After having been denied my rights to killing the boss and shared contribution, I did not even mention the troll's whole head and-or tusks. Instead I just pretended to be wallpaper in the background while the tankers made hopeful speculations based on my involvement.
When the tankers said they needed to stop and rest, the party decides it, too, needs to stop and rest. Their words held much more sway than mine. Not only if one of them received an injury while approaching the village, there was an assured time when they inevitably reached the village that the remaining goblins would be divided between close quarters and range.
With a high speed heavy hitter, the trollkin that comes down from the walls to lead or herd would be picked off. Those few seconds of confusion buys their group time to secure their positions with a few bodies by making a few bodies. The death of one trollkin would definitely bring the other into combat which would end the rain of arrows and thrown weapons.
What might have started a fight with me soon became a positively settled discussion between two well-known comrades. The younger lady affectionately named Tiny would escort to the thicket where she would lie in wait to snipe targets off of the wall while still being within comfortable range of Emilia.
The older lady in a matching styled cloak would continue being escorted by me through the thicket and towards the highway in the area the initial squad was taken from. Even for a magic user, her physical capabilities in E grade should still be above the average hobgoblins. Throwing a three-ounce glass object containing several more ounces of dangerous chemicals and compressed mana more than fifty yards should be easy for her.
Sadly, she could not throw anything around the front of the walls or highway leading into town that might hinder view of the boss.
Only a minute or so after the discussion ended, the others actually arrived and another discussion started up again. After ascertaining the number of incendiary cocktails on her person and the effects of a few others, the witch was soon asked if she felt comfortable being left alone on the highway. By me, who would be leaving her there.
She said she was fine with a further distance closer to tiny simply to avoid proximity to her own cocktails. Throwing the more bulbous incendiary vials lining the back row of each inner side of her cloak. Her overall potential with another non-lethal and lethal set of small bottles meant she could basically 'purify' the village on her own.
However, airing out the village would take no less than one day and air filtration masks as cheap as mine were no good. Instead, we had no choice but to burn the village walls down instead. It was not like anybody but the wildlife would be using them any time soon, anyway.
When the group was finally ready to start making move Jack and his team boldly starting moving out while he and his swordsmen hid behind the thickly armored tankers strafing forward behind their wall shields. None of the goblins, though, even bothered making a move.
By the time they reached the thicket I started escorting tiny and the witch across the open ground behind the thicket.
In this fashion, once we disappeared into the grass the others would be reappearing and draw all gazes away from us. Leaving tiny in the front edge of the thicket facing the village once Jack and his group had made it most of the way to the highway, I quickly hurried the witch along to the boulder strewn area the others once ambushed the goblin patrol in.
From here she would have plenty of protection and plenty of time to aim her throws. By the time she tas taking out a single rounded bottle in either hand, Jack and his team made it to the highway less that a hundred yards out from the village. As soon as they stepped foot on the highway, the goblins began attacking with everything they had.
Only about a dozen of them had bows of any quality to shoot with, so 'with everything they had' meant many of them threw spears and naked lengths of wood or even lobbed large rocks across the distance. This might not have seemed like a big issue, but the random objects mixed in made it hard to judge time between volleys. They could only slowly and steadily push forward behind raised and angled shields while facing the ranged attacks of almost thirty goblins.
As soon as their archers started firing on the big defensive decoy out in the open, a gunshot rang out from not too far away and an arrow whispered out from the grass. Only a second apart from each other, a body from either rear end of the archers on the walls tumbled over and two bows stopped firing. As hoped for, the goblins on the wall only responded by pushing toward the front end of the wall.
"Get ready," I needlessly remind the witch while getting ready to run out as well. Even as another pair of bodies fell from the rear groups of archers and they pressed forward again, the overall weight of projects did not taper by much as Jack's team came within fifty yards. However, once the third pair of bodies fell from the walls, the witch finally hopped up onto the boulder she hid behind and slowly threw out her two bottles.
Not only would it have been hard just to hit high enough on the wall to do damage, the top platform of the wall was only about six feet across. To the goblins on it, that was plenty of moving room, but for somebody throwing something lighter than a grenade? I would probably need few days of steady practice just to get a thirty-percent chance of hitting the very top of the wall.
The witch shattered both bottles on the actual bodies of goblins. At first, there was only a sudden expansion of thick blue vapors within a ten-foot radius around the shattering site. The goblins in reach of the sudden expansion were even staggered by it.
What was most impressive, though, once the sudden outer ignition of the vapors that were suddenly sucked back into the vacuum within their expansion areas. Not only were the goblins of initial contact set almost spontaneously aflame, all of them in the expansion range who were unbalanced were sucked together into the heart of the fire. After the flames had been condensed by the vacuum, a thousand degrees of heat and light suddenly spread out for more than fifteen feet in all directions.
Then the flames dimmed and all oxygen in the area was condensed into a single point in the vacuum of the expanding flames. Like the flames had done, the oxygen compressed into the vacuum until it found release and suddenly bloomed out in all directions.
Goblins who had not died by the successive concussions and or fire were simply thrown out from the wall alongside the lightly charred bodies of their dead and wounded.
I did not even care to run out, yet, as I looked at the with and asked, "What the hell was that thing?!"
