It was Saturday morning and Jason woke up excitedly.

Today he would enter a two-star wild zone again in order to test out his Adept-rank strength and hone his hunting skills which was a complete contrast to sparring with other humans, which were intelligent and used scheming instead of their wild instincts.

Beasts relied on their instincts to fight and only a few rare beasts had the ability or intelligence to set up traps or use other kinds of tricks to kill or manipulate others.

Considering that most of these beasts were at the magical rank or higher, Jason wouldn't be scared to find such beasts in a two-star wild zone.

The only thing Jason was worried about were the recent news about Goblins infesting the nearby wild zones with the info that their hunting groups became larger with time passing.

Some online forums spread rumors about a Hobgoblin shaman gathering and breading goblins in order to attack Cyro City while others said a Goblin King was going to establish its Kingdom nearby.

They're still quite a lot of other rumors but considering the increase of goblins in the local areas, it was more feasible for the first two rumors to be true.

Both of these existences were terrifying, not only because of their advanced combat abilities but also because their leadership and scheming were on par with humans if not higher due to their willingness to sacrifice thousands of their subordinates within a blink of one's eyes.

Goblins were terrifying existences. Their strength was rather weak but their ability to copulate made even rabbits envious while they are as tenacious as c.ockroaches.

If one male Goblin survived, the whole race could blossom again which was terrifying, thinking back of the multiple tens of thousand men getting ripped apart by the small green monsters while women were taken away and raped to increase their population.

Humanity gave their best to annihilate them but apparently, they were back to resist humanity once again.

Jason found many Mission issues on the school mission board which was connected to the hunting association and government, as they issued most missions.

The big three schools would also accept these missions and change the rewards to lace points which were much more valuable for students due to the wide variety of skills materials and other rare resources one couldn't purchase outside school without having a certain authority.

With this exchange, schools would still have a slight profit and it was a win-win situation for everyone.

Seeing the rewards for Goblins were so high, Jason asked himself what exactly was going on.

Searching through the issued mission, Jason found out that hunting 40 Goblin soldiers would reward 1 lace point while 5 lower Goblin mage apprentices, could also be exchanged for 1 lace point.

It was extremely rare to see awakened ranked Elite or Mutated Goblins, let alone Hobgoblins, as they reached the evolved rank within a few days after birth.

Hunting a single one of these would award 1-5 lace points which were 20.000 to 100.000 Credits.

Considering the common price for awakened beasts between 50 and 500 Credits, the given rewards was definitely worth the effort.

Goblins didn't have anything valuable for humans and their worth would normally be at most around 100 Credits, while their equipment could even be worth more than their corpse.

Jason was tempted and accepted the mission.

It was only 5 am and he ordered a shuttle, which arrived after he finished his morning workout and washed up.

Inside the shuttle, Jason didn´t forget to practice the Heaven's Hell technique with his five-strand helix.

Jason calculated that the increase of soul energy he received was around 2.5% each day which was a vast difference and solely because of him being able to practice it 3 times a day.

Otherwise, the increase of soul energy would be slightly higher than 0.8% which was still high, but even possible for normal practitioners.

For someone with 100 soul energy units, this increase would be with 0.8 soul energy per day and it would only heighten more and more.

Jason wasn't sure how much energy was needed to form a contract with a magical ranked beast, but he imagined it should be a vast amount and nothing to scoff at.

When the shuttle arrived around a kilometer away from the dome, he finished his practice of the Heaven´s Hell technique.

The city was so vast that the shuttle needed more than 90 minutes to arrive at the dome which was more than enough time for him to finish his soul energy practice.

After Jason left the shuttle, he already wore his leather garment, the daggers were sheathed in his newly purchased scabbard that was attached at this thigh and the completely filled mechanic knife holder was stuck behind his lower back.

The quiver was already attached to his belt and he was ready to receive some credits and lace points.

Nevertheless, It would be a huge lie to say that Jason wasn't at least a little bit frightened.

But rather than feeling scared, he was more expectant to fight with beasts once again.

Jason remembered the time, where he vomited and questioned himself about killing beasts but after killing hundreds of beasts and getting to know more about humanity's history and their sacrifices to build relatively safe cities, he didn´t think like that anymore.

With his current abilities and weapon, Jason could barely kill intermediate awakened beasts and only advanced beasts with weak defenses, because his throwing knives were at the lower-grade-1, while his bow was only at the mid-grade-1.

His daggers could be considered slightly unique among the mid-grade-1 and they were able to easily penetrate the defenses of advanced awakened beasts but that was already the main function they had.

Advanced awakened beasts would be much faster than Jason and it would be similar to a death sentence to attack them without a plan.

