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Chapter 156: A Dilemma. [Release Version]
🕑 Added 2021-03-20 03:08:11 +0000 UTCThinking back to the last time I saw a goblin or kobold, I could only remember them as simple-minded monsters, reminding me how they were usually the first enemies you would fight in video games. They were treated as training dummies for beginners to ease them into the game’s fighting system.
When I first came to Peolynca, my opinion on kobolds were pretty much like training dummies, if you ignored how I almost died against them twice, but my outlook on them has changed ever since. From what I heard from fellow adventurers gossiping over some curry or beer, most new hunters — specifically young, inexperienced members joining due to their fantasies of monster hunting — reminisced how badly their first Quests were if they involved goblins or kobolds. Some even stated they lost some partners from a goblin ambush.
Goblins and kobolds were grimgarians, a kind of demi-human. They were a mix of monsters and humanoids, meaning they possessed a simple intelligence even if they were mostly feral after being born from a monster spawning. They were able to use weapon and craft armor while having the cunning to ambush with traps and poisoned weapons — poison which primarily came from their ‘flower gathering.’
I learned from my time in the Belzac mountains, where I was reborn in this world, of how kobolds could act if they weren’t trying to turn me into dinner. They celebrated over a successful hunt and partied with each other. It humanized them for me.
However, it also made me wary of them. With the potential to become as shrewd as a garm or dragon, plus the power of evolution, there was a chance of a formidable goblin or kobold lord appearing. At the very least, goblins and kobolds who are able to prove how dangerous they truly were certainly existed.
<Hobgoblin: A greater goblin, fortunate enough to have built up a strong body to use for battles. They are still simple in mind, but their base strength and endurance are higher than a human’s. Rank E>
<Echikobold: A greater kobold, showing potential to become master tamers. While their overall strength and endurance have not increased, their intelligence and deftness are far more advanced than a normal kobold. Echikobolds are never alone, either more are nearby or a pack of tamed monsters will shadow their master. Rank E>
There were a few F rank goblins and kobolds among this horde, but the majority were evolved grimgarians. The hobgoblins looked like they were almost human-sized, making them look like lankier and less savage-looking versions of orcs. The echikobolds had their dog faces replaced with a wolf-like face, with wild fur imitating human hair or a lion’s mane; fortunately, they weren’t much taller than a normal kobold.
“Gruuu,” an echikobold, positioned in front of the rest of the horde, raised his bow while on his warg and aimed at the fleeing mage girl. Even from this distance, I could feel the confidence in its action, contrary to the more cowardly G and F rank kobolds.
Faster, parallel minds!
Saori hadn’t completely submerged in her shadow yet, nor would Tasianna’s ice daggers hit him in time. The green-haired magician girl carrying Roosterhead wasn’t walking very fast, probably due to having to carry her armored companion despite only being a mage. She was an easy target for a competent archer!
“Lightning Bolt!” The element type with the fastest attacks, even faster than wind spells, was definitely [Lightning Magic], although the casting time was a bit longer. A purple magic circle appeared before my hand as I stared down my arm, aiming at the moving kobold.
And I fired.
The roar of thunder echoed through the forest. A bright purple beam shot through the trees, piercing through the air, before striking the head of the warg the echikobold was riding on. With the loud cry of a pained wolf, the warg fell face down, tumbling like a ragdoll across the ground.
The kobold, having lost its mount, was launched off the warg’s saddle. Surprised, it let go of the bowstring, releasing the arrow before it could be pulled back fully. Unfortunately, the arrow didn’t hit the ground, but rather still managed to pierce the girl’s leg.
“Kyaaargh!” she screamed out, dropping the unconscious Roosterhead on the ground as she fell on her knees. She clutched her leg in pain, before looking back and seeing the imminent danger she was in. “Hiiiiiieeeeee! H-HEIIIIILP!!!”
Her shrieking was filled with fear and hysteria, perfectly showing how consumed with terror she was. But with a cry of help, comes also the helping hand.
Saori sprang out of her shadow, whispered something calming to the girl before grabbing her around the waist and the red-haired boy’s arm and swinging it over her shoulder. She then dived into her shadow, just in time to dodge more incoming arrows, which met nothing but the ground.
