After finding the tunneling worm, I headed back to the original crossroads and headed the opposite direction. At least I had confirmation I was getting close to the goblin raid camp, so I took extra precautions to be stealthy. Half an hour later I was glad that I took precautions.
“That what Gib saying! Searching here stupid. Too many worms.”
“Raid boss says search, we search. Dems the rules Gib.”
“Yeah, yeah. Rules stupid sometimes.”
Identifying them revealed two level 15 goblin scouts. I had crouched down by some tunnel rubble, and let them walk by. If it were just one I would probably try and follow it back to the camp, but with two there was just too high of a chance of being discovered. Time to see if my executioner adaption to my weapon will help. Activating [Keen edge], I lunged forward and took a backhanded swipe at the neck of the one on the left.
“Damnit.” I muttered as my blade lodged in its neck halfway through. A shove with my foot to the side of the goblin dislodged it, as his friend turned to me in shock.
“YOU KILL GIB! YOU DIE!” It screamed as it brought its spear around to attack. A hammer smash to the side of the face disoriented it that the thrust he tried missed. I stepped close and kneed him in the stomach, and smashed him in the middle of the back as he bent over in pain. As the second scout died, Gib stabbed me in the kidney with his spear.
“Gyah, that hurts you little bastard!” I yelled, spinning to face him as he pulled his spear back. I had lost a quarter of my health, while the goblin was down to 1/3 of his. As he thrust forward towards my stomach, I managed a reflexive deflection of his spear with my hammer head, getting a graze to my side in exchange for a backhand slice with the scythe across his stomach killing him. Their small bodies only took up a 2 x 2 square in my body bag, so I went in search of another pair.
It took another hour of searching before I came across another pair. They had a carcass of some lizard stretched on both of their spears, and only the one in the back had a knife showing. Smiling at my luck, I let the first one go by and was almost even with the second before launching an upward swing at his neck with [Keen edge] activated. He only had enough reaction time to widen his eyes before my blade traveled just below his jaw and took his head off in one smooth strike.
“What you playin’ at?” The other said as the pole jerked out of his hands without the support of the first goblin. As he turned to look, I smashed my hammer down on his head in a vicious, two-handed overhead chop. I managed to crack his head open, but didn’t get the splatter that I was looking for. Either way, he still died and both bodies disappeared into my body bag. I left the lizard they were taking, not having any interest in it. I headed in their original direction, hoping they were on their way back to the camp.
Ten minutes later and I started hearing faint noises. Chatter, too many conversations and too far away to recognize individual words, but I doubled up on my stealth knowing I had to be very close. Turning around a corner in the tunnel, I saw a sentry stationed behind a makeshift barricade. Luckily for me he was far more interested in using his knife to remove something underneath his nails. Time was of the essence, so I quickly aimed and fired a crossbow bolt at his face. It took him in the eye, instantly killing him. Looting his body netted me a silver and a low quality knife. I kept sneaking, and came to the chamber the sentry was guarding.
Almost perfectly round, it was the length of a football field. The ground had a gradual slope towards the center, where there were plenty of tents arranged in a haphazard set of circles around a campfire. Off to one side was a butchering table, and almost opposite the fire from me was a chair with a large, seated hobgoblin in some patchwork plate armor. Two guards stood slightly behind him, each with formidable looking bone armor and halberds that were half again as tall as they were. There were a couple of other entrances, and all told there had to be around sixty or seventy goblins. I crept backwards, and started plotting out my assault.
Direct action would be suicidal. Even if I could draw them back into the tunnels, the smaller goblins could easily fit three to four abreast. Numbers just weren’t in my favor. I didn’t have enough pyrophoria potions left to surprise the camp when they slept either. Up until now, my go to move for being outnumbered was explosions in tight places, but the devs wouldn’t let me explode. . .plain . . . rock. Wait, I pulled up their letter and double checked something. Stones with less than 50 mana wouldn’t explode, does that mean that stones with more than 50 will?
Fifteen minutes later, I felt that I was far enough away from the camp that any noise I made would be minimal. I cut a small hole in the ground, and planted one of my two remaining small mana crystals and charged it with 50 mana. Just to make sure that I wasn’t wasting my crystal, I overcharged it with one mana. I went ten feet away, and shot it with my crossbow. The flash vaporized my bolt and a small area of the ground around it, but it also confirmed that things could still go boom. Smirking, I went forth to implement my plan.
