Chapter 92: Chapter 88: Under the Cover of Night
Lin Mo didn’t consider himself some bleeding-heart saint, overflowing with sympathy, but he was still a normal person. Seeing a scene like this, he couldn’t help but be moved.
As an ordinary man, that father might not have had the strength to stop so many Goblins, but as a father, he would never have let those monsters harm his daughter before he drew his last breath.
Perhaps it was precisely because of the father’s efforts that Lin Mo had enough time to arrive and save the girl who was about to be assaulted.
But the situation was critical. There was no time for sentiment or consolation. Lin Mo could only give her a quick instruction to run back the way they had come before hurrying off to find the next Goblin.
The sky grew darker, and the tragedies in Falling Leaves Village continued to multiply.
Although the Guild’s notice had mentioned that Falling Leaves Village had been harassed by Goblins several times recently and had assessed the village’s danger level as high—even adding an urgent marker—an attack of this scale was still completely unexpected.
There were just too many Goblins...
So many that Lin Mo barely needed to search for them; every short distance he advanced, he would see victimized villagers.
He managed to reach some in time to save them, but more often, he arrived too late, finding only cold corpses on the ground.
Similar scenes were playing out constantly throughout the village.
"Child, run! You must live on!"
A farmwife in coarse clothes pushed her crying child away, picked up a hatchet, and charged toward the Goblins without looking back.
"Grandpa, I’m scared..."
The toddler, just learning to speak, clung tightly to the old man. Under the flickering light of an oil lamp, the Curved Blade in a Goblin’s hand cast wavering shadows across his face.
"Darling, close your eyes. It will be over soon... Our lives have been so miserable, it’s time we were set free!"
The man, who had just returned from a day of farming, held his wife tightly in his arms, a bleak, bitter smile on his face.
...
One scene after another, everything happening before their eyes made even the Adventurers—long accustomed to making a living on the brink of death—frown deeply.
The Adventurers, advancing from all directions, had fought their way to the center of Falling Leaves Village. But with only about twenty of them, the areas they could cover were still quite limited compared to the village as a whole.
"At a time like this, our great noble lord is holed up in his castle, unwilling to send out his Guards!"
Pain said angrily as he cut down a Goblin.
"These Goblins are endless! By the looks of it, there must be several hundred of them!"
"More than that! They’re still pouring in from outside the village, there’s no end in sight..."
"And they’re scattered everywhere. A few of them can pop out from any direction."
"Our numbers are limited. We can’t keep fighting like this; it’s too inefficient."
Marlow shook his head. Even if these Ordinary Goblins posed little threat to them, the drain on their Physical Strength was a problem. Most importantly, they didn’t have enough people. They could kill Goblins, but it was hard to stop them from harming the villagers.
If they kept fighting like this, even if they managed to kill every last Goblin, Falling Leaves Village would probably be...
"An attack of this scale must be orchestrated by a highly intelligent Goblin commander. We have to find it!"
In the crowd, Alton remained calm, pinpointing the core of the problem in a single sentence.
If they could kill the commanding Goblin, even if it didn’t cause the Goblin Army to rout immediately, the Goblins would at least become disorganized. Once they lost their relatively unified structure, these weak, low-tier Demons would reveal their timid and cowardly nature.
At that point, both fighting and defending would become much easier.
"Where’s Harlek? He’s the only Professional Level Assassin among us. This is his time to shine."
"Alright, I’ll go look for it. I’ll leave this area to you."
Harlek, the same Assassin who had crossed paths with Lin Mo earlier, answered the call. He withdrew from the fight and began circling around from another direction to get behind the Goblins.
"Be careful!"
Alton’s voice was drowned out by the noise of the chaotic battlefield.
Besides them, many of the village’s able-bodied youth were also resisting the Goblin invasion.
Falling Leaves Village was a medium-sized settlement with a resident population of about one thousand. However, most were either children or the elderly. The proportion of able-bodied adults was not high, numbering less than two hundred.
The remaining young people had all gone to work in the towns or even the cities.
Of these less than two hundred able-bodied adults, many had already been injured or killed in the initial raid. Their own Combat Power was insufficient; they struggled to even deal with two Goblins.
But even so, they did not retreat, doing everything in their power to protect the village and their families behind them.
The other people in the village were not idle either. The village chief began organizing people to gather the remaining villagers together to care for and protect the wounded.
Some of the elderly also dragged their weary bodies into the fight, and those with minor injuries returned to the battlefield after receiving first aid...
This was going to be a battle of attrition!
Lin Mo began to consciously conserve his Physical Strength.
Although his Physical Strength was quite abundant after his promotion to Knight, there was no telling how long the current battle would last. To deal with any potential surprises, he had to ensure his Physical Strength remained above 70% at all times.
At the very least, he couldn’t just keep using [Cross Slash] with abandon. He would only use it when he encountered several Goblins gathered together, where he could gain more Skill Level.
The sky had turned completely dark. Only the faint starlight helped them barely see the enemies in front of them. Fortunately, the Goblins’ night vision was also average, not much better than a human’s.
But they clearly had no intention of retreating. Even though two to three hundred Goblins had already died at the hands of the Adventurers and villagers, they still poured in endlessly from all directions.
It was as if the number of enemies before them hadn’t decreased at all.
Even the Adventurers’ Physical Strength was starting to run low; as for the villagers, who were just ordinary people, they had long been pushed to their limits.
More and more people were getting injured due to exhaustion. In the darkness, there were even occasional cases of friendly fire. If they kept fighting like this, the situation would only get worse.
The villagers behind them lit oil lamps and torches, but the weak light they provided was of limited use.
"Where’s Harlek? He’s been gone for almost twenty minutes... why isn’t he back yet?"
Alton was getting antsy. Some of the Adventurers’ Physical Strength was about to bottom out, and their movements were growing increasingly sluggish.
This was the terrifying thing about creatures like Goblins. Though individually weak, once they amassed in large numbers, they became a catastrophe. That was why some people called them "Green-skinned Cockroaches" or "Oversized Locusts."
"Logically, scouting shouldn’t take this long. Could something have happened to him?"
"No way... He’s a Professional Level Assassin, after all. If he was determined to escape, not even an adult Mutated Goblin could stop him."
"What if it was a Goblin Caster?"
