You are Summoned

Chapter 264. Humans vs. Minions.

I ordered my minions to gather together once more and sent my newest squad of kobolds to join them. The kobolds were still poorly equipped, just using sharpened wooden sticks as weapons, but they had received a new round of training in the barracks. We’d put that training to the test as I assaulted the village.

You have declared war on a faction you currently have a truce with. An early termination penalty will be assessed for violating the truce. All resource income will be reduced by 10% for the next 3 days. If there are further violations of agreements with other factions, the penalties imposed will increase. Factions specializing in deceit or subterfuge are exempt from pact-breaking penalties.

That was an unpleasant surprise, but I knew the system was going to do something bad if I broke the treaty. Still, going at the humans now was the best option, even if it cost me some resources. They were struggling with food issues and if I waited for the truce to expire, they might have time to harvest the creepy bird kills I’d granted them and could recover their strength.

It would be better to strike fast and with overwhelming force if I wanted to end this threat. There was a good chance I could force the village into confederation once I destroyed the town hall. I’d rather not wipe them out to the last person if I could help it. Another trade partner, even a reluctant one, was preferred over an empty population center.

The system seemed to have seeded at least one species in each type of terrain that we’d explored so far. I had the gnomes sharing our mountain, the elves in the forest, and now, the humans on the plains. I hadn’t gotten a view on what was past the plains yet, since I wanted my team to fully explore this section of the map before I expanded outward.

From what I could tell, the plains extended far into the distance, and given the borders on the map, we had maybe one more terrain type and a final faction to uncover. What happened after that, and after this first phase of the challenge was over, was a mystery.

As I waited for my forces to gather, I pulled up the information on the elves who were considered part of my faction now. While I didn’t have complete data on them, I could view their village. In addition to the trio of guards patrolling the trade route between our lands, the elves only had a couple others walking around with weapons.

I considered establishing a mutual defense pact with them and recruiting them to help against the humans. Their forces were still being rebuilt, and adding a couple of elves to the battle wouldn’t make a difference. Since the system had mentioned improved morale among the elves if I held off on conscription for a time, I decided to leave them out of the fight.

On the outskirts of the human village, my goblins were doing a good job of scouting out the enemy forces. The humans seemed to have around a score of people armed with simple weapons that were gathering into squads of five. Earlier, they had around a dozen confront us over the birds we’d killed, which must have been the bulk of their available forces.

Some of the human warriors had crude leather jerkins for protection, and all of them either carried a spear with a stone tip, or a wooden club as their weapon. Three of the warriors carried rough-looking short bows. Compared to Glurk’s masterwork longbow, or even Khurr’s hand crossbow, the human ranged weapons looked like something a kid would make at summer camp.

Given their arrows had the same crude tips as their spears, I doubted the bows would penetrate the armor of my front-line fighters. I would have to keep the kobolds behind the main line, as even the crude bows would tear them up. The enemy would have a slight numerical advantage, but my summoned minions were much better trained and equipped.

To my delight, half the human warriors left the village, escorting a large group of workers. They were heading to harvest the resources from the bird corpses before the fighting began. Unfortunately for them, my team was almost assembled and ready for a fight.

One of Major Finley’s training sessions came to mind. He explained that when fighting a numerically superior force, you should look for opportunities to separate them into smaller groups before taking them on. He called it defeating the enemy in detail, and it was exactly what my minions were about to do.

The drone team changed their pace to meet the goblins at the bird corpses right when the humans arrived. It took the slow-moving humans a bit to get there, and I almost ordered the goblins, who were tailing them, to engage early. I stuck to my guns and waited for all my forces to arrive. The kobolds would miss out on the first fight, but they weren’t exactly needed.

“Attack!” I ordered as the humans arrived and the villagers started harvesting the bird corpses using crude bone daggers that were oddly similar to the ones my kobold traders had. The tall grass of the plains hid my troops well, but the drone was kind of hard to miss and as he closed in, the warriors guarding the workers shouted out a warning and gathered to face the approaching threat.

The archers among our enemy loosed their first shots, the stone arrowheads shattering uselessly against the armored body of the drone. From behind the enemy, my goblins shouted a war cry and charged. Glurk fired arrow after arrow at the enemy, targeting the archers first, and dropping all three before the others got into melee range.

It was a massacre more than a fight. None of the enemy could best my troops in combat, and the drone was completely unstoppable as none of the weapons our enemies wielded could penetrate his armor. One by one the human warriors fell, and to my surprise, the villagers joined in the fight, attacking with their crude bone daggers.

The villagers did have a bit more luck than their warriors, having caught my troops by surprise as they waited until after their warriors had fallen before attacking. My minions had figured they were non-combatants and it took them a moment to respond to the threat. That moment was long enough for a pair of villagers to close in on Khurr and start stabbing his lightly armored body.

Yipping in pain, Khurr retaliated with his shortsword, cutting down his attackers with the help of Blieek who used his charge ability to skewer one of the humans. Elida dropped a pair of Minor Healing Burst’s on Khurr which had him good as new in moments. The last of the human party was down, and we’d only lost a couple of spell slots in dealing with them.

Elida spent a minute using Channel Mana to regain one of her spell slots as the party turned and headed toward the human village. My kobold squad met them there just before they arrived. The humans must have known something had gone wrong with the war party they sent to harvest the birds, as everyone working in the fields came running back to the walled settlement.

The low palisade might have protected the human village against the killer birds, but it was going to do little against my troops. I had my minions make a show of their approach, which gathered most of the surviving human warriors to that section of the wall. I could only see one of the defenders wielding a bow, and Glurk stalked forward to deal with him.

Only shoulder high, the wall provided some protection against missiles, but the enemy archer was more exposed, standing on something to give him a better line of sight on my troops. Despite having the height advantage, Glurk’s longbow had much better range. Given the goblin’s growing prowess with his weapons, he had little trouble hitting the target.

After firing, Glurk’s arrow arced over wall and hit the human archer in the center of his chest, dropping the man and eliciting a chorus of alarmed cries from the defenders. It was time for my drone to get to work, and he marched toward the wall like an invincible automaton. Another warrior gathered up the bow from his fallen comrade and stood to fire, only to also be brought down by Glurk’s archery.

Reaching the palisade, my drone just started to tear through it with little trouble. His bladed arms hacked through the ropes holding the posts together and his smaller arms pulled axes from his chest to use on the barrier. In less than a minute, the drone had hacked an opening in the flimsy defense, ignoring a few spear strikes and club hits from the defenders.

“Get the town hall, I urged the drone. It hacked through the remaining defenders, and the regular villagers didn’t attack this time, and instead fled to the shacks they lived in. There were only a dozen buildings in the village, and the largest in the center was obviously their town hall.

Like the rest of the structures, the town hall was flimsily built, a bit like my headquarters before the most recent upgrade. As he stalked toward the building, it looked like the surviving villagers were screwing up the courage to ty to stop him. Before they could sacrifice themselves uselessly, the grenade launcher on the drone’s shoulder fired off out three rounds that penetrated the thin wood of the town hall before exploding.

Fire broke out as the structure collapsed. The system confirmed I’d just won the very short war with the human village.

You have conquered the Village of Millstone and can now decide its fate.