Goblins were streaming out of the woods en masse in what could charitably be called a battle formation but was closer to a chaotic flood. They broke out of the tree-line mostly from a single location, but then spread out in the intervening distance to the village to encircle the host of guards that stood in their path.

Even those goblins that clearly possessed an [Archer] Class charged forth with reckless abandon, screeching and spitting. They were perhaps a bit more tactful than their kin, as proven when they stopped the bare minimum distance from the line of melee fighters to take aim. Some shot at the guards before the wall, some shot at the village's own [Archer]s atop it. The most intelligent seemed to take aim in Lucas's mother's direction. Regardless of their targets, most of the goblins' arrows pierced through their allies' backs.

With each passing moment, the guards slew more and more of the ugly green imps. They took hits of their own at times but they did not last. A pile of corpses quickly began forming as the seconds drew on.

And yet, the carnage did not deter the raiding monsters. Their frenzy had them jumping on the guards' blades just to get in their own strike. For the moment, it wasn't a problem, but Lucas could see it getting to a point where the weight of their corpses would subdue the guards on its own. Clearly he wasn't the only one, as moments later one of the shield-bearers protecting the [Healer] called out.

"Advance! Pile their corpses on each side and limit the directions they can come at us!"

The front line was quick to follow the shield-bearer's order, and about a third of their number started hoisting up fallen goblins from their front and tossing them onto the piles to the side, while the rest held back the tide. Step by step, the guards started moving forward, and with them Lucas snapped out of his focus and leveled one of his crude spears with the ground some distance below him.

For this moment only, he stopped willfully ignoring all incoming System notifications, took aim, and launched his weapon at one of the more intelligent goblin [Archer]s toward the back. Lucas watched it fly, twist and sink a few feet before and to the side of his target, only managing to harmlessly bonk a charging goblin [Warrior] on the head and eliciting the most minor stun.

"Shit!" He immediately ducked down as the goblin's eyes turned his way. Lucas waited a few moments, but apparently his lousy attempt at spearing the monster wasn't even enough for it to bother loosing an arrow in his direction.

Whooo~ Okay, let's try that again.

Lucas hefted another spear, peeked over the edge of the wall, and stood up to take aim when everything seemed clear. This time, he pulsed [Accelerant Frame] as he launched the weapon and got it to sail just a bit higher, a bit further, and much more on-target. Lucas's scavenged spear took the goblin right in the base of its throat as it was nocking another arrow, causing it to flail, screech, and collapse to the ground to slowly bleed out, if the trampling advance of its brethren did not finish it first.

"Yes!" Lucas pumped his fist in victory, allowing himself a moment's celebration as several notifications burst to the forefront of his attention. He ignored the levels for now and scrolled through to the bottom to find what he was looking for.

[*ding You have received the General Skill [Throwing]!]

[Throwing: you have shown some skill, but there is still much, much more room to grow. Maybe this will help.]

Lucas accepted it immediately and finally filled his last empty Skill slot. He could decide if he would keep it later, but for now he could use the boost.

[*ding You have slain [Goblin Archer - level 59]!]

[*ding [Aspirant of the Storm] has reached level 37---

Nope, back down you go. I'll check the levels later, when we're through this crisis.

With his new Skill slotted, Lucas hefted a third spear and moved to his next target, and the next. Not every one of his throws took a goblin out--not even half of them. Lucas wasn't all that practiced when it came to throwing spears, but with every passing moment he was becoming more and more familiar.

Almost astonishingly familiar. They say that the stress of true battle was the best way to level a Skill, and now he knew what they meant. Lucas would be that, if he could see the notifications rolling through right now, he'd see [Throwing] going up by leaps and bounds with every kill.

A few times, he had to duck down under cover as he drew the focus of one [Archer] or another. An unseen arrow even got worryingly close at one point and sliced a thin line across his shoulder. The injury was taken care of soon enough through his regeneration alone, but his lapse in [Vigilance] still shook him for a moment.

