In a forest during the night, my group and I continued traveling to our quest destination. This group has a really bad combination with all of us being good in one thing only, which is assassinating.

First let me introduce the group.

Ravenna Eriobea, the party leader. She's an Elf and an magic trickster. She has the typical High Elf features, blonde hair and green eyes. She's probably around 75 years old. No, she's not a grandmother, that's like early adult age for elves. She is a small elf! She's short, like 4'11 short. She makes the decision, and takes initiative for the team.

Razz Matash, another assassin that possesses magic in the party. He's a human. There's nothing really unique about him, he's got brown hair and dark brown eyes. He's not tall nor short, just average height like 5'6. He's, you could say, an average joe. He's 27 years old.

Domotraus Trijalle, he's human also. He's the fastest in the team. Naturally, he's got good reflexes, and is always alert. He's probably the most charismatic person in the team, he gets around easily with others. He has dark black hair with light brown ends. Has sharp brown eyes that shine almost gold under direct sunlight. He's a tall person, 6'2 in height. He's only 23 years old.

Sephsevel, this girl's a mystery. She's what you would call a Mastermind. She has a way of exploiting the weaknesses and blunders of her opponents, she's considerably a dangerous assassin in the party. She's a dark elf with the typical edgy look and long white hair.

Then there's me, my name is Athelstan the Cheater. Yep, that's really my name. I'm a human too, nothing special about me aside from the fact that I cheat a lot. I'm still surprised that my team still trusts me. I'm 5'7 in height. I got dark black hair with dark brown eyes, pretty generic right? I'm a pretty young guy like I recently turned 20.

Now let's go back to the adventure.

Under the darkness we travel, avoiding any hostile creatures we could sense. Our quest was to go to a village fulfill their request, which is to destroy a goblin hideout. No we're not goblin slayers, usually we receive quests related to assassinating specific people or scouting in enemy territory. We were quietly walking until Ravenna told us to stop. We had to reach the village by sun rise and stopping midway wouldn't allow us to reach our destination in time. Since I'm just a human, I couldn't see under the darkness other than a weird silhouette of what looks to be a giant creature, other than that I have no clue why we stopped.

She signaled us to draw our weapon, which we did. This giant creature was awake as it was busy moving around. Despite us being hidden under the darkness, it had noticed us right away. Just our luck, it stood up. Then I realized we were going against an Ogre. We had to react fast as it already saw us. Ravenna made the first move by casting the spell, firebolt. She shot it towards the Ogre which hits. As it was distracted the rest of us maneuvered behind the tree giving us full cover. We're not that great fighting things head-on so we like playing like cowards attacking it then running away. It moved towards Ravenna and tried to attack her with his giant club, what a caveman technique. She was able to dodge the attack avoiding the hit. As that happened the rest of us has reached our positions. Domotraus, being the fastest, went ahead for a sneak attack behind the ogre which hits. Followed by another sneak attack from Razz which also hits. The ogre turns around to face the enemies that attacked him from behind, which was a big mistake. The moment he turned around Sephsevel had made her shot with her longbow. It hits the right eye of the ogre, I made a sneak attack behind him aiming for his leg the same time the arrow shot. The ogre falls to one knee then tries to attack both Razz and Domotraus. As usual being an assassin means we're fast, the two of them were able to dodge the attack and made some distance between them and the ogre. Ravenna gets both of her short swords and stabbed the ogre from behind, which made the finishing blow. The ogre falls to the ground, dead.

We looked, and signaled to each other that we were okay and unharmed. We started hearing footsteps from left and right, meaning this ogre wasn't alone. So we hurried off to prevent another encounter.

We were very used to fighting monsters and groups, as we had encountered a lot of hostile creatures in our other quests, this ogre was simple. It was a peaceful travel to the village. The sun had risen and we arrived, it's a small village, with around 10 houses in a circular formation with some fields behind the houses. The village is located in a clearing within the forest.

We were welcomed by the guards watching over the village. We entered the village and let's say it looks quite nice. There's a well in the center of the village, this is where they get their water of course. The village elder, who waited for our arrival, approached us.

"You five must be the rogues we had requested, allow me to formally welcome you to my village. Please follow me this way."

The old guy lead us to his house. We sat down in the dining room and he offered us a meal and some tea. After eating and enjoying ourselves, Ravenna takes the initiative to ask about the quest.

"Now that we're here, let's discuss about your request, what is it you need us to do?"

