Born in apocalypse

[You have killed a monster: lesser goblin.]

[You have...]

[You...]

’So, they are the same breed as the ones who got out from the cracks during the second quest. This ought to be interesting,’ Dhruv thought as he looked at his kill notification.

Seeing that one of their partners had been killed, the other four goblins rushed in Dhruv’s direction to attack him. Before they could get within 10 meters of Dhruv, they were reduced to dust by Vexar’s flames.

After killing them, Dhruv learned one thing,

’So, this Dungeon doesn’t work like how it works in the game. After killing the monsters, they don’t drop items or anything like that and would just become normal corpses. Even in a dungeon, it works like how it works in real life.’

Although Dhruv knew he wasn’t in some kind of game or anything like that, he was excited to see how the rules inside the Dungeons would work. And finally, he found out that the rules were exactly like reality.

He moved a few more meters and reached the corpse of the first goblin. He began to examine it, looking for any abnormalities or differences compared to the ones he had seen during the Wave and this one.

After a minute of searching, he didn’t find any abnormalities, but he sure found that there was a core in the body. From that, Dhruv was certain that it would also yield essence points if he were to consume it.

He wasn’t here to test the taste of goblins, so he began to move further into the jungle and Inspect his surroundings very closely. After an hour of close inspection, he finally reached some conclusions...

So, this jungle is like a closed space from which goblins get their food and everything needed for their survival. There were also ponds and multiple water sources scattered throughout the forest.

Apart from goblins, there are many other species of beasts, insects, and reptiles living in this jungle. Dhruv hadn’t killed any of them yet, but he was sure that they were at Tier 1 without any cores.

The more he looked around, the more he found that this jungle was almost like a perfect ecosystem that didn’t need any interaction to sustain itself.

He had found out that he had spawned in the middle of the jungle and was going out of it the more he walked.

Apart from these conclusions, there were also some questions Dhruv had in his mind.

’Is this some type of concealed space, or have I really traveled to another planet or something like that? And if I’m on a planet, then why were the only monsters that attacked during the waves goblins and not these other monsters?’

’Is there some type of force that was denying their entry? No exit.’ Dhruv couldn’t help but ask himself these questions.

"What are you pondering about, my lord?" Azarex asked as he looked at Dhruv’s expression.

"Ohhh! Just a few things here and there," Dhruv simply dodged the question.

"I think we have had enough of the security check. There aren’t any immediate dangers in this part of the jungle, and there are just a few wild beasts and insects. So, let’s head back to inform all the members. They were worrying about us," Dhruv said as he began to follow the map and walked toward the portal.

The duo nodded and began to follow him as well.

While he was traveling back to the portal, he once again found a group of goblins wandering in the jungle. He was about to finish them off as well but stopped when he remembered something.

’I guess this is the perfect time to check this,’ Dhruv thought as he looked at his fingers. He signaled to his guardians not to attack the goblins and began to move towards them.

Hiss! Growl!

The goblins instantly began hissing and growling the moment they saw that a creature was walking in their direction. Instead of fleeing, they began to run toward Dhruv with their clubs lifted, ready to kill him.

When they were about 5 meters away from Dhruv, a wall suddenly appeared in front of them. They quickly tried to change their direction, but unfortunately, another wall appeared in that direction.

In just another moment, they were surrounded in all directions with only one way to escape - to jump. The area above their heads was still open.

Dhruv killed four of the five goblins inside the wall and touched the fifth goblin on the head. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Collect."

This word escaped Dhruv’s mouth, and he was eagerly waiting for the result. When nothing happened even after a few seconds, Dhruv knew the experiment didn’t go in his favor.

’So, this ring couldn’t store living beings inside itself after all,’ he thought as he looked at the silver ring that he had worn on his index finger.

Dhruv had wanted to check whether the ring could store a living being inside itself or not, and from this experiment, he finally knew the answer.

This experiment took him this long to complete because he hadn’t dared to use the ring on his own subjects for experimental purposes, afraid that something horrible would happen.

Dhruv used the ring on the corpses, and the bodies were easily collected in the ring, making the ring multiple times heavier than it was.

Having completed his experiment, Dhruv began to move toward the portal. When he finally reached his destination, he didn’t immediately go inside the portal. Instead, he stopped there and began to look at the trees beside him.

"Cut one of them," Dhruv ordered as he signaled toward the tree.

His motive was to check whether the priestess’s prophecy was correct or not. If he could really transport items from the dungeon to the real world, then he wouldn’t need to venture on the mainland for quite some time.

While he was thinking about the matter, the tree was already cut down by Vexar with a few slashes. He had chosen to cut down the smallest tree around the area so it could fit in the prison.

"Go on," Dhruv signaled as he looked at Vexar’s disappearing figure.

The tree was gone along with him.