The Deity Entertainment Network

Chapter 250 – Fantasy Logging Simulator W/Goblin Herding DLC

They had found the undead, or at least found something. There was a lot of movement and the sounds of axes on the other side of the meadow, but between the low-hanging branches and the thick foliage, it was difficult to make out from here. Tapping Nebula with his Ki gave him the impression she smelled the undead there, so he ruled out the possibility of it being some random lumberjacks.

"Are you good to support yourself now?" John whispered to Megumin. She was sitting in front of him, but he had to hold her up a few times during the ride, eventually just keeping a hand on her belly to keep her from sliding off the wolf. 

"Why would you care?" She muttered, obviously still sour at him for turning her down and apparently not having noticed the noise yet.

"Megumin, just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I hate you. Now, I need to get down. There is a horde of undead three hundred feet away, and I don't want you to become their next victim. Can you hold onto Nebula's coat by yourself, or do I need to keep carrying you while I scout out the enemy?"

"Wha- Oh... yes... Sorry. I'm still weak, but I can hold on as long as she doesn't move too quickly."

"It's fine. Hold tight, I'll be back in a few." He said, patting her thigh, then sliding off the wolf. 

After he informed the rest of his party about the undead ahead of them, Chris dismounted and followed him on foot through the thick underbrush. She was deathly silent as she moved through the bushes, barely disturbing them with her passing. It was a stark contrast to his own progress; even without his armour activated, he was a big man and couldn't avoid shaking the bushes as he crawled through to the edge of the clearing. 

I should have just sent her forward to get a look. She is the closest thing we have to a scout here. Lesson learned for the future.

Still, the noise of the axes seemed to have covered his bumbling, and he made it to the edge beside her in a couple of minutes. Peering out from the bush they were in, it took him a few moments to figure out what he was even looking at.

Dozens of grey, undead goblins were hacking at trees with axes, felling and limbing them. Then another team of goblins would hook the timber up to a pair of gigantic oxen and drag it to the centre of the clearing. Once it was there, they disconnected it and backed away. A magic circle would flash into existence, and the wood disappeared. 

"Just what in the hell is going on here?" He whispered, confused. Other than Wiz, his experience with the undead was limited to the zombies in HOTD, and there was no way those walking corpses would be working as a team to drop trees. These goblins seemed fairly mindless, not speaking at all, but they were focused on the task before them without distraction.

"The Devil King will sometimes use undead for manual labour when he doesn't have them as cannon fodder for his armies. They are slow, but tireless, so they can get a lot done just by not needing to rest. They need a firm hand to direct them, as they don't-" She said, then paused as they watched another tree be dropped, crushing a couple of goblins underneath it. The workers didn't even slow down and started limbing the tree.

"-any self-preservation. The bigger question is, why are they cutting the forest down out here to begin with? I would need to go back to heaven to see what exactly is going on. Unless you're using divinity, teleporting things gets prohibitively more costly in mana with distance, so it wouldn't make any sense for him to be cutting trees here for back in his Kingdom."

John nodded along as she whispered, trying to find anyone or anything that seemed to be in charge of these undead, but nothing really stood out to him. He did spy a few groups of Black Wolves at the far end of the clearing, but they were just idly standing there, possibly guarding the workers. He didn't see anything or anyone that could possibly be in charge of the operation; if he had to make a comparison, the goblins were like ants; they all knew what they had to do and didn't need a foreman to watch over them. If a few of them died, well, died again, it didn't matter.

"Let's get back to the others. I think we can easily take these guys out."

"Are you going to use your mech?"

"Well..."

*Thump, CRACK, Thump, Thump, CRACK*

A loud noise echoed through the evening air, causing the undead to pause in their work and look to the South in the direction the noise was coming from. They could see some trees shaking like a strong wind had blown them around, but nothing else. The forest went quiet again, and after a few minutes, they returned to their work.

A pair of black wolves went to investigate the area, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that they could see, so they quickly returned to their positions that stood between the working goblins and the city of Axel. The boss had ordered them to watch that direction in case any humans came by to investigate, so they would keep watch until ordered otherwise.

*VRROOOMMMM!!!* *AWOOOOOO!!!*

Two separate noises came from the East and West sides of the clearing, causing the workers to pause what they were doing again. From the East tree line burst four giant grey wolves, one of which was being ridden by a human dressed in yellow and white armour, while to the West, a metal machine roared out of the bushes, a human dressed head to toe in black and silver armour riding on top of it and a woman with blue hair clinging onto him from behind. 

The grey wolves headed directly for their black wolf guards, while the metal machine charged towards the workers' position. The goblins had no idea what that thing was, but they could sense divinity coming from it, so they stopped working on the trees and charged towards it with axes raised. 

It turned slightly, heading towards their Giant Oxen. The human in the black armour raised its hand, and one of the oxen was surrounded in a golden glow, while the blue-haired one pointed her staff at the other, and a silvery energy enveloped it. Both oxen bellowed for a moment, then toppled over, their bodies slowly disintegrating as the holy powers destroyed them.  

The metal machine slammed into the lead goblin, the blue-haired woman screaming in terror as she nearly fell off from the sudden impact, but the human in armour grabbed her by her hair and flailing arm and pulled her back up. A pulse of energy was emitted from that human, and if all the goblins were not already fully focused on them, they were now. 

