The Land: Raiders: A LitRPG Saga (Chaos Seeds Book 6)

by Aleron Kong

  The sword adept got back up. He looked at Richter and said, “We need to leave.”

  The chaos seed nodded, and said, “I’m ready.”

  Richter ordered the snake to stay behind and guard the Hearth Mother. The strike team reformed and they bolstered their numbers with the other ten meidon sprites. Richter took the time to cast Night Vision on himself, Sion and the other members of the strike team that didn’t have enchanted bandanas. With that done, Yoshi took point.

  They walked through the copse of trees until it ended, then moved as quickly as possible down the hill to the river. Yoshi had them wait for the clouds to block the moonlight before they crossed out into the open. Once they reached the riverbed, they sped up, moving at a fast but silent jog.

  While they traveled the four miles to the goblin encampment, Richter went to each member of the strike team and offered his enchanting skills. They each handed over their climbing claws, and he used low level soul stones to replenish the charges. He also handed out more health, stamina and mana potions. His stocks were running low, and he thanked the gods again for the Dragon’s Cauldron. Alma flew just above his head.

  All of their breaths came out in short huffs. The river flowed quietly along beside them. Sprite armor was made for stealth, so no jingling mail or loose metal gave away their position. Even their footfalls were magically quieted by their Reinforced Sprite Boots of Silence. Richter kept his eyes sharp for traps, but all he saw was water and mud.

  In no time, they were beneath the goblin encampment. The embankment they stood beside was sixty feet of vertical rock, so they would be hidden from view unless a goblin peered over the edge and looked straight down. Even from their position far beneath the enemy settlement, Richter could smell a foul stink coming from above. It was a mix of rotting bodies, untended latrines, and a horrid funk that Richter had learned to just call “goblin.”

  The chaos seed sent Alma high up to do recon and pulled his map out. Most of the strike team faced out to keep watch, but Yoshi leaned over the enchanted parchment. The entire view was in shades of black and green, showing that Alma was seeing with night vision. Soon the red triangle of an enemy appeared, though, then another, then dozens, then hundreds.

  Richter’s mouth went slightly dry as he saw exactly what they were arrayed against. He lost count of all of the enemies above him, but it was at least three hundred. What made it worse was that he knew she was only showing the enemies that were outside. There were over two dozen wooden buildings constructed that could conceal two, three or even four times that number of enemies.

  He forced his breathing to calm. The most important part of the info Alma was sending wasn’t about the enemies; it was about prisoners. The other reason that Yoshi had decided upon the river approach was that this edge of the camp they were standing beneath was also where the cages for the prisoners were located. Dozens of yellow squares appeared on the map, clustered in three cages. None of the cages were large, and it looked like most of the prisoners were forced to occupy less than three by three feet of space. They were filthy and abused. Many had festering sores on their faces, arms and other exposed skin. Disease was rampant among the prisoners.

  There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to how the captives were imprisoned. Dwarves, elves, humans, sprites and gnomes were shoved into the cages like cattle. Goblin guards walked around the jails, despite the later hour. There were only ten guards, however. Seeing as how the prisoners were weak and sickened, it wasn’t hard to understand why the goblins didn’t consider them a threat. Even those ten should be able to slaughter all the prisoners in short order, especially if only one cage opened at a time. Still, it seemed a bit light on security to Richter.

  The walls around the encampment looked much the same as before. It was erected in sections, leaving massive gaps. An inner wall had been erected around some central buildings, and the goblins guarding those two gates were both more alert and better equipped. Also within the inner encampment was the cave that Alma had seen before and the sacrificial area with the blood stone. It still sickened Richter to see the pit of bodies next to the artifact. Some of the details were hidden because they were seen through night vision, but the bodies of dozens of men, women, and children could still be seen.

