Chương 177: 177

The layout of the dragonoid canyons was well known. It was all mapped long before Mark and the goblins ever showed up. If he wanted, Mark had a display in his lens that was updating in real time, comparing the scans in town to the scans of Eliot's and Herb Sacredcut's drones that were flying through the crater-canyons right now.

Those drones marked out new events in the landscape ahead, and they were using the full weight of the command center of the settlement to make the mapping easier, and to coordinate with other Techies. The rocky outcropping up there, where the goblins were lying in wait on the exterior of the canyon wall, in surveillance, was updated with an orange outline in Mark's lenses, indicating that it was a new area, Shaped by something or someone. In this case they all knew it was goblins.

Someone updated Mark's visor with the words 'goblin lookout'. As Mark glanced to the left, at the other major lookout, someone updated the map with another 'lookout' tag overlay. Mark was partially responsible for those overlays, because Eliot was piggybacking off of Mark's sight and Quark's help, to show where Mark's Unionsense was telling him were goblin locations. This much information might have been good for some people, but not for him. Eliot always put too many things into his sight."

Downplay the lens updates, Eliot," Mark said." Paring down the readout," Eliot responded. Mark's sight cleared of all text and all possible obstructions, though the orange outline on the goblin footholds remained. That was good. Isoko asked, "What's it looking like inside?" Eliot said, "Compared to last known readouts and current lay of the land, there are traps inside the canyons. Some are obvious.

According to what I am seeing, it might be safer for you to trigger the obvious traps, which seem to be laid down along the normal paths, or just beside the normal paths. We're seeing evidence of hidden traps alongside side passages, and evidence that the goblins don't have any exterior structures at all, so the outside is trapped and they get around in tunnels. There's something developing in the next canyon over, but we'll keep an eye on that. As for right here, the big, exterior traps are human-sized.

There's one big rockfall trap— Fuck." Mark tensed." They saw my drone... They're picking off the drones. Switching off to high surveillance." Mark breathed out slowly, hovering there above the hole he had made in the ground, and above the debris of the goblin he had already killed. He waited. Eliot came back, "The main roads are trapped in big ways. You'll be able to see those traps. Smaller traps wait below the big traps. I saw crossbows and bolts that were dripping with green sludge. It's probably goblinspit.

That's how Barba and Onoho got infected as they were running."" Is it tinker tech?" Isoko asked.

"… Didn't look that well made…" Eliot paused.

"I'm going to say 'no'. Someone just has a Mind for it. Not the actual Tinker touch. Expect a lot of armed goblins firing from the canyon walls and from trees and from that place they're making in the other canyon when you get there." Eliot strongly added, "These goblins are almost as advanced as humans, Akailah is likely dead, and they almost surely have Marksman goblins through using her as an incubator.

They absolutely have various kinds of brawny goblins, because Vikas was a True Brawny, and Denaka was a Spotter so they have Spotter goblins, too." Some of the guys here are checking on the dragonoids, and the goblins might have actually gotten a few of them." Pause.

"Maybe two. We're seeing the lizard dragonoid, and most of the rest… Yes. All except for the…" Longer pause.

"Ah, fuck. The mole dragonoid of claw canyon might be deep underground and hiding, but he might be dead, and that's how the goblins have burrowed in everywhere. Not just the Stone Shaper goblin that we know they have. The bird dragonoid of tower canyon is missing. It's not always here, though. It travels to another dragonoid canyon 300 kilometers south, by the coast. Hopefully that bird one hasn't been subsumed. If it has, expect very fast flying goblins." Not a time for normal killing, then. Time for the big guns.

Mark said, "Heard and understood. Going in Union blazing." Eliot muttered softly, "Thank Freyala." Isoko said, "Here." And then she reached out with Union, in a rather normal way for the two of them. Isoko couldn't do offensive Unions at all, so she couldn't link with Mark directly to help him with his own Unionwork. Their Unions wouldn't be directly meshing, but 'having two cores to a computer' was better than one, in a lot of good ways.

