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Chapter 20
The next morning.
I got up feeling groggy. My body hurts. I have a headache. I didn’t sleep well.
The clock says 6:37 AM.
I’d rigged a freeware program into my security camera setup last night to ping a sound when goblins are moving or caught on the motion detectors. And not only that, but I’d increased the number of cameras up to 8 total now, with several views. Well actually it basically goes off when anything moves on there, but usually that’s goblins coming to check me out or cause trouble.
Without this I wouldn’t even be able to sleep now. At least I wouldn’t sleep well. You don’t sleep well when you are under siege.
I relieved myself in the bushes at 6:38 AM. Then I washed my hands really fast in the stream.
Ah this morning is pretty nice. I yawn and stretch. The weather is amazing today. Its too bad this is goblin infested territory.
Then I combed my hair and washed my face at 6:41 AM.
‘I have a note to self to make sure not to leave the pocket mirror out. Its a signal where I’m sleeping and living in my dungeon for those that see it. I need to be more careful,’ I thought.
I spat out my mouth wash also.
Byxxell is still asleep and will be for a few more hours. It seems OK I guess. She’s just happy that Styxa’s death was prevented. She’s using that projection illusion more and more to interact with me, and to check on Styxa. I don’t have to heal Styxa as much now that the life link is keeping her going.
But before going to bed last night she told me that there’s 3 other fairies that are captured and held by goblins. Two of them are being held by the head shaman on similar torture mage rod devices that the goblins use. She thinks that one of them is in the form of a weapon, using the fairies large mana pools. She hopes I can get them back.
Hm… can I? There’s so many goblins. And I can’t assault their camp directly.
I have my work cut out for me. The more I think about it, I’m not ready to take on the goblins. Especially with me mostly being non-combat spells. Plus, my system is basically a defensive … very much like a tower defense RPG? If you want to compare it that is.
If I can I want to rescue them. But its too much for me to take on a whole goblin city.
Eh…is it a city?
I’d been thinking since the goblin troop numbers have never stopped that its possible that its so.
Maybe most of the goblin city is actually under the surface with the top surface area actually just being like a small village to lure people into getting trapped. It would certainly be easy to draw people to it.
I got my coat all bundled up since its a bit chilly this morning, and then I did the rounds from 6:49 AM to about 7:25 AM. This includes the time it took to execute the goblins that were trapped again last night, and everything else that also got vine trapped, and to also walk around through the entire maze. Often trapped goblins from night attacks don’t make a lot of noise, they stay quiet. Because they know they’ll be finished off once I wake up.
OK… I slit the last few goblin’s throats as they are in the traps. I hate watching that part, but its easier since their bodies dissolve on death.
As I suspected, the first front plaza room is heavily damaged. This is where they’d gotten in and bashed stuff up trying to loot things. They had also gotten to the second plaza area but there most of them became trapped. I’ll use my life wizard skills to restore the damage to the living walls, and then we’ll be OK.
I used a rejuvenate spell casting on both rooms to repair the damage to the thorny hedge maze wall traps. I think some of the thorny hedges get stronger over time, since they are magic created anyway. With my power I can regrow all the damage, but I think my element gives me a bonus to that, where the repair looks so good like it’d never been damaged.
Then I began to move to other rooms, going through the rounds to check everywhere.
Eh…I realized that I’ve been getting more area effect range recently when I use the rejuvenate technique to repair living plant damage in the maze walls! This is amazing! It means an increase in effectiveness, an increase in might and power, and more conservation of mana!
I had a bad feeling about the goblin tunnel zone which I hadn’t solved yet also, that I saw yesterday had begun where they are trying to get past the giant hornet’s nest and have cover to climb their way up to this high elevation top meadow area. But I can’t just approach it anytime I want. I have to be careful. And I need to do something before they finish construction on it. I need to figure out a clever way of ambushing them first.
I began walking out to check it.
Shit…
As I see that spot with the binoculars they are already lowering in pipe sections into the dug out sections that they’d planned to sink them in! They’d accomplished quite a bit of work last night while I was asleep. They still have a lot to go but the clock is ticking. I’d thought it would take them longer than this, like a week or more! They also have big trenches going up the mountain that the pipe sections are in…which seems to be crudely made raw iron.
