Overpowered Wizard

Chapter 226: B3: C16: Idiot Humans 2

Dawson felt a little confused by how the goblin was walking casually toward his guild members. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand, his paranoia flaring.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to shout to warn his men and women. The scouts on the edges saw what was coming and sent out a warning to get some semblance of a fighting force together.

A solid unit of thirty warrior-types collected as a show of force against the one goblin. Another thirty mage-types moved in from behind to support. Other than Gisella, they had a few healers at the ready, too.

Dawson kept a lookout for another factor. When there was one goblin, there was bound to be thousands more.

Was the Grimrock Warlock still alive and kicking?

Dawson figured that was the reason Orin and his paladins had failed their crusade. They’d wasted too much of their manpower and magic against Shadowfell’s corrupted creatures and had nothing to spare against the Grimrock Warlock.

“Damn it,” Dawson hissed. “They don’t send just one unless they are going to give us a warning or lead us to a trap.”

“I don’t like how that goblin’s still walking toward our people. Let’s move closer,” Gisella advised.

Dawson feared the Rats might surprise them from behind, but he followed Gisella’s advice anyway. They flew over to the edge where their warriors prepared for a fight. From here, Dawson had a proper look at the incoming goblin.

She wasn’t corrupted. She was a small tyke, and on the cuter side of goblins, if one could claim those murderous and mischievous things as such.

Big green ears. Cat-like eyes. She had a fluff of purple-white hair on her head. And she wore nothing but rags and an apron, while carrying an oversized cleaver that she rested on her shoulder.

“Strange, I can’t sense any evil from her,” Gisella warned.

Dawson didn’t know what to make of that. His evil +1 mind was trying to connect the dots quickly.

No Shadowfell Tears.

A single goblin who could hide her evil alignment?

Dawson did the most reasonable thing. He puffed up his chest and made a threat of force with a few well-chosen lies:

“We’re a powerful adventurer guild! You better watch it, gobbo! All we want is to pick up some stuff for Orin and hand it back to him.”

Paying attention to the goblin’s big ears, Dawson noticed how they remained low and swept backward, behind the shoulders. That was a big giveaway that the goblin would throw herself into combat at any moment.

For now, the little tyke replied with words. “I’m going to refrain from using my Identify trait on you as a gesture of kindness. But that’s all the kindness I will grant you if you don’t heed my words. You must stop your looting. All this loot belongs to my father and his friends. To steal from them is a grave offense. Listen to me now or I will make you listen.”

“That gobbo has to be lying,” said a warrior at the front of the combat unit. “Let’s just kill her and be done with it.”

“There’s no way we’re giving up all of this loot,” said a magician at the back.

“It’s only one gobbo. We have a thousand adventurers on our side,” said another guild member. “Even if some other gobbos try to ambush us, we’re ready to fight them. We can massacre ten thousand weak gobbos just fine!”

Dawson was sweating bullets under his leather armor and cloak. He was older and more grizzled compared to most of the guild members. The same went for Gisella.

The two leaders were in their graying years, and that came with experience outside of levels. Some might call that wisdom, even if that wasn’t part of a stat.

From what Dawson could see, the goblin was acting unusual. She had a steady confidence that was less audacious and more grounded. Dawson also felt as if the goblin was ... strong.

Goblins didn’t normally act like this. Goblins weren’t normally strong. And the way she spoke was too refined for a mere goblin.

Does she really have the Identify trait? Dawson wondered. That was a rare trait!

Dawson didn’t even have that trait. No goblin should have that unless they were high-level shamans or the Grimrock Warlock.

And who the Hidden Hell was her father?

“Who are you supposed to be, anyway?” Dawson challenged.

Before he could get an answer, he heard a shout of warning from two places. A scout hollered near the entrance between the immaculate walls. Another scout shouted from the end of the basin where there seemed to be another path out beyond the dead paladins.

Dawson and Gisella rose sharply into the air on the Storm Cloud +2 and took a gander.

“Fuck!” Dawson cursed.

The rats had split up to flank from two sides!@@@@

The rats had found a new route the vultures had missed and came rushing with 2500 adventurers into the field of paladin bodies. They also came flying out of the same cliff-side route the vultures had taken.

Dawson watched 500 men and women move about aerially, disregarding the three hundred foot drop. And those 500 were no doubt some of the rat’s most powerful and magical guild members.

The 500 rats crossed over the field of dead aberrations far faster than Dawson’s vultures had and took up a position that blocked off escape through the narrow slit in the grand walls.

As for the bigger rat detachment of 2500, they formed up in a line formation that forced Dawson’s people to back off the dead paladins and spare loot.

The vultures quickly gather into a smaller and tighter series of ranks poised to fight from all angles. But that placed them in a perfect position for blasting magic to land on their heads and blow them to kingdom come.

We’re fucked, Dawson thought.

“Gisella, we might have to abandon them,” Dawson said.

“I will not,” Gisella replied predictably.

Fucking paladins and their bullshit crusader brains.

The lion sorceress aimed her hand forward and charged up a fiery attack that looked like a miniature sun.

She sent it flying at the lone goblin, and a lance of frost shot down from the air and struck the sunny fireball.

