My warriors breathed a sigh of relief when I led three still-extremely-dangerous Nurgle leaders away. But it seemed no one had noticed that there were a total of seven of these creatures. And the largest of them, without entering the battle, had literally dissolved into the darkness. The giant had a skill similar to invisibility, but the most unpleasant thing was that this creature, for some reason, wasn't looking at me, and I didn't feel its gaze. The only thing that was reassuring were the huge footprints from its feet, which in my additional vision were clearly slightly warmer than the surrounding night air. And that was enough for me to track the giant Nurgle's location. And if I didn't take this factor of uncertainty into account, then so far, everything was going well.
I had indeed managed to get behind the main puppeteers of, I'm not afraid to say, an entire army of Nurgles. The group of leaders was happily watching as their smaller relatives stormed the remnants of Takul's platoon. When a series of area-of-effect skills tore part of the forest relatives to shreds, the giant roared and sent three Nurgle leaders with an even larger number of smaller creatures for a second assault.
I took advantage of the situation, and, having crept up, I fired all six of my needles into these improvised junior officers. I didn't shoot at the most frightening one at all, deciding that my injections probably couldn't harm it in any way. But the others could well lose some of their nimbleness from a dose of my poison. Each of them received my personal poisonous gift near their kidney.
The Nurgle leaders roared and rushed after me. And it was just as I was approaching my squad that the giant used its stealth skill. It seemed to know all our tactics. And it was afraid of my mage's spells, like the fireball, and thanks to the Great Anteros, it didn't know that Leur had already used it. But it was worth remembering the time that skill didn't harm the Rank D Arachnid Tyrant at all. It's not as ultimate a magic as we'd like it to be.
I don't know what the battle looked like through my warriors' eyes. But I got, purely and simply, true pleasure from it. My poison worked very well on the lower-level Nurgle leaders. They clearly became more sluggish, and their reactions and motor skills were a little slower. The higher-level monsters, fearing being hit first, deliberately began to lag behind to assess the enemy's strength and the overall disposition of the future battle. Therefore, I was able to shoot the three smaller ones with what you could call impunity. But I had to work a lot with the three stronger Nurgle leaders. But while the blows of these giants were being held back by the magical dome, even their movements from the poison that had penetrated their blood became more viscous. As it turned out, over time, the poison began to affect even such powerful creatures.
For the entire duration of the battle, while I was under the magical dome and fighting, I tried not to lose sight of the location of their gigantic leader. But it never decided to join the battle, for some reason of its own. There was a danger that when I came out from under the protection of the magical barrier, it would rush to take revenge on me. But apparently, it had completely different thoughts on that matter. Perhaps it became so huge precisely because of its excessive caution. But the three Nurgle leaders, having received several more injections of poison from me, began to move very clumsily and soon collapsed onto the wet ground, completely paralyzed.
Running up to the largest one, which had reached Level 17, I began to hack at its neck with my cleaver. Of course, it wasn't a stone, but it was clearly harder than ordinary wood. But if each blow was filigreed to the exact same spot, it became a little easier. Blood spurted from the wound in powerful gushes after each blow from the heavy cleaver. But the creature didn't want to die.
One blow followed another, reverberating with the ringing of the blade and pain in my hands. All my armor was already covered in hot blood, which was flowing in thick streams down the armor plates. But I continued to strike, splashing the red, sticky liquid all over the area. And it just wouldn't give me its SP. In my vision, the blood was steaming, quickly giving off heat into the cold night air, and a reddish mist formed around me. But only I could see it. Very unpleasant sensations, even for such an old warrior as me, who had seen a lot during my service. The creature was so tenacious that I had to hack for more than a minute. And the giant continued to watch this bloody slaughter, about a hundred paces from me, under the cover of invisibility. It was as if it didn't care at all.
[Notice] You have received 163 SP. (176/220)
A huge amount of experience ran through my body with vigor. I couldn't finish off the two remaining ones yet. Then I would definitely level up. I needed to find out what was left of Takul's platoon as soon as possible. I already had plans for his things. There was a danger that the giant would attack my squad, but I thought that if they were smart enough to wait for their commander without lowering the barrier, they would remain unharmed. I dashed toward the Lurion, and the huge creature followed me unhurriedly. It was hard not to look back, knowing what kind of monster was sneaking behind me. But letting it know that I was aware would have been an even bigger mistake.
Approaching the scene of the fight, I encountered more and more fragments of Nurgle bodies. Takul clearly had several devastating area-of-effect skills. For a moment, just for a moment, I also wanted to have such power. But I quickly took my imagination and desires under control. It was fatigue making itself known, and the large amount of absorbed experience was stirring up my perception.
When I reached the main location of the fight, I found, probably, several hundred bodies lying very close to each other. They were not scattered across the area among the trees; no, the Lurion let them get close and instantly destroyed entire crowds of Nurgles. In a single heartbeat. Seeing this, my desire to engage in close combat with Takul completely disappeared. Perhaps he was a low level for his position, but he certainly wasn't short on skills, like our Zhurek.