You can see how they plan to bypass the giant hornets with it. They already have tunneling work carved out near the old path. And they probably will even sink the pipes all the way to the front door of my maze and then some!
They are moving faster than I like on it. Its quite clever actually.
I can see a lot of both goblin and dwarven slaves being whipped by the other goblins. Plus goblins being whipped by goblins.
I began to set off a bunch of traps near their construction area to lure them out. And just like that a lot of the goblins began setting off like mad bees racing around to form lines to fight me. I placed traps at the bottom entrance of the pipes way down the mountain (tested my range a bit…and costed more mana). And I also placed some whereever there were openings.
Like usual, the goblin lust for combat makes them unable to resist the temptation for mischief, even though they should know its a setup to lure them. They still go for it.
The idea was also to try to cause them to panic, and trample each other. Or come to get trapped and killed in the maze.
One trap…two…then four. I got out as many as I dared. I can spell cast traps out there by them and set them off almost instantly so its not hard. There’s over a hundred goblins trapped now by the time they are closing ranks to form a shield line to fight me.
I had to pull back before I could execute those goblins.
Now they will enter my maze.
(I think I’m getting better at finishing off trapped goblins now. It takes fortitute mentally, to slit their throats, but how wicked and vile and that they are monsters helps me stomach it. Also, I didn’t notice it before but when they see me coming while trapped a lot of them piss and defacate on themselves.
I managed to still kill about five that were trapped outside of the maze. But later in the day I saw them pulling out more bodies, and so my theory that they could panic and trample each other did take effect, though I have no idea on how the numbers looked for it as I was trying to stay alive and do hit and run style retreats at the same time.
Then I put down a thorny trap to grab the front line of warriors running at me.
Shit! I only captured about five of them! The other fifteen are running straight to me!
I ran.
(-31 damage)
(-27 damage)
(-21 damage)
Shit! They are hitting me now. I wasn’t fast enough.
Three goblins hit me with their rusty sword blades. The mana layer takes the sting off the damage. But if my health bar hits zero, I still die.
I kept running as I retreated. And I even got another trap skill off.
But the rest of the goblin camp is coming after me also now.
I managed to get 2 more traps off. And then I executed 7 of the goblins.
But now I had to withdraw because they brought out the goblin shamans. I don’t want to be out exposed for them to hit with spells.
!
Huh?
I see a new type of goblin unit now. But I can’t stop to look well. (It will be in the status screen’s log though…)
[[Goblin knight] class discovered!] showed up on my status screen notification flags, while I run.
These [Goblin Knight] class units appear to be some kind of warg cavalry riders. That champion guy might have been one of these probably. But I haven’t seen him lately.
Oh jeez!
I got nervous as I retreated. The goblin knight is charging up the slope towards me, still a ways off. But he’s moving very fast with a lance weapon.
The goblins knights are dangerous! I don’t have a mage movement skill yet! And also, the wargs are dangerous. And I need to make sure if my traps will hold them well because they are really about five times the weight of a normal goblin, and a greater size also.
I finally got to cover. Then I healed my wounds. I wasn’t able to kill that many goblins as they didn’t want to go in my maze yet.
Between 7 AM and 8:30 AM the goblin line advanced several times with probes and false attack fronts that were mostly distractions to keep me busy while they worked. They even put a hundred man block of goblin warriors with 10 knights guarding the front of the construction zone, keeping me back. A lot of them have throwing spears so I didn’t get close.
Do they realize I couldn’t fully handle 100 units? I don’t think they do. If they all had charged at once they’d surely get past the first few rooms with a lot of them getting trapped, but many getting through. So they are fearing me a bit.
I still need to get rid of them.
And with mana sensing I can tell there’s some kind of shaman curses spelled onto the spears of the goblin knights. I can feel this almost like it feels like ants on the spears or something… but its probably mana particles that just feel poisonous and I’m getting a feeling of something vile like earwigs and such.
I had to stay back.
By 9:17 AM I can see their work is going too fast.
I put up a whole extra room inside the maze, near the end, adding to my maze’s square footage by probably over 100 square feet. Now I have a lot of square footage to the maze. I’ve probably even got in the thousands of square footage. Hopefully its enough to stop a big assault from them.
I almost went to lay out another trap outside the maze.
