Run; I have to run faster!
“Aaliyah.”
If we slow down, they’ll catch up to us!
“Hey, Aaliyah?”
The goblins chasing after us were nothing like the group the village had to deal with, and now there were only two of us!
“Stop!” A hand reaches out, grasping my shoulder with enough force to pull me off my feet. Skidding to a stop, I reach for my hammer, only to come face to face with an annoyed-looking Tabitha who's sweating from all our running.
“Good, are you finally listening to me?” Tabitha’s eyes narrow questioningly at me as she tries to catch her breath.
“But we need to keep moving,” I stress, urging her to keep running despite her troubles. Tabitha didn't see what I saw; this wasn't a small hunting party after us anymore. When I scanned the group of goblins, I pinged multiple strong responses in multiple groups.
“Even more reason you need to calm down,” Tabitha orders me in a strong yet reassuring voice. “Collect yourself. We've been running like mad for the last half hour. We have a minute to catch our breaths.”
“Are you sure?” I ask nervously. I can’t help but scan our surroundings for any hidden foes, even though I had Sense Mana stretched to its limits.
“See, this is why you need to collect yourself,” Tabitha tells me in a firm voice. “You would know better than I if there were any goblins nearby. So catch your breath, and use your skills to scan back the way we came. I’ll make sure nothing gets close to you,” she reassures me with an oddly caring smile.
Collapsing to the ground, I’m forced to follow Tabitha’s advice, as I couldn’t enter a meditative state in my current mindset. Like Tabitha, I was having trouble breathing. It's hard to do, but by regulating my breathing, I force my body to relax. It takes twice as long as usual, but I eventually get my skills to work as they should, and I can start scanning our new surroundings.
Even while being chased, I had led us deeper into the forest by following a current of dense mana. The ambient mana was now many times what it was outside the Endless Forest, meaning there were an increasing amount of powerful magic beasts around. And not just from all sides of us either; I was picking an increasing amount of flying magic beasts near the tops of the trees and even a pack of what I suspect are magical mole rats nearly a hundred feet below us.
Thanks to Sense Mana, I had diverted us around anything remotely dangerous while fleeing, but it got trickier the deeper we got. So, I force myself to ignore the magic beasts that were technically surrounding us and focus on the path we took to get here, praying we had managed to put some distance between us and the horde on our tail.
Thankfully, my initial scan doesn't pick up anything, but I make sure to go over everything twice before I'm confident enough to tell Tabitha the goblins were no longer in my range.
“I don’t sense them anymore,” my eyes flutter open to see Tabitha standing guard over me. I was worried she might be taking the goblins too lightly, but I scrapped those thoughts seeing she had her hand on her sword’s hilt and looked ready to jump into motion at any second.
Tabitha doesn’t visibly react much to the good news, she still retains her combat-ready stance, but she does nod once like she is confirming something to herself. "That's good; it would've been annoying if they managed to keep up with us.”
“If they did?” I ask.
"If a group that size could keep pace with us while we were running at max speed, it would mean they most likely out-leveled us. Instead, we bought some time to think. That's why I needed you to stop running. We’re in a precarious situation.”
"Can't we just outrun them?" I throw the idea out there, hoping Tabitha would agree, but her headshake says it all.
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“If it were humans chasing after us, I’d say yes. But goblins….,” Tabitha pauses dramatically. “Goblins are vicious scavengers. They also have excellent night vision. We may be able to outrun them now, but once the sun sets…...”
Tabitha leaves the rest unsaid. And for a change, Tabitha doesn’t need to spell it out for me. I could only imagine what would happen if we were surrounded in the middle of the night.
“Damn it, why are they even chasing us?" I curse and kick at the ground. "I mean, why are they so dead set on us? It can’t be easy for them to keep tracking us. Unless, of course, their village was nearby?” I look to Tabitha for guidance, but she is reluctant to answer that question.
Tabitha and I stare at one another until she lets out a tired sigh. "I can think of two reasons they'd track us this far," she tells me somberly. "They're most likely after our gear," she starts.
“What?” That wasn’t the explanation I was expecting.
Tabitha sees my confused expression and elaborates. “You remember the goblin leading the hunting party we ran into our second day in the forest?”
I nod along, and Tabitha continues. “Then I’m sure you remember it was wearing actual armor, not something crafted here in the forest. As I said, goblins are scavengers, the most ruthless in the world. Normally they’re food driven, but in places like these where food is abundant when you’re strong, it’s only natural their needs shift to what they can’t acquire naturally.”
I look down at my armor and over my shoulder at my dellinium hammer. "They would risk their lives for some armor? They have to know a lot of them will die.”
“They’re counting on it,” Tabitha says darkly. “I’m sure you know how quickly goblins can reproduce; the one thing they aren't lacking is bodies. So to them, death is just weeding out undesirables."