"That, my young friend, was the creation that made me famous!" She announces proudly, disregarding the skirmishing siege taking place not that far away. "I call it the Physics Fire Bomb. I'm working on and ice version or something similar that uses ice in a vacuum. Thinning the environment with an ice bomb will thin the air and bring more into the area which would allow for greater fire and then air expansion from the fire bomb."
She was a mad scientist with a pretty face and nice body. I could have fallen in love then and there. However, Jack and his team were being slowed as they reached thirty yards from the gate.
Around thirty yards from the ten-foot wall, they could start aiming around and over the shields.
"Remind me to ask you more about them, later," I say quickly before whipping around on the balls of my feet to take off at a dead sprint. The distance between Jack's group and I blurred away at more than ten yards per step and I was putting my feet down more than one per second. In three seconds I was already passing Jacks group after outpacing the first couple of rocks and arrows that went in my direction.
By the time the second set of only two arrows intended for me were drawn back, I was already within ten yards of the wall and leaping up across the distance with my sabers in hand. There were only two goblins left on the right side close to the trollkin and even before I scissored my sabers across the face of the first goblin the trollkin simply jumped down. I was honestly a little pissed.
Taking out my frustrations with a backhand slap of a saber that cut half of the way through a goblin's neck at the base, I also leap down to pursue. With a goblin stuck on my sword. Luckily, the impact from landing was enough to literally bounce the goblin's expanding neck off of my weapon.
The trollkin wore a short sword crudely across its lower back but was waiting for me with a shortened spear on the ground. The head of the spear was somewhat broad and scoop-like similar to a boar spear and even had two bars behind the head. Avoiding this handcrafted piece of lethal portal steel was almost a failure, involving the use of my coat by throwing one open side open at the spear and rolling.
I could vaguely feel the thinness of the pressure through my proto-suit with the spear point caught on the woven leather of my coat but was pulled sideways to my body when I started to roll. Luckily, I was wearing the upper body straps so only the leather was grazed and the most depth the weapon achieved was when a cross bar poked into my ribs.
When I fell passed the head of the weapon the butt of the spear was forced to the ground as I tried to hold on to the shaft behind the head. However, the spearhead ripped through when my coat was stretched from the strain and the broken bottom of the spear dug deeply into the ground under my weight.
For a moment, as the trollkin hobgoblin reached for the weapon behind its back, it actually looked like I might have been partially gored on the spear.
Sadly for that trollkin, once I saw the arm moving out of the way in the corner of my eyes I rolled away from the spear and let my feet fall while slashing out at the trollkin hob's neck. My attack had little control, little reach, and thus little power but I struck high on the side of their neck and rocked their head back to cut open the underside of its chin.
Compiled with its extra thick skin and body there was only about two inches of depth throughout the entire cut and no vitals were dangerously opened.
Despite this, there was still plenty of thick and dark blood spouting out from under the goblin's head as it staggered from the wound. With my feet on the ground it was simply to let the spear balance me before prizing my coat free. While the time the hob righted itself and finally drew its sword under the intense gaze of its troll leader, I had flicked my wrist to throw one saber into the ground beside me in order to take up the longer spear.
Wielding a one-handed weapon for humans in two hands as though it were a proper longsword, the trollkin wields it high and to the side in a slightly predictable manner so that it can press its forearm under its chin and buy time. With the much longer weapon and greater size in my favor, I probed its outer defenses with two light feinting thrusts just to keep it moving and bleeding. Then I raised my saber and feinted a rush.
Since I had been feinting with the unfamiliar weapon, the trollkin fully anticipated a committed attack from my sword and raised his weapon horizontally over its head to defend. I never even brought the sword down. Instead, I brought the spear up and forward to rush through its animal hides and several inches deep into its ribs.
That few seconds of cringe and pain reaction that followed being caught by surprise and probably having a lung touched weakened its body and defenses perfectly.
Only then did I bring my saber down, letting the cinched sleeve of my coat and inner proto-suit sleeve to protect my lower forearm from the sword it slammed down on while chopping the saber down into the troll kin's head above its right eye.
His body reflexively cringed back and away even more than when I had pricked their lung, but this one was weak from the penetration of its skull and it remained firmly stuck on both weapons until I kicked them to the ground. Then, still wielding the thin headed spear, I step forward over the hob and thrust the spear down into their upper abdomen under their heart and between their lungs.
After they were once again heavily wounded, I stood upright while raising my saber in the same motion and swiftly chopped down in the same second. This chop landed above their left eye but was much more stable coming from a better angle. The four or five pounds of saber almost neatly hacked half of the way down through the hob's already weakened skull and face.
Leaving the spear behind for fear that it would break, I finally look away from my personal endeavors to find the remaining bodies on my neighboring wall falling from the end. The other trollkin had already left their wall and defensively ran to their master while I was fighting, but only now did the four or five remaining goblins start heading in their direction as well.
Even if they stayed to keep shooting and throwing down behind the shields that were now in the gates, they would have soon ended up on the ground any way. Two of them fell before they even got off the wall, leaving a thin wall of bodies protecting the troll. While the raggedly launched the last of their rocks and spears in a single throw, the trollkin wielding two broken but proper spears was warily watching me.
If they stuck close to the boss, they could receive some support even if its immobile. However, there were multiple different attacks and enemies from different places and the worst available one was the guy off to the side with twin sabers keeping slow and steady pace with the slow and steady advance of Jack's shield team. Without spears at all, they would just be walked over by the tankers and suffer without their own support.
*