Lord Of Puppets-Chapter 173 – Rediscovering the truth.
"..."
"Hey." – said the leader.
"Does anybody can tell me what the hell is this?" – said the leader as he was inspecting a footprint on the ground.
"This is definitely not goblin, too small." – said the party member C.
"It is definitely boots... Armor, 100%"
"But this is definitely not pigmen, the size is too small."
"Human?" – asked the leader.
"It looks like one. But I’m not so sure about it either." – replied party member B.
"There are no traps here whatsoever." – said the party member D, as it checking the area.
"....This isn’t normal." – said the party member A.
"We are about to go start getting near the center of the forest."
"By now, we should had seen at least some simpler traps."
"..."
(Tracks that doesn’t fit regular goblin feet nor any monsters we know off....) – thought the leader.
"Is somebody involved in this?"
"..."
"What about you?"
"I see it." – said the party member C who was sitting on top of tree branch.
[Skill: Farsight] + [Skill: Eagle Eye]
[Farsight]
[A skill that boost the user vision.]
[Eagle Eye]
[An enchanted version of the Farsight skill. It not only boosts the user vision related abilities, but also allows the user to much easily take a closer look at things from afar.]
"There is a lot of ’things’ there... Or more exactly, people."
"!"
"How many are we talking about?" – asked the leader.
"A lot." – replied party member C.
"The trees are in the way, but from what I can tell, they all are wearing armor.... And they are not moving."
"They are waiting for us."
"...Any goblins?" – asked the leader.
"Can’t tell." – replied party member C.
"I don’t see anything that resembles goblins." – said the man as he deactivated his skill.
"You good?" – asked party member A.
"Yea... I’m used to the side effect of using both [Farsight] and [Eagle Eye] at the same time." – said party member C man as he lifted up his mask and grabbed his face.
"Still, can’t say that it doesn’t hurt."
"But you can still go, right?" – asked the leader.
"Yea, I can." – said party member C as he put on his mask.
"Then let’s go and make sure to keep up your stealth at the all-time high." – said the leader before moments later the entire party once again disappeared into shadows of the trees.
Hidden from the plain sight, the party traversed through the forest at the rapid rate, quickly making their way towards the inner circle of the forest...And before long, they stopped.
"..."
(What the fuck is this?) – thought the leader who hid in the shadows, observing what he originally thought to be an army of goblins, according to the adventurer guild.
But what he saw was anything but goblins.
The creatures he and his party saw were not even resembling the goblins a slightest bit.
A people in what appears to be a thin layer armor.
A tall knights that were at least 2 meters tall.
And to top it all off.
Army of the standard model golems made out of earth, ranging from the ones that stood over 2 meters tall, to the ones that stood over 4-5 meters tall.
(What the hell are those things?!) – thought the party leader as he was looking around, realizing that the number of the "people" and golems in the area were by no means a "small" number.
(No! Who are they?!)
(Soldiers?)
(But they don’t appear to be wearing any symbols or emblems......)
(Not only that... But aren’t those golems? What are those doing here?)
(Split up / Don’t get close) – the leader of the group gave orders to his party members via hand gestures.
Each of the party members managed to quickly go around the golems without being spotted.... But as they tried to circle around them, they quickly realized that the "wall" of soldiers was just stretching nonstop....
"..."
(What the hell is this?) – thought bit nervous leader as it watched from the top of the tree branch, trying to stay hidden.
(This isn’t some batch or group.)
(This is a god damned army!)
(What the hell is going on? I don’t see anything else!)
(No goblins, pigmen, beasts or any other monsters that are currently on the rampage.)
(Only soldiers and golems?)
(This isn’t right.)
(According to the guild master, the goblins WERE spotted and they WERE tracked by the first group of adventurers.)
(And according to the information, the adventurers and goblins should had been HERE.)
(So why instead of goblins, there is unknown and massive army inside of the forest?)
"..."
(To make matters worse, I don’t know if we can slip past them.)
(There is just way too many of them.)
(And there is also fact that they posses some form of detection.)
(Should we take a risk and go in?)
"..."
(Nah. This time may be different.)
(Considering how they are just standing here... It would mean they are already aware of us.) – thought the leader as he put his hand inside of his pocket and clicked something, which ended up somehow signaling all of the split members of the group, who instantly all began quietly leaving the area.
(Even if they don’t catch us, but just spot us for a moment, things could end up problematic.) – thought the leader as he quickly left the area.
