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Fighting entire armies was profitable. Tom immediately assigned his new levels and stat points. He might need them.
DING!!!
Tom smiled as he felt the new effects of [Coordination Ⅳ]. He could probably afford another upgrade of it later. [Divine Protection] was mostly useless for him now. Hell, it would still be mostly useless later on. But when he finally acquired the capstone skill for [Tactician], it would become one of his most critical skills. Unfortunately, [Soul Lantern] was a level 20 skill, so he would need to keep investing in [Exorsist].
Tom took back to the air and did a quick scan with his map. Every living party member was already retreating. The only people still here were Alex, Abaddon, Ignis, Starkiller and Skippy.
Tom noticed Ignis out of the corner of his eye. Should he try and kill him now? The [Apocalypse Force] was not an ally. They weren't even a rival guild. From everything Tom had seen, it looked more like a dark guild bent on dominating the region and generally being assholes about the whole thing. Whatever Ignis' true reasons for being here without the rest of his guild, Tom doubted it was out of altruism. Mutual defence, quest rewards and even internal politics made more sense.
It brought him to the following question: Could he kill Ignis? Probably not. Between Ignis's unused [Escape] skill and his unused [Immortality] skill, Tom doubted they could kill him before he escaped unless the pyromancer was a complete idiot. Further, Ignis didn't appear to be gearing up to attack them.
No, it was much better to improve his reputation than try and fail to swat an enemy.
Starkiller and Skippy leapt onto the roof of a building that was only partly burning.
"Alright," Tom called out. "It's time to move out. We're heading back to the fallback point. Except for Skippy, I need you to stay behind and grab any corpses we've left behind."
"Oh, come on!" Skippy groaned. "I've been out here since yesterday."
"Yeah, and right now, morale is mostly held together by the fact that nobody can die, so grab all of the corpses so I can bring them back. You can also grab the goblin corpses for loot. We can divide it later."
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"Yes, master, order me around like a slave. Why don't you, master?" Skippy grumbled. "Now I know how the slaves felt."
"Skippy," Alex said oh so sweetly as her hand crackled with electricity.
Skippy froze as his face paled.
"Lighting bolt!!" Alex flung the spell at Skippy, causing him to immediately activate his skills and zip away from the attack.
"Get the fuck back here, you racist asshole!!" Alex called out.
Tom rolled his eyes as he picked up a shrunk Abaddon in a basket of paper and levitated him out of the burning remains of the university. It took a ridiculous amount of WILL and a not-insignificant amount of mana to lift the massive lizard man into the air.
"How are you feeling, big guy?" Tom asked.
"Everything hurts," Abaddon groaned, practically lying prone in the basket. "Heals."
"You should have asked before I started to carry you; seriously, man, you weigh a ton," Tom groaned as he pulled him into the sky.
"The moment I get my [Alchemist] class, I'll get a [Focus] skill, so I won't have to deal with pain anymore." Abaddon groaned.
"Stop complaining. You'll be fully regenerated before we even get home," Tom said.
Abaddon had already stashed the bloodstone in his inventory in case Ignis or Starkiller got ideas. Dividing up the loot improperly would quickly end in bloodshed.
"Alright, well, I've been paid. I did my deed. I think I'm going to take the walk of shame now." Starkiller said, giving a mockery of a bow before he lept her into the sky, disappearing from view.
Tom shrugged as the four of them flew over the suburbs. The goblin army was in complete discord. Some were burning in the university, and many more were fighting each other as they all tried to establish superiority.
They arrived at the fallback point. It was a bit of a mess. Injured people were everywhere, and as soon as Tom dropped off Abaddon, the big guy was already fully healed, as he had predicted.
Eve and Chester were already on the scene and working their way through people. Well, Eve was. Chester just applied basic first aid while his auras did all the actual work. Despite that, it wasn't nearly as bad as Tom feared. He had been expecting people to be screaming as they gripped their lost limbs or something. But as he approached, he used [Art of Life] on whoever looked the most injured.
Some people looked like they were barely holding back tears as he restored their limbs. That took a lot of mana and a dozen different spells, and the injury had to be recent. Others were weirdly nonchalant about it. Two people who looked like jocks were lying on the ground with limbs missing, and they were joking about how one of their friends had died from a spear to his skull. Stranger still, they were the normal ones. Only a few people actually seemed to be appreciating the magnitude of their injuries or of the battle as a whole.
Most people had taken Tom's advice and learned a pain management skill. Between that, the healing, and the fact that everybody was going to be resurrected or restored to perfect health later, the general feeling was more along the lines of 'we just did something stupid, and it worked out regardless.'
Honestly, Tom was starting to wonder if mental trauma was more a response to physical damage than to anything actually happening in the brain.
"This is really messed up," Tom said as he healed another person.
"Yeah," Eve said as she reattached a limb with her new [Reconstruction] skill. "This feels almost fake. Like I'm playing pretend."
"Would you prefer the actual horror of warfare?" Tom asked.
Eve grimaced. "I'm not that naive. I'll take whatever this is over an actual trauma room any day of the week."
"The magic really helps with things," Tom pointed out as he healed a dozen cuts on someone's arm.
"Definitely," Eve chuckled. "You have no idea how much easier this is than actual medicine. I could walk into a hospital and cure everyone in a day with this stuff."
Tom wasn't sure about that. Disease wasn't nearly as easy to treat as trauma, and he wasn't sure how magic would react to something like cancer. If nothing else, she probably didn't have the mana pool to heal anything too terrible yet. While Tom was thinking of meaningless things and healing people, Ignis walked up to him.
"Hey," Ignis said. "Can you give these people some healing? We're heading back to our settlement."
