Chapter 109 - Goblin Slayer
Chapter 109 – Goblin Slayer
With strong equipment and external help, humans were able to kill beasts at higher stages than their own, and thinking about the goblin´s equipment Jason encountered, he felt somewhat complicated.
If goblins were able to produce protection pendants which could deflect projectiles and enhance simple stone weapons, what were they waiting for?
Will they gather more strength until they could overwhelm Cyro city with their sheer number or was their plan grander?
There has to be at least one extremely smart and knowledgeable goblin, considering that their society gifted the lower-ranked goblins, weapons and pendants with inscribed protection runes.
´Are they scheming something or what are they waiting for?` Jason thought and he couldn’t answer this question no matter how long he thought about it.
The only thing that made Jason relatively satisfied was his mana core that was about to be completely consolidated.
After fighting another few battles against smaller groups of tens of goblins, he felt his core being completely solidified because the passive mana gathering technique would take some time to finish the process.
When it was lunchtime, Jason decided to go back inside the dome to practice his Heaven´s Hell technique.
Furthermore, he sent his teacher pictures of the protection pendants and the runes inscribed on the amplified stone weapons.
He wanted to be sure as he thought his teacher was the most knowledgeable person he knew and he remembered him inscribing a magic circle, which indicated his identity as a runemaster.
if not even Mr.Greil knew about these inscriptions, something had to be wrong and for Jason, being safe was more important than sacrificing his life needlessly.
After he finished his practice, there was still no message from his teacher and Jason decided to go back hunting some Goblins.
Leaving the protection of the dome, Jason saw a few injured heavily hunting teams consisting of youths that were only slightly older than him, staggering to the dome´s protection.
They looked terrified as if they escaped Grim-reaper by a hair and Jason wondered what scared them so much.
He thought these youths were extremely dumb as they immediately stopped advancing once they entered the dome.
The dome was only a transparent wall that let everything go through and if these groups of youths were pursued by beasts or Goblins, it would still take a few seconds until the dome´s AI could annihilate the threat.
Projectiles wouldn’t be seen as threats to the city and elemental attacks or arrows and other long-range attacks could easily find their targets, even if beasts stopped in front of the dome.
Jason´s mana eyes were always activated outside the dome and looking at the injured youths, he suddenly sensed that something was wrong with them.
`Poison? Is this also the work of goblins?` Jason asked himself but his eyes only told him that the poison wasn´t lethal enough to kill someone at the Adept rank and could at most paralyze them.
He had a certain innate resistance to poison due to Scorpio.
As such the effect wouldn’t be that much of a threat to him, however, it was still worrisome.
He continued his hunt, and after some time, Jason just decided to not use his bow and immediately sneak up to the goblins, as it was much faster that way due to the existence of goblin-mage apprentices that sacrificed their own brethren.
The more goblins Jason killed, the easier it was for him to predict their movements.
After killing the sixth large group of goblins, something began to change innately.
It was already close evening and he noticed many Goblins using blast pipes with poison which was not exactly an advantage for them, as they fought Jason.
Rather it would make his onslaught much easier and he lost count, how many goblins he slaughtered throughout the whole day.
His golden eyes were flickering even more vigorously and the goblins that looked into his eyes were scared to the bones, causing them to step back as they shivered in fright.
He hadn´t sustained many injuries and only a few small cuts and poisonous darts hit him.
The poison was not entirely useless but the whole massacre was already over when he noticed the effect.
Jason was about to pick up the goblin corpses when he senses mana fluctuations from behind.
Exerting the weightless steps to the limits in addition to him covering his body in a mana membrane, Jason jumped to the side, rolling over a dead goblin corpse, squashing it.
Only a moment later, he heard an explosion as three fireballs exploded where he previously stood.
Turning to the direction where the three fireballs came from and Jason’s eyes widened in shock.
Another six fireballs came flying towards him and he could only make a big jump backward while activating the protection rune on the pendant.
A large rune manifested in front of Jason, and fortunately, only one head-sized fireball flew right into his direction, while the other five exploded in front of him, blowing him 2 meters away.
Rolling on the ground, Jason forced himself to stand up without wasting any time when he noticed that the protection pendant´s mana was already used up and with his current remaining mana, he wouldn´t be able to activate it anymore.
He had only a quarter of his mana left and looking at his enemies, Jason could only curse…
There were 10 goblin mage apprentices standing in front of three adult human-sized goblins which were packed with muscles and razor-sharp fangs which stuck out from their jaw.
Hobgoblins! Jason frowned and upon scanning their incomplete mana core, Jason could immediately tell that they were evolved ranked beasts!
