First Battle

"Charge!"

At Isaac's command, everyone rushed out at once. The Black Knight and Smith led the way. Two flashes of sword light swept past, and the seven Goblins fishing instantly became fourteen!

"Uh..."

Meanwhile, the others had only just charged out from their ambush spot...

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 perhaps taken this matter a little too seriously?

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

Just as Isaac was spacing out, a Goblin emerged from beneath the boulder. Seeing that the number of its kin had doubled, it froze for a moment before picking up a stone from the ground and charging at Smith and the Black Knight with a scream!

Very brave!

"Squelch!"

Smith casually swung his sword and cut it in half at the waist, turning it into two and a half Goblins. Then he dashed to the boulder in an instant, his sword cane flashing with streak after streak of sword light!

"Boom!"

In the blink of an eye, the boulder was reduced to countless small rocks!

The Goblin Nest had been completely exposed!

Revealing the densely packed Goblins gathered at the cave entrance below.

Smith's gaze flickered. Without hesitation, he withdrew to Isaac's side. He was not afraid of these Goblins, but there was no need to fight them inside the cave. Goblins did not have much brains; they would come out on their own.

Sure enough, a great number of Goblins soon poured out 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 thought. There was absolutely nothing wrong with being this prepared. Before individual martial strength underwent a qualitative leap, human-wave tactics were extremely effective.

The Goblins' ability to mass-produce troops was too terrifying. This was just one river, for fuck's sake!

How many people could a single river support through fishing alone?

Even with his manor growing nothing but cash crops, it could only support two or three hundred people!

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

The former was unlikely. Those seven Goblins had been catching fish out in the open, so they could only have been born recently!

What could he say? As expected of a Legendary Wizard's Creation...

"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 flying stones for him.

Glancing at the stones that had fallen beside him, Isaac smiled faintly. With a tearing sound, a ferocious Demon Claw emerged from the back of Isaac's neck. Its five fingers spread wide toward the Goblin horde, while the jagged mouth in its palm let out excited cackles.

Then magic power surged through Isaac's body and gathered upon the Demon Claw. Specks of blue starlight appeared before it, and in the next instant, twelve blue meteors shot toward the Goblin horde!

Three consecutive casts of Arcane Missile!

"Puff, puff, puff~~~"

Blue streaks of light passed over the others and struck 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!

A brilliant result!

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

Yet losses of nearly a tenth did not crush the Goblins' morale. On the contrary, stirred by the blood of their kin, their ferocity only intensified as they continued charging forward with savage faces!

"Squelch~~~"

But their soaring morale was utterly useless...

Even without the Black Knight and Smith making a move, the battle was one-sided with just the Knight Guard.

It could not be helped. The Knight Guard was not a regular army, and their equipment was poor, but that depended on who they were compared to. Against a regular army, they were naturally far inferior. They wore nothing but Leather Armor, and even Barton did not have armor.

But they at least had Leather Armor, and the Knight Longswords in their hands were sharp.

And what did the Goblins have?

As for armor, if skirts woven from leaves even counted as armor, then perhaps around one percent of the Goblins had any protection at all. As for weapons, having a branch was already high-end equipment. Most held rocks picked up from the ground, some of them even pebbles...

How were they supposed to fight?

They could not fight, you know?

Very soon, without the Black Knight or Smith needing to act, more than a hundred Goblins were completely wiped out, leaving only corpses scattered across the ground.

Seeing this, Isaac lightly waved his right hand. The 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.

He had discovered magic power within the Goblin's corpse!

Though extremely faint, it truly contained magic power. With a little processing, it could be used as a spellcasting material.

An unexpected gain...

So...

Since they had magic power, what would happen if he performed Heart Replacement Surgery on a Goblin?

What kind of enhancement could it undergo?

One idea after another sprang into Isaac's mind. The corners of his lips curled upward as he found a relatively intact corpse. The Demon Claw lifted and flung it, and then...

"Crunch, crunch~"

The Goblin corpse fell into the jagged maw in the Demon Claw's palm. As it chewed, the corpse was completely swallowed, while the Goblin's bodily structure transformed 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 with intoxicated delight.

"Ugh!!!"

However, his appearance terrified everyone. Aside from Smith, everyone else—including Goblin Slayer, who had killed countless Goblins—went pale and could not help retreating several steps. Covering their mouths, they felt somewhat nauseated...

No matter what, although Goblins were monsters, they were humanoid. Eating one raw like that...

Was rather challenging to their worldview!

Goblin Slayer in particular began to feel regret. Before coming here, he knew the Stingy Noble's five Gold Coins would not be easy to earn, but he had not expected them to be this difficult to earn!

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

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

But only consider it, because of wizards' reputation...

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

Isaac's savage method of casting witchcraft was not an isolated case...

Smith merely 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 information about the Goblins' anatomy, the sounds of slaughter within the cave also stopped.

Carefully avoiding the blood on the ground, Isaac curiously entered the cave filled with juvenile Goblin corpses. The moment he stepped inside, he was astonished again.

Because there were still more than thirty juvenile Goblins inside!

And this cave... was astonishingly large!