Well, that ending was pretty anticlimactic, but I’m glad no one was seriously hurt. Impressive considering they were fighting a bronze rank who was clearly stronger than them.

  Alex walked over after the commander had died. “You guys destroyed that commander much more easily than I thought you would,” he said to them all while Sarah was inspecting their wounds. “Did you all get an achievement as planned?”

  “Yep. It's called Fighting Up I (Small Group). It gave us a 3% boost to all stats.” Sam said.

  “Not bad, definitely worth getting. 3% won’t be much now, but achievements stack, and it'll be a lot once we get a higher raw stat. Does it say what the small group number is?” Alex said to them.

  “Agreed, won't hear any complaints from me about free stats. But yeah, it says the small group was five or fewer. So if you had helped, it might have been a large group, I guess? ” Sam replied again.

  “Hmm, yeah, that might have been less stat percent for you all, too. Derek, Rykos, I see you both leveled. Congrats.”

  Rykos just nodded and walked back into the camp, eyeing the bodies everywhere.

  “Thanks. Hopefully, I can get one more soon and rank up.” Derek replied.

  “That shouldn’t be an issue. With as many goblins as we’ve seen, it’ll happen soon. But let's loot everything and get the camp situated. After the goblin bodies are looted, I'll use new storage to move them out of the camp and burn them in a hole. I’d like to avoid rotting bodies near camp.”

  “I agree that would let disease run rampant. We cannot allow that.” Korgrith said before walking away and adding, “I will go join Rykos and gather the bodies of our people for a proper send-off.”

  The next few hours passed. Most of the time was spent in silence for the fallen, and the only sound heard was the weeping of the survivors. In total, they had lost about 30 people. While it could have been worse, it was still devastating to see.

  Alex gathered the goblin bodies after they were looted and put them inside his [Dimensional Storage]. Outside the camp, he dug a large hole with his earth magic. He made sure the hole was big enough for all the goblins and deep enough to help hide the fire from onlookers or goblin scouts.

  That evening, after cleaning up, removing the goblins, and properly gathering all the bodies of the beastkin, they held a large funeral for them. Alex learned much that evening about the beastkin, but the most important thing he learned was their strength. They came together in mourning. No one alone. Korgrith had told him that if they weren’t inside the tutorial, they would have had a celebration in honor of the deceased.

  A celebration not of death, but of the life they lived. Their friends or family would share stories of them, and everyone would drink their fill. They would do their best to make it a night everyone remembers, or doesn’t remember if they drink too much.

  During the celebration, Alex felt his anger rising again over what had happened. He felt responsible for these people and should have protected them. He knew it was irrational to think that. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, but it didn’t make him feel better. He could feel his racial instincts related to being a progenitor. They were boiling under the surface, wanting revenge for someone attacking what was his. Taking his people's lives. Attacking his camp. Thinking they were strong enough to challenge him. It had a long list of reasons to justify revenge, and Alex agreed.

  So when night fell, he told his team what he was doing. They weren’t happy with his decision and tried to argue about how they should come. But he easily deflected them with one question…

  “Can any of you see in the dark? Because I can and I have stealth.”

  Rykos tried to claim he could see in the dark, as a wolf-type beastkin, but his sight was nowhere near as strong as Alex's, nor did he have the same stealth.

  “The only reason I’m telling you all, instead of just leaving, is because I need you to be aware I’m not here to defend the base or keep an eye out. I trust you all to do that in my stead.

  I know you all aren’t happy with this. But we need to end this event as quickly as we can. I saw thousands of goblins out there. I don’t know if that was one army, or several of the general’s armies mixed, but I need to thin them out as much as I can. If they march on this camp in force, we’re screwed. Tomorrow we’ll work on getting you all to Bronze, then we can do this together, but until then, I need to go solo.”

  Derek sighed. He looked weary from the day's fighting. “Fine. We can’t stop you, even if we want to. Just don’t be stupid. They’ll have too many, even for you to fight. Stick to guerrilla warfare like we did today.”

  “Be careful, man,” Sam added.

  “Got it. I’ll see you guys in the morning.” Alex then turned and ran off into the forest.

