Chapter 124: Chase!

By the time the sun reached its highest point, Damian had finished hunting every escape caravan he could find, numbering seven in total.

The first two had been relatively large, carrying enormous numbers of women and younglings behind a protective shell of warriors.

The following groups varied considerably, which once again proved that Varkas had put actual thought into the retreat instead of simply screaming scatter and hoping for the best.

One caravan contained twelve warriors protecting nearly twice as many females and more than three times that number of younglings.

Another carried only ten warriors, but its route passed directly through the hunting territory of several dangerous monsters that would have discouraged most pursuit teams.

A third possessed thirteen escorts and moved mostly at night beneath heavy tree cover.

The sixth was considerably nastier, carrying twelve warriors whose average strength was noticeably higher than the previous groups, including a Level 6 Fighter who had apparently been trusted with one of the more valuable sections of the fleeing clan.

Then, there was the seventh.

Damian hovered several hundred meters above the forest and stared down through his Divine Sense.

"...Really?"

A single Dark Goblin rode atop a heavy wooden wagon.

There were no females, children nor supplies worth mentioning.

It was just the one Level 6 Dark Goblin warrior and a wagon packed so thoroughly with volatile oils, alchemical powder and crude explosive containers that Damian felt his skin prickle.

The intended strategy was obvious.

Make the wagon appear valuable enough that a pursuit force would approach, let them surround it, then...

BOOM!

A classic suicidal decoy.

Damian rubbed his chin.

"Clever girl."

The Dark Goblin below had clearly noticed him by now, because the fellow suddenly began laughing while sneakily reaching beneath his coat, probably for whatever detonator the clan had devised.

Unfortunately for him, Damian was floating very, very far away.

"Ignis!"

<Firebolt>!

A bright orange projectile descended through the canopy.

The Level 6 Dark Goblin looked upward, his grin vanishing.

"Oh..." he muttered with an expression of utter resignation.

BOOOOOOOOM!

A huge orange fireball swallowed the entire wagon!

Trees bent beneath the blast as burning fragments scattered across the forest floor, several secondary explosions popping in rapid succession while Damian remained comfortably overhead.

He stared down at the burning crater.

"...Good try, to be honest."

Really, Damian actually somewhat respected it.

Of course, he made sure to respect it from outside the explosion radius.

After that final encounter, the accumulated notifications he had allowed to stack began filling his vision.

[Morning Pursuit Summary.]

[Additional Dark Goblin Escape Caravans Eliminated: 5.]

[Hostile Warriors Slain: 48.]

[Caravan Three:

Dark Goblin Level 2 ×4.

Dark Goblin Level 3 ×4.

Dark Goblin Level 4 ×3.

Dark Goblin Level 5 ×1.]

[Caravan Four:

Dark Goblin Level 2 ×2.

Dark Goblin Level 3 ×4.

Dark Goblin Level 4 ×3.

Dark Goblin Level 5 ×1.]

[Caravan Five:

Dark Goblin Level 2 ×4.

Dark Goblin Level 3 ×4.

Dark Goblin Level 4 ×4.

Dark Goblin Level 5 ×1.]

[Caravan Six:

Dark Goblin Level 3 ×3.

Dark Goblin Level 4 ×5.

Dark Goblin Level 5 ×3.

Dark Goblin Level 6 ×1.]

[Caravan Seven:

Dark Goblin Level 6 ×1.]

Damian nodded slowly.

Add those forty-eight to the thirty-two warriors from the first two caravans, and that made about eighty or so.

That was just about the total public fighting force Blackroot Clan had once possessed.

Varkas had effectively split his entire known military population across the escape operation.

Naturally, Damian did not assume that meant every dangerous Dark Goblin in existence had conveniently walked into his sword.

Varkas himself remained missing, and anyone smart enough to create seven simultaneous retreat routes probably possessed at least one final card hidden beneath the table.

Still...

Eighty dead warriors was eighty dead warriors.

The Overworld System came first.

[Combat Evaluation Complete.]

[Repeated elimination of substantially weaker hostile combatants provides no meaningful Class Experience.]

[Multiple encounters provide no additional reward due to threat and novelty decay.]

