The stare down between both sides continued for a while, until it was finally broke by Ariel shoot an ice bolt at the boss. The spiky ice ball was quite fast, but unfortunately this hob goblin had an incredible reaction speed and was able to pull up his shield in front of him, just in time.

Ariel’s attack however, did leave some large indents on the tower shield and at the same time was the signal for the others to attack. Both Sarah and Tera began their bombardment with magic and arrows, while the others made a perimeter around them.

The hob goblin boss was under quite the fire power, but thanks to his massive shield, he wasn’t hit, and even had the strength to slowly move closer. The party however, unfortunately, had to stay where they were, since if they let up even for a second, the hob goblin would have enough room to immediately start charging.

Due to that, the fight dragged on like this for a while and ended only when the boss finally reached them, due to that, although there were no injuries inflicted on him, some fatigue could be seen on his face. Their melee fighters, on the other hand, were still in almost top shape, and just as the hob goblin came into range, the three of them attacked.

Henry was at the front and quickly started blocking the oncoming swings, while Vor simply went into a rampage and started lashing out at the enemy with no desire to defend. Unfortunately, with the good weapon and shield, the hob goblin could take the two of them on without a problem, and his swings with enormous strength were rapidly tiring Henry, if not for Brendon using magic to ease their fatigue, they might have already fallen.

The one who truly did some damage was Erna, she used her quickness like usual, and while the boss had its hands full with Henry and Vor, she constantly stabbed and slashed him from where he didn’t expect it, leaving a few nasty wounds.

In the mean while, Ariel and the rest, who were at the back, were unable to continue recklessly bombarding since now the boss was in a close proximity of their comrades, so they had to attack more carefully and accurately.

For Tera it was the easiest because she could simply shoot like usual and was able to hit a few of the boss’s joints, but besides that, nothing major. Sarah and Ariel however, had to wait for the right opportunities, since their attacks could cause some large splash damage to the party.

Thankfully there were some opening and both Sarah and Ariel could do something. Sarah’s magic, couldn’t really penetrate iron armor quickly as of yet, but it didn’t cause her any problems because she just attacked from above. Her acid easily reached the hob goblins skin and even flown under his armor through some cracks and gaps.

Ariel was much more straight forward and tried several things, icing the floor didn’t succeed since the boss seemed to be quite heavy and had good balance, but some good, old fashioned ice spears with out any effort penetrated his body, and even those which were blocked by armor and shield were able to make some openings for the other party members.

With such constant pressure, the battle went fine for a while, but as the boss got more injured, he also became angrier and started fighting more aggressively. The battle began to change when the boss suddenly stopped paying attention to Vor and let him land a heavy hit, while he himself concentrated everything on Henry, and after a quick succession of a strike and a shield bash Henry was sent flying towards the back group, barely getting caught by the others.

Immediately after that, the hob goblin charged at Vor, shield first. All Vor could do was try to block with his own sword, but  the strength behind the tower shield was too much, it knocked him of balance and soon after that the boss’s sword cut down on Vor’s shoulder.

Luckily Brendon noticed this and quickly reacted, casting a healing spell on Vor and Henry. Thankfully the boss also didn’t continue pressuring them and seemed to need a breather so he jumped back some meters and merely watched the party while he was catching his breath.

The group also stayed back, their front liners were injured and needed some time to heal, so they didn’t want to engage the hob goblin immediately. Like this the stare off started once again. For a moment neither side budged even slightly and simply waited for a signal to start fighting again.

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Unfortunately, the hob goblin boss was intelligent enough to see that if he left Ariel’s group alone to heal, he wouldn’t have a single chance to win anymore, so he suddenly attacked, before the two melee fighters were in a fighting shape again. Just as the party saw that, Henry unexpectedly shouted out. “Do it, now!” As his words rang out, out of no where a shadow appeared behind the boss, and only after closer inspection did the others recognized, that it was Camila.

Camila after appearing behind the boss, stabbed into his side. A painful groan came out of the hob goblins throat, but just when they expected that he would back off further, he instead swung his right hand, backhanding Camila’s body with enormous strength.

She flew over 10 meters and the others could hear her bones brake, by the time she landed, she was already unconscious. Some of the group members, like Tera and Erna after seeing this happen screamed out, their faces white with fright.

