A forest grew up in the path of the scrambling hobgoblins ( did you expect anything great? )
The hobs didn't stop for long to admire the added greenery and quickly resumed their advance. Contrary to goblins who only used daggers as melee weapons, none of the hobs used one but used spears, swords or maces.
On the human side, the appearance of the forest was both a blessing and a curse. The weaker ones could hide behind the trees and the stronger ones could use them in their fight. Unfortunately, the contrary was also true and they would experience it quickly.
As they were fast, the hobs already reached the human mages firing range who of course did their job. Fireballs, lightning bolts, flame, water and ice streams were then launched to the hobs. On the other hand, the hob mages also launched their own spells. The trees in the middle rendered some attacks useless while they fueled the spreading of fire.
' Don't these dumbasses know that lighting fire in a forest while having the intention to stay in it is stupid? ' Letting out the ' having the intention to stay in ' suspicious part, Luke was right and the repercussions are already visible. The vanguard, already reduced by the enemy's attacks now also had to be careful of not getting uselessly burned. The two vanguard sides now met and began to duke it out while spells were less used on them to prevent collateral damage and more on enemy archers and mages who used the trees as shields. But quickly problems arose. First off, because of the trees, people used to swing their weapons in a grand way got stuck easily and then, the major problem brought by the fire: the smoke. It not only affected vision but it mostly choked people, making it hard to breathe with quickly burning oxygen.
Seeing this situation, Carl couldn't let things continue like this " Be careful guys! Try to not do broad swings! and put a wet cloth around your faces to not choke! "
" argh dammit, my arm ! my arm !"
" ughh my leg! "
" Agh... "
Quickly, screams of pain could be heard. After all, as most of them lived in peaceful countries, receiving bone deep injuries is enough to throw out their concentration, and sometimes, what follows is their deaths.
Luke and Sheila, on the other hand, couldn't be happier. Now they could go kill that mini-boss as they want while having a visibility screen, making it so that either of their plans wouldn't be seen by others.
Luke, thinking that it was a good opportunity said " The smoke is spreading, let's go! "
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" Okay, but what about the monsters on the way? "
" Don't worry, I can quickly dispose of them while not wasting any energy. "
Then, they began advancing with Luke efficiently killing everything on his path and Sheila running behind him. As they passed more enemies, they encountered the enemy mages and archers, who, upon seeing them shot without hesitation. Luke grabbed Sheila and used spacewalk, the good ol' space walk that permitted him to live up until now to bypass them while slashing the enemies on the way. As they were just throwing up their lives confronting him and that he was heading straight to their leaders, they began hesitating. It didn't last long though as a single roar from blue ogre was enough to make them change back their focus on the other humans.
Coming to a stop in front of the blue ogre, Luke let go of Sheila and faced it. The glaring contest then resumed but with them staying 5 meters apart instead of 500. After 20 seconds of them just glaring at each other, they both began to run at the same time. But, would Luke have a straight and manly fight? No, of course not. He released 10 dark hands at the blue ogre's face to knock its head back then he grabbed at its tight and made it fall like a real judoka. Afterward, Luke kept his self promise: He released a hundred dark hands at its... 'no one wants to have it touched' place.
The resulting spectacle was quite a sight to behold. Skipping the details that no one would want to know of, the blue ogre first had its stomach inflated then burst open with all of its body becoming charred black while it screamed like mad.
The perpetrator of this scene had quite... unique thoughts:' Perfect, a real masterpiece'
Meanwhile, the other spectator of this scene had more orthodox thoughts in front of such a spectacle like a mindblow. She never imagined such cruelty was possible and certainly not coming from the somehow dumb Luke. She was at the same time scared of him and relieved that she already took control of him. Though, unlike before, she now doesn't want to use him as a pawn for just a while before killing him. She now wanted him to be her eternal servant.
Aside from Sheila's delusional thoughts, Luke was still fervently glaring at... the thing he blew up, waiting for its revival to restart but, the system prompt again interrupted him
* congratulations soldier Luke for killing the mini-boss... calculating... 500 PTS are awarded for your performance.
The day's trial will end with the elimination of the other monsters. *
' It... seems like it was only a single use ability. Hmm, it's maybe better like this, thinking back doing it twice would make me a real weirdo, even for me... but first things first ' He turned around to look at Sheila who had a scared/shocked/crazed and expectant expression.
He walked back in front of her and smiled.
And as she was about to talk, a dagger found its way to her throat and she died with an incomprehensible expression. Looking at her cooling corpse, Luke trog a sneer. Then he looked back towards his 'masterpiece' and noticed something he didn't want to notice: It turned out his worst enemy was a female... what a scary species...