[Special Evaluation: Explosive decoy identified and neutralized without entering prepared kill zone.]

[Reward: +1 EXP.]

[Experience Points: 93/132 → 94/132.]

Damian grinned. "Hey, I’ll take it."

One Experience Point for blowing up a Goblin’s own bomb wagon from an irresponsibly safe distance?

Excellent business!

Then came the Skill Upgrade System.

[Valid Monster Souls processed.]

[Monster Souls Converted: 48.]

[Skill Points Acquired:

Caravan Three: +37.

Caravan Four: +33.

Caravan Five: +41.

Caravan Six: +50.

Caravan Seven: +6.]

[Total Skill Points Acquired: +167.]

[Current Skill Points: 443 → 610.]

Damian’s eyebrows rose.

Six hundred and ten!

Hohoho!

The Nightmare Corpse Sect had previously spoiled him badly enough that numbers like this no longer caused spiritual ejaculation, but six hundred Skill Points was still disgusting wealth by any sane standard.

Especially because <Myriad Arts Master> effectively increased the purchasing power of every point spent upon compatible combat abilities.

Beautiful!

<Battle God> followed immediately.

[Battle God — Qualifying Kill Contribution Increased.]

[Additional Victories: 5.]

[Uninterrupted Victories: 9 → 14.]

[Future Kill Experience Increase: 91.2% → 107.9%.]

Damian stared at that final number.

There it was.

He had finally crossed one hundred percent.

For Shengyuan, the bonus had always applied smoothly as a percentage increase toward qualifying kill-derived cultivation gains.

Valoria was more stubborn, as the Overworld System preferred clean whole thresholds.

Crossing one hundred percent meant qualifying kill Experience could now receive an additional full multiple whenever the effect properly applied.

Essentially...

"Double kill EXP unlocked."

Damian rubbed his hands together.

Wonderful!

Of course, the Dark Goblins he had just killed were so hilariously beneath him that doubling zero remained a spectacular zero.

Math was cruel like that.

Finally came the gluttonous one.

[Demonic Plundering Dao Body activated.]

[Compatible Slain Remnants: 48.]

[Current Plundering Ratio: 19.5%.]

[Attribute Plunder Complete.]

[Aggregate Attribute Gains:

STR: +8.6.

DEX: +7.2.

AGI: +6.4.

CON: +8.4.

INT: +0.5.

WIS: +1.1.

PER: +1.4.

CHA: +0.9.

LCK: +0.2.]

[Current Attributes:

STR: 40.3.

DEX: 46.7.

AGI: 38.8.

CON: 46.0.

INT: 16.0.

WIS: 18.6.

SPI: 19.5.

PER: 10.0.

CHA: 21.6.

LCK: 4.4.]

Damian became quiet.

Then he slowly looked down at himself.

"...What the fuck?"

His physical Attributes were becoming completely unreasonable!

My brother in Christ, he was supposed to be an Adept Mage!

At this point, Damian’s Character Sheet looked like someone had taken four separate classes, poured them into a blender, added cultivation, sprinkled several cheats over the top and then forgotten that balance existed!

His derived abilities naturally shifted with the change.

<Martial Adept> alone had climbed sharply because STR, DEX and AGI formed its scaling foundation.

Damian calculated it quickly.

40.3 plus 46.7 plus 38.8.

Divide by three.

Approximately 41.93%.

Almost forty-two percent additional damage to compatible physical Skills!

And he had gained those Attributes by spending a morning deleting Goblins with a sword.

Utterly shameless!!

Damian loved it.

With every fleeing caravan secured, he finally turned Longtian toward Blackroot Den.

The sword accelerated into the distance.

............

Damian reached the rendezvous point shortly afterward.

What he found there almost made him reconsider leaving these people unsupervised.

Eunice sat beneath a tree quietly speaking with Julia, the two women appearing far more comfortable around each other than they had that morning.

Good, at least somebody had chosen emotional maturity.

Paulina, though, had apparently declared war!

"FORTY-SEVEN!"

The Wolf Beastwoman lowered herself until her chest nearly touched the ground before exploding upward again.

