Knowing the right way didn’t mean finding the actual location of the goblin encampment would be easy or quick. It was possible that this was just leading to another search. Of course he could just repeat the ritual when needed as he had two soldiers standing behind him on the ice cloud holding the broken rune lance, as he decided to call them, which he still couldn’t touch even though the glow of the runes had lost some of its shine.
But Ethan had racked his brain for nothing because after flying basically straight into that one direction he found the goblin camp. While camp wasn’t really the right word as there was a literal fortress in front of him that grew bigger with each minute he flew. The fortress itself seemed to be built from black and brown bricks with high walls and thick towers that rose to the sky in the back of the structure but the closer he got the more flaws he could see.
The walls while high had straight up holes in some places which were filled with packed dirt, the towers which looked imposing from further away were askew and looked like one simple push could topple them over. But what he felt was the strong magic surrounding the entire fortress, it felt similar to the magic the goblin shaman had used but a lot stronger and more refined.
With the fortress being built between a few hills that were surrounded by nothing but plains on three sides and the forest Ethan was flying over from the fourth it gave the fortress good visibility with the direction towards the strongest being the best defended by the looks of it.
Ethan stood on a pillar of ice while he made those observations, he thought about repeating the ritual but this was the location he had been looking for, it wasn’t hidden and while protected it was child’s play to kill the defenders as they were just goblins but everything he looked towards it he felt a shiver run down his spine. This place, while looking mediocre, was anything but, there was strong magic at work here. The thing is he couldn’t just run into it, hope for the best and see where he ends up.
After spending some moments in deep thought he decided to go a different route, one that he hadn’t and simply couldn’t use due to his class change but now there was a way again. So the next few hours were spent preparing a plague attack of all things.
At first the skinny but fast wendigo soldiers saw a return as they scoured the forest for anything of note, which meant enemy patrols or strong monsters that he should be aware of. Next the fortress itself was scouted and for that Ethan used the frost wraiths he had received shorty after the tutorial ended. With so many things on his mind he hadn’t even noticed that they had disappeared at some point which just meant he had to redo his experiment with them.
With the frost wraiths as scouts he could search the fortress without alarming the enemy mage/shaman to his presence, while they could be seen it was still better than having his soldiers run through the castle. This led to the discovery that the ice drakes were used to pull stone blocks, under the castle was a large cavern, another one like under the mountain or the cave system under the unnamed city, where goblins constructed some kind of massive stone arch using the blocks pulled by the ice drakes.
So far Ethan couldn’t spot any monster that would admit such a strong presence like the one blanketing the world around the fortress. But it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things as he could finally go to work, at least he would but his attack would only begin at nightfall. Before that there were experiments to be done.
Sitting cross-legged on the ice pillar while the sun slowly sunk towards the horizon was Ethan, his eyes closed by clearly moving behind the lids. He tried to remember the feeling of using a plague related ability, while he still hadn’t tested his new abilities the increase in potency with his raw mana was already incredible. But now it was time to see how frozen hearts rot actually worked.
After activating the skill a big area around him was affected, the air itself seems to squirm around him and the trees he reached right below him started to rot away in a wave of crimson colored rot followed by a pale blue flash freeze that broke what was left into even smaller pieces until only a fine black and blue dusk remained on the ground. When he tried to reign the ability in it felt like pulling glue covered chains towards him, each link costing him more energy.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Before he exhausted himself completely he stopped and took a few deep breaths, the rot was strong, stronger than any plague he had created which just showed how badly infected Frostfall must be when such a sickness invaded its inner sanctum. After testing or trying to test singular targeting which worked awful compared to just releasing an aura of rot around him. It became clear that Ethan had to put work into this new ability so it could be used properly. Though there was still one thing he wanted to try.
The first thing was creating a vessel to carry the rot to the fortress because going there himself seems like a bad idea. With his new subclass he created the body of a snake which cost a lot of mana as his skill didn’t seem to like this very specialized variant. Afterwards he tried to infuse the rot into the snake, when he activated the skill nothing seemed to actually happened but after a while the snake, which was pure white, started to turn first the same crimson red, followed by pale blue before settling on a black and blue mix with the blue being so dark it was almost black.
Ethan ordered the snake around, watching for any sign that it wasn’t functioning properly or leaking magic or something along those lines but the result looked very promising. When night finally came Ethan created another wendigo soldier, the mana cost higher but still not as high as the snake, which ran towards the fortress after the snake had moved over to its body. Wrapped firmly around the wendigo’s midsection.
With his connection he could follow the route the wendigo was taking, he noticed an increase in the ability to think for itself in these new soldiers. While still fully under his control he could achieve the same result with just a simple command instead of more detailed instructions. The command he had given the wendigo was to find a spot where it could deposit the snake which it did flawlessly as there was no alarm from the fortress even after it ran back to the forest.
Standing on the pillar, his eyes fixed on the fortress, Ethan ordered the snake to find the largest concentration of goblins and release the rot there. He made sure to include that no ice drakes can be close by, just to make sure. After a while the snake pinged him and while Ethan couldn’t understand everything he knew that the snake had reached its destination.
With a simple command the rot was released in the form of crimson smoke which settled over the entire room the goblins were sleeping in for the night. Ethan could just sit there, hoping everything was going well, worry crept into him as the snake suddenly vanished from his connections but it seems it was just finished with its purpose, the rot too much to keep it together with mere magic.
For Ethan a time of nervous anticipation began as he waited for results but when after five minutes not one kill notification appeared on his feed he grew worried that the attack failed. Though he didn’t want to risk another attempt, not today. So instead he sat down on the pillar and practiced his control of the rot skill.
In the fortress itself was one large communal room for the goblins workers to sleep in, the snake had released the rot right in the middle of it in a thick cloud. While the aura ability was fast acting and very potent the rot delivered on this way was more akin to a disease or infection, settling in the body and growing stronger over time. Even those goblins not infected at first ended up with the rot as the air that was breathed out was laced with more of the rot, taking energy from the host to spread further.
After thirty minutes the whole room was infected and when they got up in the morning nothing unusual happened, at least for the first two hours because after that time was up the first goblins started to cough and have trouble breathing. Some of them throw up blood with the first death occurring twelve hours after being infected. The goblins rotted away from the inside until nothing remained than piles of black and blue dust.
Ethan just watched the notifications coming in. At first it was only one and two but shortly after they flooded his window taking around an hour until it finally stopped again. With conflicting emotions in his mind and heart he stood up and created an ice cloud, making his way over to the fortress.