It was pretty much what they did all the time, out in the wilds, when the going got tough and Mark needed to kill indiscriminately. Mark pulled in his adamantium, almost standing on the ground but not quite, to give himself a lot more range with Union. The canyon wall was 400-ish meters away, and that was at the far end of Mark's range. With Isoko's Union beating hard in her own way, connecting to the world and to Mark and Barba and her people, Mark reached back to Isoko, and then he reached out.

Black lightning shocked forward. Mark braindanced with a Union of vein integrity and decay, while he beat his heart with the meaning of adamant and weakness, making his team stronger in most every way as he reached into the walls of the canyon, into the stone, to every single goblin vector that pointed his way. Mark could not actually see the targets, so it was almost reckless to use this Power without visual confirmation, but Mark knew what a goblin-vector felt like with 99. 9% certainty. It was enough for him.

The effect was not immediate at all. All the goblins up there could see Mark and his team, since they were certainly Spotters born of the Spotter girl, or otherwise. They saw the beating black lightning reaching in their direction. It did not seem to reach all the way, as the lightning vanished after a 120-ish meters. The vectors of the goblins briefly turned worried, and then elated at Mark's inadequate range.

But the reason Mark's lightning vanished was not because it couldn't reach, but because Mark was threading into the world, first. Black lightning zapped out from each goblin, from their hearts and minds, and their brief elation turned to something else. Something worried. Mark couldn't see them, but he imagined that they were looking at their bodies, at the black lightning crawling out of their skin and dancing off of their green heads.

They probably started to cough, first, their concerns pointed inward, their vectors pointed at each other. And then they probably felt woozy. And then, Panic. Movement. The stone outcropping boiled with worried vectors that infected tens of other vectors out there, unseen mind goblins transferring panicked thoughts far and wide, but only the four bodies in the outcropping moved. They raced inward, down unseen tunnels, four different green bodies running away from Mark, deeper into the canyon wall.

There might have been tiny screams. Warnings. The mental warnings to the other Mind goblins out there did more than the verbal ones. The goblins elsewhere began to organize in strange ways. Mark was still connected to the original four. Still decaying them from the inside, while supporting his own team here, 400 meters away from the canyon wall. Mark walked forward, on his actual legs, sussing out the encampments through their tangled vectors. It was sort of like watching ripples in a pond made of people.

The other lookout area was still watching them. Mark didn't want anyone seeing their arrival, so he connected to them, too, and there was no tunnel in that part of the canyon wall for whatever reason. Mark was using the first group of 4 goblins to suss out the rest, but the other lookout goblins were on their own. Mark crunched in on them. Those goblins began to die and panic, and so they rushed out into the light, green blood turning black… Maybe. They were too far for Mark to see— Pop! And then again: Pop!

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Goblin heads disappeared, and Mark turned and saw Barba's smoking rifle. She wasn't shaking at all. She looked better. Mark's Union was helping her, of course, and Isoko was right there with her, too, also providing a Union. Barba lowered her rifle and walked forward with her knights Aaron and Samson behind her, spread out to both sides. Isoko was in front, between Barba and Mark, but a lot closer to Barba.

They continued forward. Goblins died out of sight, though Mark knew what they were seeing before they died. The goblins that went inward, to the others, were like monsters being released into a crowded room. Everyone saw that they were infected with something, and that they were dying, and then black lightning infection 'spread' to them. More and more goblin vectors were suddenly worried about what was happening, though a few got excited to see their fellows dying before them.

The deaths of the lookouts meant that more people were coming, and more people meant more goblins, if they could win the fight. As some goblins died, their uncaring brothers watching them with glee, the vectors of maybe 25 goblins split their focus between the dying and one stronger vector, standing taller among the rest. That single vector poked the others into line, into some sort of response. Mark connected to that single vector and through him, all the rest.