"FORTY-EIGHT!"

Beside her, Kellan struggled desperately through another push-up while Ronan moved with considerably less visible strain, though the veteran’s expression suggested his dignity had somehow become involved and retreat was no longer possible.

Paulina grinned savagely.

"Fifty!"

Kellan wheezed while Ronan narrowed his eyes.

"This stopped being friendly thirty repetitions ago."

"You surrendering, old man?"

"...Absolutely not."

Damian chuckled, then his attention moved elsewhere.

Janet had pulled Stella several meters away from everyone else and was currently whispering something directly into the Half-Tiefling’s pointed ear.

Damian couldn’t hear the words from this distance.

But whatever Janet was saying...

Holy shit!

Stella’s normally composed face was so red that it practically matched a ripe tomato!

Her lips trembled, her eyes had become unfocused, and Damian could have sworn steam was rising from her head!

Janet whispered something else, causing Stella’s pupils to nearly turn into spirals.

Damian slowly narrowed his eyes.

"...Why do I feel threatened?"

Janet noticed him, and her expression immediately became innocent.

Suspicious!

Extremely suspicious!

Longtian descended.

Everyone quickly gathered once Damian’s boots touched the earth, even Paulina reluctantly abandoning the competition after declaring herself victorious despite Ronan loudly disputing the scoring system.

Kellan approached first.

"Lord Damian! Did you find them?"

"All seven groups."

The teenager became still.

Damian briefly explained what happened.

He described the routes, the number of warriors, the numbers of civilians and the traps some of the groups had attempted.

Most importantly, he explained that every combatant encountered had been killed while the females and younglings were contained safely for guild retrieval.

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

Eunice visibly relaxed.

"You spared the families."

"Of course."

Paulina nodded approvingly.

"It would have been understandable if you hadn’t."

Julia’s expression became thoughtful.

"Considering what happened to the villages, few people would have blamed you."

Damian shrugged. "Maybe. That doesn’t mean it would’ve been the correct thing to do."

Kellan remained silent longer than the others.

Everyone eventually looked toward him.

After what he had suffered, nobody would have blamed the teenager for possessing a less charitable opinion.

Kellan looked down at Garrick’s spear, then shook his head.

"They weren’t who killed Grandpap."

Damian raised an eyebrow.

Kellan continued quietly.

"Even the warriors you killed... I hate them, but they were following Varkas and Ravelhorn. Killing a hundred more Goblins won’t bring Grandpap back."

His grip tightened.

"The one I want is Varkas."

There was no hesitation in his voice.

Damian studied the boy, then nodded.

Good, that was considerably healthier than turning his grief into a racial extermination policy.

"Then let’s go find him."

The abandoned Blackroot settlement waited ahead.

Before entering, Damian walked toward Stephen and the carriage.

"You’re staying here."

Stephen blinked. "Understood, My Lord."

Damian immediately removed several formations from storage.

The first was a Warning Array.

The second was a Bewilderment Array.

Then came a Four Swords Array.

He positioned the formation nodes around the carriage, registered Stephen as an approved presence and transferred basic control authority to him.

The Warning Array would alert him if anything living approached without authorization.

The Bewilderment Array would distort the perception and navigation of anyone attempting to enter.

And if some extremely determined monster somehow pushed through both?

The Four Swords Array would begin introducing it to repeated sword-Qi attacks until it reconsidered its life choices.

Damian handed Stephen the control token.

"If anything enters the perimeter, stay inside. Don’t go investigating noises and don’t chase anything. Let the formations handle it."

Stephen stared at the layered defenses surrounding one ordinary carriage.

"...Yes, My Lord."

Damian nodded.

Excellent!

He turned toward the others.

"Now we can go Goblin hunting!"

............

Blackroot Den was considerably larger than Kellan had imagined.

The outer encampment already covered a respectable area beneath the hollow hill, filled with watch posts, crude barricades, storage structures and multiple defensive positions.

Yet that had never been the true heart of the clan, as the exterior existed mostly for security purposes.

Warriors slept there during active rotations, captured slaves had been processed and contained near the outer chambers, while supplies moved through those tunnels before being distributed inward.

