The party continued their trek through the forest for another hour or so, with everyone except Maria gaining another additional level.
“Hey, guys...just ahead I found a large horde of goblins surrounding a cave-like opening that led underground...do we check it out?” Zack had just come back from his scouting and quickly reported. He marked the area on the party’s shared mini-map.
“There’s a cave? That means it could be their den or something!”
“That means...more XP!”
Lizzy and Milly laughed happily at the news, but Zack felt a little hesitant on charging in to fight.
“I said, there was a large HORDE of goblins,” Zack emphasized once again before continuing, “By horde, I mean that their numbers were at least 30-40! I didn’t get a clear look because I saw a Hobgoblin in the middle of the horde.”
“Ah! It’s this dungeon’s boss!”
“It’s definitely the boss!”
“Yeah...but before we even try attacking the boss...we have to kill the goblin minions first!” Amanda addressed the main issue here.
They found the boss, hooray, but if they couldn’t deal with the 30-40 goblin minions, then the only choice would be to just stare blankly at the boss from afar and leave it alone.
Rushing in straight on would be an act only done by brainless idiots. Maria looked at her troubled friends.
Hearing the 30-40 goblins and the boss, she too was a little put off from attacking them. If they had more players in their party or even just one more player, like say, a decent mage, then their problems would be solved.
They could just chip away at the horde of goblins from a safe distance with the mage’s spells and Maria’s [Gehenna’s Eye] and have the tanks block their way forward, but unfortunately for them, no one was a Mage.
“Phew...maybe I should have played a mage if I knew Maria was going to be a Priestess...” Amanda mumbled.
“Haha Sis, I don’t think that’ll solve anything! I nearly forgot to mention, but all the monsters in the horde have some sort of buff from the hobgoblin boss. I couldn’t read the description, but all the monsters were level 25 or higher.”
“What the heck...you might as well just send us over to do Maria’s quest if it’s like this!”
Maria looked around the area and saw a whole bunch of trees, she then remembered the times when she took advantage of the area to take down her monsters when she was still going around solo.
“Hmm...Zack, isn’t there some way we can take advantage of the terrain to kill the monsters? I did that back when I was still playing alone! I was able to take down packs of wolves by myself!”
“Huh?”
“At that time I didn’t have the Calamity or [Gehenna’s Eye], but it was awfully easy to the point where I thought that the developers purposefully made the monsters easy to kill...but I guess it wasn’t true since I saw new players struggling to even land a hit on a Horned Rabbit...”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Ah! That’s true! I had that thought too...but all I saw were trees everywhere!”
“Let me go take a look from the air, maybe I can find something,” Maria said. She then took off in the next instant.
Before her friends could say anything, she was already gone. Amanda quickly opened her mouth and told Zack.
“You should go with her...watch she’ll be coming back because she doesn’t—”
“Ehehehe~ Zacky~ could you come with me? I don’t know the place!”
“Hihihi~ told ya~”
Zack only stared back at his sister and her friends with a deadpanned look.
“...Okay...”
The two quickly parted ways from the group and went straight towards the goblin den.
“Wow...Mary actually did that by herself, huh?” Milly said with a smile towards her two friends.
“Well, she’s not stupid. Once she’s learned a thing or two about the game, she’ll gradually get better!”
“But leave it to her to find a solution for us!”
Amanda looked at the two BTs exchanging words and couldn’t help but say, “I bet you two could have said something much earlier!”
“Yeah, but Mary beat us to the punch!” Lizzy replied.
“Eheh~”
“...”
Deeper into the forest, Zack and Maria had both arrived at the goblin den, from afar Maria could already see the bobbling heads of the goblins.
“Ok, I’ll fly up and take a look around!”
“Careful, there might be monsters in the treetops.”
“Un.”
Maria took off slowly. She vigilantly looked around the trees to make sure there was nothing there to attack her. It didn’t take long before she broke through the treetops safely.
She moved in the direction of the goblin den and looked down.
“Ohh...If I can carry everyone on top of this small hill then we’d be safe...I think...”
Maria noticed the small hill that the goblin cave was dug on. It wasn’t really that tall and if the goblins took a roundabout way, then they’d be able to reach them on top of the hill.
She landed and noticed that none of the goblins noticed her coming down from the sky. Maria looked down from the other side of the hill and noticed that it was a pretty steep incline, maybe around 60 degrees.
“Hmmm... we could attract those goblins into an uphill fight...but that might wear us down...I’ll tell the others first though, then we’ll decide.”
Maria took off again and made her way back to Zack. Once they met up again, the two quickly rushed back to the party and Maria reported her findings.
“A steep hill huh...we COULD fight them there...and considering their small legs we could probably do it.”
“Yeah...but, if we only had a player who could do ranged attacks, like a Mage or an Archer class player, it would’ve been easier...”
“Ugh...”
When Maria heard the word ‘ranged attacks, she suddenly remembered something.
“I should have shown this to you before, but maybe this will help?”
Maria brought up her skill window once again and showed them her [Angel’s Rage].
“...What the heck? This thing doesn’t have a cooldown?” Milly exclaimed in shock.
“No rank either...Ah, this taint value...is this the skill that turned you into a Fallen Angel, Mary?” Lizzy asked.
“Yup!” Maria answered.
“This must be that counterattacking skill, right?”
“That’s right Milly~”
“Wow...”
Amanda was surprised to hear this since it clearly said that the skill attacks every enemy within a 10-meter distance of Maria as long as she designates the target. It should be an active skill, not a passive counter.
“Hey, Maria...what did you designate as the target for this skill?”
“Everything that was hurting me!” Maria immediately replied.
“Everything...that was hurting you?”
“It’s a bit embarrassing, but I was hurting a lot when the wolves were biting me, so when I heard the skill notification, I only blurted out what was in my head at the time.”
“I-I see...” Amanda replied awkwardly. She had gone and reminded her friend about that traumatizing experience.
“So...can you change the targets then?”
“Hm?”
“Like, this is supposed to be an active skill. Like that [Arc Swing], [Calamity Cleave], and that [Gehenna’s Eye] of yours...I’m sure you can activate it.”
“Oh! I didn’t think about that! It always seemed to activate on its own so I never really bothered to care about it anymore~”
“Well, if we have this we can probably do this...It deals 250 Pure Damage, so a couple of waves of the attack would be enough to fell a goblin. Not to mention it only uses up 50 Mana per activation and considering Maria’s abundance of mana she could totally keep it up until the horde of goblins all died!”
The party immediately realized how great this plan was and immediately put it into action. First, they tried to test whether Maria could select her target by experimenting on some of the patrolling goblins in the forest.
It was a success and it took around 15-20 waves of feathers to kill a goblin. Also, Maria could just designate all the monsters in her field of vision as targets and her feathers would shoot forward in attack.
The only limitation would be accuracy. The feathers would only shoot at the target’s initial location. If they dodged away then the feathers shot out would miss entirely and Maria would only be wasting her mana.
It was fortunate that her feathers were pretty fast, but after a couple of waves of her attacks, the goblins would soon adapt to the speed and they’d begin dodging. The only way was to burn them with [Gehenna’s Eye] first before killing them off with [Angel’s Rage] which was a huge expenditure of Mana.
“Well, this should do, right?” Amanda asked to which Milly and Lizzy replied.
“Yeah, let’s just get things over with. If we can’t do it, the worst that’ll happen to us is we die!”
“Since we’re all in agreement; Operation Goblin Extermination, start!” Lizzy declared.
Zack and Maria only cheered in the back.