The goblins didn’t hesitate as they drew their arms and cautiously approached the party. There were six goblin guards, which seemed like a lot for a town patrol. It made Jay wonder if they knew something was going on.
Each goblin guard wore metal chainmail armor, protecting the rest of their bodies with padded leather. Two guards were carrying bows, which were trained on the party. The rest were advancing on the party. Two more guards carried swords and shields, with the final pair carrying long halberds the length of a tall human or Elf. Their nameplates were identical.
Goblin Guard, Level: 12. Health: 150/150.
Lucille drew her swords and waded into melee combat, forcing the enemy weapons apart as she pushed against the four goblins. “We’ll do this quickly. Take out the archers if you can.”
The archers had trouble finding a place to fire off a decent shot. She moved quickly through the battle, fighting defensively and blocking all manner of attacks with her blades.
Casey raised her staff and started to mutter a spell. After that, she focused on the goblin archer on the left, so Jay prepared an attack on the goblin archer on the right.
He recognized her spell as the bear claw spell he had seen previously.
His first step was to Analyze the guards, but the message was not substantially different from previous goblins. Jay trained his repeater on the archer and started charging a Wild Strike for his opening shot. He aimed for the chest because he could drift up or down and still land a hit. The archer noticed Jay’s attention and whirled to fire arrows back at him, ignoring Lucille’s vicious battle. It was too late for the archer.
Jay fired his powered attack, blasting the goblin archer in the chest. The impact was so powerful it was knocked from its feet. He instantly trained his crossbow on the falling creature, following up his opening attack with a shot as soon as he could fire again. The second attack wasn’t even necessary. The boosted damage from his opening attack was enough to drop the creature.
Checking on Casey, Jay’s mouth gaped as she smacked the other archer with her bear claw spell. The bear claw’s damage was substantial, but she was still at a lower level than the guards.
Jay fired the last shot in his current bolt clip at the other archer. The blow struck it in the stomach, which still wasn’t enough to finish off the guard. He could hear Casey already preparing another spell, which would undoubtedly finish it, so he turned his attention to the rest of the battle.
Meanwhile, Lucille had the time of her life on the battlefield with the other four goblin guards. She did not need any help. Two of the guards were wrapped entirely in vine ropes. The ropes encircled the goblins, binding hands and feet to their sides. The other two guards were engaging her but quickly losing. With a rush of silver energy bursting from her body, the fight became deadly.
Lucille moved so swiftly that Jay could barely even see it. He wondered if Perception statistics made movement more noticeable as it sometimes highlighted targets of interest. He started counting. Within three seconds, Lucille landed two strikes on every single goblin guard. The ones wrapped in vines died instantly. The other two, blocking with their shields, lasted slightly longer—four full seconds.
Jay and Casey were eyeing Lucille with deep appreciation as the battle ended. Her skills were tremendous. The enemies were obviously of a lower level, but she seamlessly integrated traps and potent damage. There was no chance for goblins to raise the alarm, although the fighting hadn’t been quiet.
“It’s called Accentuate,” Lucille said proudly, noticing the looks. “Gives me an insane boost to Speed and Balance temporarily. Only lasts for five seconds and has a ten minute cooldown. Hate cooldowns.”
“We should move,” Jay said, quickly cataloging the slightly different goblin enemy in his Bestiary. “If anyone heard that, they’ll be here in moments to investigate.”
After confirming the goblins held no keys, he led them into an alleyway between buildings. Zenya was still with her mother, which gave the party more freedom to move strategically. They zig-zagged through a few more alleys until they felt they had created some distance.
“Are you kidding me?” Casey groaned, a deep rage bubbling in her chest. The comment was out of nowhere.
The party was safely out of sight and needed to devise a plan for searching for cage keys. They were in a space between buildings, which would funnel goblins into individual melee fights. That benefited Casey and Jay since goblins would have to fight through Lucille to get to them.
“What’s the problem?” Jay finally asked as Casey continued to grumble under her breath.
“Stupid goblins,” Casey said. “They could have brought one more along. After that last fight, I’m only fifty experience from level eleven.”
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Jay laughed, relieved to know it wasn’t serious. “Quests usually give a pretty significant chunk of experience. You might even get a full level from it.”
“Really?” she asked. “I’ve been just hunting monsters for the past few days. I should have known better, although I did find an interesting piece of gear from the monster drops.” She patted the top of her staff affectionately.
“That’s not from the Founder Pack?” Jay asked.
“Nope,” Casey confirmed. “The pack came with a spear which is just not a super cool weapon. At all. This staff gives me a little extra mp, but mostly it’s for bashing stuff.”
Jay, for his own part, found spears to be pretty efficient weapons. Depending on the design, they could be used efficiently in slashes as much as thrusts. The length was nice for blocking attacks and creating space from the enemies. He agreed Casey’s staff was pretty cool, though.
