Chapter 17

  How the journey of The new Begging ended.

  ....................

  Grim heard more rumbling coming from straight under his feet and knew what was coming. Surely he rigged the blackpowder but that was quite a while ago , they had built more.

  Just as he was trying to figure out where the machines would surface 3 fissures appeared in his immeadiate surroundings.

  To add to all of this the hole the first machine created was constantly spewing out goblins.

  He decided the best course of action and instantly executed it.

  Grim charged into the Goblin hordes that were coming from the farthest away machine. This was the best decision as the army behind him already charged at another group.

  Before the first goblins reached the ground after they jumped from the machine Grim swung his mace restlessly. Everytime his mace shined blue scores of Goblins flew left or right into the forest.

  Grim knew that following them would be wasted effort , as they died as soon as his mace connected with any part of their body. But Grim , just as Grim is , always aimed for the heads. Not because he had a strange sexual preference to smash skulls but rather Goblins were half his size.

  Their height made it easier to smash their heads. Also it gave increased damage by a slight 20%. But even so the level difference was too much for the small goblins to handle , especially as Grim caught them with numbers less then 10.

  If a bigger group formed Grim sent a quick message to Thalia and double beams of holy fire shot towards the group and evaporated them on the spot.

  Grim smashed and smashed but soon Goblins from the other 3 machines closed in on him. As they encircled him he finally gripped his hardend iron shield hard and rushed with renewed vigour into battle.

  More Goblins flew into the forest surrounding him or clashed with straggling goblins , sometimes even into the machines that came out of the earth. But strangely they didn't panic.

  Evne when 100 attacked Grim from all sides and it seemed to have no effect , not because Grim could have managed to evade with superior speed or reflexes every hit. It was simply a little ' play ' of stats Grim used.

  If one looked close enough at the coat he was wearing it was pretty obvious. He wore a hardend and reinforced leather as base armor with the same gloves. On his legs he wore greaves meant for riding a horse.

  But on top of that he had his hardend Iron armor. After some experiments Grim managed to forge a shoulder armor and a assortment of metal strips that covered his ' best' parts in a roman kind of style.

  But underneath he had a Gambeson , a padded cloth armor and some other cloth armor.

  With this kind of armor , and all the points he had invested into strength , he took from the lvl 120 Goblins 20 dmg per hit. Some could say that his stats were inflated others just thought he was to overpowered.

  But this wasn't the case. Grim thought long and hard about what overpowered meant in the first place. Sure he got a lot of stats , but a warrior could use ' spells ' that increased his damage by 100% for a few minutes or gain a passive 50 % more dmg just because he was a warrior.

  Grim had a class which literally was useless besides the fact that he had a amazing pet. He combined the offense of a caster , Thalia , with his tankiness as he built himself for taking the damage.

  Others might say it should also not be allowed to fight 1000 Goblins at that level. But was Grim really fighting 1000 at a time?

  He clearly initiated fights at the right time to only fight a handfull , kill them quickly with his superior Strength stat and his weapon , and then went to the next group.

  Sure it only took a few seconds to kill 10 Goblins at the lvl 120. But does it really matter? How does a lvl 30 character that trained hard to achieve this level fair against a bunny? Exactly the player wouldn't even notice the bunny and walk by.

  The prey was not good enough for the already advanced player. So did it make a big difference when Grim fought the lvl 120 Goblins with ease , as he reached lvl 150 during the explosion?

  With another boom and a blue sheen of his weapon he knocked 10 Goblins back and killed them. At the same time he smashed a face of another goblin in with his shield. Thalia was sitting on top of his shoulders now and with the small precise beams she fired , she fried everything that came into his blind spot.

  3 minutes later the first machine only had a few occasional Goblins crawling out of the ground and Grim ignored them as he went to the second machine.

  Grim pulled his shield as close as he could to his own body and picked speed up over the course of 20 yards. A pack of 400 Goblins had formed in front of him but he charged inside of the peck recklessly.

  Every time a Goblin got hit by his shield their life decreased by a steady 40%. With every yard Grim pushed into the throng his footsteps got heavier. More and more Goblins banded together to block the incoming force. Even though they attempted to stop the frenzied man it took them a few seconds and the first 10 Goblins that were holding the shield got squished to a pulp by the remaining Goblins pushing on them.

  Now Grim , as he had them how he liked it packed nice and tight , swung his hammer. Not on the Goblins but on the Harden Iron shield he had smelted. As it was a tower shield it was the size of a Goblin and he hit it right on the top edge.

  The damage and force was calculated and he had dented his own shield. But what he wanted to achieve has been done. He forced the shield almost a foot into the ground and that would save him from attacks from one side , at least for some time.

  Now the dance of death began a new. Grim circled around his own axis first smashing his mace into a Goblins teeth at his front. Then with a slight turn in his hips he spun around by 180* and slammed the mace into the ear of another. He turned around again but Thalia had fried 20 goblins behind him giving him a short relief.

  " Good job Thalia. " He shouted over the snickering of the goblins.

  He swung right and a blue sheen appeared. But now that the passive skill of mace mastery had activated with Goblins being so tightly packed he did not aim for any Goblin.