  Using his wind enhancement, he headed back towards the location he had seen the goblin army. He first wanted to check if they were still there. After that, his plan was simple… kill as many goblins as he could tonight. He wanted to find large groups and just do all the area attacks he was capable of, then get out before they realized what was going on. Even if he only killed a hundred goblins, that was fine, because that was a hundred fewer the others had to worry about.

  But Alex planned to kill many more than that.

  Once again coming up on the forest edge, he deactivated the wind enhancement and used his stealth skill. Exiting the forest, he wasn’t sure if he was happy or disappointed to see that there weren’t thousands of goblins again. Instead, there were a few hundred.

  Alex waited a while and stalked the area. He was curious whether there was a Goblin General around, but he found only the same types as before, along with a few commanders. They were the only Bronze ranks he could see out there tonight.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Well, maybe I can lure out a General by killing most of these. It should be fun. Alex had a smile on his face, enjoying the idea of killing the goblins.

  Another hour passed as he watched, making sure nothing changed. When nothing did, he made his move. He circled around to the less-populated side of their camp. The plan was to run straight into the middle and unleash hell.

  Slowly, he crept his way forward into camp, moving silently between many of the goblins, with them unaware of his presence. The camp teemed with small wooden structures. It stank and was loud, considering it was the middle for night. The small creatures were all over the place with no rhyme or reason. They slept on the ground in the middle, just as often as under the structures. When he eventually reached the middle of the camp, he went to the most densely populated area.

  Standing in the middle of a goblin camp, Alex unleashed a nova of fire. One he had been channeling for a while, trying to make it stronger and hotter than normal. It instantly displaced his stealth skill and sent a wave of fire 360 degrees around Alex, igniting everything within twenty feet. Goblins, tents, plants, everything burned.

  Before the goblins could even understand what had happened, he had channeled wind mana into his sword and began cutting down any creature that still stood. Within seconds, dozens had died.

  Alex ran around cutting down goblins, and he kept firing off random fire novas. These weren’t as powerful as his first, but they still set them ablaze and caused chaos in the camp. And chaos is what he needed. If they formed up and got organized, he wouldn’t last long.

  He kept using the wind enhancement instead of fire. The fire would have been better for chaos, but it also lit up the darkness too much. Alex wanted to stay mostly untrackable while he ran around the camp. Using a big, flaming sword wouldn’t help with that. The glow from a wind enhancement was minor compared to the fire that was spreading.

  I’m going to burn his whole damn camp down.

  Creating five fireballs, he made these larger and less stable. He didn’t care about impact or making them last. Fire was all that was needed. He sent them in different directions, randomly landing around the goblin camp, while he continued to use the occasional fire nova.

  If one of the goblins seemed too strong to cut down quickly, he would shoot out a wind rift, cutting them down and any other goblin behind them. His rifts had become quite effective since his evolution, and he was enjoying them. The [Space Magic] ability greatly enhanced them.

  Finally, a Goblin Commander showed up and attempted to stop him. Like the first commander he fought, it was a sword-and-shield user.

  This will be a good test to see how much stronger I am since ranking up.

  Alex started with a simple fire nova, meant to blind the commander and distract him from his movement. Still channeling his wind enhancement, he used his improved speed to get behind the commander quickly. Standing at the commander's back, he used a wind rift, curious how much damage it would do. Landing in the middle of its back, the rift cut into its armor and flesh underneath.

  Damn, that does a good amount of damage, even to a Bronze ranked tank class. Not deep enough to hit its spine though.

  The commander quickly spun around, bringing its sword arm down in a slash, which Alex easily dodged. Expecting what came next, he easily avoided the follow-up shield bash, too.

  Fights the same way as the last commander. Let’s experiment a bit more.

  Summoning wind magic, he pushed it into creating another spear, the same kind he used to kill the bovicus. However, it was much smaller this time because he couldn’t afford to waste mana.

  The wind spear formed much more easily since the last time he tried it.