However, as Lucas was picking off monsters one by one, the guards continued to slice through them by the dozen. What was once a semicircular hill of corpses had become two steep, bloody walls holding the guards' flanks and allowing them to advance in a more efficient formation. They extended the grim walls' length with each stride and drew more and more focus from the horde.

Singular goblins eventually started hesitating before readily jumping on the guards' blades. The carnage started to override the goblins' manic frenzy. The first goblin turned and ran once the corpse piles reached halfway to the tree-line, and as if it were the last thread holding the enemy force together, more quickly followed.

"Keep advancing!" the shield-bearer from before called out. "Drive them out!"

We've nearly won!

Lucas continued throwing the last of his spears, choosing to keep [Accelerant Frame] active so he could get out as many as possible. Not all of the goblins were fleeing just yet--a few continued to attack, while others attempted to rally their kin to little avail. Lucas targeted those one above all others and managed to take out a few before he ran out of spears.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

After that, he simply leaned over the wall's edge and watched the final route. He watched the front line of guards leave the shelter of the corpse walls and run down the last number of goblins to find reason and flee.

Screeches still echoed through the woods, but they were getting progressively quieter and nobody moved to pursue them. The whole world seemed to freeze in a stretched out moment as all the fighters stood still, catching their breath and waiting. Lucas's eyes were rooted on the spot he watched the last goblin disappear.

But after several tense minutes, no second wave showed. The first cheer came from a guard among the front line.

"Whooo!! We WON!" the man yelled into the still air, and other guards soon echoed the cheer.

Much of the tension left Lucas all at once when the cheering began, and he leaned heavily against the wall. He wasn't ready to join in on the impromptu celebration just yet, but still a wide grin painted itself across his face. He'd just finished his first battle. It was a lot more stressful than he'd imagined, and he had even been at range the whole time. But...he couldn't explain it.

Lucas's blood was pumping so hard right now--he felt exhausted but also like he could never fall asleep again. Monsters attacking the village had not been a good thing, and yet he couldn't wipe the fierce grin from his face. He felt alive.

I wonder what it would have been like to be in the thick of it...

He was interrupted from those thoughts, however, when someone started calling out to him from behind. Lucas turned and saw a small handful of villagers hesitantly drawing closer to the wall, a man in a faded blue tunic at the forefront.

"Hey, kid!" the man called for his attention once more. "What happened? Are they gone?"

"Yeah!" Lucas answered cheerfully. "We won!"

The villagers weren't quick to return the cheer, though. Lucas cringed, realizing his mistake and immediately toning it down. They hadn't won, the guards did. For them, they'd just weathered a terrifying raid on the village, and not entirely without injury. Lucas spotted a few of his patients from earlier that had gotten caught in the initial moments of the raid--all healed now, but not all that eager to celebrate.

Luckily, no one rebuked him for his misstep. The growing crowd turned inward and started talking heatedly amongst themselves. Lucas heard something about an Elder, but he didn't bother listening, really, and turned back to check on his mom.

She was currently checking up on the full host of guards, going from person to person and healing up anything non-critical that she hadn't had time to handle in the middle of the battle--standard practice for a [Healer] in this sort of a situation, as she'd taught him. Non-critical was relative, of course, and those guards had been through a grinder. The possession of a nose didn't contribute much to a fight, but now that it was over, the one man that had lost his certainly wanted it back. His plight was only one of many.

Now that the danger was clear, there was no reason for Mary to get mad at him if he joined her out there to help with the [Warrior]s' treatment. Lucas was just about to start climbing down the inner side of the wall and do just that when a flash of movement caught his eye. His gaze snapped back in his mother's direction, but whatever had caught his eye wasn't there. He looked past that point and caught the movement again--a flicker passing through the trees.

