Chapter 21 - The raid

Day 23

Luna's POV:

Luna was in a good mood. She was leading a raiding team all by herself. Of course, there was Biff, but he was just a stupid goblin, he didn't count. When she thought about it, this was only the second time Neo entrusted an important mission to her. The last time she let him down and fell asleep, that would not happen again.

She was speechless at first when Neo explained her his ambitious plan. Then she thought about it and got angry at herself. It was so obvious, why didn't she came up it. The most important resource for their dungeon right now was life energy. If you started to think about that fact, there was only one obvious choice as to where they could get a huge amount of it. Well, they were two, but Neo wouldn't want to attack the other place. She ordered Biff to use his wrist protector and show her the surrounding area and she saw that they already traveled half of the way to their destination. She grumbled a little bit, in her opinion, it would've been a lot better if she could wear the item! But unfortunately her arms were too small for it to fit.

Two hours later, the raid party arrived at their gathering point. Luna had a look at the entrance of the goblin hideout. According to the sensors, all of the goblin patrols were at home.

Before she could order the attack, they had to block the second entrance first. She would not allow some of the valuable life energy to slip away, so she ordered Biff to take one hundred black goblins and eight shamans and march to the smaller rear entrance of the cave. He should attack from behind, as soon as he heard explosions from their position. Then it was time to wait.

After she saw one of Biffs goblins running back to her position, she knew the stupid goblin was ready for the attack. She ordered six of her shamans to shoot their largest fireballs into the cave entrance, the other six used lightning bolts. When the first fireball started to fly, she ordered her 150 goblins to move out of the forest and attack their cousins in the cave. As soon as she gave the command, the bloodlust of the goblins was sparked and they ran to the cave entrance in their full speed.

"So much for the plan of using orderly battle lines to attack." she thought.

But maybe this was for the best, after all, goblins were not exactly used to fight in an orderly fashion. As long as they got their stinking bodies back to the dungeon, it did not really matter anyway how much of them died. She ordered the golems and the shamans to follow her and then she went after her frenzied soldiers.

As soon as she entered the lair, she saw the dead bodies. It seemed like they were guarding the entrance when the fireballs hit, now everything that remained of them were their charred corpses. She ordered Mr Floppy to keep moving. After 150 meter the passage from the entrance lead to a huge cavern. It was about 200m in diameter and 20m high. A few meters below her position, she could see her army fighting the enemy. There were more goblins present than they expected, she was able to see about 800 enemies. Thankfully, two thirds of them were greens.

While she was still getting an overview of the situation, she noticed two fireballs flying in her direction. The golems, that stood beside her, were her strongest weapons. But they were made from wood and she didn't want to see what happened if they were hit by the fireballs. They may be at the B rank and the goblins only at the E rank, but fire was fire and wood was wood. Her knowledge about the constructs was limited and she could not risk them, so she activated the shield function from her crown and ordered Mr Floppy to move in front of the fireballs.

It was very bright when the fire hit her shield, but it didn't even get warm inside of it. Neo really had done a good job with this item.

"Shamans, group one attack the enemy casters, group two attack the largest concentrations of their forces!"

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While her casters started throwing fireballs and lightning bolts on their own, Luna put her focus back on the battle in front of her. Overall the situation looked ok, but at one part of the front her troops were getting pushed back. She saw already eleven of her own goblins laying dead on the floor. It didn't take long for her to figure out the reason for it. She spotted a group of nine enemy goblins, they were better equipped and had a stronger build then the rest of the enemies forces. These goblins were even taller than her own blacks, one of them in fact was the largest goblin she'd ever seen. Deciding that this was the enemy leader, she ordered her golems to advance.

"Woody and Barky, get me the head of that ugly goblin over there."

Luna paused for a second, then she adjusted her command.

"Woody and Barky, don't bring me the head, just kill him. Then start attacking the other eight large goblins!"

The golems closed in on the enemy in a blink of an eye. One of them grabbed the chieftain and then the golem just ripped him apart. The fate of the other eight goblins wasn't much better. Her golems needed only a few seconds to take them apart. After the enemies were dead, they just stopped moving. However, none of the enemies dared to attack them, instead everyone of them who saw what happened decided to flee from them.

"So this is what a large difference in rank really means." Luna thought. She was shocked, she'd known that B ranks were strong, but she underrated the distance between the ranks by large margin. The golems would've been able to kill all of the 800 enemies by themselves.

A fireball flying out of another corridor interrupted her thoughts. Biff's forces were arriving at the party. She decided to order her golems back, her own army needed some training after all.

"Woody, Barky come back to me. Then just prevent the enemy from fleeing out of this cave."

With that said, she activated her shield again, turned herself and Mr Floppy invisible and then rode forward to attack the enemy herself. In her opinion it was a little unfair to fight this way, but Neo was able to use their connection to see what she was doing. He liked his plans and probably wouldn't have let her go to battle without a backup. So it was very likely that he'd put some kind of remote into her crown and he'd teleport her out, as soon as she was putting herself in any real danger. Leaving these thoughts behind her, she concentrated on the battle at hand.

For the next minutes, random goblins started to die, some of them from a cut through their throat, others were lit on fire. After 20 enemies died this way, a fairy and her rabbit re-emerged near their golems.

"This isn't any fun if they can't fight back." Luna muttered.

She decided to stand down and let her troops handle the rest.

Twenty minutes later, the last enemy goblin fell. In the end, most of the enemies panicked and just tried to escape. Her black goblins were far stronger than their green cousins, they were a lot better equipped and them being dungeon creatures meant, they knew no fear. With the support of their shamans, most of the enemy's forces were just mowed down without inflicting casualties on their own. 164 of her fighters survived the battle and only one shaman was killed. After thinking about this, she ordered her shamans to heal their wounded, she herself went looking for some loot.

Luna had a smile on her face, when she left the chieftains shack. She looted some gold, a lot of silver and even some jewels. Of course she knew only the gold had any real value, Neo could just create the other loot out of thin air. No, the reason while she smiled was something else. In a corner of the hut, she found a smile pile of black ingots. As far as she could tell, these were endurium ingots. The knowledge she was born with told her, that is was only mined by some dwarfen cities, deep beneath the mountain. While she thought about it, she wondered how the goblins had gotten it. Maybe they raided a merchant caravan or killed some smugglers? She didn't really care, all that mattered was that it was in her possession now.

After her wounded were all patched up, Luna prepared her forces to start with the transportation of the corpses back home. It would take a lot of trips to get all of them that was why she started with moving the stronger enemies. The greens could wait for a little longer.

Neo's POV:

When the fight ended, Neo was proud of his little fairy. He watched the whole fight, ready to teleport Luna out of harm's way. He informed Biff beforehand about his tasks if the fairy should disappear. In the end, he was glad that his backup wasn't needed. He was looking forward to the life energy he'll get, but what delighted him the most was his little friend. Most of the time she seemed a little muddleheaded or playful, but when push came to shove, she transformed herself into a little general.

With that thought, he started to create 200 green goblins and then sent them to support Luna with the transportation problems. He'd liked to build a sledge or a wagon for the golems to pull, but the terrain on the way to the former goblin hideout prevented him from doing so.