Brendon, who was the only healer of the party, thankfully was fast enough and was able to cast a healing spell on her quite quickly. However, on a closer inspection, sweet could already be seen on Brendon’s face, healing three people at the same time was putting quite a strain on him, not to mention that his healing spells were less effective and took longer than their counterparts on the light magic side.

The truly unfortunate thing was that, after seeing them react like this, the cunning hob goblin immediately noticed how important Camila was to them. With a sinister laugh, he began quickly heading towards the laying Camila. This made the others almost faint from fear.

Tera tried to shot him with an arrow as soon as possible, but he still had his guard up and with such distance could easily dodge it, same with Sarah’s magic as well, it was unfortunately too slow. Their two melee fighters were still in no shape to fight, so only Erna could sprint out. However she couldn’t fight one on one against him by herself, so she decided to get next to Camila and protect her, as her last resort, if the boss managed to reach them.

Luckily it wasn’t as hopeless as it seemed, though. While the boss was advancing towards Camila keeping an eye on the rest of them them, he didn’t have the ability to keep attention on the surroundings. Just at that time, Ariel, who was standing at the back, seemed to slightly wave his hands, unseen to anyone, but just after he did that, Ariel’s previously released ice bolt which was still there laying on the floor after the impact against the shield, shot out its spikes.

All the party members were quite far and weren’t really affected by the sudden ice spike attack, but the hob goblin boss was in an unfortunate spot and many of them easily dug into his body. Very soon after doing this, Ariel started moving towards him as well, not wanting to let the chance go.

From further away he already had began shooting ice spears to pressure him, but only the first one managed to hit in a surprise attack, others were either blocked or deflected. Of course he could simply tank through it with an enormous amount ice spears like most other mages, but being in a dungeons wasn’t a situation where recklessly spending Mana was the right choice.

Due to that, when he advanced near enough he changed his tactic. While still shooting a couple ice spears from above to distract the boss, he also swung his hand and casted ice slice. A blade of frosty and sharp ice left Ariel’s hand and cut across the hob goblin’s stomach.

It was still protected by armor, but after some heavy beatings on all over the armor, it became a bit more fragile and at some places Ariel’s attack actually penetrated, and even there where it didn’t, it left cold frost, cooling off the armor enough to give itss wearer frostbite.

Right after this strike of his, Ariel wanted to continue, but he wasn’t fast enough. The hob goblin boss, who was already enraged to the point where his skin changed color, swung his sword towards Ariel with all his strength.

Ariel didn’t have the time to dodge with his slow speed, so he could only rely on his ice shields. However, the hob goblin’s sword moved, it suddenly lit on fire and with its frightening power immediately broke two out of the three ice shield from a single clash. This clash pushed Ariel quite far backwards, to the point that he could taste iron at the back of his throat.

Pushing back the feeling of wanting to cough blood, Ariel looked towards the newly lit sword. From a single glance he could tell that this was most likely the effect that this magical weapon had, and not some cheap trick.

Thankfully the hob goblin didn’t chase Ariel and it also seemed like the continuously inflicted pain made it go into a complete, uncontrollable rampage. He swung his sword all over the place, being completely random. The bad thing was that, although Ariel could easily predict his attacks, he also couldn’t land a decent hit, with him like this.

He, as well as both Sarah and Tera, who came, closer started bombarding him, but almost nothing hit. As they were doing this, Tera suddenly recalled something and drew out her bow string without releasing it. Seeing this from the side, both Sarah and Ariel understood that she was finally planning on using her bows magical ability. Ariel even put in some effort and locked down the boss’s feet with ice.

Mana quickly gathered around the knocked arrow and although it didn’t have any element added to it like the hob goblin’s sword, but it was obvious that the arrows penetrative aspect was enhanced. When Tera was at last done aiming the bow, she let the arrow loose and it flew like wind, embedding itself into the hobgoblins armor, completely ignoring it.

The pain seemed to wake the boss from his frenzy a little as he looked towards the party. Unfortunately, although the arrow caused a lot of damage it wasn’t enough and he began to slowly wobble towards them, with killing intent visible in his eyes.

But just then, Erna, with out anyone’s notice ran up to the boss and jumped onto him. Due to the wounds and fatigue, the hob goblin’s guard was down and he couldn’t react in time. Erna’s swift sword easily sliced open his throat.

He still wanted to grab her, even as blood was rapidly leaving his body, but Erna was too fast and already left his side. With no one in reach, the boss tried struggling against death, but as more and more blood left his body his eyes slowly grew lifeless and his body fell to the ground, dead.