The Goblin Horde

by Ivan Kal

  “That…” Titus looked at Morgan open-mouthed, then turned back to the plate. “Yes, yes! That will work! Thank you, Morgan! I’ll change this engraving and you can enchant it later.”

  Morgan shook his head as the thin man returned to the plate, and turned around, leaving him alone to his work. Morgan walked out of the workshop and started up the steps to the Great Hall. As soon as he reached the top of the steps, a shape the size of a car dropped down in front of him.

  “Rann! How’ve you been, boy?” Morgan asked excitedly as the manticore approached and presented its head for Morgan to pet. Rann was the Skyreach Guild’s guardian, and was completely terrifying to those who don’t know him, as proven by the two Sky Guards that stood just a few meters away, looking at Morgan and Rann with wide eyes. Morgan winked at them and continued to pet the manticore. Rann was about three meters long, and like the manticores from fiction on Earth, had a lion’s body. His mane was red on top of his head, and it stretched back to about halfway down his back. He had two black horns and the mane that spread around them was white, streaking in that color down to his jaw. His fur was golden, with only his paws being black, and at his body’s end he had a large, black scorpion tail that curved over him.

  In that moment, though, he looked almost completely like a giant kitty. Morgan scratched beneath his head and behind his ears, causing Rann to purr, which sounded more like a growl.

  Then Morgan slapped the guardian on the shoulders and started walking into the Great Hall. Rann followed close behind, nudging Morgan with his head while staying mindful of his horns. Morgan walked through the double doors and entered the Great Hall.

  The inside was mostly the same as it used to be, with only a few new additions. There were tables in front and around the fireplace to the right side. On the far side of the room was the hearthstone, the red sphere that was set into a short wood-and-stone pedestal, and the main table was just in front of it.

  The Great Hall was where they would gather and talk while they ate. There was a kitchen behind the wall on the far side that separated the hall proper from the rest of the building. Morgan wanted this room, their Guild Hall, to be open to everyone, for this to be a place where they could gather and talk and just relax. It looked like Lucius had followed his plan, seeing as now there were a few more tables as well as a bar on the left side of the room across from the fireplace.

  There was no one inside now, but Lucius had told him that people usually gathered here in the evenings. Of course, the Guild Hall was only open to the people living in the Guild Hold proper, but there were non-ascended who worked as servants and as kitchen staff who could access it. The non-ascended couldn’t join the Guild through the system, so on Lucius’s insistence Morgan agreed not to give access to more of them than was necessary, given the hearthstone. It wasn’t like there was much they could do, but Lucius had a few hang-ups from when he was a child and grew up in a Guild beyond the valley.

  Morgan and Rann walked between the tables and headed toward the hearthstone. As soon as they reached it, Morgan put his hand over it, looking at the symbol—a red shield with a black manticore head—etched on the back of his hand that mirrored the one on the stone. With a thought, Morgan accessed the hearthstone and the Guild menus.

  The first thing that he saw was the Guild’s status, and his eyes widened.

  Skyreach hearthstone — Hall of Myths Hold LVL 3 — Tier 1 Guild (updates and rewards available)

  Their Guild Hold had reached level three, and Morgan quickly looked through the rewards and saw that they now had more options available for construction. Gonna need to talk with Lucius about that, Morgan thought as he looked further. He saw that they also had two updates available, one being for the Guardian—Rann—which would increase his level to fifteen. Morgan clicked it immediately and blinked the screens away to turn and look at Rann, who had remained standing next to him. The manticore’s eyes flashed golden for a second and he seemed to get just a tiny bit bigger. Morgan used Inspect and checked.

  Skyreach Guardian LVL 15

  He grinned at the manticore and patted his head, eliciting another purr that rumbled in Morgan’s chest. He shook his head and turned back to the screens on the hearthstone. He looked at the second update, which was an increase to the Guild bonus—it wasn’t anything flashy, just one more point bonus to nature alignment, but it was useful. With it, Morgan’s nature alignment would be VI, hopefully giving him better control over his power.

  After that, he took a look through the things that they could build, but most were different variations of empty buildings, with only a few that were dedicated to a task and fully equipped, like a forge or things like that. Lucius had already constructed most of what they needed, so there was no point in building something else. He glanced at their resource screens and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had quite a lot of materials available. A lot of that, Lucius and Morgan had agreed, would go to the other towns and villages to expand them and fortify them. Morgan was fully intending helping the people that now served under him.

  He blinked and dismissed the screens, just as he heard shouting coming in from the other section of the Great Hall, and then a loud crash. He was about to go and check it out when he heard stomping, and then Ves walked out of the small doorway and into the Guild Hall. She looked at him and then shook her head.

  “How can he be such an idiot?” Ves demanded of him.

  “I’m guessing your talk with Vall didn’t go all that well?” Morgan asked.

  Ves gave him a look. “You think?”

  “Sorry,” Morgan said sheepishly—he really could be insensitive at times. “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. He isn’t like he used to be…” Ves said slowly, but Morgan could see that she was hurt. He couldn’t imagine what their bond was like. “He looks bad, Morgan. He let his beard and hair grow out, and he frankly stinks as if he hadn’t bathed since the battle. He looks gaunt.”