"Hey! LOOK OU--"

Another wave of goblins burst out of the woods before he could finish yelling out a warning. Each goblin ran faster than any from before, and they did so without the slightest noise apart from the sound of their steps. More than that, they looked different than the first wave--somehow darker and more sickly. Even from some distance away, Lucas got a feeling of intense wrongness from the monsters.

Something had clearly changed.

To their credit, the guards surrounding Lucas's mother closed ranks barely a moment after the new goblins appeared. They had plenty of time to back up into the choke-point formed by the corpse piles. There was just one issue, this second wave was far fewer in number, so much so that they could not have surrounded the guards if they wanted to. The choke-point still made sure the two parties only met from one direction, but it was not so much an advantage this time around.

The first few enemies made it to the guards' frontline and started exchanging blows. Lucas watched just long enough to see that the goblins weren't going down immediately like before, then he dropped from the wall and hurriedly scavenged for more disposable weapons.

"Are there more of them?!" a woman practically screamed out in question as sounds of battle carried over the walls and to the crowd that had assembled.

"Get back home! I don't know how long this is going to last," Lucas yelled back without a glance and the crowd split and ran.

A minute later, he was climbing back up to his post with the few leftover goblin weapons he'd scrounged up. The battle was still going and neither side had gone down in number, but both were being bloodied. Lucas didn't know how much more mana his mom could possibly have--his sense for that sort of thing was simply not strong enough to even get an impression for that at this distance--but it couldn't be terribly much. He started [Throwing] weapons again with haste, his crude spears and cudgels and knives joining the arrows from the few [Archer]s with him atop the wall.

"Hold formation and fall back!" the shield-bearer that had given the guards orders all this time called out, and the host listened.

The guards started slowly moving back to the gate, one step at a time while keeping up the exchange of blows with the changed goblins. As the line of battle drew closer, Lucas was able to make out more details of the enemies. They were taller than the regular goblins and looked absolutely feral. They had the same frenzy as the ones before, but with an added irrational rage.

But the real difference was in their mana. It was different from any living thing Lucas had ever seen. Different from any monster, and definitely different from the regular goblins. The normal flows that all living things had around them were twisted and sharp--Lucas hadn't even known the usual fluid qualities of mana could appear sharp in such a way, and the sight disturbed him on some deep level. It was as if a hand had taken their mana and tortured it into its desired shape.

And within the goblins, Lucas glimpsed a putrid black that seemed to roll over him in a sickening wave. One small look and he had to fight to hold his stomach. He didn't look a second time.

The first body dropped moments later, and it wasn't from amongst the goblins. Luckily, the sword-wielding guard wasn't yet dead, and his fellows pulled him back to Lucas's mom for healing. Strangely, though, the man didn't need healing. Lucas had seen enough to know that the man hadn't taken a blow before his collapse, he'd fallen all on his own. The guard shifted a little as Mary tried to treat him, so it was clear he was at least alive, but he didn't get back up and one of the shield-bearers was assigned to drag him to safety.

The battle raged as the guards' cautious retreat continued, and they managed to take out a few from amongst the enemy. Then another guard spontaneously collapsed, and this time there was no way they survived. The spearman fell, and a berserk goblin fell atop him. Lucas wasn't through his last remaining spear in an attempt to save the guard, but the attempt was doomed from the start. The goblins closed in.

With the death of the spearman, a spot was briefly opened up in the guards' frontline and the goblins took advantage. Flashy Skills started flying as the guards did their best to prevent the entire host's collapse, and the enemy was suddenly pushed back. It was just enough of a turn for them to change the cautious retreat into an urgent one.

Come on, come on. Move!

The guards started running for their lives, back to the wall. Then another one collapsed, followed by another. The shield-bearer that was giving orders grabbed Lucas's mom and started dragging her back to the wall as their party fell one by one around them and whatever stun had been inflicted on the goblins finally ran its course. Then the shield-bearer collapsed, pinning Lucas's mom beneath him.

Shit shit shit.

Lucas didn't think. He just jumped over the wall and started running.