Ambush

"Goblins!" One of the knights shouted out. 

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

It was an ambush. 

"There's so many of them!" 

Indeed, they were. A hundred, no, thousands of 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 and stronger than they look," Toby said. 

The goblins, instead of wearing their dirty loincloths, now wore leather and Iron armor, 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. 

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

Artemis, however, was the deciding factor. 

He knew the inner and outer workings of goblins, their psychology, and habits. 

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

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

"A different kind?" Artemis whispered to himself. The goblins they are facing are smart and stronger than the ones he encountered back in the Great Isthmus Region, is it because there are different kinds of goblins in each place? Or someone might have strengthened them to an average C-rank like what he did to the goblins back in the Great Isthmus Region with cybernetic enhancements.

[I am detecting 30 thousand more goblins, no goblins or any other life signatures are detected within a 10 kilometer radius] Caitlyn said through his mind.

"Good," Artemis said out loud, confusing his men. 

Artemis 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. 

Artemis 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 4000 came charging at him. 

The other goblins, seeing that their brethren were now charging their prey, ran out of their positions as well with their swords drawn. The goblin archers then started firing volley upon volley of arrows with coordination. 

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

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

"Shield!" Toby shouted as he and the other mages immediately chanted their magic. Then, a dome of magic protection specifically against projectiles like arrows that are magical or not, the protective dome then appeared above and around the position of the knights. The arrows were easily repelled as if they hit a brick wall. 

"Charge!" The knights shouted. With their magic 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, while having similar things like the Knights have but lesser. However, they also had the number advantage. The weakest Knight amongst them could theoretically take on 20-30 of these 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] Caitlyn immediately warned.

"Oh, so they have an underground network of tunnels it seems," Artemis said as he gallantly and single handedly took down an entire line of 4000 goblins in just more than 10 seconds by dashing through each group of four and slicing them at once with his energy blades at unprecedented speeds.

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 were 40,000 of them. 

'Just what on earth did they come from?'

Artemis asked in his mind.

[Probably Teleportation magic, dear] Caitlyn answered.

'Hm, make sense, I felt a tiny trace, nearly non-existent mana fluctuations not far from here,' Artemis thought.

He really 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 these goblins had overrun this side of the western boundary and are now running rampant all over the Western Forest, that would only mean that the villages to the west had been overrun as well.

But Artemis, 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, Artemis jumped really high hundreds of feet from the ground, instantly he went on the ground at deadly speed, creating a huge impact in the middle of the horde killing hundreds. Not wasting any time, he dashed at the nearest goblins that came from the left side of the road and slaughtered them. He kicked two against a group of dozens and sliced them up before proceeding to punch three and then stab another dozens.

Then suddenly, three figures literally came out of his shadow.

'Goblin assassins, huh'

Three Goblin with dark cloating and daggers in hand jumped out of his shadow and were about to attack him at fast speed. However, it is no problem for Artemis.

But instead of killing them with his Energy swords, his feet suddenly turn into waves of metallic sands, in an intant, they turned into spikes and impaled them all before returning back to Artemis' feet.

For the past 4 seconds, he had slaughtered more than 1000 Goblins.

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

It was a bad decision. 

With it, Artemis turned towards them as he finished ripping off the head of the last goblin from the left and then dashed to the army of goblins to the right.

The goblins then sensed Artemis' 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 like flies.

The 19-20 thousand goblins that ran away didn't fare any better. As soon as Artemis caught up with them and their short legs, he promptly cut all of their joints in a matter of seconds, and then left them to bleed to death.

Remembering how goblins back at the Great Isthmus Region acted, he knew that they had a strong sense of smell and good eyesight. Their incredible ability to breed like rabbits is 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.

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

As Artemis horizontally slash his two energy blades into the last 10 goblins at a split second 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 of arrows began to pour. 

Toby and the other magic casters with him, their magic barriers could hold forever but the knights couldn't. 

And then, a bright flash blindly appeared in the middle of the road, not just that, something big came roaring from the blinding light.

As the bright light died down, surrounded by another thousand goblins, few Hobgoblins with heavy armor & weapons, and two Goblin grandmages beside it, a large about 5 meters tall humanoid, clad in heavy armor that covers 99% of its entire body and a large weapon that emits powerful magic enchantments within it. 

Not just that, you could see its eye through its thick helmet, if you look at it closely, its eye seems to be in the middle.

[IMAGES]

Many of the Knights realize what they are facing and it was their greatest foe yet. 

"A Cyclops!" Toby shouted seriously, immediately casting magic circles on his palms, followed by other mages with him.