Chapter 72: Isekai Life & Battlement Battle

I came running down the stairs to see Voss, Haseth and Yua on the landing area, just outside the exit to the battlements, battling a whole crowd of goblins. Already the ground around them was littered with goblin bodies and they didn’t seem much the worse for it, but there was a huge crowd of goblins coming up the stairs, and dozens of them, armed with shortswords and clubs, streaming out of the rooms on this floor. Only the bright light angling in through the archway was preventing my allies from getting immediately mobbed, but that situation would not last forever.

“What the hell are you guys doing here!?” I shouted incredulously. Luckily, there weren’t any goblins coming down from upstairs- yet- but there would be soon.

“Raszil! He’s here!” Voss yelled when he saw me, before stabbing his spear right into the throat of one of the armed goblins.

“I can see that! You think he’s going to get dressed in the middle of a melee?” I heard the gnome asked incredulously, before spotting him, standing outside the archway, holding my folded-up robes.

I scowled at the lack of regard for my question. I thought I had signalled for them to remain- now we’re surrounded by an entire tribe of goblins.

“If you stay here on the landing, you’re going to die,” I said heading for the archway, “Let me pass, then fall back to the battlements. Voss and Haseth to one side, Yua to the other!”

On way way through I tapped Yua on the shoulder, hard enough that she’s certainly notice. She gave me a glance back, saw me slip onto the battlements, and followed, backing carefully away from the enemy. Haseth and Voss covered her withdrawl, before backing away themselves, with the human fighter taking a nasty slash across the belly from a particularly brave goblin.

We ended up on either side of the archway on the battlements, Voss and Haseth on one side, Yua, Razsil and I on the other. The principle here was simple- our enemies could only attack from one direction, and in so doing would subject themselves to the penalty for sunlight and the penalty from Yua’s paladin aura both. That should debuff the goblins enough that we’d be really difficult to hit ... but on a long enough timeline, the goblins would roll enough 20s to kill us all before we killed all the goblins, I think.

We needed to figure something else out, fast.

Raszil helpfully handed my my robe, while I stood behind Yua, watching her sweep off a goblin’s head with an almost casual swipe of her greatsword. While I pulled on the robe, I shook my head at him. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

The gnome shrugged. “Your man there thought you signalled for us to stay, but then you went a tied a rope to let us up, so he wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he explained, “The old woman and I thought you were still sneaking around, but Haseth wanted to go, and I guess once your dragon girl there figured out what we were talking about, she just went off without a word, and we had no choice but to follow her or abandon her.”

That shed some light on things. I supposed I should be glad they followed Yua- she certainly wouldn’t have been able to defend herself on her own.

“Well, we need an escape plan, and fast,” I said as I cinched my belt into place, “And we can’t descend, or they’ll just cut the rope from here.”

Raszil glanced up, and nodded at the sloping side of the tower. “Maybe I could climb.”

I glanced up, at the next tier of battlements, another fifty feet above us. “I thought gnomes weren’t great climbers.”

Razsil grinned at me. “Well, perhaps the Great God Suleyar gifted me with some of the secrets of how to make an ascent like that.”

I frowned, then rand over to where the rope was still tied in place, and pulled the loop straight up off the battlement without bothering to untie it and began gathering it up. “With a little luck we can surprise these bastards,” I told the little gnome as I handed him the hastily looped up bundle of rope, “So, don’t use it all up getting there, I guess.”

Raszil threw the rope around one shoulder, and started testing the wall for handholds. “Well, I don’t promise anything. After all we’re going further up the tower full of evil goblins.”

I could think of anything to say in return. With a surprising level of agility for his small size, Raszil began scrambling up the sloping side of the tower. I was actually pretty impressed. You don’t really think about what things like movement rate really mean until you see someone half your size effortlessly climb almost forty feet in a minute.

When I turned back to the fighters in our group, I noticed that our little green foes had finally stopped swarming through the archway at us, giving Voss, Haseth and Yua a chance to catch their breath and clean the blood from their weapons. It struck me as odd, considering the sheer number of bodies that they could throw at us, until I realized what was going on. They had failed a morale check.

Before, in the field, even though the goblins were surprised, they were still very capable of hurting us because of the worgs. The presence of those worgs and the fact that they were very capable of hurting us, plus the lack of penalties due to bright lights and probably a few other bonuses like that. meant that their nerve could hold much longer in our counter-ambushes in the field. But now, here, we had surprised them while they were sleeping, were fighting them in direct sunlight, and other than Voss and maybe Yua taking a little ding here and there, were fighting them fairly effortlessly without taking much damage ourselves. Add all that together and it’s a fairly meaty morale penalty.

But you only take a morale check under certain circumstances, which would mean...

“Voss!” I yelled, “Haseth! How many goblins have you all killed?”

Haseth looked at me like I was crazy, but Voss was a little more used to my tactical savvy. He took a moment to glance inside the archway, ducked back to just barely miss being struck by a thrown boot, and added everything up in head, before shouting back, “Not sure. Twenty, I think?”

Twenty. If you took into consideration that it was only the goblin warriors in the equation, and that the civilians were staying out of it, then probably the morale check that they failed was because they took at least 25% losses ... meaning there were only about sixty more goblin warriors in the entire tower!

Guttural shout from within the tower that I couldn’t really make out snapped me back to reality. “Okay, they’re coming,” I said, “Get ready, this is our best shot at taking them out!”

I stepped past Yua and got my hands into position. The second one of the bugbears stepped out of the shadows, greatclub raised to strike me, I canted and let it rip.

Fire arced from my fingertips into the interior of the tower. I didn’t have to worry about collateral damage or things catching fire here- except, perhaps, a few bonus goblins getting caught in the blast, but I sure as hell could count on softening up or even killing the bugbears.

Despite being wreathed in fire, his chain armor smouldering, the bugbear immedaitely in front of my seemed unfazed. With a great sweep of his arms, the massive two-handed club descended, and something grabbed the back of my robe and yanked me away. The giant wooden maul swiped uselessly in the air just inches from my face, and, while her foe was off balance, Yua launched herself forward, yelling a wordless battle cry, one-handing her greatsword straight through the bugbear’s snarling mouth and out the back of its’ skull, her other hand gripping me right between the shoulder blades.