I started fifteen feet back from the turn before the goblin camp. Here I strung the bladed wire trap at waist high for a goblin, double checking it with one of the bodies from my bag. Ten feet behind that, I put three stone posts in a triangular formation at chest height for a goblin. It took a half hour of muttered curses, but I finally had each of them secured. My next project was a stone sphere. Simple enough to carve in the wall thirty feet back from the posts, as I was also carving out a cubby for me to stand in. Turning back to the sphere, I started by cutting it in half. Taking the top half, I cut out a 90-degree wedge, and hollowed it out so that there was only a half in thick shell of rock left. The bottom half simply got hollowed out. I was planning on the two pieces becoming shrapnel, but I didn’t want to rely on fickle luck. Instead I took the extra time to carefully carve out a repeating hexagon pattern turning it into a rock soccer ball, careful not to cut all the way through. I still didn’t think that would be enough shrapnel, so I carved three cross lines in each hexagon, turning each of them into six equal sized triangles. I placed my medium mana crystal inside, and carefully arranged everything on the pedestals. I left the bottom half pointed down the hallway towards the goblin camp, aiming for maximum devastation. Double checking my work, I headed back to my cubby and made sure that I could enough of the mana crystal that I could shoot it. Happy, I crept towards the goblin camp.
Peeking around the corner, I exhaled in relief to see that the sentry hadn’t been replaced. I love it when an enemy is complacent. Making my way forward, I took a little time to watch the camp. The raid leader and his guards hadn’t moved, while the rest seemed to be eating dinner from a massive stew pot. Pulling my crossbow, I figured that attacking the raid leader would draw the aggro of everyone present. Sadly, I just didn’t have the range. I had to crawl forward about ten feet, but was able to eventually fire a looping shot in his general direction. Just before it hit, a halberd flashed forward from a guard and smashed into the bolt. Everything in the camp stopped immediately, and the hobgoblin leader stood up and stared at me. Smiling, I happily gave him the finger.
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“KILL THE INTRUDER!” He screeched, and the camp erupted like a kicked bee hive. I scrambled away down my hallway, reloading my crossbow as I ran. I leapt over the wire trap, and didn’t stop until I had reached my cubby hole. The angry yelling of goblins turned into pained screams as the first of them slammed into the trap, and they couldn’t escape as the weight of the ones behind them pressed the unfortunate saps further onto the blades. I gave them thirty seconds to make sure that the entire camp was within what I hoped was the kill zone before aiming at the improvised claymore mine, firing, and diving into my cubbyhole.
Though I had my back to the explosion, the flash was still blinding and my ears were left ringing. It took a minute to recover my eyesight, but it seemed like my hearing was going to be nothing but ringing for another few minutes. Walking out with my weapon handy, I dropped it in shock when I saw the results. The hallway was a charnel house. Bodies were mangled, and it was difficult telling them apart. The stone was pitted and scarred, missing chunks in some spots. My wire trap had been blown apart, but that would be a problem for Dharkiss. I went through the grisly task of looting the bodies, glad that they disappeared once looted. All told, I had plenty of junk weapons, mostly knives and spears, and came away with five gold coins in currency. The easiest to repair would be the two halberds, as they just needed new shafts. The blades were intact.
Once everything was looted, I checked out a few of the notifications I had been neglecting. I gained two levels, putting me two levels shy of the 20 needed for Thanatos’ quest.
