Erik would be the first to admit when a plan went sideways, after all he was known for daring if somewhat idiotic plans of attack in his local LARP. He was also prepared to admit that Dane had made the best plan he could with the information they had. Regardless the plan had one hundred percent gone sideways. Goblins had poured out of the huts and surrounds of the village to converge on them like a veritable swarm of ants. The patrols had been nothing even close to the experience they now had of the diminutive greenskins attacking them enmasse.
Without a true shield to really block the entrance to their little funnel the spears and blades had found vulnerable targets in Lucas and Dane’s unprotected legs. Blood ran freely from their shredded hose, the padding doing nothing to stop the razor-sharp tips of the weapons that thrust out. For the first time since they had entered the dungeon Erik had to use his healing abilities, golden light flooding his friends in waves as he burned his mana. If not for the levels he had begun to earn in his secret profession since they had encountered their first patrol he’d have been spent already.
Lucas and Dane were each yelling with pain, no matter how fast he healed them, the sensation of being repeatedly stabbed in the legs was never going to be pleasant. Each of them had forgone any and all technique with their blades, instead treating them like scythes and simply swinging from left to right and back again at roughly head height for the little monsters. Dane lashed out with his buckler and caved in skulls and chest cavities one after the other, and still the Horde came on. Erik wasn’t able to relax and heal either as the mass of goblins had found their way around the edges and were coming from the rear as well, his axes and Brigid’s blades reaped a heavy toll for their audacity and still they didn’t seem to be making a dent.
David had overcome his fear to an extent, he still huddled between them all and hurled mana bolts where he could, and in between explosions he would hop forward with a jerky step and swing his light arming sword at things that appeared in the gaps, arms and weapons were not safe from his horrible, slapping sword blows that hit with the flat of the blade as often as the edge, it was one of the few amusing things Erik could find in their current predicament. The other was that the sheer numbers of goblins that felt like they would eventually kill them, was fuelling his counter attack.
Every goblin that was killed resulted in a message that only Erik saw.
**Slain Goblin Spirit Absorbed 47/100**
He had stumbled across the profession trainer amongst the more esoteric trainers on his first day. Without going into the dungeon he couldn’t level it up, but the trainer had given him mana exercises to practice controlling the strands of his essence that were constantly interacting with the world around him, so that now when they were engulfed in the swarm of greenskins he was constantly absorbing the spirits of the slain while he fought with minimal concentration on his [Soul Drain] skill.
**Slain Goblin Spirit Absorbed 71/100**
With his efforts reaching capacity the time had come to demonstrate what a [Soul Forger] could do. Tapping into the deep wellspring of absorbed spirits within himself, Erik knew exactly what they needed to help turn the tide. Despite the name, what he actually absorbed was not a true spirit or soul, that could not be touched in any meaningful way, when a sentient being was killed their soul went back to the System itself, but the process stripped away a tonne of energy that had once made them up, and Erik’s ability syphoned some of this off. With a deep breath his hands and eyes began to glow with an ethereal white light, and shapes began to form around his legs as four large, white, glowing wolves materialised around him. They had high spiky manes and glistening fangs that swirled in pearlescent shades of cream and white.
The lead wolf gave a howl that shredded the thin courage of the attacking goblins and the small pack smashed into their ranks like a scythe through the wheat. Incorporeal claws still left rent flesh and muscle in their wake as the wolves past through armour and weapons unharmed, eliciting screams of abject terror from the foe.
“Are the wolves on our side?” Dane all but screamed from the front rank, now that he had some breathing room.
“They’re mine, I’ll explain later, just keep fighting.” Erik said through gritted teeth as he maintained his focus. His axes continued to carve bloody furrows in the ranks of goblins, but a new message shattered his concentration enough that a spear found its way past his guard and into the soft flesh above his hip.
**Maximum level achieved, banking Experience for Post Evolution.**
It flashed past his vision so quickly that he wasn’t even sure he saw it, but the pain of the stab wound burned through him and Erik fell back with a scream.
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Dane heard his brother scream, and his gut grew cold, a ball of icy fear gripped his spine and raced through his body in a shiver as he resisted the urge to look. There was no way to look and not take a blow himself with the way the horde pressed in around Lucas and himself.
“David, is Erik okay?” He called over his shoulder as his sword decapitated another enemy.
“I’m fine, that just really hurt!” Erik called back, a flash of golden light from his peripheral vision let him know Erik was already healing himself.
“We need to try something else, because this isn’t working, do you think they’ll run if we kill the boss?” Lucas asked.
“We can’t reach him, unless David wants to try a ranged bombardment?”
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There was no verbal response except a flash of crimson that arced over head and slammed into the Boss’ chest. It was immediately followed in quick succession by three more. The bolts didn’t seem to do much to the armour but it enraged the boss. Suddenly he and his cadre of armoured goblin warriors were striding through the mass of lesser goblins, hurling their kin out of the way or in some cases merely killing them as a matter of expediency.
Dane watched them advance as a unit and almost laughed, their discipline was somehow going to work against them. They were too eager to prove themselves as warriors over their smaller kin and in doing so would only come at them from the front and would remove the overwhelming pressure. Dane watched in almost disbelief as the Goblin Warboss spat orders at his lesser villagers to get out of the way for his better soldiers.
