Only two days after having picked our assignment the entire group met up at the property to get ready. Thanks to the trunk space afforded by my personal Bureau vehicle everybody but Leo and Ms. Gwyn could pile into my giant armored van. The two of them we left driving the truck full of extra supplies and equipment.
Everyone had upgraded their armor and weapons in more ways than just death stone and ivory while on vacation, both Emile and Carlos were wearing matching suits of new and reddish chainmail over troll leather. Both of them wielded pairs of upper C grade steel swords that were folded and hammered to shape before being super heated and hammer welded around death stone blade pieces like Goat.
Alongside these swords and upgraded mail were upgraded heavy swords designed like angled cleavers not unlike my own big sword. All of their swords, though, boasted air stones in their pommels for casting wind and death blades.
Fred and Frank no longer wore just leather armor but had added steel bands about their torsos worked into the weaving of their armor. As well, underneath their augmented outer armor were lightened versions of combat suits without the polymer plates and outer pads. Just ten layers of super impact absorbent mid-grade bulletproof rubber and honeycombs.
Both tankers wore death shields on their backs but while Fred wielded arm blades like my goblin soldiers Frank had replaced his old mace with a new one of higher grade steel and death stone flangs. Unlike Fred whose punching weapons were embedded with a fire stone to channel the basic corrosive death energy with, Frank's mace had an air stone that made it release a corrosive gas that blows away from the wielder on impact.
When activated by thought or command for those without magic inclination, our tankers were armed with some serious firepower despite probably only being able to use these attacks a handful of times every hour. They had been in their grades and developing longer than me, though, so even the tankers probably had balanced grades and pools. No matter what the director said.
Leo and Ms. Gwyn had upgraded their magic apparel with cloaks similar to Karen's except they were matching but alternating color schemes of main white and secondary red for Ms. Gwyn the healer sub-fire and main red secondary white for the fire mage sub-healer. They still had their old robes that helped them accumulate and channel ambient mana, but under them were now simplified combat suits like the tankers'.
Their overall armor could probably stop a full back trigger pull from my rifle with contribution ammo, but the overall penetration protection in their equipment was lacking. Alongside their outfits, though, they wielded new staffs that contained stronger C grade elemental crystals than their old wants. Leon's had petal-like fire crystals pointing outward like blades around a small central orb of death stone.
Because healers apparently could not use death stones like other mages, Ms. Gwyn's staff was topped with similar fire crystal spikes or blades around a dimly golden glowing orb that somehow contained different forms of healing energy. Amplifying the power of not just these healing orb but all of our team leader's healing was her personal artifact that was used to cast the head of the staff.
Because I was content to continue using my 10mm Protector Revolvers instead of one of the higher caliber pairs from my territory assignment, I had intended to give Emilia the .44 Magnum revolvers. Instead, it turned out that she had already upgraded her guns to .357 Magnums.
The bullets themselves were normally the same length overall despite the .44 being bigger around but in a Protector Revolver the caps or actual bullets were made a little longer for rifling accuracy and the casings were lengthened to accommodate a larger package. In this regard, the bullets have comparative accuracy but the .44 Magnum had half a time more stopping power.
On top of these new sidearms she also wore a pair of sabers that were definitely higher grade than standard issue and across her lower back was an affectionately termed weapon known as the 'noob tube'. For those times when you're too lazy to deal with large numbers of enemies or just have one big one to fight, there was a single-shot grenade launcher for five thousand contribution points that launched a 40mm charge.
The ammo types that came with it were standard, incendiary, and sonic.
Standard charges were C grade explosives that could clear out just about anything organic in a fifteen-yard radius and knock everything within forty yards off its feet or senseless. Incendiary rounds had C grade thermite and napalm layered around a small explosive distributor and ignition source, once they hit a target they had a small concussive blast that set off thousands of Fahrenheit in flames that lasted for about thirty seconds in healthy servings.
Sonic rounds were one big magic concussion grenade that, if it went off next to a person like me, could send even me flying about fifteen feet in the air half dead before ever touching the ground. On top of this she had joined Eliza and I in wearing full combat suits under two-layer reddish mail dress like Carlos and Emile's chainmail.
Karen only wore the ten-later under suit like the others and had added to her arsenal a bracelet of many stoned charms that included a few black rocks. For weapons, though, she now carried an edgeless French estoc made of 'green gold' electrum that used to be formed from natural copper and gold alloys that are high enough in copper to tarnish green. That basket guard of her sword, though, was set with more black, red, and quartz crystals for death, fire, and air magics.
Eliza's kit did not change as much, she now wore a special case on her leg that contained twenty collapsible death arrows, a pair of 10mm revolvers and a pair of electrum estocs, and a full-sized leather cloak augmented with round sided polymer plates over the back and around the sides like a turtle shell. The large hood of this cloak was also adorned with small scale-like plates of death ivory that matched the ivory blades worked along the forearms of the sleeves.
My own armor, regrettably, did not change by much accept for the addition of a twenty pounds of ivory plates lining the inner pocket of the back of my coat. Instead, Poniard now wore a cobalt steel saber forged by Karen's magic alongside her daggers and over her ivory augmented leather suit she now wore a hooded black leather coat studded with ivory plates.
Over her coat was a light MP bow with eighty pounds of pull and two-hundred pounds true strength and a small quiver of fifteen arrows while she carried in her hands a new six-foot death ivory spear tipped by a seven-inch spearhead of death stone.
