Fighting the Goblins

Chapter 5

Fighting the Goblins

Just as a goblin came to change the shift; I picked up 2 heavy stones and threw them towards the goblins.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I am also ambidextrous. Knowing it would be very useful in the future, I trained from the start in using both of my hands. So, I was able to throw the rocks simultaneously.

'Thwack' 'Thwack'

The stones directly impacted their skull making them bleed. Their skull caved in from the stones. They probably didn't even know what hit them before dying. The bastards didn't even have time to scream. I would have loved to torture these things to death as they torture girls but I was on a mission. Culling them is the very least I could do.

I slowly approached the cave entrance as silently as I could. Fun fact: Their blood is not Red, instead it is green. I wasn't sure how and chalked it up to magic.

First things first – I checked whether they were alive or not by slicing their necks clean. I didn't want to give them any chance to surprise me.

'2 done' I mentally counted, imitating Goblin Slayer, as I swiped my blades clean from their loincloths and placed them into their scabbards. I took the sword from one of the goblins. It was a little smaller than my twin swords. It was even rusty. Still, it was perfectly usable for killing.

Goblins are numerous and I don't want to waste any coin in getting new weapons when I can use theirs. The second goblin had a club as a weapon. I discarded that as it was the size of my wand and probably useless.

I also noticed that my cloth does not hide the scent of blood.

'I will have to add enchantments to it' I mused. But then again it will be beneficial if I get used to the smell of shit and blood. I nodded in my mind and decided against enchanting the cloth for blocking the smell of shit and blood. It will be good practice just in case I don't have my cloth. It wouldn't do for me to get distracted from all the smells while fighting.

It doesn't mean that I wasn't already used to seeing blood. But the monster's blood is something else. It gives a lingering smell of evil which is offputting.

The next thing I did was used a spell to hide my body, scent, and sound totally. It was actually the first thing I learned instead of the 'Fireball', the 'Lightning strike', or something flashier.

Initially, I actually used 3 different spells to hide each – scent, sound, and body. But with time I learned to be more efficient. Now I only needed a spell to do it although it uses 6% of my magical reserves instead of the 4% that a normal spell takes.

I was so adept at this that I didn't need to verbalize it. But its potency and time limit reduces vastly if I didn't verbalize so I just murmured the chant. And lo behold the spell was complete. It was already tried and tested so I wasn't worried about its failure. Now, it would be there for at least 15 minutes before going out.

Moreover, I wasn't worried about using all my spells for the day. Although I wrote that I could only use 3 spells in a day, I could actually use more than two dozen (25) spells. I only wrote 3 as it was the highest I could go without making them suspicious.

A newbie who is able to use 25 spells. Yeah! Like that would go right. They would just think that I am a liar and get me into a problem.

So how I could use so many spells?

It was all thanks to an idea.

I noticed in my early years that almost all wizards and witches use staff (or staves as they usually called) for the spells or some even without them.

So I did an experiment and made a wand.

I used a heartstring of a ferocious dragon that an adventurer killed recently then. It didn't work perfectly but it worked. I then experimented with some other parts of magical beasts before settling on the heartstring of another dragon.

I admit I copied this idea from Harry Potter, but it's not important. The most important thing is it WORKED. Although much of it was trial and error initially, I was able to make a wand for myself after a few years of experimentation. It was a recent thing.

Most of the trial and error was spent in carving runes and deciding which wood was best useful. I had to check my and the dragon heartstring's compatibility with the wood too. I experimented with different woods from yew to elder. I didn't use any other core as the dragons were the most powerful magical beasts in the world. Some could even talk though all of them were definitely evil.

So instead of a stave, I made a wand. Well, it was not a proper wand and more like a rod. It was smaller than the staves but a lot bigger and heavier than wands, which was shown in harry potter movies. Still, with the help of this, I could use many more spells.

In just a few weeks, I have noticed a lot of things about my wand compared to the stave I used before.

First, it amplifies the number of spells by 5 times. This means if I use a stave to perform magic, I would be able to do only 5 spells.

Second, it is a lot easier to cast spells with a wand than it is with staves. The reduction of time is about 90% and that means life and death in the battle. An average mage takes at least 10 seconds to cast a spell. I could do it in just a second. And with time, I will become faster.

And third, it is a lot easier to carry and hide than a stave. I hide it on my thigh.

