Commander

"Careful, there's a rare one behind the next corner…" Bree explained after scanning the next group of goblins that they saw in the second area of the goblin town. "It's a Tamer, apparently, and it's specialized in poisonous animals. Snakes, scorpions, and spiders. They're climbing all over it…" She said with slight disgust in her voice, while Jyuuk's interest was peaked.

"A Tamer? Interesting. But that Goblin should be hard to deal with. Except if we could kill all of the tamed monsters before him, but that could be hard." The Monkey-man said, and Eisen nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, that would make it a lot easier. They are relatively small, so they shouldn't have much health, right?" Eisen asked, and Bree nodded to say yes. "Mhm! These ones do a lot of damage, but they have neither high health or defense."

"Then maybe I could try something. I told you about my element, right? I've got an idea of what I could do with that, but it will have to be the first part of the fight. Otherwise, the monsters could jump off of him and attack us before I can do what I want to try out." Eisen explained, in response to which Bree and Jyuuk nodded, trying to help out whichever way they could.

So, Bree buffed Eisen's magic attack while he moved around the building they hid behind to a better position. Eisen pushed out his mana and spread it to a space large enough to encase the goblin whole in its mist-like state, and then infused it with his element, watching as it turned into a giant ball of the earthen-flame.

Eisen tried to change its state so that it turned into complete dirt and then loosened it up until it became more like sand since he couldn't turn it fully into dust just yet. Then, after signaling Bree and Jyuuk that he would start now, Eisen shot the sand forward as quickly as he could and stopped it right around the Goblin Tamer. It was surprised, and its monsters nearly jumped off of its body, but before then Eisen managed to change the state of his element again into its full flame state, causing it to explode outward.

Luckily, this was enough to nearly immediately kill most of the monsters that crawled all over the Goblin's body.

[Magic Spell Learned] Flame of the Earth Sand Explosion

[Add to spell library?]

"Yes, add to spell library!" Eisen muttered out while sprinting forward toward the tamer to finish it off, while Bree instantly de-buffed the group of goblins and Jyuuk's beasts hurried forward as well.

Eisen slashed his sword sideways while the Goblin Tamer tried to block his incoming attack with the wooden staff it was holding, that simply snapped in half on contact with Eisen's Zweihänder, and since the fire already damaged the Goblin as well, it was easily killed by to more slashes from Eisen sword.

So, Eisen turned around and looked at the other goblins, most of which were taken care of by the others in Eisen's party already. And as such, Eisen helped his friends out by attacking and finishing off the goblins that Jyuuk's beasts were fighting against by stabbing them in their back, allowing the beasts to support their master by fighting against the last standing goblin with him.

[You are now Level 67]

"Great!" Eisen smiled in glee when he saw that level-up message. Leveling up was incredibly easy for the first few hours that Eisen, Bre, and Jyuuk entered the second area of the Goblin-town due to the sheer level of the goblins. There was a simple reason for that:

While the goblins got stronger the closer to the castle, they also seemed to become more intelligent, and as such often times had classes like Mage or Cleric that required such intelligence. Sure, there were still a few physical combatants, but those were in the far minority of the goblin groups.

And since this meant that the Goblins didn't have great physical stats, they were easily and quickly killed even in large groups as long as the party had the proper tactic for the attack.

And it also didn't take Bree that long to grab the Goblins' mana crystals anymore, since by now she simply stabbed into their heart to create a small opening and ripped them out. The mana crystals were about the size of an index finger, so Bree didn't really have to look for them anymore as much, at least compared to when they were still the size of rice grains.

So while Bree was grabbing the Mana-crystals, Eisen and Jyuuk were gathering everything else that could be of use, like the gems from the mages' staffs for example, and then they moved on to the next group of interest. During this last fight, the only thing of interest was the gem at the end of the Tamer's staff, which seemed to simply be a 'Beast Gem'. Eisen would try to figure out what its effects were later, but for now, concentrated on combat.

Eisen's new magic element also had to do with this speed, since he often used it to attack in simple ways before then slashing at the goblins with his Zweihänder. He used it so much that his skill ranked up, giving him better control over the element and an INT and WIS stat each.

And they managed to do all of this so fast that the party soon found their way to the gate leading to the third and last area that was in the immediate vicinity of the castle.

"There aren't any guards around?" Bree asked curiously and looked around the closed gate, and then shrugged once she confirmed this.

"Well, better for us, right?" Eisen smiled and looked at the gate that was closed shut with a big lock in front of it.

Jyuuk tilted his head slightly and crossed his arms while seeing this. "Should we try to just break it?" He suggested, but Eisen shook his head while grabbing a small piece of metal, which he then formed into two simple tools: A bent tension wrench, and a lockpick.

"It's a fairly simple lock as far as I can tell, with only… three pins? It's as if they wanted people to pick this lock…" Eisen explained and shook his head in disapproval before getting to work. It's not the first time he's picked a lock. After all, it was one of the best ways to properly understand the mechanism of a lock, so Eisen practiced lockpicking a few times when trying to construct such a lock mechanism in real life.

Well, even then, this was the type of lock that Eisen didn't expect to find in a medieval scenario. After all, locks were constructed completely different back then compared to modern locks.

But maybe this was to give an advantage to those that already knew how to pick them. Either way, Eisen didn't complain and simply got to work.

Eisen inserted the tension wrench at the bottom of the lock and applied slight torque to it, following which Eisen used the pick and looked for the 'weirdest' pin, meaning the pin that stuck out most, which he then pushed upward and properly set in place. This allowed Eisen to turn the lock further, and afterward, he set the 'second weirdest' pin in place, turned the lock further, and at last set the third pin in place so that he could fully open it.

