"What is the drill bit for?" asked Tang checking the images of the loot that Shadow displayed.

"As the priest told they are mining at the hills and if there is one thing that goblins are famous for in any game are their engineering capabilities. It is expected of them to have drills and other machinery at their operation," said Shadow as if it was obvious.

Shadow had already begun to move towards the location of the mine. It is going to take at least another 30 minutes to reach the enemy camp and he no time to lose as he is going to have his actual training with a new teacher in another 5 hours of the game time. He needed to improve his characters as fast as he can. He had his aim on a pair of unique daggers that he could obtain after reaching the White Heart city.

Along the way, they found few other goblins mining at iron ore veins whom they managed to easily pickpocket and kill. As they came within a 200 feet distance to the mine entrance. They say a camp of about 10 brown colored tents with a wooden fence surrounding it. There were elite goblins guarding the camp and a few goblins riding wolf patrolling the area around the camp.

[Lesser Goblin Guards] (Elite Monsters)

Level: 4

HP: 500

[Lesser Goblin Riders] (Elite Monsters)

Level: 4

HP: 500

"How are these level 4 elites? They hardly have any HP compared to level 3 players," asked Tang who had about the same amount of HP as them.

"Their defence, agility and skill would be high enough to compensate for their lower HP. These aren't the common monster like the miner goblins we found outside. They might also call for reinforcement if they notice us, especially those riders," explained Shadow.

They soon found a hiding place behind a boulder a bit closer to the camp and while the rest of the team waited behind it, Shadow went around the camp to scout the monsters and the patrols' patterns of the riders. A few minute later, a report of the details of the camp came in.

"There are over 12 riders patrolling the camp. Four guards in total, two at the gate visible to you near the tents and two more just at the entrance of the mine. A number of the common ones are all around place. Might be more common and elite monsters in the tents," reported Shadow sending the location and patterns of the monsters on his map.

"So, we can't directly attack them. They outnumber us and there are higher-level elite monsters at the camp. It would be very hard with those numbers. We need some kind of plan to infiltrate the camp," said Quite fire looking at the image of the map sent by Shadow.

"We also need to check and see if there are any monsters that would get out from the tents. It is very complicated pattern. Is this one like that special quest that you completed?" asked Blinding White.

"I don't think so. Special quests are not given by routine NPCs like the temple priests. They are given by unknown hidden kind of NPCs," replied Shadow. "As for the plan, I will try to thin the ranks near the other side of the gate and send my clone also to provide some distraction, in case I accidentally alert them."

Soon, alerts of them receiving experience points filled up the team battle log. They were quite amazed at the speed with which Shadow was killing the monsters. But it looked like he was only attacking common worker goblins scattered around the camp.

In ten minutes time, they heard about 20 notifications of the common goblins kills. This can be considered to be very efficient as Shadow always looted them before casting cheap shot and killed them.

"Done with the common goblins. Will attempt to take the riders now. Might get discovered if reinforcements move towards me, attack the remaining ones. I can swap with my clone to escape successfully," said Balthazar as he prepared to take down the wolf riders.

Wolf riders had one advantage that was very irritating. He needs to carefully attack only the rider and not the wolf that he is riding. If the wolf is hurt, then it will be a two-fold attack from both the wolf and the rider who wields a sword. The wolf rider is also very fast, even faster than blackrock wolves.

The rider also shoots arrows and inflicts long distance damage and has high perception. It is very difficult to approach them stealthily to use cheap shot on them. But luckily the mask of shadows provides Shadow Tyrant enhanced stealth as a passive which make sneaking up to the rider a lot easier for him.

The 500 HP of the wolf rider is divided between the wolf and the rider, 350 HP to the rider and the remaining to the wolf. The rider could also call for reinforcements. But if he manages to stun the rider, he could actually him down and release the mounted wolf. The mounted wolf usually would run away from the camp.

But Shadow wanted to try and pickpocket the riders. This in general is considered extremely foolish as the riders are continuously moving and the players are hardly skilled enough to pickpocket such moving targets at the beginning of the game.

