The base was 3 stories tall, maybe 10 meters square, with merlons rising around the top like square teeth. A few different scanning towers rose here and there upon that roof, all of them covered in glass and stone to make them harder to destroy. Basic gun turrets, that were more like rock slingers, held on the edges of the tower, all of them with clear lines of sight to ground, to the kill zones that Eliot had set up in the dry moat that surrounded the place. Every square foot of space out there had tall, sharp pyramids of stone, for 10 meters in every direction.
“Why pyramids?” Mark asked. “Why not spikes?”
Eliot said, “Because goblins will break stone spikes with a hammer, or just kick them over, thus removing the purpose of the trap zone, which is to keep them slow and injure them. The pyramids are 2/3rd’s as tall as they are, so they’re a good hindrance, and people only do spikes when they have no time or ability to make real defenses. I have the time and the ability to make real defenses.”
Isoko asked, “They’ll just sacrifice comrades to make a bridge, right? And that’s PL0 stone. They won’t give a shit about it?”
Mark said, “I can make them give a shit about it?”
Eliot breathed in, and said, “All true.”
David just watched.
The north and south towers that abutted the main tower each had laser turrets that could blind and disorient the goblins. They were pretty basic, though. Nothing special.
“I have no real power sources, either, so I can’t do more than blind them with some automatic targeting software,” Eliot said. “Not much more than that, anyway.”
“They’ll recover fast, since it’s just light?” Isoko asked.
“Ultraviolet light, so it will burn out their eyes while keeping their eyes dilated with the dark,” Eliot said, “If I could support a lot of those, I would. They have good track records against monsters in the dark that can’t see ultraviolet. Goblins can see ultraviolet, but not very good. Basic spotlights will also be used to disorient.”
Eliot had taken down the bridges leading to the central tower, as well as part of the wall that led to the south, leaving the northern sides covered by the tree. Perhaps the tree would not like the goblins getting close? And be a good killer in that direction? Hard to know!
And here, in the tower, in the center of Eliot’s defenses, was a detailed holomap rising from the stone, in full color, with blue dots everywhere. Those blue dots were goblins.
Mark could not feel everything out there through Union. Not yet.
But he could certainly connect to stuff he could not see. To the weeds and small trees growing in the buildings all around, the monster tree over there, the monster fish in the crater lake in the other direction, and even the goblins hiding out in the nearby buildings. He didn’t have the range to get many of them, for there were hundreds out there and they were staying back, but he was able to reach out and touch some of them, now that he could tell where they were.
He knew he missed some.
He couldn’t tell where things were out there. Not yet.
Mark looked at a nearby clump of 120-ish blue dots, and then at the other clumps out there. “They’re planning how they’re going to attack, aren’t they.”
Isoko was quiet. She looked frustrated. All she had was herself and her Platinum Body; it was barely any use at all against the goblins. She’d still be upstairs throwing rocks. Between her and Eliot, they had decided that she was not going to be throwing steel, because they needed that steel, and they didn’t want the goblins to have it, to use it against them.
Eliot was concentrating on making power sources for his various electronics. Batteries came together below, in thick stacks, beyond a pane of thick glass that allowed Eliot to look and focus on what he was doing. He was up to battery tower #4 now. The other 3 towers were all lit with lights, alongside a computer bank that would run the automated defense systems.
David said, “They’re doing more than planning how to attack. They’re also organizing themselves into tribes. This happens when the goblins get advanced. Looks like we have at least 4 or 5 goblin leaders now. One of them is the corrupter goblin.” David pointed at the largest clump of goblins, far back from the rest, almost inside the toxic yellow slime area of the Vatican. “Probably that one.” David continued, “The goblins were watching us for a while, probably using hive mind capable goblins to communicate what they know about us to other goblins. Not everything, though. Goblins are monsters, but they’re also a people. They will communicate with each other just enough so that what they learn fighting us is not lost, but they want the Powers that we have for themselves. They want to be the ones to get to us, not their fellow tribesmen.
“Near as I can tell, some of them are hive mind capable, and high level blending capable. Those two Mind Nudge goblins that I killed likely went through the Monster Tutorial. They had actual Powers. There might be another 2 or 3 mind goblins with the same sorts of Powers, a bunch of Hive Mind goblins, then there’s the corrupter goblin at the heart of it all.
“How these things usually go is that the people in this situation here, even if they have defenses like we have here, will be taken by the goblins. It’s just a matter of time.”
Silence.
Contemplation.
Mark said, “Their unwillingness to tell the other tribes our strategies is a weakness that we can exploit for a while, but not forever. All of our tactics will eventually get found out.”
David did not answer.
Isoko said, “Yes, but we still have more Power per person than them. We only die if we get overwhelmed.”
Eliot spoke up, “They’ll come at us in waves, throwing 50% of their forces at us while the other 50% go hunting monsters to make more of their kind. Those that die will teach those that survive, and eventually they’ll commit to an attack that they believe they will win.”
Isoko said, “That is the reason that normal city defense tactics are turrets on the walls and roaming groups of monster hunters out in the wilds. So… we need to funnel them. The spiked ground is good. I need to be out there with a weapon, and protected by you, Mark, while I fix problem spots in our defenses and defend the turrets.”
