by Ivan Kal
Skinning III
Herbalism I
Enchanting V
Inspect III
Energy Manipulation III
Arcane Mark I
ABILITIES
Scatter Shot II
Piercing Shot I
Nature Sight II
Nature Sense II
Power Infusion V
Power Siphon II
Energy Arrow III
Rain of Arrows I
Exploding Arrow II
Ward II
Satisfied with his stats, he glanced at Sabila and waved at her. “Bye, Sabila.”
“Bye, master,” Sabila said, and sent him back out.
The others seemed to have done the same as he had.
He turned to look at Clara, who had a big smile on her face. “Did you hit level 10?” Morgan asked.
“Yes.” Clara smiled, and then pulled out her class stone and popped it in her mouth. Her eyes unfocused, and Morgan turned to others.
“Any leveling up?”
All of his friends nodded their heads, which meant that they had hit 13 like Morgan.
A moment later Clara came back to the real world and smiled at the group. “You are looking at a new Aegis-class healer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
A few days after they got back to the Guild Hold, they had a visitor from Terbon: a messenger carrying a letter for Morgan.
“What did it say?” Vall asked during their daily meeting.
“Mayor Fennes got word back from the few neighboring settlements,” Morgan said.
Vall looked at him impatiently. “And?”
“Out of the four that he contacted, two are willing to join us—a fishing village on the coast, Orsa, and the mining town of Gebel. The town of Jarul wishes to negotiate, and the town of Heddos refused.”
“That’s a good start,” Lucius said.
“It is. The only thing is that I need to go there in person to have them swear to us.”
“That has always been the case,” Vall said.
“I know,” Morgan said, but he really didn’t feel like leaving the Hold right now. They had just started getting things off the ground, soon enough they would have enough materials for a wall around the plateau, and he already had plans on building another one at the base of Reach that would surround a smaller village he planned on building conventionally. He planned on having more workers here, and to move in people from the other settlements. For now, he just didn’t want them living in camps like they were now. And then there were the goblins; they needed to deal with that as well. They had some time, still, but he didn’t want to meet them for the first time when they arrived at Reach. He wanted to start scouting them out as soon as possible, to gather more information, but there was just too much to do.
“How long would it take me to go and visit all these places?” Morgan asked.
“Three weeks minimum,” Lucius answered.
Morgan grimaced. “Fine, I guess I have no choice. I’ll assemble a group of people and we’ll go,” Morgan said. He would need to leave someone here to be in charge, so he would probably take Ves and a few of the Sky Guard.
“Good,” Vall said. “We need to increase our domain, get more people here to work and more to ascend. We need to get our Guild level up as well—it will give us more bonuses as it becomes stronger.”
Morgan agreed, he just didn’t want the hassle; still, he was the one who had wanted to be the leader. Suck it up.
They ate dinner as Lucius and Vall reported on the most important things that Morgan had to know, and they debated how to proceed.
The next day, Morgan was standing in front of the Great Hall, looking over the plateau. He was surprised at how quickly it became so busy. The dormitory was placed against the mountainside, half hidden in the hole that the creation of the Guild Hold had created—and a bit away from the Great Hall, near the stream, was a cleared area which they had dedicated to training grounds. He could see Clara from here, training there with a few of the Sky Guard. She had summoned bark armor over her body and held her staff in her hands. She was a healer, but Morgan had suggested that she put some effort and points into fighting with that staff—it wouldn’t be good for her to be completely defenseless.
He watched as she tripped one of the Sky Guard and sent him tumbling to the ground. He heard a chuckle from behind him and turned his head to see Ves standing next to him.
“She is feisty,” Ves said.
“She is,” Morgan agreed.
“I like her. She is a good person,” Ves said.
Morgan didn’t reply. It wouldn’t be good for him to comment on how good of a person he thought Clara was, especially since he found her rather cute. Not that he would ever do anything; he was with Ves, and he loved her. Still, he had eyes.
The stood there in silence, simply enjoying each other’s company. It was comforting somehow, and it was something that Morgan never had before. This familiarity, the feeling of being content.
Too bad that it was interrupted by yelling and screaming. Everyone who was outside turned and looked at the man running toward them from the road down the mountain.
It was Orden—he was bloody and dirty, and also out of breath. Morgan and Ves reached him first. The man tried to speak, but he just couldn’t get anything coherent out. Clara finally reached them and immediately put her glowing hands on him. The man’s injuries shrunk and disappeared, and he got his breathing under control over the next few minutes.
“What happened?” Morgan asked.
Orden was still shaking, but he spoke much more coherently. “The quarry, we were attacked.”
“Who attacked you?” Ves asked.
“Goblins…and hobgoblins,” Orden whispered.
Clara cursed, and Morgan remembered how hobgoblins were made. It made him sick to his stomach.
“Go get your brother!” Morgan said to Ves. “We need to get there fast.” I’m not about to leave my people to those monsters.