“Even if it takes them a few years to grow strong enough?” I ask, remembering the lesson Del gave me on goblins. Young goblins are weaker than the average villager but start growing exponentially after they reach two years of age. We call goblins that live that long hobgoblins, and they are comparable to an adult at level 30.
And if a goblin makes it to five years old, they start growing horns, like the hobgoblins attacking us who were around level 55. The point is goblins need to survive long enough to reach their higher forms. Is Tabitha telling me there are so many of them that they don't care if horned hobs die?
"Goblins like humans mature faster in a high-stress environment like the Endless Forest,” Tabitha explains. “They still need to survive a few years, but that’s not hard for a thriving village.”
“Wait,” I interrupt Tabitha because I need an important question answered. "If the goblin tribe can pump out so many horned hobgoblins, why did a horde attack our village? Is there a second tribe nearby?"
“I don’t think there would be another tribe so close to one so large. They were probably expelling the weaker members of the tribe, the goblins that weren’t improving as fast as the others," Tabitha gives me her best-educated guess. “Again, it’s all about resources for them. They don’t care if a hundred goblins die so long as one of the strongest members gets better gear out of it.”
“And the second reason.” If they were willing to field a small army just for some gear, I hesitate to ask what the other reason could be.
I’m only surer of this when Tabitha visibly frowns and tightens her grip on her sword. "The second reason they may be hunting us so rigorously may be because we’re both women.”
And like that, I’m suddenly reminded why people hate goblins as much as they do. “Oh,” I can barely squeak out.
“Yes,” Tabitha sneers in disgust, but she quickly gets ahold of her emotions and goes back to speaking to me in her usual emotionless voice. “They wouldn’t care that we killed a handful of goblins, so we have to assume they’re either after us or our gear. Maybe both. Either way, if they’ve come this far, it’s safe to say they aren’t going to give up.”
Tabitha pauses to allow me to ask any more questions, but I was still digesting everything, so there was just an awkward silence between us.
Realizing I wasn’t going to say anything, Tabitha informs me what we must do. "The goblins aren't going to stop hunting us, and we can't chance them finding us after sundown. So the only thing we can do is fight back.”
“Tabitha, I don’t think….," I start, but Tabitha holds up her hand to stop me.
"I'm not suggesting we take them head-on," she immediately clarifies. "I couldn't guarantee your safety, and I promised you I wouldn’t put you in another situation like that.”
She was talking about how I almost died fighting that bird. Tabitha had been pushing me this last week, but she’s been much more careful in what challenges she sets for me. If anything seemed too out of my league, Tabitha would immediately step in. But if we were to attack a group of goblins of this size, there was no insurance that she could save me if things got complicated.
“There may be a lot of goblins, but we’re both strong individuals,” Tabitha tries to reassure me. “I’ve been in worse situations and came out on top,” she boldly proclaims.
“Really; you have?” I perk up hearing Tabitha tell me she’s been in this kind of situation before.
“Well, not with this many enemies,” she backpedals a bit, but then I see her eyes light up, and I’m not surprised by what she says next. "But Master has told me many stories of overcoming such challenges. So I'm sure the two of us working together can do the same," she confidently states with her hands on her hips in a heroic pose.
“We’re doomed,” I hang my head in fake despair to hide the smile threatening to creep up on my face. I was still scared, but damn it, if Tabitha's positivity wasn't making me feel better.
“You should be more positive,” Tabitha huffs and folds her arms in front of her chest. "After all, you're our ace in the hole."
“Huh?” I crane my head back up in confusion. How was I more influential than Tabitha; she could probably kill most of the goblins by herself?
“The goblins may have numbers, but you have the most important skill of all.”
“Which is?” I raise an eyebrow in confusion.
Tabitha rolls her eyes at me. “Your ability to sense them at long range," she scolds me like the answer was apparent, and if I weren't nervous about the future, I might have figured it out for myself. In time.
"Thanks to your skill, we've already avoided them once," Tabitha reminds me. “If we play our cards right, we can use ghost tactics to whittle down their numbers into something more manageable. We play to our strengths; we hit them, then retreat and repeat. We've already established they can’t keep up with us on foot.”
"Ghost tactics? Don't you mean guerilla tactics?"
“Gorillas aren’t sneaky,” Tabitha looks at me like I knew nothing about animals; to be fair, she wasn't exactly wrong. But it didn't matter because she was happy to correct me. "No, we swoop in like ghosts, reap as many lives as possible, and disappear before they know what hit them. What do you think?”
“I think you’re crazy,” I let out a long sigh. “But you’re right. We need to do something about the goblins.”
Tabitha grins manically, hearing that we are finally on the same page. Crazy battle junkie.
“So, how do we do this?”
“I have a few ideas,” Tabitha motions for me to move in closer as if someone was going to overhear us in the middle of the forest.
Well, here we go again.