The Goblin King (I): Players and Goblins

There was flash of light as the ever elusive Valka showed up in front of Rezar, his appearance has startled everyone around as the Lion was about the size of a full grown dog, with a tiny tuft of man on his head to show that he was just an adolescent, however the major attribute that truly drew all eyes to him, was the fact that Valka was for all intents and purposes, a pitch black lion with eyes so blue it was like looking at Rezar in a different form.

• Familiar Name: Valka Deathwind// Level: 10

• Familiar Race: Nether Lion// Type: Assault

• Familiar Grade: C+// Growth Factor: 7

• Familiar Skills: [Nether Blast] [Eerie Roar] [Dark Cut] [Speed Up]

Rezar knew absolutely nothing about familiars, so he couldn't exactly tell just how strong this familiar of his was. Valka has been in a few fights in the dungeon, which was why his level was ten, but the lion preferred to laze around rather than participate, but this time Rezar was not letting him sit on the sidelines.

Rezar called an ant for both himself and Valka, the rest of the undead along with Lenore and Priest were in the forest trying to canvass the area while the ants harvested the trees from the forest for wood. Normally Rezar would worry about deforestation, after all everything in Elysium has to have a balance, but that forest was a hundred times the size of his territory, and each tree gave 50 units of wood, including those that were fruit trees and held food. It would take dozens of years for them to clear it out.

And beyond that those trees will still grow back in they made proper rotation of it. As the left the cove, leaving Gynaika and her entourage behind, the ant Rezar was on ran across the open grassland to the forest ahead. Rezar could see the forest line had receded a bit like a man approaching his middle age and slowly growing bald.

The wind rushed past his ears and blew his white hair every which way as the ant he was on, though undead with its speed reduced, traveled at 25km an hour. Rezar got the feeling that they could be faster, but this was enough for now as they rushed past the grassland, past the stumps of trees that were once a part of the forest and straight into a fight as about two dozen goblins riding on wolves were going on a killing spree on his undead.

*Roooaaaaaar! *

[Eerie Roar]

Valka roared, causing a chill to cascade over the body of everyone here capable of feeling fear, and in that regard it was just the goblins and their wolves as Priest and Lenore were strong enough to brush off the effects. But the few seconds bought by that roar was enough to change the tide of the battle as Rezar gave orders to his undead ants telepathically.

The ants surged forwards, the pincers snapping the goblins closest to them in half, whilst throwing their acid spit at those too not within Melee range. The attacks brought most of the goblins out of their frozen stupor, but with Rezar here this battle was going to be to their advantage.

[Strengthen Undead]

50 undead ants at a spot glowed with a shimmering light as they became faster and seemed to have gotten into a berserk state, rushing at the goblins and their extremely nimble wolves. But the goblins had already killed a little over twenty undead before he got here, so there was no way they could be so simple. For one they were about a meter tall, a little bit taller than normal goblins closer to the center of Elysium as opposed to the frontiers, so you could say being in the wild made them thrive.

As the ants rushed, a rain of arrow came surging from beyond the tree lines, obviously some of the goblins had chosen to remain hidden. But these arrows did nothing but bounce of the carapace of the ants, even those that weren't strengthened had enough of a defense to tank the arrows, or at least that was until the arrows themselves became a blaze of light and it became obvious that they were using skills, and this left Rezar confused as he came to a very startling conclusion.

He wasn't dealing with simple monsters, their coordination, the usage and application of skills, and the way they hung around the edges and circled around them to pick them off rather than go at them head on as most if not all goblins would do, he was dealing with people, really smart and intelligent people. Maybe not all the goblins were people as there were some making repetitive attacks, and that's when it dawned on him; PLAYERS!

He was about to curse in anger when Brutus used a skill of his that made him disappear, he appeared right in front of the tree line and smashed forwards with his horn and eerie purple fog trailing behind him along with after images. [ Spectral Charge] could not be defended against, and he smashed the trees serving as cover for the goblin archers.

Screet was dancing across the battlefield, his staff whizzing through the air with a speed unlike any other as smashed goblins of their wolves and left them to the mercy of the ants. The wolves themselves weren't safe from this assault as Neema and Jason decapitated and smashed them to death. They were winning, but they were losing undead just as fast. Valka blasted onto a goblin, his claws taking on blackish white hue as he ripped the goblin apart and jumped to the next.

Rezar was about to jump into the fray when Brutus was blasted backwards, Rezar barely had timed to lean back as his Ghoul Bull went over his head, mooing in agony as he landed hard, his body uprooting a few tree stumps along the way. But he was back up to his feet in seconds as he releases a roar that showed his anger and rage, by this point he was well and truly berserk.

Rezar turned and saw a goblin that had at least human height; a hob-goblin. Clad head to toe in iron armor point a sword as he held a shield close towards Rezar. The hob-goblin was laying down a challenge, taunting Rezar, but Rezar knew this Hob-goblin was just a puppet. The real enemy probably had to be that scaled goblin sitting on a wolf as large as Brutus, and surrounded by a force numbering in the hundreds.

"You cannot beat us! Most of us are players and every time you kill us, we will come back. We're no different than your undead, surrender to us and I promise, you'll be treated well."

Rezar wasn't so sure about the plot of his story, but this sort of confrontation was happening way to early, or better yet it seems he was the villain or the stepping stone in someone else's story. But they were players and they could die over and over again, true. But did he know as a player if you died to a necromancer or undead that's not in a dungeon a certain number of times, your account would be disabled and your character lost forever. This was Elysium's way of balance.

And better yet, when they died players left bodies, it takes them 5 minutes at least to resurrect and within that time, their bodies would be left behind to give a feeling or show of realism. But what happens when said body is raised as an Undead, Rezar would very much like to find out. He called his undead back to his side, Lenore was nowhere to be seen, so obviously she's off exploring somewhere, but Rezar knew better, she was just bidding her time. He turned to Neema and said.

"Neema if you don't mind… get the cavern moles up here, we're about to have our first territory defense. And the difficulty just went up to total annihilation!"