With Sylvia ready to go, the only question was just how to initiate the attack in the best way. After a couple seconds, she had brought forth five dirt spears, as she figured it would cause a good distraction, and none of the strong goblins should be on the lookout for techniques to exploit.
Thus, after getting a bit closer, she quickly threw the five spears towards as large groups as possible, as that’d make the explosion more effective; not to mention that her aim wasn’t all that good. Normally, a spear would cost her between 10 and 15 MP for construction and explosion, which she could thank her Earth affinity and mana quality for, but for these five spears, she invested an extra 40 MP in the explosion.
As such, when the first spear landed among the unsuspecting bastards, the resulting explosion and shrapnel killed a handful of goblins and even an enhanced one. The following spear was about equally effective, but by the third, they were running around in panic and confusion, with the three remaining enhanced goblins trying to get them back under control. This all meant that the spears had become less effective in taking goblins out, but the shrapnel could spread a lot further and deal some general damage to way more goblins.
Killed Goblin lv. 5. Gained exp.
Killed Goblin lv. 7. Gained exp.
…
In the end, only somewhat over 10 additional goblins died, and not a single enhanced was even really hurt. However, the true purpose had been achieved, which was to create some chaos. Taking advantage of the confusion, Sylvia successfully got to the camp before someone spotted her, but said goblin was laying on the ground less than second later. Before the word managed to spread, another 17 goblins had been felled.
Leveled up. Gained 2 Strength, 1 Vitality, 2 Endurance, 2 Mana, 2 Wisdom, and 1 Perception.
As she fought, it truly set in for her how weak the goblins actually were, and a potential way of dealing with them took shape in her mind. With them beginning to surround her in a bit more of an ordered manner, she figured that she may as well try it out before it got too late. Thus, she lit the fire on her spear and sent her mana into the spearhead, with a mental image of an attack similar to what that enhanced goblin mage did so long ago, she swung her spear widely while emitting fire.
The result was what she wanted, as a small wave of fire washed over the goblins, and actually killed the majority that were caught in it. The major downsides were that it didn’t seem too effective on the enhanced goblin that’d been in the mob, and it wasn’t exactly the cheapest attack, with that one costing her an estimated 100 MP based on feel. On the positive side, Sylvia estimated that she just ended more than 30 goblins in a single attack.
Disregarding the level up notification that just appeared, Sylvia rushed towards the enhanced goblin and thrusted towards its heart right away. While it successfully noticed her attack, it only managed to bring its club slightly in front of itself, but that didn’t do much; there was simply too large a disparity in both stats and equipment quality. With that one dead, she noticed that more goblins were streaming in, with regular and enhanced being in roughly a 10 to 1 relation.
The most dangerous part right now was that there were goblins behind her as well, so she had to pick between fighting those or the new ones. With very little time to decide, she ended up going with the new guys, of which there were a lot fewer after two additional fire swings.
You have learned the {Spear Skill} |Elemental Emission|
With each fire swing, she felt the efficiency of the attack improve as she grew more used to it. The two attacks left slightly charred enhanced goblins that relentlessly charged towards her. Though the pathway she’d made in her shoe earlier, she changed the earth to soften the ground before the goblins for a couple seconds. Which led them to have a foot sink in, before being brought to pretty much a full stop as the ground solidified.
For the majority of them, they simply tripped and landed on their faces, but for the one that really charged, its foot got too deep to break through the solidified dirt and its momentum was too high. Thus, leading to its knee outright giving up and breaking. With that one as her last priority, Sylvia quickly went around to the others and killed them, leveling up in the process.
By this point, enough time had passed for a couple hobgoblins to show up as well, and unlike when she saved the craftsmen, this time she couldn’t rely on a surprise attack. With another two waves of fire taking out even more goblins, a small part of her even felt a little bad for the creatures being mindlessly sent to their doom, but she quickly quashed that feeling.
Leveled up.
…
Now, with the goblins dead, she was left to face off against three hobgoblins and four enhanced goblins. The hundreds of charred goblin corpses around her were beginning to obstruct the terrain quite a bit. Luckily, said obstruction also hindered her enemies free movement in an equal amount. Two of the hobgoblins bore short-swords and one bore a spear, with all three having a leather chest plate and helmet.
