightly stumbled as well, noticing the severe decline that the cave just reached.
Nonetheless, the braced himself and started to slide down as well, soon arriving close to the goblin once again as he attempted to grab him for a second time. This time, the goblin suddenly stopped in its tracks before dashing sideways into a hole in the wall.
"What!? This little shit!" Lyrian said as he slid down past the hole along with the others.
ραndαsnοvεl.cοm Alten became worried as he saw this, "No! The map!" He exclaimed, looking up at the hole he was continuously getting farther from.
Lyrian became frustrated, "Damnit! I'm not actually going the lose the damn thing!" He said, taking out his sword as he dug it into the floor.
Using that as leverage he pulled himself up to where the hole was before entering through face first.
Leon dug his sword into the ground as well to stop himself from sliding as he held onto Alten's hand, before following Lyrian and entering the hole as well.
Lyrian crawled through the 4 by 4-foot pitch-dark hole for only a few seconds before suddenly coming to a fully inclined slope and sliding down. Before he knew it, he had landed in a small cavern room that was round and about 15 by 15 feet with many smaller pathways in between.
Alten and Leon soon fell in as well, as Alten quickly yelled, "This! It's a goblin den!" Seeing the random sword hilts on the ground along with pieces of cloth and stones.
"Where did the goblin go? There are too many pathways!" Lyrian said, looking around at the 3 pathways in front of him.
"Split up!" Leon said, running toward the right one. Lyrian went in the middle one, as Alten reluctantly ran toward the left one, 'Oh god! Hopefully, I won't fail alone! Without those two, I'm not fit to be here!'
Determined, Leon ran quickly through the cavern path. As he saw goblins in his path, he sliced them instantly before moving on. Finally, he arrived at a giant opening.
It was close to 50 by 50 feet in size, a large room of stone fit for a fight.
*KREEII*
'What the!?' Leon thought to himself, hearing the abrupt scream. Dashing to the side and turning around, he saw a large, ogre-like creature stand up from its stone throne and face him.
It wore colorful regalia, a few feathers arched on the top of its head. He immediately recognized it as being a part of the goblin-mega species, as its abnormally large face resembled that of normal goblins.
In its right hand was a dark drum made of deerskin and on its right a metal drumstick.
Out of nowhere, the creature spread both of his hands out into the air like wings, before quickly slamming the drumstick into the drum in the middle.
A loud, powerful booming noise resonated through the cave at once, sending a woozy feeling down Leon's spine that made him feel like falling to one knee, but he resisted the feeling and stood his ground.
"You want to challenge me head huh?" He said, feeling as though he knew that the beast wanted to fight.
"Fine, ill fight you." A slight smirk appeared on his face as he unsheathed his blade, his eyes glowing white.
This creature... was a Hobgoblin Shaman. Similar to the one Lyrian fought.