  Being a higher tier makes a big difference, plus all the extra stats I’ve got. This spear was about the size of a small wooden spear. Alex lunged forward and front-kicked the goblin's shield on the edge with his full strength, unbalancing the monster's defense and opening up a path for the spear.

  Immediately after the kick, Alex sent the wind spear straight ahead, aiming for the commander's head. His aim was true. It hit right in its nose, completely obliterating the commander's head. Its corpse fell headless to the ground.

  Hmm, that wasn’t bad. Still a bit mana hungry, but it was much easier to control and does good damage. I’m going to need to back out of here soon, though. I don’t want to risk my mana getting too low.

  While thinking about the wind spear, he fired off another minor fire nova, since some goblins had started to move in.

  He slowed down on using more Fire Novas unless needed, and didn’t fire off anymore magic. He only used mana for wind enhancement on himself and his sword.

  Cutting down all the goblins he could, he made his way out of the camp, going back into the forest. He got out without any issues, and then he boosted his wind enhancement on himself to speed up his retreat, while removing the one from his blade.

  He ran for ten minutes to ensure no one was following, reactivated his stealth, and canceled his wind magic. Then he waited. He wanted to see if anyone was following him and needed to recover his mana. It was slower to recover while using his stealth, but he had enough regeneration to do it now. Alex looked for a nice spot in the forest and sat down, leaning against a thick tree trunk.

  After an hour, he got up and slowly moved back towards the edge of the forest. He wanted to see what the goblins were doing while he continued to wait for a full mana pool. It took him 40 minutes of trekking through the forest under stealth, and once he did, he was shocked by what he saw.

  Holy dwarf balls, I didn’t realize I caused that much damage. 70% of the camp has been burned down, and half the army is dead. I might be able to finish the whole camp tonight.

  Alex smiled to himself. I’m also not going to check my notifications until the night is over. It would be fun to see all the kills at once.

  He continued watching the camp for another hour. Nothing too interesting transpired, and he didn’t see any General show up.

  Finally, remembering his unspent 15 free points, he went ahead and threw them all into Willpower, since that boosted his other stats too. I need to stop holding back my points. They won’t do any good sitting there.

  After using the 15 points, he pulled up his new stats.

  Stats

  Strength: 46 (48)

  Agility: 46 (50)

  Endurance: 38 (41)

  Toughness: 41 (48)

  Perception: 34 (39)

  Wisdom: 38 (44)

  Intelligence: 38 (48)

  Willpower: 53 (57)

  Free points: 0

  He laughed inwardly and smirked. Ridiculous how much my stats are jumping up. Pretty broken too, just put points into Willpower and it boosts everything else too. But I guess it'll even out with my reduced experience and increased amount needed. I doubt I’ll be the highest level for long.

  I probably didn’t even get much experience from all those goblins. Most are lower-level than me, so my experience will be greatly reduced. He thought, considering his new changes, while he watched the goblins.

  Two hours had passed since Alex’s last rampage through the goblin camp, and now it was time for round two.

  He took the same route as before, circling around the camp, then stealthing right into the middle of it. Once there, he channeled an overcharged fire nova.

  Why change what isn’t broken, right?

  Unleashing the wave of fire, it had the desired effect once again. Goblins ignited; any remaining structures burned; chaos ensued. Casting wind enhancement on himself and his blade, he went to work again, pumping out fire novas.

  He hacked, slashed, and burned any goblin he could find. He even dropped several commanders once again. They weren’t a big challenge since his evolution.

  Mana reaching 70%, he started planning his escape again, laying off the fire novas. He didn’t want to risk going below 50% if he had to fight more.

  He hadn’t been damaged too much during the second raid. He took two arrows, one in the back and one in the shoulder, and had some bumps and bruises. But nothing damaging enough to slow him down.

  Before Alex could fully extricate himself from the camp, he heard a loud war-horn blaring through the night. The sound echoed off the nearby forest and even the distant mountains.

  In the direction of the horn blast, he saw a group of goblins approaching. In the center of the group, there was a goblin the size of a commander, but it was obviously more important. It wore blood red armor, head to toe, and was covered in spikes. On its waist, it had two axes strapped to its belt, and a large one on its back.