"THAT WAS THE BEST EVENT ever..." I started screaming and then whispering into my mic while the kids were all still cheering. I did not know about them, yet, but I had gotten several profile achievements from some of the enemies and how many I killed. My character's levels were all but multiplied after the final body was basically disintegrated under a combination of drones and turrets.
Throughout the boss wave there were random super bosses that had all forms of cybernetic and uniquely advanced monsters. These would supply 'mystery tech' and parts that players could combine into final-tier goods. Since we had a giant stronghold all to ourselves, we got all those numbers of bosses. To ourselves.
In another minute or two, all available 'in-game communications' would be hijacked by an unknown source that reveals the aliens released mind-controlled mutants to use the environment to attack the dwindling human population. Thirty seconds after these messages ended, a high ranking and publicly 'hated' member of the Tribunal would openly reveal the same information about the humans and say they were creating reasons for war propaganda and reinforcing military drafting.
This was what made all-out war take place on the already ruined planet in that server and the story behind the constant battles and events in permanent servers.
However, while these guys would probably be here around the same time once again tomorrow I would probably be on the other side of a portal and we would not get to finish the server together. However, the others were already calling this a practice run in our chat group and planning another 'practice run' when I get more time off from my job. Probably the day after tomorrow, if they were lucky.
After saying some fond farewells, I left in a prideful and sacrificial manner that would allow the others to continue logging in and out without me. I stripped my character down to its censorship bar to preserve all my equipment- they said they might be able to make a super drone from the drone remains, final boss parts, and my mech stuff. Everything else would just be scrapped.
Playing with those kids had been fun but I was tired from three hours of rough running and after sitting down for more than four hours I was ready to do something else with my life. Something else being using the bathroom and cleaning up myself and the house before cooking another light dinner. Tonight, I just made an extra heavy pastrami on rye with a small bowl of canned fruit that had been drained and then rolled around in a freshly buttered pan just removed from high heat.
It took a lot of butter to preserve the fruit canned in just water, but it was worth it.
After dinner I made some phone calls to check on progress reports before my next portal and then took my trollkin skulls upstairs with me. Their initial MP rating would eventually dwindle away without a living body sustaining them, so I needed to suck up all the MP exposure they could give me while they were giving it. I was honestly eager to be measured before the next dungeon.
Waking up with my head between two jawless and toothless frog-like skulls of thick bone on either end of my pillow, I simply get up and take care of myself before I start getting dressed and suited up. After a light breakfast of toast slices and peanut butter, I checked the time and did some cleaning. I woke up earlier than all hell and now I was regretting it, walking around the house in full and bloody regalia.
Most of my cleaning was just cleaning up behind myself. When the current hour ended it was finally an agreeable time for me to start walking in the direction of where I would be getting picked up. I had thought Lucinda might try to come home early and surprise me, but maybe there was a delay or she was actually trying to give me some time off from her nagging.
When the white van finally met me while the sun was half of the way up the sky it another hour before we arrived under an overpass on some old train tracks where the current portal had appeared. As expected, Emilia and her… swordsmen… were there with Ms. Gwyn's full team. Despite there being eight of them already, though, I almost was not surprised to see the people Emilia actually had conversations with recently at our portal.
Tiny and the witch.
After some brief nods from the tankers and called out greetings from the others, it was not until I actually walked up that the witch held out her hand and said, "We meet again. I AM Karen but im not A Karen, I'm glad to see you here."
"It's you, again," tiny says beside Karen, her already small voice dangerously muffled by the helmet she was wearing.
"Hello, again, and hi, Karen," I say quickly to both of them. "For the record, if you guys ever see me with a slightly older lady who is either dressed professionally or dressed lazily and you hear me call her Lucinda… that's my current guardian. Please don't mention our last mission around her unless you see me shrug at you guys when she isn't looking."
"That's… not something I should be as okay with as I am," Karen says with an oddly confused laugh while looking at tiny. "This is Lizzy, short for Eliza, and I'm her guardian as well. Even when I want her to, she never does anything I shouldn't know about. Are you a recent graduate?"
