Any normal hobgoblins would have been dead from those blows, but the tattoos on these must have provided some magical protection, as the designs flared to life with a blue glow against their green skin. It wasn’t enough to save them, but simply enough to make it so their lives were ended as elven blades opened their throats rather than from Dave’s spell.

  He prepared to cast another spell, but the remaining shaman and warriors were already cut down. The forest wardens had been able to combine all of their efforts against these outside guards since none had to engage the shaman inside the tent. They made short work of them, showing just what it meant to be Tier 3.

  With those down, Dave turned his attention to Eisuke’s fight. The slender elf was moving rapidly around the warlord with his twin flaming blades. A rune shield that the head of the forest wardens had won in the dungeon hovered around his head, waiting to intercept any otherwise fatal blow. It was a nice safety mechanism and one that Dave hoped to have enough time to research and duplicate. As it was now, he could tell the fight was close between the warlord and hogo-sha, but he gave the edge to Eisuke.

  “We’ve got this. The rest of you can go help with the slaughter. It’s grim work, but know that we save our families a great deal of suffering by killing these goblins now,” Dave ordered the other nine forest wardens. They all took a look at him, nodded, and then ran off, trusting in their leader and Dave to be able to finish one hobgoblin.

  Dave’s attention was now drawn to Thelan, who sounded as though he were taunting Eisuke. “Leave it to an elf to dance instead of fighting. Dab nabbit, stand still soz I can crush you.”

  Eisuke returned the taunts. “I can see why you became the warlord. You are entirely too slow to keep up with the younger goblins. It must be a great relief for all the females that they can simply run away from you.”

  “We were promised that you would fall before us. This is the era of the goblin. The dark mage promised. He said his master foresaw chaos and destruction.”

  Dave said, “Seimion is a liar. There may be chaos and destruction, but it will be your ruin. You shouldn’t have sought to harm those who are beyond you.”

  With that, Dave cast Alacrity on Eisuke, and the elf felt his movement rate jump up. His attacks came so fast that he was cutting every open inch of skin. The warlord’s mithril armor served him well, but still he was being cut to ribbons. With the new speed granted him by Dave’s spell, any chance that the enemy’s hooked sword would hit Eisuke had disappeared.

  Dave said, “We will spare you. We will let you leave with your remaining goblins if you tell us how you control the mountain giants.”

  “Bah, they will crush you. You may kill me, but you have no chance against them. They were brought down from the mountains by Seimion and barely listen to me. They will continue on and destroy your pathetic little village. That is if the fiend hasn’t already killed them by now.”

  In his desire to taunt Dave, Thelan had just betrayed Dave’s greatest fear. “What do you mean? Is that why the fiends are no longer here? Did they go to Eris’ Rise?”

  “Yes, and you are too late. The fiend will drag your women and children screaming into the abyss, where their souls will be tortured until they form new fiends.”

  “Don’t listen to him. There is no way that they could make it there that quickly. Even with magic. They couldn’t be bound there. Besides, you can simply gate back to town to check on things. We will be okay here,” Eisuke said a moment after he executed a scissoring slash with both swords that took the enemy’s head from his shoulders.

  There was no joy in this victory though. Dave looked around him, and the enemies were being slaughtered in droves, and still all he felt was a letdown. He knew this party he’d put together was strong, but if the enemy was this weak, then how would Seimion have expected them to defeat Eris’ Rise? He wasn’t willing to believe that the spiderkin was a fool. So either he had badly underestimated the power that they would be able to gain by using the time dilation in the dungeon, or there was more to this.

  “Maybe there is some way for them to get there,” Dave said.

  “If that is the case, then you and the other casters need to gate back,” Eisuke replied.

  Dave felt a pang of anguish go through him. He wanted to do exactly that, rush back to his family and come to the rescue. Yet there would never be another opportunity to destroy the enemy army like this. It was just going to take time. Against all that he wanted as a father and contrary to the voice screaming inside his head that he was the only one strong enough, Dave decided that he needed to trust Emiri, Mira, and the others to be strong enough to survive till he could get there.

  Grimly he said, “Let’s end this now.”

  With that, Dave turned to an area of the enemy camp where his team had not reached yet. They were so far being careful to hit everything that was as far from the mountain giants as possible, and Dave couldn’t blame them. He targeted the area with Frost Storm and watched as those goblins were cut up. By the time that spell had finished, 80% of the enemy field had been cleared. Literally thousands of sick goblins had been swept away, more than half by the three fel harvesters. This truly was an ideal situation for them.

  “Mages, save your energy. Let the melee finish up here. We need you to prepare a fire trap for the trolls,” Dave yelled. In response to his command, he watched the druids, storm mages and human mages all move to the far end while the others continued wreaking the same carnage. Each of the mages popped a mana potion, letting him know that they really had been going all out trying to finish off these monsters.

  Then when everything seemed perfect, the ground shuddered beneath his feet. He looked north and saw all five of the mountain giants standing. They were walking in a V-shaped pattern with the chieftain in front. Their deep booming voices were chanting something as they quickly strode past him, ignoring him. Those steps would take them far from him before long if he didn’t do something.

