With a well-timed swing of his staff, he could get rid of at least a few of them, and had the wisp block the rest. One or two still got through to him, but they would've been barely strong enough to draw blood if they hit skin, but the jacket was strong enough to block that.
"Tsk, gonna need to summon a mender if these things keep coming," Ashton sighed as he ran forward. This close to their own, the archers wouldn't shoot here anymore. They would if they were independent goblins, but being under the command of the hobgoblin, that shouldn't be anything he had to worry about anymore.
With each swing of Ashton's staff, he either cracked a goblin's skull, broke an arm or a leg, forced them to the ground and made them vomit with a well-placed stab into the stomach, or simply threw them backward to make a bunch of them land on a pile that the wisp could slam down on with all its power.
This was actually a great way for Ashton to practice again. It'd been a while since he had to fight monsters with pure, unadulterated technique.
Before he could even see one monster react to being hit by the steel caps, Ashton's staff had to impact the next. One by one, bit by bit. He cracked a nose with a stab then threw the staff back and let it roll over his shoulder to attack the one behind him. He would lead it over his back to make the goblins steer clear for a moment, and when they came back in once the staff moved past, he would spin his whole body around and use the gained momentum to get a couple of them at once.
Staffs maybe weren't as effective for this type of attack as other weapons. With a sword, he could just slash through them all in one go. Frankly, he had tried to use them in the past. But in the first place, Ashton was absolutely and utterly miserable at fighting. It took him five years to even get an ability that correlated to staff combat using a random stick that he found during his and the Summoner's travels. He simply didn't have the leisure to divert attention to a sword, and much later, learned that he was most suited to the staff in the first place. Whether it was luck or fate wasn't clear, but he somehow managed to pick out the one weapon that, despite his miserable talents, gave him an opportunity to survive a little longer at that time.
Ashton remembered the feeling of using that stick. How light it was in his hand, and how heavy it felt when he took his first life. Compared to the horror in his bones back then, this staff felt lighter than air.
So despite the weakness of this body, and despite the exhaustion that was building up from all these continuous battles today, if he couldn't even swing a staff as light as that, Ashton would never, ever make it through to the end of the quests.
Ignore his skin being torn, ignore his flesh being cut, ignore his bones cracking under the weight of the onslaught of attacks of this small army of monsters. Dark blood splattered around him, mixing with the dirt and grime of the road. The thick mud that was forming wasn't easy to move in, but that was true for the goblins as well.
Minute by minute, Ashton continued on and on and on. Until finally, silence enveloped him.
The last of the goblins had fallen. Ashton turned around, breathing heavily. The clothes he had just picked out were torn to a point where only magic could save them.
"Annoying. Hey, you," Ashton pointed his staff toward the hobgoblin, a massive grin forming on his face, "You better give me a good reward to make up for this."
The hobgoblin, still sitting atop the fountain this whole time, stared back with fear clearly written all over its distorted visage. It tried to jump away, using the corpses of the other goblins it had gathered as cushion for the fall, but Ashton just let out a long sigh, "Hobgoblins may be pretty smart, but I guess even they turn into idiots in the tutorial."
Ashton flicked his wrist and the lesser wisp shot through the monster's head. While they had their intelligence and innate leadership abilities going for them that let them control regular goblins, they weren't actually particularly stronger than basic goblins. This one probably had an ability that let him randomize the types of goblins that appeared around him so that he could gather a varied army, but beyond that, it wasn't anything special.
"Goblins are goblins, after all," Ashton sighed and approached the well, sitting down on the edge for at least a moment. He snapped his finger, calling on the Backpacker to get some water, "You can't coincidentally collect all the magic stones for me, can you?"
The spirit stared back at Ashton. For a moment, he swore he heard a voice ask, 'are you fucking insane?', but he knew that lower spirits didn't speak in a language audible to humans, "Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it... soon..." Ashton yawned, staring at the as system messages floating in front of him. There were far too many, so he sighed. He dismissed all the kill messages for the regular goblins at once, and was left with just a handful of useful messages.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
[You have killed a [Tutorial Field Boss - Hobgoblin Chief]. For your extraordinary effort, you are awarded 100 Coins and a [Common Settlement Selection Box]!]
[Contract | Lesser Wisp - Level 4 -> Lesser Wisp - Level 5]
[Skill | Aether Sensitivity - Level 2 -> Level 3]
[Skill | Channel - Level 3 -> Level 5]
[Skill | Summoning - Level 2 -> Level 3]
[Class | Summoner - Level 5 -> Level 6]
Ashton stared at the system message with a slightly baffled expression.
"Excuse me? The fuck do you mean, a 'tutorial field boss'? This was seriously supposed to be a godforsaken field boss?!" he buried his hands in his face. The Interdimensional Council was absolutely insane.
