Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

Running forwards while raising my sword up high I chased after the limping goblin while ignoring the one on the ground. With all the strength I could muster I brought my sword down against its shoulder which was unfortunately protected by a piece of armor. While that strike didn’t leave any dangerous injuries it did have enough force to knock the goblin down to the ground where I was able to keep it from moving by stomping down on it with my foot.

The goblin with its face now pressed to the ground and my foot pressing down on its back coughed and tried to crawl away, but given its small size and bleeding leg it was unable to muster up the strength to do so. Not that it mattered much as I conjured up a simple dagger with my geomancy and plunged it into the exposed neck of the creature. It managed one last breath before its throat filled with blood and it slowly lost consciousness and died.

Turning my attention towards the second goblin I saw it too was attempting to escape my crawling away, the small trail of blood was evidence that its method wasn’t entirely pointless. However it would likely bleed out before making any significant progress, so I walked over to the struggling creature and plunged my earthen dagger into its neck as well creating a second bloody corpse.

With the two most immediate goblins now dead or dying I rushed back over to the edge of the hill we were standing upon and looked over the edge for the last remaining goblin, however with the darkness that enveloped the cavern I couldn’t see it. All that it left behind were its tracks it made as it fell down the hill and rolled around till the bottom. I was tempted to follow its tracks and hunt this one remaining goblin down, but the risk was far greater than I was willing to take. ‘I don’t know what that goblin was thinking or what it knows, for all that I could know it might be retreating back to its lair where more could be hiding.’

With little need of such a bright light I dimmed my small ball of fire which would also preserve my mana reserves, luckily I had only used around six units of mana through that whole fight. Three units went towards the tri earth bolts spell and the other three went towards the exceptionally bright light I created.

With a surplus to my mana reserves I started looting the four goblins of anything of value. The most obvious thing I took was their weapons and armor, the design and quality were roughly the same as the group I found at the entrance of the cavern. But I also found a few other things that they had stashed within their things.

The first thing I found excluding the armor was a small pouch of some sort of plant, whatever it was it had been dried and packed into this small pale leather pouch. It didn’t have any distinguishing spell so I just tossed it into my new dimensional bag with the armor. The second interesting thing I found was a second pouch, this one being filled with some sort of powder. Since these sorts of things tend to be very very dangerous to inhale or ingest without an examination beforehand I decided against smelling or tasting the powder.

The last object of interest I found was a small piece of what appeared to be a white wood totem in the familiar shape of the demon warlock that was living down here. I didn’t sense any magic within the object and I didn’t see any inscriptions along the sides leading me to conclude that this was just some personal trinket of some religion these goblins have created around the greatest power they know of.

At least that is what I hoped, there were of course several other possibilities that I didn’t want to think about such as the possibility of goblin occultists. Though that was unlikely given the lack of goblin’s casting magic down here, the only outlier was dead on the nineteenth floor.

With everything of value I could find now within my bag I started walking off further into the darkness with my ball of fire as the only company for the time being.

**********

“Well this is certainly new.” I said to myself as I was atop of the dim mushroom caps overlooking what appeared to be a large camp consisting of entirely goblins. It was far past the caves that led to the goblin warlord and the demon warlock that were such an issue the first time I, Lyra, and her mercenaries were down here.

The goblins numbered in at least one or two hundred, I could even hear a hammer striking metal every so often past all the noise they created. I also spied what appeared to be fields that were growing large amounts of food, predictably they were the very same mushrooms that I was forced to eat during my first several weeks within the dwarven city that I stole from other goblins.

Watching for a while longer I noticed several groups of goblins coming and leaving the camp bringing dead animals with them. Most of said animals were completely new to me, but there was one that was familiar, it was the large pig-like animal that looked like it had no eyes.

The groups that were doing this were no larger than five in size which led me to believe that I might have just ambushed a group of hunters instead of warriors. ‘But they were carrying swords and daggers, that certainly doesn’t sound like something a hunter would carry. Also I can see those hunters are carrying several spears each, most likely hunting spears.’

I supposed that raised a few questions for what the goblins I recently killed were doing, they might have been normal hunters like the ones I could see right at that moment. But they might have been something else, perhaps even bandits of some kind. ‘I don’t see why goblins wouldn’t have several groups making up their own societies. These goblins might not even have anything to do with the demon warlock, maybe it's just some cult or something.’

With little else to gain from watching these goblins from a distance I slowly climbed back down the way I came, with several sharp objects conjured from earth attached to my body and a whole lot of time and patience.

Slowly I made my way to the bottom taking my sweet time to prevent any dangerous and harmful falls. But I could hear something or someone making loud vocalizations somewhere on the ground as I did so. From the distance I was at I couldn’t be certain, but I figured they sounded an awful lot like the goblins from before.

When I reached the ground I knew for a fact my thoughts were correct, a goblin was shouting like a spoiled noble child at something and I slowly crept towards the source of it. The large stems of the giant mushrooms messed with the sound a little but I eventually found the source just outside of the strange forest.

