Although the wall facing the other end of the ravine was two to three times the size of a man and made out of a resistant type of stone, the side the troop was facing barely reached two meters and was made mostly out of wood. This weaker side of the wall was built only because of the monsters coming from the forest would sometimes attempt an attack on the fort from behind; however, the monsters attacking from this side would only number 30 at max, adding the advantage from the wall plus the fact that a well-trained soldier can take at least 3 monsters at the level of a goblin and you barely have a need to worry about an attack from behind.
The troop should be able to easily make a hole large enough for them to pass with magic, and so they would. The plan was pretty simple, a unit of 20 people - mostly warriors - will invade the fort from the sewers - the same place the retreating unit left the fort from two years ago - and attack from behind while the goblins were focused on the main force inside the fort.
The main force would advance until the walls were in range to both archers and mages, then the warrior would use large shields borrowed by the village army to protect everyone from stones that the goblins would probably throw at them and let the ranged unit do their thing, grabbing the attention of the enemies and slaughtering a good part of their numbers if they dare to leave the protection of the walls.
While the troop adjusted the formation, Lyrus was facing the fort, the wall holding with 50 goblins. Memories of his old teammates started to resurface in his mind. But this time it didn't feel like the guilty pressure in his mind that always haunted him, it felt more like a warning to not let something like that happen again.
He got lost in that feeling that voiced his worries and decided that this was a good moment to finally go along the flow of his mind... completely, this time.
Lyrus closed his eyes and time instantly stopped, like a river that had lost its currents and stood still like a lagoon. Before his eyes, images of his time with his long-dead friends flew at an unbelievably fast pace, the day when Lyrus found Cawton on his way to the village; the day when they both called out Vanessa for the first time inside the Guild, asking her to join the party, which she reluctantly did; their daily hunt which ended moslty on bad days with no game to claim rewards from; his last day with them, in the Fall of Fort Baxter; and his daily life now with his new companions.
Robert, the pessimistic warrior that never thought much before saying things, his swordsmanship as good as Lyrus while his skills at fighting monsters surpassed him.
Alice, the carefree archer that was not so carefree depending on the environment, her archery not being the only outstanding thing about her made Lyrus suspect that the girl was part of the Rangers.
Jane, the aloof mage that only had attention for a random announcement board, Lyrus had the impression that her true field was in research as opposed to combat.
He opened his eyes and let out a really slow breath, after finishing it, everything started to move normally again.
This power was the reason that Lyrus came to this village for. At 20 years of age, he finished his training to become a knight and went to the battlefield for the first time against rebellious nobles all around the country of Englass, the nation he's currently at.
Reaching 25, he mastered the longsword, the shield and sword, and then the spear. But after reaching 27 years of age, Lyrus experienced the first time that everything came to a slow, it was on a battlefield when he fought against three other knights at the same time, he was going to lose but at the most crucial moment everything came to a slow, almost without realizing, he took the opportunity to kill one of his enemies and critically injure a second, winning against the remaining one was easy after that.
But he couldn't control it at the time, things went to an agonizingly slow speed only at a few dangerous and decisive moments during a battle and nothing more. Knowing the importance of mastering such a skill, Lyrus traveled through the world for four years in order to discover how to control it, but he didn't make much progress, it started to happen more often than before, but he couldn't control it, yet.
His favorite moments of those trips were the times he spent traveling by ship, what would otherwise be boring days were instead good opportunities to think about the world in a different light while learning strange and random tidbits about sailing.
He came back to his home country and settled in this little village to think about his life, searching the meaning of this power inside of his mind. And he finally finished mastering this skill during the last swarm by surviving a monster ambush that forced his thoughts to the past (almost like today).
'Time flies by fast.' Thought the hunter, going back to the times spent learning from his father who treated whole years as an instant and always came up with a different excuse to stay in still in his chair instead of going out to play with his son.
Meaningless thoughts went on and on while the entire unit entered the formation.
The troop started advancing, a slow advance with shields at the ready, trying to get in synchrony with each other to make a perfect shell. After getting 300 meters away from the fort, the goblins started to throw stones the size of their hand against the shields, they didn't cause damage but it was annoying that these monsters who barely had the strength of a man could use their Will send stones flying at this distance. They kept going.
At 200 meters of distance, Lyrus heard the cry of the officers ordering them to stop, he felt a bit of sweat building on his right arm after a few minutes of holding the shield that was almost his height and defending from the stones, but he didn't feel tired. Burying his shield as deep in the ground as he could, Lyrus then held it while hunkering down in front of it, the person behind him held a normal-sized round shield above Lyrus'.
Every officer kept screaming 'hold the line!' for half a minute, he remembered the suicide squad that he called 'the last line' two years ago and smirked after thinking that this line was a bit more prepared. 'Prepared to make an overkill that is!'
