Black Mist
“Ugh. Why isn’t this working? The wheel won’t move!”
The two carts had stopped dead, their front wheels ruined. They were loaded down with stone and scrap metal.
The transport squad, one after another, had come to a halt like a row of gears locking in place.
“I told you to spread the weight out more evenly. Move aside and let me see.”
With time pressing and no patience left, Ho-yeong dismounted and looked over the cart.
“Damn it. It’s completely shot. Tch.”
He glanced at Berneval Luntin, but he did not ask for help.
“Let’s pull the axle first. On three. One, two, three!”
He tried prodding the broken spokes here and there, but nothing went smoothly. Watching the humans fumble around as if repairing a cart were some great feat, Berneval let out a snort.
Look at these humans go. How can their hands be so damn clumsy?
Still, he made no move to help of his own accord.
Just because I was invited by the lord doesn’t make me a hired man. Right, then. I already said I wouldn’t be doing menial work like this.
The dwarf folded his arms and drummed his thick fingers together. How many seconds had passed like that?
“By the gods, you idiots! Even skeletons with the shakes would do better than that!”
Berneval finally lost his temper and roared at Ho-yeong, who was struggling not to laugh.
“Jo-rey, you hopeless fool! Why the hell are you floundering around like a stray pup when you’ve got a dwarf right here?!”
“Ah, how could I possibly ask the lord’s master, the weapons and artillery advisor of Tamer Territory, to do such a thing? Such trivial work is for us to handle….”
“Get out of the way, damn it!”
In the end, Berneval stepped in with a hammer and chisel.
“There. Done, ma.”
With the discarded materials loaded on the cart, he quickly fashioned new wheels. He wrapped the rims in a tough but supple fabric and reinforced the centers with a convex iron plate.
“You planning to use this cart as a barricade or something?”
“Yes… sir.”
“Then take these front wheels off and use them. That way you won’t need to wedge something underneath to keep the wheels from rolling, aye.”
“Take the wheels off?”
“Aye. I made it so they’d be easy to remove and reattach.”
Berneval even demonstrated the detachable wheels himself.
“The removed wheels can be used as shields.”
He had attached handles to the backs of them as well.
“Wow. Dwarves really are different. That’s incredible.”
Ho-yeong and the soldiers stared in admiration.
“Well, when you think about it, I’m the one who modified it into a battle cart, so this counts as weapons manufacture, don’t it? It’s not menial work.”
“Of course, of course. I’ve learned something today. All right, move out again!”
The troops from Tamer Territory were marching in two columns. In the advance direction, the left force was under Jo-rey’s command, and the right force under Lillian’s.
Ho-yeong had briefly considered gathering the troops directly in front of the district office, their defensive objective, and waiting there.
It would stop us from spreading out our forces and let us concentrate our firepower... but if we fail, it’s over.
A last-stand defense was a kind of cheap build, the sort of high-risk strategy people called a quick-and-dirty setup.
Ho-yeong did not want to split his forces, but there was a reason he had no choice.
[Legend]
∏ = monster spawn point
∴ = monster (goblin)
│ = obstacle (cannot deploy troops)
♥ = defensive objective (district office)
∏ ∏
↓ ↓
∴∴ │ ∴∴
∴∴ │ ∴∴
∴ │ ∴
∴ │ ∴
♥
Between the goblin spawn points, rock and earth mounds stretched out like a long hill.
I’d love to put ranged troops up there, damn it.
He had already tried placing the archers on the rise, but the dirt was slippery and the obstacles made footing unstable. If things went badly, the troops could be isolated like men trapped on a tetrapod, and it was the kind of hill that made you want to scream into the void.
Tip: Goblins are not forest-type monsters, so they also have a very hard time moving across hills.
The only silver lining was that the enemy also could not take advantage of the terrain.
“Um... my lord. Will I really be useful? I have dungeon-exploring experience, b-but... I’ve never faced hundreds of monsters at once.”
Meyril, crouched behind him on horseback, trembled so hard that he could feel it through his back.
“Of course. Don’t be afraid. We’ll stop anyone aiming for you. You just focus on your magic.”
He turned with a quick smile to reassure her.
“It’s open ground except for this hill, so your weather magic should help a lot. It’s fine even if the range is narrow. Those things have no choice but to come at us in one place. Unless it’s a forest... wait. A forest?”
Something flashed through his mind.
What did the status window say earlier? Right. It said forest-type something. Then what if...?
Ho-yeong halted his horse and jumped down.
“No. 8! Come here! Carry me. Yak, you take my horse.”
He transferred to the Mandragorani that had been following behind him.
“All right, No. 8. Let’s climb up there!”
- Lani-lani! (No problem!)
No. 8, carrying Ho-yeong, surged up the obstacle-filled hill without hesitation.
“Oh? You can climb this?”
- Lani! (This is nothing!)
“You eat things like that too? Anyway, put me down for a sec... aargh!”
But the moment he got off No. 8’s back, Ho-yeong slipped and fell.
“What the hell?! Why is the ground so flimsy? Ngh!”