Glaive wore a simply coat designed like my own with straps to augment her proto-suit around the legs and torso. For weapons she carried her Kobold in hand and wore a pair of three-foot batons with guarded leather-wrapped grips in the event she could not use Kobold as well as the scrap fire wand Poniard had drunkenly made for her.
Looking at everybody else I suddenly felt like I did not appreciate myself because all I had for new equipment was a bracelet charmed with low grade healing stones. Considering we were facing estimated overall numbers of about one hundred and fifty goblinkind with four third-stage evolutions and no less than five of either hob, I felt almost under dressed.
Since I was D grade, now, it was probably time to commission a bigger sword.
The portal turned out to be rounded square in the middle of nowhere twelve miles off the side of some highway over a hundred miles away from home. The ride there was interesting as everybody made friends with my driver who turned out to be some normal person with a commercial license and good history. Considering he basically had no MP but had no problem working for a tamer like me, everybody quickly liked him.
I had honestly never had a personal conversation with this guy in my life and he had never bothered trying for one. I got him fired and rehired on some cushy job where he has next to no worries except when to pick me or my things up and then drop them off. As much as there might be gratitude, he probably lost benefits somewhere at the same time.
When we parked in the tall grass meadow miles from the highway and got out the Bureau crews there received something of a start when four bipedal reptiles started stretching their legs zooming about the area. Even though the immediate area around the portal had been mowed down and cleared away, that fifty-yard circle could only reveal them for a few seconds at a time while they whizzed by going fifty miles per hour.
Everybody underwent some brief health and MP checks before being cleared the begin the portal assignment. As it turned out, I had finally reached two-sixty-five despite several days spent practicing 'blade magic'. Even though I could throw a few more fireballs that were a little bigger than when I started at the property, I had not made much improvement beyond consumption control.
Inside the portal it was just after dawn with the sun showing on the far side of the world from the ridge line we found ourselves on. Because the opening of the valley faced the west, though, it would not be until halfway to noon that sun enters the secluded valley. Despite the fact that it was passed noon on our side it was the perfect time to be launching a surprise attack on this side.
From the top of the ridge I could see the vast sprawling landscapes that stretched down from our elevated position roughly half a mile above 'flat' ground. After looking around and getting my bearings as the team gathered up and did the same, I realized something.
Between the tainted waters and elevation, this valley was a caldera in the side of an inactive volcano that rose even higher to the north for a mile or two and reaches a few miles above sea level at least. The caldera's inside had about one square mile of space lushly carpeted in foliage with small fruit bearing trees and some small hardwoods scattered all over. At the back where the deep but narrow rivulet cut through the area was the settlement.
The settlement covered the entire back fifth of the caldera and was divided by a sloppy and uneven pile of porous volcanic and solid metamorphic rocks. Inside this were wood huts built from cane trees further down the volcano and sealed with a variety of new and old hides on top and around the sides. There were a dozen of these large communal buildings on either side of the stream around which only a handful of bodies could be seen moving.
In the very back was a broad but low cave mouth from which the stream pooled into a pond and then poured forth through the caldera. On either side of this small pond area were two longhouse style buildings that probably houses the ogres, trolls, and their hob harems. The male hobs and trollkin probably ran the smaller bunkhouses raising goblins into hobs.
Once upon a time.
"How do we do this?" Leo asks his wife after everybody got together behind a rock wall lower down the hillside. "I know we're here for the goblins, but, all the young are probably in those… manors."
"Ask the taming expert," Ms Gwyn says with little care, watching the settlement through a spotter's scope. "I'm busy counting."
"Spread out across the caldera, sneak up, and catch all the front buildings by surprise?" I ask with a shrug, seeing if anybody had a problem with this. "We can divide the tanks and swords to either side of the flat ground, put our main range players scattered across the middle, and I can take point out at the edge of the bare ground to draw attention by the stream in the very middle. Once the goblins start dropping and buildings start burning, they're all going to group up behind their wall and wait on the big guys. Then, I challenge the big guys."
Even Ms. Gwyn looked away from her 'counting' when she heard that and meaningfully asked, "You'll challenge the big guys?"
Honestly, I suddenly felt a little awkward with the eyes of everyone present, even the raptors', suddenly on me as if I was a newly discovered giant insect. "They're old and stagnant and potentially sick," I point out, reminding everybody of the general reason why this place was still even E grade. "If they even accepted the challenge it would probably be as a group. They have overwhelming numbers, why put themselves at risk? However… guys, I see a lot more than just goblins here."
"Whoa, is there some freaky undead voodoo here?" Fred suddenly asks, getting up from his seat and looking back toward the portal. "There's four days left on this assignment, we can pass. Hard pass."
"No, no, no," I say quickly with a quiet laugh, honestly amused by his sudden fear of the undead. I had to admit, though, those randomly assembled revenants were terrifying. "The stream and ground here is so rich in iron we can gather it with a speaker magnet, not to mention the other minerals making them sick. If I can beat them senseless and then let one of each live, they'll all belong to me. This entire place. WILL. Belong to me."
Not only did I emphasize the word verbally but I even pointed to the ground at my feet when I said it.
"Carlos, bro, you owe me some money," Emile says while punching his fellow swordsman in the arm. "I told you and Emilia both, he's going to make an army and go crazy. Step one, find pet monster. Step two, want more pet monsters. Step three, the end of which we're at now, get more monsters. Step four is after this when he industrializes this place and uses it to amass monsters."
*