As if that was not enough, behind these Hobgoblins, stood more than one hundred Goblin soldiers as his skin was covered with goosebumps seeing his opponents.
Jason thought that once such a horrifying scenario would appear in front of him, he would be scared shirtless but right now, he was terrifyingly calm.
He sighed and told himself “In the end, the only good goblins are dead ones!” as he felt like the protagonist of a fairy tale he heard a long time ago when he pulled out his mana pistol.
Jason’s eyes turned cold and killing intent gushed out of him when he switched his mana pistols magazine calmly to anti-magic bullets.
Without caring about the eerie and bloodthirsty cries in front of him, his eyes began to flicker violently, giving the fear inside him not a tiny chance to overwhelm Jason´s thought.
Pulling the trigger, a loud *BANG* resounded through the two-star wild zone and a protection rune manifested in front of a goblin mage apprentice.
However, the rune was immediately destroyed as the goblin cried out in pain before its eyes turned dim.
The anti-magic bullets were nothing special, but extremely expensive and only capable to destroy grade-1 runes, but it was more than enough to shatter the crude protection runes, in front of the goblin mage apprentices.
Between its eyebrows, a tiny hole could be seen.
Before the whole herd of goblins could even react, a volley of bang´s could be heard, before nine identical runes manifested in front of their respective wearer.
They shattered without showing any signs of deflecting the bullets when all goblin mage apprentices collapsed lifelessly.
While Jason changed his magazine into one with armor-piercing bullets, the goblins and hobgoblins were shocked and enraged at the same time.
While hobgoblins had a higher position in their society, goblin mage apprentices were not something one could easily kill without attracting the wrath of their race.
As such they began to charge at the lone enemy they faced while disregarding the thread his mysterious weapon possessed.
Hobgoblins were more intelligent than normal goblins but not comparable to mage apprentices.
This was also the reason why Jason killed the mage apprentices first.
If they warned their brethren about the lethal thread from his mana pistol, how could Jason enjoy the scenario that occurred right in front of him?
Three hobgoblins and over a hundred Goblins were charging at him, while Jason only smiled as if he lost sanity, as he emptied his magazine, before holstering his mana pistol again.
After Jason holstered his pistol, the three hobgoblins noticed a searing pain spreading out from their chest, before blood poured down their chest and head, covering their eyes.
Unbeknownst to them, an armor-piercing bullet pierced through their skull, exiting it without much resistance.
They felt weaker and tried to wipe away the blood covering their eyes, but it was too difficult for them to lift their arms.
Each step felt heavier and more difficult than a step before and they only noticed the goblin soldier overtaking them before they collapsed on the ground.
Only a few moments later, their life force dissipated with dead corpses remaining.
Sighing in relief because the most lethal threads were wiped out with the large number of cannon fodder left alive, Jason felt excited.
`Finally, I can use this!!` Jason smiled slyly when he took out a cylindrical shaped crystal in the size of a baby-fist
Injecting half of his remaining mana into the crystal, he threw it horizontally in the air before he crouched and closed his eyes and additionally covered them with his clothes.
And this was not even enough as he could still see a bright light illuminating the already darkened sky.
He heard an endless echo of cries and the light began to diminish slightly, causing him to jump up before he pulled out his daggers instinctively.
Without wasting a single second, he rushed towards the mass of goblin soldiers, as a smile blossomed on his face.
His smile widened as he saw that all goblins were covering their blood-leaking eyes, crying out in pain and anguish.
The cylindrical-shaped crystal he threw into the air with his mana injected was a primal-luminous crystal, that was mainly used to illuminate streets with a marginal amount of mana injected.
Injecting too much mana into this crystal would cause the inner structure to overdrive and cause a forceful reaction by the crystal.
This reaction would cause a terrifying bright light to appear, which could cause even Expert ranks to be dazzled for a few minutes without being able to blind them completely.
Looking straight into this light would cause awakened beasts and adept ranked humans to become dazzled for hours with a high chance of becoming blind, and Jason used this overdrive effect to blind the horde of goblins in front of him.
He had never thought that all goblins would look into the primal-luminous crystal and he felt fortunate, even though he was confident in defeating a few sole uninjured goblin soldiers.
As such he started his onslaught of goblins before he picked up the primal-luminous crystal that began to crackle lightly
Picking up all corpses and the equipment, Jason asked himself, if goblins would tell nightmares about him if a single one of them escaped.
This thought lightened up his mood and he left for the dome when everything was done.
Entering the dome, Jason was suddenly bombardement with notifications.
Outside the dome, there one couldn´t receive messages without a certain device that Jason didn´t have, as saw over a dozen messages from his teacher with most of them saying
[Come back, immediately!]