My wand was 15 inches long and 2 inches in girth. Its core was a heartstring of an old dragon and its wood was from 7000 Years old Elder tree. It was the only tree that I could find which was the oldest. I could have used some other tree and I even used it but it was less efficient compared to now.

I didn't tell anyone else about the wand as this info could get to the evil faction and I wasn't going to give them any more advantage, at least not before the upcoming war.

This doesn't mean that I won't share this knowledge. It's just that very hard to trust someone who would not use it for nefarious deeds.

Moreover, nobody would easily believe me, not until I could prove my worth to them. I could have shared it when I was a prince of the kingdom but then too they might haven't believed me due to my eccentric nature.

Well, my nature is eccentric for them but perfectly good from where I come from.

Now to get inside – I will need light to see. But a light source could give away my position to anyone in sight. Moreover, the goblins could easily find me in dark without even the torch due to their unique eyesight.

'What I wouldn't give for heat-sensing goggles' I mused.

Hmm, there's an idea. Maybe I could replicate the phenomenon with the help of runes.

In the end, there was only 1 option. I took a torch from my Adventure tool kit and lit it up. It could also be used as a club.

From some other perspective, it would look like a torch was floating on its own as I was totally invisible. The spell only hid the body and the armor or anything the person was wearing.

Suddenly I got an idea. I kicked myself for not thinking of it before. For god's sake, it was a common spell in the Harry Potter series. I am talking about 'Lumos' and 'Nox' spells.

Well, next time I will definitely use it after making it from scratch. Yeah, I have to make most of the spells from the scratch. Now, that I don't have any Royal Magician to ask for help, I can't pick their brains for the spell.

I also covered all of my head with the helmet by sliding the panel. I will need it as I was going to fight in the dark anyway. I did not want to get killed by a stray arrow (if they have those). I could now see with only a slit in front of my eyes. Step by step it was getting darker.

With the sword, I liberated from the goblin in my right hand, and a torch in my left, I traversed the cave as silently as I could.

Although I have masked my sounds, the goblins could easily find me from the torchlight. I made sure to look around on the path for the side tunnels. Fortunately, there were no side tunnels in the cave. I double-checked just to be sure.

It didn't take me much time to reach the main chamber.

There I found 4 goblins just as I estimated.

They were all sleeping without any care in the world, thinking that the guard would alert them of the danger. The smell of shit and piss was 10 times strong from before. With inhumane effort, I controlled my urge to throw up and withheld a grimace.

Before I could get distracted again, I placed the torch on the ground once I got used to the smell. That way the whole room was lit up and I could see easily. I also uncovered my face by sliding the panel back as I didn't want to miss any goblin. With the torch's light, there was enough illumination to clearly see my targets.

And then with that done, I silently crept upon the largest goblin among them and killed him by stabbing the sword through the mouth so that he does not scream and alert others.

The goblin I killed was a bit bigger than the rest of them and looked like to be the leader.

'Maybe he is transitioning into his higher form of Hobgoblin' I wondered.

I twisted the sword as an extra precaution to make sure he would die without making any sound. Still, the bastard made some noise when he was choking down on his own blood.

The other Goblins started to wake up from the sound. Still, they were groggy from the sleep so I had some time to finish them off.

I took out the sword from his neck while deftly ignoring the blood squirting out from his neck and sent it through the face of the nearby goblin. I noticed that the other 2 goblins were somewhat awake and reaching their respective weapons.

Knowing and feeling that the blade I took from the goblin was already useless to me by blood and fat; I picked up the ax lying beside the corpse of the leader and threw it to the nearest goblin. It got stuck into his chest and he easily went down. I wasn't sure if he was killed but he was definitely out of commission for now. The last goblin took the situation and made for the run.

'Not on my watch' I thought.

I wasn't going to let him escape. He will only learn from this encounter and spread suffering. I picked up a big stone from the ground and threw it with all my might. It struck his head dead-on. He went down and didn't move at all. Blood pooled around him and other goblins. I was breathing a little hard when I was done. I took a moment myself to calm my breathing. While the fight wasn't even more than 30 seconds, it felt like I fought for a few minutes.

Still, I quickly checked on all of the goblins to make sure they were dead.

They were.

I was half expecting them to try to kill me or make a break for it. But they were clearly dead.

Now that they were dead I sighed in relief. I don't know how but just killing those 6 took a little toll on me. Like I said, I was breathing a little hard in the end. With my skill, I didn't get any blood on my armor while fighting.

...

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