After breakfast and some light training the next day, Sylvia made her way back to the large tree and began to head in the direction of the orcs. Once she’d made it around halfway according to her mental map, she changed into Calysta for the better senses. Right now, spotting the enemy first and running away before they spotted her was key for surviving.
Yet again, it was the loud sounds that keyed her in on where the orcs were, but this time she wasn’t completely overwhelmed by their presence as she had mentally prepared herself. Having located the orcs, she refrained from approaching further, to avoid potentially notifying them of her being there. Then she turned into Sylvia to check the location, and it was quite close to where they were yesterday. With that done, she made her way back home, picking up a couple edible plants and some colored fruits on the way.
After repeating this process for a couple days, they reached a consensus that these orcs weren’t the ones chasing Korrak, as they would otherwise have moved closer already. This news was quite helpful in getting Korrak back in the regular flow of things, though he would still spend quite a bit of downtime working on the fortress thing. It was quite apparent that even if they weren’t the specific orcs from his past, orcs having what they assumed to be a watch post so close by, wasn’t exactly calming for him.
The fortress was actually progressing at a speed far beyond anything they would’ve expected from a one-man job. In less than a week, Korrak had managed to erect three half a meter thick walls at almost two meters in height. Two of the walls touched up to the cliffside so that said cliff would make up the fourth wall and allow for expansion inside in the future.
Besides some of the more obvious draconic features that had appeared, the most important thing was that Korrak now had an affinity for earth magic, and he was a really quick learner, at least for the things that related to building. While his affinity was just a minor one, his natural ability to use it was on a completely other level compared to the dwarves, at least according to them. His main issue was without a doubt his low amount of mana, though he somewhat made up for that through the sheer efficiency of his magic.
Now that they had an estimate on the threat of the orcs, they decided that it’d be best to just avoid that area for the foreseeable future, as accidentally getting spotted would be disastrous; they, or more specifically Sylvia, were in no way capable of dealing a group of orcs, if not even a single one. To prepare for a potential encounter with them, there was one critical thing that needed to be done, which was for Sylvia to level up.
Ever since the craftsmen had joined her, she had managed to level up twice through her light hunting in the forest outskirts. But that would have to change if they were to stand a proper chance, so her sight had become set on exterminating the goblin village. She highly doubted that a single hobgoblin would be all the village amounted to, so there should be a decent chunk of exp to gain from it.
However, as running into an enemy camp with no prep wouldn’t exactly be that great of an idea, she had spent the past couple days practicing a couple different things. One of the main things was a way for her to make use of her |Spearhead Explosion| skill without destroying her actually good spear. Her solution was to make use of either her Earth or Nature affinity to quickly form a spear, then she could throw the spear at stab the enemy, before setting off the explosion.
Through her practice, she successfully brought the skill level up to 24 in about a week, which made the spear deal an additional 240% damage. The large damage increase was the main reason even the magic spears were able to be properly useful. It also seemed that just because a skill was Rare, it didn’t have to be hard to train, which was quite relieving.
Besides that, she had also spent quite some time practicing with her |Spear Enhancement| and her fire affinity. After a little experimenting and guidance from Enelise and the two dwarves, Sylvia had learned to use the mana she enhanced the spear with to manually light a flame at the spear tip. Sure, the spear already had the inherent ability to light a fire, but from what Enelise told her, being able to do it herself would be beneficial. Not only would it allow her to do it on other spears, including the ones made through magic, it would allow greater control and enhancement of the spear’s innate ability.
After a light breakfast, Frank packed a bit of lunch to bring with him in a small side basket Sally had made and attached to the larger one. With a couple simple tools strapped to the basket as well, he turned into Sylvia and set off.
As she wasn’t in a particular hurry, Sylvia just walked at a brisk marching pace that she’d be able to keep up for a while. On her way, her thoughts eventually dipped towards her feet and something she’d been thinking about a couple times while trying to fall asleep; that being mana pathways.
It had already been a while since she’d made pathways in all three forms that went into both hands and feet, but she had been wondering if it was possible to do more with pathways, more precisely if she could make them in objects. Take earth magic as an example, to use it right now, she needed a connection to the ground, be the through direct contact or an object she had an affinity with, to make proper use of her magic.
She could technically force her magic through the soles in her shoes, but a little experimenting with that had quickly made it clear that it wasted a shitload of mana. But what if she could make a pathway that led straight into the ground, then she just had to match one in her foot up with it to give her direct access to the ground.
As it could provide a nice advantage in the upcoming battle, she took the time to take a quick break to focus on it. The outlet she had made in each foot was located in the heel, as that gave the mana the shortest route possible. From there, she carefully sent her mana to begin the pathway creation and was surprised by the result.
She had previously tested it out on a small stone, since she had quite an affinity for earth, and there it almost felt like she was restructuring the stone from the ground up in the area of the pathway. Compared to that, doing it on the shoe here just felt like had made the pathway on another layer in an image editor, instead of making an actual edit to the image.
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The weirdest thing about it was that it was the same feeling as when she did it in her own body. ‘Wait, my own body?’ -She facepalmed from the obvious thought that followed- ‘the clothes are made from my own title, so it makes perfect sense that doing this feels similar to doing it on my own body, it’s just external instead of internal.’
She quickly finished up both shoes and got up to try it. With a quick thought and well-practiced intent, a compacted dirt spear rose from the ground. “Yes! It works.” Happy to know that the potential of mana pathways still had a lot of room left, wrote it behind her ear to ask if the others know much about it.
Before she resumed her walk, she quickly inserted just enough mana and threw the spear, just to watch the tip explode. The explosion itself didn’t produce any sound, which was quite positive, and the act gave a little experience for her skill.
