Chapter 46 - Goblin camp (2/2)

With that in mind, he had no option but to call in the second highest damage dealer in the team. He had already canvassed the entire area and had Quiet Fire hide while he stunned the riders. Then, together they easily killed the riders, before the stun duration was over.

Even though he had already warned Quiet Fire to not injure the wolf and that if the wolf is injured it's howling would alert the other goblins, accidents were bound to happen. In their eighth attempt, she hit the wolf with a fire ball causing it to howl and alert all the riders and guards.

”Quickly kill both the wolf and rider now,” said Balthazar summoning his clone to block the running wolf. Though they managed to kill the rider and wolf in 3 seconds. The remaining of the riders already have seen them and are riding towards them.

”Rendezvous with the team. I will lead them away,” said Shadow. He could slowly whittle them down or escape but Quiet Fire will surely be killed without Tang or Blinding tanking for her.

”No, there are only 4 of them, if we meet at this point, we can repel them. The guards aren't as fast as the riders. We can manage to repel them,” said Quiet Fire opposing his idea.

”No, I can outpace the riders then easily run back and strike at the isolated monsters and pick them off. You four attacked the guards and thin their ranks with long range attacks while maintaining your distance. If more guards or other goblins show up just leave. This is definitely a quest made for level 4 players. At level 3, it is really hard to defeat them,” said Shadow.

”Maybe, I shouldn't have brought them to the mine before they leveled up,” thought Balthazar. ”They are not strong enough attack them at level 3 and they need to get better equipment. They might die if we continue to go to quests like this.”

He messaged to Quiet Fire instead of on team chat regarding his concerns. ”If we fail let us attempt this again only after we level up. We are not strong enough for this quest. We need to upgrade our equipment also.”

”Might be right. It is a level 3 to 4 quest,” said Quiet Fire agreeing with him. ”If, it gets hard, we will retreat. You do the same.”

”OK, if you retreat, this is a good place where level 3 wolves are found. The Blackrock Wolves, which are special elites, may also be seen. Be careful and farm here. They respawn* rate is also not bad. The dead ones respawn about once every half hour,” said Shadow providing her an image of the map he traversed for his special quest.

There were two riders already closing onto him and Quiet Fire hardly thirty feet far. He immediately created a clone to attack the rider targeting Quiet Fire allowing her to make a decent distance from them.

By the time, the 20 seconds for the clone were done, Quiet Fire managed to run close to 200 metres from him. The other rider also focused on him as Quiet Fire was far away and the aggro from the clone shifted to him.

The remaining two riders also appeared on the horizon and were riding fast towards him. Though Shadow with his higher attributes could resist the attacks of two of the riders and combat them. It would be far too hard to handle four of the riders on his own.

He started running in a direction away from Quiet Fire and the other two riders while fight two riders close to him. Lucky for him that the riders didn't have an attack speed that was comparable to their movement speed. Else, the two riders would have managed to land attacks on him without fail.

It was a hard task to evade the two who were collaborating to land attacks on Shadow. But that wasn't the main issue. If Shadow ran at his maximum speed, he could sooner or later avoid the riders. He had to intentionally lower his speed so that the riders would keep attacking him, else if he successfully evades, they will go back to the camp and might attack the team who were attacking the guards.

He continued to run away while maintaining aggro range for a few minutes when he got the system message.

System: Teammate Tang and Spicy died.

He immediately messaged Quiet Fire, ”What happened at the camp?”

”There were more goblin riders and guards who came out of the tents. We hardly managed to escape them. Luckily, they stopped attack us after we were about 100 meters away from the camp. Else even Blinding would have died trying to tank those riders.”

”That is good, it looks like the monsters that appear from the tents won't leave the premises of the camp.”

”But Tang died trying to tank them. They are too fierce. We need to upgrade our equipment by a lot before we try to do the quest again,” said Quiet Fire.

”OK. Go to the location I mention in the map. I will distract them,” messaged Shadow as he created his shadow clone and made it go into stealth to escape. He had four of the lesser goblin riders attacking him. The clone only had 20 seconds of life within which he had to swap position. He had to make these few seconds count and sprinted away from them at full speed.

In the last second, he activated the skill shadow swap to disappear from the aggro range of the riders. ”I escaped the riders. I hope you are nowhere near the camp,” he said immediately going into stealth. He made his way back to the goblin camp to check up on the reinforcements.

As Quiet Fire told him, there are more riders and guards at the goblin camp now. Due to him being in stealth he was 50% slower than his normal, the riders who were after him returned to the camp. Apart from these four riders, he noticed another four riders and four guards.

”They are lucky that only Tang and Spicy got killed,” thought Balthazar. ”With these reinforcements, they definitely need to be geared up well before they can take on the quest. I always knew that the temple quests aren't easy. But this is harder than I remember, even the initial number of riders and guards were lower than what I see. I guess, the difficulty of quite a decent number of quests was made easier in later upgrades.”

He quickly made his way to the guards while in stealth. These guards were 4 feet tall. That was quite large for species like lesser goblins. He set to picking their pockets. He got refined iron ore again. The guards were quite stationary compared to the riders and it was easier to execute pickpocket.

It was a common habit for most guilds in his previous life to pickpocket guards as they gave iron ore. Shadow continued to pickpocket the guards for refined iron ore.

He already had enough iron ore and refined iron ore to finish his quests, but he continued to pickpocket the goblins because they might give him engineering blueprints or forging designs. Even the lesser goblins occasionally carried blueprints and designs.

Though the goblins began to notice that some pickpocket was among them and began to attack blindly, Shadow continued till he finally got hold of a parchment from one of the guards. It was a shield design, a black iron shield.

[Goblin Shield] (black iron shield)

Level 3:

Materials Required: Refined Iron Ore x 3; Stones x 5; Magic esscense x 2;

Requirement: Endurance: 8;

Defence +15;

Vitality: +10; Endurance +3;

”Finally, something worth being a goblin creation,” thought Balthazar as he looked at the design. He could easily create it once he finished Kade's request. With this he could earn some money in the game and maybe don his team with better equipment.

If he opened a stall at the village, the players tend to buy it with credits through somnium technology than the in-game money like it happened in his transaction with Blue Dart. He decided to give it them to the village head who could auction them off at his office.

Note:

*respawn - an instance of a character in a video game reappearing after having been killed.