The goblins panicked as their leader died as fast as Mark could kill him, which turned out to be 3 heartbeats. And then Mark moved among the populace. For the weaker goblins, their hearts split inside their chests, or their brains leaked out of their ears, or their bodies simply stopped working as vessels burst in their brains. Half of the goblins were dead within 10 seconds. The other half started running away, toward other encampments in the canyon walls.

There was some sort of magical response that amounted to pushback on Mark's Power, and which Mark plowed through with adamant strength. Most of the goblins could do nothing but die. Some managed to run, their goals to organize a bigger response. Mark estimated the deaths as he walked forward. Ten. Twenty. Thirty dead goblins. And then Mark was 350 meters away, and he hit some big encampment of goblins inside of the canyon walls, and he felt several goblins rebuff him.

Mark focused on those ones as he walked forward, across the decayed grasses outside of the first dragonoid canyon. … Hmm. Mark spoke for the first time in a few minutes, "Looks like some of them aren't dying immediately, but I think that's something like three hundred killed so far. Confirm the village, Eliot?" Mark added, "Inside, to the right, maybe 20 meters in from the walls?"" Looking," Eliot said. Mark kept walking—" That's just a stone rise. If there's a village then it is underground."

Eliot added, "The big goblin encampment is one valley over." Mark was losing their vectors as they ran to get away, and as they did… something. Ah. Mark realized what was happening.

"I think some of them have really strong Body Powers, and someone is a Healer… There is a rallying response. Lot of healers, I think. I'm still killing, but there are at least… 20-ish, that are resisting death. A few are completely immune to what I am doing. Don't know what that is about. They probably don't have normal physiology." Mark was 200 meters from the entrance to the canyon, and he kept going, splitting his focus on what he sensed, versus what he saw.

Dragonoid canyons the world over were all made in the same way. Dragon fights tore up the land, and dragon blood spilled everywhere. The canyon wall ahead of Mark was a crater wall, from where some kilometers-long dragon had fallen and fought with another such monster. The gap in the crater wall showed a land of multicolored trees, some of them glowing bright pink or green. Colorful vines were the only thing from inside the canyon that managed to make it out of the canyon.

The black blood of dragons only existed in the canyons, and so the glowing plants only grew inside. Mark wasn't sure how the 'blood of dragons' kept being replenished, and why it remained only inside of the canyons, because surely the plants ate it all, right? But maybe there was something of a cycle going on, and maybe 'dragon blood' wasn't literal. But, whatever! Mark focused on the gap in the canyon wall. The stone to the sides of the passage towered like a gateway to a city.

He was still 100 meters away, but now that Mark was closer he could see the traps on the walls. Big rocks, mainly. The rocks were positioned perfectly so that they would fall into the gap and thus crush anything in the middle, or, more likely, split any group of humans that happened to be going through the gap. Mark did not go into the canyon. Instead, he focused on the goblins who were rallying just on the other side of the gap, and up there, by the boulders ready to fall.

Strangely enough, Mark couldn't see the goblins by the boulders at all. He counted 3 vectors, though. He stared up at the boulders, trying to figure out what was wrong. He could not." Barba. See those boulders up there?" Barba's vector told a story that her mouth never did. She was already looking up there, and feeling sick to her stomach. Dread filled her, but also hate. She could not see anything, either, but she could tell that something was up there, and it was watching.

Mark said, "The second boulder in the middle. I need you to shoot about a meter to the right, at goblin height." Barba lifted and shot in less than a second of turnaround from Mark's order. Something distorted up there, but not in any way that Mark understood, except that the vector turned tail and ran inside of the walls. For the briefest of moments, though, Mark had connected to that vector. As black lightning beat from his body, filling the world, black lightning had reciprocated off of the goblin up there.