It was something so hard that Balthazar heard of what he could obtain on executing pickpocket ability on the riders. The wolves were 3 feet tall with the riders wearing satchel on its side.

He quietly walked in stealth by a rider and carefully put his hand into the satchel and pulled out something. It was a Blackrock crystal! The rider gave Blackrock crystals not even crystal pieces. He directly obtained the Blackrock crystals.

Excited by his discovery, he began to pickpocket the riders without attacking them. He made sure that he didn't pickpocket from the same rider multiple times so that, he wouldn't get caught.

Meanwhile, the remaining members of the team were getting bored. They had been waiting for more than 10 minutes but there was no commotion or notifications of the monsters being killed.

Tang couldn't bear to remain in hiding any longer. "What are you doing? Why the delay?" she asked in the team chat.

"Sorry was stealing from the riders and forgot to attack," said Shadow sending an image of a stack of 15 Blackrock crystals in his inventory. "Will start the attack now."

He immediately chose a rider who was patrolling the area where his team was hidden. He waited till the rider reached a secluded where he used cheap shot to stun the rider and assaulted him to death. He used a shadow clone. Even with a white trash dagger and sword, his attack power and speed couple with his clone were high enough to deplete the riders' health to nothing.

The wolf mount of the rider ran off away from the camp once the rider died. He got a white trash dagger and 8 coppers from the dead body. The team also got a total of 40 experience points from the death of the rider.

[Goblin Dagger] (White Trash)

Level: 4

Equipment Requirement: Strength: 8;

Attack Power +10;

Agility +6;

Durability: 20/20

Though he managed to kill a rider without alerting anyone, it couldn't be done without the shadow clone which had a cooldown of 5 minutes. So, that implied that he would have to wait for 5 minutes before he attacks another rider. This would take a lot of time to kill 12 riders and by that time, the riders might realize that some of their companions are missing.

With that in mind, he had no option but to call in the second highest damage dealer in the team. He had already canvassed the entire area and had Quiet Fire hide while he stunned the riders. Then, together they easily killed the riders, before the stun duration was over.

Even though he had already warned Quiet Fire to not injure the wolf and that if the wolf is injured it's howling would alert the other goblins, accidents were bound to happen. In their eighth attempt, she hit the wolf with a fire ball causing it to howl and alert all the riders and guards.

"Quickly kill both the wolf and rider now," said Balthazar summoning his clone to block the running wolf. Though they managed to kill the rider and wolf in 3 seconds. The remaining of the riders already have seen them and are riding towards them.

"Rendezvous with the team. I will lead them away," said Shadow. He could slowly whittle them down or escape but Quiet Fire will surely be killed without Tang or Blinding tanking for her.

"No, there are only 4 of them, if we meet at this point, we can repel them. The guards aren't as fast as the riders. We can manage to repel them," said Quiet Fire opposing his idea.

"No, I can outpace the riders then easily run back and strike at the isolated monsters and pick them off. You four attacked the guards and thin their ranks with long range attacks while maintaining your distance. If more guards or other goblins show up just leave. This is definitely a quest made for level 4 players. At level 3, it is really hard to defeat them," said Shadow.

"Maybe, I shouldn't have brought them to the mine before they leveled up," thought Balthazar. "They are not strong enough attack them at level 3 and they need to get better equipment. They might die if we continue to go to quests like this."

He messaged to Quiet Fire instead of on team chat regarding his concerns. "If we fail let us attempt this again only after we level up. We are not strong enough for this quest. We need to upgrade our equipment also."

"Might be right. It is a level 3 to 4 quest," said Quiet Fire agreeing with him. "If, it gets hard, we will retreat. You do the same."

"OK, if you retreat, this is a good place where level 3 wolves are found. The Blackrock Wolves, which are special elites, may also be seen. Be careful and farm here. They respawn* rate is also not bad. The dead ones respawn about once every half hour," said Shadow providing her an image of the map he traversed for his special quest.

There were two riders already closing onto him and Quiet Fire hardly thirty feet far. He immediately created a clone to attack the rider targeting Quiet Fire allowing her to make a decent distance from them.

