First Battle

"Charge!"

At Isaac's command, everyone rushed out in an instant. Black Knight and Smith led the way. Two flashes of swordlight swept past, and the seven Goblins that had been fishing instantly became fourteen!

"Uh..."

By then, everyone else had only just emerged from their ambush position...

Isaac's Arcane Shield had not even had time to deploy...

Looking at the Goblin corpses on the ground, Isaac fell into thought. Had he taken this matter a little too seriously?

"Waaah, waaah, waaah, waaah~~~"

While Isaac was still stunned, a Goblin walked out from beneath the boulder. Seeing that its kin had doubled in number, it froze for a moment, then picked up a rock from the ground and charged at Smith and Black Knight with a shout!

Very brave!

"Splat!"

Smith merely swung his sword casually, cutting it in half at the waist and turning it into two and a half Goblins. Then he instantly rushed to the boulder, his Staff Sword flashing with streaks of swordlight!

"Boom!"

In an instant, the boulder shattered into countless small stones!

The Goblin Lair was completely exposed!

Revealing the densely packed Goblins drawn to the cave entrance below.

Smith's eyes shifted slightly. Without hesitation, he retreated to Isaac's side. He did not fear these Goblins, but there was no need to fight them inside their cave. Goblins did not have much sense; they would come out on their own.

Sure enough, a large number of Goblins soon poured from the tiny cave. In the blink of an eye, more than a hundred Goblins had appeared by the river!

"Hiss!"

The sight made Isaac suck in a sharp breath. There were really fucking a lot of them!

It also overturned his earlier thoughts. There had been nothing wrong with being this well prepared. Before individual martial strength underwent a qualitative leap, human-wave tactics were extremely effective.

The Goblins' troop-producing ability was terrifying. This was only a river!

How many people could a river sustain through fishing alone?

Even the cash crops planted on his estate could only support two or three hundred people!

And they had not noticed these hundred-plus Goblins at all. That was very abnormal. Either they had exceptional stealth abilities, or they possessed terrifying reproductive capabilities, and these had all been born within the last few days!

The former was unlikely. Those seven Goblins had fished in broad daylight, so they could only have been born recently!

What could he say? They truly were creations of a Legendary Wizard...

"Charge!" Shaking his head, Isaac no longer held the slightest contempt in his heart. With a light wave of his right hand, everyone immediately reacted, raising their longswords to meet the Goblins charging at them with cries of "waaah."

A pale blue barrier also appeared around Isaac, blocking several rocks flying toward him.

Isaac glanced at the rocks that had fallen nearby and smiled faintly. With a tearing sound, a ferocious Demonic Claw emerged from the back of his neck. Its five fingers spread wide toward the Goblin horde, while the savage saw-toothed mouth in its palm let out excited cackles.

Then Magic Power surged through Isaac's body and gathered upon the Demonic Claw. Specks of blue starlight appeared before it, and the next moment, twelve blue meteors shot toward the Goblin horde!

Three consecutive casts of Arcane Missile!

"Pfft, pfft, pfft~~~"

Blue streaks of light passed over the others and collided with the Goblins first. In an instant, seven Goblins had their heads blown apart, three had their chests blasted through, and four had their arms shattered!

An outstanding result!

"Waaah, waaah, waaah, waaah!!!!"

Yet losing nearly a tenth of their number did not crush the Goblins' morale. On the contrary, stimulated by the blood of their kin, their ferocity only grew as they continued charging forward with twisted faces!

"Splat~~~"

But their soaring morale was fucking useless...

Even without Black Knight and Smith joining the fight, the Knight Guard alone turned the battle into a one-sided slaughter.

It could not be helped. Though the Knight Guard was not a regular army and their equipment was poor, that depended on whom they were compared with. Against regular soldiers, they were naturally far inferior. They wore nothing but leather armor, and even Barton had no metal armor.

But they at least had leather armor, and every one of them carried a sharp Knight Longsword.

What did the Goblins have?

As for armor, if skirts woven from leaves counted as armor, then perhaps one percent of these Goblins could be considered armored. As for weapons, having a tree branch was already high-end gear. Most held rocks picked up from the ground, some of them even pebbles...

How were they supposed to fight?

They could not, understand?

Very soon, without even needing Black Knight or Smith to act, the hundred-plus Goblins had been completely wiped out, leaving only corpses strewn across the ground.

Seeing this, Isaac lightly waved his right hand. Black Knight immediately rushed into the cave and began another round of slaughter, while Isaac walked over to a Goblin corpse and crouched down, his eyes lighting up slightly.

He had found Magic Power within the Goblin corpses!

Though weak, they truly contained Magic Power. With a little processing, they could be used as spellcasting materials.

There was an unexpected gain, too...

So...

Since they possessed Magic Power, what would happen if he performed Heart Replacement Surgery on a Goblin?

What could it be strengthened into?

One inspiration after another sprang into Isaac's mind. The corners of his mouth rose slightly as he found a relatively intact corpse. The Demonic Claw lifted it and tossed it, and then...

"Crunch, crunch~"

The Goblin corpse fell into the saw-toothed maw in the Demonic Claw's palm. As it chewed, the corpse was completely swallowed, while the Goblin's bodily structure turned into streams of information flowing into Isaac's mind. He stood up, closed his eyes, and tilted his head back slightly, receiving the information transmitted by the witchcraft in rapt fascination.

"Ugh!!!"

But his appearance terrified everyone. Apart from Smith, everyone else, including Goblin Slayer, who had killed countless Goblins, went pale and involuntarily backed away several steps, covering their mouths as nausea rose within them...

No matter what, Goblins might be monsters, but they were humanoid. Eating one raw like that...

It was rather challenging to their worldview!

Goblin Slayer in particular began to regret coming. Before arriving, he had known that the five Gold Coins offered by that stingy noble would not be easy to earn, but he had not expected them to be this hard to earn!

If he had known Isaac was a Wizard, forget five Gold Coins—even fifty! Five hundred...

Well, if it were five hundred Gold Coins, he would still consider it.

But only consider it, because Wizards had a reputation...

Hard to say. They were on par with Witches, and far worse than Arcanists!

Isaac's savage method of casting witchcraft was hardly an isolated case...

Smith, meanwhile, let out a heavy sigh. He had been mentally prepared for this, so he could still accept it. All in all, as long as Isaac had not eaten the Goblin corpse himself, it was fine...

By the time Isaac had roughly absorbed the structural information on Goblins, the sounds of slaughter inside the cave had also stopped.

Carefully avoiding the blood on the ground, Isaac curiously entered the cave filled with the corpses of juvenile Goblins. The moment he stepped inside, he was astonished once more.

Because there were more than thirty juvenile Goblins inside!

And this cave... was astonishingly large!