“Tasianna, let’s do it!” I shouted, having already constructed an air rifle using [Aerokinesis]. I loaded the gun barrel with small earth pellets, filled with a small amount of my scale-dust. Compared to my normal bombs, these little guys still produced an explosion, but were significantly smaller in size in order to prevent forest fires and such. I shall deny my destiny of burning down every forest I enter with this invention!
“Yes, my Lady! Icicle Gust!” Tasianna, with her fully repaired catalyst, shot out not only her ice daggers but also the spell [Icicle Gust] at the stampeding horde of grimgarians. At the same time, the sound of exploding winds could be heard from me as I shot out each pellet with [Wind Blast].
“Guuuuraggh!!”
“Shariyk! Gurrraaagahhh!”
“Gizamp! Gizampa run!”
Including the first echikobold, the front row of warg riders was buffeted by our ranged attacks, falling down after receiving one or two hits. Noticing the danger, the kobolds in the mid and rear end of the horde began to swerve to the sides, using the trees as protection from our shots.
“Hey, you two, help out!” I called out to Cernust and Antonio who were standing still, not moving.
“Tch! I apologize for reacting slowly! Bornelli, we ride!” Antonio quickly mounted his hippogryph and was about to ride into the battle before ordering Cernust. “You, drake, stand and protect my sister! If you dare run away, I will make sure to hunt you down with an army next time!”
I thought Antonio seemed to have mellowed down a bit after hearing what happened with Cernust and Severa, but it still seems like he couldn’t trust him fully yet. Cernust seemed to think the same, “You can’t order me around! I am an adventurer from a different country, I do what I will! If you can’t trust me, then stay back and defend Severa! As if I can allow Lady Hestia and the ladies to handle everything while I’m here!”
“Imbecile! You are slower than my Bornelli! You will be made a fool against these warg riders, so allow a Knight of the White Talon order to handle this! Accept the situation, for I can aid the Lady Shrine Maiden better!” Antonio replied with an equally prideful statement.
What the hell are they doing? I wondered, flabbergasted.
That was when Saori jumped out of the shadows with the rescued adventurers. “Lady Hestia, she needs treatment. You, whatever you do, do not leave my Lady’s side, alright? You will be safe here.”
With a trembling voice, the girl nodded and said, “O-Ok.” Saori then turned to Cernust and Antonio, who were still arguing at this point. “You two! What are you doing arguing on the battlefield?! You two should be ashamed for acting like this when you are facing the enemy! Start moving and participate; Lady Hestia and Tasianna are proficient enough to defend everybody else here!” With that harsh criticism, Saori dove back into her shadow and reappeared from the shadow of a tree, taking down a hobgoblin rider and summoning her three garms.
“““Whrooooooooooh!”””
“Hunt them down!” Saori commanded the now collared garms, each moving in different directions to challenge a warg. Whether it was due to being the superior version of their race or something else, the wargs seemed to hesitate as they saw the garms appear, panicking even, as they seemed to not listen to their riders. It was even more evident when none of them wanted to even get close to Saori, the pack leader.
“You two, leave this to me!” I reassured the two worried men. “Do not underestimate me or my friends!” To demonstrate, I produced multiple magic circles at once and shot them out at some targets.
“A-Alright, thank you, Lady Shrine Maiden. Bornelli, we ride!” Antonio shouted, which was reciprocated by a loud shriek of an eagle.
“Please, Lady Hestia,” Cernust simply said, before charging into the fight while commanding the trees to stop blocking Tasianna’s attacks.
With Saori, Cernust, and Antonio joining the offensive on the east side, I told Tasianna to start shooting the enemies on the west. I put down my rifle, ordered my parallel minds to use [Detection Sensor] to shoot spells in my stead while I treated the arrow in the girl’s leg. I had to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.
“Eiiiiieeek!” she cried out through clenched teeth, tears flowed down her face, as I pulled the arrow out of her leg. From a closer inspection, her blue robes were tattered and had signs of dirt and blood, mostly on the shoulder area. She didn’t have any wounds there, though.
