Synthetic Survivor: Machine Age - Chapter 147

“Goblins!” One of the knights shouted out.

The knights ran to form a circle around One and Toby as the goblins emerged from all sides.

It was an ambush.

“There’s so many of them!”

Indeed, they were. A hundred goblins surrounded the group of twenty.

They came out from their hiding places, behind the trees, bushes, a few trenches, while some merely stood in front of the road as if they were expecting the group to make their way through this road.

“These goblins are smarter than they look,” Toby said.

The goblins wore dirty loincloth, a few had bandanas and leather gloves. They all wielded crude knives and short swords while others had crude bows and some arrows that were still sharp enough to kill.

Fifty wouldn’t be a problem but since there were at least a hundred and all of them were armed to the teeth, the battle was evened.

One, however, was the deciding factor.

They also had a culture of their own, their culture was a barbaric one if put in human terms.

But One himself was taken aback by the sheer amount of coordination these goblins had against their southern counterparts.

“A different kind,” One whispered to himself.

[I am detecting one hundred goblins, no other goblins within a kilometer radius] Hailey said.

“Good,” One said out loud, confusing his men.

One then stepped out of the circle and confronted the goblins down the road.

They were confident but since they were savage creatures at best, their confidence could be used against them in the form of taunts.

One taunted the goblins down the road by waving his hands, gesturing them to come at him.

The taunt worked and the goblins down the road which numbered twenty came charging at him.

They acted more like a disciplined unit of an army rather than their commonly held image of just charging in blindly.

One then drew out his two energy swords amd prepared to face the charging goblins. Seeing One’s confidence in his abilities, the morale of the knights and Toby went up.

“Shield!” Toby shouted his chant. A dome of magic protection specifically against arrows then appeared above and around the position of the knights. The arrows were easily repelled as of they hit a brick wall.

“Charge!” The knights shouted. Woth their swords drawn and shields up, they charged at the goblins who had by now passed through the magic shield Toby had put up.

The two sides clashed with the battle in favor of the knights as they were more skilled, better armoured, and well-equipped compared to their savage counterparts.

The goblins, however, had the number advantage. One knight could theoretically take on ten goblins but if those goblins doubled or tripled, the knight would stand no chance.

As long as they kept their tight formation, they’d be fine.

But the goblins, the number of goblins began to rise.

[Detecting more heat signatures! They’re coming from the ground] Hailey said.

“Oh, so they have an underground of network of tunnels it seems,” One said as he gallantly and single handedly took down an entire line of twenty goblins by dashing through each group of four and slicing them at once with his energy blades.

The goblins fell to the ground, dead, and some mutilated. But just as he turned around to help his knights, another wave of goblins came from the treeline, this time, there was forty of them.

One needed to take care of the goblins fast or he risked losing his men.

And this wasn’t the only problem he was going to face. If the goblins had overrun this side of the eastern boundary and are now running rampant allover the Forest of Death, that would only mean that the villages to the east had been overrun as well.

But One, for the first time in his life, was going to gamble. He hoped that there would be at least a few survivors that managed to hide themselves from these invaders.

If there were any survivors, then it was a race against time to save them.

Sparing no time at all, One dashed at the goblins that came from the left side of the road and slaughtered them. He kicked two against four and sliced them up before proceeding to punch three and then stab six.

Seeing his skill, the goblins that came from the right were terrified and stopped on their feet.

It was a bad decision.

One turned towards them as he finished ripping off the head of the last goblin from the left and then dashed to the goblins to the right.

The goblins then sensed One’s terrifying aura that shouted bloody murder. There was mercy to be had.

And so, half of the goblins simply dropped their weapons and tried to run away and those that remained had their bodies simply sliced, cut, impaled, and thrown aside with ease.

The goblins that ran away didn’t fair any better. As soon as One caught up with them and their short legs, he promptly cut their joints as fast as physically possible, and then leaving them to bleed to death.

Remembering how goblins back at the peninsula acted, he knew that they had a strong sense of smell and good eyesight. Their incredible ability to breed like rabbits are also one of their strong points.

The smell of their brethren’s blood will draw in goblins from afar thanks to the breeze that blew. The more blood, the stronger the smell that would reach their brethren.

One planned on luring them all out into the open to buy the survivors of the villages some time bu distracting their attackers.

As One sunk his two energy blades into the last goblin that ran away the farthest, he turned around to see his men. They were still standing and none of them had fallen yet.

But the number of the goblins attacking them kept on increasing as more and more appeared from the treeline and volleys more of arrows began to pour.

Toby’s magic barrier could hold forever but the knights couldn’t.

And then something big came roaring from down the road.

Clad in crude iron armor, one eye blind, fat, sleazy.

“A Hobgoblin!” Toby said.