Goblin Chief’s POV

“These cursed humans.” I spit out.

“What are your orders?” Asks one of my lieutenants as we march, but I just ignore him as I look at the only person with actual knowledge of what is happening. I can see as the Arch Shaman with his retinue tries to make sense of what must be a cacophony in his head.

“It is hard to tell exactly, but the spirits tell me… there are several hundred enemies in all directions. There is also the large flying craft and about a hundred fighters marching our way. It’s hard to get accurate movements there are too many and most are not moving in concert.”

Right… the spirits. Can’t be telling the rank and file troops all that nonsense is bullshit intended for the masses. Even telling that we are just communicating with other shamans would not be ideal, let alone when the knowledge comes from the ruthless eye in the sky.

“Ohh, the humans in the main invasion corridor just started retreating.”

“Ohh no. Now we won’t be able to crush their skulls.” Another lieutenant, this one even taller and physically stronger than me, but with a lot more resurrections to his name and the accompanying loss of self. Even in his prime the gap in experience and skills would be too much against me, but he was a useful minion.

“Have patience. In a few days, the HLZ will be ours and in a month, we'll start taking over the entire instance. Now…” I call out and look all around in each of their eyes, giving me time to think and still seem decisive. Then I turn to the Arch Shaman. “Destroy the large craft before it gets in visual range of the village.”

He nods and I feel the thrum of magic building. The combined power of the shamans as they halt their march. They draw on the latent mana of the entire Army. With plenty of this resource in hand, power builds in the sky. Even my few hairs can sense the change in static as one of the more powerful magics we can use in the current circumstances spins up. Even if won’t be at full power given the lack of storms to feed the lighting and its cost will be increased, at least we are close to the end of the month and the sky is darkening.

A loud crack that nearly sends my hands to my sensitive ears hits the passing craft some two hundred meters off. The entire surface is scorched and the magics holding it aloft fails. We have brought down the flying craft these cursed humans had made in a single blow.

The natural order back to its proper place.

They shouldn’t have anything like this so early. Not even the bastardized version that can barely get off the floor like these.

My smile freezes.

“Damn,” The Arch shaman curses in perfect agreement with my thoughts.

The large craft cracks splitting into pieces, but from its guts, hundreds of smaller intact flying craft swarm out in all directions. If they are smart about it, which see no reason they wouldn’t be, it will be nigh impossible to stop without just about every single one of us in a position to block them, and we are not in position.

Even the few I see losing power over the next few seconds as the HLZ beasts and the shamans get the closest craft barely put a dent in the swarm.

A moment passes and the implications settle in my mind.

Why did they do that? Are they throwing out so much preparation and gifting is literal tons of copper? That is what must be powering their flying craft. Are they so stupid they don’t realize the gift from the heavens they just delivered us? Even if they learn the precise location of the village, the trade is worthwhile.

No, they are not stupid, just ignorant. I can’t forget that.

A smile builds as the hundreds of things we could do with so much copper come to mind.

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Alex’s POV.

Slash, sweep, bend, fold and spear butt.

Amidst the chaos, with formidable defenses and one more level in my main skill, now sitting at a cool 102, the beasts around stand no chance. Though the fact that my active skills are all on cooldown means I won’t be skewering any more beasts alone. Three already fell to my blade not counting the two assists I gave. Assistance that no one else could have provided, … except maybe Greg.

As the days pass, he is just pushing harder and harder on the tank role and trying to figure out how to become a human turtle.

Each move flows from the last until there are only five beasts and for the first time, they don’t stand until the last one falls.

They tuck their tails in their legs and run.

The numerical superiority or maybe something about their territory and our larger group pushed them to the limit.

As those thoughts hit me, I let the exhaustion creep in, not all of it, not all at once. If I did that I would fall to the ground well past all my limits as my skill pushed me beyond the ordinary. But let in enough that I know what I’m working with.

Even before the others turn around, I’m in my slow march back and not to my surprise all of our comm medallions soon chime:

“Retreat.”

I push on faster and faster, slowly getting to full speed and as soon as the people with faux inner worlds like mine pull the corpses back, everyone sprints off.

I look at my stamina gauge nearing the bottom, I should probably do some training like Nash to increase my stats. Though no one else managed to even get a single stat to 30 on their own. I may not have quite his distinctive advantages of a body that broke all the rules of training like him, nor losing a single stat even after stretches days long without training… but at least I had Aether and I could probably figure something out.

Putting one foot in front of the other with no feeling but bone deep tiredness, we retreat in muted triumph for we accomplished our objective.

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Nash’s POV

Dozens of crafts bring back all the ore they could stuff inside their small holds. The overwhelming attack and large number are not even that much of an impediment to our coordination, but the enemy didn’t know what to do, nor did they seem to know our real objective.

