Scroll 40: Alaster the Environmentalist
At a steady jog, Elise and the elf began moving forward, guided by the distant echo of clashing steel and the high-pitched screeches of the goblins.
Soon, they drew close. The racket of combat was fierce, and as they approached, a pungent stench began to fill the air—the foul odor of the creatures' green blood.
Alaster stopped dead in his tracks behind a thick cluster of bushes.
Scarcely sixty meters away, down a sloping incline, the clearing where the camp stood gave way to a narrow path.
There, the monster horde was desperately swarming, trying to reach Remis, Syrus, and Tagard. The three defenders were utilizing the narrow trail as a bottleneck to prevent themselves from being completely encircled.
"There are too many of them... I don't think we can kill them all, even with your fireballs," Elise said beside him, her tone laced with alarm.
Alaster surveyed the tide of goblins. There were well over eighty of them, though the vast majority were jammed tightly along the path bordered by trees and dense underbrush.
Beyond the small monsters, right in the thick of the fray on the path, Tagard looked thoroughly exhausted. He held his greatsword with the tip low, nearly dragging against the dirt, as he panted heavily.
Remis was in no better shape. Her round iron shield was covered in deep dents, and she was delivering weak, sluggish slashes at the enemies trying to force their way through.
"I think the girls must have rescued the villagers by now," Tagard managed to choke out between ragged breaths. "We need to get the hell out of here!"
"No!" Remis countered immediately. "You know how we operate. One of the girls should have sent a signal by now. Besides, if we turn our backs right now, exhausted as we are, those creatures will run us down in a heartbeat."
Syrus threw the full weight of his body forward, ramming a group of goblins with his heavy tower shield and sending at least five of them tumbling backward onto their spines. The impact obstructed the advance of those behind them, granting the party a brief moment to breathe.
"Then what the hell do we do?!" Tagard yelled, kicking a goblin that tried to leap over the fallen corpses.
They had been trying to erect a makeshift barricade out of the dead goblins' bodies, but the horde pressed forward with such sheer force from the rear that the pile of corpses simply collapsed right on top of them, shattering their contingency plan.
"I don't know! Just keep fighting, damn it!" the leader barked back.
Alaster crept a bit closer, analyzing the situation from his hiding spot.
«I can't wipe out all of them, even if I hurl both of my remaining fireballs. There are just too many and... wait,» he thought. A highly destructive idea began to take shape in his mind.
«I think the tree-huggers back on Earth would be pretty pissed off if they knew what I'm about to do,» the elf reflected with a touch of irony.
Alaster tried to gauge the direction of the wind, but the current was blowing directly toward the position of Remis and the others.
"Elise, do you have any way to signal the party? We need to make them fall back right now, or they're going to get trapped in a wildfire."
Elise froze, utterly perplexed. She stared at the elf with her wide, pale eyes, reflecting total confusion.
"Wait, Mr. Al... Are you going to set the forest on fire?"
The elf gave her a lopsided smirk.
"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do. That way, all those goblins turn into medium-rare steaks. But I need you to give them a signal to retreat immediately."
"A signal..." Elise repeated, and suddenly she slapped her own forehead. "Oh, no! The signal... I was supposed to fire the warning arrow earlier!"
The archer hurriedly snatched an arrow from her quiver. It was completely different from the rest of her ammunition; it featured carved runes and a small, hollow tube affixed to the wooden shaft.
Elise drew her bowstring taut and aimed high into the sky. The arrow sliced through the air with incredible speed, clearing the sixty-meter distance in a flash before exploding into a dense cloud of vibrant blue smoke.
«Perfect,» Alaster thought.
By that point, the elf was already channeling mana into his storage ring. The moment it filled, he began manifesting his third fireball of the day.
Elise didn't miss a single detail of the process. Positioned right behind the elf, she felt considerably safer this time around. «I'm definitely on the correct side of the mage today,» she thought with a sigh of relief.
Alaster began directing the energy from the accessory straight into the spell structure. He extended both hands forward and took a deep breath to steady his focus. The air in front of him began to reverberate violently.
The familiar red dot in the air began to feed on continuous bursts of flame that erupted out of nowhere. Elise kept a vigilant eye out in all directions to ensure no enemies flanked them, then locked her gaze back onto the swirling vortex of fire.
The sphere thrummed with a steady, roaring sound. The archer stared at the display, completely hypnotized by the raw intensity of the magic.
Down on the dirt path, Remis delivered a sharp backhand slash.
"Keep falling back!" she ordered, shoving away a goblin that was trying to flank Syrus.
"What in the absolute hell is that?" Tagard asked, pointing a hand that trembled from pure physical exhaustion toward the space beyond the enemy lines.
Remis deflected her gaze for a split second. In the distance, the silhouettes of Elise and Alaster were perfectly recognizable.
Seeing the massive accumulation of churning fire in the elf's hands, Remis turned pale instantly.
"Holy shit! Run!"
She spun on her heels and took off sprinting with every ounce of energy left in her legs. Tagard and Syrus, who had no idea what was happening but trusted their leader's instincts blindly, stood stunned for a fraction of a second before turning around to follow her at breakneck speed.