Before she could go, Orden caught her hand. “Stop. There is no point… They are dead. They are all dead.”
Morgan looked at the man, seeing the look on his face. He wanted to argue, but Orden’s eyes convinced him that he was telling the truth.
Orden spoke again.
“They are coming here.”
“What?” Ves asked surprised.
Before Orden could answer, Morgan raised his hand. “How many, and how long do we have?”
Orden shook his head. “They were just behind me, but I was faster. An hour, maybe, half an hour, probably. And I don’t know how many. At least a hundred.”
“A large raiding party,” Clara said through clenched teeth.
“Morgan…” Ves started. “We don’t have any defenses.”
Morgan was quite aware of that fact. They had a few ascended, but most of their people were non-ascended, and their camp at the base of Reach was undefended. “Get Vall and Lucius to the hall. Clara, go down to the base camp and warn the workers, have them come here.”
Morgan was already trying to come up with a plan—and he needed to come up with a good one.
They were gathered around the hearthstone, with Morgan looking through the menus of the add-ons that they could build. They had some materials stockpiled; Morgan had planned on having more buildings built and a wall around the plateau, and maybe even around the base of Reach. He had intended on building a town down there eventually. Now, however, they needed something fast. The typical build time for buildings was several hours, so he couldn’t build something so large. In the end he decided on two small scout towers, both at the top of the road leading to the plateau. It would take just about half an hour for them to be built, and they would be simple, wooden things. They didn’t have the materials nor the time for anything else.
He blinked his eyes and returned his attention to the people around him as black mist left the hearthstone and flew out of the windows.
“How did we not notice them before?” Vall asked an
grily.
Lucius shook his head. “We have only a single patrol unit to cover a vast area around Reach. It isn’t enough.”
“There is no point in arguing about it now. We’ll have company soon,” Morgan said, ending their argument. He turned to Clara.
“Does this mean that the goblin king has finished uniting the tribes and is sending his armies south?”
Clara thought about it for a long moment. “I…I don’t think so. If he had, we would’ve seen the entire army here. My people would’ve come down this way before then, too. From what Orden had described, this looks like a raiding party.”
Morgan nodded, filing that information in his head. He could worry about the goblin king later; now, they needed to survive the coming storm.
“All right, this is what we will do,” Morgan said, and then explained his plan, though there wasn’t much to it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The two towers were finished just as they got all the workers from the camp up to the plateau, along with anything that they thought was valuable enough to carry up the mountain road.
At about the same time, the raiding party arrived. Looking down, he could see them rush into the camp, searching for prey. When they didn’t find any, they started wrecking and setting the tents on fire. Morgan grimaced at their battle cries and howls. They were far up he couldn’t see much more than tiny shapes moving about, and there was no way to for him to use his Inspect on them or even tell how many there were.
Orden’s recollection of the attack suggested that this raiding party was better equipped than even the large party they had fought off at Terbon. He knew that this was not going to go as easily for them as that fight had. They had no walls, they hadn’t had the time to prepare traps, and had hardly had time to strategize at all. Still, they had moved some of the logs that they had around the plateau and made simple barriers. It was no wall, but Morgan hoped that they would help. They put them around the top of the road, next to the two towers and leaving a hole in the middle. Morgan hoped that goblins would rather rush through the opening that try and climb over the logs, but he did have a plan for if they did try to climb.
It was several minutes before the enemy started climbing up the road. Morgan cursed the fact that they had cleared and made the road more passable. They had even widened it a bit so that carts and wagons could pass more easily, but now that would help the raiding party get up to them faster and safer. If only they had the time, Morgan could’ve made it impossible for them to reach them, making traps, collecting boulders to roll down the road—all of these things were feasible, if they only had the time to do them. He cursed himself for not preparing before, but he had thought that they had time.
When the enemy reached about halfway up the road, Morgan motioned to the group. Morgan and Clara climbed one of the towers, and Titus took the other one. They were not very tall, maybe double Morgan’s height, and they were barely large enough for two people to stand on the top. They climbed up through the ladder inside the square tower. Once up there, Morgan glanced to the rest of his people. Ves and Vall were standing just inside the opening in their hastily assembled barriers, and Lucius and Orden stood behind them with the Sky Guard ascended. Over toward the edge of the plateau were the non-ascended, holding simple bows in their hands and getting ready to fire down on the enemy as they came into range. Morgan didn’t like them standing there like that—the enemy might not be able to scale the rock wall, but they had no cover.
They also didn’t have a choice.
The first to come around the bend were tall monsters, as tall as an average human. They had muscled bodies with a green, and some even brown, tint to their skin. Their faces had goblin-like features, with longer noses and long pointed ears, but these had tusks peeking out of their mouths. Morgan recognized that they were hobgoblins, and he shivered as he remembered how those were made once more. It was another thing that made him hate the goblin bastards even more. The hobgoblins had tall shields in their hands and assortment of weapons from swords to clubs and axes. As soon as they came in range, Morgan yelled out.
