Chapter 301: Goblin Lair and Gravity Core?

Dead silence.

The cold air that used to be filled with hisses and strange calls fell into silence completely after a short period of wailing and mourning.

The campfire crackled, and the skinned wild boar was slightly scorched under the roasting of the flame flow, having reached the most suitable heat for consumption, provided you could ignore the stuffy stench of intestines mixed in the meat fragrance.

The faint mist from outside the cave drifted gently, and a touch of blood color was added to the mist, as if condensed from the extremely thick bloody smell in the air.

"Gurgle."

A small, turbid, yellowish-green eyeball, just like the sugar-frosted crystal ball often used by nobles in Niumu City, rolled out from the skull that only had half left, with sticky and chewy "mochi" at the end, a few pieces of minced meat like red spices dotted on it, sprinkled with a few drops of milky, viscous "condensed fat bean liquid," and finally wrapped in a layer of scarlet "hawthorn honey" that had just been boiled and retained warmth, completing the setting.

It was just that, the country boy from the fields on the field right now clearly didn't have the appetite to taste this kind of exquisite "little dessert."

Sshh-pah—

Leather boots stained with mud stepped down heavily, and a slight sound of brittle objects bursting came from under his feet.

Lifting his legs and taking steps, accompanied by the sticky sound of mucus sticking, fresh blood mixed with unknown turbid liquid dripped slowly from the soles of his shoes.

Standing on the ground paved with blood and broken limbs, Xia Nan held a piece of gauze in his hand, carefully wiping the silver-white longsword in his hand.

His face carried a touch of relaxed aftertaste after indulgent enjoyment that was hard to detect.

Although it was just a weapon used for transition during the recasting of the Decapitation Longsword, the good habit cultivated in the adventurer career of more than a year still made him wipe away the blood remaining on the surface of the sword blade after the battle, ensuring the sword blade was as dry and clean as possible.

And more meticulous care would be carried out when setting up camp at night, together with armor, leg armor, and other equipment.

To be on the safe side, Xia Nan didn't put the sword into the scabbard but held it in his hand.

His gaze swept across the lair.

Although he had a premonition about the scale of this lair in the extremely complicated and long passage at the entrance,

but right now, when he was standing in it, he still couldn't stop being surprised at the openness and hugeness of this space.

It was like a green-skinned ant nest excavated by countless Goblins, with dense, large or small cave entrances distributed on the walls on both sides.

Some were shallow and could be seen to the bottom at a glance, while others were deep and could only see a piece of pitch-black darkness, not knowing where they led.

And the entrance passage he came from was just the most inconspicuous one among these dozens of cave entrances.

It is hard to imagine exactly what kind of huge Goblin community could excavate and build a lair of this scale.

The number of Goblins in it would be unimaginable.

It was only until now that Xia Nan truly had a real feeling about the encounter of that high-level adventurer squad that suffered casualties here.

The lair area was too wide, and the Goblin tribe composed of those fifty or sixty Goblins he had wiped out just now only occupied a part of the area.

Coupled with the overall dark environment, the visibility was relatively low, which made Xia Nan's speed of collecting loot after the battle much slower—there were remains of burnt-out torches on the walls on both sides, but they should have been left by the original owner of the cave; this Goblin tribe that occupied the nest like a cuckoo only lit up the area near where they lived, and the rest of the areas basically had to rely on the fluorescence emitted by the bacterial colonies on the walls to identify objects.

Fortunately, his perception was exceptional, and the improved physical fitness had also slightly enhanced his night vision. After fumbling around for about twenty minutes, he managed to scavenge the Hobgoblin's hidden stash from a concealed small hole in the nearby wall.

Some scattered coins, plus a few small stones that were shining.

Could sell for thirty-something gold?

Xia Nan guessed in his heart.

Without relevant mineral identification knowledge, he could only take it back to the grocery store in Hegu Town to process.

Regarding the clearing reward for Goblins, contrary to common sense, the loot that could be searched in the lairs of those small Goblin tribes located in the edge area of the Mist Forest was, under normal circumstances, much richer than those large communities located in the core area of the forest.

The reason is actually very simple.

Small Goblin tribes on the periphery of the forest, although their actual combat power is much worse than the latter, often have the opportunity to contact bottom-tier adventurers exploring in the forest, and even have the opportunity to plunder villages and passing merchant caravans outside; even if many times they don't have the concept of actively collecting treasures, the gold coins carried on those corpses of intelligent creatures, when accumulated, will not be too few.

Conversely, Goblin communities that can gain a foothold in the core area of the Mist Forest are obviously stronger in terms of the number of elite individuals and combat ability.

But their enemies are basically those cruel magic beasts with higher challenge ratings and extreme danger.

Daily hunting is just to fill their stomachs, and there is basically no loot to speak of.

As for adventurers...

It can only be said that, just like Xia Nan now, adventurers who can cross the periphery of the forest and arrive at the core area possess both strength and experience.

Naturally, they cannot be defeated and captured by green-skinned Goblins like those so-called "adventurers" who just wore an extra piece of armor and held a weapon compared to ordinary people.

Unless the luck is really bad, or other accidents are encountered, they basically won't flip over.

In this way, the scarcity of loot in these Goblin communities with a large number of Goblins can be foreseen.

For this, in order to clear the Goblin clusters in the depths of the forest in time and strangle them before their scale grows to a degree that is difficult to handle,

the measures taken by the Adventurer Association are to increase the difficulty rating of the corresponding Goblin clearing missions, using the gold coins and points of the mission rewards to compensate for the losses of those professional adventurers, and encourage them to go to the core area of the Mist Forest to clear Goblins.

It is equivalent to using commission rewards to replace the original loot gains in the lair.

Taking this commission Xia Nan took as an example, with just these dozens of Goblins, can it really reach the level of an "e" grade mission, rewarding three hundred gold coins or ten points?

Most of it comes from the subsidies of the Adventurer Association.

When you can really withstand the countless dangers on the road and safely travel between Hegu Town and the core area of the Mist Forest, the Goblin tribe as the mission target can only count as a side dish.

Happily accepting it, he put these scattered gold coins and small stones into his backpack.

Still carrying a debt of more than four hundred gold, Xia Nan naturally wouldn't dislike these little extra gains after the battle; even if used as food expenses, it was enough to buy quite a few bowls of mushroom soup.

After confirming again that those broken limbs and minced meat had no possibility of resurrection, Xia Nan, who had completed the loot collection, didn't rush to leave.

Instead, he began to carefully check this huge lair, searching for any missed gains.

With such a scale, like those large churches in big cities, what if the high-level adventurer squad responsible for clearing last time didn't search cleanly and left some oil and water for himself, the funding gap for the longsword recasting might be filled directly.

It is a pity that Xia Nan's luck was not that good, and he underestimated the search ability of high-level professionals.

He walked and checked the whole lair twice, but couldn't find any more valuable loot.

But it was not completely without gain; his keen perception ability allowed Xia Nan to discover

In the center of the entire lair, there was a patch of ground that was distinctly different from the surrounding area, being flatter and lighter in color.

It was about ten square meters in size, forming a square with rounded edges.

It felt to him as if some small structure, like an altar or a statue, had sat there for a long time and had been suddenly removed, leaving behind these traces.

Most crucially, Xia Nan discovered many bone fragments of corpses all around this square patch of ground with the obvious color difference.

Very strange.