  The problem was that one of those monsters was likely a team effort let alone five of them. But then he realized what they were chanting. Their voices were so deep that at first he hadn’t been able to distinguish the words, but as they kept repeating the same thing, he made it out. “He calls. We obey. Crush Eris’ Rise. He calls. We obey. Crush Eris’ Rise. He calls. We obey. Crush Eris’ Rise.”

  Over and over again they chanted their mantra. There was no rush to their words or their pace, but their long legs would have them to his home in less than a day, perhaps no more than eight hours depending on if the forest slowed them at all. That wasn’t enough time for the others to get there.

  “Harvesters and blade dancers, finish the goblins. Any mage with fire spells, kill the trolls. Eisuke, you take charge of that group. The rest of you join me. We have to find a way to stop those giants.”

  The forest wardens and storm mages all joined him. He wondered that the storm mages had no fire spells, but didn’t say anything. He was gonna need all the help he could get. Dave racked his brain for the best way to go about this. He had to do it quickly because otherwise the creatures were going to get too far in front of him.

  The elves had some techniques to help their arrows have more piercing power, but even if they managed to make it through the skin of a creature like this, what were they going to do in terms of damage? The amount of health possessed by these walking mountains was going to take a huge amount of effort to whittle down.

  He had to assume the same would apply to most of his spells. Assuming he could hit for 700-point lightning bolts, that would be less than 10% of the health of the weakest of the creatures, and that was before any kind of damage reduction was applied. Fire Bolts would cause more damage but presumably would have less penetrating power against the stone-like skin. So he thought about other spells that might help without relying upon direct damage.

  He could cast minor binding, and their foot would literally become bound to the ground. Of course, he would have to be fairly close to make that work, but their strength would not be an issue then. Or maybe it would be. Given the size of their feet, they might simply pull up a chunk of the ground with their step.

  Damage Mirror would deliver a hefty amount of damage to a couple of the creatures, but he had to survive the attack for it to mean anything. Dave was willing to die fighting to protect his family, but he would rather live to enjoy life with them afterwards.

  Likewise, he assumed that Alcoholic Cloud would have little to no impact on these creatures even if he could fly up and cast it straight down their throats. Frost Storm the same. They were creatures of the mountains and likely resilient to even very bitter cold. He didn’t think his dire rhino, even enlarged, would be much more than an annoyance. Maybe if he was lucky, it might be able to knock one of them over. Now though, he was grasping at straws.

  The biggest question in his mind was if the others would stop to help one of them that was attacked or if they would continue chanting and walking. This concern kept him from relying upon some tactics that might have worked if there was only a single creature. He thought about climbing up one of the creatures and dumping their remaining heat and shock stones down its throat with the hope that its insides would be less durable than the exterior. They only had about twenty of the stones left, and that might be enough to do serious damage to one of the creatures’ insides, maybe even fatal, but certainly not to five of them. And if others turned and helped one of them that was being swarmed, they could lose most of their team to take out one monster.

  This left him with three spells. Bone Shatter seemed promising because there was nothing in the description saying that the size of the bone mattered. Of course, that was contingent upon the assumption that they were not simply made of rock but actually had bones within their bodies.

  In the same way, Inertial Burst didn’t have any regard for size or strength. It would move even one of these creatures if they were standing still, or it would stop cold the most powerful of their attacks because it stopped all motion. He thought that could be used to destroy one of their weapons. The problem was that he would only get one shot with it before they creatures were too far away for anyone who didn’t have a movement spell like his flight.

  The final spell was his pride and joy. He had achieved it through failure, which he hoped wasn’t a forewarning about today. Dave had wanted to learn the spatial magic that empowered the bags of holding, but enchanting didn’t seem to be a thing for him. So instead he’d had an idea, drawn from the framework of that magic and based upon the idea of his portable hole. The idea was a Tier 4 spell that he had created himself. His research skill put to very real use.

  The spell scared him a bit, though, as it had a price for its use and wasn’t one that he could use too many times back-to-back. This prompted him to look at the spell description again on his character sheet to make sure he hadn’t missed something about it.

  Spatial Bite: Creates a spherical hole in any object. Inanimate objects have little to no ability to resist this effect unless they have built-in enchantments. Living creatures may resist it with a base chance of 50% +/-1% for every point of difference between caster’s Intelligence and that of the target.

  Range: 100 feet +5 feet/level. Cast Time: 3 seconds. Area of Effect: 1-foot-diameter circle +1 inch/extra 10 mana. Mana Cost: 200 +10/extra 1 inch diameter. Damage: Variable based upon location of hole.

  The material within the hole is shunted into the ethereal plane. The edges of the sphere will be perfectly smooth. No heat is created in this process.