As she approached the area where she had first encountered goblins, Sylvia’s lax attitude disappeared, being replaced with an observant one. This turned out to be the right move, as it didn’t take long before a small group of goblins entered her senses. From what she could gather, it appeared that the goblins were on a lookout, but they didn’t seem to care all that much.
This lack of care made it quite the simple task to sneak close, and once she was sure that there were no actual threats, she went in for the attack. With both the goblins and the enhanced goblin group leader completely unprepared for an attack, Sylvia was able to make short work of them, cutting each down with a single slash or thrust of her spear.
As she looked at the remains, ready to loot whatever useful stuff she could, she realized that none of the goblins had had anything besides their clubs, not even the enhanced one. This confused her a little, as not even a month ago, the enhanced goblins had been equipped with both armor and a proper weapon. “Did they lack gear to properly equip the goblin? Or maybe there’s some other reason. Regardless, I won’t learn more by sticking around here.”
As it did appear to be a lookout post, she would do well in not beating around the bush, as there would probably come a replacement squad at some point, and she’d prefer them to not learn that they are under attack in advance. Thus, she recalled the placement of the village and made her way there in an expedient manner.
Once she felt that she was getting close to the village, she turned into Calysta to improve her perception. It would certainly not hurt to get a basic idea of the strength of what she’s up against, and hopefully without them noticing her first. Unlike when she first found the village, her increased experience in moving silently, along with her greatly increased perception, made it possible for her to get quite close without being spotted.
From what she could see, the village had grown a lot in size since she last saw it, along with the fact that there seemed to be a lot more goblins, be they regular, enhanced, or even hobgoblins. In total, she would estimate there to be well over 100 shabbily made buildings, with the majority seeming to be housing to protect against the weather. From her current position, she could see two buildings that stood out, both in their scale and looking quite a bit sturdier compared to all the others. Of the two, the largest one stood around the village center and was mostly left alone by the goblins, while the other had goblins almost constantly walking in and out.
‘Hmm… they have grown an incredible amount for such a short time. It’s almost to the point where I fear letting them be. I don’t really care for the regular and enhanced goblins, but the hobgoblins are of unknown strength and ability. The others told me that hobgoblins have levels from 26 to 50, after which they evolve again. Since I don’t know the full scope of the enemy, I should assume that there’s at least one evolved one, if not multiple. The large building in the center is most likely the home of the leader, who’s probably the strongest here.’
During the time she spent thinking up a plan, she focused more on staying hidden than recon, as a surprise attack would be devastating, while most of her focus was elsewhere.
‘I can’t be certain about their strength, but I can at least have decent confidence in my weapon being far better than anything they have, along with my MP and mana quality surpassing theirs by leaps and bounds, but that’s all. If I go by 10 stats per level and roughly discount the stats I had at level one, then, with the spear included, my level approaches 60, though around 24 of those levels come from mana alone.’
A couple days ago, when she had asked the craftsmen about stats, she had learned that all creatures, or at the very least humanoids and demi-humans had a set potential from birth, which were stats that could grow without them leveling up. From that, she estimated that her initial stats upon entering this world were somewhere between 30 and 40. She hadn’t thought much about it back then, so she couldn’t remember the specific number. She was also informed that for humanoids, the vast majority of people had 25 to 35 stats as their base potential.
‘Even more than my spear, I feel that my magic will be the deciding factor in this conflict. That is if I do attack right now. I could always head back and get more equipment first, but who’s to say if the village won’t have grown even more by then. Equipment isn’t quick to make, even for Enelise, at least under these work conditions. Even the spear took her over a day to make, which she said was quite long. All in all, I think my best bet is to attack now, as I should also grow stronger while I fight.’
Having decided that it’d be best to attack today, she steeled herself and fully began with a battle plan. After her near-death experience with the bear, she had found herself a bit less cautious of getting hurt, as she had learned how quickly her body could recover. Of course, she wouldn’t aim to get hurt, but her definition of what was a really dangerous risk had changed, especially with her greatly increased abilities in casting magic offensively.
‘My three main ways of attacking are directly with magic, up close with my spear, and throwing explosive dirt spears. Of those, I’d prefer to save either the explosive spears or direct magic attacks for when I really need them, otherwise the stronger hobgoblins may adapt to them before I can use them. Considering that the spears are a bit more single target and that they do extra damage thanks to |Basic Spearmanship|, then I think I will save those; magic is also more versatile, so it’s harder to adapt to.’
As her plan had reached the point on how to carry out the attack itself, she returned some focus to observing the village while thinking up the plan.
‘When I commence the attack, I think earth magic would be best for dealing with the regular and enhanced goblins, to save as much time and energy as possible. If any enhanced goblins. The hobgoblins are a bit more of an issue, but I should to the best of my ability go for singular targets at a time, as it’d be really dangerous to let them group up if they already aren’t. And as for the evolved ones, I don’t really know what they’re capable of, so that’ll be improvisation on the fly.’
By now, Sylvia could very easily manipulate dirt and rubble at a very small mana cost, so her method of dealing with the goblins was quite simple, all she had to do was to use the ground beneath the goblins to form simple walls around them. Not only would this drop them into the ground, but it also allowed her to either dump the soil back on them, or let it stick around to hinder the movements of the large goblin flock. With her plan ready, she took a deep breath and prepared herself mentally. Under her breath, she muttered to herself: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” The idiom reminded her of some lyrics that felt quite fitting to this situation, so mentally she continued: ‘My death will come, but not today.’ With that, she was as ready as could be for the raid.