  Alma was finishing her sweep when she heard a scream. Flying over a section of the camp near the cages, what she saw made Richter so angry that he tasted acid in his mouth. About seventy goblins stood over eight wailing prisoners. There were two elf women, three gnomes, two males and a female, a young human woman, and a human boy. Richter’s teeth pulled back in a snarl. They were being raped.

  The goblins not actively involved stood around jeering while the prisoners sobbed and begged. A ninth gnome woman lay unconscious on the ground. Her lack of awareness didn’t save her from being abused just as horribly as the others. Two goblin fighters were using her at once.

  One group of goblins had decided to make a game of it. A naked and bleeding elf woman stood in a circle of them. One fighter chased her with a smile on his face and a dagger in his hand. She already bled from at least five different places, the worst of which was a ragged cut across her left breast. As she begged, the goblins only hooted louder, aroused by her pain.

  The rapes were happening only a couple hundred yards from the prisoners. Now Richter understood why there weren’t more guards around the cages. A row of buildings separated the cages from the clearing that held the goblins and their abused victims. A look of stark fury came over Richter’s face. It was so intense that he started shaking and he didn’t even hear Yoshi the first two times the adept spoke.

  “Richter. Lord Richter! Battle Sergeant!” Yoshi hissed.

  The chaos seed looked over at the adept, “What?” he snapped quietly.

  “I see the same thing that you see,” Yoshi said tapping the map. “It is horrible, but I have seen goblins do far worse. They will do far worse if we do not save the rest of these people. The truth is, what is happening to those nine may be why we are not facing thirty goblins around the cages. Their suffering will help us to save the rest.”

  “Would you be so cavalier about the ‘suffering’ of those men and women… and that boy, if they were sprites?” Richter asked bitterly. What he had just seen had ignited a rage inside of him. His face felt hot, and his fingers twitched involuntarily while he imagined them wrapping around a green skinned neck.

  Richter may have been hot with anger, but it was nothing compared to the cold hatred that overtook Yoshi’s face, “I have been fighting this war longer than you have been in this world! I have seen goblins skin babies alive and feed them to pigs. I have found the remains of their victims after they are tied over sear ant nests. The goblins like to do that because their captives sometimes break their own backs. The pain from the thousands of bites contracts their muscles that hard. You think I do not care? You are a fool!” Yoshi spat. “Do not speak to me of that boy’s suffering. You sound like a boy yourself! That boy is enduring something horrible, and though he does not know it, he endures it to save the lives of all the other captives. Now will you continue to whine and let those poor souls’ sacrifice be for nothing, or will you stop sniveling and fight?”

  Richter and Yoshi glared at each other for several tense seconds. The chaos seed fully considered attacking the adept, so great was his anger, but Yoshi’s words rang true. It was Richter who finally looked away, ashamed. He channeled his anger and quashed his self-indulgent shame. When he had controlled himself enough to speak again, a volcano of anger still burned inside of him waiting to erupt. He promised himself that the goblins would feel the pain of their victims a thousandfold. With his eyes clear and full of hate, he spoke softly, “I apologize, Adept Yoshi. You are right. How do we help these people? How do I kill as many of these motherfuckers as possible?”

  Yoshi told him how.

  CHAPTER 31 – Day 141 – Kuborn 31, 15,386 EBG

  There were large gaps in the wall surrounding the goblin encampm
ent. Unsurprising, seeing as how less than half of the outer barbican had been constructed. The spaces were too large for the goblins to monitor every weak spot all the time. To make up for that, they had patrols walking around fairly frequently. If any of those groups spotted the strike team and sounded the alarm, it was game over.

  The plan was relatively simple. As they had said before, there were four main objectives. One, find and take whatever had drawn the goblins to the valley, or barring that, destroy it. Two, steal the Bloodstone. Three, destroy the goblin forces. Four, rescue the captives. While the first three had greater military significance, they would all be much easier to achieve if the allied army didn’t have to worry about noncombatants. Because of that, phase one of the incursion was to get the prisoners to safety.