!
I pulled back as I see the white warg goblin knight trying to approach me from the side and behind! He’d used some of the really tall meadow grass and some cover to try to sneak up when I’d moved forward. And a stealth skill. He’s pretty good. I almost didn’t see it in time.
Can I lure him into the traps?
I split side ways straight towards one of my traps.
The warg also approached, but he leaped over 2 of the vine rope traps going off.
!
Oh shit! I didn’t anticipate them jumping over the maze walls! The wargs abilities are strong! I must be wary until I figure them out.
But do all of them have that jump skill with that level of performance? Or do they have to be leveled up to do that?
I need more information.
Then this guy got away from an improved trap, to my shock. But as I got deeper into the maze he didn’t want to risk going in further. Luckily his fear to advance prevented him from scoring a hit on me, which he almost did.
Shit, shit, shit…
This is an elite warg knight! He’d moved so fast I almost missed his lance moving out fast and cutting up the vine tentacles of the improved trap so fast and effectively that nothing could hold him! He only didn’t get me because the vine traps he tore through slowed him down a bit.
This guy is dangerous and on another level! He’s also obviously leveled up well, and way above my level!
I went back deep into the maze, anticipating that I was going to have to work really hard to stay alive now.
The main problem besides that, is that even if I didn’t die from that guy, he could still stop my flow of XP from goblin XP farming as I was killing the goblins!
~10 AM
I circled back around, but somehow the white warg goblin knight is there again. Going to the back of the maze and trying to get out a hidden side entrance didn’t work. He knew where I’d come out?
Or…
Does he have some kind of tracking magic? He must have used the warg’s jump skill to leap over the hedge and come around. Or he’s also got parts of my maze’s map information. That might have given him an edge also.
Crap.
I didn’t think knights got the tracking and mapping skills, but maybe goblin knights might have variant skills compared to normal knights?
I did manage to execute some of the goblins that I’d already captured in my traps, those that had tried to get into the maze. (~10:07 AM)
I wonder if I can deepen the moats to throw off some of the goblins?
No… wait.
I have to anticipate that the knight will come inside the maze. And be able to avoid the traps. If that’s the case I could have real trouble. I need a 2 step escape edge not just to react to him but to think 2 moves ahead. To do that, I have to think what if he gets in and avoids the traps. And with him being on a cavalry unit that’s really really bad for me if he gets close.
Near one section of maze I set up another secret room. By using existing walls this time, I managed to only lose one hour’s worth of mana (-120 mana). This secret room is a backup and only 10 feet by 10 feet, with the normal 8 foot high maze hedge walls. I’ll add a ceiling later when its more convenient. And the hedging around this secret room is immensely more thick than most of the other rooms, which means even if someone finds that I’m there they can’t easily get into it, even with a big wolf.
Wait, the hedges aren’t tall enough also, I realized. Something like a warg might even be able to jump them with their abilities. I could grow the maze hedge walls taller, eventually to counter it. I could in theory have the hedges go as high as possible, being only limited to how much power I have.
I hadn’t counted on something that big coming yet. Or that they could leap over the maze walls with such skills! This means for weeks from here forward I’ll probably be just working on growing the maze hedge height.
I’ll have to use more modified rejuvenate skills to make the entire maze’s hedging grow taller! And I’ll have to do it tonight if possible! It will also take a lot of energy to do the entire maze. And I’m not sure how high the wargs can jump. I do recall seeing them jump but I didn’t know if that was the highest they could jump, or if they would jump with the least amount of energy to be used.
I spent some time at 10:40 AM checking on Byxxell and Styxa. Byxxell just got up and is getting dressed. Seriously she’s too unguarded and walks around naked in the morning. I gave her some fish. I did catch her using some kind of mana transfer skill to send health and mana to Styxa. Plus, I felt it using the life link skill.
But I was in a hurry and didn’t stay with her long.
The life link skill is still stable, I can see.
11:03 AM
I managed to use the create life skill to create the first tree warrior spirit unit. Since Styxa isn’t in the death flag zone now this is OK to do.
Now I have my first real monster minion! This is so exciting.
The monster sapling is pretty small, only about 2 feet tall right now. But he has long arms that drag on the ground, and looks like a small tree trunk. His stats are more durable than you’d guess. At first, he didn’t look too happy to see me. But then he started looking me over curiously. His expression softened after a few seconds.