While navigating through the corpses, Sylvia quickly made her way over to the two enhanced ones that had one flank and made quick work of them. Sadly, the spear wielder had gotten within range, forcing her to parry the spear away with her own, which she barely succeeded in doing. While she avoided any significant injury, the hobgoblin’s spear did slice slightly into her left thigh. This showed how inexperienced she actually was with fighting other weapons, forcing her to make a note to figure out a way to improve once this was over.
With its spear knocked to the side, Sylvia had the ground soften beneath its front foot, such that it would be surprised by the sudden tilt. Thus, allowing her to step in, raise her spear, and behead the bastard. Right away, she heard a crunch behind her and barely swung around in time to block the attack of another hobgoblin, this time it was one with a dagger and leather armor, who had just joined the fray.
As the hobgoblin already was too close for her to effectively utilize the spear, she instead grabbed the moment of hesitation in it when its sneak attack failed, to grab around its wrist and ignite flames on her palm. Thereby forcing it to involuntarily release its knife. The moment it released its wrist to instead crush its neck, of course with the flames active as well. As it’d turn out, Sylvia was more than strong enough to end it in that way, especially with the fire added on.
Leveled up
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…
She only barely managed to release the goblin in time to turn around and put her spear between herself and the two sword wielding hobgoblins that had reached her. Aware that any time wasted could have disastrous effects later on, Sylvia stepped towards the left most one while forming a short barrier behind its feet. Despite it not stepping back as she approached, she managed to force it a step back by getting close enough to feint a strike.
With the hobgoblin well on its way down, Sylvia changed her target to the one still standing. In the interest of learning how viable her |Elemental Emission| would be against stronger opponents, she concentrated on manifesting as hot a flame as she could muster in the moment at her spear, before firing it off with a thrust. A step later, the ball of flames struck the goblin in the head, as it was too close range for it to dodge the unexpected attack.
It was quite clear that the fire didn’t kill, but it did seem to do major damage to its face, and the chaotic movement that followed suggested that the goblin had gone blind, or at least something similar. Quickly, Sylvia stabbed it through the throat, killing it and allowing her to return focus to the other hobgoblin, who was just about up.
As it hadn’t risen fully, Sylvia used this time frame to make its feet sink into the ground, which allowed her to swoop in for a quick kill and level up. In the brief time of no battle after the goblin fell, a part of her managed to find it ironic how such magic effects had so major implications on the outcome of a fight.
Over the next couple seconds, she noticed that the goblins weren’t even approaching her at this point, which only served to worry her. Though it didn’t take long for her worry to be realized, as she second later found herself surrounded by twenty plus enhanced goblins, ten hobgoblins, and one goblin that stood at her own height with a muscular build. The latter seemed to be the one in charge, but she honestly doubted that it was the chief; that was at least what her gut told her.
She figured that they had moved through the hundreds of surrounding regular goblins to incircle her while the others distracted her, at least that was the only thing that made sense to her. It was also a bit surprising how coordinated goblins could be. Regardless, it wasn’t as if that mattered now, as with a call from the big guy, all the goblins began to move in towards her at a steady pace, weapons pointed towards her.
“Tsk.” A glance at her MP informed her that despite her repeated use of magic, she actually had more MP available than when she entered in the first place; leveling repeatedly was surprisingly good at granting extra mana. This abundance of mana gave her an idea on how to at least clear out the enhanced goblins, if not some of the hobgoblins as well.
Taking a deep breath, she focused on the ground beneath her and began to send a massive amount of mana into it at a rate of a thousand mana per second. A little over three seconds later, with her remaining mana at 2.5 thousand, and the goblins being within five meters of her, she executed her magic. In a breath, the surface meter of ground in a five-meter radius and half a meter towards her, disappeared beneath the goblins’ feet, as it all shifted to form a very temporary wall between herself and them.