And then the connection vanished." Hmm," Mark huffed, thinking that he needed to do some sort of weird union to connect to that goblin, who obviously didn't have any sort of normal physiology—" It's that fucking blue goblin!" Barba spat. Eliot's voice came over the coms, "I saw it, too. Give us a moment to confer— Okay that was fast. We're 90% confirming blue goblin as a Lightself. Could be a Body, Shaper, or an Arch Skill. It no-sells a lot of other Skills.

If you can connect to him with Union and make him drop his Skill you should be able to kill him." Mark said, "I was connected while he wasn't in his Lightself, when Barba disrupted it, but now he and several others are running away instead of preparing their ambush, but yeah," Mark finished his thought from before, "I'll make him sleep, or something, and I'll switch when I need to switch. Right now I'm still killing hundreds of goblins per minute inside of the walls of the crater."

He wasn't sure what, exactly, he would switch to, in order to connect to the goblin in the first place, but he'd figure it out. He had a few good ideas already, like drawing the goblin into a Union of physical versus ephemeral. Maybe a Union of war, with them on two sides of the fight? That could be enough. It was usually enough for spars between Mark and other people, but for a goblin? Mark didn't know. Mark turned and asked Aaron, "Can you trigger the boulder trap without being exposed yourself?"

Aaron said, "Lightspeed goes fast, but entering and exiting does take a second. I can still do it. Just the boulders?"" Yes." Aaron vanished in a flicker, reappearing up by the boulders. He kicked them and sent them tumbling, and then he flickered back to castle formation, standing with Samson and Barba. Barba's finger held beside her rifle's trigger. Samson had out his shield and mace and his shield was glowing with a soft grey light, filled with his Shielder Skill.

They were prepped for defense, and Samson should be able to have everyone hunker down for a fallback location at any moment. Mark wasn't sure exactly how 'Shielder' worked, or Lightspeed or Hunter for that matter, but he'd figure out fast enough. The boulders collapsed into the gap in the crater wall with a great clatter and breaking. Some small trees got smashed, and then something stranger happened. A cloud of green light filtered into the air, and then dissipated to green smoke that flowed everywhere.

Mark switched to purity/impurity. A crash of black lightning cleared the air before any of the green stuff got anywhere near anyone at all. Mark still got a small whiff of whatever it was. It smelled like something sick. Like bile or… something. Barba muttered, "Goblingas." Oh yeah. That's what it was. It was the same stuff as their spit, infecting anyone it touched with Goblin Bite, but less effective. It only worked on people who were close to death. It was a tool meant to irritate… or maybe to blind?

For the real trap out there? Well now Mark was getting cautious. Maybe they were supposed to trigger the gas before the boulders got tossed down on them? Or maybe the gas was for a different trap… Mark paused, as he recognized the danger ahead. These were smart monsters. He knew that. They were like little, vicious humans, who were just plain murderous. Practically demon cultists. And now he was second guessing himself, because these bastards could plan.

Mark switched back to his killing Unions as he asked Eliot, or whoever might be listening on the coms, "How important is keeping the trees alive?" Barba answered, "The forest will regrow from anything as long as the destruction isn't too great. Blighting would be death to the ecology."

"… How about a little bit of blighting?" Barba didn't have an opinion. … Well. Mark needed clear lines of sight, for the land in there was surely trapped to shit. He might have a good helmet now, but all the rest of him was simple ablative armor, and though it held up exceedingly well to the occasional unexpected claw or whatever… traps were another matter altogether. Honestly, traps were Mark's main weakness. Traps had no vectors. Plus, everyone else was vulnerable to traps, too, of course. So…

blighting down the main paths, only. Mark stared forward, into the cavernous, multicolored green, saying, "Blighting a path." If he even could. Some of those plants were surely monsters… So. Maybe Mark could feed some of the monsters to the other monsters. Yes. That would probably work well. Barba hummed, almost in acknowledgment, or maybe in objection, but that was the extent of her opinion.