Fifty metres from the Goblin Tribe, they paused to wait for the military units’ orders.
[There are more monsters coming, you guys are really slow.] Hawk chastised them.
[What’s coming?] Karl asked, wondering if it needed to be relayed.
[Orcs maybe? Really big green things that aren’t lizards. About twenty of them. They are coming from the far side of the camp from you, so you can fight them last.]
Karl whispered the update into the handheld radio that Alice was carrying, and got back a click from the Captain in return, letting him know that he understood but couldn’t speak right now.
Then came the single tone to start the attack, and Karl led the charge into the camp with Thor beside him.
[Remember, not too far in. Everyone is following us this time.] Karl reminded him.
He turned the flat of his sword on the closest guard, and swatted him like a cricket ball, sending the goblin flying halfway across the camp before landing in a crumpled heap.
Alice gave him a look as if to say “seriously” as the camp turned to face them, and the Goblins began to form up and charge their way.
The spider golems raced past everyone, tearing apart Goblins at a frantic pace, and every bit as messy as Rae when she attacked them the first time. Now she was more careful, in case she got Goblin blood in her mouth, but compared to the two Golems, Thor’s crushing attacks and Karl’s hurled bodies were only a minor distraction.
That was when the military units struck, cutting into the side of the camp with a wave of spells before they charged forward.
It was textbook perfect. Not a single one of the Goblins was watching the flanks when the attack started, and they fell by the dozens.
Karl swept through the Goblins with Rend, using lower power and wide swings of his sword to send out arcs of energy that sliced through waves of them, while Hawk rained down huge fiery explosions from the air. He had gotten the dispersed version of Fireball to work, and the effect was terrifying in a Goblin camp.
Then, the Spider Golems expanded to five metres tall, and Rae began to laugh hysterically.
The Goblins were terrified, but the Golems had no intentions of slowing down. Lotus looked inordinately proud of herself for the [Giant Growth] spell, which only worked on plant type lifeforms.
The Goblins couldn’t even flee, they were being slaughtered wholesale, and the enlarged golems could spear multiple Goblins per second while running on six of their eight legs.
But the Orcs were here, and they weren’t about to miss out on a good fight.
It was the screams from the military units that attracted Karl’s attention to the disaster about to unfold. Six Orcs, green skinned humanoids, two and a half metres tall, with elongated lower tusks and black dreadlocks, had charged into the military lines, and their blades were shattering the [Guard] abilities of the warriors like glass.
[Spider Golems, go help the soldiers until I can get there.] Karl ordered.
They were the only ones that could move across the camp that quickly, but the whole group was moving forward at a steady walk.
The spider golems reached the Orcs in only a few seconds, and the military unit retreated to let them fight, but the Orcs also split up, three to a Golem. They had tactics, and while one kept the Golem busy, two hacked each of them apart faster than Lotus could repair them.
Rae was shocked. Her golems were more durable than she was, so if she had gone with them, wouldn’t she have been hacked apart as well?
She summoned another pair as the Orcs turned back to the military unit, but they would be too late to get there before the unit was in trouble again.
Alice threw a barrier over the first rank of warriors in the military unit, but it was only of limited use as the Orcs knew [Slash] and half of the attacks bypassed them to hit the ranks behind them.
In order to allow them to fight, she had to cast it on their physical shields, and the Orcs were smart or experienced enough to know how to work around that.
Karl didn’t need to be ordered to change his direction and order Thor to charge at the Orcs.
Tessa was right behind them, and the others were doing their best to keep up. With his increased strength, Karl could cover an easy five metres per running step, leaping over the Goblin defenders who were knocked to the ground by the force of his stride if they got too close.
The Orcs recognized the threat as soon as the trio approached with the Spider Golems, now back at normal size, surrounding them, and the largest of them did just as Karl had to begin the fight, and swatted at the closest warrior with the flat of his blade, sending the man flying out of the way to clear the battlefield between the Champion and Karl.
His short sword was going to be woefully inadequate for this, but Karl was going to have to make the best of it, and he leapt straight for the Orc Champion, using Shred and Rend together on his blade as he thrust it forward.
The Orc chuckled as he saw the much shorter human coming at him, but when their blades met, his two-handed sword was thrown wide by Karl’s strength, and the Orc Champion took a deep wound across his chest as he turned out of the way.
Drawing on his unarmed combat training, Karl kicked the Orc’s feet out from under him as soon as he landed, and followed up with a full-strength slash.
The two blades met with an explosion of skills, and the Orc found himself disarmed at the end of the clash, missing a hand.
But his other fist came up and crashed into Karl’s Refreshing Lightning barrier, sending him staggering back.
Beside him, Tessa was sitting on Thor’s back, using her flail mace to keep two Orcs at bay, and constantly refreshing the enhancement spells on her and Thor.
She enhanced Karl again as he charged back at the fallen champion, who had grabbed a fallen shield in one oversized hand as he got to his feet.
Karl drove his blade forward again, straight through the shield, and into the Champion’s chest, knocking him back to the ground with the force of their collision.
He narrowly avoided having his head taken by the blade of another Orc as he rolled over, but it was too late for the Orc champion. Karl’s blade had driven straight through its heart, with a shield impaled on the blade.
Karl reached around for another weapon and found the oversized two-handed blade from the Orc Champion. It was heavy, but at the moment, that didn’t matter at all.
Karl surrounded it with the Lightning Barrier and parried the next attack that came his way.
The Orc in front of him was moving much slower than expected, restricted by Alice’s wind magic, and Shred took its head without difficulty, leaving Karl briefly disengaged from the group.
The Golems were dealing with two, and Thor had another occupied with Tessa, but the others had already fallen.
A volley of condensed fireballs from above hit the Orc facing Thor, adding more burns to his already damaged body, and the Cerro’s horns speared its chest right before Tessa’s chain mace crushed the creature’s head.
That weapon, glowing with golden holy light, couldn’t be underestimated.
Karl gave the Orc Champion’s blade a twirl, getting used to the size and weight, and moved up to engage the other Orcs. He didn’t need to be at the front, the Golems had that, but he did need a good angle to attack from, and Alice’s golem was as tall as the Orcs were, impossible to attack around.
The mages were having the same problem. In a crowded fight, it was challenging to get a direct line to anything that you wanted to attack, especially when you were trying to maintain a safe distance.
As much as he didn’t want to, Karl found himself only a few metres from the Orcs when he threw his next Rend attack at them with a downward swing of his newly acquired blade.
The attack hit, and the formerly dull blade began to glow with a faint red light. It felt more natural in Karl’s hand, as if he had used this weapon for years. The other Orc was surrounded, with no easy space for Karl to get an attack in, so he turned to the Goblin tribe and sent a wave of Rend across the camp, a metre above the ground.
The blade glowed brighter as the Goblins fell in a wave of destruction, and then Karl shivered as a wave of power flowed through him. He couldn’t say for certain, but the blade felt like it was stealing the life force of the Goblins and transferring a bit of it to him, which then flowed to his beasts.