Chapter 48

  The truck arrived at the mall, and John Sr. and his son got out. The security team followed them, as well as four dozen volunteers from the high school who were there to support them in whatever fashion they requested.

  The tinkerers were ‘part of the party’ after all, and most of these men and women were hoping to convince them to share a guild invite in exchange for their services today.

  But this wasn’t all about the party. This was a scavenging mission to claim goods for the Haven. That the Tinkerers had suggested and were leading it was just part of the background for many of the men and women present, who were largely going for things like clothing, food, and sporting goods to serve as weapons and armor.

  “So, what are we looking at?” John Sr. asked the leader of the security team.

  “Last we heard the Mall had a group of thirty to forty goblins rampaging about in it,” the leader relayed. “We should be fine, unless they’ve gotten significant reinforcements.”

  “Right,” Junior said. “Okay, we know our targets. We go in, we get them, and we get out. If you see a goblin, don’t try to be a hero, fall back to the group and prepare for combat.”

  “Right,” the others agreed, and they dashed off into the mall.

  The tinkerers had a very specific target, and they knew exactly where to find it. In the pet store.

  With four men working together, they loaded the pet-tag engraving kiosk onto a dolly they’d brought for the purpose and were wheeling it out of the mall while their compatriots looted the place. There had been sounds of combat, but the goblins had swiftly fallen to the humans, who were roving about in groups of six to ten.

  The initial sweep was over in ten minutes, but the Tinkerers were still working on getting their prize out of the mall. Everything was going within expectations, so the raid went in for a second round, looting as much as they could. The Haven needed these supplies, and if the world ever returned to baseline, well, the stores presumably had insurance. Whether that insurance covered the Apocalypse was outside the looter’s concerns at the moment.

  Things were going well. John Sr. and his son had the Kiosk loaded up within an hour and themselves returned to look for interesting tools that they might not have thought of in the planning stages of the run. They found a small 3D printer that was reserved for making figurines in the back of a tabletop gaming store, and they decided to add this to their list of urgent supplies.

  They were in the process of loading it onto a cart when abruptly they heard a loud bellow. Then screams.

  They returned to hall. They were on the second floor, but the first floor was opened beneath them and they could see a fifteen foot tall Minotaur rampaging about, chasing down the lower leveled raiders who had come to loot the place.

  John Sr. exchanged a look at his son, and they each grabbed their crossbows. They fired at the same time.

  The bolts that they fired were the first weapons that actually pierced the beast’s hide. It bellowed again and turned to face them. It picked up one of the indoor trees and threw it at the father and son duo, who dodged, even as the tree smashed into the glass on the balcony.

  “What do you think?” John Sr. asked his son.

  “Cyanide?” Junior asked.

  “Yeah,” his father agreed, and they pulled out the specialized bolts from their quivers and fired again.

  These too pierced the beast’s hide, and seemingly caused no more damage than before. The beast continued to pick up items and throw them at the last seen spot where the mosquitoes who had dared to hurt it had been seen.

  The other humans were forming up, and it turned to face them, ready to charge at them in irritation. One of them cast a helplessly ineffective fire spell at it, which barely scorched the beast’s skin.

  Then it charged, and the group was forced to scatter before it was trampled. It collided with a pottery shop, the resulting cacophony echoing through the mall. Covered in glass, the beast turned to charge again.

  It launched itself.

  It landed on its face.

  After a few moments of struggling to breathe, it stopped. It’s white eyes closed and did not open.

  “Right, so that’s new,” the leader of the security forces said. He walked up and stuck his sword in the beast’s neck, making certain that it was dead.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “It just spawned,” one of the low leveled followers volunteered. “I saw it appear in blocks of white mana. If these things are going to be common, then I think we’re in trouble.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” the man agreed. He looked up at the tinkerers, who were already going back to figuring out how to salvage the 3D printer they’d found. “If we hadn’t had them along to solve this for us, we might have been in real trouble.”

  As he spoke, the beast suddenly broke apart into blocks of white mana, which dissipated into the air. Replacing it, appearing in the same manner, were boxes of nonperishable foodstuffs. Specifically MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. The man hesitated to call them ‘the good stuff,’ but he knew that these were exactly what the Haven needed at the moment.