Skill
Previous level
New level
Bonuses
Sculpting
Beginner lvl 10
Intermediate lvl 1
Sculpting speed increased by 16%
Ambush
Beginner lvl 2
Intermediate lvl 6
Ambush damage increased by 21%, critical hit chance increased by 16%
Trap making
Advanced lvl 1
Advanced lvl 3
Traps do 33% more damage, are deployed 17% faster, and 23% harder to detect
Achievement
Action
Bonus
Next level
The bigger they are II
Kill 50 creatures or players higher level than you
+2% damage
Kill over 500 creatures or players higher level than you
Is there no one else? I
Kill a group of 25 or more with one attack
+5% AoE damage, +5% AoE range
Kill 5 groups of 25 or more with one attack
Army slayer I
Kill a group of 50 or more with one attack
AoE attacks ignore 5% of armor
Kill 5 groups of 50 or more with one attack
Army of One
Win a battle outnumbered 10 to one (must be even level)
+1% damage when fighting outnumbered 3 to 1 or more
Win 5 battles outnumbered 10 to one
Against all odds
Win a battle outnumbered 50 to one (must be even level
+20% damage when outnumbered 3 to 1 or more
Win 5 battles outnumbered 50 to one
Skill gains and achievements were great, but I was missing the quest complete box. Damnit, someone must be missing. Heading down into the camp, I saw the raid leader standing in front of the camp, staring at me.
“What trickery did you use to win, kobold?”
“No trickery, just a simple trap. It’s not my fault your group didn’t think that chasing one opponent would be a bad idea.”
“Tsch. No matter, you will die soon anyway.”
“We’ll see about that.” I said, pulling a pyrophoria potion from my pack.
“[The mountain stands tall]” he replied, pulling a battleaxe from his back as he was enveloped in a green glow. Something was odd about how he was standing, but I couldn’t take the time to figure it out. I flung the potion at him, then moved to the left before dashing forward while he slashed through the potion in a smooth motion. “AAAAAAH!” He cried in pain and surprise as the burning potion rained down on him, slashing wildly in front of him expecting me to attack.
Instead I waited for a few seconds to charge some mana into my hammer head before charging in and unleashing a [Mana shockwave] into his right knee. Unable to withstand the forces, his knee buckled in the wrong direction before he jerked it back and fell onto his remaining good knee and hands. I gave him a parting slam to the back of his head with my hammer before jumping back as he whirled his axe around in a rage.
“You’ll pay for that.” He growled before testing how much weight he could put on his injured leg. He had only dropped about 15% of his life, so I knew this was going to be a long battle. I kept circling him, not giving him time to set up a decent stance. As soon as he did a small hop turn to keep me in his sights, I would dart in with a slash or a feint, mixing them up to keep him guessing. Eventually his growing rage got the best of him and he gave a powerful slash expecting an attack, but it was a feint. As I sucked in my stomach to let the axe head pass by, the piercing spike on the top of the axe cut a burning line across my chest. Ignoring the pain as best I could, I lunged forward with the scythe edge aiming for his eye. He pivoted onto his weak leg, and the buckling of his knee was the only thing that saved his eye. Instead, I carved a furrow from his forehead down his cheek.
He retaliated with a thrust of his axe, but it had little power as he couldn’t push off with one leg. It still managed to gouge along my ribs, but he came out worse in the exchange as my hammer slammed into the side of his head, sending him stumbling. I took the time to down a health potion, as I was down to half my health. He was hovering at around 60%, but was missing any potions. I tossed my last pyrophoria potion at him, just to keep him from using any skills. As he was flailing about in panic with the flames, I tried to time my next attack carefully. Charging forward, I used [Keen edge] and aimed at the inside of his weapon arm’s elbow, hoping the lack of bones would help with the amputation. Unfortunately for me, I badly misjudged everything. I took a solid whack with the axe to my stomach, and overextended my attack and hit him in the middle of the upper arm. My only saving grace was that my blade bit deep into the bone, severing his bicep in the process. I staggered back in pain, and watched as he kept trying to bring his arm up but failing. We were both down to a quarter health, so I downed another health potion before wading back into the fray. This time I tried to bait him into attacking, and being content to wear him down with weaker counterattacks. I also kept moving around him, so that he was constantly adjusting. We both knew how this battle would end, but through it all he never gave up. As he thrust forward with the axe one last time, I grabbed it in my offhand, and pulled him toward me. The sudden jerk pulled him off balance, and my [Reaper’s edge] finished him with a decapitating blow.
Panting, I finally got the notice that I had completed the quest. The raid leader gave me his axe for loot, which provided a nice five-point boost to strength. There wasn’t much else in the raid camp, and from the empty carts I found I assumed that they had sent back their spoils not too long ago. Disappointed in the lack of loot, I headed back to the city to turn in my quest.