Nodding my head once with a brief glance at the bullet-proof and lightly shaded visor of Eliza's helmet to see if there was any reactions, I say, "It's nothing wrong, she just worries a lot and restricts me to only two portals a month. She's away on Bureau business and I did both of last month's portals already, so… yeah. This portal simply never happened. ms. Gwyn! You said you had updates for everybody?"
"Ah, right," she says while checking the much larger side bag she was wearing this time under a thickly quilted coat of D grade wool 'material'.
"Since we pushed the entry back a day, we had time to do our own recon," he begins loudly while walking out in front of the vaguely darkening portal. "The goblins overall number a hundred with an immature ogre for a leader, less than ten hobs, and the rest are all weak older or younger goblins. They have made a home for themselves in the valley of a shallow river only a mile or so from the portal but have not yet noticed the portal."
While she maintained everybody's attention, she says, "Even though we're a heavy range team this time, the terrain is all boulders in the valley and water so effective ranges are shortened. There are a couple of places to place Emilia and Lizzy with height advantage near the water, but I want Malcolm on the front line with us while Leo and Karen escort our marksmen."
While Leo was taking out a pair of drone maps marked with their crow's nests to give to the marksman, Ms. Gwyn smiled brightly as she brought the rest of us together around her larger map. Then, "This is the portal, the valley, the camp, and a neighboring fall that they dammed up for a food supply. While they are going to sneak into these positions beside and above the camps once we enter the valley from upstream, here, we'll be sneaking along our wall of the valley to attack their fishing area."
"We watched for most of a day, they do nothing but fish, eat, shit, and sleep but some of the hobs are pregnant. Our orders are that they dealt with them like the rest, but that also means standard goblin procedures still apply," she informs us in an initially gloomy but then positive manner.
With goblins that were mostly mostly young and old, she did not seem to want to kill the pregnant hobs as well.
"If we're quick, quiet, and lucky, we can flank their fishers for the day," she says after letting the previous information and her intentions settle on the rest of us. "Malcolm will be shooting those closest to camp, first, which should cause others to run toward our positions in these rocky areas. Their camp isn't that far and any sounds entering the valley will be amplified by the valley. Leo threw a rock a hundred yards upstream of where we were going to leave from and it reached us clear as day so for that reason we won't be having any communicating going on. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," the rest of us said quickly and quietly.
"This should be a short trip, but we brought the snack pack again so if you want something now then you need to go and grab it," Ms. Gwyn adds after our acknowledgment, temporarily dismissing us.
Five minutes later, the entire group was gathered and both team leaders went over a few hand signs to look out for and use. After that, we entered the portal.
From a world that had not even reached noon yet we appeared in a world where the sun had not even fully risen. Once again the change in the air was as noticeable as the change in lightning, but the terrain here was different from before. This was high moisture environment in a space between to small mountains where broad but shallow river was flowing. The inorganic materials and color in the soil here were darker fro the presence of a larger number of minerals.
The rocks making up most of the mountains that I could see through the thin forestry of tall evergreens and short hardwoods were granite with varying quantities of lime. The rock deeper down in the valley, though, became somewhat paler from the increasing presence of lime with depth as well as the clay created around the waterway.
Actual rocks, though, like boulders of all shapes and sizes could be seen all over the place on the sides and bottom of the valley. It looked like the area was pretty prone to landslides from how thin the forestry around the river was compared to places outside the mountain. The handful of kind of old fallen trees scattered in the distance on both sides of the bank seemed to reaffirm this fact.
From roughly a hundred feet above the bottom of the valley, even through the granite piles we could see the tops of smallish structures and a few bigger leaning buildings. With our current height we could see some goblin activity around the smaller structures and near the end of the valley area at a short forty-foot waterfall. Unlike the goblins in the last portal, these were mostly green and brownish without any gray.