They swung axes at the machine and its riders as it passed, but most were too slow to connect. The only one who managed to connect with their weapon, hit the armoured human in the leg, the axe bouncing ineffectually off the armour. The group turned to follow, bunching up with the stragglers in the back. Back and forth they charged their ranks, gathering more and more goblins together, the blue-haired one casting spell after spell, turning their numbers slowly and releasing their undead souls.

Suddenly, the metal machine turned and went to the aid of the other human, where the grey wolves were savaging the flanks of the mass of black wolves, while the armoured female was being chewed on by no less than six black ones. She was screaming loudly, but it didn't appear that their guards were very effective in actually hurting her.

The forty or so remaining undead goblins turned as one towards the metal machine and started to give chase, but a loud voice boomed across the field, causing them to pause. "Is this the button he said to press? No wait, this one! And...Explosions!"

The last thing that the goblins saw was four bright flashes of light before their world was enveloped by fire. 

"Stop laughing. It isn't that funny! I've never ridden a motorcycle before!"

"Heh, Yes, Ma'am. Hehe." 

"Gah! Don't call me that! I'm not an old lady, I'm a delicate goddess!" 

"Heh, of course you are."

They were just finishing up with the black wolves, Aqua purifying their souls and sending them off to the afterlife. They both already healed the few wounds the wolves had accumulated from the short but intense combat and were now pulling Darkness out of the pile of bodies. She was fine, just happily hyperventilating a bit from being pinned and bitten by a half dozen wolves.

She is definitely an oddball, but she barely had a scratch from that.

"Why don't you ever worship me? Or even give me any respect? I wasn't lying, even with your... hair pulling and proclivities, I could really use a Crusader like you in my ranks."

"No thanks, I'm non-secular. Besides, shouldn't you be worshipping me? You did agree to follow me after all."

"I don't remember agreeing to that!"

"You agreed to follow me for two bronze coins. Sounds like a tithe to me, missy." John said, chuckling at his dumb joke. What he said didn't make any sense, but Aqua appeared to look horrified at the thought that she might have agreed to worship him for a couple of coins.

"Ack... I-I-I-" She stammered. He was about to end his little joke when Darkness spoke up, finally able to pull herself out of the pile of black wolf corpses.

"Hah, hah, hah. I got their attention like you asked, John. Did I perform, hah, within your expectations?"

"Well... I didn't expect you to become a chew toy, but it worked, so I would say you did pretty well. You okay?"

"Well... *Crack* my armour held for the most part, though this one... *Crack* seems to have lockjaw. Can you help me pry it off? Its canines are poking me through the chainmail." She said, trying to pull the decapitated head of one of the wolves off her body, slamming the pommel of her sword into its maw to try and dislodge it.

"Sure. Watch your hands." He said and cut the skull in half with his sword. 

"Thank you. For this and for that party menu of yours. I went up another level from this fight." She replied, sheathing her sword.

"My pleasure, darlin." 

"Umm... John? Can you come help us get down? I'm terrified to touch anything in here, and Megumin keeps wanting to fire more-" Chris's voice echoed over the meadow from Suzy Q's external speaker.

"It was incredible! It was like chains of mini explosions! Can you teach me how to make this machine move, John? With this, I can use explosion, then become the dark crimson demon of the battlefield, blowing my enemies up and crushing them under my-"

"Stop flailing around and hitting things!!!" Yunyun shouted over Megumin.

"Wha-?" " EEEEKK!!!" *Crash*

"I'm coming!" He shouted, though he didn't know if Suzy Q would be able to pick up his voice from so far away. John cycled wind magic and charged towards the wood line and the now fallen Jenner that Megumin, Chris and Yunyun were inside of. 

Crap, I thought I locked out Suzy Q's movement controls.

Yunyun had cleaned up Aqua's mess; she apparently had the Clean spell, allowing the three tiny women to fit inside the cockpit with little issue. He had shown them how to fire the SRMs, then positioned the mech, so all they needed to do was pull the trigger once he and Aqua had brought the undead out into the centre of the meadow and cleared their fire area. He left Chris with them since this could have gone quite wrong, and she had no armour, though she assured him she would have been fine due to her luck stat. 

The plan was a little more complicated than it probably needed to be, but his wolves wanted to put their former pack mates to rest personally.  He sent Darkness with them so her skills would keep the black wolves focused on her, while he kept Aqua with him to cast Turn Undead as he rounded them up. He used his Holy Light spell from Warcraft on the Ox, which was devastating against the undead, but between it, Barrier, and the healing magic, he burned over half the mana he had available in this world, leaving him with ninety remaining. 

All things considered, he thought it went well for them, destroying nearly fifty undead without him just completely cheesing everything with Suzy Q. He just hoped the girls were okay in the cockpit; he didn't even think about having them strapped in just to fire a volley of missiles. 

He made it about halfway across the meadow when suddenly, blue light surrounded him.

"Hun? Ah, crap-" He cursed, his words being cut off as the teleportation field activated.

"John!" Aqua and Darkness shouted at the same time. He didn't hear them, he was already long gone.