[Round 3, Day 17, 21:20]
“Kieek. Kyaa.”
I stared at the goblin who was making those annoying sounds while blood was coming out from his mouth.
What was it trying to say?
Actually, did those shrieks even have any meaning to them?
Putting their appearance, fortress and city into consideration, their civilization’s development was quite significant.
It was at least at the level of early medieval period.
And they would most likely had a language.
Well, it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t understand it.
But, just because I couldn’t understand their words, didn’t mean that I couldn’t figure out what it was trying to say.
This goblin who seemed like the leader of this pack began shouting as soon as it seemed like this was a lost battle.
At that moment, some of the pack left the formation and retreated back to the city.
Most likely it was an order for retreat.
Seeing how only some of them left instead of the entire group, it might have been an attempt to send information about me rather than survival.
Meanwhile, the leader continued fight against me until the end to buy time.
A worthy opponent.
Such sense of responsibility was coming from a monster.
I wish some of the humans would learn from his example.
This leader goblin even had some skill under his belt too.
He could have been a nice match against the instructors.
Not against me though.
[Talaria’s Wings]
I leapt off the fortress’s walls with my wings spread wide.
The goblin leader tried his best to ensure their survival, but sadly it was all for naught.
It would take at least half a day to reach the city from here.
Plus, some of them were already injured.
Their probability of escaping from me and reaching the city was zero.
Hua.
How refreshing.
I was hoping I could fly through the clear blue sky one day when I had entered the 4th Floor.
And now my wish had come true.
Ah, it was night time right now.
There may not be any sun, but flying under the stars under the illumination of moonlight had its own charm.
Anyways, flying was the best!
Sometimes I got the urge to just fly for the entire day.
Humans since the olden days, dreamt of flying in the air.
With the introduction of airplanes and the improvement of technology, the dream had been reached somewhat.
But, wasn’t I be the first HUMAN to fly in the sky with my own wings?
Ah, I pitied the humans who didn’t know the magnificence of having wings.
I could see the back of the running goblins from the distance.
I had caught up to them.
These last 3 days, I had continued using my guerrilla tactics against the goblins.
Against the battalions trying to reclaim the fortress to be accurate.
With the signal fire continuing to burn, the goblins sent men after men to recapture the fortress.
First it was 20.
Then 30.
Then 50.
Their numbers had increased each time, along with their strength and equipment.
And when the number had come close to a 100, I gave up on the fortress and ran.
I spread my wings, and glided towards another fortress to take over it.
It only took 3 hours for me to travel from one fortress to another.
But, the men who were sent were mostly cavalry and could not travel in a straight line between the fortresses.
They had to go back to the city and use the roads on the plains to reach the other fortresses.
It took one day for all this to happen.
They couldn’t beat me in terms of mobility.
I was thinking of those swordmasters that often appeared in fantasy novels.
Superhumans who had enough strength to be considered a walking strategic weapon.
Their greatest weapon was that they had the power of an entire army in a single body.
I was using that strength to shake up the goblins as much as possible.
As soon as the army sent was larger than 100 men, I left the fortress without hesitation.
The goblins chased after me endlessly in futility.
They ran their horses with extreme fervor, but they couldn’t achieve anything.
In the end, they had made the decision to send 200 men each to all 4 fortresses.
All of the men stationed in each fortresses were killed.
They had even sent 800 men to other fortresses just to catch me.
And, now.
One of the 4 armies have been defeated, hunted down to the last man, by me.
Hahahahah.
You thought that sending 200 would be enough since I ran when the numbers were over 100?
That was why you scaled the walls without any siege equipments to attack me.
If their aim was to chase me out and reclaim the fortress, it was a reasonable plan.
But with the walls on my side, I could take on 500 of them if I wanted to.
And to be honest, I could beat 200 even on equal footing.
I would have had trouble at the start of this boss room just fighting against 100 of them.
But repeating the process of goblin hunting and fortress capturing had increased my level by 2.
An unbelievable increase.
It seemed that there was a huge reward a.s.sociated with the concept of capturing the fortress itself.
A lot of my combat skills had improved, and the experience of fighting against many at the same time was valuable.
It had been only a week since the start of the boss room, but there was a significant difference between me back then and me right now.
I was starting to think if I should stay here to hunt the goblins longer instead of clearing the boss room, just for the growth.
If there were enough goblins, I might have taken that route.
For the last week, the goblins had been losing men left and right, and now they had decided to send 800 men at the same time.
It meant that there weren’t many men left in the city.
This expedition was the result of the last week of guerrilla warfare.
Their forces were increasing in number for a time, until it began to drop quickly.
Their equipment and number of horses began to drop as well.
Now, there were many men who hadn’t been trained properly among their forces.
They were the same goblin soldiers, but I could see that they were lacking in terms of skill.
It seemed like they had just given a spear to a civilian and sent them out to fight.
And, the number of those weaklings were getting higher and higher.
Their ratio was now 1:5, with 5 being the number of weaklings.
That force of 800 was made by literally sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel.
It was not a bad feeling.
I felt like I had become a great strategist like Zhuge Liang.
[The G.o.d of Duel is disappointed by your unfair actions]
What did you want then?
Did you think having a nice lethal brawl out in the open against THAT number is fair?
I had no regrets at my methods nor my results.
[The G.o.d of Chaos is satisfied by your actions]
There were other G.o.ds who were happy as well.
Although it left a bad taste as he seemed like an evil one.
Now, I should take care of the remainders and fly to the city itself.
Time for a raid.
I’ll show you the meaning of terrorism at the main base.
