Chapter 30: Help

30 30 - Help

Initially, when he entered the Fortress, the number of groups he encountered was quite high, but at some point they became increasingly difficult to find.

Since he killed the Blessed goblin, he had only managed to find 4 other groups of 3 goblins. With each group he killed, he was careful not to alert other groups and also to stop for a few minutes to rest and not risk losing a battle due to tiredness. But in the last two groups, after Noah finished resting, even though he walked a great distance, it was increasingly difficult to find other goblins. Once he had killed the fourth group, even though Noah ran through the forest making as much noise as possible, he found nothing.

'This is weird... The Fortress was open for a long time; it doesn't make sense that the amount of monsters in here has decreased so fast… and now that my ability is evolving so little...' Noah sighed while looking for the status of the skill [Hell Flames] in his profile.

[User: Noah Stern

Level: 01, 78/100 exp

HP: 10/10

Strength: 10

Agility: 10

Stamina: 10

Skills:

(Hell Flames Lv 01, 99/100 exp: A technique that consists of invoking the flames of hell itself. The flames of hell did not differ from normal flames, but after purifying so many sins and so many sinners, it became the most powerful flame, having even burned the flame god himself, making him beg Lucifer to extinguish the flames before he died. To increase the power of hell's flame ability, the user must burn sins or sinners.)]

'Only 1 point... I only need a single point to make the skill evolve... but not a single goblin is appearing... I need to find out what's going on here. This is illogical,' Noah thought.

Looking at his own compass, Noah started walking north. As he could not find any monsters in this region, at least when approaching the goblins' camp he might find the answer to the question for which he was looking.

Noah ran along the path at a steady pace so as not to expend more energy than he should have, but even running over a kilometer, Noah could not see even a sign of monsters or even the Blessed others.

'Perhaps the group has already attacked the camp...? But that is not possible for a Fortress that is overcrowded like this; it would be impossible for them to reach the camp in such a short time, even if they tried to move as quietly as they could.' Noah couldn't find an acceptable answer in his head, until one possibility arose. 'Unless...'

To further prove Noah's theory, he saw a small, lone goblin running in the same direction as him holding a rusty sword in his hand while apparently looking for something.

'I just need to follow this goblin and I will find out what's going on. Even if I have to give up the missing exp to evolve my skill, it won't do any good if I can't get there in time.' Noah thought this as he altered his course to follow the little goblin at a distance where he wouldn't be noticed.

After a few minutes of running at high speed, when Noah was already starting to feel tired, he finally could hear the noise of screams and shocks of metal against metal.

'Really... These idiots forgot that the biggest problem with goblins is the sense of companionship they have, and that the greatest cause of death inside a Fortress with goblins is that they can communicate at long distance, making the case that if the group is not eliminated quickly, another one will soon arrive to give support, and another, and another one, thus becoming a battle of resistance between the numbers of the goblins and how much the humans endure. However, different from an average Fortress where after killing seven or eight groups, the goblins stop coming, due to the time this Fortress was open, this number may easily have doubled, so the humans probably need to deal with at least fifteen groups of three or four goblins. The difficulty is... will these guys be able to fight for that long?' The last question Noah asked himself was obviously rhetorical, it was impossible for Blessed Rank E to fight for so long without their resistance running out.

Before he could even see anything, Noah could already hear the screams growing louder in addition to a strong smell of blood. According to the wiki he read on the internet, goblin blood has one of the worst smells of all Rank E Fortresses, second only to mud golem feces. Because Noah burned all the corpses in their entirety, Noah didn't actually smell the goblin blood for more than a few seconds after killing some of them, but now as he approached the scene, seeing the large number of corpses around explained the reason for the horrendously bad smell.

When the Blessed Ones saw Noah approaching, the woman who shouted at him made an expression of disgust, but she was so tired that she didn't have enough energy to shout at him and also keep shooting arrows at the incoming monsters. Among the other Blessed, a man of apparently 24 years with a serious and tired look shouted at Noah in a friendly voice, "Please help us! Our mages have run out of energy while two of our archers have run out of arrows..."

Looking at the group's situation, they were better off than Noah imagined. Even though exhaustion was obvious on everyone's face, at least there was no one with any fatal injury. Noah hadn't liked the way they treated him before the invasion started, but he had also benefited a lot from it, so he wouldn't be so stingy as to not help. Even more, Noah saw how awkward some of the archers and mages were when welding a knife because they were out of arrows or could no longer cast spells after spending so much energy in this long battle.

As Noah did not have a real Blessing for the first 4 years of his being Blessed, he was practically forced to learn to fight with knives and swords to defend himself. So after he received the [Hell Flames] ability, he stopped being a warrior/assassin and became something like a Magic Assassin. Since he always had a preference for shorter blades and faster logical reasoning, Noah always used this to ambush or escape with great agility in his invasions.

While seeing the large number of monsters attacking them simultaneously caused the Blessed group much desperation, for Noah the sight was better than even a large and luxurious banquet, a banquet filled with exp points and hopefully the evolution of his skill.

Without saying anything, Noah ran up to the front line with the warriors, but he did not touch his knife itself. The warriors found his behavior strange and wanted to warn him not to do anything stupid and kill himself without reason, but in the next second they understood what was going on.

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