Chapter 112

Somehow we survived the freakish night of goblin devilry.

The smoke is starting to clear in a weird heavy cloudy form that’s almost like sea fog. Sea fog has a remarkable way of covering absolutely everything and seemingly no end and that’s what this is like with this smoke. We’ve been coughing a lot because the smoke is so bad. There’s been even more of it but we hope it will eventually go away. The runic shielding has helped with some of the smoke damage affecting us but it isn’t designed for atmospheric and air filtration type of protections, so it’s very imperfect.

“Wish you had an air spell of some kind,” Asakura says as she tries to clear her throat and is coughing while we try to stay as low as possible on the ground since there’s a tendency for the smoke to go up. The rest of us are also coughing still intermittently.

Once again I’m reminded I have more to reach for.

We’ve been up all night and our joints hurt like crazy; feeling like we want to find a bed fast and near complete exhaustion, severe fatigue feeling. It’s like the feeling of staying up all night to do homework and then the next day going straight to school without having a rest and your legs feel like jelly the next day. When I wave my hand it feels like there’s heavy weights hanging on my forearms trying to pull me down we’re so tired.

“Shun, …so tired,” Asakura stumbled a bit even.

“Stay close by me,” I warned her.

“Got it, lover,” she said.

In the last three hours of guerrilla warfare the goblins and orcs have tried to carry her off at least four times. With her looks and figure I’d have had an impossible time keeping them off her if the dwarves weren’t all with us as a team. It’s made me exceptional paranoid. After today I think I’ll be the most paranoid adventurer team leader in the world at protecting what’s mine and I don’t care as long as it works.

We’ve also lost count of all the kills.

It did help Svinn see the danger of the orc baiting tactics though.

“Where’s Svinn? I can’t see him,” I said nervously nearly panicked.

The dwarves had been scouring for survivors after we thought that most of the goblins and orcs had fled.

We finally found Svinn, gasping and barely hanging onto life. He’s been gutted by a goblin’s dagger. We weren’t even sure how he’d gotten separated to be honest. He was right there in front of us just ten minutes ago and now he’s a mess. He’s hanging back, leaning against the brickwork around the town well. He’s bleeding badly and his legs are splayed way out in different directions. He’s gasping something and in extreme pain holding his guts together with both hands. He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s barely hanging on and fading fast.

“Asakura, we have a stray goblin specialty class somewhere!” I realized.

“Make that a stray dangerous goblin assassin,” she answered back.

That’s when it hit me she was right. An assassin goblin?! Near us?!

We thought that we’d cut off the goblins and orcs over an hour ago and that the area had been clear. Right after that the heavy armors had blocked off the hole in the wall. But if it were something that could stealth that might explain why we’d missed it…

We’d thought we’d driven them off. I’m sure that they’d retreated as a whole and we’d walked the perimeter several times to be sure there wasn’t any left. We’d even been about to let the non combat civilians out of the mine refuge.

But how had this happened?

There shouldn’t have been anyone still inside the range of the keep!

That means maybe an experienced veteran assassin type goblin or some other type of magic user that can stealth. It’s got me worried. We’d discussed a stealth situation and anti stealth with Fox but not actually had to ever play this game this way before. We’d also mostly focused on me stealthing and not the enemy. I didn’t think it was coming up this fast and I thought it would be me hiding from someone else instead of them hunting for me with stealth.

My heart skips a beat and I whirl to check to make sure nothing is coming up from behind me, shining my light out into all parts of the dark. I can’t tell if there is anything or isn’t and my light spell is waving around like a flashlight in the dark as we try to spot any sign of movement.

“Nothing…” I muttered to myself.

“Stay alert Shun,” Asakura warned but she’s in paranoid mode too and stressed out.

Svinn tries to cry out something, but he’s not in good shape and it comes out mumbled. He can’t get up and the blood looks dark. That means there isn’t much time left to save him. The darker the blood looks, the deeper it’s come from inside.

“Keep direct pressure,” Asakura says.

She begins cutting parts of the dwarves pant legs to be used as make shift bandages. It’s terrible for sanitary reasons, but it’s our only available material short of using our own clothes. We have to stop the bleeding first, or the heal spell will be useless; it’s still bound by physics after all.

“Shun!” Asakura half panicked.

We hear footsteps running up behind us. It’s too late to turn around to meet the blows with a proper block!

Crap! This person is fast and light on their feet!

