Luke and Dahani quickly arrived at the place where the Goblins were seen. Tracks showed that they walked on the border for a hundred meters or so and then went into the non-awakened forest. The worrisome thing was that the number of Goblins had doubled from the day before if the tracks could be trusted. Such an increase was dangerous for Luke as the only thing he truly feared was their numbers. He could easily dispose of small (50 or less) to medium groups (up to 100 goblins), if he is lucky maybe some big groups (more than100) could fall to him too if circumstances aligned themselves perfectly. However, in most cases, even with the help of the forest, more than fifty goblins at once would prove troublesome. Especially so if more shamans started spawning.
At this point, Luke remembered one of the skills he got and hadn’t been able to use much: Expand Conscience. The ability sounded awesome at first sight, and it actually was, though it came with a steep Mana Cost. There was a base cost of fifty Mana per second, and one extra for every five meters he increased the radius. The skill depended on his Intelligence stat to dictate how far you can reach. So, Luke could use a maximum radius of 307m, but that came with the cost of 110 Mana/second. With that information, the skill became unusable except to scout in certain situations (The base cost was too high to maintain the skill with a small radius, and he couldn’t last thirty seconds with maximum range) and for a short time. Despite this, the skill was an excellent tool for gathering information at a greatly reduced risk. The skill provided a mental image of everything inside the area. It wasn’t like watching what was there, it was more like knowing exactly everything in the area. It wasn’t perfect, it could feel thing up to a certain size before they started to blur. If an ant was close, he would feel something alive and moving around that position, but he wouldn’t be able to establish what it was.
Nonetheless, with the new form of his Mana pool, he could sustain the skill as long as there was Mana around. When he came to this conclusion, he activated the skill. No matter how many times he used this ability he always felt the same sensations: like you were blind your whole life and you were seeing for the first time. It was refreshing. The other downside was that it took two to three seconds to become used to the expanded senses. It was predictable, as your mind has to adapt to receiving and processing several times more information that it is used to. As he was expecting this issue, he crouched putting a hand on the ground while he was adjusting. For Dahani, on the other hand, this came as a surprise. Everything was fine and suddenly Luke was almost sitting on the ground grabbing his head like he was in pain or disoriented.
“Are you alright? What happened?” Dahani asked. Fortunately, the unpleasantness didn’t last long. Gazing at the recovered Luke, she released a sigh.
“I’m fine. I just activated an ability of mine and it takes some time to adapt. The good news is that the goblins are gone, the bad news is that they didn’t have a natural death” Luke.
“Ahh, that’s good. How do you know? What killed them?” Dahani.
“I just told you, my skill. It lets me check the area around me. The skill isn’t that accurate so I don’t know the exact means of death, but they had their weapons on their hands when they died as such, I think they died fighting.” Luke.
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They crossed the border and soon found the ‘battlefield’. The first thing they felt was the smell of so much blood. Then, their sight confirmed what their nose had told them: a medium sized group of goblins with eighty members more or less had died on this spot. Luke examined some of the bodies and discovered wounds similar to arrow wounds. Most corpses had two or three with at least one on the heart. This showed that the killing was done by a small group of highly skilled archers. What’s more, It was done in the time it took Luke and Dahani to travel from the valley to here, maybe five minutes. They even had enough time to recover every arrow, even the broken ones. It suggested that the one that did this didn’t want to be found or recognized. The archers left almost no sign of their passing. In fact, Luke could barely found from where they shot by using the angle of the arrows wounds and the bodies disposition. This was harder than it should have because most bodies were moved to take the arrows. After awhile, he gave up in revealing where they came from and in what direction their left. Dahani had a little better result: she found some marks that suggested they came from deeper into the unawakened forest, but the hints were vague enough to make it impossible to narrow the direction. This track may even be planted to lead to an ambush.
They spent a few more minutes checking every spot again, but they ended empty handed for all the effort. Luke guessed that the woodcraft of this creatures was very high level. If you added the arrows, then the logical explanation was…
“Forest Elves.” Dahani said confidently. “There are few beings with better woodcraft than me, and the archery skill is a dead giveaway. I thought it possible for the other tribes to appear after the dark elves, but I didn’t expect them so soon. Besides, the made their presence known just as the Nuaga left? Very suspicious.”
“Now that you mention it, it’s quite the coincidence, isn’t it? Do you think the forest tribe had any contact with the ones in the valley? I mean, if they did, they went through a lot of trouble to not be detected. Steve stayed there the whole night and didn’t see anything and his senses are pretty sharp.” Luke commented.
“Steve? Ahh, the wolf! I found it strange how close the two of you were. Are you bonded? That would explain a few things like your alliance with a pack… Anyway, the forest elves are the best at hiding in any kind of wooded area, as such, they are pretty skillful in hiding from its resident. If they contacted the dark elves, no animal, no matter how developed its senses are, would be able to detect them. But no, I don’t think they had any kind of contact. The tribes hate each other to the core, the first reaction they would have will be to attack and maybe negotiate later. And the wolf would certainly had seen the fight or the troop movement if the Nuaga were the aggressors” Dahani said.
“Yes, we bonded more than a week ago. He was a little pup at the time. There is nothing else to do here, let's go back.” Luke.
While they were returning to his house clearing, Luke maintained the Expand Conscience spell. He decided to test if he could actually have the skill active at all time. This was to say that he wished to know if there might be any secondary effect of sustaining an ability for such a long period of time. After all, he already knew that he had the Mana to fuel the spell. If it was so, its level would probably skyrocket. For the time being, though, Luke didn’t notice anything out of place.
Once in the glade, they discovered that the tree had grown a full meter taller and had a greater amount of leaves. It already looked like a tree with more than a hundred years. They sat under its shadow and had an early lunch while Dahani exponed about some of the races of her world. Then, they discussed different strategies for dealing with both tribes of elves and what could they do to improve the overall defenses of the Awakened forest.