Delving a nest was a delicate business. One actually had to do some research on the kinds of monsters a nest commonly created. It was also quite wise not to delve alone. The monsters did not fight fairly. They fought in groups. They attacked from behind, from above, from below or, rarely, through the walls, mostly ghosts or other similar monsters but these had not been sighted in the nest Elise was about to enter.
"What you need to know," Gustav began, "is that there are different kinds of greenskins, as a mercenary might call them."
"I already know that," interrupted Elise, whose gaze wandered down the dimly lit corridor.
"Well, that makes it easier," the Dragen stated simply, four beams of light following his statement resulting in the smell of burning flesh rising to her nose.
"There you go," he said, pointing to a lone figure standing in the distance.
Elise eyed the last surviving member of the group. It was a common goblin armed with nothing but a crude wooden club. It roared upon spotting her, sprinting forward to meet her blade. Its head fell on the earthen floor and the headless goblin collapsed.
That ... had not been much of a challenge.
The young girl looked at Gustav, who just kept marching forward. The process repeated itself again and again until Elise finally had to fight a whole group consisting of five goblins. These were once again armed only with a wooden club.
The girl did what she had done before to fight groups of, one might argue, similar size. She simply waited patiently to avoid being clubbed to death by five goblins. Goblins were not known for being smart, they attacked everything that came into their field of vision. Fortunately, they did not seem to know any tactics.
A single goblin charged first, raising its club and trying to hit her. But Elise effortlessly cut off its arms before two more charged forward. They roared furiously and attacked her from the left and from the front.
Both reached her almost simultaneously. Elise frowned and dodged their attacks by taking three steps back. The goblins couldn't stop their momentum and one hit the other, causing it to growl angrily.
She raised her sword and moved forward to take advantage of the chaos. She stabbed the first goblin in its heart. The second goblin, noticing her advance, backed away and began to circle around her.
Elise eyed the goblin and noticed that it was holding the wooden club with one arm rather than two. Apparently the small collision and blow had resulted in an injury. She lunged forward and raised her sword. The goblin raised its mace to block her attack. Her sword only met resistance for only a second before it cut through the old wood and dug deep into its shoulder, almost severing its entire arm.
Quickly she yanked out her sword and attacked again, cutting off its head. The first goblin, having lost both its arms, fell to the ground almost simultaneously, having lost too much blood to continue living, or, more precise, screaming in pain.
Now there were only two more goblins left. Elise stepped forward and entered a guarding stance while waiting for the two goblins to attack her. They did not, however, forcing her to abandon caution and move forward. Her advance was followed by a thrust. Her sword struck the first goblin, but she missed its heart and had pierced its lung instead. A hiss of air escaped, followed by a steady trickle of blood.
The young girl took a step back and dodged the ensuing attack. The injured goblin hastily retreated, leaving its companion to fend for himself. Elise grinned, took a high stance, raised her sword high above her head and slashed at her opponent's head. It died almost instantly, having lost its brain, a result of a head cut into two almost equally sized parts.
The other goblin tried to run away and stumbled, perhaps because of the loss of energy. Elise quickly followed it, her sword piercing through its back and coming out the other side. The young girl managed to pull her sword out before the goblin collapsed forward. Otherwise she would have been forced to let go of the sword, a ribcage was not known to be where one stored a sword.
"Well done, Elise," Gustav said simply, staring contemptuously at the five corpses, "But don't expect your sword to cut through all the weapons a goblin might carry. Wood is possible, with iron or steel it becomes extremely difficult and it is almost impossible if they use anything else. It's always best to either make it impossible for them to fight, cut off their arms or legs, or kill them outright, a stab through the eyes or heart works wonders."
Elise nodded. Cutting the wooden club had been a bad decision on her part. If she hadn't put enough force into her attack, the sword would have gotten stuck and she would have been forced to use her fists or waste time getting her sword out.
"I understand," she said, "I will keep that in mind."
The old Dragen nodded and continued walking. The next few minutes passed rather uneventfully, simply because the nest had been unable to create any more goblins. After all, a group of much stronger foes had only recently delved into the nest.
But the calm did not last long. Gustav suddenly began firing a handful of beams into a dark part of the passage. Elise had seen no enemy. But the fact that she discovered the charred corpse of a bugbear, a hairy goblinoid with bear-like features, partially clad in plates, made her change her mind.
"I think we'll end up meeting a group of bugbears," Gustav said, "It looks like Tobias didn't actually kill them all. Maybe, it's rare, but the bubbear there was clearly just a scout."
