Homesteading in a fantasy world

Thanks to Goose's ability to stay hidden, it was no problem for me to continue observing how the goblins of this horde worked. For the weakest of the goblins, their daily routine was quite sad. I do not know exactly how long they stayed protected by the stronger goblins after they were born, but it couldn’t have been too long.

I could see a constant flood of young goblins being pushed towards the large camps. Calling those places camps, however, was a stretch.

There were no buildings, and the only shelter these goblins got was when they dug underground. The only food they got was fellow goblins who had died. It seems like starvation was the main reason most of these goblins died.

Their main job was to cut down trees and bring the lumber towards seven different breeder camps. From the energies I felt, each of them had one rank three breeder, but there were many rank two goblins there. Some would also be breeders, but I think a lot of those were there to protect the breeders.

This brutal life would eventually help them get stronger if they survived. Those who got decently strong seemed to move to different camps. Those were more organized, where there actually were some structures built. From there, it seems that groups of goblins would go out into the forest to hunt for food.

Besides the main camp where the leaders were, there were also two camps that actually looked like camps. Those were for the stronger goblins, those who have achieved gold rank or above. There was way too many of them.

There were simply too many, and I was having a hard time figuring out if I could do something. The problem was that there were also shamans, and the large lightning scar I got from one of their lightning attacks reminded me of how dangerous they could be.

I had incredible stamina, but fighting down there would be dangerous. There's simply too many different abilities in this system, and even monsters could have a wide variety. Still, I was quite certain I could kill and destroy at least four of the breeder camps before they would be able to pin me down and eventually exhaust me.

Goose could come and save me at some point, I could then relax and try again, but the second try would be harder. There were simply too many unknowns. We did have goblins of our own, and perhaps we could convince some of them to infiltrate, so we could find out more about what kinds of abilities these goblins had.

This seemed truly troublesome. Goose interrupted my pondering with a few images of us training to fight together.

"It wouldn't work; there’s simply too many of them, and you getting close to the ground is a bad idea. They will definitely have some ranged attacks. Although there would be a lot fewer than on the ground, you would still eventually exhaust yourself by attacking and defending, and I myself would also eventually tire from the constant attacks."

There was silence between us as we continued to glide over this destroyed land. Goose once again broke our silence. The images he sent this time were different. They were of us, higher up, Goose defending but not attacking, while I concentrated on taking out the ranged attackers. After that, I would rest, and we could simply stay up high, only attacking when I had enough energy to do so.

Hmm, it could work. It would be an endurance battle then, something that would take me many days to accomplish. "They would simply escape after we kill their ranged attackers. In the forest, we will never be able to find them up, and they would simply start up once again. This way, however, I think we would be able to destroy most of the Breeders, wait.”

This reminded me of the many spell scrolls I had in my tattoo storage. It was something the mages of UF suggested. Now, every high official and many in the military had spell scrolls that they could use to kill one strong individual or many weaker ones. I had the strongest and most out of almost everyone, but even they will not be enough to destroy so many.

I did, however, have multiple different fire-type spell scrolls. While it was quite a large area that was black and devoid of trees, it was not yet unimaginably big.

It was obvious that cutting down the trees was not a true priority as it was left to the weakest of them, and the main source of food came from the hunting parties. That meant that I could possibly set the edge of the forest on fire and trap them all in here.

They would obviously want to use shamans to put out the fire. Goose and I would need to kill those shamans anyway, as they would be the only true danger to us unless they had some archers, which I didn't believe they could have in large numbers, if they had any.

There would still be a lot of goblins who would be outside the ring of fire, but perhaps towards the night, more would return.

"There might be a way, Goose. Excellent suggestion. We will still need to stay and observe for a few days. It will be a test of endurance for you, and I hope you’re ready."

From our bond, I got a sense of determination back, which made me smile. The smile, however, quickly turned into a more sinister one. Was I really about to do this? Will I truly succeed and actually be able to take out such a large army?

We waited for two days before I was able to completely confirm a pattern. I did not know exactly how many came back, but a lot of them did come back during the night. A lot of hunting parties, however, left before the sun even rose, so there would only be a few-hour window to trap as many of them as possible.

