[SS] Chapter 21: War Games are fun, War is not. The difference is that you could die, again.

I had at best a few hours before night fell and I had to seriously up my game or I was going to die. Not fighting and fleeing weren’t options anymore. It would take just one of those wolves to see and howl and then they’d all be on me, except I wouldn’t have walls.

I moved over to my Hob-Goblin prisoner. I needed information first and foremost. I was forever regretting not getting analyze. It was a skill so I could probably unlock it. If I survived that is.

I came down near her and she was still shaking like a leaf. I worried I would have to slap her but she finally noticed that I was sitting in front of her. Her next words were illuminating and unhelpful.

“Dire Wolves! We have to leave!”

Yeah, I wish we could. But that would leave us out in the wilds and dead. We were going to have to someone kill a small army, eight Gen 1’s, and 1 really powerful Gen 1. Judging by how it had ripped apart a Hob-Goblin like it was nothing, I doubted I could summon anything useful enough. I was panicking slightly but I had a lot at my disposal as well. The Hob-Goblin didn’t and was probably worried I was going to slowly eat her and now panicking that something else was going to slowly eat her.

I cursed our lack of easy communication. I hadn’t considered that forming words with no mouth would be this hard. I bubbled and tried to speak in Goblin Language. It completely failed.

“Leave! We have to leave!”

She started to get up and I was honestly tempted to just let her go. But cruel pragmatism won out there. She would 100% die if she did and I would be down a fighter. She would probably be able to easily slaughter a bunch of regular wolves and I’d need to expend everything I had to survive this. I tried to calm her down but when that inevitably failed, this time I did slap her and she fell back on her ass.

I wanted to freak out and panic too you know?! I had just decided to be more merciful and had righted my mind a tad so I wasn’t going to turn into some sociopathic killer and now I have to deal with this?! Are you kidding me?! But complaining and panicking isn’t going to help!

No, it was time to think and think fast. Information gathering is step one and that meant I needed this Hob-Goblin to tell me everything she knows and as soon as possible.

It took a worrying amount of time, but through a stick, drawings, interpretive dance, and a few more slaps that made me feel like an abusive husband, I finally got her to tell me about my enemies.

“Dire wolves. Bad. They can see in the dark and are fast. Mean, big, strong.”

That was all I got but I already felt it had paid off. Being able to see in the dark was a huge advantage, one even I didn’t have. I was still working on fixing that issue with my vision but I just wasn’t there yet. My slowly forming plan to ambush the dire wolves was out, they’d see me coming from a mile away. But not all was lost. I hadn’t just been mindlessly trying to get her to talk for the last half hour, I’d also been pouring my mana into the Dungeon Core and refilling it. It wouldn’t be much but with the corpses from earlier, I managed to get it to a decent number without over taxing myself.

Mana: 1034

Just a little over how much it had started with. That was the first thing I had available to work with but far from the only thing. I had disgustingly eaten as much of the corpses as I could from earlier and that meant stats.

[General/Crown/Evolution/Dungeon

Name: Slimy Slime

Free stat points: 22

HP: 278/278

MP: 160/160

STR: 27

AGI: 27

DEX: 27

CON: 26

END: 27

INT: 26

WIS: 26

SPI: 26]

I couldn’t be stupid this time though, I had to put them into what would help me the most right now. That brought up a solid question. What was my strategy? How was I going to kill all of them? Ultimately, I didn’t feel like I needed to kill all of them at all. I needed to get rid of the leader and they’d probably all go the hell away. Unfortunately, that seemed even harder… damn.

For the Alpha, I’d have to try and fight that thing personally. There was no a way a dungeon trap, a false Hob-goblin, or even a real Hob-Goblin, was going to be able to defeat it. That left eight other Gen 1’s.

I looked back over at, god, I really should get her name but asking is hard and Goblin’s don’t really seem to have proper names. Nothing that translates well at least. Could she hold off eight Gen 1’s at once? She had that skill that boosted her speed so even if she couldn’t actually defeat them, being a distraction would probably work. Assuming that worked, that just left a whole shit ton of wolves. I couldn’t count them but it was at least fifty. Possibly more. For that, well, I had a little bit of an army of my own.

[Minion Authority:

Time consumption: 30 minutes + 30 minutes per minions Gen Tier

Duration: 60 minutes

You are now able to temporarily summon minions from Forms that you already were. For example, if you were imps once before, you can now summon imps to do your bidding. A True King has plenty of minions fully willing to carry out whatever their Lord desires.]

And I didn’t know exactly how long I had been here but I had kept track of my time. And I had a decent amount saved up.

Time: 1260 minutes

Slimes would be totally useless but I could make [Acid Slime]’s and that would just have to be enough. At the very least, when the wolfs tried to claw and bite them, they’d be in for a bad time. Alright, I had a shitty dungeon, a terrified hob-goblin, about 14 [Acid Slimes] and maybe 3 or 4 hours to prepare.