By the time, the 20 seconds for the clone were done, Quiet Fire managed to run close to 200 metres from him. The other rider also focused on him as Quiet Fire was far away and the aggro from the clone shifted to him.

The remaining two riders also appeared on the horizon and were riding fast towards him. Though Shadow with his higher attributes could resist the attacks of two of the riders and combat them. It would be far too hard to handle four of the riders on his own.

He started running in a direction away from Quiet Fire and the other two riders while fight two riders close to him. Lucky for him that the riders didn't have an attack speed that was comparable to their movement speed. Else, the two riders would have managed to land attacks on him without fail.

It was a hard task to evade the two who were collaborating to land attacks on Shadow. But that wasn't the main issue. If Shadow ran at his maximum speed, he could sooner or later avoid the riders. He had to intentionally lower his speed so that the riders would keep attacking him, else if he successfully evades, they will go back to the camp and might attack the team who were attacking the guards.

He continued to run away while maintaining aggro range for a few minutes when he got the system message.

System: Teammate Tang and Spicy died.

He immediately messaged Quiet Fire, "What happened at the camp?"

"There were more goblin riders and guards who came out of the tents. We hardly managed to escape them. Luckily, they stopped attack us after we were about 100 meters away from the camp. Else even Blinding would have died trying to tank those riders."

"That is good, it looks like the monsters that appear from the tents won't leave the premises of the camp."

"But Tang died trying to tank them. They are too fierce. We need to upgrade our equipment by a lot before we try to do the quest again," said Quiet Fire.

"OK. Go to the location I mention in the map. I will distract them," messaged Shadow as he created his shadow clone and made it go into stealth to escape. He had four of the lesser goblin riders attacking him. The clone only had 20 seconds of life within which he had to swap position. He had to make these few seconds count and sprinted away from them at full speed.

In the last second, he activated the skill shadow swap to disappear from the aggro range of the riders. "I escaped the riders. I hope you are nowhere near the camp," he said immediately going into stealth. He made his way back to the goblin camp to check up on the reinforcements.

As Quiet Fire told him, there are more riders and guards at the goblin camp now. Due to him being in stealth he was 50% slower than his normal, the riders who were after him returned to the camp. Apart from these four riders, he noticed another four riders and four guards.

"They are lucky that only Tang and Spicy got killed," thought Balthazar. "With these reinforcements, they definitely need to be geared up well before they can take on the quest. I always knew that the temple quests aren't easy. But this is harder than I remember, even the initial number of riders and guards were lower than what I see. I guess, the difficulty of quite a decent number of quests was made easier in later upgrades."

He quickly made his way to the guards while in stealth. These guards were 4 feet tall. That was quite large for species like lesser goblins. He set to picking their pockets. He got refined iron ore again. The guards were quite stationary compared to the riders and it was easier to execute pickpocket.

It was a common habit for most guilds in his previous life to pickpocket guards as they gave iron ore. Shadow continued to pickpocket the guards for refined iron ore.

He already had enough iron ore and refined iron ore to finish his quests, but he continued to pickpocket the goblins because they might give him engineering blueprints or forging designs. Even the lesser goblins occasionally carried blueprints and designs.

Though the goblins began to notice that some pickpocket was among them and began to attack blindly, Shadow continued till he finally got hold of a parchment from one of the guards. It was a shield design, a black iron shield.

[Goblin Shield] (black iron shield)

Level 3:

Materials Required: Refined Iron Ore x 3; Stones x 5; Magic esscense x 2;

Requirement: Endurance: 8;

Defence +15;

Vitality: +10; Endurance +3;

"Finally, something worth being a goblin creation," thought Balthazar as he looked at the design. He could easily create it once he finished Kade's request. With this he could earn some money in the game and maybe don his team with better equipment.

If he opened a stall at the village, the players tend to buy it with credits through somnium technology than the in-game money like it happened in his transaction with Blue Dart. He decided to give it them to the village head who could auction them off at his office.

Note:

*respawn - an instance of a character in a video game reappearing after having been killed.