"This village is usually safe, and the surrounding areas were also safe. Even a part of the forest was safe for us, during the day at least. I had a group of four strong men to hunt for food. They usually come back after 5 hours, but the last time they left, they never came back. I sent out a search party and we found their belongings on the floor near the hills, north from the village. We had also found goblin prints and followed it, which lead us to a cave. We chose not to enter it."

The village elder takes out a map showing the village and the surrounding area, he plants his finger in the northern area of the village where the hills are located, but not exactly on the hills.

"This is where the cave is. We believe that the goblins are become active during the sunset, and we haven't been hunting ever since."

I saw something interesting in the map, it looked like a building somewhere in the south of the village.

"What's this building?" I asked as I point to what caught my interest.

"This is an abandoned church, there's a rumor of a spirit taking the appearance of a well known rogue named Cilan Mamoru. He fought in the war to protect the world from demons, he died in battle. And that church is where he died.

This spirit is known to cause chaos to wherever it goes, but as far as this spirit goes. It's just a rumor. But the main objective of the quest is here in the north with the goblins, don't get distracted."

"Right.... goblins... got it" I just looked away irritated.

"Ughh old people" I mutter to myself.

As the village elder explained things, I noticed Razz trying his best to not fall asleep, he'd be doing the signature lowkey headbanging where he just slowly puts his head down then immediately put it up with his eyes half open. This guy must be a master of stealth cause no else seemed to have noticed him. Well I wasn't listening either, too busy focusing on sleepy Razz.

After a while of Razz trying to fight his sleep, the village elder stands up followed by Ravenna.

"And that's what we know so far, I wish your team a successful quest."

They both shake hands

"Thank you. We shall move out by nightfall and take out the goblins on the same night." Ravenna says assuringly.

The village elder begins to walk out.

"Well I have a village to take care of enjoy yourselves for the time being."

"Anyways team, got a plan?" Ravenna asks and looks at all of us.

Of course, I'm not smart enough to think of a strategy, but I DO know someone who does. The rest of the team also knew this so we all looked at Sephsevel on reflex. We were waiting for her to come up a plan as we watch her inspect

the map.

She finally speaks up

"I'll explain the plan later, I need some time to think of counters. So yeah see you till then."

She stands up then walks up the stairs.

"Hey, where are you going?" Razz asks her.

"We were given permission to use the rooms. Knowing you, you were most likely totally not half asleep and was totally listening to the village elder." She says sarcastically.

Domotraus stands and follows her up

I knew for a fact that our mastermind probably said an excuse just to take a rest. Well we are pretty tired from traveling, so I guess I'd do the same in her position.

I followed them upstairs also cause I want to sleep. Before I left the room, I looked back at the table seeing Razz already asleep, making himself comfortable on the chair. I let out a little laugh then went upstairs.

I entered a random room and see a girl sleeping on the bed. She looked pretty cute with her dark curly hair reaching to her shoulder she looked young but not too young, I'd say she's around 17 years old. She slowly rises as soon as I had opened the door, she turns towards me then rubs her eyes.

Quick strategy plan.

It takes about 5 seconds for your sight to clear up, and about 3 seconds when rubbing your eyes. As she rubs her eyes, I can make a quick hide behind the door as I haven't closed it yet. But she would know that someone had entered, and we'd be in trouble if I were to just leave the door open, but if I do close the door. It would again make a sound, but the sense of hearing isn't fully awake either. And people tend to forget the first 30 minutes of what happens as soon as they wake up, but she looks like she enjoyed her sleep. So there's a possibility that she might notice me the sound right away, but I can always kill her so there would be no witnesses. Wait what am I thinking?! I can't kill her. She's just a girl-

Then suddenly she finished rubbing her eyes. Good game, this is it. I was too slow, sadly I don't have the fast reflexes or the speed of Domotraus. If I did though, I'd have been able to get out of this situation before she could get back to her senses.

She opens her eyes and I'd just be standing in front of the door, frozen knowing I had screwed up and the village elder is gonna have me arrested.

She screams as loud as she can then throws a pillow at me then hides under her blanket.

Ravenna pulls me out then closes the door.

"What in the word are you doing?! He said not to enter her daughter's room! Weren't you listening to what he was saying?" She be scolding me

"I- uh I'm sorry" I didn't know what else to say honestly. But right mow I'd really like to just take a sleep.

"Just go to a vacant room and take rest, I'll explain things to the village elder." She heads back downstairs.

I looked to the right and followed the hallway and there'd be four doors, two on each side, excluding the daughter's room. I went to the one nearest to the daughter's room for reasons and thankfully it wasn't taken.

