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When the call to start the fight boomed out, I started sprinting towards the monsters. As for my teammates, we had to do some… improvisation.

Instead of charging or holding their ground with weapons ready, Dave and Sam sheathed their swords before Henry and Arabella jumped on them for a piggyback ride.

No doubt this would make people give us some questioning looks, but there is a good reason. Due to Henry and Arabella not yet being able to concentrate while moving around and casting spells at the same time, so I put forth the question of them being able to cast spells while being moved around.

To which we found out the answer was, yes, yes they could. As I was a quarter way to engaging the enemy, I felt enchantment spells wash over me as I felt my armor become lighter and my sword has a slight shimmer to its edges.

When I looked back to my teammates they had just started casting their first spells as they advanced toward the goblins, however at a much slower speed, but I was glad that my stupid idea somewhat worked as the hobgoblin shaman saw us coming and started barking out orders in a guttural language as it let fly a small volley of flaming bolts towards Dave, who was carrying Henry, and before the volley could even reach Dave and Henry, the hobgoblin condensed a soccer ball sized ball of flame between its hands and chucked it at Sam, who was carrying Arabella.

To which Dave and Sam acted accordingly and dodged out of the way with the mages on their backs, giving the mages a slight cast of whiplash. I could imagine it, had Henry and Arabella stood stationary to cast spells like most mages their level would do, they would have forced the instructors to step in to avoid their serious injuries, but now with Dave and Sam zipping around with the mages on their backs, my teammates were like mobile turrets that stunned and incapacitated the goblins as he closed in.

Speaking of closing in, when I was near the first goblin, I tried to pull off my darkness shroud spell again to finish the enemies while they were lost in the magical darkness. But the moment the first wisps of dark energy seeped out of my body, the hobgoblin snapped its attention to me and brought its wand up to its face while chanting, and before my shroud could properly form, the hobgoblin shouted something that caused six of the goblins that were preventing my approach to jump to the sides as I saw the hobgoblin shaman pointed his wand at my forming darkness shroud.

From that wand, a gaut of flames came towards me, totally wiping out my shroud as I followed the goblins’ lead and jumped out of the way before I was cooked by the hobgoblin shaman’s flammenwerfer.

As I was getting to my feet, I was somewhat open to attacks, and the nearest goblin to get out of the flamethrower’s way got to me and took advantage of the situation.

I saw a goblin coming with a club raised, ready to bash my head in. As it was a few paces away from me, I raised my sword to defend myself when a stone bullet took the goblin in the eye. This made the goblin scream in pain while clenching its now destroyed eye. I took the opportunity to rush forward and performed a swift decapitation of my would-be assailant.

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I turned to see where the stone bullet came from and saw Arabella casting more of the rock spells to suppress the goblins nearest to me, while Henry was shooting a few lightning spells at the hobgoblin shaman, forcing it to stop its flamethrower spell and erect some magical defenses.

Seeing that the previously six, now five goblins defending the hobgoblin shaman had their attention concentrated on dodging the stone bullets Arabella was shooting at them, I took advantage and charged.

When I reached the five goblins, some of them were battered and bruised, which made my job easier. In my first two swings, I cut down two goblins and as I kicked one goblin into another, my support fire from Arabella was cut short as two of the four other goblins chasing after the mages, chased after Arabella and she and Sam had to retreat, but now that I am so close within the goblin ranks, I could wreak some havoc.

As I cut down another goblin that was standing, I turned to find the goblins that I made collide and fall over, but I only saw an empty spot, I looked around to see where they were and found them standing by the hobgoblin shaman like good little minions.

I glanced around to see if I could get some ranged support spells from my teams’ mages but found them busy as they dismounted Dave and Sam in order to kill the 4 goblins that had been harassing them the whole fight.

This left me to deal with the hobgoblin shaman and his two goblin buddies.

Seeing that the hobgoblin shaman could throw around a level of firepower I was not allowed to use, I decided to test its level of magic competency. I started spamming second circle spells at the goblins and hobgoblin shaman while cycling through the elements.

To this magical onslaught, the goblins hid behind the hobgoblin shaman, the hobgoblin shaman first tried to counter it was what it had been using to defend itself against Henry’s spells. It was barely a spell at all, the hobgoblin shaman was simply throwing mana at the problem, literally, the hobgoblin shaman was using raw mana to divert or outright stop my second circle spells. But I was curious, this method of magical defense was consuming huge amounts of mana, so how long could this hobgoblin shaman last?

Before half a minute was done I could see the mana the hobgoblin shaman starting to wane as my spells got closer and closer to the hobgoblin shaman.

That was when the hobgoblin shaman did something I did not expect, hear, or read about before.

As my spells were continually pelting the hobgoblin shaman’s defenses, it grabbed one of the goblins that were with it and lifted it off the ground by its neck, then the hobgoblin shaman started chanting in more of its guttural language as the grabbed goblin thrashed around.

Then with its other hand, the hobgoblin shaman reached its other arm around the goblin’s head and in one swift motion, shaped the goblin’s neck.

It then used its clawed fingers to reach just under the dead goblin’s ribcage and shoved its hand inside the chest cavity, and a few seconds later, the hobgoblin shaman had a heart in its hand.

It quickly devoured the heart and used the blood on its fingers to paint some rough designs on its own face while continuing its chanting. As the hobgoblin shaman’s chanting reached a crescendo, the first change I saw was veins bulging on its face, which soon spread to the rest of its body.

The next thing I saw was the hobgoblin shaman’s muscles start bulging and despite its slightly smaller stature compared to an average man, its body started to bulk up and look like my dad’s men during training.

The last thing I noticed was the turbulent mana that suddenly burst out of the hobgoblin shaman, making its mana much more abundant than when I started pelting spells at it.

I am starting to think that the bonus reward was not worth it.