Luckily Jason also bought a holder for his mana pistol and four magazines, which was attached to his belt and could be easily pulled out, once something unexpected happened.

He had only loaded common bullets but these were more than enough to kill awakened beasts with ease, while even evolved beasts should have some problems from the impact.

Jason expected his whole equipment once again while slowly walking up to the dome as he sighed deeply when he stepped through it.

As expected, he was once again assaulted by the huge mana density behind the dome´s protection, overwhelming him.

Adjusting to the sudden mana density change, Jason could see many youths absorbing mana directly behind the dome with bodyguards protecting them against beast attacks.

He thought this was a clever way to save credits and nodded his head in agreement.

Instead of hiring someone to construct a mana gathering platform at home, bodyguards at the expert or master ranks that could be hired to protect the new generation were much cheaper in contrast.

There are mana advantages and disadvantages with everything and one would need to find a solution for oneself to figure out what was better.

If Jason had the credits, he would rather hire a runemaster to construct a mana gathering platform at the Fler´s house to save the time needed to make a round trip to the dome and back.

Walking through the two-star wild zone, it didn't take long for Jason to sight the first Goblin hunter group.

To his astonishment, Jason saw that compared to his trip a few weeks ago, this group seemed to have more than 30 goblin soldiers.

Their weapons seemed to be better than before and it almost looked like they were from other hunters, which caused Jason to frown slightly.

Some of these goblins had still old-looking stone weapons, but they looked sharper and tougher than a month ago with something disturbing radiating from them, while others had Jade iron- and other forged weapons.

`Are there already Goblin runemaster and blacksmiths?` Jason asked himself.

Even though most weapons looked rather crude they were not only forged but some stone-weapons had runes inscribed on them with a weird color on them.

`Why are the higher-ups not doing anything against these Goblins? If they continue to multiply and grow even further, Cyro-city won't be able to guarantee their citizen's safety??`

Fortunately for Jason was that he was more than 50 meters apart from them, as he distances himself a little bit.

Looking at the group of Goblin soldiers in front of him, he was sure, that there were only a few archers, while not a single Goblin mage apprentice could be seen by Jason.

His archery proficiency increased by a lot over the last month and Jason could already hit slower evolved ranked beasts in their head, even if they were repelled due to his previous weak pulling strength.

But now that Jason´s strength increased to the Adept rank, he was confident in beating the ** out of the Goblin soldiers in front of him.

Taking out his bow, he nocked the first arrow at the bowstring before he pulled it back, aiming at the Goblins a hundred meters away from him.

*Surr*

*Surr*

*Surr*

Three arrows flew out in rapid succession and Jason could only marvel at the accurate and smooth sequence he had perfectionated over the last few weeks.

Not wasting any time, he lodged the next arrow to continue shooting them at a fast pace.

The first arrow killed an archer by piercing through its skull, while the remaining two arrows shot hit another two Goblin-archers next to it, piercing its heart and abdomen.

Before the Goblins were even able to notice the disaster approaching them, another volley of arrows killed two of their brethren.

Not knowing what was going on, another batch of goblin soldiers fell and now all archers had been annihilated.

The whole situation turned chaotic and the intelligence of the goblins was not high enough to immediately figure out where their hidden enemy was and it took another volley of arrows for them to find out Jason's rough position.

Only slightly more than 20 Goblins were able to continue fighting as they roared in anguish, while their eyes turned bloodthirsty.

Charging at their sole enemy, Jason picked out five Goblins, before he decided to store away his bow.

It was only now, that he started to feel the pressure of a quantitative disadvantage, as he pulled out multiple throwing knives to injure the raging goblins´ legs and joints to further decrease their combat prowess.

Around 10 uninjured Goblins were left, when they reached Jason´s five-meter range, as he pulled out his two, tempered Jade iron daggers.

Exerting the Weightless steps movement technique to its fullest with the Weaponry Knight technique at the same time, Jason leaned forwards and with a slight push, he stood in front of the first Goblin soldier that was shocked to see the human appearing in front of it, without it noticing.

It thrust its long spear at him, but it was at a huge disadvantage because its opponent was already too close to fully utilize a spear, while Jason didn't need to exert much strength to slice through the goblin's throat.

There was not much resistance and Jason disappeared from the dying´s Goblin side before a huge fountain of blood spurted out of the cut-open throat.

Due to his amplified speed, Jason was much faster than the short-legged Goblins and they weren't able to overwhelm him with their quantitative advantage either.

As such, Jason gracefully moved through the group of Goblins and slaughtered them, while his golden eyes flickered full of life.