***
It was not difficult to scale the walls and infiltrate the city.
I just had to raise my alt.i.tude and fly above the clouds.
The problem was what happened afterwards.
After reaching safely inside the city, I landed on one of the roofs and scouted the city.
To see the difference between looking from high above the skies and mountains and looking from down below and decide where I should start.
Afterwards, I couldn’t leave the roof for the next 2 hours.
I had already made a plan in my head.
How to make chaos as effectively as possible.
It was a given.
I had been continuously thinking of these methods in the last week during my battles.
A frontal a.s.sault was one way to go.
When the guards come chasing, I could leave and raid another place.
I would be using my superior mobility.
The same tactics I had used before.
Making fires here and there was also good.
Firefighters in the city wouldn’t be able to keep up with fires all over the city that were being made by someone.
Their guards would have to leave their posts, and chaos would follow.
Exploding any gunpowder would also be good too.
Creating chaos like that was all I need.
If I repeated it enough times, I could force them into disarray.
It didn’t matter if too much time pa.s.sed and all the men sent out to the fortresses came back.
I could just hide in the alleyways or run back to the fortress.
And then just rinse and repeat.
Their armies would not resp.a.w.n like in the games.
I had confirmed that with the combat in the last week.
They didn’t have many men to spare.
The 800, no 600 men they had sent was all they had.
If I succeeded in shaking down the city enough, I could easily go for the king before the army came back.
But I couldn’t do that.
The goblin was laughing
The goblin child was laughing.
Grabbing onto what seemed like its mother with one hand and a bag full of ingredients in another.
It was continuously talking away, full of joy.
That restaurant building was filled with goblins.
Seems like the business was good.
I could see what seemed like a couple sitting by the windows.
They would occasionally stare at each other and snicker away, no idea what was making them laugh so much.
The goblins had feelings.
They had a life in this city.
They were not monsters in this city.
At first it was just curiosity.
I haven’t had contact with such a normal life for too long.
In the Tutorial and my room in real life.
So I just watched.
It was a mistake.
Their life held their dreams and their pasts.
Their life was real, a product of their past continuing into the present.
Was this really just an illusion?
An illusion just to show this moment to me?
I remembered one of the theories I had thought of.
Maybe, this place existed within the universe, and I was just being teleported into the world following the instructions from the messages.
Haah.
My head was starting to ache.
I suddenly thought about the Representative Confederation.
They seemed pa.s.sive, but some of the rankers and I had been continuing our investigation.
We had somewhat of an idea on what they were doing, although there hadn’t been any evidence.
Let’s compare these goblins with them.
Compared to those a.s.sholes, these goblins were much more human.
Actually, was calling them ‘human’ even the right term?
They were not monsters.
The monster was me.
What else could I be to them?
I suddenly appeared one day, only to a.s.sault the fortresses and kill the goblins.
Now I’m trying to cause chaos within the city.
I thought back to the first goblin leader I had met at the eastern fortress.
What had he said, just before he died?
Countless goblins I had met in the fortresses, on the plains, and in the mountains.
Countless goblins I had killed.
None of them had died quietly like monsters in a game.
They had tried their hardest to live, as long as, they could breathe.
The goblin that had held hatred in its eyes at its last moment, the goblin that had charged at me with madness his eyes, the goblin that had shouted in agony, the goblin that had tried to limp away to safety, the goblin that had screamed as he held onto a corpse.
I had just found their appearance amazing.
Like watching a really polished game and getting all the details right.
I feel like I had become the villain of a fairy tale.
These feelings would not settle down, and continued to tangle up inside me.
***
[Round 3, Day 21, 23:10]
As the world began to darken, the number of goblins on the streets dwindled.
And deep in the night, there was not a single goblin on the streets.
I guess it was time for bed.
Watching the dark and empty streets showing their everyday life even more clearly to me.
… I couldn’t stay on this roof for all my time.
This may sound selfish, actually it was selfish.
h.e.l.l, when wasn’t I selfish?
But I had a job to do, things I desired.
s.h.i.t, maybe I had become too soft.
I hadn’t seen other people in so long.
They were just an illusion.
No matter how many I killed, they would reappear once I went back to the Waiting Room.
If I failed to beat this floor, and came back to this boss room, they would be the back same as ever.
Would that really be the case?
I slowly stood up.
My back and hip felt sore.
Just how many hours had I spent sitting on this roof.
The feelings in my head hadn’t settled down.
It wouldn’t be for very long.
Let’s just finish what I was here for.
Not endlessly tackling at an unsolvable issue, I jumped off the roof with my wings spread wide.
Let’s just skip creating chaos in the city for now.
I don’t think I could do it with my current state of mind, and I think it would get worse if I tried to anyways.
There was still some time until the expedition forces came back.
Actually, they may not come back in order to defend the fortress.
Let’s go to the inner castle.
Let’s find that goblin king, and leave this place.
As expected, there weren’t many guards inside the inner castle.
The only problem was where do I find that king.
I guess I could go for the fanciest building from above.
Flying around the castle, I found out where that was.
The fancy building at the centre of the castle, fulfilled all my conditions.
All the windows of this building were blocked.
It seemed crude, showing how recently it was done.
And just by looking at it felt like there was someone important living in this place.
The design of this building was different from everything else.
All the walls and guard towers were positioned to surround that building in the centre.
I was confident.
It was there.
I lowered the alt.i.tude, toward one of the windows that was blocked with wooden boards.
I will just break through that pathetic fortification.
Surrounding myself with Talaria’s Wings, I flew into the building like a bullet.
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