'Myrmidon? Like, Myrmidon as a variation of Achilles' Myrmidons?'
As a mythology lover, I can relate the name easily, and I think it would be easy for many others too. Who doesn't know the Eliada and the Odyssey?
Still, that shell, that name, and the state the entire surrounding area was in...
Honestly, I don't know what I prefer: whether those responsible are some kind of subhuman who can create their own armor and therefore would be intelligent enough to even engage in dialogue. Or whether they're simple ants with a name similar to the soldiers Zeus himself created from ants for the Greek hero in the Trojan War.
Seriously, I don't know which option I prefer.
But looking calmly at the park area, which was even more planned than the surrounding land, I noticed some things I didn't see when we arrived, like the holes in the ground.
From a distance, they looked like holes made by the great fight that happened here. It was as if something had torn up large clods of earth or fallen with sufficient force to create depressions, which, considering the size of the creatures that must have fought here it wouldn't be that hard to imagine that this happened and wouldn't surprise me at all.
But now that I was seeing better. I could see that not all the holes appeared to be impact holes, they seemed to have been excavated.
Signaling for the two of them to wait for me, I activated my [stealth] ability and looked around the park on our side of the street. Paying closer attention, I could see that there were indeed holes that had been dug, mainly on the side of the park.
I counted at least four of these holes. They weren't large, but they weren't small either. At 1,78 meters, I could easily get in if I bent over a bit. Lumi, Impeto, or even my sister in normal form could get in without having to bend over.
'What that means?. That the creatures that come out of these holes must be at least Mari's height, and if they really are ants that big..."
It's not a very nice thing to think about.
I quickly returned to my spot behind the tree and thought about what to do.
If we're dealing with ants, then the best way would be to poison the colony to contain them all at once, but we don't have anything lethal enough to kill one creature that size, much less several. And even if I did, I doubt I could get enough to wipe out an entire colony.
So maybe it's better to take a chance and run to get the stone, then try to lose them if they come after me until they give up.
But then—
'No, wait a minute! Why was the red magic stone exposed out here, and on top of a small pile of rubble?'
Not only that, there weren't any monsters in sight. Even if they were monster ants, they would still be ants. Shouldn't they have workers leaving the colony to get food, or soldiers protecting the anthill?
Something didn't sit right with this.
The more I thought about it, the more the fact that the magic stone was exposed became more and more absurd. In a very bizarre comparison, the large magic blood stone would be something like a large lump of sugar, what kind of ant would leave it outside the colony instead of giving it to its queen?.
Who would leave something like that for anyone to see?.
'Unless it was—'
I didn't even need to finish the thought to see I was right. Coming from the left, a large group of ten goblins appeared. The one ahead pointed at the red stone, completely ignoring the three of us, even though I was sure they could see us.
The ten quickly headed toward the rock, pulling, pushing, and trying to make others fall so they could get ahead and be the first to reach it. When they entered what had previously been a small soccer field, they were attacked from behind by arrows.
Good news: they weren't giant ants over 1 meter tall. Bad news: they were creatures just as bad.
I said earlier that I'd seen all the starter monsters after seeing the slimes, right? So, I take back what I said: there's still one missing, but to be fair, it's not like they're necessarily "starters," just a few often compared to goblins.
Yeah, they're kobolts.
Kobolts, as far as I know, generally come in two types.
The first type of kobolt would be a bipedal canine, usually the same size as a goblin and on par with them in terms of threat. Or, they're slightly more dangerous because they're faster, more coordinated, and able to ambush opponents more easily.
The second type of kobolt would be a miniature bipedal lizard, obsessed with digging for and finding precious metals, primarily gold, with attacks that could range from harmless to quite alarming. These types of kobolts also had a minor drawback: they often possessed a minimal (basically microscopic) amount of dragon blood.
This made their scales more resistant, making them irritating to deal with, to say the least.
The kobolts that ambushed the goblins appeared to be the first type, but upon closer inspection, I realized they weren't. They were the second. Their standing posture resembled a dog's, but they were hairless, and their skin seemed to follow a scaly pattern.
They were almost as ugly as the goblins, with eyes practically bulging from their sockets, a huge mouth almost fused with their snout, and claw-like fingers that somehow managed to hold their spears. Their eyes moved almost independently, like a lizard's, but they had no eyelids—at least I couldn't see any.
As soon as the goblins' bodies disappeared, one of the kobolts picked up the stones and headed toward the ruins of the UPA, while the other kobolts hid back in the dirt.
'Hmmm, this is going to be a little more complicated than I thought.'