[Lockpicking Skill Learned]

"Oh? That's a skill, huh?" Eisen muttered to himself while Jyuuk and Bree looked at him in awe.

"As expected of you, Eisen." Jyuuk said with a smile and was only met with approval from Bree. "Mhm~! You did that so easily, without even having the skill~!"

"Haha, yeah, but this lock wasn't so hard, to begin with, so it wasn't anything that great." Eisen laughed and then slowly pushed the wooden gate open, making sure that there weren't any Goblins waiting on the other side.

So, Eisen quietly moved through the gate and hurried to hide in the area between the closest building and the wall, waving over Bree and Jyuuk.

"Alright, let's be careful now, we don't know what kind of Goblins are around here." Bree said and carefully looked around the corner of the house until she spotted a small open area with a well in its center. On the edge of that well sat a goblin that was about one or two heads taller than others usually were, wearing, for Goblin standards, fine clothes. For some reason, it didn't look like it was a combat type at all, and despite its height seemed to be rather weak.

Around it were another five goblins, all of which seemed to be regular goblin types, including a Shieldbearer, Mage, Cleric, Assassin, and Swordsman.

Wondering what took Bree so long to determine a good approach, Eisen came closer and asked her "Can you see anything?"

She turned around and nodded in response. "I think so, yes. I think it's a Goblin Commander. They themselves aren't directly strong, but they can greatly increase the strength of the goblins under their command. And those goblins will do everything they can to protect their Commander. But if we can kill it, the other goblins will receive a short de-buff for about half a minute! That should give us enough time to disrupt their party structure so that we can kill them quickly enough!"

"I see… Yes, that sounds like a good plan. But how do we get the Commander, then?" Eisen asked, and Bree crossed her arms in thought.

"Well… it's basically surrounded by the other goblins, so the best way to attack it without alarming them would be from above, but the only one out of our group that can do that is Aotori, and she can't do enough damage to kill it quickly enough…" She explained, and Eisen scratched his beard while a slight grin began to form on his face.

"I'll deal with it, but from the moment that I attack the Commander, you two have to do your best so that I won't be instantly killed by the others. Let's go with our standard tactic for that, then." Eisen explained and looked up at the roof of the building they were hiding behind.

He pushed out mana out of his body and spread it across the wall in front of him, activating transmutation to pull out certain parts of it, forming some simple, steep and narrow stairs for him to climb up on.

"H-huh? Eisen, what are you doing?" Bree asked with complete surprise in her voice while the old man took step after step until he reached the roof, where he looked down and only winked at her since he didn't want to pull unwanted attention to himself.

Eisen looked for the best rooftop to start a surprise attack and found that it was luckily just the one of the building next to the one he was on right now.

So, carefully, Eisen created a small bridge between the two rooftops with the help of transmutation and then created another small and narrow platform that made a jump even easier.

Signaling Bree and Jyuuk that they should prepare to attack, Eisen did the same and grabbed his Zweihänder tightly, jumping forward with his sword pointed downward as he closed in on the Goblin Commander's head.

It seemed to have great senses, so it noticed the sounds that Eisen made while jumping off of the rooftop, but it was too late. When it looked upward to search for the source of those sounds, it was met with the cold metal from a blade that stabbed right through its body!

Of course, from this height even Eisen took a good amount of damage, nearly half of his total health, but that was fine since this attack was enough to kill the commander, nearly instantly de-buffing the other goblins around him visibly as they were encased in a dark purple mist that shot out from the commander's body.

The other goblins tried to attack Eisen instantly when they realized what was going on, but it was pretty much too late for them as well, as they were attacked instantly as well. The Swordsman was mauled by Yamikuma, the cleric scratched by Aotori, while Bree hammered onto the Mage and Jyuuk swung his pole toward the assassin.

At the same time, Eisen recovered from the impact to the ground and slashed his Zweihänder at the Shieldbearer.

This fight had already been decided.

---

[Eisen]

[Race - Giant-Dwarf Halfling][Occupation – Omni Craftsmaster][Level - 67]

[HP – 1781][MP - 1590]

[STR - 100][END – 101][AGI – 99][INT - 92][WIS - 92][CHA - 10]

[Titles]

-[Original of the Mechanical Arts]

-[Limitbreaker V]

[Skills]

-[A Dwarf's Hands][Rank - 2][Level – 23]

-[A Giant's Strength][Rank - 2][Level – 23]

-[Alchemy][Rank - 2][Level – 17]

-[Appraisal][Rank - 1][Level – 7]

-[Blacksmithing][Rank - 1][Level – 61]

-[Cooking][Rank - 0][Level – 68]

-[Crafting Space][Rank - 0][Level – 51]

-[Drawing][Rank - 1][Level – 6]

-[Enchanting][Rank - 1][Level – 41]

-[Flame of the Earth Magic][Rank - 1][Level – 32]

-[Golemancy][Rank - 0][Level – 1]

-[Leatherworking][Rank - 2][Level – 4]

-[Lockpicking][Rank - 0][Level – 1]

-[Mana Copy][Rank - 1][Level – 4]

-[Mana Double][Rank - 2][Level – 46]

-[Mana Manipulation][Rank - 2][Level – 24]

-[Swordsmanship][Rank - 2][Level – 58]

-[Tailoring][Rank - 2][Level – 6]

-[Tool Connection][Rank - 1][Level – 10]

-[Woodworking][Rank - 0][Level – 49]