Territory Defense with Sly Monsters
A heap of corpses had been stacked high along the attack route. The flames spread like dominoes.
- Goooooh!
The spreading fire quickly devoured the goblins. They had no fireproofing, no means to fight back against it, and the blaze and smoke rose out of control.
“Mandragoranis! Roll them!”
- Ranirani! (Yes!)
The Mandragoranis gathered on the hill rolled the boulders piled there down toward the foot of the slope.
“This should be enough.”
Just in case any of the burning monsters came charging at the barricade, he had raised a firebreak in advance.
As Ho-yeong had intended, the firebreak held back the flames—but it couldn’t stop the stench of burning goblin flesh or the smoke.
“Ugh. That smell is atrocious.”
Then a single gust of wind swept in.
Meyril, her face drained of color, had mustered every ounce of her mana to create it.
“Ohhh.”
The smoke and flames were driven even more violently back toward the goblins, and Ho-yeong’s status window rang with a flood of elimination notifications.
“Good. Clean-up complete!”
Before long, the goblins on the right attack route were annihilated.
Ho-yeong led the converted goblins over to the left side.
“Nice. You held that well.”
The mist had cleared enough that the goblins had pressed their attack, but most of the spearhead leaders were dead and there were no archers or shield bearers left, so they had all been repelled.
“There are still a few left. You archers over there, four of you—come here.”
He ordered the archers and positioned them atop the hill, then had the goblins follow behind.
- Goooooh...
Roughly halfway down the route, one spearhead leader lay blocking the way, one leg severed, while about twenty goblins hesitated in front of him.
- Goooooh!
The spearhead leader ordered them forward, but the goblins only wavered and refused to obey.
- Goooh. Gopgop? Gooble! (Hey. Don’t go. You saw it too—those who led the charge died.)
- Gopgop. Goooooh. Goblegoble! (They’ll die. It’s pointless. Let’s just run!)
- Gop? Gopblin gop gop! (But there’s a gopblin behind us!)
They seemed to be leaning toward fleeing, but they were still torn apart by fear of the spearhead leader. Even though he could no longer move one leg, the way he clenched his glaive still radiated murderous intent.
“Honestly, you pathetic losers. What are you so scared of? One cripple with a severed ankle, and twenty of you are trembling?”
- Gooooh?!
The voice from ahead made the goblins recoil in shock. The human riding a Mandragorani was one thing, but now even their own kin had mounted Mandragoranis.
“Listen, you lot. You can’t even work up the nerve to gang up on the bastard back there? Cowards, all of you. Still, I guess you’re smart if you’re not just charging in headfirst.”
The goblins were bewildered when the suspicious, dangerous-looking human praised them.
“I’ll keep it short. Surrender, and I’ll spare you!”
- Goooooh?! Gopgop gob! (Did you all hear that? He says he’ll spare us. That human will)
- Goop? Gopgop?! Gob-eul gob? (But how the hell do you understand him? Human speech, I mean.)
- Gobgob gob! (Idiot. You understood it too.)
The fact that they could understand human speech at all was astonishing.
If I turn this into a chase-and-wipeout now, it’ll eat into the time before the next wave. In that case, I’d rather convert these guys.
- Goop! Gobgob! Goo gooooob! (It’s true. Follow this human’s orders, you idiots!)
The goblins behind Ho-yeong chimed in as well.
“You little punks. So you did learn a thing or two from the Mandragoranis.”
Even as the persuasion from the psychological-warfare unit started to sink in, the goblins still hesitated.
“Tsk. You timid bastards. Guess I’ll have to help push this along. Archers! Fire as I said before!”
The archers on the hill loosed their arrows at once.
- Goooooh! (It was a trap after all!)
The goblins panicked, but the arrows weren’t aimed at them—they were aimed at the spearhead leader.
- Gooooooo!
The spearhead leader dropped his glaive after taking arrow after arrow through his limbs. He struggled desperately to move, but the arrows pinned his wrists and ankles to the ground, leaving him only writhing in agony.
- Gopgob? (What do we do?)
Seeing that and still hesitating, Ho-yeong clicked his tongue.
“Let’s test this out. Area Conversion, activate!”
For the first time, he attempted an area conversion.
“Oh. That’s cost-effective. Must be cheap since I’m getting a bunch of trash mobs at once.”
“Thanks to the Guardian’s psychological warfare, the goblins’ anxiety has lowered. In situations like this, if you first soften the target with proper persuasion and create favorable conditions before immediate conversion, the conversion cost decreases and the conversion rate increases.”
The goblins, still stiff and uneasy, approached Ho-yeong.
“First order: everyone drops their weapons.”
Like the cowards they were, they obeyed the disarmament command without a fuss.
“Second order: go beat the hell out of that gopblin who bullied you.”