“Please, hang on,” I told her before readying a spell. With the information I heard from adventurers, I smelled the arrowhead, noticing a putrid stench only shit and urine could produce. The arrow was poisoned, it needed to be purged! “This is my custom spell, so please don’t be alarmed. It’ll get rid of the venom and heal your wounds. Sanctified Blaze.”
Since she was a mage, she should understand what I just said. I placed a white magic circle on her skin, which immediately produced white flames which entered her wound. She screamed out in surprise but I held her down and told her to calm down, mentioning the fire was a custom spell.
As my spell was treating her leg wound and the many scratches across her body, I could hear Tasianna tell me that the horde was retreating. Through my [Detection Sensor], I confirmed her statement as multiple signals were moving away from where we were standing. Even if they were a small army, getting ambushed like this would dissuade anybody from continuing the charge.
I asked Tasianna to apply some ice on the patient’s leg once I dispelled [Sanctified Blaze], now that we were out of danger.
“T-Thank you very much, Lady Priestess,” the green-haired girl told me. “U-Uhm, I know, this might be very rude to ask of you after what happened, but I beg you in the Goddess name, please save Leif!”
It took me a while for me to remember her, but it didn’t take a second for her to realize who I was. I guess I left an impression. I nodded, telling her the past wasn’t very important when life was in danger, causing her face to brighten up.
Using [Mana Eyes], I checked on Roosterhead. His profile was not worth mentioning, since it was probably the norm for an F or E rank adventurer. On the other hand, his Health was dropping from [Bleeding (Minor)] and [Poisoned (Minor)], and his Stamina was zero. “What happened to them,” I couldn’t help but wonder.
I identified the blood spots on Roosterhead’s clothes, each sliced open with some blade or something, and was bleeding quite a bit. I quickly applied [Sanctified Blaze] to handle any wounds I missed and used [Major Heal] on the ones I could see. During this treatment, my ears picked up his strained breathing.
The armor!
Brigandine armor, what I originally thought of as leather armor but Saori later informed me of its real name. I wouldn’t be surprise if the armor was the cause of his troubled breathing, seeing as how tight it looked. I called Tasianna over to help me pull it off him. We first unequipped his brigandine, then the chainmail underneath it, and lastly the gambeson. Layering armor to improve defenses seemed to be smarter than what fantasy games do, where your character could usually wear only one layer.
I pulled up his shirt to reveal his bare stomach and chest, where I noticed my flames healing an area quite aggressively. It was a large purple spot, probably caused by blunt trauma. Were his ribs broken? Regardless, nothing [Major Heal] couldn’t handle now that I knew what was causing his breathing problem.
With his body now healed, I pulled his shirt down again and let him rest until he woke up. That was when Cernust, Antonio, and Saori returned. Saori spoke up first, “Uno, Song, and Sarasa are handling the clean-up of any stragglers or survivors. Each of them leveled up once.” Saori was showing a rather pleased smile, probably happy to see her garms getting stronger.
Or, she’s just happy that our meat stock got another refill. Goblin meat, kobold meat? Bit stinky, but edible with spices.
“Was this forest always a goblin and kobold lair?” Antonio complained, short in breath.
“Not at all. That grizzly shouldn’t even be here, since this is an F rank monster-infested area. No way would the adventurer guild mark it as such when hobgoblins and echikobolds walk around, making it unsafe for gatherers or newbie hunters,” Cernust explained, showing he had done his research before coming here.
“I agree,” I said in support of his statement since I had been here before with Ellaine. “The last time I ventured here, there were only animal-level monsters. Skorrs, loopabits, fowls. Nothing that would pose such a problem.”
“They retreated, no?” Severa chimed in, looking anxious as she looked where the warg riders fled to. “W-We should go, yes? I-I trust in your strength Cernust, and in your party, Lady Hestia, but I do not wish to be here when they come back to retaliate.”
“She speaks the truth. It would be safer if we left the forest for now to assess the situation,” Antonio agreed to his sister’s suggestion. “Even with Lady Shrine Maiden’s white grace, we still have two exhausted, injured adventurers and Severa is a non-combatant. Let us not risk anything.”
