Beyond All Expectations (Emerilia Book 8)

by Michael Chatfield

  Days

  Hours

  Minutes

  Seconds

  17

  8

  51

  38

  She pushed the timer away and opened up the timer for the Goblin Mountain. Once everyone had seen it, it was accessible in the Event tab.

  Spawn Point (Goblin Mountain)

  Days

  Hours

  Minutes

  Seconds

  9

  2

  44

  18

  “Eight days between the two.” Lucy rubbed her forehead, a headache brewing as she moved to the tab with the information on the orcish swamplands and then shared it with the rest of the Stone Raiders’ leadership.

  ***

  Malsour stepped out of the teleport array and found Dave.

  “There you are!” Dave said.

  “What did I miss?” Malsour looked sideways at Dave.

  “We’re going to Goblin Mountain in a few hours. What have you been up to?” Dave asked.

  “One big exit formation laid then I was putting in missile tubes. Had to get to the moon’s surface, make doors from the surface material and then lay them in. I put in Light runes on the ends of the tubes so that they can cut through the rock no matter what,” Malsour said.

  “Huh, makes sense.” Dave nodded.

  “So, what’s this about Goblin Mountain? Thought it would take a few more days before we were able to get anything outside it. Thought that it was going to be really close, actually,” Malsour said.

  “Well, seems that the Lady Air was willing to give a helping hand.” Dave turned and moved for the exit. “Though right now we need to get you headed over there. You’re the strongest Dark mage we’ve got and you were in charge of making the other outpost at the Six Affinities Temple. As such, you’ve been picked to head up this job.”

  “How many people have I got and what kind of resources?” Malsour asked.

  “Well, I just got you a Mana well and some clean soul gem constructs that will clean a designated area and create a pad underneath. You just need to worry about the damned walls. Also, figure out what settings you want to have in the soul gem constructs. Be easier to program in the magical coding for Mana shields and barriers than doing it into the surface of the walls,” Dave said.

  “Makes sense. Can I see the Mana well?”

  Dave threw him a pouch of holding that could be folded out to pick up and drop larger items.

  Malsour pulled out the soul gem-covered Mana well. With a flick of his hand, his surfboard came out, creating a hand to hold it.

  The Mana well was only two feet along each side, but the soul gem was about five meters wide in every direction and packed with power. With the power buildup, it would make the soul gem grow faster.

  Malsour also saw a number of vault soul gems were in the bag to speed up the growth.

  He accessed the soul gem construct and checked the settings. It had the basics within it and connected to his interface. Basically, it was drag and drop. They would make different structures from preset items, or things that they coded in, on their interface. Then once they accepted it, there was a certain amount of power required and a timer that would say when everything would be completed.

  With more power, the timer went down; with less items or less complicated items being made, then the timer would also go down.

  It was like a city building but with less necessary resources and messing around.

  Malsour followed Dave as he continued to play with the settings. “How many people are we taking, and how many people are supposed to be based there?”

  “About a hundred thousand are going with us. There should be around fifty thousand based there. We’ve got fifteen thousand in three dwarven warclans, then fifty thousand DCA, with half of them being aerial and half ground forces. The rest is made up of players, supporting groups like the mage’s and adventurer’s guild,” Dave said.

  Malsour tapped his chin in thought. “I’ll make it double the size of the outpost at the Six Affinities Temple, but then I’ll make the walls taller so that more people can fire from them at any time. Also make sure that it’s on a rise so that the dwarven artillery has maximum range. Also emplacements along the top of the walls for their guns as well.” Malsour dissolved into talking to himself as Dave led him into Terra, and then to an area where there were thousands of soldiers preparing themselves.

  Up front were the Stone Raiders, followed by the dwarves, and then the scouting DCA and elven forces. Finally there were the engineers as well as Dark and Earth mages. The mounted fighters were all waiting off to the side, ready to move in but not blocking up the routes for those who would be going first.

  “Oh, Shard told me that we should be getting the second section turning and attached within a short while,” Dave said.

  Malsour looked up from his increasingly complex blueprint on his interface. “That soon? It will be good to see. The third section should come along even faster than the second.”

  “And we’ve already gained permission for the fourth and fifth section,” Dave said with a proud smile.

  “It would be five kilometers long by that time,” Malsour said in a somewhat stunned voice.

  “Yeah, be bigger than most major cities in all of Emerilia. Though we have more traffic moving through Terra than any other city in the world. We’ve got jobs and opportunities—people are always looking for those things,” Dave said.

  Malsour nodded as a whistle cut through the air, making those with good hearing wince as conversations died down.

  “The ono has been placed. Moving out in one minute!” Josh said to the event group assembled to tackle Goblin Mountain.

  People checked their gear one more time as Dave and Malsour moved quickly to the front of the groups to where the Stone Raiders waited. Among them was Party Zero.

  “What are you doing here, Deia?” Malsour asked with a stunned voice.

  “Mom is looking after little Koi. It’s been awhile since I got to be on the front with everyone. I need to see that my skills haven’t become rusty,” Deia said.