About half a second later, it all came crashing down like a wave, instantly killing all the enhanced goblins and eight of the hobgoblins, granting her six levels and 1056 fresh mana. Surprisingly, the act of controlling that much mana all at once had actually been quite physically straining as well, as shown by her sweat increasing twofold and rapid breaths. As expected, the leader had managed to react and jump back, but in a positive surprise, only two of the hobgoblins had done the same, and both of them had failed their landing.
Sadly, the leader didn’t let her do anything about those two, as he immediately charged towards her. The moment he got within range, he swung his sword as if it was light as a feather, an act that didn’t bode well for a contest of strength between the two. With little room to breathe, Sylvia barely avoided a diagonal downwards swing, which put her in a position to swing for the head, but with seemingly little effort, the goblins had moved its sword up to block.
This was where she really began to appreciate the effects of |Spear Enhancement|, as it prevented the sword from even scratching the staff. While that knowledge made her feel a tiny bit better about the situation, it was still apparent that there was quite a difference in both strength and skill between the two, and not in her favor. Not to mention, she hadn’t fully recovered from her magic.
In the hope of creating an opening, Sylvia attempted to use the quicksand move she had gotten so used to by now, but once her mana reached around the goblin’s feet, she felt it get forcefully scattered by another source. With a roar, the goblin resumed its attacks with newfound vigor, and she could only assume that it had somehow dispersed her mana, probably with its own.
Since she knew there was little to no chance of her spear being destroyed, she did her best to keep a distance while parrying incoming strikes, but the goblin kept forcing her backwards. By now, she figured the other two must’ve gotten up, so she had to do something.
That was when an idea took form, or more that one reemerged. The idea in question stemmed from multiple weeks back and was how she took out the bear. Thus, as she took another step back, a spear shot out from where her foot had just been, and barely pierced into the abdomen of the surprised hobgoblin. In that moment of surprise, Sylvia sent her mana out into the ground and had more spears shoot out towards it, increasing in thickness with each one.
Covered in wounds, unable to move, and seemingly incapable of disrupting her magic, the goblin growled at her. Actually, it wasn’t growling, but instead some kind of laughter, as if it knew it’d won. The second she realized that Sylvia spun around, swinging her spear with all the force she could muster, and it wasn’t a moment too late.
First the staff moved an approaching spear to the side, then the spearhead carved its way through a hobgoblin’s head, before doing the same to the other hobgoblin’s neck. As she returned focus to the caged leader, she briefly noted that she had just reached level 49.
When she saw the leader, she realized that if she had taken any longer to finish off the two hobgoblins, she would probably be dead by now. The impromptu earth cage had cracks spreading across it in real time. Before it could get even worse, Sylvia managed to return focus to the mana and metal image, allowing the cage to recover. With a slight sigh of relief, she gave the furious goblin a smirk. “Don’t sell the skin till the bear’s shot.” With those words, a spear through the stomach ended a fight that could easily have cost her life.
Killed Enhanced Hobgoblin lv. 56. Gained exp.
Leveled up.
Leveled up.
…
You have reached level 51 Increasing mana quality slightly.
Increasing MP multiplier by 0.1.
With the one keeping them in control gone, the mob of goblins began to swarm towards her. While thankful for the free exp, some annoyance also permeated Sylvia; just killing a hoard of goblins with a spin and fire wave was quite uneventful and boring, but more than anything, tedious. Sure, killing a couple hundred goblins, including multiple enhanced goblins, did bring her two levels, but it did next to nothing for her skill experience.
As her mana pool had now expanded to over 8.5 thousand in capacity and she still had around four thousand left, she didn’t mind investing a couple hundred in wiping out the enhanced goblins as well. Besides, the two levels turned out to give her more MP than she had had spent in the first place.
Sylvia now had two choices, she could either try to clear up the remaining goblins in the village, or she could wait for them to approach her. There were pros and cons to each option. The first option would give her the initiative but wouldn’t give her time to rest, while the other option would put her in a worse strategic position, but it would allow her to rest for at least like half a minute. When her 161 vitality were combined with the increased regenerative abilities from Geb, just half a minute to a couple minutes should be enough for her to mostly recover her physical state.