The archers shot a hail of arrows at the walls filled with goblins, around 30 arrows were fired, hitting almost 20 of the goblins on the wall.
Immediately after, the mages fused their spells between each other to increase the power and size of their magic at the cost of quantity, letting loose earth stones almost as big as a man's torso at the wall, breaking some of the wood that made it, also doing some damage to the gate. Fireballs were bound to do a lot of damage but with the objective being to reclaim the fort, burning it to the ground was not a good way to go about it.
After realizing that throwing stones would not stop the troop, the goblins jumped out of the walls - iron swords and short spears in hand - and ran into the troop's direction, more came after the first ones on the wall, increasing their numbers to almost a hundred. When the goblins were 150 meters away from the formation the archers shot a rain of arrows at the monsters, the warriors that made the upper part of the shell threw their shields aside and grabbed a long spear each, lengthening close to 3 meters and awaited the goblins on the side of the frontal shields, the mages ignored the incoming beasts and shot at the fort once more and blasting more holes open on the wall.
The archers shot two more times at the enemies and then left the rest to the warriors. Little more than 20 goblins reached the shields and almost all of them were impaled by the long spears, only half a dozen managed to jump by the shields in the ground but they were all killed when the warriors hunkering behind the shields drew their swords. One of the spear-holding warriors managed to get scratched but it wasn't enough to put him out of battle.
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Seeing how there were barely 50 goblins remaining inside the fort, every officer commanded the mages to fire one last time, after making several openings large enough for half a dozen people to enter simultaneously they ordered the warriors to make a full charge to the fort.
They did as ordered and ran past the large shields, leaving them upright on the ground.
Lyrus took his normal-sized shield from his back and ran at full speed to the fort, during his run Robert started to follow behind him, longsword at hand.
The goblins desperately threw stones at the incoming warriors but it did little to stop the charge, not even one minute later and the destroyed wall was already being climbed over.
The first warriors to enter stood in formation, waiting for the ones behind to join them before starting the fight. Just a few seconds after Lyrus entered, they were ordered to attack the incoming goblins and both sides charged at each other.
The goblin leader, that used a spear and was using tiger pelt to cover almost all of his relatively tall body, charged with the remaining goblins to attack the humans. Luckily for Lyrus, he was the closest to the leader and charged at him, with Robert right beside him roaring at the top of his lungs.
The goblin leader had more reach than Lyrus and sent a thrust at him first, but Lyrus simply parried the attack with his shield and made a sudden, fast advance towards the leader while attacking with a thrust of his own, Robert and the other warriors reached the other goblins and started their own fight by then.
Seeing the dangerous attack coming its way, the goblin leader sidestepped to avoid it while swiping with his spear in a horizontal slash, Lyrus blocked it head on and advanced again, also slashing horizontally.
The leader parried the attack and made another thrust towards Lyrus' shoulder, the human stepped back and avoided the attack. But when he did so, his back bumped on one of the goblins and he almost fell because of the monster short height, before the goblin could react, Lyrus quickly reversed his grip on his sword and accurately stabbed at the enemy's neck, he never took his eyes of the enemy leader, who was already charging at him with yet another thrust.
Lyrus parried again and made another advance towards his opponent after correcting his grip on his sword, he slashed horizontally at his enemy who parried again and tried another thrust. However, Lyrus didn't put much power behind his last attack and gave his enemy a thrust of his own before the enemy's spear could hit him. The strike aimed at the tall goblin's face only left a scratch on his face before he completely avoided it by sidestepping.
During the whole fight, Lyrus never slowed time, he didn't need to, he bought time to his troop and after another few similar exchanges the goblin leader was attacked from behind, Robert managed to leave a cut spread open several centimeters deep and a dozen centimeters long on its back, it tried to turn and attack the backstabbing human but Lyrus pinned the goblin before it could.
The tall goblin immediately tried to end the fight with Lyrus but this was not possible against a former veteran knight. After having its thrust parried by its opponent, a longsword stabbed through its chest from behind, the leader dropped its spear and started spasming on the ground, after a few seconds, the monster went completely still, devoid of life.
When Lyrus saw Robert's sword stab the enemy's chest, he immediately glanced through the entire battlefield, now only a dozen goblins were left. One of them looked at Lyrus direction and saw its leader's corpse, it screamed something unintelligible and all the remaining goblins made a run to the stone wall, only seven escaped the grasp of the warriors and managed to jump the four-meter tall wall, deserting the battlefield.
No one went to look for the runaway goblins, everyone stood somewhere along the buildings made for housing, waiting for the ranged unit to enter the fort.