With any luck, I might die quickly at least.

.

.

.

(A few hours later)

I’d done all I could. Had it been enough? Probably not. Would I survive tonight? Almost certainly not. But on the bright side, I at least had a plan and had done all I could. Now, my danger sense had been buzzing at me for at least 3 minutes so I wish they would hurry up and just-

SCRRCH!

And that would be the sound of wooden walls being ripped apart by a few hundred claws at once. I had hoped the Alpha hadn’t been smart enough to do actual army tactics of sending in the grunts first but sadly, I wasn’t that lucky. Instead, I now had to deal with the bulk of the forces to start with. Luckily, I had prepared for this.

I nodded to the Hob-Goblin, which was more of a slime bob but the motion translated well enough, and she nodded back. We had made amazing progress between us in the last few hours. The fear of death can do that. I hadn’t bothered giving her back her axe and instead had used a damn good chunk of mana to make her a proper one. I hoped she would use it well. After all, she wanted to live just as much as anyone else.

I opened the door I had crafted and she rushed out and judging by the immediate sounds of yelps, was actually fighting. That was actually incredibly surprising, I had figured she’d run away immediately and draw at least a few dozen to her, maybe even one of the eight dire wolves. Hopefully not the Alpha.

Still, I’d take it.

You know, the most annoying thing about the Dungeon Core was expansion down seemed so incredibly difficult. All of that ground had to be destroyed and the ground that was left reinforced or it would all collapse and it was such a massive drain on mana. But other things seemed to cost so little by comparison. Part of me had wanted to make weapons, even just wooden spears, and use my [Spirit Hands] to fight off a bunch of them. Sadly, one of the curses I took made that impossible.

[Omen of The Fool:

every time you try to use a weapon or armor, you will absolutely fumble and make a fool out of yourself]

As I saw the first wolf breach the wall, these are the thoughts that filled me before it took a wooden spear to the face, dying instantly.

In that weird sociopathic state, I had figured out spring propulsion using only flexible wood. How, even I didn’t know. It had been a far greater achievement than I had expected. I didn’t know if turrets just didn’t count as weapons or if it was just too hard to fumble pointing and slamming a button down, but either way, it worked. I had taken the spike traps from the death tunnel I had made and repurposed them and slanted them to be horizontal instead of vertical. It didn’t give me a perfect system, but it took wolves longer than a few minutes to claw open a doorway wide enough to fit through.

I got a few more kills like that, till it seemed my curse acted up and decided that Yes, in fact, this was a weapon and not a trap and it jammed and the springy mechanism broke.

All was well anyway as the Dire Wolves had clearly started helping out and the holes in my wall was getting bigger.

Alright, time for phase 2!

With a mental command from my Dungeon Core, I completed the work I had started earlier. I punched out with all my spirit hands at once, rapidly, wincing at my fists met wood. But wood gave. With a mighty creak, my walls began to fall.

I had disconnected them, mostly, from the ground and ceiling. With the last bit of mana I had, I fully disconnected them and pushed them over. I was honestly worried for a moment that they’d fall the other way, but, well…

[General/Crown/Evolution/Dungeon

Name: Slimy Slime

Free stat points: 0

HP: 278/278

MP: 160/160

STR: 49

AGI: 27

DEX: 27

CON: 26

END: 27

INT: 26

WIS: 26

SPI: 26]

Strength as a stat was crazy. I could already see where it started to plateau but at the earliest levels, it gave the most bang for buck. I felt like I was strong enough to lift a sumo wrestler. Still, even that probably would not have been enough to fully knock over my walls if I hadn’t made them into multiple pieces.

With a mighty crash, my walls fell upon the wolves. It wasn’t enough to kill any of them, but it did catch them off guard. Long enough for me to do phase three. The fact that this was going so well was not lost on me. It meant that things were bound to go wrong sooner or later. After all, this was all just to get the bare minimum necessary to survive, defeating the normal wolves. It still left the Dire wolves and Alpha to fight.

I summoned my crown and for a moment, a Purity and Power washed out. I had barely had the time to snap it on and off before hand, not enough for even the Aura to pour out, but now it was different. I had evolved and while that only gave me a few seconds more, it was enough. All the wolves felt it, at what they were fighting, something that was Strong by existence and Pure by nature.

Fourteen [Acid Slimes] appeared, each one costing an hour of saved time. I sent them after the trapped wolves.

I took off the Crown and looked forward out into the open air.

A creaking noise was heard as six [Dire Wolves] walked towards me. The Alpha [Dire Wolf] leading from the front. It looked vaguely amused at best.

I took a deep metaphorical breath.

Seven vs one huh?

Alright. Bring it.