"Yeah, sure," Tom said. "How many do I need to resurrect?"
"None. Altan can resurrect them later in the evening." Ignis stated.
Tom did his best to hide his surprise, as Ignis's words suggested that Altan had both a soul collection and a resurrection skill. That was annoying and useful to know. He didn't say anything, though, as he moved to heal Ignis people.
Although it wasn't technically a high priority, Tom didn't really want Ignis around. He was only an ally of convenience, and he wanted him gone as soon as possible.
Only a handful of people needed to be healed. No more than twenty.
"Are you sure this is everyone?" Tom asked.
"Everyone else is dead or a deserter," Ignis stated.
Tom was starting to like Ignis. He gave up critical information far too easily. Tom watched as Ignis and his riders marched off. Adams walked up next to him as he watched Ignis leave.
"How are you handling yourself?" Adams asked.
"I'm fine. They're just goblins. It's not like we were killing people." Tom said
Adam frowned at him.
"You shouldn't think like that," Adams said. "It can lead to dehumanizing your enemies. That's a dark path and not one you should be walking down."
Tom gave Adams a look.
"They are not human. They are an invasive species intending to outcompete us for our ecological niche. This is very much an us or them situation," Tom said, not really seeing his point.
Adam signed but didn't push the issue. Tom didn't really see a problem. He would believe humans and goblins could live in harmony when he saw it. Until then, he would stick to the goblin's own philosophy: kill on sight. He would skip the raping part of goblin philosophy.
"Can you revive the rest of the council members so we can have a quick conversation?" Adams asked.
Tom shrugged and nodded.
Initially, all of the corpses were in someone's inventory, and Tom's [Logistics] skill allowed him to pull them out of whoever's inventory they were actually inside. Tom pulled Luke, Gareth, Jaime, and Sam, a dozen volunteers, and a few minutes later, all four of them were back among the living.
"Did we win?" Luke asked as he spat out blood.
Tom shared the notification.
Tom watched as the four other members of his council looked over the notification.
"Haza, we have won the day!!" Gareth cheered as he nursed the phantom pains in his arm.
"Pretty much," Tom said, leaning against a parked car. Eve was still dealing with the injured, but a not insignificant number of council members were available for the meeting.
"We still have an army of goblins roaming around," Sam pointed out.
"They are disorganized. Without a [Goblin King], they are little better than animals at this point. So long as we cull their leaders, they won't be a problem," Alex said.
"On a more important topic," Luke cut in. "Are we sure we didn't leave anyone behind? I wasn't sure anyone was going to pick us up after we lost to Seraphel."
"That was stupid, by the way." Tom pointed out, "But don't worry, Skippy is staying behind to collect any corpses we left behind, but he'll be back before nightfall," Tom said.
"Why was anyone left behind?" Sam groaned as she rubbed his neck.
"Because we put this army together in what two days." Major Adams stated. "This whole system thing has only been here for a week, as crazy as that sounds. Frankly speaking, if we didn't have Tom here, we would be looking at over a fifty percent casualty rating. I'm still worried about how so many people are reacting to … this."
Tom winced at learning just how many had died; he didn't know it had been that bad. He considered implementing more training programs, but he quickly dismissed that idea. It was hard enough to get people to train and fight when faced with a goblin horde, but getting them to train for something they couldn't anticipate would be difficult. He would leave that task to the major. He would just have to grab some skills like [Drill Sergeant] to improve the average skill growth.
For all he spoke about not underestimating the goblins, they were some of the weakest creatures in the Legend of Noralon. His level 100 characters would have decimated the goblins on their own without even dipping into their trump cards. Not for the first time, he was left wondering if putting his levels into [Exorcist] was the right move. Too late now.
"There are still seventy thousand goblins running around," Luke pointed out. "What are we going to do about them?"
"Goblins aren't like humans," Alex interjected, "Our experiences today align with what we know about the game. Mostly, Goblins require [Party Leaders] with the [Coordination] skill in order to organize beyond a simple mob. With so many of their leaders eliminated today, the remaining ones will be in a rush to be the next Goblin King. They'll be attacking each other as much as us."
"So what do we do now?" Adams asked.
Tom shrugged as his eyes were drawn back to the storm clouds on the horizon. Massive white clouds were moving in on them, threatening snow.
"There's a blizzard coming, so as soon as we're done putting everyone back together, we head home," Tom said.
"I meant more long-term?" Adams asked. "What's Awoken Myths next move?"
Tom looked up at the sky. Two of the three moons were clear in the sky above them, with only the edge of storm clouds ruining the image. Tom was cold and hungry, and his body was sore everywhere, but perhaps most of all, he was tired. As much as he liked levels, he needed a break.
"Right now, let's head home," Tom said.
You may skip to the next chapter.
Base
Personal: +4 PER +4 WILL +3 INT +3 CHA
Racial: +3 WILL +2 CON +2 CHA +1 SPIRIT
Bloodline: +5 PER +5 INT
Level Bonus: +2 to all Stats
Mini-Character List
Tom: The protagonist a half elf and the parties healer
Alex: Toms best friend, a sun elf and a wizard
Abaddon: A large lizard-man the parties tank. and Toms friend
Ignis: A member of the [Apocalypse Force] guild
Starkiller: A member of the party who jokes about his deeds and departs after completing his task.
Skippy: A member of Tom's group who is tasked with looting corpses but is grumbling about his duties. he's Toms friend, beastial human and the parties rouge
Eve: A healer with the new skill [Reconstruction] who is working on treating the injured and Duncans girlfriend
Chester: Large native American man and a healer who provides basic first aid and applies auras to help with injuries.
AN:
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