  The spell has an additional cost if it is used against a living being. It opens a tiny hole within the caster when casting this spell. The effect is to cause a loss of 10% of total maximum health capacity for 1 hour. This stacks with each casting, and the duration increases by 1 hour for each subsequent casting made before the prior casting wears off. No healing may circumvent this cost. The cost is increased to 20% if the spatial bite is the direct cause of a living being’s death.

  It was that very cost that had caused him to avoid using it other than to test it out a couple of times. It hurt when he cast it, but nothing that he couldn’t power through. It did most certainly lower his total health though, and nothing Emiri tried could reverse that. The thing was, though, that again this spell would ignore the toughness of the creatures. That was all moot, this was a pure metaphysical concept, and nothing they had tested, not even pure mithril, could withstand the spell.

  The cost seemed steep to Dave, but as Mira had explained it, the power of the spell was overwhelming and bypassed many of the normal protections that a being might have against magic. Eloria seemed to strive for balance in certain ways, and she insisted that the flows of magic were always balanced to her sight. So as much as it frustrated Dave, it seemed perfectly natural to his magical prodigy daughter. He was left trusting her that it was just the way of Eloria and not some flaw in his spell design.

  Even while running after the mountain giants, his mind was racing. He was supremely confident that they could take down one of these things without any casualties as long as the others didn’t help. Then that voice popped up in his head again, demanding to know why it mattered if the others survived. The strong survive and prove their worthiness. The voice insisted it was not his job to keep others alive, but that in fact he did a disservice to them, to his people, and to Eloria in general if he let the unworthy continue on.

  He stuffed the voice down as best he could, but it was particularly insistent on this point. So much so that no matter how he focused, he couldn’t be rid of it entirely. There was nothing for it but go on the attack. Which reminded him of the other avenue of his abilities. His sword with its ability to phase through armor. Something seemed abhorrent to him about the idea that he would have to rely on melee after all the time he had spent developing his magical capabilities.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy wading into melee. The battle earlier had certainly proven that. There was just something about it that was annoying. Although maybe that was because he was so off balance, trying not to let the voice in his head influence him at the wrong time.

  “So I am going to attack the closest one on the left. If my spell works right, it will break his leg. If not…” Dave shrugged as he continued, “I want you all to watch and try to cover me if the others turn to help him. I am hoping that whatever is influencing them is strong enough to keep them moving forward if they aren’t personally attacked.”

  Dave cast Bone Shatter and stored it in his left hand, then started to close the distance with the closest giant. It took full-out sprinting to do so. He heard a voice behind him and saw the three harvesters suffused with dark energy. “Baron, we can attack another one. We have a ton of energy stored up, but it will only last for a short time.”

  Against his better judgment, since he didn’t believe they were very well trained as warriors, Dave shouted back, “Okay.” The voice in his head scoffed at his concern for them.

  The mountain giant didn’t seem to care that Dave was chasing it. Then again, he wouldn’t have really been worried about a fly chasing him, and that must be what he appeared like to these creatures. He was sweating and panting from the exertion, his lungs burning as he tried to catch up to the creature. He could have used his mobility spells, but he wanted to save them for when the others got farther away as well, and was worried about conserving mana.

  Once he reached the creature, he cast a series of quick Minor Bindings to allow himself to scale its leg, and then placed his left hand against its thigh, hoping there was a bone inside the leg. The giant growled and broke out of its chanting to look down at him briefly.

  Then the spell triggered, and sure enough, there was a bone inside the leg. The creature completely failed to resist the power of Dave’s spell, and a deep mournful moan escaped it that sounded like nothing so much as a whale back on Earth. Dave jumped free as the creature fell forward. Its leg was no longer able to support the great weight, and Dave had timed it so the bone broke as the giant was striding forward onto that leg.

  Any question about the flesh and blood nature of these creatures was dispelled in that moment as the shattered thigh bone was driven out of the skin and the thigh became a bloody mess. The blood might have been a deep burgundy, almost a rich brown in color, but it still behaved very much like blood. It spurted in great gouts that shot out several feet, and the creature dropped its club and reached for its leg as though holding it could somehow end the agony it was experiencing.

  The notification said that the spell delivered over 2000 damage, but that was barely more than 20% of the giant’s health. He had to hope that the injury and pain immobilized it enough for the others to hack it to pieces because he was going to have to turn his attention to the other one that had been hit by this giant’s dropped club.

  It turned to him and was pulling back its club for a smashing blow. Dave took the entire scene in around him in what felt like slow motion. It was really just a combination of his greatly improved processing speed and that battle sense he had noticed ever since arriving. Off to his right, the fel harvesters, paladins, and forest wardens had engaged two of the giants. Whatever special attack the former lumberjacks had stored up from all the goblins they killed must have been pretty terrifying because one of their giants had an arm sheared off, and the other was on the ground with its abdomen opened wide by a deep gash.

  Still, he couldn’t focus on them. Fortunately as soon as he had jumped off the first giant, he saw lightning start to dance along it as the storm mages went to town. Hopefully they had enough juice, no pun intended, to be able to finish it off. Either way, Dave had to cast Inertial Burst to stop the club of the second mountain giant from flattening him.