As the horde pulled back, a gap formed between the two sides and Dane and Lucas stepped forward on instinct, their chests heaving for air. The fighting had lasted barely twenty minutes, but their chests were restricted by their breastplates and they dragged in what oxygen they could, blowing like a bellows.
As the first of the armour goblins reached them, Dane dropped his sword to his left hip and sliced upward out of Fiore’s Boar’s Tusk garde once more. His opponent managed a very competent parry that was unfortunately too weak to stop a blow powered by over sixty strength points. His blade ripped through maille and flesh as though it wasn’t there, before coming down on the same arc in reverse to split a second goblin’s collarbone.
Lucas almost mirrored his friend as they began to turn the tide properly on the goblin warriors. Their strength levels were simply too high to block and with the narrow funnel in which they could approach their numbers could not begin to tell. As he cut and counter cut Dane began to feel the hope that they hadn’t thrown the dice and lost, he could even see his brother’s Spirit Wolves still ripping through the gathered throng of greenskins like savage executioners. It wasn’t until one reached the boss that he saw them take damage. The boss’s magical axe carved straight down through the torso of the creature that leapt at him forcing it to dissipate into the ether, the energy that held it together gone.
That was when the boss unleashed a new ability. He summoned a ring and let out a guttural cry. From the ring light emanated until it coalesced into the form of an angry spitting boar with spikes over its shoulders and tusks the size of daggers. Without wasting a second the goblin was on the beast’s back and waving its axe in a signal.
“Well that’s not good,” Dane said out loud without thinking.
“Erik, David, Brigid, you guys sprint back for the trees, we can not take a cavalry charge here,” He ordered, “Get behind the trees and hopefully that thing’s turning circle is like the ones we knew on earth, I’ll buy what time I can.” He didn’t look to see if his orders had been obeyed, the sound of scrambling feet was enough. Alright let’s see if this strength level is all it should be, Dane thought to himself as he readied his blade. He cracked his knees so that they were only just bent, and allowed his blade to stretch out behind him over his right hip, the garde of the long tail.
The great boar began its charge with a rumbling roar like thunder over the landscape, the rest of the goblin warriors that weren’t yet dead were tossed aside like a child’s play things as the beast ran right through them, its tusks doing more damage than even Dane and Lucas had managed so far. The whites of its eyes were visible quickly as it hit full stride in the space of only three steps, great bristles of hair seemed to stick out like miniature spears along its flanks and Dane imagined he could smell its hot breath already as the crazed monster bore down on him.
As the boar mounted goblin reached Dane, several things happened at once. Dane moved, the goblin swung its magical axe down and the boar tossed its head. When avoiding a blow meant for you, stepping away is one way of avoiding in, stepping in is a better way. Dane stepped in close past the tusks and his sword rose like a stone in a catapult, catching the side of the descending axe and knocking it off course. It was why Dane had sent the others away, he needed room to move freely without them around to pull off this manoeuvre, and the aftermath of it would not be safe for them all grouped up.
The axe was knocked off course, but it had been a truly telling blow with the goblin chief’s whole power and weight behind it, so there was no stopping its momentum. Especially as it drove down into the flank of his own mount. The magically empowered axe cut through hide, muscle and tendon as if it wasn’t there, nearly severing the great beast in two as it careened through and pulled the chieftain from his seat to fall to the dusty earth, underneath the thrashing bulk of his dying pet.
Pigs scream when they’re hurt, it’s loud piercing sound that can rip through anyone unfortunate enough to hear it, having grown up on a small farm in outback Australia Dane was familiar with the death cries of several animals, and it appear magical system empowered giant boars were not an exception to this rule. It thrashed about on the ground for long moments as its life blood poured into the dust, each kick growing weaker and weaker, until finally the beast became still.
**You have slain [Giant Boar] Level 10.**
He sagged in relief at the confirmation that it was dead, a little shocked at how high the level was considering what they had fought up until now. It also confirmed that the system acknowledged his role in the beast’s death even if it wasn’t his sword that dealt the death blow. He was breathing harder than he expected as he opened his visor to let some of the cool air wash over his sweat slicked face and clean out the carbon dioxide that always built up inside a helm.
**Skill Upgraded [Sword Adept (Common)] >>> [Sword Master (Rare)]**
A nice bonus to round things out, though he laughed at the notion of calling himself a sword master, he hoped some of the actual masters had survived the integration to this point, seeing what they could achieve with boosted stats would be something else. It was only while he was distracted by this tangent that a prickling sensation began to crawl down his neck, he had forgotten something in his complacency and he now realised what it was as he saw the corpse of the boar begin to move.
Grunts and growls echoed around the deserted village, the angry sounds all emanating from the fallen monster behind him, a glance showed exactly what was happening as the goblin chieftain rose from underneath the beast. His green arms flexed in straining musculature that would not have shamed a pre-system body builder with their definition. The boar was tossed aside, and a very angry goblin, with blood running down its body from a dozen small wounds and three less small cracks in its armour, a missing eye and a hand that looked shattered, glared balefully from its one remaining eye at Dane.
Dane rounded on the green monster, his blade rising into a point forward guard quickly, the fear evident as he looked the creature up and down. He was positive that the boar’s thrashing would have turned him into a paste on the ground, so for the goblin to survive it, even as battered as he was, spoke to a truly insane level of toughness, and he had naturally sent his team away, so he could only watch in horror as the magically enhanced axe wielder advanced on him with murderous intent.