Born in apocalypse

Dhruv contemplated the possibility of a fourth goblin village being in the forest.

’If there’s a fourth village, it must be in the west,’ he thought as he gazed in that direction.

Realizing there was no reason for Vexar to keep searching the forest anymore as there was only one direction left, he sent him back through the portal. Vexar transformed into his human form before leaving.

Dhruv watched him disappear into the portal. When Vexar was finally gone from the dungeon he let out a sigh of relief and then began to walk toward the west. He used his map to ensure he was heading in the right direction.

While walking, a thought appeared in his mind.

’So, there are four villages in this dungeon, and from the size of the previous village, I could consider that there are at least five hundred goblins living there.’

’...So I can use this village for my experimental purpose,’ Dhruv thought as a smile began to form on his face.

After traveling for another half an hour, Dhruv stooped in his track when he suddenly heard the notification sound in his head.

[Map Maker has reached level 5]

[Do you want to evolve the skill?]

[Yes/No]

’So, It finally reached level 5,’ Dhruv thought with a smile on his face.

The reason the Map Maker has reached level 5 this quickly was because it was always active in the background and constantly making a maps of the path Dhruv went, which resulted in the skill reaching level 5 so quickly.

Without any hesitation, Dhruv clicked on the "Yes" button.

[The skill Map Maker had evolved into Better Map Maker]

Looking at the name of the skill, he knew the skill was going to be better than his previous version, after all, the word "Better" was in the name.

He enlarged the virtual map and began to look for any changes. It didn’t even take a second and he instantly found the first changes on the map.

If the previous version of the map can be called the default mode, then the map in front of him was like a satellite mode.

Instead of just a plain, boring green background, the map now showed a more detailed version of the forest. There were pixelated trees, ponds, and lakes on the map with underatable terrain designs.

If Dhruv looked at the map with slight focus, he could even identify the place just by looking at the map. Happy with this change, he began to look for any other upgrades.

Dhruv couldn’t find anything new when he looked at the map in front of him. He was disappointed by this fact and was about to close the map when he suddenly found an icon hiding in the bottom-right corner of the map.

The icon was in the shape of a small pin. He clicked on it, and suddenly a new screen popped up in front of him.

[Do you want to pin any location?]

[Yes/No]

Reading the sentence on the box, Dhruv’s mouth curled up, forming a smile. He remarked, ’So, I can really pinpoint the location on the map.’

Without any second thought, he clicked on the "Yes" button.

The moment he clicked on Yes, the whole screen turned slightly grayish, prompting him to choose his location. Dhruv didn’t directly click on his current location and instead scrolled the map slightly.

When he found what he was looking for, he clicked on it. The map instantly returned to its normal state, and a little box opened on top of the map once again prompting him to add a name or symbol for the pinned location. He could even do both.

Dhruv thought of writing "Portal," and it got written in the box automatically. Just like that, he thought of a normal portal symbol and it also appeared. When he was done with both, a confirmation box opened in front of him.

[Do you want to pin this location?]

[Yes/No]

[Warning: If you click "Yes," then you can only add another nine pins until you remove the current one.]

"So there is a fixed number of pins, and the number is ten," Dhruv thought as he clicked on the "Yes" button.

The box disappeared, and now his map had a location pin as "Portal" with a little portal symbol.

Satisfied with the upgrade, he closed the status and resumed his walk.

...

While standing on a huge tree, Dhruv looked at the village in front of him. As he gazed at the village, he appeared to be deep in thought...

Dhruv had managed to find another village on the west side of the map as well, and just from a single glance, he could tell that it was almost identical to the other tree village.

With the appearance of this third village, he finally decided to continue with his plan. And what was his plan? It was to experiment with the goblins.

At first, he thought of directly entering the village and keeping some of the goblins as captives while killing the rest of them. But he quickly abandoned the idea after thinking for a while.

The reason for abandoning it was pretty simple. The moment he directly attacked the village, it would turn chaotic very quickly, and then he would be forced to kill all of them and he wouldn’t have time to capture some of them.

For the experiment, he needed a calm place where nobody could disturb him. So, instead of directly entering the village, he thought of a different plan and acted based upon it.

For the sake of that, he had been monitoring the village for the past two hours, calmly observing and keeping notes of their behavior.

In that time frame, he had found out that every ten minutes, a group consisting of five to seven goblins would exit the village. After some time, they would return to the village carrying various items such as fruits or animals that could be eaten.

From his mana vision, he found out that almost all of the goblins were at tier I, with occasional appearances of tier II goblins. And even the ones at tier II were at the very bottom of their tier.

He had also taken note of their weapons. Although most of the time they only had clubs or used their bare hands, Dhruv had observed on three occasions that they possessed other weapons as well.

On those three occasions, two times they had axes and one time they had spears with them.

After observing this, he thought that maybe there could be somewhere in the dungeon a place where the goblins were either obtaining the raw material or full-made weapons.

Considering the natural theme of the dungeon, they couldn’t just create axes out of nowhere.

On second thought, they could possibly conjure weapons out of thin air, but for that, they would need access to a Cosmic store, which they didn’t have due to being monsters.

After seeing those weapons, the first place that came to his mind from where they could obtain them was that weird cave.

While he was pondering over this, Dhruv remembered that it was almost time for another group of goblins to leave the village.

This time, he wasn’t simply going to watch them. No, this time, his plan was different. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

With a creepy smile on his face, Dhruv leaped from the tree he was standing on and began to follow the goblins.