Briefly turning around, Zor confirmed that most of the village’s hunters were indeed chasing after them. “  Stick to the plan everyone. They're right behind us.” Just low enough that the opposing group couldn't hear them hear them.

The group was still running to the ambush site and if the opposing group caught up to them before they got there it would all be over for them. Fortunately they seemed to be faster runners than their pursuers.  

“ Woohoo, we're going to make it.” Gobox said as they were rushing through the forest. 

“ Shut it, before they catch on!” Zor said sharply under his breath. But what Gobox said was true, it did look like they were going to make it. The clear was just within sight, and just like that they ran straight into it. 

So the first thing that went wrong was that the ambush was launched too early. As soon as Zor's group hit the clearing all the goblins in hiding popped out. Naturally when the goblins chasing them saw that they turned and ran in the opposite direction. 

It was only Mii's quick thinking that prevented the worst from happening. Since she was stationed right at the edge of the clearing she was able to launch a fireball right in front of the fleeing  hunters. This slowed them down enough for the first wave of attackers to reach them. 

The first conflict was centered around blocking the fleeing goblins in. The Marsh dwellers were fighting desperately not to be enclosed, but fortunately They did not scatter so it was easy to trap them all once the main group caught up.

And thus the real fight began…

….

By the time Evelyn and I caught up to the two sides were already fighting albeit in the forest as opposed to the clearing.

“ Huh, I guess my ambush plan failed.” I said as we landed in a tree and I turned back to my tanuki form. 

“ Na, the goblins probably just messed it up.” Evelyn said off to the side.

We were looking down over a battle currently in progress. From the looks of it this was going to be costly, probably due to the failure of the plan, but it looked like it was going in our side's favor.

“ Looks like we won't need to help.” Evelyn said idly. Honestly it was my idea to come to the battlefield. I thought that the goblins might need some help with the plan and I didn’t want them to get slaughtered, But it seems unnecessary in the face of those four.

Zor was the clear MVP of this battle, he was wading his way through the battle challenging the strongest warriors on the opposing side and after impaling them on his spear, then he would immediately move on to the next one. 

The quiet mage, Mii I think, was the next significant one. She was acting like magic artillery, throwing small fire balls whenever the enemy bunched up too much. It was a miracle that she didn’t start a forest fire or something.

The other guy in Zor’s group was supporting Mii. Early in the fight the enemy seemed to realize that taking her out was essential if they were going to survive because a large group of them was engaged by a group of shield wielders. Led by the other guy they were single handedly holding the line so that Mii could do her thing.

The annoying guy was probably going to get the most kills though. For some reason the enemy was ignoring him completely. This allowed him to run around the battlefield stabbing everyone in the back with what looked like a knife.

“ Yep, looks like we're going to win.” Evelyn said with a look of surprise. Apparently even she underestimated how strong they were.