I summoned new hounds and sent them forward on the trail of the goblins. Time progressed and in a little over an hour I found the goblin village. It stood between two rocky hills and was surrounded by a thin wooden wall. Most of the goblins lived in thatched huts and holes in the ground, but they had also dug tunnels into one of the rocky hills. The larger goblins lived there, as well as a pack of small wolves that they used as riding animals.

The captives were in a large cage, in front of the tunnels on the hill, and surrounded by many curious goblins. Some of them tried to get too close to the cage, but were stopped by the guards who guarded it.

"There are too many!" thought I and decided to wait for the night and try to come up with a plan.

I found a comfortable spot and summoned a group of forest imps. Then climbed a tall tree and hid among its branches. After that I sent my imps to scout, as I used my link with them and utilized their senses to keep watch on the goblins village safely.

After about half an hour, a big fat goblin emerged from the caves on the rocky hill, followed by an ancient looking shaman and a retinue of goblins. They began to speak to the assembled goblins, and before long began to light a large fire.

"Maybe they'll actually try to eat the captives!" I thought desperately. I ordered my imps to approach, and when I saw the goblins approaching the prisoners' cage with sharp wooden spears I sent my imps to attack the fat goblin and the old shaman.

My imps jumped off the hill and started firing various battle spells. Three of them separated from the group and headed towards the shaman.

To my surprise, the ancient goblin reacted rather quickly and made a few motions with his staff, and a bluish ethereal shield rose around him, stopping my imps' attacks. It then began to shoot out fireballs that could slightly curve and track their targets.

Seeing this, I diverted my three imps and they slammed at high speed into the body of the fat goblin.

I could hear the wounded goblin's screams and “feel” his blood pulsing through his veins. “My” fangs and teeth dug greedily into his body. During this time, through the eyes of the other goblins in the air, I saw the shaman looked in horror at the three imps, and after catching his breath, began to wave his staff again.

I urged my imps on and they headed for the fat goblin's neck. One of them even managed to climb onto his back and from there started to climb up, leaving blood in his wake.

The shaman shot a few fireballs that stuck into the bodies of my 2 imps and I felt the life begin to leave them. However, I imposed my will on them and they clung even tighter to the goblin's body, intent on inflicting as deep wounds as they could before dying.

My third imp, managed to climb up the goblin's back and began ripping at the back of its neck.

During this time, my other imps were sending fire spells at the unprotected goblin villages. I decided to waste no time with the weaker spells, and sent some of them up close, to sow death with their fangs and they descended upon the weaker looking individual goblins.

Soon the stones were stained with goblin blood and there was a commotion. The goblins ran in different directions. One of the larger goblins began to give orders, ceaselessly swinging a curved saber in the air. Groups of archers began returning fire at the summoned creatures. More goblin mages approached the shaman, and with their combined efforts they managed to destroy my imps.

I hurriedly summoned another group of imps and sent them to the far end of the village, where they set about slaughtering more of the smaller goblins.

A battle ensued, through which I sent a couple more groups of imps. Eventually, though, I ran out of mana and started meditating to restore it.

The goblins began collecting the wounded in the tunnels and also began some ritual with the body of the dead fat goblin, most likely their leader.

A few hours later, when darkness fell, the goblins retreated to their thatched huts, and it wasn't long before only the guards on the walls could be seen in the village.

I decided to wait and two hours before dawn I summoned a group of hellhounds and with the help of my rope, and under the cover of the night, lowered them one by one, from a suitable rock on the hill overhanging the village.

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When the last hound was on the ground, I sent them to the cage with the captives. They quickly reached and attacked the two goblin guards, and then used their teeth to open the cage doors, and chew through the ropes of the bound captives.

The two guards did not die quietly and I had but seconds. So I sent my hounds to attack the guards on the wall, only keeping two of them to accompany and direct the freed captives.

Moments after the first goblins fell in the camp for the second time there was a commotion. From somewhere came the sharp sound of a bell, and armed half-clothed goblins began to emerge from some of the thatched huts or tunnels.

