Chapter 26: Chapter 23 – The Raid

The whole area descended into chaos almost instantly, explosions from spellcasters echoed from everywhere, shouts from multiple people mingled into a single sound that made it impossible for me to tell what was being said and the clangs of swords clashing joined the discordant sound of battle. Hearing the chaos made me relieved that I wasn’t a part of the vanguard as I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep up and pay attention to everything that is happening. Unfortunately this feeling didn’t last long as the first wave of Goblins ran at us, there was a lot of them but they were split into groups by the huts so the group I was in only had to deal with twenty standard goblins.

The group I was in consisted of me and Val in the back and two melee adventurers in the front protecting us, since everything had happened so fast after we were put into groups I didn’t get a chance to ask what their names were. One of them was a Human that was wearing standard leather armour and was using a short sword and shield, the other one was a gnome that also wore leather armour, except it was thinner so that they would be less constrained in their movement, they used a standard dagger.

Before the Goblins could get to the frontline I started to take pot-shots at them, not wanting to waste my mana I didn’t use my abilities and so took out five of them, meanwhile Val used a strengthened version of her fire bolt twice that took out three Monsters each. Our temporary party members took care of the remaining nine without any issue and I looked over the fallen goblins. Monsters in general don’t usually procreate, instead a group of monsters would subconsciously release mana over time and once enough of this mana had gathered another monster would be ‘born’. This meant that there were no children monsters which I was happy about because even though I knew that if they were left alone they would grow until they attacked a nearby village I still wasn’t sure I could bring myself to kill them.

I was only able to rest for a couple of minutes before the next wave came running at us, this time it was slightly more organised as only half of them were standard Goblins, some archers and a few warriors that were shouting orders at the others. Before the Goblins kept on charging at us with no thought as they were still scared of the adventurers behind them, this time however they all were a bit more coordinated thanks to the warriors and archers making them more confident so that their need to get experience overwrote their flight instinct.

Because of this the archers stopped running and started to fire shots at us, focusing on me and Val since we looked like squishier targets and we were the biggest risk to them at the moment. We dodged the arrows while returning fire, this time I used my [Quick Shot] to send two arrows each into two warriors and the fifth into one of the archers downing them instantly. Since I had grown stronger I could take down any of these weaker goblins with one or two standard shots so [Critical Shot] was useless at the moment.

Meanwhile Val used various AOE spells to take care of the weaker monsters that had clumped up. She even used one of her new spells that caused a mini tornado to pick up half of the goblins and throw them into a hut killing a few and severely hurting the rest. Seeing that she had the main part of the wave occupied I focused on the archers taking out the rest of them over a minute. Unfortunately we were all scraped a couple times by the arrows at this point so I also used a new spell.

I concentrated on my mana and forced it through my bow and onto my last arrow, which then started to glow a light green. I focused on the healing properties of nature and printed that onto the mana. Then with the hard part of the spell done I  aimed my bow straight up and let the arrow loose. As the arrow shot up a cloud that travelled with it formed around the arrow, once it reached about fifty meters above me the arrow dissolved into nothing and the cloud started to let out rain that was slightly tinted green. The cloud then travelled up another fifty meters before stopping and continuously raining for a good minute before it dispersed into nothing.

Everywhere on the ground that the water had hit a flower now grew, causing twenty meters surrounding me to turn into a mini meadow. Each time a rain drop hit an ally their wounds would slowly close and once the spell ended everyone’s wounds had mostly closed. By this point all the fighting had finished and it looked like the next wave would be a while as I couldn’t hear any of the fighting approach us.

Since I had used all my arrows in the last two waves I used this time to look through my bag, that I had placed slightly behind me before this all started, and take out my reserve arrows. activity to place down my bag and take out the other twenty arrows that I had brought along. Over the next five minutes the battle started to quieten which indicated that the raid would soon be finished. I couldn’t relax entirely though as the third, and final, wave soon came charging at us. It was massive and I contemplated telling everyone to run as I doubted we could defeat us and they would kill us all, what changed my mind though was that I could see a party of vanguards chasing them we would only have to hold them off for about a minute.

The wave consisted of three hobgoblins, two shamans and what could only be described as a metric shit ton of warrior archer and standard goblins. I looked around to see if anyone else was free to help us but all the other scouts also had waves to deal with so I shouted ‘Hold the small ones off, I can see help on its way. I will deal with the Hobgoblins and shamans.’ I punctuated this by using [Critical Shot] to send an arrow through its head before using the full barrage of [Quick Shot] to take out the other hobgoblin. As the second Hobgoblin Val I got a notification that I assumed was indication that I had levelled up, I couldn’t tell though as I dismissed it immediately, I would look at it once I was out of the fight.

Val decided to take out the last Hobgoblin by shooting an ice lance at it that shot into its belly before exploding into a sea of gore while taking out a few goblins that was around it. With all of the Hobgoblins dead in just twenty seconds I started to feel better as I focused on the Shamans. Unfortunately it turned out that they had a high dexterity as they would constantly dodge my shots, only occasionally getting scrapes. This couldn’t continue as the main wave had just hit the melee fighters and I worried they would be overwhelmed quickly so I used [Critical Shot] at one of the Shamans.

The extra speed that the [Critical Shot] gave to the arrow was enough to take the shaman by surprise and went through its heart, leaving only the other shaman left out of the evolved monsters that had run away. During this time they had been casting various spells at us, some we managed to dodge and others that we didn’t, these spells were all poisonous in some way and would slow down the person that they hit while dealing some damage over time. Seeing how the other Shaman went down tipped the other one off to my tricks so every time I used [Critical Shot] it would put up an arcane shield that the arrow just bounced off of.

This was starting to frustrate me and I was down to two arrows so I chugged one of my mana potions before taking out both arrows and knocking them onto the string and concentrating [Critical Shot] on both of them simultaneously. This took twenty five seconds instead of the usual but once it was over the arrows were loosed at the shaman, they saw this and put up another shield expecting it to block the shot. Unfortunately for it the force of both shots combined to break through the shield and subsequently the shaman, dropping it.

With the five biggest threats dealt with we managed to keep the few monsters that remained at bay until the vanguard party showed up. Not wanting to rely entirely on the I spent a few seconds to calm down slightly and the create a set of 20 arrows. They were made entirely out of wood and looked as if someone had forced a branch into growing in the shape of an arrow, they weren’t as strong as the arrows I had been using but they would get the job done.

As I did this I looked over the battle, dead bodies surrounded the two melee fighters in our group and Val set shot after shot into the middle of the wave, every time she sent a spell it would cause a hole to appear but it was quickly closed up by more Goblins. The vanguard had started to cut through the wave like butter, easily taking out multiple Monsters with a single swing of a sword or a barrage of arrows. At this point the arrows had finished growing out of the ground so I returned to the fight, unfortunately my only AOE spell caused vines to wrap around anything near to where they hit. It was still useful but it still required someone to go and finish them off before they got out.

We quickly finished off the rest of the wave and the vanguard approached us to make sure we were still ok. We had all suffered injuries but nothing life threatening so the party started to go elsewhere to see if anyone else needed help. I stopped them briefly to thank them for saving us, they said that anyone would have done the same before running off again, I did genuinely believe that we would have died without their support.

With the fight over I lay on the grass and couldn’t hear any fighting so that must have been the last of them, I didn’t know if The Red Rubies were fighting the [Goblin King] or if it was over but I thought about them as the adrenaline left my body and I fell asleep exhausted.