FOREWORD: i got knocked out of the first place position in the wpc190 contest, help meeeeeeeee
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When Poniard and I finally met the kobolds it ensued in a brief skirmish. He had, of course, ran ahead of me so that shooting was risky. Poniard did not seem to mind, though, because he simply greeted the first kobold with flashing poniards that left thin trails of red in their wake. C grade steel even as light as the enlarged poniard was still strong and sharp enough to leave ribbons when in Poniard's hands against D grade enemies.
The first kobold to lunge into Poniard's reach fell away grasping at their face and throat that had been sliced open back and forth. The series of blows lasted two seconds and in that time the other kobolds had only just started to circle around my goblin. Poniard, trained to be a speed fighter, was outside the encirclement and back within my reach before the next attack could be launched.
Holding an ivory sword in one hand and a revolver in the other, I blindly shoot a kobold in the top of its head as it chased after Poniard. Then, Poniard whipped right around and tackled the closest kobold while driving his daggers forward. The Kobold started to wrap its arms around Poniard and dig its claws into his armor while biting for the neck, but the strength was quickly fading from the kobold's body after two daggers opened two lungs.
Another kobold soon joined the first two after I got a clear shot when Poniard kicked his kobold into another. The kobold who was staggered from being struck by its dead companion soon found itself stumbling backward all alone. Neither of us pursued the kobold but instead watched as it steadied itself by whirling around and running away as fast as it could.
Poniard had free reign over the bodies once we dragged them back to camp, wordlessly cutting them open because he already knew I did not care about monster bodies except for their skin and bones. "You really do just let it eat the heart from everything," Lucinda remarks while watching the goblin switch into full carnivore mode.
"Those-"
"I don't care, I won't question it," Lucinda says quickly while raising her hand to cut me off. "It's too late to stop it since the first time, but if I ever feel like its hunting me or something I will shoot it. If I even can still shoot it, by then. It would probably need to have a grenade shoved down its throat."
It was both relieving and depressing to be told this, a relief that she would support my decision but depressing that she would probably misunderstand it for a long time. However, I could not win every battle. I could only accept whatever live gave me right now.
Bernard, on the other hand, asked, "Would I be paying for you to feed a goblin human hearts?"
"No, this is particular to my own familiar," I reply, trying to find a way to evade the issue. "The component I think that correlates to magic goblins is slime cores, that's how Poniard started eating hearts. In our first dungeon, it ate slime cores and the hearts of goblins its killed. The hearts is probably their witch doctor version of Earth's tribal heart eating practices for taking the enemy's power. Except, it actually works for them."
"Should I feed mine hearts?" He asks curiously, looking back toward our mission objectives. "If I buy a mage, that should help it grow?"
"It should help them grow in general, but im thinking time does play a role," I reply with a shrug.
"Here we go again," Lucinda groans, walking away. "I'm going to go sing with the bird!"
"Time?" Bernard echoes curiously. "Poniard was an E grade goblin and he's halfway through D grade, most goblins SHOULD have evolved by now. Either his type is a different evolution or he still needs to mature into evolution naturally. To some extent. However, slime cores are what you should feed your goblin but nothing the same grade as them or higher until it has dried. Feeding them acid is a no-no."
"Okay, I can pull some favors and clear an F grade after I get the goblin," Bernard decides thoughtfully. "If it's E grade then that should be fine. How long do you think it will be until you find suitable D grade goblins?"
"I mean…standard pricing is E so D goes up in value but if you bring me the goblin I'll only charge you the standard rate. If you have to bring me a second goblin, I'll only charge you the basic magic package value," I add quickly, unaware of whether or not two goblins would even be enough tests. I would probably end up having to give him a free magic goblin if I simply kept lowering the price for every failure.
"So wait on you to figure it out or keep feeding your business," Bernard sums up the offer I had just made for him. "I've got more than one job in the area, so once I get the two of you two the wall I might just be able to catch some goblins. What were you planning to do about those kobolds, though?"
Looking in the direction where we could still see the fleeing kobold running up and over small hills in the distance, I shrug and say, "Expand my business. The scouting party was ruined so now they'll come at us with an actual assault force. The young will have been left behind at camp with maybe one adult and the weaker members. Once the main group is gone, I'll come collect what's left and ask Si-Pon to help keep them in line during transport."
"What do we do about the lizards?" Bernard asks while watching the kobold reach its camp in only a couple minutes of hard running. "They're not coming to us, so do we go to them?"
"They eat carrion, anyway, so they won't move until it's only scraps left," I agree thoughtfully. "With all the guns we have, now, it'll be easy to just pick them off from a hundred yards out even with their numbers. Alright, I'll keep and eye out here. You do whatever."
Taking that as his cue to leave, Bernard simply walked off into camp while Poniard cleaned his hands and face with a different ruined suit. If not for how cold it looked to use a dead man's shirt, keeping his hands clean actually made him seem a little more human. For a moment I worried about if evolving would change Poniard's personality, though.