There’s a slash and a rebound coming off my shielding, and then more rebounds with a lot of swearing but my runic shielding spell has held up though it has a couple of jagged gashes that leave a hot molten look to where they’ve cut into the transparent shielding. It’s interesting that an enemy doesn’t usually spot a clear magic shield like mine without a trained eye or sunlight reflecting on it. We hear cursing and swearing again with food steps but still no visible goblin or orc. It shrieks at us to challenge us.

I see a quick series of about five huge slashes appearing on my shield. They are deep cuts and two of them puncture small inch wide slashes in the shielding less than two feet long. I try to guard and parry but what do I swing at?

“Asakura! Help!” I cried out.

Nearby I can also hear other dwarves rushing about. They don’t know what’s going on yet, but they can hear us calling out for help. Several of them are already moving this way.

I recasted my runic magic shield and want to move, but I don’t know which way to move is safe. If I’m not careful I could end up running onto its blade. I also hate bringing Asakura into it, but I know her nose is sharper than mine is. She might be able to help me figure out where this is coming from. I want to be able to dodge, but how can you avoid something that you can’t see?

I’m glad we’d kept the shielding up. Lately I’d been trying to keep them up most the day, since our battles had been so frequent. It would be too hard to cast this on the fly with an enemy close by me with no existing shielding.

“Shun, I smell something strange?” Asakura said. She’s got her weapon out and tries to slash at whatever is in front of me. Still, we can’t see whatever it is.

“Why can’t we see him?!” Asakura is wild with fright but also partly her aggressive protective instinct is also starting to awaken.

“Stealth enchant probably,” I yelled out hoarsely.

She tries best to react, and is adjusting her combat strategy for wide swath swings,” got it,” she said.

“We have to keep Svinn alive, but I don’t know if he’s the primary target,” I said. I risk a burst heal on Svinn to buy time.

“I’ll save you Shun,” Asakura said.

It’s a weird feeling, being attacked by something you can’t see.

Yes!

We can fight back though, because the altered drone racial status of Asakura, has sped up and heightened her senses! This is probably the only way we could have fought back against this special goblin elite warrior assassin!

We can hear movements of whoever it is again for a second time. Weird. Did they circle around to try to fake us out? This time they came up from behind Asakura to test if she had a shield up, while I’ve also put a magic shield up on Svinn and guarding him.

It would be a shitty deal to tell the dwarves that I couldn’t protect their hero if he dies.

It does help buy me some time to get some quick spam healing spells onto Svinn to try to save his life. They are obviously targeted for his deep mortal wound and I’ve added some mana stitching to hold his guts together while Asakura is desperately swinging around me. Occasionally her blade rebounds off some other metal, so whatever she did it worked in keeping it off me but didn’t wound it at all.

But it’s also strange that this particular assassin didn’t finish him off.

Unless he wasn’t the primary target?

Then it hit me.

He had set this up to use Svinn as a lure to draw others into the danger and then it would finish everyone off it possibly could while Svinn bled to death. It’s a clever lure.

Or there’s also the chance that he was using Svinn to lure for a second leader? Back home when fighting drug dealers and scum on the street cops knew they had to go for the runner up leaders on top of the front line leaders to actually make a dent in an organization. It’s very possible that this is the same tactic of going for the second tier leadership and the primary tier at the same time.

Goblins are smarter than they look. This guy is really dangerous and he’s killed before. Only a pro would know a trick like this, luring more victims to compound the damage.

I had to pause in helping Svinn to renew Asakura’s shield. The assassin had gotten through her shield and knicked her forearm and her thigh in a very short time. It’s scared me how fast he is.

“His weapon is shorter than ours. Probably a long knife of some kind that can both slash and pierce,” Asakura said hurriedly. She’s trying to block some blows but it’s not working well, even though I got a shield up again on her in time.

“I’m more worried about how he’s managing this invisibility thing, even after his blows connected,” I said hurriedly.

We’re both waving our weapons around in the dark and missing.

“I see footprints!” Asakura managed excitedly.

It’s the one good sign so far. She swings hard trying to crush the attacker and sends out a dirt cloud from the impact of her weapon. Then we see an imprint in the dirt from him rolling away. I think she’s barely missed him. But we’ve gotten so close a few times now without even getting a single hit. There was even a flicker of a shadow in the dirt cloud before it was gone almost as fast as we’d seen it.

It’s very discouraging.

“Ah, kick up sand!” I cried out.

“Oh good idea!” she squealed out.