The real Dark Goblin settlement lay deeper underground.

Damian led the group through a broad stone passage until the tunnels widened into an enormous subterranean cavern.

Old fire pits covered several areas, hide tents and rough wooden structures stood against the walls, small alcoves had clearly housed families while bone tools, baskets and abandoned household items remained everywhere.

This was where Blackroot Clan actually lived, especially the people who did not normally stand on battlefields.

Paulina glanced around. "They sure evacuated quickly."

"Very," Damian noted with raised eyebrows.

Ronan frowned toward the cavern’s center as a surprising quantity of loot had been gathered there.

There were countless weapons, coins, armor, human belongings, and even several chests.

There was enough wealth here to attract practically any Adventurer operating under the ancient law of ’shiny thing equals mine’.

Kellan took one step toward it, but Damian caught his shoulder.

"Don’t take a single step further."

The teenager stopped, everyone turning to look toward Damian in surprise.

He pointed at the pile with a grim frown. "That, my dear friends, is a trap."

Stella’s hand immediately moved toward her greatsword.

"An explosive trap?"

Damian’s lips twitched. "...Among other things."

Damian’s Divine Sense had already swept through the cavern, so it wasn’t the loot pile itself that interested him.

Rather, it was the thin channels beneath the stone floor made of prepared ignition lines leading to several concealed explosive containers.

And, more importantly, they were placed at structural weak points positioned throughout the surrounding cavern.

Touch the wrong object, trigger the mechanism, then the center of Blackroot Den became a very large grave!

Janet whistled. "They expected us to loot first."

"Yup."

Julia frowned. "And then collapse the cavern on top of our greedy heads."

"Also yup."

Damian looked around with respect. "Varkas planned this retreat disturbingly well."

He did not allow the others to wander, though.

Instead, Damian moved toward an utterly ordinary section of stone near one side of the cavern.

Nothing marked it, resembling a stretch of seamless cave rock.

Damian pressed two fingers into a narrow depression almost completely concealed between stone ridges.

CLICK!

Something shifted, a section of wall pulling inward before sliding aside with a deep grinding sound.

A huge maw of darkness waited behind it, causing everyone to stare in surprise.

Damian smiled. "There we go, much better."

He turned toward Kellan, who was already gripping Garrick’s spear tightly.

Damian’s expression softened slightly.

"Come along, Kellan."

Kellan looked up with a glint in his eyes.

"It’s time for you to avenge old Garrick."

............

Far beneath Blackroot Den, Varkas Blackroot was running for his goblin life.

Vesha, his daughter, was beside him, breathing hard as they moved through the old emergency passage carved through earth and stone generations before Blackroot Clan ever became powerful.

Behind them came the last portion of the clan Varkas had deliberately hidden from everyone, his true reserve.

These were elite warriors who had never participated in ordinary raids, veterans trained specifically for the day Blackroot Clan needed to fight something its normal soldiers could not handle.

Among them moved a hunched Goblin Shaman covered in bone charms, dark feathers and crude talismans.

These warriors had originally been Varkas’s final answer to Ravelhorn.

They were not enough to defeat the Great Fey, as Varkas had never been delusional.

Yet, they were perhaps enough to create an opportunity.

Anything that might have given his people one chance to escape Ravelhorn’s grip.

Now Ravelhorn was dead, and the hidden force Varkas had preserved for years was being used to flee from Humans instead.

How fucking ironic!

Dozens of surviving Human slaves moved among them, some stumbling beneath chains while others were forced forward by spearpoints.

Varkas had taken only those capable of keeping pace because everything about this escape route relied upon speed.

The main cavern should already have collapsed behind them, the loot trap having been triggered and thousands of tonnes of stone sealing Blackroot Den forever!

Nobody would find this passage, nor would anybody follow.

At least, that had been the original plan until the Shaman suddenly stopped.

Varkas immediately turned. "What is it, Wise One?"

The Shaman’s expression had changed, his head tilted as though listening to something impossibly distant.

Then, his murky eyes widened.

"The entrance!"

Varkas’s blood cooled. "What about it?"

"It has been... opened."

Silence.