Lucille was watching the staff with disinterest, giving Jay the sense she was firmly on team spear.
“We should probably return to the task at hand where we’re stuck in this weird goblin village,” Jay said. “It is in the middle of our territory, after all. Also, a baby dire wolf is trying to save her mom.”
“And if they didn’t know we were here,” Lucille said, “they definitely do after we dropped six of them. Also, their scouts won’t return whenever they’re expected back.”
Casey nodded, passing her hand over her mouth like she was zipping it shut. Jay considered their options, but they didn’t know much about the city. The town did seem to be more on the large city block end of the spectrum. There wasn’t much to do except explore more of the area, hoping to find something. If they couldn’t notice anything, they’d have to search it building by building.
Jay didn’t really care that much. He was up for killing every goblin in the town if it became necessary to finish the quest.
He led them through more of the city, trying to learn more about the buildings. The goblins didn’t use signage, nor was there any real difference in many buildings. They were different sizes, but aside from that, there was no indication through the form of what the functions might be.
They continued through the area, combing everything over twenty minutes. There were a few close calls with goblin guards, but the party managed to avoid them. The situation was slightly tense, mainly because Casey was slowly watching her clock tick down. No one was genuinely concerned about being able to handle the guards after the previous encounter.
Lucille was forced to destroy another citizen that happened down the alleyway right into them. Still, the party managed to avoid large-scale detection.
And they finally found a point of interest.
The party finally found one distinctive section of open space. There was a large area that appeared to be fenced in with a wooden wall. In the center of it, there was a relatively small goblin.
The sight was almost funny, even though Jay didn’t want to laugh. The small goblin—even by goblin standards—was overloaded with gear. This goblin wore no armor. It was adorned with all kinds of baubles, animal skulls, and trophies of many sorts. It wore some style of blade at its side, various pouches of unknown contents strapped over it, and even all kinds of tools.
Jay didn’t want to laugh because of the animal stuck inside the pen with the goblin. The most enormous dire wolf he had ever seen was trapped in chains and lazily maintained a seated posture on the ground. This wolf was at least twice the size of Zenya’s mother, even from this distance.
The goblin continued to yell at the dire wolf, but the creature seemed utterly unconcerned. The goblin began waving its hands around emphatically. Jay recognized the move as a kind of spellcasting, but the gestures and phrasing weren’t analogous to his friends’ spells. He could only identify the spells his friends frequently cast. The magic didn’t seem to be working on the wolf. Jay inspected the nameplate.
Dire Wolf Matriarch, Level: 30. Health: 721/1,237.
The wolf was the matriarch. Jay assumed that meant it was likely the strongest wolf in its pack. Maybe within a group of several packs. He didn’t know much about wolf hierarchy, but the wolf in front of him was strong.
The matriarch’s level definitely explained why the magic wasn’t working. There was a low chance the enemy goblin was at such a high level. He checked the nameplate of the goblin, as well.
Goblin Willbender [Elite], Level: 18. Health: 730/730.
Jay hadn’t seen any elite monsters in Tumultua Online yet, but he was familiar with the concept. An elite monster was stronger for its level than a standard enemy. Usually, they were meant to be attempted by groups or especially well-prepared players.
A shower of sparks cascaded into a small potion in Lucille’s hands. She drank the potion, swallowing it in a single gulp. Jay saw another buff appear next to her character screen.
“Potion of Giants,” Lucille explained. “I made it myself. Adds twenty to strength for one minute. Time to move.” Lucille strode towards the end of the alleyway, adding, “Stay behind me.”
“She’s pretty cool,” Casey said with adoration. “Are we going to go?”
“Yeah,” Jay agreed. “Let’s do that.” As he moved forward, he cursed himself. He hadn’t stopped to reload the clip he’d already spent, which meant none of his clips were loaded with slime bolts. The special effect was precisely the kind of thing to use on an elite. Jay activated Rapid Fire, quickly loading a slime bolt into the repeater without adding a clip.
The Willbender was involved in its work. The party started to hustle over toward it. Jay, in particular, tried to catch up after stopping to load the bolt. The elite monster didn’t notice them until Lucille hopped the fence, entering the ring where it was trying to cast spells on the matriarch.
“What are doing here?” the Willbender asked, skipping a word or two. It paused its work though it kept one eye on the muzzled dire wolf matriarch.
Jay and Casey followed in hopping the fence as Lucille taunted their enemy.
“Killing you,” Lucille said, throwing a lasso of vines. The spell was the one she had cast earlier to trap the goblin guards. The vines quickly shot through the air, wrapping themselves around the Willbender as Lucille confidently strode forward.
The Willbender sneered as its undersized body rippled with muscles hidden by all the gear strapped to the creature. Although, it should have been obvious, given the sheer quantity.
The vine rope snapped, falling to the ground uselessly.