But in the interweaving of bodies, I didn't see any living ones yet. I slowed to a walk and began to carefully look for the goblins' bodies. The bags of the mages, and the ordinary soldiers, might contain something useful for me. Judging by the absence of living Nurgles eating the carrion, the Lurion had survived.
Rushing past the pile of bodies, I headed south. That's where we had come from. Two hundred paces, and several bright markers appeared among the trees. They were clearly wounded and were moving slowly. I approached them as stealthily as possible. It became clear that they were confident in their safety, because they were talking, and most importantly, they were moaning in pain, not trying to hide it. But what made me even happier was that they had many Bags of Holding on their shoulders. This meant that they had already managed to rob the bodies of their dead comrades.
I simply considered it inexpedient and an overly risky venture to get closer than a hundred paces. Takul himself and four of his subordinates certainly looked battered and were limping badly, but they were definitely not mortally wounded. There was no point in waiting; while they were distracted by conversation and, apparently, spending all their energy on healing spells, I needed to attack.
Greasing a dozen arrows with poison, I fired them one after another. The first was intended for Takul. After all, there was a good chance that he might have some artifact stored away that could protect him even from a surprise attack from behind. But I had overestimated the young Lurion's abilities. He collapsed as if mowed down with a pierced neck. The arrow unhinderedly pierced the weakly protected area of his armor from the back, just above the collar.
The remaining goblins reacted only after the second body had already fallen. He seemed to be one of the Decurions, particularly close to Takul. The two wizards and the last junior officer tried to scatter, but an arrow pierced the light armor of one of the mages. The second wizard fell next; his armor also could not stop the heavy tip of my arrow. The last Decurion left standing hid behind a large shield and began to shout.
"It's us, soldier, we're your people, stop shooting," he tried to reason with the unknown warrior who was shooting at them, tearing his throat.
There was no point in entering into any dialogue. I added one more arrow to each of the bodies lying on the ground. Not paying attention to the screams of the dying man. I was more concerned with the giant's behavior at that moment. But it seemed to be enjoying the spectacle as well, because its location hadn't changed. Of course, this was just my speculation regarding the motivation for its actions, which were not entirely clear to me.
The next arrow pierced the screaming warrior's shin; he shuddered, stumbled, and at that moment an arrow pierced his thigh. That was it; in a minute, he should be completely paralyzed. Just like all the others. I slowly began to approach in a small arc, still fearing a counterattack. Of course, I really wanted to get skill cards from the mages' bodies, even knowing that the chance of a Magical Affinity dropping was vanishingly small. But I wanted even more not to die stupidly because of my greed and haste.
As soon as the Decurion with the shield stopped trying to crawl, freezing, completely paralyzed, I sped up a little. And yet, greed got the better of common sense, but not completely. A heavy spear flew at Takul from just ten paces away, and almost separating his head from his body, it got stuck in his neck. Then, more calmly, I beheaded the mage closest to me with my cleaver.
[Notice] You have received 34 SP. (210/220)
Knowing that I would need to spend the experience somewhere, I had prepared a little for this moment.
[Notice] Do you want to upgrade the skill Regeneration (1/5) (200 SP)
Yes/No
Rank increased. Skill power increased.
Select the direction of development:
1. Body regeneration increases.
2. The speed of bone needle reproduction increases.
3. Slows the body's aging process, thereby gradually increasing life expectancy, in exchange for increasing the body's need for nutrients.
4. The body's need for nutrients decreases.
(10/220)
I already knew what to choose, so I quickly scanned the text and clicked on the third option. A slight tremor throughout my body didn't stop me from finishing the bloody business I had started.
[Notice] You have received 24 SP. (34/220)
At the same time, I carefully controlled the giant Nurgle with my peripheral vision, as well as Takul's body, trying not to demonstrate my excessive awareness to the monster. But most importantly, the possibility of the young Lurion's resurrection bothered me. Once upon a time, when he was very drunk, Zhurek boasted that he had been rewarded with a resurrection skill. He said that even if he was killed, he would be able to be resurrected fully healed after a certain time. This is a very expensive skill, even by the standards of senior officers, and maybe Zhurek was just showing off. But I wanted to be ready for even such a turn of events.
[Notice] You have received 20 SP. (54/220)
This young Decurion died right after his commander and was lying next to Takul's body. He didn't even have time to understand what had happened when an arrow pierced the back of his head.
[Notice] You have received 28 SP. (82/220)
And now I had finally touched the shaft of the spear that had finally ended the life of this Lurion. Cases of a corpse being resurrected after being drained by a System weapon have not been found even in legends. So my heart began to calm down little by little. Takul was finally dead. Now all that was left was to collect the experience from the last Decurion. This shield lover had only crawled ten paces away. He was not lacking in perseverance; he tried to survive no matter what, he was a worthy warrior.