Field bosses were only supposed to appear starting quest two or three, as far as Ashton knew, and should still be pretty 'weak' even then. But a fucking field boss appearing in the tutorial? So they really were planning on raising this thing up as a massive adversary in an early quest.
"At least I took it out before it turned into a Lord species. The entire town could have turned to shit if I had let it get that far," Ashton sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. That at least explained some things. Even in the other world, there were places that were taken over by monsters far more than others. The Summoner had suggested that it was just because the people were so weak they were wiped out, so the council just filled it with powerful monsters, but... if the council just picked out those places starting from the tutorial so that they could have pieces to play when the time came, that would explain quite a lot.
"So that means either, I just foiled their plans, or... they'll have even more in store for us to make up for this," Ashton looked up at the sky. It had gotten pretty dark by now, and soon only the light given off by the wisp would light up this place. He had to hurry and get back to the grocery store.
As he started moving through the streets, Ashton began to yell as loudly as he could, "That army of monsters is dead! Everyone that can hear me, come out and help barricade the streets!"
He repeated this as often as he could, until he reached the store again. By the time he got there, some people had overheard him and had already come outside. The store manager stood at their front. At first he was glad and happy that the hobgoblin was taken care of, but then he saw the state Ashton was in. Covered in blood, most of which wasn't his own, with his clothes torn and most importantly... an ominous thing floating beside him.
Realising what everyone was thinking, Ashton sighed, "Don't worry about that. It's a friend of mine," he explained, carefully patting the wisp's surface with a smile on his face, "More importantly, get started already. There's a few cars nearby that could work great for barricades. I'll make sure to help you guys and keep you safe for now, but we need to be done before the tutorial is over."
The group of people in front of Ashton looked at him nervously, "Why do we need to be done by then..?"
"Hah? Because I want to sleep, man, I've been up and fighting all day, I need a nap," Ashton replied as if it were obvious, and immediately turned around. He needed to make sure that the barricades were set up properly.
He broke open cars and pushed them around with the help of some of the physically stronger folk, while others brought out shelves out of the store. Of course, Ashton always kept everyone in his view, and in the cases where a group of stray goblins or other monsters came around, aiming for the dense mana well right where that goblin camp was, he would run over and take care of them. It didn't help his exhaustion, but it was better than letting people die that he promised to protect from exactly those monsters.
"No, no, don't do it like that, set it up so that you can let people in whenever you need to right away," Ashton sighed, trying to rub the tiredness out of his eyes, "I'm not saying that you need to leave gaps or something, but just put some parts there that are easier to detach from the others. I saw some bike locks in the shop earlier, just use those."
Following his suggestions, a few people ran back inside the shop. Even so, it didn't take long until the first barricade was finished, and the store manager came up to Ashton.
"What do we do now?" he asked, and Ashton shrugged.
"We, or rather you, build more. But first, we need to go by the other stores. I'm guessing that you all kind of know each other around here, right?"
"Huh? I know some of the owners and managers from other shops here, yes. Why do you ask?"
"Because some of them have survivors. With someone they know and trust, they'll come out and help more easily. Once you have enough people, you split up into groups. Some of you act as protection, while the rest do manual labour. And then after that you'll just have to do your best to hold out."
A realisation came over the manager's face a moment later, "It sounds like you plan on leaving again?"
"Didn't I say so? I have to leave as soon as I gather what I need from the monsters I killed. Actually, that reminds me, you guys have a butchery in the back of the shop, don't you?"
Or at least, it looked like there was a space for people to do some degree of butchering themselves. They weren't slaughtering the living animals, obviously, but there were some folk that knew how to handle a knife.
The manager called over the pair of in-store butchers. Though confused, they went to get their knives, and the majority of the group decided to follow Ashton for now. There were plenty of people staying behind in the still-barricaded store to watch everyone, but those that could handle some labour came with Ashton.
He first brought them to the stores where he saw some survivors, waited for them to come out, and then told them all what to do so that they could get started building barricades too.
It seemed like the cops were actually doing their jobs and planning to act as protectors, though they clearly felt queasy and maybe a little trigger-happy whenever seeing Ashton kill the humanoid goblins.
'They'll have to get used to it, anyway,' he thought. By the time they got to the end of Market Street to the rudimentary goblin camp, the group that was still following Ashton was stunned and frozen in place.
That singular man stood in front of the dozens, at least a hundred of them, monster corpses and looked at the group, "I'll need some help gathering something from these bastards."
[Currently Available Milestones]
[+1 Chapter | 10 Reviews | 5/10]
[+1 Chapter | 25 Ratings | 10/25]
[+1 Chapter | 25 Favourites | 16/25]
[+1 Chapter | 250 Followers | 101/250]
[Current [Bonus Chapters] in queue... [0 Chapters]]
! There, you will find 15 Chapters ahead of Schedule!