The room isn't big it's quite small really. There's the bed at the end of the room, with a window on the left side if the bed.There's a cupboard beside the door I came in from, and a small table and a chair on the right side of the bed. I just went ahead and jumped on the bed then took a rest. Since I was used to traveling I slept like a log.

After 8 hours of sleeping, I woke up and got my pack. I inspected my dagger, and it looks like it's about to break. I needed a replacement, something good and not a kitchen knife. I checked my pocket and counted five bolts. I equipped my handbow and prepared one bolt. I head out of my room and headed downstairs.

As I arrived I see the girl from a while ago reading a book.

"Good morning."

"Afternoon" She looked at me with those brown pure eyes.

"Exactly what I said!"

I just sat down on a chair. It was really quiet. I wasn't good at talking much, but someone had to break this silence. I know for a fact she wasn't going to, so I made the first move.

"Hey so what's the book about?"

She looks at me in the eyes. At first I thought to myself if she was the one. But I know for a fact that I was being to simple, so No.

"It's a story of a Prince and how he came to learn of love after a tragic past."

"I see. By the way, my name's Athelstan"

"My name's Mary"

Mary. What an angelic name. Wait what am I thinking?!

"So Mary, how young are you? I'm twenty"

"You're quite young for a rogue. I'm sixteen"

And there is the awkward silence again. Pretty intense. After just a few minutes of me staring at her as she reads. Razz enters from the front door.

"Ah you're finally woke! Let's start going, we're gonna setup camp near the cave."

I stand up and head for the door. I look back to take one more glance at Mary. Our eyes catch each other then she quickly goes back to reading. I blush and look down tryna hide my face. From here on out, I knew our journey would be a tough one.

We left the village and started heading to where the villagers were known to be last spotted. The sun is still up and I know that we would take hours to reach our destination. It was quiet trip, since we're rogues. We stay quiet for the stealthy travel.

After just travelling for hours. Ravenna signals us to stop then points up to the trees. We immediately know what it meant, so we started climbing the trees. Then she signaled us to stay hidden. Which is pretty easy since we're rogues and hiding is something we're good at. The closest to me was Sephsevel. The tree she's on is literally beside my tree. While Razz and Domotraus are 40ft away from me. We traveled in a two-one-two formation. Ravenna being in the middle while Sephsevel and I are on the right side, and Razz and Domotraus are on the left side. So while on the trees, we still kept formation. I had my eye on Ravenna to see her next signal, and it was to watch around. I watched around for quite a while and started hearing rustling in the bushes nearby on Razz's side. Soon two humanoid creatures in green coloured skin. With like a sharp chin and pointy ears. They would both be holding short swords and wearing leather armor. I looked at Ravenna waiting for the signal to attack. Instead she gave a signal to stand by. Soon after, 2 more goblins join them with the same equipment. This confirmed that there was a goblin hideout nearby, and they did kidnap the other villagers. Well, that is what the village elder said. Usually as rogues we wait for the right time to strike them, and we'd attack them at their weakpoints. But knowing that they did take the villagers, it made me have this weird urge to play the offensive and take them down at this spot. I was confident that we could, since it's a 5 on 4 with all of us being rogues. We didn't do anything and stood by. After some time, the goblins left heading south, which is where we came from. We assumed they were gonna attack the village. We let them off the hook knowing the village can defend itself from mere goblins. We started climbing down and continue heading north to the goblin hideout.

That was our very first encounter of goblins. Was it the right decision to not attack them? I honestly really wanted to make the first strike, sadly we at this point in the quest we have to make the right and best decision that will benefit the whole squad. As we travel I started noticing traces of muddy footprints. We decided to follow it then it lead us to the cave of where the goblins are known to be hiding. There would be two goblins outside the cave, but they look asleep so I went ahead and did the honor of putting their soul to rest.

"So do we still put up a camp?" I ask

"No, change of plans, we're going in. These goblins must be asleep while it's still day. We can take them out while we can." Ravenna replies back.

I was so in agreement to the plan. I glance towards Razz because I had a feeling he'd be into the plan, but he seemed to be distracted once again. Staring into the sky again. I approach him and give him a tap.

"Stay focused on the quest." I say to him.

"Right. Will do." He replies back

Sephsevel casts the Light spell, then a small orb of light appeared in front of the party. We enter the cave with the light shining 30ft away from us.

This is the part where I hate being human, I can't see anything in the dark. Only the girls in the group can see in the dark, while we weak guys can't. We all stayed quiet, which was pretty boring but then again, we are rogues after all. We can't be rogue if we're noisy right? Anyways, we've travelled for about a few minutes, and hello path. The path split into two. One going left and one going right. I waited for Ravenna to decide where we go. Just imagine what this group would be without Ravenna's leadership, we'd be so done for.