His words proved to be true. Only moments later, a group of three bugbears of varying sizes appeared in their field of vision, amidst preparation for an ambush. But unfortunately they had been too slow to move their bodies into the cover of darkness. Gustav dispatched all but one with ease and urged her to fight the last bugbear.
Elise eyed the large creature warily. She had never fought a bugbear before. From what she knew about them, bugbears were more powerful than a simple goblin. Moreover, despite their large stature, these monsters moved quite quickly and also surprisingly stealthily. While most goblinoid monsters didn't seem to know the concept of flight, bugbears were quite the experts at escaping from fights when the odds were stacked against them.
She quickly formulated a plan in her head. The monster was big, at least twice her size and probably five or six times her weight. A wise decision would be to just run away, a bugbear was an opponent she could not defeat unless it did something really stupid or unless she suddenly managed to find out what her nodes did. It was best if she just tested the waters to see how far her own strength and skill could take her before she had to give up.
Elise considered attacking the Bugbear from unexpected angles and turning the fight into a battle of attrition. After the fight, she would have to take a break, but with Gustav at her side, a break was something she could actually do.
The girl clutched her sword tightly and went into what she called a hanging left stance. A stance that Heinz had taught her worked quite well against opponents she could not block. Instead, she had to deflect their attack and take advantage of their missed attack.
Elise stared at the bugbear, creating a 'Spectral Shield'. It was not unlikely to be hit at least once, so it was a wise decision to weaken the attack or even mitigate it altogether. She had also considered casting 'Magic Mirror'. However, it was doubtful that the bugbear could use magic. As far as she knew, bugbears preferred a purely physical style. Besides, it was an unwise decision to use many wild spells at once. It drained her mana and required quite a lot of concentration.
The bugbear walked slowly forward, aware of the dragen’s presence. The dragen appeared ready to end its life if it dared to do anything funny. The bugbear knew that the Dragen was a much bigger threat. However, it had seen what one of the dragen’s attacks had done and knew that its life was simply not over because the Dragen expected the bugbear to do its best while fighting what the bugbear saw as a much weaker creature.
Still, the bugbear couldn't help but feel uncomfortable. Something about its enemy screamed danger. Like any monster in a nest, it was aware of the fact that most of the intruders were adults, not small children. After all, it was a monster created by the nest. In the entire history of the nest, only seven children had entered it. Three had died, but four had managed to delve deeper than most of the other intruders.
The bugbear raised its club and eyed the unmoving girl, expecting her to run away or retreat. But the girl remained motionless and simply stared at the bugbear with her red eyes. Eyes that seemed to bore into the bugbear's soul. It could have sworn that the girl's shadow seemed to grow teeth and started to speak to its soul.
A shiver ran down the bugbear's spine, but it did not stop its attack. The large wooden club, riddled with sharp metal shards, came crashing down. With one fluid movement, the girl deflected the bugbear's attack into the ground. One of the metal shards drilled into the earthen floor, forcing the bugbear to pull it out, wasting precious time. Time that its opponent used to cut deep into its left foot, almost causing the bugbear to lose its balance.
The pain was unbearable. Willpower alone and the experience of many weeks of being in the nest allowed it to hold on. It roared angrily, raised its club and tried to strike its enemy. But this time the girl did not remain unmoving. She swiftly dodged the attack, popped up behind the bugbear and cut into its left foot again. This time the sword managed to cut through the remaining bones, nerves, muscles and skin, slicing the foot clean off.
The bugbear stumbled forward and crashed into the dirt where it fought against the ensuing wave of pain. Its eyes widened as it noticed its opponent's sword coming ever closer, taking advantage of the fall. It cried out angrily, cursing its maker and trying to call in as many reinforcements as it could. The Dragen be damned, he would kill the damned girl for sure.
The black sword dug deep into the haired chest, destroying its heart and ending the rest of its miserable life. As it died, it weakly grabbed the girl's left arm with its remaining strength before its life ran out.
Unfortunately, the fight did not end there.
A nest was, strictly speaking, a creation of magic. Noticing the bugbear's demise, perhaps even the girl’s rather weird presence, it raised its metaphorical eyebrows and created a small and simple trap just below the bugbear’s corpse. It then refocused on fighting the horde of undead that swarmed through the middle level, killing anything that met their blade or, more often than not, their magic.
Thus, after killing the bugbear, the girl noticed a huge amount of magic building up just below the bugbear's corpse. Although it might not have helped to have created some kind of anti-magic shield, the girl was unaware of it and just thought, "Shit..."
The Dragen, noticing the huge amount of magic, thought something similar but even more vulgar.
