The goblin chieftain Grak flung the tent flap aside and charged out.
Behind him, the old shaman—leaning on his staff—shuffled after with deceptive speed.
Outside, the camp was utter chaos. Thick black smoke roiled up with dust; the open ground was splashed with glaring blood and littered with mangled goblin corpses.
Had some unknown creature attacked the camp?
With so many kin dead, panic spread through the goblins like a plague.
"Enemy attack! We're under attack!!" an elite goblin howled, throat raw, trying to rally the rout.
Before Grak could even take stock—before he could bark an order—
A second blast hit.
KRA-THOOM!!
This one detonated deeper inside the camp—seemingly where junk and combustibles were stored. Fueled by tinder, a massive fireball leapt skyward! Scalding air and a brutal shockwave flipped and tore tents like toys; common goblins too slow to dive clear flew like broken dolls; severed limbs and wet organ shards sprayed everywhere.
Stones shook loose overhead and crashed down, killing more under blunt gravity.
A heavy reek of char filled the air.
"Waaah!!"
"Yalulu!"
Set off in a confined space, burning agents were devastating. Disaster had fallen with no warning. Two blasts killed droves of goblins—some elites among them.
"Everybody freeze!" Grak roared. At his side, the old shaman swept his staff; a wave of light washed over the horde. A strange calm snapped into place—as if a sedative had been rammed into their veins. Wailing, panicked goblins went still where they stood and heeded the order.
Grak could finally see. His eyes skimmed past the fallen rabble without pause; only when they touched the larger corpses of elites did his face pinch with pain.
Those were the backbone of this expedition. You can always scrape up more common goblins; with enough elites and hard whips and fists, you can keep the dull-witted savages in line. But elite losses are hard to replace.
The night raid days ago had already cost them dearly. Now this round of explosions made a poor hand poorer. Even Grak saw black at the edges of his vision before rage flooded up again. He'd taken this mission from Blackfang—brought supplies and purpose. If he couldn't deliver, losses like this were intolerable.
"Grak, Grak." The shaman's hoarse voice, edged with urgency he'd never shown before, cut through the chief's stunned anger. "The exit has collapsed! Rocks have blocked the passage!"
He jabbed his staff toward the smoke-choked canyon mouth—the natural cleft that served as entry and exit—now thoroughly sealed by falling stone and blast.
Uncertain how many enemies there were—and where they hid—they had to reach open air fast. Otherwise, their safe-hideaway would become a tomb.
Grak snapped awake; reason drowned the rage. "Kaga!" He whipped his head around, bloodshot eyes fixing on the bat rider, just now staggering up. "You worthless cur! Time to repay your debt! Can your bat still fly?"
Kaga blinked, then bobbed a frantic nod. The mount was rattled and wing-scraped from the blasts, but flight-worthy—and had flitted back to his side.
"Out the vent—now!" Grak jabbed at a smoke slit high above. "See how many enemies there are and where they're hiding. Harass them with your javelins—draw their eyes and buy us time."
It was the only way to get intel and hit back.
Air control and mobility made the bat rider crucial now.
"B-but, chief—the one out there might be that human," Kaga stammered, terror prickling at the memory of Gauss. Since the last retreat he'd lost his nerve to face that man.
"Refuse and die now!" Grak snarled, one huge hand closing on Kaga's head. "This is when you earn your keep."
Kaga jolted, swallowed his words, and scrambled for the bat. A moment later, Grak spun on the still-stunned elites. "What are you gaping at?! Get the whelps moving—tools and weapons—dig that rockfall out!"
Under the shaman's near-compulsory calm, the survivors rallied, seized shovels and picks, and attacked the blocked exit. Urgent scraping and hammering rang through the canyon.
Meanwhile, Kaga swung into the saddle. Grak's bellow had, for a moment, shaken his fear apart. He jerked the reins; the bat shrieked and thrashed upward, arrowing toward the slit of daylight. The mount wove deftly through tight stone—this was the edge bats had on other flyers, threading caves and gorges with ease.
Sunlight speared down from above, growing sharper. "Nothing to fear," Kaga muttered. "Just a human—our food."
He swallowed; the warmth on his back felt like strength. In that instant, he believed again. Goblins are born raiders—humans are prey. He shoved the chill image of Gauss out of his mind and tried to call back the old hunting fury.
Then they burst from the slit—into the sky.
Sun poured over him; courage flooded back. He felt like the proud sky knight Kaga once more. The bat, stunned by the sudden glare after the dark, hovered and adjusted.
Kaga turned to scan below for the enemy—
A flash stabbed his eyes. He squinted; the brilliance grew in his frozen gaze.
Wrong!
Enemy fire!!
On a nearby rise, a ballista bolt—a spear-long giant shaft—erupted from a weapon that radiated lethal intent.
THOOM! The heavy report boomed across the gorge.