I took a peek at the right path and saw a bit of light. It was a Goblin carrying a torch heading towards our direction. The goblin had a short sword ready on his other hand, while walking towards us. We were pretty used to this kind of situation. Sephsevel aimed her hand crossbow at the approaching goblin while I prepared my 50ft rope. As soon as Sephsevel made her shot. As the bolt flew across the cave. Domotraus and Razz rushed towards the Goblin. The Bolt hits the Goblin's right eye. As soon as the bolt Domotraus and Razz did a cross slash on that Goblin with their Daggers. The Goblin falls to the ground and dies.

I picked up the torch and noticed something strange from the sword of the goblin. It had blood on it, fresh blood.

"Looks like we weren't the only intruders here." I tell to the group and I show them the bloody short sword.

"Or they just recently killed off the captured villagers." Sephsevel remarks.

"Let's be optimistic about this, who knows maybe they killed each other off! They are goblins after all." Razz mentions jokingly.

Ravenna stays quiet and continues moving forward. We follow behind her as she walks. And there we find something horrible...

Who knew a goblin base would have bloodied wall for hallways. We continued the path with blood everywhere, it smelled like blood as we kept going. The walls, floor and ceiling just covered in blood, it doesn't smell like human blood. As a trained assassin, I've killed a lot of humans to know how their blood smelled like, and this wasn't it.

As we kept going passing through the bloodied hallways, we come across a lot of corpses of goblins, it was as if they had fought something or each other. The rest of the group were starting to feel uneasy, I could tell with this silence. We made it to the end of the cave path and see ruins at the end. Of course, with goblin corpses everywhere.

"Didn't we just pass by 4 goblins outside a while ago..?" I ask nervously.

"I think we're having the same thoughts.." Ravenna glances towards me and I can see how worried her eyes looked.

"That can't be true right? I mean, they're just 4 goblins! They couldn't have killed their own race-"

Razz would be interrupted by a huge roar in the ruins.

Domotraus was the first to react, he hides in one of the corpses and covers himself with blood to hide his scent. We were too shocked and frightened by that roar, it sounded like something here killed all these goblins. I waited for Ravenna to say something but from what I can see, she looked too frightened to think straight. Seph tapped me on the shoulder and somehow, I didn't feel scared anymore. I took the initiative to check where the roar came from, I hid behind a huge rock and took a quick peek.

There'd be pillars in a circular formation, and a round table in the middle of the circle formation. I spy with my little eyes...... a weird shadowy humanoid figure with 2 scimitars. Whoever this person is, he looked like to be the source of that roar. This ruin is filled with glowing purple flowers, like they're literally everywhere. Makes our torch look like a joke. 2 goblins would show up holding their swords getting ready to attack the shadowy humanoid figure, let's call him Darky. Darky just glances toward 1 goblin, then suddenly that goblin gets filled with darkness, like I could see a dark aura literally around him. That same goblin does a surprise attack on his goblin friend, what a friendly fire. Soon after the friendly kill, the goblin kneels down in front of Darky, offering his sword that comes with a goblin head bundle pack. Darky takes the sword and easily beheads the goblin. Darky then walks toward the round table and takes off a green crystal from it and then he just fades away. Razz follows behind me just right after Darky fades away, perfect.

"What was the roar sound thing?" Razz asks as he looks around.

I point towards the goblin's head.

"Whoever made the noise just killed that goblin, I couldn't see the face but from what I could see, it was a humanoid shadowy figure with 2 scimitars. Also took a green crystal from that round table there."

I also point at the round table. Seph approaches the round table and examines it.

"Soooo what is it?" Domotraus asked curiously as he reeked of goblin blood. He'd be standing with us behind the huge rock also looking towards the round table, watching Seph do her thing.

"Isn't this the same round table located in the Holy Land? Ravenna check this out." Seph would be surprised

by the fact that this round table looks like the one in the Holy Land. Though I've never seen it, so I don't know how special it is.

Ravenna goes towards Seph, and we follow them to that round table. The round table looks like a table thats round, nothing special, aside from this table having a hole in the middle, probably where Darky took the green crystal from, and there would be writings engraved on the table. Sadly me, I can't read this. If only I knew more than just the Common language.

"Yeah this table is similar to the one in the Holy Land, the writing is in a different language." Ravenna informs us. Ravenna begins to explain the use of this table.

"This was used during the war. Think of this table as a gateway, a bridge to another realm. Depending on the stone placed in the hole, you may end up in a realm that goes beyond our understanding."

