Ethan and Doran left Windmare with a very positive impression of both its Lord and its people.

Of course, Ethan wasn’t about to abandon his plans over something so trivial.

Still, he would prefer to spare the Lord’s life and that of his family, keeping him as a loyal subordinate.

Silverbrook, however, was a different story.

The village welcomed adventurers and kept its gates open, much like its neighbor, housing a population of just over a thousand and fifty souls.

The pair offered the guards a slight nod as they crossed beneath the gates, only to freeze in place a heartbeat later.

The subtle smiles on their faces vanished the instant a loud, shrill scream tore through the air.

In the middle of the street, right in front of the stately residence, stood the Lord of Silverbrook.

Well, whether such a pig deserved the title of lord was highly questionable.

He carried the powerful aura of a third-stage Awakened, but that was the only thing respectable about him.

He was nearly naked, wearing nothing but a filthy pair of underwear, staggering drunk while bellowing without pause.

His large, protruding belly swayed like a sack of lard, and his right hand clutched a half-empty wine bottle so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

Below him, sitting on his butt in the mud, was a young man in tears.

His eyes were swollen from the punches he’d taken, and his cracked lips dripped blood.

"Ugh... you fucking asshole! Who do you think you are to deny me something? Tell me, where is your sister?"

The Lord roared the question, then drove a brutal kick into the young man’s ribs.

The blow landed with a muffled thud, sending him sideways into the dirt with a strangled gasp.

A crowd had gathered around them, watching the terrible scene in silence. Many clenched their fists at their sides, but none had the courage to intervene.

The beating only ceased when the young man hung at the edge of consciousness, his face reduced to a bloody mess.

"I’ll wait another week, you bastard. I’d better have your sister in my arms by then."

He delivered one final kick to the young man on the brink of death, then staggered away.

Ethan and Doran watched it all with cold eyes.

They could have killed that pig right there. Ethan didn’t think it would take more than two moves to be done with him.

But in the end, they restrained themselves.

His time would come.

Naturally, unlike Windmare with its pleasant atmosphere, Silverbrook held no charm for them.

Even in the tavern there were hardly any adventurers, and the villagers wore cold, hopeless expressions on every face the two passed.

It was a miserable little place, inhabited by miserable people.

After buying a few drinks and discreetly scouting the village’s defenses, the two finally set off. But not toward Goldenveil.

Consulting the map, Ethan decided to first pay a visit to the medium-sized goblin camp, which lay about twenty kilometers away.

The other two smaller camps weren’t far either, but after a moment’s thought, he chose to leave them to the regular escorts. Night was already falling, after all.

Soon, Doran and Ethan found themselves descending into a deep valley just past Silverbrook.

At the bottom, surrounded by hills on all four sides, sprawled a gigantic goblin settlement.

Tall palisades of rough wood encircled it, and dozens of yellow-eyed sentinels patrolled the perimeter.

The hills weren’t high enough to grant a clear view over the wall, so the two climbed a sturdy tree, hiding among the dense foliage.

That place was, without a doubt, very different from the goblin camps they had destroyed near Goldenveil.

The basic structure was the same, but this one had three leaders.

Three large huts stood at the center of the settlement, where the leaders bred and hoarded their treasures, surrounded by hundreds of smaller huts inhabited by the common goblins.

"It won’t be easy..." Doran whispered, mentally counting the creatures swarming below.

Two, three thousand? Maybe a little more?

It was only a rough estimate, but seeing so many creatures gathered like that drew a heavy sigh from his lips.

This was the goblins’ greatest strength.

If three thousand goblins lived in that camp, then there were three thousand warriors who wouldn’t hesitate to rush headlong to their own deaths.

They were weak, yes, but that mattered little in the face of such absurd numbers.

Worse still, the pair counted about twenty hobgoblins among them, all strong and healthy.

Those alone could carve terrible damage into Goldenveil’s formations, since, like it or not, they were far stronger than human warriors of the same level.

Of course, that was without considering special skills and human intelligence.

"It shouldn’t be that hard..." Ethan’s lips curved into a smile.

Goblins, as a rule, were idiots who only cared about food and violence.

Hobgoblins, on the other hand, were idiots who cared about food, violence, and above all, their own pride.

What if a few goblin corpses turned up in places where they shouldn’t, bearing marks that should never be on them?

The Eternal Forest was held together by a tenuous balance built on respect, fear, and violence.

Those smaller goblin camps existed precisely because of that balance.

If those lines were broken, a crushing retaliation would fall the very next moment.

Doran, catching his Lords’s drift, nodded in confirmation.

The more of those damned goblins they eliminated, the easier the attack would be.

Finally, their gazes fell upon a cave situated at the northernmost edge of the camp, likely where the creatures stored their food reserves for the winter.

They couldn’t afford to wait much longer. They needed to strike before the goblins began consuming those reserves.

With Doran jotting down everything important about the camp, the two men finally set off back toward Goldenveil.

By the time they arrived, the night was already deep.

Both were dirty and exhausted, having walked nonstop for over a hundred kilometers.

Even with superhuman strength, exhaustion was inevitable.

Fortunately, both had beautiful wives waiting at home.

Upon returning to his mansion, Ethan sank into a hot bath, letting the steam draw the soreness from his muscles.

Afterward, he settled into Alice’s loving arms, her soft body warm against his own as her gentle fingers traced slow, soothing paths across his hair until sleep finally claimed him.

He would need to be well-rested when morning came. Tomorrow would mark the day Goldenveil began to prepare its first conquest campaign.