The black head gleamed coldly in the sun—closing the distance at impossible speed.
He yanked the reins—too late.
The planned ambush was simply too fast. Bursting into light, steeling himself, spotting the threat, freezing in fear—all that "long" sequence was a heartbeat. The strike arrived regardless.
No time to react.
A tearing, wet thunk rang in his ears, something warm and red splashed his cheek—
The bolt punched through the bat's chest, kinetic force ripping membrane, muscle, organs, bone—blasting out the other side in a fan of hot blood and shredded tissue.
"SKREEEE!!!"
The mount screamed—and its wings stopped. Momentum rammed it back on the shaft—then gravity took over. Kaga's stomach lurched as the world spun; instinct lifted his hands and wrenched the reins at the last instant. The bat thrashed in agony, flailed a few beats, then pinwheeled into the treeline.
WHUD!
Branches snapped; dust geysered. After a long moment, Kaga came to—sprawled on the bat, head bleeding, vision red-washed, the world a hellscape. He planted an elbow, tried to sit up—
A shadow blotted the sun.
A black boot pressed down on his chest.
Hck!
Blood spurted from his mouth. He looked up through blood and glare—and saw that face at last: hideous, grim, scaled—soaked in an aura that made his soul shudder, swallowing the light around it. To Kaga, Gauss was a demon—no different from an arch-devil.
Cold fingers clenched around his heart; his green face twisted with suffocation and terror. He'd fled—and fate had put him under that boot anyway.
"Waaah!" he yammered, pawing at the air.
Gauss was faster. Calm eyes never left the goblin's twitching hands.
Crack. Two arms snapped like twigs under the grinding heel. Then two legs. As Kaga howled, a slim blade slid in; Gauss gave a tiny twist—shattering the tongue.
"Ur…kh…!"
Even so, the bat rider didn't die. Top-tier elites were stubbornly hard to kill.
Gauss's Zephyr slipped under the leather, opened the belly, and drew out one last alchemical bomb. He tucked it inside, with fuel and a micro clay spider as the trigger—and stitched the wound shut in a blink of magic.
Kaga bawled and begged, but Gauss had no sympathy. Simple truth: if their roles were reversed, would a goblin spare a human? The people in Lawrence Camp who'd died under raid—hadn't they struggled, too? For humans, the best goblin is a dead goblin.
…
Inside the canyon camp, the goblin tribe—still blind to the outside—dug on. With no new blast and no interference at the mouth, Grak began to loosen his guard.
"Seems that worthless Kaga did pin them down."
"As long as…"
As long as they could get out, it didn't matter if the enemy was that human called Gauss. Grak swore it would eat him alive for this—raw.
The thought of such losses stoked a hot, uncontrollable fury.
Thunk! Thunk!
A strange banging from above. Grak looked up. A familiar shape bounced off the rocks and slammed onto the open ground.
"Kaga!"
Its eyes went wide. Beaten? Useless trash. Grak and the shaman strode toward him, questions ready—
—but the barely-breathing Kaga convulsed, shrieking nonsense. The shaman reached to grab Grak—
—and dazzling red light bloomed beneath Kaga's skin.
No—bomb!
Grak's heart stopped. Blinding heat and light erupted from within Kaga, turning him into a human-shaped torch in a blink.
"No—!" Grak got out one roar, half rage, half horror.
KRRR-THOOM!
The shaman's staff only just struck the earth; the dark shield he tried to raise was swallowed before it formed. Too close. The alchemical bomb detonated at point-blank.
The third and loudest blast ripped the canyon camp. A spherical shockwave, studded with Kaga's flesh and metal shards, hurled outward.
The shaman's hasty dome crazed like glass and popped. Grak, in front, fared worse. He'd thrown his arms up and leapt back, but the force hammered him anyway—heat and shards bit deep, and the impact pitched him end over end, smashing fire pits and frozen goblins until he hit rock—hard.
Kfaugh—! Blood burst from his mouth; his chest was a mangled mess. Pain dragged him under. As he blacked out he saw again Kaga's terrified face—and felt a last pulse of regret. He still couldn't grasp how—if it was truly Gauss—how the human had found this place so easily. Humans shouldn't have been able to…
Darkness took him.
Leaderless, the tribe broke. Tools and weapons clattered to the ground; goblins ran like headless chickens through the smoke, char, and blood-stink, howling their fear, minds gone.
In the chaos, flaming timbers rained through the slit above. Heat, poison, and black smoke billowed through the sealed canyon. Wooden billets soaked in thick fuel fell like little meteors—onto tents, junk piles, even the panicked goblins—igniting more and more. The smoke carried a sharp, dizzying stench—the sprites' paralytic toxins—to gnaw at every goblin's nerves and strength.
The canyon had become a sealed, heated, poison-choked furnace of despair.
Outside the mountains, Gauss watched the counter flicker upward—heart pounding in step.
This wave… paid off.