  Malsour nodded. It made sense. Deia was the leader of Party Zero, but it had been months since she had been really in the thick of a battle or that she had been able to unleash her true strength. She had refined her spells and abilities in those few months but there was no telling what she would be able to do now.

  Malsour looked at the members of Party Zero. By now they were all veterans of tens of battles. They knew what was coming; still, it didn’t stop them from having that nervous edge that came with a new adventure that had the possibility for leaving people wounded, or worse.

  Jung Lee had formally joined Party Zero. Jekoni floated beside him, looking at the assembled forces with interest.

  The teleport pad flared to life; the wall behind it was replaced by a grass plain with a massive mountain standing over it all.

  “Move out!” Josh yelled. The Stone Raiders lurched forward. The other groups followed closely behind as they left Terra and came to the base of Goblin Mountain.

  Malsour’s senses extended outward as soon as he was through the portal.

  “These locations look decent,” Dave said. Markers appeared in Party Zero’s shared map.

  Malsour looked to them all, checking them against what he had sensed and could see. “This position.” Malsour picked a location.

  “Okay, you two get started and be ready for those coming behind us. I’m passing it up to Josh,” Deia said.

  Malsour and Dave nodded. Malsour waved for Steve to join them as they ran for a single glowing marker.

  In the quiet meadow, the creatures that had been enjoying the midday sun were suddenly startled as the shiny rock with odd characters all over that had appeared out of nowhere flared to life, and then began pouring out people from all kinds of races.

  They started to move for one position as the creatures fled, stunned by the sudden events. However, these were creatures t
hat lived on the Ashal continent. If they didn’t know how to run away, or when to fight, then they wouldn’t have survived to this point.

  Just minutes after the people started spreading out into the meadow, the ground shook as a shining material with motes of light contained within it spread out from a large sphere of the same material. It spread out like a snowball melting in the summer light, revealing a box that still had a thin layer of the glowing material covering it.

  The wild animals in the meadow weren’t the only ones to notice this growing material, or the way the earth shook just before massive metal pillars shot out of the ground as if they were sea monsters rising from the depths of the sea.

  A group of scavenging goblins made to attack the feeble creatures in front of them. As they raced forward, yelling their war cries, a dozen arrows cut off their cries. Shadows flitted outward as people coming out of the glowing rock spread in all directions. Most had pointy ears, beast-like features, or wings on their backs. This was the DCA and elven forces!

  The Terra Alliance had staked their claim to the plot of land outside of Goblin Mountain and they had brought a force capable of defending it.

  BAE Chapter 11: Enemy Territory

  The Stone Raiders’ scouts had gone off with the DCA and elven forces, led by Josh.

  Esa, Dwayne, and Kim were working with the dwarves to secure their lines.

  The four dwarven warclans each faced a different direction, creating a rounded-out square with interlinked shields planted into the ground. Dwarven artillery was being brought to bear, the artillery commanders and their crews securing the artillery to the already two-hundred-meter-wide soul gem sheet that covered the ground.

  Among the dwarven lines, there were the Stone Raiders as well as members from the Fellox and Portal Purge guilds.

  The dwarves made up the front lines simply because they were more coordinated than even the Stone Raiders. If they had allies in front of them, then their ability to fight would be greatly reduced.

  So the players took secondary positions, ready to aid as needed.

  Dave and Steve were finishing up with the commands for the soul gem construct as well as placing soul gems around the Mana well in slots that drained the power into the soul gem construct.

  Malsour and Jung Lee were with the engineers and mages with a Dark or Earth Affinity.

  The Earth mages moved out. Their job was to level out the forested areas a bit more, as well as collapse any tunnels that were underneath it.

  The Dark mages were all bringing threads of stone and metal from the bedrock below; these would hook into the soul gem construct and be the basis of the walls.

  “Done!” Dave said after he’d checked the plans for the fifth time. He accepted them and the soul gem construct stopped just growing outward wildly; one-foot-wide lengths shot out in four directions.

  They reached out five hundred meters in every direction before spreading outward to either side until they reached the other edges of the extended soul gem lengths. Once they met, they spread out ten meters and then started growing upward, creating the basis of the wall.

  “Good here,” Steve said. He’d been working on the overall magical coding as well as checking the structural strength of everything.

  “Well, now you can help me with feeding this thing power.” Dave pulled out more and more vault soul gems, draining them.

  An automated cart came through the still open ono. A repair bot picked up the empty soul gems before racing back to Terra. It would charge them off of Terra’s power grid and bring them back.

  Dave continued to dump more soul gems in the power intakes. The soul gem construct continued to grow at a rapid rate.

  Finally, the threads from the bedrock had secured themselves to the Mana well and the foundations of the soul gem inner layer for the walls. They started breaking through the ground and wrapping around the growing soul gem walls. The glass-like walls became much thicker and imposing as they were covered in layers of stone, metal, and sand. These layers were the best to protect the walls.

  With the number of Dark mages and various engineers, the soul gem constructs were only just capable of growing faster.