  He hit the shield that was forced into the ground. As the weapon connected to the shield with its incredible force the shield was blown to pieces and those metal shrapnel flew far off into the tightly packed Goblins.

  Grim flicked his wrist and another shield appeared. Another slam later it was stuck again. But as the goblins were not dumb they cleared the front of that shield and packed themselves even tighter in the rest of the pack.

  " I think it is time master. " Thalia spoke to him after she released more beams.

  Another blue sheen appeared and as a effect Goblins were flung around like ragdolls. Now Grim did a axel in the air while fighting and Thalia used the remaining Mana she had left into 2 beams.

  As Grim spiraled and Thalia shot 10 yards around them the Goblin army was roasted. Grim always was astounded at what magic could do in this game , and even jealous at times. But he had no time to do so.

  He flicked his wrist again and the time the combination of Thalia and Grim had given him he used to place 8 shields in a octagonal shape around him. Between every shield there was a space of 3 yards open. This was were the Goblins would swarm in.

  Grims health had dropped to 70% health and also took a bread out of his inventory and placed it in his mouth. As he bit down a dry crack errupted and the Goblins swarmed in again.

  As again every time a blue sheen appeared scores of Goblins died. But there were more and more coming with every minute. Even though Grim killed them at a rapid pace the throng he created just increased.

  Just as Grim made this observation another machine broke through the Ground. And another ... and another ... .

  " Thalia can we do that combo again? " Grim asked.

  " Yes we can do it twice again. " Thalia confirmed.

  They made enough room to escape and so Grim did. He jumped out and left the 8 shields he repeatedly placed anew and with a few more smashes and swings he left the throng running after him.

  He wanted to look around how the Army was doing but he had no chance to do so.

  As soon as the first Goblins jumped of , Grim jumped into the air and smashed the descending Goblins with his mace. He almost lost his balance as he was only able to get his tippy toes on the plattform of the machine but 2 goblins were stupid enough to try to push him off with spears.

  He took hold of the spears and pulled on them. 2 Goblins flying down into the angry throng of Goblins that followed him made him smile a little. Now he wanted to find a way on how to deal with these creatures more efficently.

  ....................

  Celu and the army were holding up quite well. All of the warriors were standing firm with their shields and the people that used naginatas were standing right behind them.

  With lightning quick thrusts they pierced Goblin after Goblin that assaulted the moving ' head hoge ' formation. This was something Grim thaught to Alberthos before the battle.

  A square wall of shields was packed tightly against the goblins. Shoulder on Shoulder the shieldbeares were holding up and crawled behind their shields that were longer in height as the goblins.

  The row of spearman wielding what ever spear , naginata or lance they had dealt all the damage. But what was truly fierce were the archers and magicians in their midst.

  100 Magicians bundled their energy or mana as they called it together while holding hands and chanting long spells. As soon as the battle started and they were encircled by thousands and thousands of Goblins they started chanting but even now after 5 minutes they were still chanting while sweat adorned their heads and necks.

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  The voices gradually declined while the priests kept up their healing magic to ensure the survival of the shield wall.

  Now finally after another 2 minutes a large surge of power flew out from the mages. The ten thousand Goblins that encircled the shieldwall were pushed to the ground and started to burn. As they incinerated the Goblin archers that restlessly tried to kill the shield wearers or the spear wielders now aimed for the magicians instead.

  The final plan of this defense came to action as a thousand arrows flew into the middle of the shieldwall. 25 reserve priests created a powerful barrier and as the arrows collided with the invisable barrier in mid air the just flew to the ground.

  Now Celu knew they could win this fight.

  ...................

  Grim was killing the Goblins in the narrow floors and rooms inside of the digging machines they used to arrive at the surface. He only could guess how these machines worked so no convinient ' reverse lever ' was anywhere installed.

  So he took a huge leap of fate and tried to make its way to the part of the machine that was still emerged in the ground.

  Countless steps and spiraling staircases later , that didn't make sense in the first place as one stairway lead down and 3 more up. Then anther 2 down and 1 up after another down.

  Grim was growing immensly frustrated but soon he found what he thought would be here.

  As Grim was underground for 2 weeks he had mixxed a little something with the black powder to create explosives. Naturally this , as it was made from crude materials , was not a reliable method.

  This digging machine worked similiar to a rocket. It was round allover but at the top it formed a pointy tip where a drill function was placed made from iron. Overall it was crudely made and the interior definetly was no nice place , but it worked even though it was made from Goblins.

  But at the bottom of the contraption lay the key. As it was formed like a rocket and they propelled it along a ' run way ' into the caverns ceiling some where the force to lift this massive thing with over 1000 goblins inside had to be created.

  Massive amounts of blackpowder were stored in jars at the base of this machine and he had rigged those while he was in the caverns.

  That was why over 80 thousand Goblins died within seconds when they were released. They all gathered along the rockets and the rigged blackpowder exploded taking all of those goblins with them and destroying some machines.

  The left over machines had either new or defect rigged blackpowder inside of them. That is why a few still made it to the surface. Now after the initial 1000 goblins had reached the surface more goblins kept crawling up a rope or the railings they used to ' guide ' the rockets to the ceiling.