«Finally,» Alaster thought, watching them take flight. He couldn't delay the release of the spell any longer.
«This stuff is seriously addictive...» he muttered.
Alaster sent the fireball hurtling straight toward the narrow path, aiming right behind Remis's group to sever the advance of their pursuers.
The leader heard the thunderous roar of the magical projectile tearing through the air directly over their heads. As they ran, a violent vibration shook the earth beneath their boots.
Remis looked back to see what was happening behind her and had to dive sideways just in time to dodge the flaming corpse of a goblin, which was sent flying in her direction by the sheer force of the blast.
Beholding the massive column of fire and billowing smoke that was beginning to swallow the front ranks of the goblins whole, Remis burst into a loud, booming laugh.
«Looks like this elf has a hell of a lot better aim than Dilinger,» she thought, but she instantly regained her stern expression and roared, "Keep running!"
Alaster observed the outcome. The bulk of the horde was caught in the path, which was now burning rapidly due to the dry underbrush. However, at least twenty-two straggler goblins who had avoided the direct impact were now surging straight toward his position.
«I don't think they're looking for a fight... They're more likely just fleeing the fire in this direction,» he analyzed.
Elise tugged violently on the sleeve of his trench coat, visibly terrified.
"We have to run! They're coming right for us! Al!"
The archer braced herself to bolt, but Alaster remained completely motionless.
"I still have enough juice for one more attack," he told her.
He would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous, but he knew exactly what to do. In the worst-case scenario, he would simply grab Elise and use [Blink] to jump clear out of harm's way.
"No! If you fire that thing at the monsters closing in, we could get caught in the explosion ourselves!"
Alaster paid her no mind; he was entirely focused on molding his remaining mana.
The frantic, rapid footsteps of the monsters echoed loudly, trampling over dry leaves and grass. In a matter of seconds, the distance between them had closed drastically.
Elise began firing arrow after arrow in rapid succession. Several goblins dropped in the distance: one with a projectile driven straight into its eye socket, another in the chest, and a third in the leg.
Even so, the rest of the pack was already less than ten meters away when Alaster unleashed his final option. This spell was significantly faster to project and far less destructive, but it boasted the massive advantage of covering a wider area with an immediate freezing effect.
"[Wave Spikes]," he murmured.
A wave of extreme, biting cold rolled out like an icy carpet in front of the elf. The goblins' unchecked sprint ground to a sudden halt as they were caught by the crowd-control effect; their boots and legs were instantly fused to the ground by thick ice.
A second later, a deafening sound of shattering glass echoed through the clearing.
CRASH!
Hundreds of razor-sharp pillars erupted violently from the frozen earth, impaling the helpless goblins before they had a single chance to react. Alaster outmatched them in offensive power by an absolute landslide.
The area extending over ten meters in front of the mage was converted into a sea of jagged, frozen spikes. The battlefield plunged into absolute silence, punctuated only by the sharp cracking of the ice fracturing from the drastic temperature shift as it came into contact with warm, green blood.
Elise cautiously approached the crystal structure, which was emanating a faint cascade of cold vapor. Amidst the cluster of icy spikes, she saw the immobilized bodies of the goblins; the vast majority were completely still, and the few that still twitched clearly wouldn't last much longer.
«This spell isn't any less terrifying than that fire explosion!» the archer thought, wrapping her arms around herself to shield against the biting chill radiating from the frozen zone.
"Let's go," Alaster said. "We need to take a detour to avoid the forest fire and head back to the convoy."
The trek back to the caravan was relatively long. Along the way, they crossed paths with a few isolated goblins fleeing in terror through the brush, but Elise took care of eliminating them with ease. The real danger of the goblins lay entirely in their numerical superiority; individually, they were nothing more than ordinary monsters ranging from level six to ten.
Every now and then, Alaster's ears would ring, but the sound felt strange to him.
«Did the explosions actually damage my eardrums?» he thought with a hint of worry as they walked.
Finally, the elf managed to spot the caravan's wagons through the vegetation.
"Hey!" Alaster shouted loudly so they would know it was them, preventing any panicked civilians from accidentally shooting at them.
A small crowd began to peer out immediately from inside the wagons and behind the carriages. From among the people, Berona appeared, followed closely by Remis. The leader looked utterly spent; her brown hair was soaked in sweat and plastered to her forehead.
"Elf... you almost killed us with that thing," Remis said, though she kept a broad smile on her face.
"Not at all, everything was perfectly calculated," Alaster replied. "Everything except the fact that we haven't had lunch. Plus, this damn ringing in my ears is driving me crazy."
Berona burst into a loud laugh upon hearing him.
"That's the first time I've ever heard someone complain so much about receiving so many gifts from the Pantheon."
Alaster stopped dead in his tracks, processing the sentence.
«Huh?... Gifts from the Pantheon?»
He paused, thinking it over for a second. «Does she mean... monster drops?»
For a moment, the elf had completely forgotten that creatures in this strange world dropped items upon death, exactly like an RPG back on Earth—and that the peculiar ringing sound in his head was simply the log registering his loot.