  Morgan grimaced. He knew that Vall had taken the loss of his hand hard, but not this hard. He did understand what Vall was feeling, as he had felt much the same way before: to feel like one was no longer worth anything, that one was just a burden. Morgan knew those feelings intimately. “Leave him alone. I’ll talk to him tomorrow after the meeting.”

  “I don’t know if you can get through him…” Ves whispered. “Morgan, he looks bad. He didn’t even want to listen to me. He always listened to me.” She bowed her head.

  Morgan stepped close and hugged her, and Rann walked over and put his head on her hip. “It will be all right. Trust me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next morning, at breakfast, the Great Hall was mostly empty aside from the original party, Titus, Clara, and a few Sky Guards—those of whom Lucius had made captains—along with Artos and his apprentices. The others were sitting at a few tables close to the fireplace, while the rest of them were at the main table, near the hearthstone. It wasn’t that the other ascended in the Guild weren’t welcome, but that there was just so much to do. Most of the ascended were too busy to come to the Great Hall for every meal, though they all tried to come for dinner.

  Before they started the meeting, Morgan took Lucius aside for a moment to speak privately.

  “Is there any news?” Morgan asked. There was no need for him to clarify, as both of them knew what it was about.

  “No. The people I sent haven’t yet come back, but I doubt that any of the other Guilds will want to help us. They don’t really care about this valley—it is too low of a level for them,” Lucius said.

  Morgan nodded. He had thought the same, but the two of them had still decided to send people and ask for aid. He didn’t want the others to know and have some kind of false hope spreading that the other Guilds would ride in and save them.

  “And our other projects?” Morgan asked.

  “There is progress, but while our descriptions are valuable we don’t have any blueprints for the war machines, they need to figure out everyth
ing by themselves,” Lucius said.

  Morgan nodded, they had known that their lack of knowledge would be a problem. With a sigh, the two of them moved back to the table and sat down. Most from the original party were there—the one person that was missing, however, was Vall.

  They were still waiting on him when Titus spoke.

  “He won’t come.”

  Ves glared at Titus.

  “What?” Titus said. “He didn’t attend a single meeting since you left.”

  Morgan turned to Lucius. “Is this true?”

  Lucius looked embarrassed, but nodded. “It is. I tried to get him to come, but…”

  Morgan glanced at Ves, who looked torn.

  “All right then, we’ll start without him. I’ll go and deal with him later,” Morgan said.

  The rest of the people around the table nodded, with only Ves looking unsure, but finally she nodded as well.

  “Good—first thing on the list is the basics. How much ascended do we have, what levels are they, and how are our preparations going for the coming of the goblin horde?”

  Lucius cleared his throat and spoke. “The Sky Guard is currently standing at forty-seven ascended, and we have four patrols of five people each patrolling the valley on a two-week schedule. Two patrols are moving south, securing the areas around the towns that are now in our domain, one is patrolling the area around Reach, and the last one was sent out north to watch for any sign of goblins. We have already found and cleared what we believe to be every goblin den south of Reach.”

  “That is great to hear,” Morgan said.

  Lucius nodded and continued. “Twenty Sky Guard are always kept in the Guild Hold, both to train and keep Reach Town and the Guild Hold proper secured. They rotate with the patrols every two weeks so that everyone gets experience out there. We have one team of five Sky Guards at the mines to the north, five manning the walls of Reach Town, and the rest are usually up here training and standing guard.”

  Morgan nodded and gestured for Lucius to continue.

  “Next we have the hunters: they all mostly started in the Guard, but didn’t really fit in, so I moved them to that new group. For now, they mostly hunt game to augment our food supplies. There are four teams currently of five people each. They are mostly all a hunter class. I’ve been putting all the new recruits through the same training and teaching regimen, which teaches them the basics of using weapons, as well as a few other class-based things. It allows the non-ascended to then take up the class of Soldier, Knight, Rogue, or Hunter. So far I have been limiting their first starting to class to one of those, but afterward they are free to take learn from Titus if they want a magic-based class.”

  Morgan glanced at the Titus, their resident caster. He was the only one who had taken up both magical classes, the Wizard and Mage. He wasn’t yet level ten, so he couldn’t evolve the class, but it didn’t matter since they didn’t have a class stone that he could use anyway. The only one they did have that was for magic users was the Spellguard class, which required either the Mage or Wizard class alongside the Knight class. They did have one more class stone, that of Outrider, but that one required someone to have the class of Scout with either Soldier or Archer. They still didn’t know what kind of knowledge a non-ascended required to have the ability to choose Scout class during their ascension. The others were all pretty straightforward and easy to figure out, and since they had people who already had knowledge that applied to them and could therefore teach, it was easy for them to instruct the non-ascended. They didn’t require perfect knowledge, only the basics.