  “Apparently risk is not without reward,” he said. “Get those boxes loaded up with everything else, high priority. And keep an eye out for another big bastard. If killing them gives rewards like this, then it might just be worth it to send the party out to take care of them.”

  ~~~~~~

  The white-eyed goblin struggled against its bonds as it was tied to a cross downrange on the former athletic field. Eli didn’t really like the idea of using helpless living targets as practice for his magic spells, but the fact was that he needed to get an idea of what some of these magic effects actually did.

  John Sr. and Junior had made a perfect blasting rod for him, one that was suitably impressive to the audience that had been underwhelmed by his initial display. It could shoot a fireball every two or three seconds that was slightly less powerful than the ones cast by Luke. It was a rapid-fire option which would assure that he had the ability to strike from ranged in the future.

  But compared to the high-octane spells that Luke could pull off, such as his massive fireball which would create an explosion that could consume everything within ten yards and cause significant damage beyond that? Eli didn’t have anything like that.

  Instead, his Grimoires seemed to be filled with these ‘curses,’ or ‘debuffs,’ as he preferred to think of them. But he didn’t know how effective they were and he refused to test them out on humans due to the obvious ethical concerns.

  So he’d requested that someone capture a few goblins for him, putting out a bounty of a hundred contribution points per living goblin returned. He was rather surprised at how enthusiastically the bounty system was embraced, and he soon had thirty goblins ready for testing.

  The first one was screaming obscenities at him in a language that only he and the goblin spoke. Eli walked up to it.

  “I can understand you, you know,” he said to the goblin. “I am curious. Why do you kill humans? Is there a purpose to it, or are you just programmed that way by the system?”

  The goblin looked at him, going silent for a moment. “Why do you kill goblins, human?”

  Eli frowned at it, then shook his head. “You’re put here for us to kill and gain levels, are you not?”

  “Yes. We are,” the goblin agreed. “So we understand each other. Why am I not dead.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have a rare class and I need living subjects to test out some of my magical abilities,” Eli admitted. “I am reluctant to perform them on my fellow humans, so…” He trailed off, leaving the rest unspoken.

  “I shall die cursing your name! I shall die cursing … what is your name, little human?” the goblin asked.

  “Eli,” Eli admitted, seeing no point in hiding it.

  “I shall die cursing the name Eli,” the goblin shouted. And it began to do exactly that, cursing him in creative terms in a language that nobody on Earth spoke.

  Eli sighed and walked back to the fifty yard mark. He waited for the others to finish tying down five goblins and then evacuate the ‘danger zone’ to the ‘safe zone,’ where nobody was supposed to aim their magic and the other observers could stand.

  He pulled out the first of the magics he wanted to test and empowered it, aiming the ritual at the first goblin. It was ‘hyper-coagulation.’ The goblin continued to scream and shout for a few minutes, and then its shouts grew incoherent. It spasmed, and in a few moments it was dead.

  He cast ‘anticoagulation’ on the next target. This spell was less than lethal, but the goblin began bleeding from its orifices. Eli cast a second effect on it, Dropsy, and the extremities of the poor goblin began to swell. It died a moment later. The necropsy performed by one of the volunteers would show that it was due to a heart attack.

  The other effects were all non-lethal, but were decidedly effective at shutting the goblins up as they began asking why the sky was blue, where their littermates were, and why they were dressed in loincloths under the confusion spell, or writhing in uncontrollable seizures, or various other effects.

  Eli commanded that some of these goblins be released to see if they were still dangerous while affected by his magic.

  The answer was no. They were effectively disarmed.

  He nodded, and then announced that he was done with his testing for now. The surviving goblins were re-imprisoned, to be held for future testing by Eli, or anyone who arrived with a class like his.

  He didn’t like it, but they might prove useful down the line.

  The crowd was subdued as he returned to the high school. Not everyone really understood what they had just witnessed, but those who did were slightly disturbed.

  On the one hand, these were goblins. The goblins had little issues with killing humans who didn’t fight back so far, and would likely continue to slaughter helpless people in the future.

  On the other, the ruthlessness that their leader had just displayed, and the somewhat disturbing effects of the two spell combinations which had killed their targets, were unsettling.

  Perhaps they would have been more at ease if he had blown them apart in a Hollywood style explosion, like the spells that Luke and the other mages possessed.

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