The Lost Forest.
From what I've heard from most players in the past, this was a notorious place for first-time players of Heaven's Path.
And the reason for that wasn't the difficulty of the monsters roaming around it. No. It was something more... unpredictable. More sinister.
Of course, that's only the perspective of the initial batch.
For those who came after them, knowing what would happen, it was literally a blessing.
And, of course, coming here with what little information about the game I could recall, I wouldn't really miss out on having a part of that blessing.
After getting our first kill, Miyabi and I continued walking deeper into the forest. We didn't leave the monsters we passed alone either, hunting them one after another as we went.
Within the next 30 minutes, we'd killed about 50 goblins, raising both our levels to 4. With each level, we gain a total of 3 free points to distribute across 10 different stats. But, of course, I didn't put mine into any stat just yet.
Our current power was more than enough to handle the "tutorial" area, after all. No need to dump stats just yet.
Of course, I told Miyabi the same thing, but...
"Shibari play, huh~! That sounds cool!"
She took my words in a different way. Well, it works, so I guess that's fine.
The cameras floating around Miyabi had increased by a lot too. It seems like she'd already gotten a thousand or so "fans" watching her every action. Me, on the other hand? Zero attention. I guess girls are just better at pulling viewers, after all.
Of course, not all of those thousand-odd cameras were visible at once.
Only about twenty-five of them could be seen at a time. If all of them were visible simultaneously, Miyabi would have trouble seeing what's even ahead of her.
"We've been walking for a while, but... Where are we even heading?"
After hunting our 51st goblin, Miyabi finally asked, unable to hold back her curiosity. I hadn't told her where we were going, after all. All I said was that I "knew" a good hunting spot.
"Yeah, we're almost there, so you'll see for yourself." I replied with a smile.
By now we'd walked roughly 3 kilometers, so our destination wasn't far. And timing-wise, that place should've gotten quite "interesting" by now too.
After checking the auto-distributed loot—still the same, just gold and random trinkets—we continued forward. Not even five minutes later, we finally reached a clearing.
"This is our destination!" I said, extending a hand forward.
Miyabi followed where I was pointing and gasped. "What the..."
Her mouth hung open as she took in the sight before her. It was surreal, even to me. Still, I smiled and made the introduction.
A small cave set into a cliff face, with several hundred goblins roaming in front of it.
"This is the Goblin's Nest! Their spawn point!"
This place was, of course, a Scenario location.
Following the script, after two hours passed, this place would be teeming with goblins. Then they'd all march toward the player spawn and massacre everyone in their path. With the Goblin King's buff powering up the horde, players had nearly no chance of winning.
The old players called it the Goblin King's Stampede. A disaster in and of itself—but once you knew about it, there were ways to take advantage of it too.
Like right now.
"There's only a few hundred of them now, but in another hour or two it should swell to a few thousands." I said, smiling. "We're quite lucky to have arrived early!"
"W-Wait..."
Miyabi grabbed the sleeve of my shirt, asking with trembling lips.
"Don't tell me... you're planning for us to hunt all of them? That's crazy! We'll run out of stamina and die!"
Her fears weren't unfounded, either.
Earlier, while moving through the forest, we'd confirmed that running out of stamina caused sluggish movement for a period while it recovered. When a goblin caught us mid-recovery, we nearly died then and there—if not for the flag's buff padding our defense stat.
Fighting consumes stamina too.
Meaning if we fought a hundred goblins at once, we'd collapse long before we finished them off.
"Don't worry about that." I smiled reassuringly. "Whenever we level up, our stamina gets fully restored—so we can keep fighting continuously!"
Right. This was the strategy Kiki had shared with me before. Something meant to be done in a party of at least two, never solo.
Why?
Because a solo player would burn through their stamina before they could level up against a crowd this size.
For a duo like us, the ideal lineup is one frontliner and one backliner. But since my weapon makes me a "buffer," I can only support rather than attack directly.
Which means Miyabi had to handle all the fighting herself.
[BlackHeart: This guy's just leeching off our princess! Kill him, goblins!]
[Akemi: Two versus the world... 💀]
[Nambaka: Nooo! FleetingCloud-chan will die!]
The chat erupted the moment they heard my declaration, flooding the view with comments. Most were worried for Miyabi's safety. The rest were just throwing insults my way. Were these guys bored or something?
"That said, it's not like we're going in without a plan either."
I added, addressing the viewers at the same time.
For the next five minutes, I walked Miyabi and her audience through everything. By the time I was done, even the bashers had gone quiet. I guess Kiki's strategy was convincing enough on its own.
"Are you ready?"
After the planning was over, I stood and looked over at Miyabi beside me.
But instead of hesitation or fear, she looked more excited than ever. With a wide grin, she raised her sword. "Anytime!"
"Good!" I nodded, then took a deep breath.
I lifted my flag, and—
"HAAAAAP!"
—threw it forward like a javelin.
It drew an arc through the air before dropping back down, sticking upright into the earth at a slight slant.
"LET'S GO!"
Miyabi was already sprinting toward where it landed before I'd finished the words. I followed right behind her, not missing a beat.
The next moment, her sword was already moving, weaving between the distracted goblins.
"MEEEEN!"
Five heads split before I'd even gotten my hands back on the flag. Miyabi was one-shotting them already—her damage had climbed that high.
It made sense. Each level-up randomly distributes 10 points across all 10 stat categories. By level 4, that's already 30 random points on top of everything else. And in Miyabi's case, the RNG had dumped nearly all of it into STR—spiking her base damage up to 30, or 40 when accounting for the sword's bonus.
So with my flag's 50% attack buff added in and a critical hit landing, her peak output could reach 120 damage. That's one and a half times the goblin's maximum HP.
"Stick to the plan!"
I called out quickly.
One-shotting was great, but it wasn't ideal for our situation. Every dead goblin was an open slot for a fresh one to push in and crowd us out.
"I know!" Miyabi shouted back, and her next swing changed.
Rather than a clean finishing blow, she swung four times—targeting shoulders and thighs, severing both arms and legs in quick succession.
Right. At this damage level, the amputation mechanic was available.
Landing enough damage on a single limb would "destroy" it, removing a chunk of HP without finishing the goblin off. The crippled ones she left behind, still alive, fell within my 5-meter range—serving as backup reserves.
That way, if Miyabi's HP dropped too low or her stamina fell into the danger zone, I could finish a few of them off myself and push our EXP bar over the edge. Even with a zero-damage weapon, a few clean hits on something already near-dead was well within my reach.
In those first few seconds alone, five more goblins hit the ground—all limbs gone, completely immobilized.
As Miyabi pushed deeper into the crowd, I moved to pull the limbless ones closer to me. The tighter they were clustered around me, the easier it was to manage our HP and SP on the fly.
Her SP bar dropped fast. Almost like a lit fuse burning down.
Then—her 10th kill. The 7th limbless goblin down. We both leveled up at once, HP, MP, and SP all snapping back to full. Miyabi dove back in without a breath's pause.
"Good..."
I turned to the crawling goblins at my feet and started working through them—not finishing them off, just chipping them down to the edge. One or two hits from death, no more.
Even still, Miyabi was the one I kept watching.
"As expected, she's way too good at this."
It's almost a minute in, and she still hadn't taken a single point of damage!