Shaking my head to clear those thoughts away, I find a small warehouse building to climb on top of. From up here, I could just barely see over the hills and into the kobold nest to see that their numbers were gathered together. They would probably set out soon to come attack Poniard and I.
Just as I had guessed, the kobolds left a single matured leader with the weakest members of the 'pack' while the other two lead the rest out of the hollowed hill. There were about thirty enemies altogether and most of them were small but fast moving targets. The big guys would be easiest to shoot so they would probably be saved for last, but there would probably still be a few little guys to make it close.
It all depended on how good Lucinda and Bernard were at shooting. If it was just me, maybe five lessers and both adults would confront Poniard in my close range. With the two of them here shooting as well, it was only 'possible' for these enemies to actually reach us once we started shooting.
For the sake of being on the safe side, I look down at Poniard on the roof with me and say, "Use some air or ice magic, fire and lightning and darkness might mess of their skins. Those adults are going to be your new armor and the rest are going to be future assets."
"Good… job," Poniard says somewhat hesitantly as if trying to reassure me but uncertain if those were the right words.
Reaching out to lightly rub the goblin's bald and rough head, I say, "I know you will, little buddy. You've yet to let me down." Then I lightly hopped from the roof to the ground below and walked over toward where Lucinda and Bernard were going over weapons."
While I was walking up, Lucinda was going over the leader's handguns and saying, "...Know, it's just the guns have gone through a few changes. Mine are only semi but these are newer with alternate settings so the weight and aim will be off. If these shits had a rifle between the lot of them, it'd be different."
I suddenly felt slightly less guilty about having killed one of these people and let Poniard eat their hearts. Slightly. Just slightly.
"You've been handling people and paperwork for too long," I smilingly admonish my guardian as I walk up. "The main attack party is inbound, how are we looking?"
"I'm ready, she's ready, are your guns good or do you want a quick upgrade?" Bernard asks when Lucinda turns to me with an irritable look, stopping an argument before it started.
"And deal with the same problem Lucinda is? No, I like my guns." I reply with an impish smile.
Less than two minutes later the three of us were out in front of the property facing the raiding party of kobolds who were still only half of the way here. Bernard was sitting on the trunk of a scrap car while using the roof to stabilize his sniper. Lucinda was on the opposite side of me from Poniard, wielding her two new giant .50 handguns that came from the rescue team leader.
In my hands were my usual Protector Revolvers and an ivory sword while Poniard simply held the wand of electrum alloy we made together. The different colored stones lining the top half of the sharply pointed rod glinted with various rays of light under the late morning sun. It was honestly a little hard to keep my eyes forward and not be drawn to the ever-moving magic stones.
"Get ready," Bernard murmurs a minute later as the first kobold crests the closest hill more than a hundred yards away.
Similar to the goblin assignment I had taken with the sick troll, the goal here was to draw the enemy passed the point of no return before opening fire. If we killed them as they topped they hill, they would stop coming over the hill and divide or simply run home. If they were all on this side about forty or fifty yards from the closest hill, retreating would only mean pointless death by he time we opened fire.
Twenty seconds later as the last kobold was coming down the hillside toward us, Bernard started quietly counting under his breath. It was at this point that Lucinda and I raised our firearms, lining ourselves up with the disheveled front line of kobolds. When Bernard finally hit zero, he squeezed the trigger and pretty much as soon as the boom of a high powered sniper sounded off there was a line of six kobold bodies missing large areas of their bodies.
The first one to get hit was simply missing his midriff while his shoulders, arms, upper chest, neck, and head were on the ground nearby.
Lucinda, who was probably jump at this point, started firing in reaction to the first gunshot while I took my time. Her first shot between two guns dropped a kobold but it was not until the fourth shot that she hit another body. Her guns only had ten shortened .50 rifle rounds in each magazine and each gun only had two magazines. My first shot that fired at the same time as her third hit my target in the chest with at least two bullets.
My second shot that was fired with her fifth also struck a running kobold and then I nailed my third with her seventh shot as she hit her third. Bernard was casually taking his time loading and aiming each bullet, seeking out angles so that he could drop at least two goblins with his second and third shots. However, they were scattering further out to become harder targets and their numbers were thinning.
More than ten in the first eight seconds had already fallen. By the time the remaining kobolds reached the halfway point, they were down to about fifteen bodies overall and were running for all that they were worth. Sadly, Lucinda was reloading so I could only drop my current empty gun and draw the other.
At thirty yards away, Poniard unleashed his first spell in the form of a short spear of ice about as big around as a pencil that he flicked from his wand with his wrist. This four-foot arrow of ice flew so fast I could barely even follow it before it simply ran through a kobold's body. After it was reddened with blood it was easier to follow before it struck into an adult kobold's leg.
