Chapter 43 - Caster Duel

My archers were already shooting, firing arrows into the oncoming goblin swarm. I ducked back behind the line of my skeleton warriors and ordered them to advance, protecting themselves with their shields. Ahead of me, the less well armed tier one skeletons were doing their best to skirmish with the first goblins, but they were going to be overwhelmed fast if I didn’t do something.

“Advance!” I called out, and my undead got moving.

A huge fireball streaked by overhead, and I ducked instinctively even though it was nowhere near me. The thing slammed into a car about twenty feet back, and I felt the heat from the burst, even at that distance. I did not want to get hit with that!

“Holy crap, Alfred! What was that?” I hollered. He’d mentioned fireballs, I recalled. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but that was damned terrifying.

Alfred was back with his warriors already, getting them lined up and organized. He had them spread out, though, probably because they already knew about the fireballs. I ordered my skeletons to do the same. No sense losing an entire squad to one lucky hit.

“That’s their spell caster,” Alfred shouted back. “You think your guys can take him? If we need to run, we should do it now, while they’re still coming at us.”

I considered that a moment. That was no way a tier one spell. It had to be at least tier two, maybe higher. It would obliterate my undead if it hit. But from what Alfred said it sounded like the enemy only had one caster able to do this stuff. If I could take him down, then that might make all the difference. He wasn’t the only spell caster around, and it was time to show him that.

“Yeah, I’ve got this,” I told him. “Hunker down.”

He looked like he was going to object, but then shook his head and ordered his people to take cover behind some of the still-smoking cars. With his people in relative safety, I could focus on dealing with the threat.

First I ordered my entire line of battle to rush the enemy, and I was hot on their heels. There might be a lot of goblins out there, but I was willing to bet the caster didn’t want to fry his own troops. Once we were at close range, he wouldn’t be able to toss fireballs at us without killing a lot of goblins, too.

A fireball smashed into one of my warriors, and it exploded, sending shards of bone flying in all directions. One chunk of rib slashed past my face, narrowly missing me. I really needed to get some armor, and probably a helmet, and I needed them sooner rather than later. Instead I kept my shield up to protect myself as best I could. It wouldn’t be enough to block a fireball, but it would protect me from shrapnel.

There! I saw the caster. It was another goblin, interestingly enough. He was bigger than most of the other goblins, and dressed in some rudimentary armor, while most of them wore rags. He was still too far away for my Drain Life spell, but that wasn’t my only ranged weapon now.

First I cast Contagion, hitting the nearest goblins, who were packed in close against one another to fight my warriors. The spell quickly spread from one to the next, staggering the enemy force. I could see a visible difference in each goblin as it became afflicted. They were weaker, less coordinated, and more tired. One stumbled and fell forward on its face, only to be smushed by a heavy hammer blow from one of my skeleton warriors. With the front rank of the enemy force weakened, my undead tore through them.

I pushed us forward, ordering my undead to advance as fast as they could. Another fireball flew by overhead, smashing into one of my archers and destroying it. Damn it, I was losing undead too quickly here! Fortunately I’d be able to replace at least some of them. I’d already seen Dr. Carver Animate a goblin, back on that first day, so I knew it would work.

We punched through the enemy line. My warriors went to work ripping apart their backline, and opened a gap just wide enough for me to break through. I surged ahead, Hope right beside me to watch my back, two skeleton warriors flanking me as well. Together we pushed straight on for the goblin caster.

He’d seen me for sure, but he apparently had the same limitations I did in terms of casting—too many shots wore him out. He’d gone for the archers because they were trying to shoot him. An arrow protruded from a dead goblin right beside the enemy caster. But now he had no juice left to handle me, whereas I still had a full tank.

And now I was in Drain Life range.

I cast the spell, black fire launching from my hand toward the goblin. He shrieked and tried to duck behind a shield, but my spell didn’t work like that. You couldn’t deflect it; it didn’t bounce off. The black fire wreathed itself around him, sinking into the goblin, sucking out his power and vitality before returning them to me.

I felt renewed. The goblin? He’d had better days, but he was still on his feet.

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That was impressive. I’d half expected him to drop with just the one spell. This guy was a lot stronger than his fellows. My timer was up to twenty seconds now on Drain Life, so I had a little ways to go on that. I slammed Curse down on him, instead.

This was the first time I’d cast the spell so I was curious what it would do. There was no light show, no black fire shooting from my fingertips. Instead, the Curse just took hold of him without fanfare. I felt the first tick of damage as it hit him, and watched the goblin double over in pain as sores appeared all over his body.

He looked up, eyes scanning the battlefield for the source of the pain, and he saw me. His eyes locked with mine, and he raised the staff he carried, pointing it at me.

“Oh, shit!” I swore as I dove sideways, trying to get behind some sort of cover before he could finish casting.

The fireball rocketed through the air, smacking into the ground where I’d been standing with a roaring explosion of flame and heat. I was already in the air, so the burst picked me up and carried me further. I slammed into one of the overturned cars, my shoulder screaming in pain.