  The one piece of good news was that the goblins were lazy. The cages holding the prisoners had been placed in one corner of the encampment. Two walls had been built, hemming the area in, but nothing had been built where the two walls met. That section faced the river. The goblins had let the sixty-foot drop onto the rocks be deterrent enough for any escaped slaves.

  In all honesty, they were probably right in most cases. The cliff would most likely be enough to keep the prisoners contained, or at least to ensure the death of anyone that failed to make the climb down. Considering the fact that the cliff was mostly rock and loose scree, and that it went almost straight up, it was highly unlikely that any of the weakened and diseased prisoners could have made the climb. Richter had no idea how Liddle had done it, considering the state the hill sprite had been in when they had found him.

  While the cliff might be enough to keep the prisoners in, it might as well be an “Enter Here” sign for the strike team. They all prepared to climb. The original strike team would go first, making hand- and foot-holds with their climbing claws. Richter, Sion and the other meidon sprites would follow. Yoshi took point.

  The sword adept moved faster than should have been possible going straight up. The other sprites went up as well with their climbing claws out, creating holes as they went. Each time Yoshi reached up, he activated his claws and turned his hand in a clockwise motion, while moving it in a slight circle. It created small holes in the rock. It wasn’t much, but with Richter’s high Strength and the climbing boost from his gauntlets, it was no problem to follow. The meidon sprites had even less of an issue. In a few short minutes, the entire team was at the top of the cliff. Then it was time to kill.

  Yoshi had already given kill orders to the sprites before they began the climb. The twenty sprites split into four different groups, each with five archers. Richter had handed out a few vials of poison to the meidon sprites prior to the climb, and each sprite had three or four arrows with the leech poison smeared on. Alma continued to fly above them all, her dark body unseen, and gave real time updates as to the positions of the goblin guards.

  Seeing her visual feed, Richter felt like he was looking at one of the old games he used to play. Specifically, it looked like Battlefield 9: Water Wars. He shook his head to clear it of idle thoughts and focused on what he was seeing. Enemy combatants walked around lazily chatting to one another and ridiculing the prisoners. Two were fully drunk, judging by the bottles they held and their lopsided gait. The sprites moved forward, trusting in the darkness and their Cloaks of Concealment to keep them hidden. They all looked at the goblins they would attack soon and waited for the signal.

  When Yoshi had told him what would trigger the attack, Richter looked at him in shock and disgust. His anger had started surging again, and the adept was the closest available outlet for it. The half-sprite had said nothing in defense. He had just returned Richter’s gaze and let the chaos seed remember his previous words. Ultimately, the chaos seed had nodded in acquiescence.

  So the sprites waited in the dark, watching their hated enemies. Each of them nurtured murder in their hearts, wanting nothing more than to set their dark impulses free. The wind blew lightly, bringing another putrid gust of the camp’s stink to their noses. No one moved. Then, another high-pitched scream rent the air from the poor souls being violated just north of the cages. The goblin guards all stopped and turned towards the sound, leering in gross joy at the pain being caused.

  The sprites unleashed death.

  Twenty bowstrings snapped as one; the sound finished before the woman’s begging scream even ended. Arrows sprouted as if by magic from eyes, mouths, throats, hearts and heads. The goblins collapsed to the ground. Watching them fall, all Richter felt was a rough and bitter satisfaction as he thought, I hope you enjoyed that scream, you filthy fucking animals. He moved into action.

  Half of the sprites rushed forward to search the bodies of the goblins for keys to the cages. Getting closer, the smell of unwashed bodies and bodily waste was nauseating, but Richter fought down the impulse to vomit and accomplished his task. He and Sion secured several ropes from his bag to the bars of the cages. The other ends were thrown over the cliff. Then the prisoners started to arrive.

  Several of the children cried out in fear when their cage doors were opened, but the others quickly quieted them once they realized they were looking at sprite faces. All members of the strike team scanned the surroundings, but no goblins came looking. Richter guessed that cries of pain and fear were most likely commonplace, so even if they had been heard, they were probably also quickly ignored.