To Dawson’s surprise, the fireball didn’t explode. The frost lance froze over the fireball and turned it into useless steam, smoke, and vapors. Then that soon became a cloud of mist and spreading frost.

Incompatible magic attacks that met with some measure of force had a tendency to explode, but the powerful fireball had no chance of releasing its inner power. The frost lance had outright overpowered the lion sorceress’s magic.

Dawson was flabbergasted, and so were many others among the vultures and rats.

“What trickery is this, vultures!?” Cyprus shouted. “We have you pinned from two fronts! See your backside blown to pieces!”

Dawson turned about and prepared for the 500 rats to attack their rear. He waited for a few rapid heart beats before feeling some measure of confusion.

No such attack came.

In fact, he saw none of the 500 rats at the entrance of the walls.

They were gone.

What the fuck was going on?

“Idiot humans,” said the goblin, rising into the air by some invisible force.

Dawson scanned with his traits and senses couldn’t figure out how the goblin could fly up so effortlessly. But there she was, in the sky, looming above them all. She was about to make a big revelation of some sort, and Dawson was hanging with suspense to hear what it was.

“My name is–”

Cutting off the goblin, Cyprus lashed out with a swing of his poleaxe, sending up a blazing crescent that left vapor waves and smoke trails behind it.

The goblin disappeared from her lofty position and reappeared on the ground in front of Cyprus. The blazing crescent flew off uselessly. The giant cleaver the goblin held had streaks of blood on it.

The rats nearest to their leader stumbled back, with Cyprus remaining in place until his head dropped from between his shoulders. Then his body slumped to the floor.

Dead.

“Hisscreep, my Evil God, what is happening?” Dawson mumbled.

The goblin picked up where she left off. “I am Princess Cook Foodie, Daughter of the Dark Lord and Shadowfell Goddess. You have not heeded my warning. And you disrespected me. Most of you can die now. The few who get to live longer will make for good eating in my stew.”

Dawson and his vultures watched with silent horror as an array of beams fell from the sky. Fire. Frost. Wind. Lightning. And green-tinted destruction.

From the very ground, strange and nightmarish tentacles thrust up with pointed ends. They pierced up men and women, sometimes several to one tentacle, like a spit through slabs of roast.

The men and women caught by the monstrous tentacles didn’t always die instantly. Many got pulled in between the cracks in the rocky ground, where they screamed bloody murder. Something underground ate them and made loud snapping, slurping, and crunchy sounds.

Dawson barely kept his own lunch in his gut. Some vultures hurled theirs onto the ground, their Willpower broken.

More rats died from an onslaught of elemental beams from above, and voracious tentacle attacks from below. Then there was the so-called Princess Cook.

She hopped and skipped through the chaos, swinging her cleaver and hacking humans in half. She reached out and ripped an arm away from a man with a simple tug. She chewed on the limb as she kept chopping at screaming rats with her cleaver.

Many rats tried to flee out the way they came. But something magical – which might’ve been gravity magic from what Dawson could tell – triggered and sent rats flying upward and out of control.

Then the ground that led out of the basin became a blockade. Filling it was a horrifying army that no man would want to face – an army of the undead.

Dawson gaped as a black figure led at the front of the army of bone-white skeletons. The black skeleton pointed forward, and his army charged forth.

The skeletons flashed with advanced runic enchantments carved into their bony frames. They attacked with powerful elemental magic that slammed into the rats and demolished them before the adventurers could fight a proper battle.

It wasn’t an instant destruction, but it was a one-sided affair of the most horrible degree. Dawson and his vultures watched in fear as the rats suffered a gruesome defeat with only a few members remaining alive, begging for mercy.

There was none to be had by the monstrous victors.

The Princess Cook stopped to watch her chosen sacrifices get plucked from the mass of dead humans. Skeletons carried away the screaming rats, in which they would meet their ultimate fate as part of some horrific stew to feed the princess.

Then the Princess Cook walked stoically toward Dawson’s people.

The Level 70 Storm Blaster flew slowly to the front and dismissed his Storm Cloud +2. He fell to a knee beside Gisella, who remained on a knee as well, despite how she braced tensely for combat.

The Princess Cook settled into a spot right in front of them.

“You’ve listened,” the blood-soaked goblin said. “Very well. You can pick your spoils from the idiot humans we just slaughtered. My father is kind, so I shall be kind, too, since you’ve listened.”

“Yes, princess,” Dawson said, and the others repeated after him.

Princess Cook Foodie nodded. “You’ll have to stay. My father and his friends might want to speak with you first. So camp up. And all the items you took from the paladins must be piled in the corner over there.”

The Princess Cook pointed to the side. “We will know if you steal from us. Then I will stop being kind. I will give you no mercy and watch you all die except for those I will add to my stew. They’ll get cooked alive.”

“Yes, princess,” Dawson repeated. “I will personally skin the bastard who tries something slick.”

Dawson had a tendency to keep the full power of his evil +1 in check. But for the sake of his survival and the survival of the vultures, he would unleash his alignment in full.

He had to if there was anyone stupid enough to upset Princess Cook Foodie, the fucking daughter of two of the most powerful evil deities of the Infinita Star System.