The first beacon came online only moments after the airships relayed the message that the Adventurers had encountered scout groups of a hundred or more Goblins at a time.
Alexis sighed as she read the relayed message.
"You know that Dominic and the gunslingers are loving this. They can kill a Goblin with every shot, it’s like being granted free loot while the warriors fight the real threats." She plained.
"Relax, we will be there soon enough. Give them a few hours to get the beacons placed, and we will be able to move with the armies. You won’t be short on monsters to fight by tomorrow morning." Prince George assured her.
And so, they waited.
But four hours later, when the second beacon came online just before lunch, it became clear that the adventurers were not having an easy time making the loop around the horde.
Whether this was because of terrain or because they had misjudged how far out the scouts would be placed was a matter of debate between the military leaders, but the Royals had very little doubt that the reason for the delay was because they were deliberately targeting monsters, instead of trying to make it to the beacon locations.
They were not wrong.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, let’s take a lunch break. Loot Magistrate, how is our big bag of loot looking?" Dominic asked.
The adventurers laughed as the mage dramatically opened the magical bag full of mana cores.
"If we assume an average level of two, given the ratio of Goblins to Hobgoblins, I would say that we have about three thousand levels worth of mana cores so far. Split twenty ways, that’s a hundred and fifty levels each." He replied.
The adventurers cheered quietly at the news.
"Not bad loot for the morning. But how does the afternoon look on the skimming spell?" Wiz asked.
The other mage shrugged. "Could go either way. I’m seeing quite a few Ogre Clan Brutes ahead, and a large encampment of Frosthound Riders.
Those could be nasty fights, but they’re stationed in the scouting ring, so we should eliminate them before we place the beacons to call in the army. They have the numbers to deal with them easily enough, but if they don’t detect them in time, they will take heavy casualties."
The Brutes of the Ogre Clan were mixed blood Ogres, the sort who could normally be considered demihuman, save for the fact that they were working with a barely higher than animalistic level of intelligence.
They were insensible and violent, incapable of plex speech, even in the Ogre tongue.
Still, they were a level ten to fifteen monster, so the core values would be good, and their magic resistance wasn’t as high as a full-blooded Ogre.
The real issue would be the Frosthound Riders.
The mounts were the size of a dire bear, but long-legged and much faster. Then, there was the rider. A Gnoll or Yeti Clan elite warrior who was formidable on his own.
"Couldn’t it be something reasonable, like some Goblin Boar Riders?" One of the warriors sighed.
"There are those too, but they’re on the other side, closer to where we started." The mage replied.
The warrior gave him a look that said "Then why didn’t we go that way?", but refrained from saying anything.
A Frosthound Rider pair was close to forty levels worth of monster cores, with a significant chance of giving someone an unmon or rare grade item. For that reason alone, it would be worth it to pick them off one or two at a time.
They ate in relative silence, broken only by the constant updates from the airships and some army units who were scouting in the distance.
The scouts had all backed off from the major army camp, so they didn’t draw too much attention, and so that they could search the area for additional monsters that the airships missed.
They had found hundreds of them.
With his lunch dishes packed away, Dominic got to his feet. "Same routine as before. Brutes live up to their name, so we will start with the bees."
"You like the bees too much."
"It’s definitely a plex."
"That has to be a war crime."
Dominic laughed at the joking plaints of the Adventurers. None of them actually wanted him to stop with the bees, the swarm was simply too useful as a distraction. They might only work once against a human army, but against monsters who didn’t municate with each other, they could keep the trick up all day long.
Or at least until they met the Frosthound Riders. Those would just kill the bees with an ice attack and get even more angry than usual.
"What are you going to do when the bee trick stops working?" Amie asked as she checked her new pistols.
"Probably ask the Coven Leader if she has something similar but in a snake or scorpion variety." Dominic replied with a shrug.
"Maybe Locusts? Aren’t they one of the great plagues?" Amie suggested.
"Oh, that would be good. A locust swarm would totally block their visibility, but wouldn’t stop a bullet."
The two of them led the group through the woods until they smelled the signature odour of the Ogre clan camps on the wind. A bination of rancid body odour and a rotting carcass.
"It’s almost too easy to find them. Everyone get in position, once they realize they’re being attacked, they’ll be on us in seconds." Dominic instructed.
The bees flowed overhead, swarming into the camp full of the brutes as if drawn to them.
The panic was as immediate as it was predictable, and Dominic started firing the moment that the chaos started.
Three brutes dropped in as many seconds, before the other gunslingers had even begun to fire.
Then, the creatures were charging toward Dominic’s position with surprising agility, faster than the warriors could even get in position.
Amie giggled as she slid between a brute’s feet to shoot up into the belly of the beast behind it, catching the dim witted creature pletely unawares. Then, she retreated, dodging the body of the one Dominic cut down behind her, but remained in the front lines as the warriors struggled to establish dominance.
"I like this plan. The bees add a nice ambiance."
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