After all the mages and archers reunited with the warriors, the troop was ordered to sort the corpses, leaving the goblins close to the stone gate and the few on the human's side close to the wall they came from. 7 people died in the invasion, all warriors, a low number considering that the goblins were the ones inside the fort and slightly surpassed the humans.
After all the mages and archers reunited with the warriors, the troop was ordered to sort the corpses, leaving the goblins close to the stone gate and the few dead on the human's side close to the wall they came from. 7 people died in the invasion, all warriors, a low number considering that the goblins were the ones inside the fort and slightly surpassed the humans in number.
Robert and Lyrus waited for Alice and Jane to join them to start their talk. Jane started by commenting.
"Now, would you look at this wall. We finally made it look nice for once."
"I don't think 'nice' is the right word for whatever that is right now." Commented Robert.
"You should learn to appreciate art, Robert, life gets boring without the fun. And hear my words, one day, you shall see the glory of my piercing arrow explode that wall, not the mages' spells!" Replied Alice, now back to her childish self.
"You're saying that destroying human forts is something fun? And please don't call that something 'piercing' when it's supposed to explode." Said Robert, letting out a sigh.
"Whatever. Hey, Lyrus. You got us a bonus, right?" Asked Alice.
"Well, Robert got the last hit on their leader. So... I guess?" Answered Lyrus.
"Aren't you becoming quite useful then Robert? Did you backstab him?" Asked Alice.
"Uhm... no?" Lied Robert, with an uncertain voice.
"Wow, Robert, you literally stole the kill now? From who was it?" Alice kept going, her tone increasingly more teasing.
"That would be me." Said Lyrus. "I really didn't expect that he would become an expert kill stealer mid-battle." He decided to join the chat.
"Not you too!" Exclaimed Robert, looking at Lyrus while faking tired eyes.
Alice and Jane laughed at that, Lyrus nodded while smiling. They chatted like this for a little while before an officer came and spoke to them.
"Hunters!" He virtually screamed to the group a few meters away from him.
"Yes, sir!" Everyone answered, but only Lyrus and Robert saluted.
"The acting general is calling for warriors at the dungeon." He said with a loud voice. Lyrus and Robert just answered "Understood" and left for the dungeon, Jane and Alice decided to wait for them in the same place they were now.
Arriving in front of the dungeon, Lyrus and Robert stood in line with the other 30 warriors, awaiting whatever report or briefing they were going to be given. Soon, the acting general saw that everyone was there and spoke.
"Good work with those filthy monsters. Now the problem we have at hand is this, the unit sent through the sewers did not flank as ordered! In fact, they never even showed up again. We are preparing another unit with the same size of warriors to check the sewers from the dungeon and we are enlisting 20 volunteers!"
A bad feeling came to everyone hearing the speech, Lyrus contemplated the reasons they would have for deserting like this but ended with the thought that they did not run away, no one was coward enough to run away from an army that was weaker than them before the fight even started.
After discussing the matter with Robin they both decided to join the mission. It was said that it would start next morning, so everyone went to their respective housing to rest before sunset.
The party of four stood to the side of the entrance of the house, talking about what could have happened to the unit while Alice threw a few comments about how boring would be waiting for them to come back tomorrow before deciding to enter and head to bed, the fort was made so that around 600 men could occupy the buildings at the same time, having space for almost two thousand men when counting the entirety of the fort, so there were no space problems for the troop of a hundred people.
Before the Alice could step past through the door, however, an explosion sounded out. The four hurriedly looked in the direction of the loud sound coming from a few dozen meters away just to see countless pieces of stone flying ten meters high before coming back to the ground, burying themselves through the roof of the buildings for lodging, some people were directly hit by the rain of rubble, receiving bone-breaking injuries. A piece of stone went through Lyrus' building, smashing the door and making the party feel thankful for not being early-sleepers.
Lyrus saw that what exploded was the dungeon and ran to its location, the rest of the party along with many others right behind him.
He came in time to see a black slimy liquid coming from underneath the dungeon, like a flooding river, the bottom could not be seen. It started to eat the rubble and, by using its own body, started to form silhouettes a few centimeters smaller than a normal man, these beings soon received a pale emerald looking color to their skin, their arms stretched to an inhuman length and their legs turned smaller but thicker.
A spear formed from the same black liquid in their hands, they soon opened their eyes and with a roar, charged at the onlooking humans.
Seeing this scene, two sayings went by Lyrus' mind when he remembered the cut-down trees in the forest and the missing unit, as well as his party's comments about those two cases and some more.
The first was the obvious saying of 'Talk about the devil.' The second, he learned during one of his trips on the sea when he, for no reason, exclaimed how good the day was a few hours before a storm almost flipped the boat he was in, it was said by the captain of the ship himself: 'You've set the wrong flag, sailor'.