When we got to the valley we were still a couple hundred yards from the camp, but at least from here we could see the camp and activity around it. After making our way into the rocky valley and splitting up into our two teams, though, we lost most of our visuals on the goblin camp.
Every now and then, Ms. Gwyn at the front would raise a fist and point to a tall boulder, meaning for everyone to stop and four our spotter- me- to climb up and scout.
These were the handful of times I would spend at least a full minute watching for enemy movement in the area and further ahead around the camp. When nothing would be found, we would move sixty or seventy yards closer and stop to scout all over again. By the time we finally came level with the camp on the opposite side of the valley, the others were already perched low in their nests waiting for our signal.
Luckily, Ms. Gwyn let us pick up our pace once the snipers were in place so that they would not have to keep waiting on us. A few minutes after we had reached level with the camp, we started to actually cross the valley toward their fishery of sorts. Ms. Gwyn was hanging back slowly while the rest of us slowly spread out sideways.
Climbing up to a good vantage point once we reached the less rocky area near the water, I waited for the others to sneak up toward the water's edge on our side. Then, I sat up and signaled the entire team to start the attack by aiming at a goblin's back while carrying a spear of multiple fish back toward camp. Before I even fired my second shot a pair of bodies within the camp had already hit the ground.
The deepest the water reached in this area was only a little over head height in the middle, so even in armor it was fairly easy for the others to just walk across. The goblins, being half our height, had trouble just fighting in the shallows and had no idea what to do. Between the large armed and armored bodies momentarily disappearing underwater and my shots felling any goblins running toward camp, they soon chose to just wait by the water's edge with stone and naked wood spears at the ready.
Originally there were less than two dozen goblins around the fishing area, six of them were shot within the first five seconds and three got away back to camp while I was reloading. By the time the others reemerged from literally walking across the river, I was waving aside or ignoring the rocks and other objects being thrown in my direction from the ten remaining goblins. Once they were drawing the attention again I started aiming my second revolver down toward camp.
While reloading my revolvers, the large bodies of multiple hobgoblins began appearing in the camp and then the more than two meters tall body of burnt orange elephant skinned ogre. Ogres usually had an immense beefy body where the trolls were just tall and stocky, with biceps around the size of my head and thighs thicker than my waist. The looked like only a JoJo character could fight them.
However, ogres were crazed fighters who rarely defended from attacks because of their dense skin and muscles. Getting in close to one without assistance was usually a recipe for trouble. This young one had arms as thick as my thigh but they were not as impressive as a museum specimen, showing the immaturity MS. Gwyn had mentioned by standing there howling in blind fury.
Once the goblins at the river were dealt with by the time I finished reloading, I hopped down from my ten-foot boulder and fearlessly ran into the camp ahead of the others. Emptying my revolvers along the way for only half the effect of shots in my gun, I holstered them calmly and draw my sabers as I neared the goblins grouping around their hobs and ogre leader. Even with a healthy boss, they usually would not attack until at least half of their underlings were dealt with.
Stabbing one saber forward into a goblin while chopping the other down on their defensively raised spear, I knock them away from my sword and slash either weapon out to the sides to make room. There was a hobgoblin wielding a pair of large flint hatchets pushing through the goblins toward me, but the goblins were fighting to get away from me.
By the time to hobgoblin finally had a clear path it was because I had killed six of the goblins in front of me. The hobgoblin had a more apelike face than a trollkin but its lower face and mouth were still broad and thin like a frog's. Its large black eyes where staring at me impassively as if it fully expected to win.
I cheated. Bad. I feinted throwing my sabers and simply tossed them up in the air before snatching my big sword up and out of its sheathe in both hands to chop forward in the same motion as the draw.
Releasing the sword half of the way through my chop while it was still aimed upward, the sword tilts forward like a short-range knife throw across the seven feet of distance and dips down into the hobgoblin's gut. They never even had the chance to defend after swatting at sabers that never flew. Then while yelling my head off like a stabbed gorilla I did the one thing someone should never do while fighting in the presence of an ogre.
*