  The automated cart and repair bot reappeared with charged soul gems. It came with an extra Aleph repair bot. This one pulled off the soul gems, placing them into the right place while another gathered up the used soul gems.

  Dave and Steve dropped off their remaining soul gems for the repair bot.

  “Time to golf! Sorry, erm, defend this outpost? Is it an outpost? Kind of more like a castle.” Steve looked to Dave.

  “How was it that you’re the personality of one of the most complicated rune creations in all of Emerilia?” Dave asked.

  “’Cause I like turtles?” Steve shrugged as if he, too, was confused.

  “Oh God.” Dave didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he shook his head.

  ***

  “Goblins are on the move,” one of the DCA forward scouts said over the brigade chat.

  “Force strength?” Kala looked over the preparations that her people had made. With the aid of Earth magic and some devious know-how, they were creating ambush positions and traps.

  “About three hundred,” the scout said. There was none of the panicked uneasiness from a few months back. Kala quietly praised the scout in her thoughts.

  “Malkur, would it be possible to break up those forces before they reach our lines?” Kala asked.

  “We can do that,” Malkur agreed.

  “Very good. Have your people ready themselves. Doi’Kun, your elven forces—are they in position to harass the goblins? Need you to aggro them and pull them into smaller bands. Then get your people to kite them to different ambush locations,” Kala said.

  “We are ready,” Doi’Kun said.

  “Good. Malkur, go and say hello,” Kala said.

  DCA aerial forces rose up into the sky, gaining altitude.

  Kala looked to her preparations, checking with her different leaders when the first Mana bombs started to shake the ground with their impacts.

  “Kiting the groups,” Doi’Kun said as explosions continued to rock the ground.

  Kala looked to her map. The charging and ramshackle mess of a formation that the goblins had adopted had completely fallen apart. They were now racing at the targets that they could see.

  “We’ve got pockets that our Mana bombs didn’t work in,” Malkur reported.

  “They probably have shamans,” Kala said.

  “I will have my rangers target them first,” Doi’Kun said.

  The mass of creatures had been thinned out and they rushed outward in multiple directions. The elven rangers were at home in nature; their bows and spells kept the goblins focused on them, using their anger to drive them apart and into isolation.

  Clumps of rangers hiding in camouflaged positions seemed to appear from the ground as they unleashed barrages of arrows at the shamans, taking them out before they rushed off into the forest. The kiting groups had to work harder to keep the goblins focused on them.

  The DCA aerial forces swooped in, unleashing Mana bombs and bolts on the smaller goblin groups.

  The goblins were once again broken up.

  Hidden elven rangers appeared in the midst of this destruction, aggroing smaller and smaller groups.

  Using the confusion of the explosions and the goblins’ fiery tempers, in a short period of time, the goblins’ three hundred was reduced to two hundred and all in groups of no more than eight.

  “Customers coming in,” Kala said to the group that she was in command of. She was on a slight rise with bushes, looking down on a muddy and bare stone gully.

  The elves flashed through, their arrows whizzing through the air. The slightly rough terrain didn’t slow them in the slightest. With their ability to read the land, they were able to easily avoid the various traps.

  They led the goblins by the nose, just barely missing the traps so that the goblins didn’t realize that there were a
ny traps.

  The goblins entered the gully, grunting and panting as their pace slowed and they started the arduous climb up the sloped gully.

  Kala waited until they were all within the gully. “Fire!”

  The DCA stepped out of the bushes on either side of the gully as an explosion went off at either ends of the gully. Rocks, debris, and the explosion killed a few and stunned the others. The DCA didn’t give them time to recover as the gully lit up with the destructive light of hundreds of Mana bolts.

  “Hold!” Kala called. The bolts stopped firing, leaving behind a gory scene with the gully turned to mostly glass. “You’ve got thirty seconds to loot then we’re off to the next position!”

  The DCA rushed in, taking the loot from the floating tombstones above the goblins. This was given to the officers, who stored it in a loot bag.

  “Let’s go,” Kala said.

  The DCA faded into the overgrown meadow, not making a sound. Explosions reverberated through the forest as well as the screams of goblins and the occasional clash of metal on metal.

  None of the goblins made it through the rough forest beyond their mountain. The DCA was rarely seen and the elven rangers seemed untouchable with their agility and mastery with the bow.

  As the forest once again fell into silence, the tigers within it prepared for more prey. New ambush locations and traps were added while wounds were checked and wounded were sent back to the camp. They hadn’t lost anyone but they had received fifteen wounded, ten of which needed healers’ attention.

  The training for last couple of months had turned the DCA into hunters and warriors capable of working independently and effectively. Even the elves who had seen warriors and soldiers from all over Emerilia for hundreds of years gave nods of respect to the members of the Devil’s Crater Army.

  ***

  The walls were coming up faster and faster. The DCA and elves had been able to repel five different attacks, each of them bigger than the last. Shamans and hobgoblins were coming out in considerable numbers in the latest groups.

  Goblin Mountain had truly earned its name. There must have been thousands of the creatures hidden within it and the surrounding tunnels that connected to it.