I fully connect most of the network back. Extending the range of our controllers and allowing for even greater recovery of the batteries and flying craft. After all, even if it is only copper and we haven’t seen the enemy using it, no sense in being sloppy. Gift wrapping so much of the metal could come to bite us in the ass.

Nearly all the equipment returns, including the stream of mana batteries used to power the main craft before it split up.

I try to send mana to the fallen craft through the network to bring them back, but the severing comes back in earnest and only embers to destroy the wooden parts are left behind. While they can’t eliminate the main branch that has thick redundant roots hidden over a hundred meters underground, the more recent thinner additions responsible for the bulk of territorial acquisition are all fair game.

I try and try until the effort becomes futile. As a last ditch effort, thousand of mana head out, and I fireball all the batteries still in my view trying to melt the burn all the runes into scrap metal and make their job as hard as possible.

Not a single enemy remains anywhere I can reach.

I open my eyes and stand down the dozens of seeds still trying to reconnect the network. Too bad that young as they are, they can’t even come close to Aspen in being able to wield mana for anything other than growing roots at the wasteful mana rate that they manage.

I could probably think of other stuff for them to help me beyond just handling the root network.

After all the craft land in their place in the inner world, I mentally tally all the equipment losses.

Just 8 tons of copper missing which adds up to about 10 percent of the medium-sized crafts. Most of which were on the main attack corridor, not the craft designated for distraction that managed to survive much better. Even the HLZ beasts paid little attention to the smaller craft buzzing about.

I replay the recorded data on the attack alongside a walk in my memory palace trying to make sense of everything that happened. A grin blooms on my face, not only as Stuart’s assistant starts processing the Gold inside the inner world, but the success that the multilayered repulsion runes had in keeping the craft aloft.

It is not an adamant shield, nor would the strategy be as effective for small craft skimming the ground given the small delay for it to kick in. But… anything at least 5 meters high could benefit. It would take at least two or three ‘ghostly hand’ attacks in short succession to drag a craft to the ground.

With a craft large enough and a lot more redundancy that I could fit in a small mass produced vehicle… I could probably make something nigh immune to the HLZ beasts' attacks even without any support from underground runes. At the very least a resilient platform that could take dozens of attacks from small groups of HLZ beasts.

Yes, I’m definitely putting a few people to work on this.

“Nash.” Stuart’s assistant calls out.

“What?” I ask with a large grin still plastered over my face.

“You wanted an estimate after we were on our way back… and your original projection was correct. Nearly a ton of ore… most of it the high-quality stuff, which will refine into about 4 kilograms of 24 karat gold.”

Relief hits me at his words. I felt it all with my perception field for hours, but even with its amazing usefulness, I was not just trying to measure the weight of a piece of rock, but the flakes spread inside an ore that I never touched. There was no way to calibrate my impressions.

This should be enough for the next attempt at the spatial runes.

When I’m nearly back at the village and I get ready to continue my current project, a familiar nemesis strikes at my soul.

PAIN.

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Goblin chief’s POV

“What do you have to report?” I ask the messenger after his interruption. He wouldn’t have interrupted a meeting if it wasn’t important.

“Uhh. The enemy made off with some gold ore.”

“What? Why didn’t I hear that immediately?”

“Because they were sneaky. But we found a little dust in the forest and the blacksmith confirmed is real gold, likely from our mine, not somewhere else.”

“Shit… still, how much dust?” I ask interested in any source of magic metals, but he shakes his head.

“A few handfuls if we try to collect it.”

“That is a lot of gold, why wouldn’t we….” And then it hits me like a boulder. “You are talking about the ore, not the refine gold, so not even enough to make a ring?”

“Yes.” He replies downcast. I dismiss him back to his duties as my mind keeps running.

With a good look at everyone else around the table, they all stare back, not in challenge, but there are none here so beneath me that they would be cowering in fear for no reason.

“That is a disappointment. At least we have plenty of Copper now.” I say.

“Yes.” Says the Arch shaman in a strange tone.

“What? Don’t tell me…”

“Oh no. It is Copper alright with nothing alloyed into it, but… they managed to recover a lot more of the fallen craft them we had expected. Three hundred hit the ground and we only kept a hundred of them. Even in that number a dozen of them are melted puddles on the ground and we will need a while to gather everything up. Also, the wood was not just for the shell, it substituted for some of the copper and was part of the runes. We don’t have a single complete example of the flying runes, though we can guess a bit based on the copper wiring in the ones that only burned instead of melting.”

“Ok, how much did we actually get?”

“Best as we can tell, over 6 tons. Probably closer to 8 or 9 after we scrape the ground of the melted ones.”

“That… is enough to surprise them.”

“I don’t think things will be so simple.” The Arch shaman says ominously.

“Ohh I know, this is a daring enemy and I will enjoy every second in our march to crush them.”

Dreams of glory, even if I was being hampered every step of the way come to mind. It is not perfect, but this will serve its purpose. Soon we will take over the instance and they will despair so much that they will all choose to return to their planet in short order.