1.19 – Goblin Stronghold III

Rika drove a Shield Slam into the goblin warrior before her. Then she set her shoulder and charged. She drove it back with her shield until she had it pinned against the wall. First, she thrust with a Dark Strike. As the goblin thrashed underneath her shield, she stabbed it again. She kept stabbing until it stopped moving.

Enemy slain: Goblin Warrior – Level 9

Standing up to her full height, she let the flood of her level up wash over her.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 6!

Name: Rika
Class: Dark Warrior (Basic, Rare)
Level: 6 (Grade I)
Affiliation: Adventuring Guild – Novice

• Stats Increased: Might +2, Finesse +2, Resilience +2, Magic +1, Control +1, Ward +2

• Primary Stats

  • Might – 13

  • Finesse – 13

  • Resilience – 13

  • Magic – 8

  • Control – 8

  • Ward – 13

Most welcome was the immediate lessening of her fatigue. If they weren’t trudging down the sloped tunnel or through hollowed out redoubts, they were fighting. This was the third time they’d been ambushed since they entered the caverns, although each attack had been smaller than the last. Hopefully, they were finally making a dent in the goblins’ numbers.

“Goblin tribes can swell to several hundred strong, especially if they’re allowed to entrench themselves,” Chryson said when she asked him about it.

“What about leaders?”

“I couldn’t say what sort of leader a tribe like this might have. Sometimes an Elite-type, often greater goblins or shamans. The quest description doesn’t specify, so the best I can do is speculate.”

More helpful than nothing, at least. By her count, they must have killed at least a hundred so far. Which meant that, yes, they were making progress.

She glanced over to where Erik was recovering from his own level up. Each one was more intense than the last. Easy to see why eventually someone would want to delay their level ups until the fight was over. How Chryson determined “over” was beyond her, but as far as she could tell, he was the actual conduit for whatever power flowed into her every time she gained a level.

At least by now she was really starting to see the potential Chryson had promised her when she’d first received her class. Her stats were growing quickly, with only Control and Magic lagging behind. While she’d not really tested out her Ward stat, she couldn’t deny its effect on her overall toughness thanks to Balanced Defense. Despite the difference in their relative protection from armor, she felt like she could hold her own on the front lines with Vilmos now. For all his bullheaded insistence that the goblins were a minor threat at worst, he took his job seriously, and Rika had come to respect the durability of his Defender class gave him.

She found her attacks growing ever more precise the greater her Finesse climbed. While she’d take a long time to close in on someone like Kriztan, she wasn’t going to complain about her newfound ease of landing precise hits. Similarly, Control did little for her as things stood, too. She had no abilities that used it, and there weren’t any real effects she would need to contest with it.

Her Magic stat was the one that surprised her most, it turned out. As it grew, the eruption of Dark aspected power released when she landed a Dark Strike grew with it. Somehow she could tell that while the skill’s description of “high damage” remained the same, it now hit far harder than it had only a few levels ago.

Before he could head marching off into the torch-lit gloom of the tunnels once more, Rika grabbed Vilmos’s attention. “Hey,” she said. “The goblins keep making use of these ambushes. They’re coordinated. They’re organized. I don’t like that we’re marching more or less blindly forward.”

“I’m not sending Kriztan ahead, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Vilmos said. Erik had offered that idea after the second time they were attacked in the tunnels. It hadn’t gone over well.

“No, I’m just saying we should be careful. We don’t know what’s ahead, and we should account for that.” She still hadn’t quite convinced the other two that this was a far more dangerous venture than they were giving it credit for. But then again, with each victory they put behind them, she was becoming less convinced herself.

The most recent ambush only consisted of about a dozen goblin warriors. No archers for the first time since entering the tunnel, either. They’d left a trail of corpses in their wake, and the party only gained in strength as they pressed forward. Not to mention that so far, Erik seemed to have little trouble keeping them all safe. His ability to heal had kept pace with their own ability to take damage, or dish it out.

Kriztan sneered at her as he ghosted by, collecting his daggers from their fallen foes. Rika still didn’t see what his issue was, but she could definitely tell that as they came through one fight after another, he was growing more contemptuous of her caution. Fine, let him. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong here, despite their success. The quest description still said level eight plus. They were all level six now. Rika was just waiting for the floodgates to open.

They grouped up as they did after every fight and proceeded down the tunnel once more. At least if there was one thing going for them, was that any side passages they’d come across quickly ended in storage chambers, sleeping areas, or similar. The tunnel they followed twisted around on itself, but it never split. It headed mostly down, and as far as Rika could tell, led them deeper beneath the Ironbacks.

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After another quarter hour, the shuffling of feet and odd clank of metal sounded from ahead of them. Everyone braced for the coming fight. Instead of the expected surge of goblin warriors, this time they were met with a slowly advancing shield wall. The goblins held their crude, makeshift shields before them, their crude, makeshift spears poking out from between. Like a wooden porcupine, slowly pushing up the tunnel slope, the goblins advanced in lockstep, chanting in unison as they marched.

Rika glanced over at Vilmos, but didn’t say what had to be on his mind, too. A shield wall took practice to maintain like this. These goblins had drilled, and despite the shoddy make of their gear, they’d drilled fairly well.

“Let’s see how they like this,” Vilmos said, his voice low and angrier than Rika had heard it so far.

He surged forward, his own shield raised, his lamellar and helmet gleaming in the torchlight. When he reached the goblin line, he pushed, slamming his own heater shield into the center of their formation.

The goblins held. Rika checked their levels.

Goblin Warrior – Level 10