The first 10 minutes or so would be incredibly crucial. I would need to use all of the fire-based spell scrolls, and Goose would need to use his wind to spread the fire even further. The trees here were old and strong, so they would resist, but once they caught fire, it should be quite hot and truly difficult to put out.

I did notify UF that I was going into a large battle and whom I was facing. Obviously, they were not happy, but they couldn’t exactly command me to return. So, about an hour before midnight, we began.

Goose swooped down, and I readied the first spell scroll. It was hard to modify the spell scrolls, but it was possible to an extent, so the flame wall spread out beneath us, covering the edge of the forest while we flew over it.

This was the best scroll for this kind of job; the rest of them would not be so easy. Goose used his wind manipulation to fan the flames. We could not fly too fast, but even then, our first ring was only about 10 minutes long. I had only two spell scrolls left, and most of the job was up to Goose to fan and spread the fire.

I used the spell scrolls on the parts of the forest that were not yet on fire. It was on the 2nd ring when we were first attacked. One was a lightning-type spell, while the other was a group of small rocks.

Goose was able to dodge them, but he immediately returned back to fan the flames while I started to shoot back. It was the most crucial time, but after the 4th ring and me having killed at least five of the shamans, we had succeeded in setting the entire forest edge on fire.

It seems that finally, the goblin leader figured out what was going on and started to send shamans to tame the fire in certain places. We still climbed higher but not too high so I would still be incredibly effective at devastating those groups of goblins who were trying to stop the fire.

We couldn't dodge forever, but now that Goose was fully concentrated on flying and defense, the few attacks that hit didn't do any real damage. Those shamans were quickly protected by large goblins, most of whom used shields, but it seems that they were happy enough to use their own bodies to protect them.

We couldn’t stay in one place for too long; otherwise, we would be too vulnerable, but it was also good that we were flying around that way we could interrupt the many shaman groups. The arrows I shot were made from my own energy. Otherwise, I would have needed a truly magnificent storage skill to have so many arrows that would be needed to kill this goblin horde.

It was unfortunate that we would basically get no experience out of this. That was, however, a fleeting thought as I concentrated on searching for my targets, making arrows, and shooting them.

Not all arrows were the same; some I made so they would pierce through the toughest of shields, some would explode, but mainly, I just shot as many as possible.

The many hundreds of hours of practice paid off as Goose and I worked perfectly together. Goose was a little bit frustrated that he couldn't attack himself, but he needed to defend and conserve as much energy as possible. For hours and hours, we attacked the shaman groups that tried to put out the fires while also defending against their return fire.

I was right; there weren’t many other ranged attackers, but they had more shamans than I expected. They must have had thousands of them. Most, however, were quite weak, and whenever my arrow found one, they usually died.

It took until midday for there only to be two groups of shamans left. There were about 200 in both; they were the strongest and quickest, but mainly they still survived because they had defensive spells.

They weren’t the best at putting out the fires that were now constantly spreading further into the forest, making it even more impossible for any of them to escape.

The goblin leader and most of their strongest warriors constantly screamed at me. Unfortunately, I knew the goblin language well enough to understand the insults. Mainly, they were calling me a coward for not facing them on the ground.

Perhaps I was a coward, but I was eventually going to be a winning coward. My arm that was pulling back the string was completely exhausted, as was the rest of me, but I still kept firing. Now, I put a lot more energy into my attacks, and three hours later, I was certain that if there were any shamans left, they would be hiding in the mass of the weakest goblins trying to survive.

Finally, Goose and I could ascend further up, where he could glide and start to regenerate his energy while I did the same. Every once in a while, I used a few of my abilities to shoot a splitting arrow that would split into almost 500 arrows before it hit the ground. Those were shot at the large mass of goblins. We recuperated for eight hours before we dived back down, and I truly started to kill.

Like that, it took us three days to basically kill everything. There were only three rank-three goblins left, including the leader. Finally, I jumped down from Goose, and they looked at me in utter confusion.

That confusion stopped when I pulled out my sword and charged at them. They lasted a minute, and with the leader's head now rolling down the small hill, everyone inside the ring of fire was dead.

It took us three more days to extinguish the fire, and we waited another two, but no other goblins returned to this location. It seemed like it was finally time to return.

I suspect it won’t take long for the wildlife to find this place and eat what’s left of the goblins. While this wasn't easy to achieve, I think I have underestimated how powerful properly built high-rank people could be.