The soil that had looked firm sank under his feet, and the rocks that had seemed solid were slick as if greased.
Seriously, this is like the system itself is blocking us from climbing it. Like an obstacle from a game.
Ho-yeong climbed back onto No. 8.
“How the hell are you not affected at all?”
- Laaani, lani-lani! (Our feet are built to run on hills and through forests.)
“R-right. You don’t need to show me your feet. I already know what they look like.”
He had seen the foot structure when Mandragorani feet were being made into trotters. It was optimized for terrain like this.
“All right, good. Archers and Baunal, everyone mount the Mandragorani and come up!”
Ho-yeong smiled faintly. At last, he had a way to seize the high ground.
There was only one problem.
“You want us to ride on a monster and throw stones at people? Have ye lost yer mind?! No chance! Nay, absolutely not!”
“Jo-rey, have ye gone mad?!”
Berneval Luntin and Baunal, two men cursed with short stature, flatly refused to climb the hill on a monster’s back.
Ho-yeong looked exhausted from trying to talk them down.
“Damn it! Fine, I’ll spend the EP. How much? How much do you want? Edification! Edification!!”
In the end, he had to use his conversion ability.
* * *
The first wave will begin shortly. Time remaining: 10 seconds.
A wave was a segment where monsters surged in large numbers. Sometimes they came as a single species, and sometimes they appeared mixed together. A stage was usually made up of about ten waves.
5... 4... 3... 2... 1. Begin.
From within the black mist, goblins emerged on foot. They wore what was barely more than rags of leather instead of proper clothes, and each one carried a crude weapon. But there were an enormous number of them.
“Archers, ready!”
“The target isn’t the front line. It’s the back ranks!”
- Gob?
- Gop-gop. Gob?
The goblins were startled. There was a human standing on the hill they had never been able to climb. It was a slightly ridiculous sight, riding a Mandragorani instead of a proper horse, but the figure had a blinding halo around him with the sun at his back.
“Fire!”
- Gop-gop!
- Gob-uhk!
Arrows flew in while the goblins were still distracted. They were not many, but because Ho-yeong’s troops had occupied the high ground, direct fire was easy. Being able to cover both forked routes was another major advantage.
- Gop-gob! (Move!)
- Gop-gop! (You move!)
The front line kept advancing, but the goblins struck down by arrows behind them became obstacles in the procession.
“Baunal!”
- Leave it tae me!
Riding atop No. 10, Baunal yanked stones from the sack strapped to the Mandragorani’s back and hurled them with obvious glee.
- Gob-uh!
The sling smashed goblin heads open one after another, striking with lethal accuracy.
“Spearmen, move to position!”
- Gop-gop?!
The goblins in the lead were thrown into confusion. The allies behind them were gone, and the path had narrowed before they knew it.
That was because the road had been blocked and pinched tight with boulders and discarded timber hauled in by cart.
- Gop-gob! (Climb, climb!)
On top of that, the slope created by all the digging made life hard for the short-legged creatures.
“Hup!”
Even when they managed to clamber up, the barricade and the spearmen beyond it blocked their way.
“Cease fire!”
Ho-yeong stopped the archers to conserve arrows.
“Should I stop too?”
“No, keep throwing, Baunal. You’ve got plenty of stones.”
“Keep mocking my dialect and I’ll stop being entertained, aye. Ah, we’re out of stones.”
“No. 16! Go down, grab the stone sack, and come back up!”
The Mandragorani that no one was riding was being used as ammunition transport.
- Gop-gop! (Step on them and climb!)
The goblins thought in their own crude way. They used the corpses of the ones who had been stabbed by spears and tumbled down as stepping stones, filling in the slope.
“Don’t give ground! No. 8, let’s go down!”
Ho-yeong joined the right flank, where more goblins were pressing in. When the goblins saw him fighting while riding a Mandragorani, they were aghast.
“You’ve forgotten mounted combat, and yet you’re still fighting so well on top of that thing.”
Lillian gave her blunt assessment.
“This is combat on a monster, so it still counts as mounted swordsmanship!”
He was not at Lillian’s level, where she could end a goblin with a single strike by pouring aura into her spear tip, but he was no pushover either.
“Your control of aura has become quite skillful. Not quite as before your resurrection, but close.”
“That’s because I had a good teacher. Or should I say a good student? You were my disciple in the first place.”
Even during the journey to the territory, the nightly sword lessons had continued. Thanks to that, Ho-yeong’s skill had risen from the level of a complete beginner with a wood sword to that of a bronze-sword swordsman.
“All right, No. 8! This time we’re going the other way!”
- Lani!
Ho-yeong raced back and forth, climbing and descending the hill.
- Gop-gop! Gobob! (This is impossible. We need to fall back for now!)
- Gob-gob! (There’s a crazy human riding a Mandragorani around!)
The goblins were terrified, as if they had seen a death knight.
- Gob...?
One of them, inching backward, was suddenly cut in half.
“What the hell is that now?”
What appeared was a large goblin, at least twice the size of the others. It carried a glaive as huge as its own body.
Warning! A Goblin Elite Commander has appeared.