  “I agree with that strategy,” Morgan said. He wanted to have more magic users in the guild later on, but for now it wasn’t necessary. Every class was already essentially a magic user with their powers being painted by their alignment, and there was already enough diversity between people with the same classes because of the alignments that they had no need for pure casters right now. Perhaps once Titus leveled up a bit and managed to upgrade his classes, meaning he could be a more proper instructor, they would start allowing recruits to become casters from the start.

  “Next,” Lucius continued, “we have the workers: ascended that are not combat oriented and instead use their abilities to help the Guild in other ways. There are currently twenty-four of them, but I guess we will be getting more of them soon, seeing as you brought an entire town here for that purpose.”

  Morgan nodded. “Yes. Most of them will not be going in the combat-oriented direction, but some will.”

  Karissa had promised to bring a list of people and their intentions for the ascension to their meeting, which was scheduled after this one.

  “That puts our ascended count at ninety-seven, counting us,” Lucius said with a gesture around the table. “Out of that number, seventy-three are combatants. We have a few who have reached level eight, fifty people who are at least level five, and around two dozen who haven’t yet reached that point, but I plan on having them led through the Mountain’s Heart dungeon soon.”

  Morgan thought about that. Seventy-three combatants seemed like a lot, but from what Clara had told them, the goblin horde would number in the thousands. Of course an average goblin was about level five, and not much of a threat to someone who was a much larger level. Morgan himself could probably deal with a couple dozen of them, provided he had the time to prepare and plan. This didn’t mean that they weren’t dangerous, of course, especially as there were the goblin chieftains and shamans who were usually about two or three levels higher.

  Still, his plan had never been for an outright battle. They didn’t have the numbers for that. They needed to make a trap, something that lowered the impact of their numerical advantage.

  “And the non-ascended?” Morgan asked.

  “Before your arrival, we had seventy-four non-ascended living in Reach Town and working for the Guild, mostly woodcutters and miners, but we do have merchants and crafters, tailors, and the like. These are people who did not want to become ascended, but quite a few of them changed their minds after they came here and saw the benefits of being an ascended from their friends and family. I expect that more and more will take up the offer and ascend soon,” Lucius said. “And then there are the people you brought. There are sixty-three of them, but I guess we shall wait for Ms. Karissa to give us her list so that we can update our numbers.”

  Morgan nodded. With Karissa’s people, they had one hundred and thirty-seven non-ascended, but most of her people wished to ascend. All in all, that meant a bit more than two hundred and thirty people who were now living near or in the Guild Hold. Two hundred and thirty souls he was responsible for.

  “Thank you for the update. You and I will go through the details later and devise plans for moving forward. What’s next?” Morgan asked.

  Lucius looked at his list, then cleared his throat. “There is the matter of the training of the newly ascended. That job had been given to Vall, but…I’ve had to send my captains to fill in a few times when Vall failed to arrive.”

  Morgan waved his hand. “I’ll deal with that later.”

  Lucius nodded and looked to the list. “Next is the matter of allocation of loot and gear. We have been storing everything in the storehouse for Ves to catalog later. So far there hadn’t really been a need for us to use the loot from there, as the gear that Artos made for use is serviceable, but there are items left over from our clashes with the goblins, as well as the loot that the dungeon groups recovered. There are a few stones that were recovered as well, but we don’t know what they are. There are also a few enchanted pieces of gear.”

  Morgan turned to look at Ves. “You should get started on that as soon as this meeting is over,” he told her. Vestella was the only other than him who had the Inspect skill, and she had been the one in charge of cataloging their loot.

  “I will,” Ves said. “But how are we going to distribute the loot?”

  Morgan wondered about that. So far they’d been leveling up people by taking them through the
dungeon or by taking them on monster-hunting missions in the wilderness. But all the loot they had gathered to the Guild—except the ascension crystals, which they were giving out based on how much time of life everyone had. Morgan and the others had been taking the gear that they found useful for themselves, but that would no longer be fair. Then again, we’ve been struggling and nearly dying for it. The others have it easier, Morgan thought to himself. Slowly he started formulating a plan.

  “How about this,” Morgan said, still fitting the pieces of the plan together. “Once a person hits level five and gets their second class, they can go to Ves and ask to choose a single item from our stores. Then, after they hit level ten, they can pick out another. People in the Sky Guard will of course be getting standardized equipment crafted by Artos, and since the Sky Guard will mostly be protecting the Guild Hold, whatever loot they get will be from their patrols or dungeon runs will be given to the Guild as a payment for the gear they will be getting. As time goes by, our people will get better at crafting so that gear will improve over time. Lucius will of course be able to requisition any item from Ves if he thinks that there is a need, and will equip the Guard as he sees fit.”

  The others nodded, but Lucius spoke. “And what about the other ascended, those who are not in the Guard?”

  “For the crafters—well, they are already being supported by the Guild. Ves will need to figure out a currency or merit system based on how much they make, but I doubt they will even need any special loot. Of course if we find any crafter-centric class stones, they will be allocated based on their capabilities and affinity. For the workers and such, we can do the same. They are not risking themselves by going out and increasing the Guild’s gains.”