More goblins were standing about in two distinct groups each carrying their own weapons. The leaders of these two grounds were looking rather unhappy with each other and what I assumed were their subordinates looked about ready to start swinging.

The dim glow of the mushrooms was just enough for me to make out the silhouettes of the goblins and distinguish the two groups, otherwise I would have just assumed that it was one ground with a bit of infighting. The dim light was also enough to dispel my ball of fire entirely and keep my mana reserves from being drained even a little.

Unfortunately I didn’t know how to speak even the smallest amount of the goblin language, as such the argument basically was no different from two animals screeching and growling at each other which was then followed by weapons being drawn and more shouting before the first blood was drawn. It was the goblin on the right side of the small area that thrusted its short sword towards the face of its enemy which was met with a yelp of surprise.

With that one act of violence the other goblins that were until a moment ago standing on the sidelines immediately readied their weapons and started running forwards, what happened next could only be described as a messy brawl. Skill certainly wasn’t a major port of joining either of these groups as the goblins were basically just swinging their weapons wildly.

I would have been a little insulted if it wasn’t being so effective in this scenario, I saw several goblins on both sides fall to the ground. Some were crawling away, others got back up and started fighting again, but there were a few that fell and stopped moving after that.

The two leading goblins were quickly lost amongst the shadows as I watched from the sidelines. I tried moving around the outside of the fight to get a better angle but I was left with the same pile of shadows filled with sloppy swings left and right.

What felt like an hour but was most likely only several minutes later and the two groups were basically gone and only a handful were left standing. There were of course several wounded on both sides and the winning side was quickly preparing to change that fact, or there were before I started to change that fact.

Since I had enough natural light in the area to see and fight clearly I didn’t need to worry about keeping my ball of fire burning for a source of light. Instead I could use my mana to cut down as many of these goblins as I could with any spell I had learned.

To start out I decided to go with the simple Tri Earth Bolts spell and with a flick of my hand they shot forwards into three of the unsuspecting backs of my remaining opponents.

I had my bolts aimed towards their heads, but I could be certain where they hit due to the dim lighting. All I knew was that two of those three goblins fell shortly after I felt my bolts make contact and my control over them disappeared. It took a moment for the other goblins to react to their sudden injuries or deaths as they were all in the back row, but they quickly connected their wounded allies and the direction of where the bolts sticking out of them.

In the dim light I was able to see the ever so slight gleam of light reflecting in their eyes, the only good thing was that I was behind the giant mushroom right next to the one I fired my first volley from, as such I could still see their eyes in this darkness as well.

For a moment I felt my heart stop as they were looking towards my location like a pack or hungry animals, for a brief moment I understood why the common people were so scared of these things, why they were hunted down like dangerous animals when they acted more like a pack of dangerous subterranean animal people than anything else.

I didn’t need to check my HUD to know that I still have a majority of my mana at hand to cast whatever spells I wanted to. ‘It's been a while since I have casted anything above just a tier one spell, perhaps now would be a good time to change that.’

Reaching within the depths of my mind I pulled upon the knowledge of the fire wave spell, something that I became rather fond of for dealing with groups of close enemies. The fact that the flames might even temporarily blind any goblins that somehow survive didn’t even cross my mind at the time as I stepped out from behind the giant mushroom stem and into the view of the six or so on edge goblins.

While clearly angry and with a target to vent their grievances on, the goblins raised their weapons high and started running towards me, from what I could tell they were carrying more of those curved swords that were relatively excellent for slashing attacks.

Without wasting a moment I started casting the Fire Wave spell with the arcane words and the hand movements to keep the powerful spell steady. I just barely finished the spell when the group was just two meters from me. A bit of habit I immediately pushed the spell forwards and unleashed the powerful wave of fire a bit prematurely. Instead of killing all of the goblins that were rushing towards me I instead killed three or four and wounded the rest while also blinding them and hurting myself with the sudden burst of light. When the flames died down I saw that I did kill four and I wounded those remaining, but they were stumbling around like they were incapable of seeing anything.

‘That wasn’t my best idea, pyromancy in a place that is wrapped in a thick blanket of darkness. Next time I think I will be sticking with geomancy spells, that has sort of become my specialty in terms of magic types.’

With little time to waste I casted another spell, another Tri Earth Bolts spell that I used to kill the two remaining goblins from a safe distance as even in their temporary blindness they were still more than happy to sing their weapons around without any regard for anyone else.

/- - - - - -\

+ 75 Exp x 8 (600)

Level 10, Next at 8000

+ 10 points

\- - - - - -/

I smiled at the notification that appeared within my view the moment the last two goblins were dead. ‘Eight goblins killed by me, not bad given the starting numbers. It was just enough to boost me over that six thousand six hundred threshold and reach level ten again.’ I didn’t even need to look at my HUD further to know that my mana capacity had increased further and thus increased my mana recovery, I was also tempted to use my additional ten points right then and there to empower myself further. But I stopped myself, anyone else who might be watching could do exactly what i just did and swoop in and take everything while I was distracted. Instead I should be picking up everything of value and getting out as soon as possible before someone else has the same idea I did.