Several elite warriors looked backward while Vesha’s face showed worry.

"Impossible! The cavern should have collapsed!"

"It did not, Little Chief. The hidden stone moved, and someone found the mechanism," the Shaman replied with frustration.

Unease spread through the group like wildfire, as that was not supposed to happen.

Even most Blackroot warriors did not know the passage existed.

The entrance had been concealed behind ordinary stone, hidden separately from the explosive mechanism and designed specifically so that anyone searching the destroyed cavern wouldn’t discover it.

Yet someone had actually reached it, found it, then opened it!

Varkas’s expression hardened. "We keep moving."

One warrior hesitated. "Chief, if they found the path..."

"Then standing here makes death arrive sooner! Move!" Varkas snarled.

The retreat resumed, much faster this time.

The tunnel narrowed repeatedly, forcing the group into lines.

At several prepared junctions, Varkas made increasingly cruel decisions.

The deadweight Human slaves were abandoned in side passages.

Some remained chained to stone fixtures near old collapse points while others were pushed into narrow corridors and left behind specifically because any pursuer possessing even a shred of decency would need to stop and release them.

The Human slaves being left behind understood this perfectly.

"You fucking monster!"

"May the Gods drag you into the Abyss!"

"They’re going to kill you, Goblin!"

"Your whole filthy clan is dead!"

Varkas never looked backward, every curse following him through the tunnels.

Yet Vesha did, her steps growing increasingly uneven.

It was not from physical exhaustion, but something else, something worse.

Her instincts had been roaring at her since they entered the passage.

She could not properly explain it.

There was no sound of pursuit nor any visible danger, yet every few minutes, the feeling worsened.

It felt like... if their group were considered a flame, then a patch of all-powerful darkness was rapidly approaching from behind.

"Father..." Vesha called out in a weak whisper.

Varkas kept moving. "What is it, Daughter?"

"I-I don’t like this," Vesha stated shakily.

Varkas sighed tiredly. "Neither do I."

"No, Father. I mean something is wrong," Vesha shook her head.

Varkas glanced toward her as she pressed one hand against her chest.

"I can feel it. Something horrible is coming after us. Something... inevitable."

Varkas’s expression became gloomy.

He had learned long ago not to completely dismiss that particular instinct his daughter possessed, who was likely the next shaman candidate among them.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do except continue as the emergency tunnel stretched several kilometers.

The Blackroot Clan had expanded it gradually over decades, always ensuring the exit remained distant enough that enemies surrounding the den would never think to search there.

Eventually, the stone floor began rising, airflow changed, and fresh wind entered the passage.

Then... sunlight appeared!

One by one, the Dark Goblins emerged from beneath a concealed hillside, Varkas stepping outside and inhaling deeply.

Open grass stretched before them, revealing the famous Greenmoss Flats.

They had made it outside Moonveil Forest!

The exit had been chosen here carefully for this exact reason.

The Greenmoss Flats was relatively safe, having low-level monsters, open visibility, and few dangerous predators.

From here, they could separate further, change direction and disappear before any organized Human force understood where they had gone.

For the first time all morning, Varkas felt something approaching relief... then he heard shouting.

"Hit it from the side!"

"I’m trying!"

"No, your other side!"

"How many sides does a slime have?!"

Varkas slowly turned and saw that several dozen meters away, four Human youngsters were fighting a group of small slimes.

They had fresh items, cheap equipment, and awkward coordination.

They also had the unmistakable excitement of people who had only recently awakened Standard Classes and were experiencing their first taste of real adventuring.

One teenager triumphantly stabbed a slime with his sword while another girl cheered.

Then all four noticed the movement near the hillside and looked over as one.

Their happy smiles vanished.

Varkas stared at them, and the young Adventurers stared back.

Then their gazes moved past him, toward Vesha, the Shaman, and the hardened Dark Goblin elites emerging from the tunnel one after another.

One boy’s sword began trembling, while the girl’s face went white.

Nobody moved for several seconds as Varkas’s expression slowly changed.

His eyes became cold, then sinister.

With a movement of his hand, the Dark Goblins began walking toward the helpless youngsters as the four novices trembled in fear.