Bernard was obviously not the only person who could line their shots up because Poniard continued unleashing icicles into the dwindling distance. By the time he stopped slinging ice the kobolds had gotten within eight yards of our front line but were now all dead or dying on the ground. The adult kobolds were still alive, though, but they were still fifteen and twenty yards away with spears of ice in their legs.
Flashing Lucinda a bright and innocent smile, I say, "I always had faith in your abilities. See? They never even got here."
"I'm buying a custom goblin and I want it to do THAT," Bernard informs me loudly while pointing at all of the closest goblins. Out of the final ten or so that got within twenty yards, there were more ice holes than bullet holes in their bodies. Even I was impressed by Poniard's skills despite the fact that he only trained his magic for an hour or so a day.
"Poniard, eat the adults," I say while pointing toward the larger bodies at the back that were crawling toward each other. The pole weapons I had originally seen were now clearly spear made from scrap sheet metal and they still firmly clutched their thickly shafted weapons.
Soon, though, their bodies simply went limp after Poniard took a few steps forward and flicked his wand twice. Two blurred blades of distorted air flew forth like transparent crescents, cleanly separating the heads from the adult kobolds' bodies. "My goblin is such a badass," I cannot help but gush, turning around for fear of screaming like a fan girl if I kept watching.
"How many can it eat," Lucinda asks while turning away, covering her mouth and nose with the side of her hand while still holding a handgun. "How much do you feed it?"
"Poniard has grown from around one-ten E to over two-fifty D," I reply honestly. "Its been about two months. I dont feed it this or that number, I let him eat as much as he can from all that I can provide him. The stronger Poniard is, the safer I will be," I add pointedly, emphasizing the role Poniard fills in my life and work.
Climbing down from the car with his rifle, Bernard says, "You guys should go on ahead to their camp, the other kobolds will be getting restless soon. I'm no good in a close-up fight so the three or four of you should be fine."
"Lucinda…" I say slowly, looking over at my guardian who was capped at mid F grade. "I know you don't like the dirty work, but you'll have to stay here with Bernard. Poniard and I will be enough for the few that's left," I hurry to assure her while reloading my revolvers, looking dead at her instead of the guns when she whirls around to get angry with me.
"I know damn good and well you were probably part of the teams that put these walls up," I inform her when she is successfully caught off guard by my glare. "However, the situation is different. The grade is D and you're an F. Poniard and I are both par for the course and Poniard's mana pool is above his own grade but you're just elite soldier material. I don't personally have the firepower to ensure your safety, so you don't need to come with us."
She honestly looked like she was going to argue after I said that but then she just kind of looked away and up at the sky. "You ARE getting about that age when I can't always protect you anymore," Lucinda seems to say to herself, having some kind of moment that I did not want to be fully aware of. If not for her personality and how seriously she takes our guardian-child relationship, I would have made the joke that she has only known me for two years and some change.
Simply shrugging the incident off and turning away, I watch Poniard finish the last heart before pulling a ruined shirt from his weapons belt to clean himself. Then, I whistle to get the bird's attention before gesturing for Poniard to follow me. Without my night vision goggles to perch on, Si-Pon had no choice but to ride on the guard of a large sword across my back that I had 'borrowed' from a rescue team member.
Even though I maintained a light jog by stretching my legs t the fullest and 'lightly' bounding forward with my calves, it took us longer to reach the kobolds than for the kobolds to reach us. Why? Because the kobolds were dumb enough to run up and down hills in and out of clear view while the three of us wove between the hills.
It took almost ten minutes before the bombed out area and large hollowed hill came into view and by then we were now walking up behind the small encampment. All that remained of the kobold tribe was a single evolved adult standing about as tall as me and a bunch of differently sized lessers of different ages. Because most of them lacked clothes and the young or old had thin hair I could tell by nipple count which were male and female.
Male kobolds only had the standard pectoral nipples while females had full sets of nipples like an actual dog. The remaining evolved adult was a female from the sagging and motions under its thin hide simple shirt dress and most of the kobolds were females but some of the young and old were still male. All of them, though, were tense and patrolling.
From where we hide behind the edge of a shallow crater beside a hide, I could tell there was no way we could successfully sneak up all of the way there. Instead, I could only make sure my weapons were put away and covered by my coat. Then, I whispered, "Count… Si-Pon, do you know our time concepts, yet?"
"Of course," it says in an almost irritable voice.
"Count seven seconds and then follow me on Poniard, slow and steady unless they come running first," I order the bird before getting up and boldly striding out of the crater and toward the hollowed hill. Less than two seconds after I started walked, kobolds around the hill started calling the alarm. What were at first two or three kobolds to see me were now all of the kobolds gathered on one hillside behind the remaining adult in less than five seconds.
By seven seconds, I had already cleared half of the cratered land around the hill with my hands held up in the air.
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