Not cool. I was up in a flash, looking for the little green bastard so I could give him another dose of Drain Life. But he wasn’t there anymore, wasn’t anywhere close to where he’d been standing before. He’d used the distraction to flee the battlefield, and the other goblins were beating feet, too. Frustrated, I cast the Drain Life on the nearest goblin, the black fire sucking life force from the hapless creature to heal my injured shoulder. It dropped to the ground, dead, and I felt much better right away.

“Form up,” I told my little army. I counted my losses. The goblins killed three of my Controlled skeletons, one warrior archer, and two of the melee warriors. Not super great, but most of those losses were Animated, rather than Controlled. That was good, because it was a lot easier to replace Animated losses.

I wondered if there would come a time when I’d ditch the Control Undead spell entirely. I mean, it was nice to have. But I could only replace losses when I ran into undead. With Animate? Well, my guys and I had killed fifteen goblins over the course of that short fight. That would let me more than replace my losses.

“Holy shit, Selena,” Alfred said, walking over to join me. “That—that was amazing!”

“Yeah?” I asked, honestly shocked. I’d half expected him to be horrified. I’d cast a Contagion spell, a Curse, and multiple Drain Life spells. It wasn’t what most people would call ‘nice’ magic.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding earnestly. “That rocked. I wish you’d been here last night, now. They never would have beat us back.”

I wasn’t too sure of that. This time I knew in advance I was up against another caster, and I’d rushed him to take him down quickly. More than that, he hadn’t known I was there. I’d carried all the advantages, this time. Next time might not be as easy, and a sneak attack in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t see the goblin caster to target him? That could have gone very differently.

Maybe I needed to socket that Nightvision spell again, after all…

I didn’t tell Alfred all of that, of course. Why blow the good vibes? “Glad I was able to help this time, anyway.”

“You sure did,” Alfred said.

I went over and began looting the goblins for the crystals and recovering the arrows my skeletons had shot. It didn’t take long. I got back most of the arrows we’d shot, although one snapped. I also found two kind of crappy bows and two quivers of goblin arrows. They weren’t as good as the modern weapons I’d already found, but every bit helped.

Fifteen goblins gave me fifteen crystals, five brown and ten clear. Best of all, I knew what they were without socketing the things. I had two Strength, two Agility, one Stamina, two Will, one Intellect, and two Charisma, for the clear ones. The brown ones were more skill type effects: one each of Weapon Making, Armor Making, Tracking, Building, and…Farming?

We were getting skill drops for Farming now? I shook my head, wondering just what the world was going to look like in a couple of years, at the rate things were going.

I hadn’t told Alfred yet that I could identify the crystals without socketing them, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. He’d let me loot the dead without protest, which was only fair from my perspective. My undead and I had killed every one of them, after all. But it felt fair to pass some of those along to his team. It would be a nice gesture, and one I could afford to make. If I kept my identification ability secret, I could pass off the trash crystals to his people and they’d never know.

But eventually they’d find out. Sooner or later one of them would hit tier five, and they’d know. That wouldn’t be great for any sort of lasting relationship, and people were going to need to work together to survive this mess. With a small inward grumble, I went over to Alfred, coming up close so we could speak privately.

“I want you to have some of the crystals for your team,” I said. He looked like he was going to protest, so I held up a hand to forestall him. “You all were here. Yeah, I killed them, but you’re going to tell me if I’d gotten in trouble you wouldn’t have helped?”

He shook his head. “No, I would have.”

“Right. So, here you go,” I said. I handed him six crystals. “Those two are Strength, that’s Agility, that one is Stamina, and these two are Building and Farming.”

“Farming?” Alfred asked. “That’s weird.”

“That’s what I said! But you’re the one leading a community now, so maybe it’ll help you more than me.”

“Hey—you didn’t take the time to slot all of those,” Alfred said. “How’d you know? Another tier five power?”

I nodded. “I think so, yeah. I can tell what a crystal does just by touching it, now. It’s a nice feature. I was getting tired of the damned things breaking.”

“Gonna have to work on getting my Strength up to five, myself.”

“Are you close?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Only tier three, remember? I’ve got a long way to go yet, but I’ll get there.”

“I know you will.” I looked over at the battlefield. “Listen, we should clear out. Collect Lords’ body and any other dead from last night. I’m gonna Animate some goblins to replace my losses, and then we should skedaddle. Those guys were scared off, for now, but I can’t guarantee they’ll stay scared. We should motor.”

“You coming with us?” Alfred asked.

I almost winced at the hopeful note in his voice. I’d gotten used to working alone, relying on myself. Not worrying about getting backstabbed. But I shrugged. “Sure. For now, at least.”

“Good. I’ll get my people moving,” he replied, and hurried off.

I looked down at Hope and sighed. “So much for solitude.”

She gave me a peppy bark and wagged her tail. I had to smile at that, so I reached down to pat her skeleton head. Then we set off to animate ourselves some goblins.