Saori nodded. “It is getting dark, anyways. We should not be fighting in the dark without knowing the full strength of the enemy.”
As everybody agreed it would be wise to leave the forest for now before night came, we were about to move but the green-haired girl stopped us. “Please, don’t leave! Mister Raian, Wulf, and Verdiena were captured by those monsters!”
“Who?” I turned around to the frantic mage girl.
“Lady Priestess, I-I don’t know if you still remember us, but they are part of our party.” She pointed at Roosterhead and then back to her. She then bowed her head, prostrating before me. “Please, please, save them. By the Goddess, I beg of you! I-I still remember what Miss Melia said about your high level, so please, you should be able to do it! Please!”
She was obviously asking me to do something about her missing party members, but I had no idea what she was talking about with her voice nearly breaking under stress. I held up my hand and told her to calm down first, “Hold on, breathe in, breathe out. What are you saying exactly?”
Her name was Lucia, a mage working at the hunter’s guild. She and her party recently took on a Quest to hunt down some kobolds sighted in this forest by some adventurers. Once they arrived, they managed to find an echikobold riding a warg commanding a hunting group of kobolds and goblins. They successfully took down all the goblins and kobolds, but the echikobold escaped.
“Leif and Wulf wanted to pursue it since it was part of the Quest. Mister Raian and Verdiena, on the other hand, thought it would be dangerous, but eventually agreed that we had to scout out if there was a camp nearby,” Lucia explained.
“Hmm, yeah, sounds fishy when goblins and kobolds work together. Kobolds can be cooperative when desperate, but goblins are just slimy, little shits filled with hatred and jealousy. They would never ally up with other goblin tribes or grimgarian races, except when they are being dominated by stronger beings,” Cernust added.
“Grimgarian?” Severa tilted her head, just like Antonio and Lucia. Didn’t they know what the race name of kobolds and goblins were?
“Ahh, I forgot, you humans don’t call them like that. Forget what I said. Just continue, but I’m guessing that your little scouting trip didn’t end too well,” Cernust urged Lucia to continue.
Looking as if she was about to tear up again, she endured and continued, speaking as fast as she could while making it understandable. “A cave; the tracks led into a cave. M-Mister Raian made sure we understood what we had to do before we entered the cave, making sure we had the preparations the guild would suggest before entering a cave. W-We prepared for only a few more goblins or kobolds — maybe some wargs, too — but-but there were too many.”
The horde we saw just now was just a fraction of an army hidden inside a cave. Wargs, a grizzly, and other tamed monsters. Hobgoblins, echikobolds, and orcs were roaming inside that place, all armed with iron or steel weapons and armor. It was like a war camp.
Has the grimgarian army come? I thought as I looked at Saori and Tasianna, sharing my thoughts as they nodded.
“They found us. Mister Raian sacrificed himself to allow us to escape, but then Wulf and Verdiena got separated from us. Leif and I somehow made it outside. We tried to hide, but Leif lost consciousness from the bleeding, which was enough for the wargs to find us. I-I’m only here because I heard that loud roar, and I was desperate enough for any help I could get. Even if it was from a giant monster.”
With all the roaring Cernust and I did, I guess being loud has its perks.
“If that horde was only a hunting party, then this might be more problematic for Greenveil than I thought. We should leave and report this to Lord Marquess Sirus immediately,” Antonio suggested after hearing all that.
“W-Wha-?!” Lucia trembled.
“Brother?!” Severa turned around, not understanding what her brother was saying.
“Severa, don’t be naive. This is an army we are talking about, and we are only a pitiful number. We will also need to fight inside a cave, and hippogryphs will never, ever enter a place they cannot escape from. Are you suggesting we throw our lives away, even the life of a holy servant of the Goddess?” Antonio replied with a pretty convincing argument from a realistic standpoint. “Also, I might be a knight, but I am a knight of the Lecartiglio Duchy. This is an issue the Greenveil duchy must tackle themselves, including asking for reinforcements.”