Tree Warrior
Level; 1
Health; 60
I didn’t have a lot of time so I closed the stat screen early.
“Just so you know I’m the boss OK. You need to follow my orders. In exchange I will help you in return,” I gave it a simple statement.
“…” it just kind of looked at me but isn’t rejecting or showing any feeling.
But one thing caught my eye.
He can level up. And he posseses the ‘loyalty’ trait. But he only gains 2 stats per level!
Eh… a minion that can level up. Nice. But how many of him can I have? Can I have infinite numbers of things like him?
And this raises all kinds of questions for this world.
If this guy is getting only 2 stats per level, then how many stats per level is normal? And will he get more stats per level if I’m a higher level?
Currently I’d been getting about 8 stats per level. And this guy is only getting 2 then? How can that be? Then does that mean everything else is also getting that low of stats per level? Or how often do they get something more than 2 per level.
But without a town of friendlies I’ll never know.
For now though…
I’m happy.
“Nice to meet you sir,” I told him.
He gave me a stiff conservative wary look. So I patted his head, which he did tolerate. (Feels like mossy bark on the top, and leaves.)
Good. He didn’t bite or attack me. He’s following me around. (Sigh of relief.)
11:05 AM
Wow using 500 mana to summon the tree warrior spirit took a lot of power. I feel really tired using up that much mana.
“Come with me,” I told him.
He began following me.
“Hey Byxxell, I have a question for you,” I coughed when I entered one of the secret rooms where her mental projection was hanging out.
“OK?” she said. She stood to face me.
(Wow, she really wears skimpy clothes…)
“Err…how many stats per level do most people get on this world?” I asked.
She frowned. “I can’t say what it is for fairies. I’d get in trouble for that, you understand. But for humans its usually anywhere from 2 to 4 per level. 2 per level is common. More than gets harder to find as it goes up. Its impossible for anyone to get more than 6 per level though. To get more than that would be…” she stopped.
Her eyes glazed over.
“Byx?”
“Yeah, what was it we were talking about?” she said suddenly.
She’s acting like she forgot what I just asked. And her face expression and eyes just got weird too.
“What did you want?” she asked.
“What was it you were saying before?” I asked.
“We weren’t talking before. What are you talking about?” she asked, now suspicious that I was trying to trick her.
“I just asked you something. Then you…”
“No. You just barely came up to me. We haven’t talked yet. What did you want?” she was acting annoyed now.
Weird…it was almost like someone had blocked her from knowing or remembering what we’d just said. It was almost like she had been mind zapped.
Did that have to do with the censorship on me?!
Wow…it might.
Maybe some higher power is blocking me from knowing what I am, and what my past is! There really is a censor!
“Well what is it? I’m busy,” she said.
“Um, do you have any tricks to combat goblin knights?” I asked.
“Javen, I just gave you 3 spell techniques. You know I can’t give you everything. You have to work with what you got. Try to level up the skills also. They’ll get stronger that way. You need to work hard,” she sounded annoyed.
“Right. Sorry.”
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“Um, how do I give my tree warior XP?” I asked.
She frowned. “Everybody knows that. You use the party window menu. Invite it to your party. That’s the first step. Then you just give it jobs, work, and have it kill stuff. You don’t want it fighting something strong yet, but that’s common sense. Seriously don’t ask me stupid stuff like that. Every fairy knows stuff like that. Even humans know stuff like that. How could you not know that?”
“S-sorry.”
Its not my fault. I’d only been on this world so long. But somehow I felt I shouldn’t tell her that.
“Just get to work. You’ll figure it out. I can’t do everything for you. Go on then. Get to work. Make him strong so he can help us,” she sounded kind of snarky.
“Oh right. I better be going,” I said.
“And don’t forget we need to save Styxa. Please work on her again soon,” she called after me.
“Right. I will … but there’s so much to do. And I need some inspiration first about how to get those things off her. But I am going to work on it when I can get some more insight,” I promised.
“OK. That’s fine. Just don’t let her die. And I hope you can rescue the other 3 that they still have,” she said hopefully.
“Now let me go fish in peace. I want to go fishing today. So don’t bother me,” she said.