She continues explaining more about the round table, and honestly I wasn't interested in a lecture right now. So I just tried not to look sleepy. I spaced out a bit from the lecture, then I begin to sense something. It felt like a dark presence is approaching us. I turn towards the direction I sensed the dark aura, and there I see a man walking towards us. Ravenna and the party noticed the man. He was unarmed, but I had a bad feeling about this.

"Sir are you al-"

Right when she approaches him, he starts to go on the offensive. Luckily with Domotraus being the best here, he knew something was off with the guy and is fast enough to catch up to Ravenna and block the attack from the man.

The man throws a punch, and was blocked by Domotraus. Even though Domotraus blocked it, he and Ravenna were both pushed back by the force of the punch. The man lets out a roar, it was the same roar we heard, very loud.

"Back away!"

I shout to them as I make a run towards the guy. Razz helps Domotraus and Ravenna up, while Seph got her handbow ready and immediately fired a bolt at the raging guy. While I dash and slide past him, I slash him behind his knee, and surprisingly he didn't fall. What is this guy? The slash wound didn't heal so he should be taking in pain. The bolt hit his shoulder, and he just let out another roar and turned towards me with his arm up about to smack me. I was able to parry his attack so his hand hit the ground right beside my face. I roll away and quickly get up, but he caught up to me with his next attack ready. As I got up he kicked me right in the gut, and I wasn't fast enough to block it. I flew a good 15ft away from him and quickly recover myself midair so I landed on my feet.

"This guy isn't human!"

I say obviously knowing the others knew that already. Razz gets his short sword and dashes toward the enemy. Ravenna supports him using her magic. She created a Minor Illusion of him mimicking his movements as they switch places. He reaches the enemy and slashes his chest then jumps backward creating some space between them. Something strange was going on, is he feeling the pain of our attacks? But another thing I noticed is that he was getting larger, like he's now way taller than us compared to a few minutes ago. As I look at the enemy, I also notice a spot that seems to be the source of his dark aura. I see Domotraus running towards the side of the enemy holding a rope. I see what he was trying to do, so I stood up and ran towards the enemy as well. In a flash, he threw me the extension of the rope and I stab it to the ground with my dagger, followed by Seph shooting her bolts at him and Razz using all his strength to slash him. The enemy staggers as he moves backward tripping to the rope we set up. He falls to the ground and somehow Ravenna caught up with the rest of us. Ravenna stabs the enemy's hand to the ground, while Domotraus applies strong pressure on that dagger preventing him from breaking free, while Razz did the other hand with his short sword. I was fazed by how he was still strong enough to break free of the dagger and short sword. I saw this as a golden opportunity to strike as he's still on the ground and he just broke out, I got my dagger and strike him straight in the heart. The enemy stops moving and I can see the dark aura fading away, he died.

"What the hell?" I say.

"He's like a berserker, how'd he get that much power for a villager?!" Razz says in disbelief.

"We should head back to the village, maybe those 4 goblins that left know something."

Ravenna makes the decision to abort not knowing what happened to the other 2 villagers. We go back the way we came from and the goblin we killed earlier isn't there.

"Isn't there supposed to be a corpse here?" I ask

"Something weird is going on here..." Razz states the obvious.

We make it out the cave and it was night time already, we could see a smoke coming from the direction of the village. As if the village is on fire. We rushed back towards the village with no rest and it is on fire. I rush towards the house of the village elder and see that the village elder was murdered. We checked the other houses to find survivors and every house we checked had corpses. I couldn't find the daughter of the village elder, so I assumed she knows something. We found the dead bodies of the 4 goblins, burning in the middle of the village at the stake. Since when was there a stake in this village?

A few minutes pass by and we couldn't find the source of fire. We hear noises of horses approaching the village. The horses reaches the village being ridden by knights. We would see 2 villagers standing in between us, I don't recall seeing 2 villagers. It was as if they just appeared there. These villagers had something off about them, as I could see the same dark aura as the villager we fought in the cave.

The villagers turn to the knights and kneel.

"Please help us, this group of assassins burned the village and killed everyone here! We can't fight them they're too strong, our guards were murdered!"

The knight ,that stood out the most with his armor being different from the other knights, got off his horse and readied his longsword.

"Stand down you filthy rogues!"

The other knights get off their horse and readied their swords, approaching us trying to surround us.

"Drop your weapons!"

"We should kill these criminals!"

The knights slowly approaches us as we try to make some distance between us and the knights. The villagers would be behind the captain smiling like an evil maniac. With that we don't have any other escape. If we tried to outrun them they would get on their horses and chase us, there was no other way to escape this.