I don’t know what to think about that last statement, but the bright, heroic knight in shining armor image I had of him was slowly dying.
“Saori?” I turned to Saori, since I knew she would complain if I said anything without consulting her. My fight with her inside the Belzac Forest was still vivid to me.
“Hestia, you know what I think about this. I really do not want us to get into this much danger. Even the one we had in Rashan Village was a bit too much for me,” Saori sighed loudly. “If those adventurers were not inside the cave, then I would say it should be easy enough for you to detonate and destroy the cave with your bombs and spells, but we need to enter and rescue them… it would require stealth.”
“Yes,” Tasianna nodded. “Lady Hestia, your power means nothing if you were to cause a cave-in while we are fighting inside the cave. You would need to reinforce the walls and ground again, but the last time you did this, it was inside a dwarven ruin. The stone might have withered through time, but their craftsmanship was indisputable still. We cannot say the same for a normal cave.”
“So, you two suggest we should give this up?” I asked, hesitating a bit since they were clearly pointing out their disagreement with the plan. Lucia looked like the world was ending.
“Hestia, please, do not give me that look. I do not want to have the same argument with you again that we had with the lizardmen. I didn’t say anything in Rashan Village, since it was my fault for being so excited and taking that Quest in the first place, but this one? This is a request we should deny for our safety.” She then activated [Telepathy]. [“Do you remember those mana cannons? If those trolls had them, then this group might have some, too. We saw what an army with those could do to a certain B rank wyvern.”]
Just the mention of those [Warhammer Mana Cannon]s made me shiver a bit. I barely blocked the projectile and it shredded my arms to the point I couldn’t use them. Thankfully, I was able to heal them with my magic, so I was spared from becoming a cripple. Saori was right…
Also, it’s a cave… I hate caves. No sun.
“Please,” Lucia begged once more. “I know this is selfish, b-but you should be able to do something, right? Advanced elements, level 80, and the guidance of the Goddess. Please, I don’t want to lose them all.”
I could hear the other three whisper “Level 80?!” but I ignored that for the moment.
While I could sympathize with her, helping her would mean either I go in alone or endanger Saori and Tasianna. In either case, it was simply impossible. I would worry them with the former and I would feel bad with the latter. There was no winning in this situation. I mean, in the first place, we don’t even know if her companions were alive.
This was a conundrum, and I was about to rip my hair out as I didn’t know how to answer Lucia. I wasn’t a hero, but I know the right thing to do was to help her. However, I don’t want to worry my friends who are vehemently against taking large risks like these. What am I to do? What am I to do?
“You know, Lady Hestia?” As I was working out this inner dilemma, Cernust poked my shoulder. “You know, a Kargryxmor wouldn’t be thinking this long on an issue, you know? The black tyrant doesn’t exactly care for whatever is standing before him, only that it needs to go. It’s not my place to say as a descendant of Kurnistus, since we are supposed to be passive and peaceful and all that, but, you know, maybe it’s time to burn stuff?”
“Cernust, you don’t exactly understand what my problem is, but it isn’t about fighting or not fighting. We don’t know what they-”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on! ‘Burn something…,’” Saori interrupted me, looking as if she had the idea of the century. “Lady Hestia, tell me, can you make a hole as silently as possible? Drilling a hole through stone quietly, I mean.”
“Huh? Uhm, I don’t think I can do that without tearing pieces of the mountain down with spells, but maybe that might be too loud. Oh, [Rumbling Might] can cause a minor earthquake,” I threw out ideas at Saori’s question.
Cernust then stepped in. “I am not the best digger, but I have claws adapted to digging. I can probably tear through rock if it’s weakened first, but I haven’t leveled up my Earth magic that high yet. My [Floral Magic] is my specialty.”
Saori nodded before a smile appeared on her face. She then looked at me, “Lady Hestia, do you want to help Lucia? I still do not approve of this, but I think I have a plan where we could get rid of the unknown factors and threat of ambush inside a cave.”
I nodded.
She then turned to Lucia, “We will do our best.”
I have no idea what she thought off, but she is more or less the brains of the party. It probably will work… hopefully.