Right after that I was shocked when a goblin stealther was ripped into a trap, only about ten feet from us! It was one of the rope pull traps that pull them up into the air hanging from the top of the trees!
!
Both of us were shocked. He’d been right outside the secret room!
Shit, shit, shit…
He must have been trying to use some kind of stealther skills to find me. Then he triggered the trap. And maybe also the stealthers are how the goblin knight got some of my map information. He couldn’t have gotten it on his own.
I hurriedly invited the tree warrior to my party. I hurriedly crawled out and executed the trapped goblin stealther, by first dropping him on his head (massive falling damage).
Also, I put an extra grass type trap in front of the secret room, as I was worried about protecting the spot where Byxxel was resting.
Traps are amazing. This is seriously a lot of fun.
As I check the window, the tree warrior spirit is getting XP.
So we roamed around the maze area. Mostly we’d just grab trapped mobs and looking for easy kills, since this guy is still pretty weak and low level.
I got some XP from giant hornet kills. And also some from stray wolves, some undead skeletons that had wandered in, and something called a murder raven that got caught also in a trap.
Still not easy to level this little treeman warrior. He doesn’t level up fast.
But I’m getting nervous. That warg knight could show up anywhere now. Even in the maze with skills like his. I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder nervously.
…
Wait…
And then I realized how I can manipulate the white warged knight. There are others, but that guy in particular is the most dangerous.
I watched as he would have to help save other goblins from the giant hornet nest. That’s when I could hurriedly find an opening out of the maze and then lure the first group of goblins with me!
Quickly, I used the Stardust spell to false attack and lure a big group of about 30 goblins, including 2 wargs!
Shit…I didn’t mean to get the wargs. But probably these 2 were lieutenants of that one big warg knight, the one I’m afraid of.
We ran fast to get away. I pulled them away and sprinted to the maze with the tree warrior spirit there waiting at the entrance.
“Follow me,” I ordered.
I set up an extra four vine rope snare traps in each corner of the first plaza room, and then we retreated.
So far so good.
The group of goblins was right on our heals by now. They’d been slowed down initially by the entrance traps, which the 2 warg riders were trying to cut them out of.
But I still had the permanent improved traps on each of the 4 plaza walls! These went off right away trapping one goblin after another!
I risked using another spell cast to put up a normal root trap to slow down the warg riders, but it only caught the one goblin knight, who is trying to cut himself free.
(Tch…he’ll be able to cut himself out. A warg knight is way different than a normal goblin. And because its a rider, the goblin can be cutting the warg and himeself out. Plus, they are more resistant to being impeded.)
I casted another root snare trap and then we moved deeper into the maze.
A horde of goblins is chasing me! Somehow more had entered after the first wave!
I began to get worried as I saw how many there are! And my traps were getting overwhelmed pretty fast! They pick up the goblins and do trap them, but when that many rush in some get past those areas.
I lured several more into wall traps in the successive corridors and hallways of the maze sharp thorny hedges. Then a few more.
The Stardust technique is making them mad to chase me. But the goblin knights are trying to save and get their ‘brethren’ loose.
Shit…the goblin knights are messing it up! I really need to stop them for sure.
By the time we got to the second plaza room, I I’d whittled the pursuing goblins down to about 12. Now literally tons of them are stuck in my thorny hedge walls! But I know others could get set lose again, which is frustrating. And if I down start executing some of them, the knights will have the others free soon to come this way also.
I set off 2 more traps, while blocking with my shield.
Success!
“Eh?!” I cried out as one of the goblins is charging me with his lance!
I dove out of the way but took minor damage from his slash still (-17 damage). I was lucky then that wasn’t humongous damage, given that he had a warg to amplify his speed and power. But there hadn’t been enough hall space for a charge.
I hit him with the burn wave spell technique twice. And then blocked his blows. My tree warrior blocked the blow of the wolf’s jaws, but lost an arm in the process!
Oh shit. The treeman warrior is no match for him and his health bar is going down fast!
I hit him with an improved trap! And I used a heal technique on the tree warrior, but his arm is still gone.
We exchanged a couple more ackward blows but both of us blocked each other this time. I did manage to execute a trapped goblin by slitting its throat quickly.
The treeman warrior’s health bar just went down a bit more.