“Fire!” he ordered as he took aim and let an arrow fly. Clara had said that hobgoblins were not very intelligent, even when compared to goblins, but that they were stronger. Still, the hobgoblins had enough sense to put their shields up. His arrow found its mark, but many of the others didn’t. They kept firing, but the hobgoblins kept their shields up, protecting those behind them as they approached the opening on the top.
A few of the goblins had bows themselves, and started firing at the unprotected non-ascended. Morgan saw one man take an arrow in the chest and tumble over the edge. The others ducked back, stopping their fire as spears and arrows started flying their way. They moved to fire only intermittently, and then only when the attackers fire lessened. Morgan fired off his warded arrows, splashing the area in weakening auras. They still kept coming. Titus started chanting something, and a moment later a ball of fire left his staff, hitting the hobgoblin shields and exploding, sending several of them flying. Morgan and the non-ascended took advantage of that and fired a volley into the opening.
They still hadn’t halted the attackers. They pushed forward, abandoning their defense and covering the short distance remaining in a rush. The hobgoblins reached the opening followed by a wave of goblins, and were met by Ves’s bear. It laid into them, swiping from side to side, but there were too many opponents, and they were cutting at the bear from every side. Ves had her ice armor and icicles covering her shield, and she fired them off at the attackers. Vall jumped into the air and came down in the middle of them with a stomp that cracked the ground and sent those around him tumbling. A moment later his sword caught on fire, and he whirled around, sending a ring of fire flying a few paces out.
But the goblins kept coming.
Morgan and the rest were firing their arrows at them as they came up the road. Titus continued throwing fire at them, and Clara was keeping her buff over Ves and Vall beneath the tower. They goblins coming up were holding their shields up, at least those that had them, but the non-ascended and Morgan were taking a lot of them out. It didn’t seem to slow their assault. Then Morgan saw a ball of fire flying in his direction, and he didn’t have the time to move out of the way. The fireball reached the tower and exploded against an invisible shield in front of it. Morgan noticed Clara standing next to him with her hand raised up.
“Thanks,” Morgan whispered, getting a small smile from Clara in return. Then Morgan swiped his eyes across the attackers and found two magic users preparing to fire more bolts at them. He fired at them, taking one in the throat—and Titus sent a lance of fire at the other, burning him to cinders.
And then a few of the goblins and hobgoblins broke through the opening, managing to get around Ves and Vall as they held off the rest. Lucius and the Sky Guard met them in melee. Morgan was doing as much as he could to lessen the throng coming—already more than fifty attackers had come up the road, and he had no idea how many more there were.
Vall released a roar, freezing all the goblins around him in place. Ves’s bear mauled the rest, and then they moved back. Morgan recognized the signal and he changed his target, firing at two large clay pots placed near the opening. His arrows smashed them, and water flew out. Ves smashed her shield into the ground in the center of the opening, and the water flowed toward her. She than raised her shield and pushed, forming a wall of ice between the two towers. The two of them then turned around and ran to help Lucius and the Sky Guard.
The goblins left outside were slamming into the ice wall, chipping at it, and they had filled out the road. Morgan turned to the non-ascended on the edge.
“Do it now!” Morgan ordered, and the non-ascended dropped their bows and ran over to the logs, keeping the goblins from spilling over the sides of the road. They each took hold of the levers, stabbed them at the base of the logs, and pushed. Clara chanted and then threw her hands out, putting a large circle on the ground in the middle of the atta
ckers. A moment later a dark purple glow enveloped them, and Morgan saw them visibly lose strength.
The non-ascended yelled out from the effort, but they managed to push the logs off, and the long round pieces of wood tumbled down the road, rolling over the goblins and crushing them. In only a moment, they had managed to clear the road.
Then more of them came around the bend.
“Oh, come on!” Morgan said as he fired his arrows at them. They didn’t have the logs now to protect them, and the enemy would be able to spill into the plateau far too easily.
Ves and Vall moved back to the towers as the ice wall broke apart and new attackers rushed forward. Titus was throwing fire at them, but there were just too many of them. He saw Ves’s bear falter under its injuries amidst the goblin throng before falling down and disappearing into mist.
Then Morgan heard a loud thumping sound, and he turned to look down the road. Coming just around the bend was something big—a white-skinned monster with a large, bald head and a flat face. It was tall, as tall as the tower Morgan was standing on, and wide, bulky. It was dragging what looked like a tree trunk behind itself.
“Fuck me sideways,” Morgan whispered, just as Clara noticed it.
“An ogre!” she yelled.
Titus noticed it and started firing off his balls of fire at it, but it didn’t seem to do much more than piss it off. The ogre roared and started rushing forward, stomping on the goblins in its path. It reached the tower and swung its tree-club at it. Morgan could see Titus’s eyes widen from where he was standing, and he saw the moment when Titus turned and jumped off from the tower. The ogre’s club smashed the tower, sending pieces over the Sky Guard and the goblins fighting there.