The goblin riders were pretty much goblins sitting astride wild dogs. The only problem with these particular mobs was the fact that it almost seemed as if the goblins had been fused with the wild dogs—like some grotesque caricature of a centaur. Yet instead of a man with the lower body of a horse, it was wild dogs with the torsos of goblins growing out of their backs.
*Fwoosh! Thunk!*
Kenan didn't waste time as his first arrow flew true from his bow. It caught the first goblin rider in the middle of its skull, punching clean through and bursting out the other side. The goblin slumped backward for a few seconds before raising its hand and pulling the arrow out—much to Kenan and Kate's shock.
"What the hell?" Kenan asked in surprise. He turned to Kate. "Don't hold back! Use everything!"
As if that was the sign they were waiting for, the goblin riders rushed forward—all ten of them. If not for the weird fusion, it would be more apt to say they were up against twenty enemies. And it seemed they didn't die easily—or it was going to take a lot more than arrows to bring them down. But Kenan wasn't going to give up that easily. He rushed forward. It was better he met the monsters' charge a little ways ahead to give Kate more space to work with her skills. He left his quiver behind but not before picking one arrow and nocking it. He pulled back, and in the moment before he released it, he used his Basic Wind Bullet skill.
The arrow shot out from his hands like a cannon, leaving a stinging sensation behind as it flew through the head of the wild dog half of the goblin rider he'd attacked. The moment the arrow went through, the fused monster crashed to the ground—both halves dead. Kenan grabbed hold of the longsword, using both hands to grip it tightly as he attacked with a low sweep going up from left to right.
The blade bit and slashed through the lower jaw of another goblin rider, severing the wild dog's head and nearly splitting the body in two. Fire flew past him, smashing into one, then two, then three. Kate was rapidly casting, trying to reduce the number of enemies they had to deal with at a time. Kenan took a step back as jaws snapped shut where his left foot had been a second ago. The longsword stabbed down, going through the skull of the goblin half and deep into the body of the wild dog. That was three enemies down. Of the three Kate had attacked, only one was down for good, while the remaining two were struggling to their feet with severe burns.
Kenan fired of his skill as the second of Kate's attacked goblin riders went down as another Basic Fire Bullet flew past—this one a lot more focused—to take out the third of her first targets. That brought their targets down to five, and all of them had circumvented Kenan and were heading straight for Kate behind him. He turned and flung the longsword into the back of one of the goblin riders. The force and strength from that attack was so strong he didn't just slash through but also broke bones, carrying the monster forward until it crashed to the ground, severely injured and incapacitated.
Kate met the arrival of the remaining four with fury.
She met the charge of the first with a powerful shoulder tackle, her shield held high. The impact barely shook her—evidence that the increase in stats had really improved her physical qualities. She'd traded the staff for the wand. With her shield holding one in place, her wand went over the shield as she took a step back, letting the cabin behind her block any space the riders could use to flank her.
She called out the skill twice, the laser-like attack going left and right into the other goblin riders that were snapping at her and trying to bypass her shield and their comrade that she'd locked down. The fourth let out a yelp and a wild screech. Kenan had caught up, and he'd pulled the absent-minded goblin rider's head back before stabbing his gladius through its neck, using his considerable power to push down and break the goblin half's spine backward so the gladius could reach the back of the wild dog half. He twisted his blade and slashed forward, splitting the monster in half as he rose.
The two goblin riders, Kate had attacked with her basic fire bullet; were crashed on the ground. She'd attacked the wild dogs instead of the goblin halves. A smoldering hole was left in their skulls, but the goblin halves were still alive and somehow crawling toward her, slashing rusted daggers at her legs. The final goblin rider was still being held back behind her shield, completely exposed to Kenan behind it.
His gladius stabbed through, going through the heart of the goblin and then down into the wild mutt. Two swift strikes, and the goblin rider dropped to the ground. It didn't take much effort from both of them to put an end to the remnants of the goblin riders. The fight hadn't even lasted more than five minutes, and it was surprising for Kate just how efficient they'd both become and how well they worked together.
"That was intense, but not as bad as I thought it would be," Kate said as she started helping Kenan move the goblin rider corpses away.
"Don't get complacent. One mistake in that engagement would have meant the end for one of us, or for both of us. We can't afford to underestimate anything this place throws at us—not after that corrupted message from yesterday's last wave." Kenan's response put a damper on Kate's cheerful mood.
"Based on what you told me, it seems to me that perhaps the pylon or the system has a virus in it."
Kenan paused, then turned to look at her. "Are you sure?"
Kate gestured to the pylon where the system prompt from their recent wave waited. "Not a hundred percent. This system... there's no easy way for me to explain what it is. It seems like a computer program of sorts, but it's magic and seems baked into some sort of fundamental law or rule that can affect reality. We're getting stronger and gaining magical abilities, but in the end, it still feels like a computer program. Plus, we've had hints since we got here." She pointed at the face-trees this time.
"The system said those trees, or whatever causes people to turn into those trees, is an invasive entity. And it has swallowed up the entire world—slowly infecting and taking over everyone and everything that it comes across. Feels like a virus to me. And if it has taken down every hero the system has thrown at it, then what's to say the system or the pylon are completely infallible? There was barely any space when we first got here. Some corruption might have seeped into the pylon's systems."
Kenan blinked, then turned to the pylon like a light bulb had gone off in his head. "There's an option on the pylon menu about a Corruption Index. It's blank, though, so we can't tell how much corruption the pylon has."
Kate clapped her hands once. "Yeah, I remember seeing that option. I guess that raises the theory of a virus to about ninety percent. Maybe if we raise the pylon to its next level, that option would be available and we can know just how much corruption we're dealing with. Of course, we have no probable benchmark to measure if it's a lot or not, but we do have something to work toward."
Kenan nodded as they moved closer to the pylon to go over the notification prompts on it.
[Quest 4: Welcome Party III: The system has siphoned excess corruption and will be discharging it into the clearing for the heroes to purify. Wave 1/3 completed.]
[Wave 1: Defeat 10 Basic Goblin Riders 10/10. +200 exp each!]
[Wave 2: Defeat 30 Basic Goblins 0/30]
[Time until next Wave: 0:29:38]
"What the hell?" Kate asked in shock as she saw what was written there. She turned to Kenan, but he was just as surprised as she was. The basic goblins weren't that strong, but at the amount that was coming after them, their chances of winning were very low—extremely so, in fact.
"That's a rather steep increase. Do you think we can handle it?" Kate asked Kenan. But he didn't respond immediately as he looked around the clearing, desperately trying to come up with a plan to make this easier. The mobs didn't spawn one after the other but all at once on the opposite end from where their cabin was built. And there would be no time to adapt to such numbers—they'd be swarmed almost immediately.
"We need to limit their movements. Create a funnel so they can come at us one at a time, or at least a few of them at a time. If we get swarmed, we're done for." Kenan observed the clearing, his eyes roving from one end to the next. His past was colorful enough that there were times when he'd had to plot a defense. His initiation into the family business was one such scenario—he'd been left in a warehouse with a valuable package, and then his location was leaked to a rival group. His test was to ensure that he was the only one of the fifteen people in that warehouse to leave it alive.
"What do we do then? We don't have anything to use to create barriers of any sort," Kate asked, a little bit of panic already seeping into her voice.
Kenan tapped her on the shoulder. "We actually do have barriers that we can rely on."
"We do? Where are they?" she asked.
Kenan raised a finger and pointed. "There they are."
Kate raised an eyebrow in surprise as she realized that Kenan was pointing at the corpses of the monsters they'd killed. It seemed those bodies would finally be of some use.