Down in the melee?
Mark frowned at that, but it was the probable best way to do this. He looked at Isoko with his scanner glasses, as his heart beat with a Union of resilience and weakness. With a tap to the button at the side of the glasses, the scan changed from goblin recognition to human scanning. Isoko glittered with an outline of a high tier 3 Body, and everything else. Mark focused more, and Isoko’s base scan glittered stronger. High tier 3 became low tier 4.
Isoko stood a bit straighter. She looked to Mark, and her Platinum Body practically shimmered as it strengthened, and she became high tier 4. Almost tier 5.
Mark asked, “How you feel?”
Isoko said, “I know I can’t keep this up forever. Can you?”
“For a while, but not forever. I need to constantly breathe in and out sustenance and deprivation, too, otherwise you’re just going to faint of exhaustion; we all will. And you don’t have a good weapon to go against the goblins. Steel will bend.”
“I need to learn better Tactile Telekinesis, anyway,” Isoko said, as she looked to Eliot. “The mace is too hard to work. Too big. I need a sword. Thin and strong.”
Mark said, “You need a radio, too.”
“And a radio, too,” Isoko added.
Eliot crafted a radio out of a headset and a new pair of scanning glasses, as he asked, “Katana, longsword, rapier?”
“Rapier, probably,” Isoko said, as she put on the new scanner/radio. “Can you do an estoc? It’s the same but a bit thicker. And a buckler.”
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“I know estocs,” Eliot said, pulling out steel from a hole that led to the first floor. Within several seconds, he had two thin swords, a belt, and a small, round shield that could be braced onto an arm. “That’s the best I can do with normal steel.”
Isoko strapped the shield on and started waving around the sword, as she said, “Thanks.”
Eliot said, “I’ll make extra.”
Mark asked Isoko, “You want me to leave the goblins around you alone? Or down them so you can stomp them and move on?”
Isoko said, “Stomping. I’m hoping to poke brains and that’ll be enough to kill. Some goblins can heal when they eat the dead, but the dead can’t heal themselves at all, and that will have to be enough.”
Mark breathed in, preparing to say something he really didn’t want to say. “I’m gonna kill goblins through Union. Lola told me a few different ways, but I haven’t done them yet because…” Mark didn’t want to say that it scared him to kill with Union, that it scared him to take something good and protective and that he used to help people all the time, and to use it as a weapon. So he didn’t talk about that. He asked, “Where do you want me to kill them?”
Isoko and Eliot were silent. They were probably having similar thoughts… Or maybe they were thinking of something completely different.
David just watched.
Isoko said, “The stragglers. We don’t want anyone running and regrouping— Better than that, the hive minds. If you and Eliot can figure out where the hive mind goblins are, then kill them from afar.”
Mark nodded. “Okay. Then…”
He looked to the holographic display of the nearest 500 meters, and the blue dots circling and moving in. A lot of them were already within range, but Mark wasn’t confident he could kill them from here and he didn’t want to start the attack early. The nearest group was stopped about 30 meters outside of the wall that surrounded the tower. They were inside a building near a road that led straight to the tower walls.
They were going to start.
Planning time was over.
Mark said, “Then I think we're as ready as we can be.”
Eliot said, “I’m almost done with battery 6. I’ve used up most of our supplies, but I can repair the eye-burning turrets a few times. The stone slingers will mostly be a deterrent, and not much of one. We’re set for power and defense… but when they get here I won’t be able to change the land out there at all. Not after they touch it. Anything the goblins touch falls out of my ability to Manipulate.”
Mark had an idea. “Can you adjust this holo display to highlight which turrets upstairs are burning eyes? I want to be able to weaken those goblins specifically, so you can actually burn them.”
Eliot frowned as he looked at the holo display. “… I think I can. Yeah. Should be able to. The systems are on automatic targeting, but I can feed the automation into the display.”
Isoko asked, “How about sound makers, too?”
Eliot laughed suddenly. “Yeah. I can do directed sound attacks. I can’t believe I forgot about that…” He lost his mirth. “I’m probably forgetting a lot.”
A quiet contemplation filled the room, as Mark stared at the holo display, feeling out the world with Union, Eliot’s fingers hovered over an invisible keyboard, and Isoko held her estoc tightly, as she poked the ground. Mark glanced over to see Isoko poking the tip of the sword into the stone, like slipping a knife into hard-packed dirt, except the dirt crinkled and broke into tiny stone shards. It made a grinding sort of noise. With a flick of her hand, she drew half of a line through the stone, but then the estoc caught. The steel scraped and broke off at the tip, and Isoko frowned.
She had been testing her TT, and it had failed somewhere in there.
Eliot reached out and silently fixed both the stone and the estoc.
Isoko looked frustrated that her attempts at tactile telekinesis were… not great. But she was ready for battle.
David startled them as he spoke, “My professional opinion is that this plan is going to work, until it doesn’t. When that happens I will rescue all of you and pull you out, away from this location, and then we will begin a counter assault, or flee. That final outcome depends on your personal choices between now and then.”