Then we fall back.
I got lucky.
The one warg rider got away.
But I did capture the second one! And I bet they don’t have endless numbers of wargs!
I quickly moved to dispatch and slit throats of the trapped goblins. By goblin number 11, my tree warrior spirit is now level 3!
Then he got to level 4 after a few more executions! I’m now even having him help with executing trapped helpless goblins that have pissed themselves while they wait to die in the hedge thorny walls.
‘He’s taller than before!’
‘He looks tougher! His bark is thicker! The look in his eyes is more cunning and sharp,’ I thought seeing the changes in him from leveling up. However, he’s still only got one arm.
I don’t have time to fix his arm right now. We have to move fast since goblins are still in the first room areas. I moved around quickly eliminating goblins to get the tree spirit worked up before I face the goblin knight that’s trying to get free. But my other worry is that the other warg rider will be telling the chief goblin knight to rescue him! I have to stop this from happening before anything else goes down!
More goblins are screaming and pissing themselves as we moved through the ranks of the trapped.
Damn…!
…
About an hour of work passed, just slitting the throats of the trapped goblins. I’ll bet I have over seventy goblins from this skirmish!
I hurriedly cast 2 more basic traps on the warg, as he was about to go free. He’d been chewing himself out, as much as he could. It took him quite awhile and also the spell work was trying to still compensate for it. I came right in the nick of time. I can’t get that close. The warg is too strong and volatile, I thought.
So, I pelted the warg, not the rider with stardust basic spell attack techniques over and over. By the time I hit the warg with over 10 spell techniques the warg died.
The knight rider itself is still alive and angry enough to spit blood. And seriously that thing took tons of damage before he fell over.
I feel tired. Mana bank is lower than I like.
I turned just as Byx shouts a warning. (At some point she’d decided to check on me and was approaching me from behind.)
“Look out!” she cried.
I turned.
Just as I did so, I saw the shadow and form of the big white wolf warg knight on the other side of the hedge fence! His jump skill is amazing! He sails through the air carrying his goblin easily, even turning and watching me with his sharp wolf eyes as he’s pouncing. He is here to rescue the other one! He was staring at me through tiny gaps in the maze hedge wall that weren’t quite closed up, only about a few feet away!
Holy crap!
I didn’t have time to wait, and risked getting hurt to slit the throat of the other captured warg rider. Doing so got me stabbed in the arm for (-12 damage). But in the end that warg knight has its throat slit. And I get the XP to share with my treeman warrior.
But now the white warg rider is shouting in anguish, as he retreats.
Both sides are licking their wounds.
…
I won for today…but they were too daring to come here with the warg riders! The elite warg rider knight also is a force to be reckoned with also and I don’t feel ready for him. And it seemed with nothing to gain, he was cautious about picking a fight with me. But in actuality a cavalry unit versus a mage or mage warrior on foot is very dangerous for me, and I fear it would go badly if I don’t adapt. I would have also have taken more damage also, if the hallways would have been longer to allow them to build up the power of a charge speed attack. I’d already seen the charge skill the cavalry goblins could do, I’d seen them use it against giant hornets when they were flying low.
Also, how many other elite knights do the goblins have? That I don’t know, but there’s probably someone above the elite knight. I can reason that because someone must force the elite goblin warg knight into the field. Normally the top leader wouldn’t expose themselves to danger. Which means, there’s other elite units that are high level also on their side. And this idea that the top boss would stay in their camp reveals this, from logic and reasoning.
This means I’ll have to change and adapt the maze much more to be ready for the warg cavalry. And expect them to be able to get deeper into the maze, once more powerful units are deployed from their end. Plus, also I needed more height from maze hedge walls anyway, because of the possibility of aerial attacks and flying monsters.
Huh?
The one executed warg knight must have been a pretty good level, because the tree warrior spirit is already level 5 now!
Tree Warrior
Level; 1 –> 5
Health; 60 –> 96
(Damage increase, armor increase. He looks a bit smarter now, but not too smart. He looks tougher and fiercer.)
He’s also now close to about 3 1/2 feet tall, whereas he’d been stick thin before. He’s thickening out also, and looks like he could take a few hits before dying. He moves a little bit faster also, but not by much; still sort of a shambling waddle almost like a duck.