It has been three months since my death and I have grown considerably more confident in my mana manipulation skills. Besides basic rituals to improve strength, dexterity, and senses, Nuala taught me my first offensive spell. Well, offensive is maybe a bit generous, I can now use my body to deliver an unpleasant shock to a target. Or I can create a severe thunderstorm’s worth of lightning, that reaches out to destroy anything nearby. This is very cool to look at, but blowing up a tree a few feet away is an excellent example of why control is more desirable than power.

Today, Nuala explained that we would be training by the expedient method of killing a whole bunch of stuff until I am comfortable casting in a high stress environment. Apparently we are doing pest control within the forest. And by we she means me. And if you heard pest control, and thought like me that this meant dire rodents, or giant spiders, or something equally squishy but unpleasant, you would be wrong.

No according to Nuala, today I would be single handedly clearing out a goblin slum. Now maybe you hear goblin and think 3 foot tall monsters with mottled green and brown skin. This is a gremlin, not a goblin. A gremlin slum I could handle. A goblin slum is packed full with 4 and a half 5 foot tall monsters of such ferocity and prodigious breeding rate that they are treated like a plague. They sweep through lightly defended towns and leave ashes and blood in their wake. Goblin slums, when found, are always assigned a high priority extermination target by the local mercenary guilds and mercenary companies can cancel a contract without penalty to exterminate one.

And I was supposed to march into one, and exterminate every goblin I can find. I suppose Nuala just wants to be rid of me then. I gather my approved gear: my ritual knife, a 31 in long arming sword and a 20 in long baselard. Despite the upgrade to my equipment in the form of the sword and long dagger, without my bow, I felt a lot less confident in my chances. Nuala did gift me a pair of fine leather boots and a set of elven armor: a brigandine, vambraces, tassets, and greaves to cover the chest, forearms, thighs, and shins. The set was a hardened leather, dyed green and lined with steel for extra protection and was light enough to move comfortably for hours without fatigue.

A shame that Nuala neglected to include a helmet of any kind. When I asked, she gave me a strange look and said “Don’t get hit in the head then, not that it would make any difference considering how infrequently you use it.” That did sting my pride quite a bit.

Prepared for my little jaunt through the forest, I followed Nuala towards the goblin slum. It took a few days of travel to reach the area now overrun by goblins. I knew it was overrun by goblins because they left vivisected animal corpses all over the place, and put strange shamanistic fetishes out to mark their territory. After Nuala wished me luck, said she wouldn’t save me again, and departed, I planned my approach to goblin extermination.

Considering the amount of territory claimed, the slum would have a shaman and warchief, and probably a hundred or more goblins. I figured I could find a choke point and exploit the natural aggressiveness of the monsters to thin their ranks before hunting for the two leaders. So I began trooping through the forest, ambushing the occasional single goblin patrol, and searching for a proper place to set up.

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After six hours of sneaking about and searching, I came upon a dried creek bed that seemed perfect. It was relatively sheltered from both banks by thick underbrush and a 3 ft fall from the bank to the creek bed. The creek bed was a perfect place to conceal some footfall traps to slow pursuit, and if I play my cards right, I should be able to ambush 10 or 12 goblins, kill them, then escape using the high banks as cover.

This all planned, I baited my trap by dragging a body into the middle of the creek, and mutilating it with my ritual knife. Eventually a group of seven goblins came to investigate the corpse, only the one in the middle was armed. The other goblins mulled about, unarmed but packed with wiry muscles and clawed hands as dangerous as knives.

I silently charged the two closest goblins who were mere feet away from hiding place along the bank. I opened their necks before they could cry in alarm, but the others heard the commotion. One spun, only to meet the point of my arming sword. I left the blade embedded into my foes neck and used my left hand weapon, the baselard, to slice open the spine of the apparent leader, the goblin armed with a short, rusted sword, who was too slow to turn and face me.

I dove past the remaining 3 goblins as they turned to face me, and left my baselard quivering in the eye socket of another goblin as he came about. I produced my ritual knife as I confronted the final two goblins. Both charged me, frothing in a fur; I danced between them and earned a glancing blow from one for my effort. I opened the other’s neck with my ritual knife, but unfortunately, fumbled my knife and was left facing an unarmed but savage animal with my bare hands. As it charged, I slipped pasts the clawing hands and slammed an open palm into the creature’s neck. This crushed its neck, and the monster when to the ground choking and sputtering.

For some reason, seeing the goblin suffering put me in a cheery mood. I watched the monster die and felt a swell of satisfaction. After I collected my weapons, I removed the hearts of the armed goblin and dedicated his death to Ramrar. I noticed a small rush of power breathed in deep; my magic crackled in me, begging to be unleashed and I decided that I would use magic to dispatch the next bunch of goblins.

I made no effort to hide the last group, instead moving further down the creek bed, away from goblin country. This time, I decided to hide up on the bank, and so I scrambled up there to prepare for my next victims. The group that approached my first ambush site numbered 20 goblins that I could see. I already killed 10 goblins by this point, so a 20 goblin detachment was a significant percentage of the remaining grunts by my estimate. Of the 20, 5 had weapons other than the claws; only 1 goblin had a weapon that was not rusted to near uselessness.

I took a steadying breath and allowed my dragon eye to change from the minor physical boost, to the more magically oriented pattern. It turns out that I can change the focus of the spellform imprinted on my flesh, but doing so takes a few seconds and during that time I am useless. The change from physical prowess to magical might is painful enough to rob me of my sense for a few seconds, but I maintain my silence and begin to push power through the marks on my hands and arms that generate lightning. After a few seconds of concentration, I release a lightning bolt at the most well armed goblin.

I felt really good about myself for about 5 seconds. Then I noticed that my powerful lightning spell was only marginally more powerful than before. The spell had temporarily immobilized the goblin warrior, but it also alerted every goblin to my presence. Having failed my ambush spectacularly, I decided to run and try and pick off the goblins one by one. I would not be able to keep ahead of the goblins if I stayed on the bank so I dropped to the creek bed and took off at full tilt. Besides, I had a dozen or so footfall traps sprinkled throughout the creek bed; hopefully that would give me the advantage I needed to survive this brawl.