Isoko asked, “What do we need to change to make this a stable plan?”
David said, “This is a learning experience and the goblins are about ready to attack. I’ll give you tips later.”
Mark winced. They were forgetting something painfully obvious, weren’t they.
What was it?
Funneling the goblins? Check. There was one main path from the south and they’d probably come from the north, just because they wanted to avoid the main path. But that was by the tree. The goblins were avoiding the tree, though, because it was obviously a monster tree.
Trap the land? Check. The stone pyramid ground wouldn’t last forever, but it would hinder them.
Turrets? Check. They wouldn’t last forever, either. The lasers could fire forever, though, as long as they weren’t targeted by monsters, but Eliot had set up ablative glass enclosures for them that would stop simple rock throws, and those could be removed and replaced by Isoko, or even Mark if Isoko was busy.
Weapons? Check. As much as could be checked, anyway. Mark didn’t have more than a grain of adamantium inside of his body, so he couldn’t use that against the enemies, and even if he could he wasn’t strong enough to wield it. He needed to be practically tier 8 to pick up more than the few grains of adamantium inside his body, to use them, and he wasn’t anywhere near that.
All they had was steel and Isoko’s unrealized tactile telekinesis—
Wait.
Mark felt a cold sweat as he thought about weapons made of monster parts that had naturally high Body ratings, and otherwise. His adamantium was grown inside his own blood and it was a fantastic magical weapon. They used monster parts all the time as weapons over on Daihoon, too!
Mark blurted out, “Should we have grabbed those wyvern bones to use as weapons?”
Isoko’s eyes went super wide—
Eliot said, “No. Monster parts make good weapons over on Daihoon, but on Earth they rapidly degrade due to soul-leaving the body or some shit like that. It’s a Veil-thing. We similarly don’t have to worry about monsters making weapons out of bones, or anything like that.” Eliot chuckled. “Gods. Could you imagine if monster parts worked like that over here?”
Mark had a surreal moment. “But—”
Eliot snapped, “We don’t have to worry about that!”
Mark paused.
Isoko looked at Eliot.
Eliot breathed, then said, “Sorry. I… I hate mind monsters.”
A moment they didn’t have stretched a bit long.
David said, “You don’t have to worry about monster-part weapons here in this scenario, Mark, Isoko. They’re actually really rare. Even on Daihoon. You need to prepare the monster before you kill it in order to make weapons out of it. Most stuff, even on Daihoon, degrades down to somewhere between Power Level 1 to 15. On Earth the degradation is all the way to PL 0. There are some big exceptions to this, most notably the magical metals, certain stones and crystals, all elemental-core-touched items, and most heartwood from monster trees. Wyvern dog bones and most monster parts would not make good weapons unless heavily treated, and the goblins here will be dead long before they progress to industry.”
As David spoke, Mark felt more secure. Isoko looked calmer as well.
Eliot said, “Yeah. All that.”
Isoko said, “I’ve decided to get on the ground. Mark; You can defend the turrets. Eliot; Can you turn the slope at the base of the tower into something thicker, with a flat surface a few meters wide at the top that I can fight on? I don’t want them tunneling into the stone and I need a surface down there to fight on.”
Eliot said, “Sure.” He looked to Isoko. “I’ll make a switchback at the north tower that you can guard, and use to come up and down.”
Isoko nodded—
She glanced at the holo display. Everyone did. The blue dots at a southern group were moving this way. They were moving toward the big gap in the wall that Eliot had left, on purpose.
Isoko steeled herself, which was really just platinuming herself, and said, “I’ll deploy from the roof and prepare to meet the enemy on foot.” And then she asked David, “Am I immune to the goblin curse? Or does Mark need to do something special to clean that away?”
David looked to Mark.
Mark was already saying, “Purity/impurity breathing with a focus on astral body tainting. It cleans up real fast, but it piles up fast, too. If you take a wound say something, otherwise I will be cycling purity/impurity every few minutes. They shouldn’t be able to touch you except through exhaustion, anyway, and they can’t hurt you through normal weapons. They have to bite you, Isoko. They’re PL 25, at the most, going up against PL 35, at the least; teeth and claws against bio-platinum, so… You tell me if you’re safe or not.”
David nodded.
Eliot nervously looked at the goblins coming from the south.
Isoko was looking more and more confident by the moment. She grinned. “I can fight all day long with a good healer at my back.”
Mark smiled a little. He was already breathing in sustenance and breathing out deprivation. “You got one of those.”
Eliot made himself smile, and then he stood up and hovered some cameras around them, saying, “So here we are! On our training mission! Gonna kill goblins that wouldn’t accept peace talks; you know how it goes. Platinum Princess is getting ready to break gobbo skulls and Blackvein is getting ready to make hearts explode! Let’s get this completion!” He held out a hand, straight ahead, palm flat and down.
Mark rolled his shoulders, ignored the name Eliot had named him, and put a hand onto Eliot’s. Isoko was there, too. It was a nice moment.
Eliot raised his hand, saying, “Go team human!”
Isoko said, “Go team human!”
Mark grinned. “Go team human!”