Because we’re at the central area where people meet up, there is a lot of loose dirt here. But the problem is that there is also a bunch of flagstones too.

She kicks out with her feet making a dirt cloud. Then she spots a shadow and finally we hear an, “oofuk,” sound from some humanoid creature. The body flies back about four feet and rolls in the dirt. We converge forward to smash at it, but he rolls away in time. But he’s only momentarily caught off guard and in pain. He isn’t going to be injured much from just a kick.

“We’re losing him,” I cried out.

“I got it!” she replied. She kicked out again, but this time the assassin dodges.

There’s an almost imperceptible click, click, click from near the goblin assassin. And then I feel something rebounding off my shield with sparks less than a second later.

“He’s got a range dart shooter of some kind,” Asakura warned before I realized what it was.

“Crap.”

“Range darts…mean poison right?” she asked.

“Probably,” I said it while cringing.

“If he scores a hole in our shield we’re dead Shun,” she said.

I steeled up my willpower.

We can’t let a single dart thrown at us get through!

Near us the other dwarves have formed a protective ring around Svinn. One of them is also giving him some medicine.

Nice! They have this teamwork and rescue stuff down pat.

“He’s trying to separate us from Svinn, until he bleeds out,” she warned me as we followed the goblin’s sounds a bit more. At least, we think it’s a goblin because he’s lighter on his feet. But there’s a feeling if we don’t rush him that he’ll pick us off.

So we do a hurriedly guarded and panicked retreat back to Svinn and the other dwarves. It’s fortunate they’ve been protecting him while we had being lured, but there’s no one else that can stop this assassin.

We try again to spam a few more heals but I’m getting low on mana. We need to get this fight done with soon.

It has me more worried than the assassin.

Then after that there’s several more minutes of range spam from the assassin using the darts to try to get us. He’s swearing some more after he hits more of my runic shielding spells on the other dwarves. It’s a good move. He’s able to whittle down the shields and he’s moving while shooting so we can’t go out and search for him.

We endure a few more minutes of hell, while I try to stabilize Svinn again. I then have to use cure poison spammed on me and Asakura, and any of the dwarves hit, even if it’s only the energy shields because I haven’t dealt with this before and don’t want any unnecessary risk. I am not sure how calculations on shield bleed through work with poisons.

We keep up the turf war for another half hour while the dwarves are shouting stuff. In that time my mana depletes another twenty percent. Because we’d been in protracted battle all night I’d actually been able to regenerate some mana after we’d taken down most of the shaman’s suicide bomber turret positions, because over time I’m still generating probably about 10% of my total mana per hour. But now that’s sinking again.

I have maybe about 13 percent left.

The goblins have calculated this well. The assassin that can move like in an invisible like state while still attacking gives them a win-win situation. He can either try to get rid of dwarven leaders before the dust of the battle clears; or if he can’t manage to pull that off, he can try to divert attention away from pursuing the retreating goblin and orc armies which is probably one of his mission goals. While pursuing either option, he can also hope to finish off any wounded dwarves or support staff on the way.

But there’s something neither of us accounted for.

The dwarves keep hunting dogs here at the keep with a dwarven tracker. I wonder…will the tracker with dogs make a difference? I’m curious about this concept.

We bide our time when the tracker finally catches up to our position encouraging his dogs and trying to excite them for the hunt. Finally he’s about twenty feet from our position while a pack of about five hunting dogs and a dwarven tracker dressed in leathers and furs gets released all the dogs at once.

The goblin assassin’s invisibility fails as he is ferociously eaten alive by all five dogs at once. They aren’t shy in tearing him up and he is literally ‘dogpiled’ in a storm of teeth and eaten alive while he screams until there’s nothing left. The hounds look like mild puppies as they wander around the other dwarves wagging their tails carrying fresh bones in their teeth from the former assassin. If they weren’t carrying goblin femur bones in their jaws and other freshly scavenged bones I’d have been tempted to make friends with them.

They look like a mixture between Labradors and rottweilers of some kind, with about the same size and height. They are versatile enough and big enough they could probably pull a small wagon if they needed to. But its interesting that they look remarkably well trained. Their master whistles and they go straight to him in perfect order wagging their tails with hyper speed and looking happy but submissive.

“That’s unbelievable,” I commented seeing them act like puppies now.

“Friendly dogs,” Asakura noted.

I think she’s being serious…

“I’m really curious who the goblin assassin was. Guess he couldn’t fool the dogs though,” I said as went to go find a place to rest and make sure Rina is safe too.