  One by one, the prisoners left the cages and walked to the cliff’s edge. There was a tense moment when one of the larger human captives shoved a woman out of the way in his haste to leave the cage. It was not the time to address it, however, so Richter just used Analyze and made a note of the man’s name, Edgin.

  The prisoners who were strong enough to climb down the ropes immediately went over the side. They were instructed to start walking west and were assured that the strike team would catch up soon. After suffering at the hands of the goblins, they needed no further urging. Small children were tied to adults with lengths of rope and taken over the edge as well. Richter was confused that there were no elderly prisoners, but then he looked back at the emptying cages. In each were the decaying bodies of prisoners that had already succumbed to disease and harsh conditions. His heart almost broke when he saw the small form of a baby that had been left behind in the churned mud of the jail cell. After seeing the haunted look in the eyes of the prisoners, the chaos seed couldn’t find it within himself to cast judgement. Instead, he turned his eyes towards the north. He could still hear occasional screams and hooting goblin laughter. Phase two, he promised himself bitterly. Phase two.

  Not all of the prisoners were strong enough to make the climb. Some were so weakened by disease that their health was in the low double digits. These, he knew, had to be strengthened. Richter waved one of the sprites over.

  “Drape your cloak over my hands,” he ordered. Then he began to cast. Golden light surrounded his hands again and again as he cast Weak Slow Heal. The more powerful minor version of the spell would have had a greater effect, but he had a finite amount of time and an even smaller mana pool. Each time he cast the spell, he watched some of the color return to the abused captives’ faces and was gratified when a few were strong enough to attempt the climb.

  Two of the other members of the strike team saw what he was doing and placed their hands under the cloak as well. Golden light surrounded the other sprites’ hands, and Richter breathed a sigh of relief. Some of the sprites were Life magi. His own mana had been close to being depleted. One looked at him and raised his other hand, moving it in hand speak.

  ^We handle this. Recover.^

  Richter sat back and drank a mana potion. He would have liked to have had Alma’s help him with the healing, but she was too important in her role as overwatch. Only minutes had passed since they had killed the goblins guarding the prisoners, and Yoshi was determined to hold this position to give the prisoners as much time as possible to reach safety. If any goblins found the empty cages, the game would be up. So the strike team remained to kil
l any goblins that might approach. Richter’s gaze turned north, unable to forget that all the while, innocent men, women, and children continued to be violated only several hundred yards away.

  The chaos seed understood the reasoning, but couldn’t help feeling sick about not helping the people the goblins were abusing. He also could not shake the fear that at any minute the strike team would be discovered and hundreds of goblins would bury them in hatred and steel. Almost as if his thoughts had summoned calamity, he heard a harsh whisper.

  “I cannot leave. They have my wife and son!”

  Richter looked to his left. On the other side of the cage, he saw a human man talking to Yoshi. The man had indeed whispered, but with the harsh inflections he was using, it sounded as loud as a tea kettle whistling to the chaos seed.

  Yoshi leaned close and tried murmuring quietly to the man, but the human just shook his head vehemently, and said, even louder this time, “They are my family!”

  Richter rushed around the cage and grabbed the man by the arm. The pressure he applied must have been more than he intended because the man sank down on one knee and had to bite his lip to stop from crying out. The chaos seed immediately let go and used Analyze.

  Sinking to one knee as well, Richter leaned in and put his face right in front of the man’s. “Oreet. Your name is Oreet, right?” After the man nodded, he said, “Well, Oreet. I know that you are concerned about your family, but you have to trust me. We are here to save all of you. As soon as you and the other prisoners are over the cliff, and moving towards safety, we are going to get the others.”

  Oreet looked at him, and tears streaked down his face. He pleaded with Richter, “But they are hurting them. Can you not hear it?” As if to mock his pain, a low moan of anguish came from the north, followed by the inevitable hoots of goblin delight.