[Few moments later: Camp]
"What the hell do you mean there are no goblins?!" – asked confused guild master, after the Silver Talons returned back from infiltrating the forest and sharing all of their discoveries with the guild masters as well as the party leaders.
"Armed force.... Accompanied by golems?" – said the dwarf.
"By any chance, do they resembles the empire golems?"
"No. Their design is much more... Primitive to say the least." – said the party member C.
"They were definitely earth golems."
"A base design ones, if you seen war golems of the empire, then you can tell them by their form."
"There were big ones and the ones that were at least two times bigger than them."
"But that group of soldiers were-"
"Stop." – said the guild leader, suddenly interrupting the leader of the Silver Talons.
"Those knight and soldiers you told us about. Could you tell what race they were?"
"No." – replied the leader.
"But the knights were somewhat tall. All of them were over 2 meters tall."
"I think they may had been different species, compare to the regular soldiers."
"..."
"Or they may not had been PEOPLE in the first place." – said the guild master with worried expression as she bit on her nail.
"?"
"By any chance, you know who these people.... No... What are they?" – asked the leader of the Silver Talons.
"..."
"Yeah... I maybe have a clue." – said the guild master.
"Or more specifically, these guys may have clue." – said the guild master as she looked towards the group of adventurers.
"Shit... I think you maybe right." – said the older blond-haired man who seems to be the leader of the party, which the guild master encounter before alongside her party.
"These soldiers... They maybe too golems." – said visible nervous blond-haired leader as the youngest member of the party clenched his fists.
"?"
"Golems? Are you saying that the soldiers and knights we had spotted were not ’people’, but golems?" – asked the leader of the Silver Talons party.
"Yeah... There was once a raid on the dungeon here that ended up in failure." – said the blond-haired man.
"And the monsters that were encounter here were a humanoid type golems."
"Originally the golems were weak.... But they got us with an ambush. They forced us to ran away with our lives as these fucking bastards dropped bombs on us."
"Back then it was a combined force between adventurers and Garmfon kingdom, when it was still under control of the traitor duke Ash."
"However, from what I’ve heard, there was second operation held later on by the elves... We all thought that the elves did it, since there was no more golem related incidents."
"But considering that these golems are freaking here, that means the knife ears failed." – said the pissed off dwarf.
"Tch."
"What now?"
"We were gathered for goblins, but these enemies seems to be completely different what we were expecting?"
"And if the golems are here, that means we are also dealing with a dungeon... Probably a one at the break state as well." – said the dwarf as the adventurers gathered instantly started getting annoyed, complaining and questing about the next course of action.
"..."
"SILENCE!" – shouted guild master, instantly silencing the adventurers.
"..."
"Silver Talon." – said the beast-human as she turned the group of masked adventurers.
"How many of these ’golems’, did you spotted?"
"..."
"Army." – said the leader of the Silver Talons.
"The number of these golems were beyond alarming."
"We couldn’t get a proper look at their base or how many exactly of these monsters were there, since the number of enemies blocking our path was way too large."
"And if they are truly having some form of detection ability.... There is a chance that they may had expected somebody trying to sneak in."
"They set up an ambush for US specifically."
"Golems usually needs somebody controlling them.... And that somebody knows what they are doing."
"We could try going in, but again, if they see even a ’bit’ of us, then it could cause some nasty reaction we don’t want."
"Even if we are the best at sneaking around here, this whole thing look like a set-up, a trap meant to bait out the scouts."
"..."
"So, what do we do?" – asked the dog beastman.
"Do we have any information about these golems? Are they different compare to the ones these guys fought?" – asked the dog beastman as he pointed at the blond-haired party leader.
"We can try describing them as much as possible, in order for them to compare information they have on them.... But the fact remains that we are dealing with an army." – said the leader of the Silver Talons.
"Which means, we need to think carefully about next course of action."
"We were prepared to go to the war against army of goblins and possible all sort of monsters that had made alliance with the goblins."
"But are we ready to face these golems?"
"How strong are they?"
"How prepared are they?"
"Who is controlling them?"
"What do they aim for? Expansion of territory?"
"Or maybe they are just territorial and would attack anything that would get near them?"
"If we are not carefully, this could turn into large scale disaster."
"We could end up being wiped out or we may cause golems to go on the rampage."
"..."
"In short, we can’t do anything." – said the guild master as she gazed in the direction of the forest.
"..."
"Pack things up."
"We are leaving this place."