[Notice] You have received 20 SP. (102/220)
But their lack of discipline certainly surprised me. Had they never seen an invisible attack at the most unexpected moment? You can never relax. Especially not in enemy territory. Even when I lock my bedroom door with a steel bolt, I always sprinkle the corners of the room with a special powder, where one could hide using concealment skills.
After collecting all the cards from the bodies of the dead and all the Bags of Holding, I carefully checked the armor pockets for valuables. It was a shame that I had never served with these specific goblins before. And I wasn't lucky enough to hear their conversations or just rumors about more expensive equipment. But that didn't stop me from taking all their rings and amulets and putting them in my Thal's Weightless Quiver.
Realizing that I wouldn't be able to find anything more worthwhile on the bodies, I switched to the Bags of Holding. It was no trouble for me to figure out which one belonged to whom. Five Bags of Holding simply stuffed to the brim with mana crystals were definitely the property of the mages. Two of them contained skill cards collected on this mission. In addition, there were many food supplies of various kinds. Expensive clothes, sleeping bags, and all sorts of household trivia. They traditionally didn't take weapons, that's just how it had historically happened.
All the mana crystals and skill cards were moved to the Thal's Weightless Quiver. There were too many of them to look through all that stuff now. The bags of the soldiers and Decurions didn't bring anything interesting at all. Using various weapon cards was too dangerous; someone might recognize them. And then a thought flashed through my head: let them just lie in my altered space; they won't ask to be fed. Although no, they do ask to be fed. But maybe in the future, there will be an opportunity to sell them profitably.
And now the most exciting moment had come: checking the senior officer's, Lurion Takul's, Bag of Holding. Of course, I didn't find any rare rings or System amulets. These were too expensive artifacts even for a senior officer. Besides a good set of weapon cards and a large number of skills from the Nurgle bodies, there was nothing valuable in it. Well, except for the main purpose of killing Takul. Because, finally, I had an experience accumulator in my hands. The artifact itself wasn't worth a huge amount of SP; it was only slightly more expensive than a good Bag of Holding. It was considered a very specialized artifact, useful for the most part, exclusively for military officers and merchants.
SP Accumulator
Rank E
Type: System artifact
Description: Allows you to transfer and take SP within the limits of the artifact's saturation.
Saturation: 738/5000 SP
Illustration. An Incredible Artifact of the System.
Takul didn't collect as much SP as I expected during our mission. Most likely, the recruits absorbed a lot of experience by raising their levels. But that no longer matters much. Now I had my own experience accumulator. The first thing I did was transfer all my free experience into it (840/5000) and place the artifact in the altered space of the Thal's Weightless Quiver. A small silvery cube, a little smaller than my fist, now felt like it was on my back. It could be taken out at any moment to get rid of excess experience, allowing me to continue fighting without holding back my strikes. And most importantly, without fear of accidentally leveling up.
It was a shame that I couldn't take their Rank F Bags of Holding, as they took up too much space in my Thal's Weightless Quiver. Although initially, it seemed to me that a whole cubic elbow would be enough for any of my purposes and desires, this turned out not to be the case. Therefore, I combined them, getting a Rank F Bag of Holding (5/7) in the end, and I was still able to make a place for it.
I had dealt with the accumulator; now the most exciting moment had come, the skill cards that had dropped from the goblins. I mentally imagined that I would still get a Magical Affinity. But what then? Well, I would have mana. And would that fundamentally change my plans for the future? How many more skills would I need to become a full-fledged mage? And where would I get them? Healing costs, if I'm not mistaken, 300 SP, and that's just an empty card. And it still needed to be upgraded to start providing real benefits. I also needed a defensive one, an offensive one for single and group targets, mana crystal creation, and who knows what other skills. How much SP would be needed for all these skills? And hoping that they would all drop from the opponents I killed would be too optimistic.
Having thought about all this, I took 5 skill cards out of my Bag of Holding with a calm heart. Three turned out to be duds, and two were filled with Rank F sword mastery knowledge. I put them with the others in the altered space. And I was about to return to my squad when the giant began to move.
It was incredibly difficult to keep my movements calm. It seemed to have become interested in what exactly I was doing here, and it decided to take a closer look. Without breaking my stride, I went almost to meet it, expecting an attack from its side at any moment. The giant stopped just 30 paces away, letting me pass. After walking a little further, I slowly transitioned to a run.
How this monster could keep up with me without making a sound with such impressive body dimensions was utterly impossible to understand. But most likely, these were the properties of its invisibility skill. While I was running to the bodies of the five still-living Nurgle leaders, a sense of disappointment still broke through the anxiety. No matter how much I lied to myself, my youthful dream of having a Magical Affinity was ineradicable within me.