I could imagine what it was like to be in the shoes of the little goblins, living in a world where every predator was their enemy. My hellhounds must have seemed like giant monsters coming in the night to tear apart their little defenseless bodies.

I urged my hounds at the fire-lit walls, where they charged the first of the goblin defenders.

“But Meridin, how did you charge them, they are on the wall,” asked one of the future readers of this story.

“Well, there were small ramps leading to the back of the walls.”

“Ah, OK then.”

…

And so, taking advantage of the commencing commotion, their mana reserves and my two summons, the humans made it to the village gates in just 40 seconds, where after a brief skirmish, they overpowered the small group of four goblins guarding it, opened the gates and headed towards me. During this time I sent my hounds to attack the goblins' thatched huts, my goal being to slaughter as many of them as possible. Tonight, these human-eating goblins would not sleep well!

“But how do they manage to run so fast?” asked a curtain beta-reader.

“Well the village was small and the average 100m (running) time of the average combat oriented adventurer was let say 16 seconds, when running for their lives.”

…

When the people finally reached me, I greeted them and explained the situation. I had summoned my bear and made it start roaring at the top of its lungs.

The goblins had been attacked by imps, hellhounds, and now that they heard my bear's roars, they had completely abandoned any ideas of pursuing their captives into the dark and scary forest.

However, I kept an eye on the village while the group rested briefly and snacked on food and water from my ring.

"Marquis Zlodar, thank you for the incredible rescue.” Bowed low, one of the adventurers.

"Well I'm a little late, for which I apologize, but I'm glad everything is alright." I replied in a nonchalant tone.

"Just a little longer and they would have eaten us...'' one of the female captives cried. "Thank you, Marquis Zlodar, thank you. " The woman then hugged me tightly and continued to cry.

"I... everything will be alright. I'm glad I came in time."

A little later, we set off through the woods, led by my bear. She navigated a little better than I could, but we still made pretty slow progress. When the sun came up, however, our speed improved, and after only a few hours, we found the first group of adventurers hidden at the agreed-upon spot, which was in a small cave about a mile from our first encounter. After resting we waited for the sun to rise and the clouds to clear and headed towards the camp.

"We need to get some hunting parties together and raid this place." said Valerie, one of the former captives, for the hundredth time. "Those goblins eat people! We must attack and destroy them before they attack us. Everything in this damn game wants to kill us!"

"Maybe you're right," I replied, "but it's not your decision. Let's report everything to camp and if then we'll see. You're free to try to convince our leaders of the validity of your position."

"This is what I am doing. I am convincing people."

"Keep trying and you may have to go back to camp alone." I retorted, annoyed by his constant complaints. "Besides, if you have the strength to talk, then you have the strength to run longer."

With those words, I stood up and commanded my newly summoned hellhounds. They stood and headed in several different directions. This way, they stood in a circle around us and were able to detect and warn us of any danger that could come up.

In the following hours, we encountered nothing special, except a few interesting herbs and the tracks of many different animals. One of these tracks was quite fresh, and at my insistence we detoured along it. It led us to a small cave where a group of wild boars lived. They were quite large and fast, and their tusks were deadly. I sent my hounds inside the cave, and we stood at its exit.

It wasn't long before I realized my mistake. It turned out that the cave had two other exits and the wild pigs chose to escape through them. However, there was a group of little suckling pigs in the cave. Besides them, the hounds had cornered two huge boars - one the head of the herd and the other the mother of the boars. They were desperately trying to fend off my hounds and protect the cubs.

Our group attacked them and soon we defeated them with our magical skills and our numerical superiority. After that, I harvested over a cubic meter of skinned and boned meat. Or in other words, I had acquired over a ton of mana-rich wild meat. The rest of the meat, we redistributed among ourselves and after eating some delicious roasted suckling pigs on a spit, we continued on our way.

“How interesting creatures are we humans. Hours after we are almost eaten by goblins, we are now eating these defenseless animals. But this is the great cycle of life.. Eat or be eaten.” I thought, thinking about how sometimes the universe looks at us like we are just sacrificial animals made of straws.