  Grim wanted to cut the ropes or destroy the railing but as there were still a few jars of blackpowder left he made Thalia ignite a wooden stick he found in the room and opened a jar.

  As he stuck the now burning mini torch inside of the black powder with the burning end pointing up , he created a time bomb.

  Grim smiled and was very pleased with himself as he ran out of the construct.

  He now repeated this with the rest of the 6 machines and just had to wait for the fireworks show to begin.

  ..................................

  Celu couldn't hold back anymore and used every bit of mana she had to heal the already badly wounded Warriors with the shields , or archers or even the mages.

  All of their mana was running low and their supply of mana restoring tea was used up. They had anticipated a lot smaller force of opponents and for some reason already 65% of the force had died before the actual battle began.

  Celu shuddered at the realization of what would have happend with the army if they had entered the caverns of the dungeons. Never ending streams of arrows and assaults ... It was a nightmare but luckily for them the Iron wall had been resurrected for them denying them entrance.

  Already a few hundred players and over 20 npcs had breathed their last and the formation they had was getting thinner and thinner. The anti projectile barrier the priests had tried to uphold ran out long ago.

  Hundreds of arrows , even if they were shot from crude bows and not aimed correctly , still made their way into the ring the army tried to hold. But with every arrow rain their numbers would decreasly as the priests couldn't keep up anymore.

  The earth suddendly trembled and everyone , inculding the Goblins , landed on their behinds. The tremor that shook the earth was so intense Celu thought of Palanthalos aiding them in battle with a earthquake but the black clouds of smoke told her otherwise.

  Only the machines were shaking heavily the goblins used to asscend above the ground. After a few seconds of rising smoke they slowly started to retreat beyond the surface world they had broken a hour or so ago.

  With loud groaning noises of metal they were swallowd by the earth again and disappeared.

  Another large tremor shook the earth and Celu expected it to be the impact of the ton heavy machines into the cavern floor.

  * tring*

  WIth renewed vigour the Army assaulted the Goblins and without lossing more then an additional 20 they slew all the goblins in front of them.

  As the Army turned in another direction to face the remaining few hundred Goblins the noticed a blue sheen from within the tightly packed throng and soon all of the goblins were flying around like lifeless dolls as the force scattered them , but most of the times only their body parts , around the forest clearing.

  100 yards was between the army and Grim as they stared eachother down.

  Celu and Viena both ran towards him but with a outstretched palm Grim halted both of their advances directly.

  " I knew you weren't crazy! " Celu shouted.

  " Come back ... to us ... and explain .... please ... " Viena brought out between sobs.

  The touching reunion was disturbed by a loud * tring*

  All of the army Npcs or players alike broke out in jeers. The npcs soon started to dance and a warm smile appeared on Grims face as he watched the people who he had saved with his reckless and dumb actions.

  Celu joined Vienas crying and sobbing as she saw the smile appear on Grims face but as she was trying her best to make his way to him he opened his lips.

  " To all of you who have completed this quest today , Congratulations you deserve everything they give you. I am devestated at how many you have lost and will grief ... if i have the time. " Grim began.

  Celu didn't feel right inside , she didn't know how to react something felt even worse then when Grim had ' acted ' the mental ill and insane and she soon found out.

  A single lone thunderbolt struck right besides Grim. At first Celu feared he would be hurt or even worse dead but soon she saw the platinum hair colored elf standing besides him.

  " Aye Palanthalos i know what the bargain was , but just let me finish this one sentence. TO ALL THAT SERVED IN THE ARMY AND HELPED COMPLETING THIS QUEST , YOU HAVE DONE WELL. " Grim shouted at the top of his lungs and smiled his usual warm smile at everybody once.

  " It is time to fullfill you end of the bargain , Grim of the house Gwachilmar. As a chosen one , death will not be enough , so i have decided to permanently ban your soul from this world ." Palanthalos said in a hushed voice.

  But strangely enough everybody understood the words clearly as if they had been spoken directly in-front of them.

  Celus crying intensified at what she understood from that statement. Grim for some reason had sacrificed everything he had in this world ....

  " With this begone. " Palanthalos said and touched Grims rubys at his forehead.

  His body began to glow icnredibly bright as his body dissolved in particles. Thalia was hecticly flying around her Master but there was nothing she could do.

  " Thalia ... Listen to me . Do whatever your heart tells you. Don't get lead astray by some stranger even if he is a chosen one. Choose your next partner carefully. " Grim told the little fae with his last breath as his whole body just disappeared and the light subsided.

  A piercing shrill sound assaulted all of their ears and even Palanthalos had to cover his ears at the sound Thalia created.

  .....................................

  Craig jumped out of the Capsule and started to laugh.

  " Expected as much , at least they completed the quest. " Grim said as he laughed and was already undressing to take a shower.

  What Grim didn't know at this point is that the capsule behind him had completly seized its function and all the buttons that light up , even when in standby , had turned grey.

  Even after a few days had passed they still remained grey but a change appeared after another week the buttons would occasionally blink.