- Goooooh? (Really?)
- Gobgob! (Yeah!)
The goblins swarmed forward with gusto and beat the spearhead leader senseless, their faces full of savage glee.
- Gop! Gopblin gop! (Kill the goblin bastard!)
“That’s what you should’ve done from the start.”
The spearhead leader, with his ankle severed and his limbs pierced by arrows, was mercilessly pummeled.
“Let’s see. Is there any room to convert this guy?”
Ho-yeong considered converting the spearhead leader, thinking it was a shame to lose such combat power.
Hmm... but then it’d be awkward to keep him around with the other goblins. No choice. Just kill him. You guys, step aside for a sec.
Coolly, he cut off the spearhead leader’s head.
Keeping the goblins from trying to play soccer with the severed head turned out to be more annoying than he’d expected.
* * *
Tamer Territory had successfully held off the fourth wave as well.
“Hey, Lord. Why the long face? You just won a landslide victory, but you look like a defeated commander after a crushing loss.”
“Ah, I’m just thinking about something. Anyway, Rubia, that was incredible earlier. You were amazing.”
“Ahem. This big sister may look like this, but she’s a fourth-rank priest, you know.”
This had been the hardest combination to face—goblin shield bearers, archers, and a handful of spearhead leaders. The reason they’d been able to stop this wave at all was the fire attack from the previous one.
I’m glad I started the fourth wave right away.
He had chosen to attack immediately instead of waiting.
I’d already turned the place into a sea of fire. Might as well use it. Of course.
On the right attack route, the flames were still roaring, and Ho-yeong intended to take the right-side wave for free by exploiting that.
But there had been one variable he hadn’t anticipated.
And then they go and pull some bullshit like that.
The goblins that had emerged from the right had not run straight into the flames—instead, they’d turned back and joined the left-side march.
No, I guess it makes sense if they’re intelligent at all? Charging in like moths to a flame would’ve been the weird part. Either way, it worked out for me.
Taking advantage of that, Ho-yeong had set fire to the left side as well.
He hadn’t merely blocked their advance with flames; he’d chained it together with Rubia’s specialty, Holy Flame, and wiped the goblins out in one sweep.
There are too many variables I didn’t see coming. This variable-difficulty nonsense is already annoying enough as it is, and now this? Ugh.
Rather than celebrating the victory, Ho-yeong was analyzing the battlefield.
Dad always said it. Whenever things are going too well, that’s when you need to be careful. Get it together, Bang Ho-yeong. Even if this is a world inside a game, one loss is all it takes to end everything.
Thinking of his family, he steeled himself.
Then again, even the game never had anything like this.
Reign of Dice was a defense game, but not every monster advanced honestly along the attack route. There were monsters that crossed obstacles the allies couldn’t, flying monsters, and monsters that tunneled underground until they hit a blocking force—there were all kinds.
“I mean, veering off the route halfway through and coming in from the side? That’s a first. In what universe is this even Stage 1? No matter how much you call it super-hardcore or whatever.”
“…Who are you talking to?”
“Ah, no one. Just talking to myself. I feel like the world’s cursed me, that’s all.”
Lilian, who had come to report, seemed used to the lord’s odd behavior by now and didn’t comment further.
“More importantly, what were our casualties in that last engagement?”
“Zero dead, zero critically injured, three lightly wounded.”
“Really? Thank goodness. Still... I can’t say I’m entirely relieved.”
Ho-yeong’s expression remained grim.
It was a relief that they had suffered no losses in manpower, but the depletion of strategic resources was a real pain in the ass.
“Is Mr. Berneval doing all right?”
“I’m still fine. So no need to keep poking me. There ain’t any more stones to poke out, anyway.”
They were running low on both the stones suitable for cannon fodder and Berneval’s stamina to peck them apart.
“Meyril, how are you holding up?”
“I-I think I’m all right. Or maybe not all right, yooo?”
“Let’s go with not all right.”
“Th-this is the first time I’ve cast magic with such intense power in rapid succession. I think that’s probably why.”
Meyril was in serious mana depletion.
“I, I’m at my limit too, mal-im-ni-da.”
Sicoop, the mage soldier, was in the same state.
Can we really stop the boss like this?
With the boss’s appearance looming, Ho-yeong’s worry deepened.
“Sigh... But, Status Window. Didn’t you say earlier the fourth wave was the ‘final’ wave? Then what do you mean there’s a boss? That’s basically player deception, isn’t it?”
The final wave remains unchanged, because the boss appears only once.
“That is some outrageous wordplay. Fine, then what’s this boss supposed to do? Where’s it coming from?”
The Stage 1 boss is a Hobgoblin. Its spawn point is random.
“Random? You mean we don’t know whether it’ll come from the left or the right?”
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