By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 14 - Chapter 1

Chapter 8, Episode 18: Let the Raid Begin

The next morning, with a bone-shaking explosion we commenced our raid on the City of Lost Souls. Patches of midnight dew—the grass we were here to collect—grew inside the tower in the center of the city. Two things stood in our way: the enormous gate that loomed as a reminder of when this place was a prison, and the sea of Undead that swarmed beyond it.

So, we’d destroyed the gate first, using up the rest of my dead stock of gunpowder. We peeked around the corner of a structure that stood a little ways down the road.

“Maybe I used a little too much gunpowder... Not that I had any other use for it,” I said.

“It’s hard to see past the cloud of dust... But I’m sure the gate has been blown to smithereens, at least,” Sever noted.

“Yeah, along with a bunch of Undead that were crowding it. Which works out for us,” Remily joined.

“Good thing we kept our distance,” Reinbach said.

The explosion seemed like the right size, considering that I’d initially set aside that gunpowder to blow up—or at least bury alive—any enemies I might have encountered at the abandoned mines. But that opening wouldn’t do us any good if we let the Undead swarm up again. “Secure an entrance.”

The hobgoblins that I had brought out of the Dimension Home before the explosion ran into action at my command. Leading the charge was a group of them in armor, each carrying a riot shield made out of hardening solution and a metal slime in the form of a mace. Behind them were another group with lances, followed by a mix of hobgoblins holding grave slimes and regular goblins carrying long-range weapons.

The goblin march was a far cry from the organized procession of a well-trained army, but they managed to secure a position before the Undead could flood the area again. As soon as the first team of hobgoblins formed a defensive wall with their shields, the following unit shoved grave slimes through the openings between the shields.

Our plan of attack had three stages, and my familiars were the stars of the first. Even after the massive explosion, there were far too many Undead in the city proper for just the five of us to mow through. I reinforced our numbers with my familiars, although that still put our numbers at fewer than one hundred. There was no way for us to count how many Undead monsters filled the City of Lost Souls. We’d estimated there were no fewer than ten thousand of them in total...leaving us still massively outnumbered.

“Coating Light.” I coated the goblins’ weapons with Light magic that made them especially potent against the Undead. Although I couldn’t parallel cast Light Ball spells like Remily could, I was able to send a big batch of magical energy to their weapons—the metal slimes that were also my familiars. This alone would drastically improve the goblins’ ability to eliminate the Undead, especially given how many of them I had sent out. With more practice, I might even learn how to cast enhancement spells on all of my troops at once. Besides, the grave slimes would be munching on Undead right off the bat today, so the goblins were only responsible for taking out any Undead that slipped through the cracks. With long-range support from the regular goblins, I expected the hobgoblins to do just fine on their own. If they faced any trouble, one of us would intervene... The chances of them needing any assistance would drastically decrease with time, though. Most likely, the grave slimes would begin to multiply after a few hours of preying on the Undead. The more grave slimes there were, the more efficient they and the goblins would be at taking out those monsters. We’d gain ground slowly but surely as the goblins marched and my grave slimes multiplied, like in an RTS game.

“Holy Space,” Remily chanted. “Our rest area is set up too. We’re in for the long haul, Ryoma. Take a break when you start to feel tired.”

“Yes, I will,” I answered.

Meanwhile, the Undead were oozing out of the city center, step-by-step. Since dawn had already broken, they had slowed to a snail’s pace. Still, the Undead horde, groaning and squelching, stretched far into the city until they blurred into a crawling cloud that encroached with eerie foreboding.

The goblins sensed it too. I could feel their trepidation through our familiar bond. Nerves could easily wipe away any advantage they had... To raise their spirits, I decided to have them take out the first bunch of Undead with a bang.

Luckily, the wraiths were leading the Undead march. Unlike the ground-bound Undead that were pushing and tripping over each other, the wraiths floated through the air with far more freedom of movement.

“Marksmen, ready!” I called to the goblins at the rear of my familiar unit.

The wraiths, although more agile than the other Undead, were easy targets as the grave slimes’ Attract Haunts skill funneled them in.

On my mark, the goblins raised their slingshots. And these were no children’s toys. I had modeled them after hunting slingshots that were attached to the forearm with a metal frame to allow for improved accuracy and drawing power. Naturally, rubber slimes acted as the “strings” of the slingshots.

“A little closer... Fire!” I ordered, and the goblins loosed their slingshots at once. The pebbles they fired bored large holes in the wraiths on contact, and the flying Undead vanished without a trace. As ammunition, I’d given the goblins plenty of BB-sized pebbles I had created from a nearby crag. With a coating of Light magic, these little pebbles were highly effective against the Undead. As long as there was Light magic on it, pretty much anything could be used as a weapon to take out these monsters.

The goblins were shocked by how easily they had shot down the wraiths, so I said to them, “Weapons coated with Light magic make dealing with Undead a breeze! As long as you hold your formation and remain calm, you can easily take out that horde too! As soon as they’re in range, fire away! We have plenty of ammunition!”

My verbal encouragement, along with showing them how effectively they could defeat the Undead, did the trick for the rather simpleminded goblins. Their trepidation had made way for a sense of excitement as they squealed, ready to take on the next wave of monsters that would approach.

As I watched the pumped-up goblins with relief, Sever gave me a satisfied grin. “Way to bolster their morale.”

“Thank you. Now that they’ve seen how effective their weapons are, they at least won’t crumple under the pressure. The wraiths can’t flank them by passing through those rock walls before the goblins reach the city, right?”

“That’s right. Wraiths can pass through man-made structures, but not through naturally formed barriers, like boulders, cliffs, or the ground itself. Because they’re incorporeal, magical energy has a more significant effect on wraiths. If they attempted to pass through natural formations, the innate magical energy would overpower the magical energy that is their essence. That’s also why wraiths are even rarer to see during the day than zombies or skeletons. They’re only here now because we’re so close to an epicenter of cursed energy and we drew their attention with that explosion. I’ve even heard of someone who trapped wraiths outdoors under sunlight, and they simply disappeared after a few hours. That should demonstrate how vulnerable they are to magical energy,” Sever explained.

“That much?” Could they be taken out by concentrating sunlight with a magnifying glass? Remily’s laser spell was a concentration of bright light generated by magic. On Earth, there were some cooking appliances that didn’t use any fire or gas, and I remembered watching a few online videos about cooking meat by harnessing sunlight. Using the same scientific principle, it seemed possible to take out the Undead without using magic...or at least to crisp them up.

“Oh? Take a look at that, Ryoma.” Remily indicated something with her staff.

The march of the ground-bound Undead had slowed. Here or there, a zombie or skeleton tripped, knocking over others like bowling pins or becoming a temporary obstacle for those who followed it. It was difficult to get a good look because any fallen Undead soon became trampled, but I had a guess as to the cause. “Are they tripping over the bullets I’ve fired?”

“Looks like it,” Remily confirmed. “There must be charges of magical energy left over in them after going through the wraiths. It looks like this can only benefit our plan...but how much magical energy did you put into each of them?”

“I’m not sure.”

Those bullets were made in three steps: first, using Earth magic, I harvested stones of approximately the right size from nearby rock faces; then, the stone slimes ingested the stones and detached a portion of their body in the uniform size and shape I’d demonstrated to them; finally, the light slimes ingested then ejected the bullets to coat them with Light magical energy.

“So the light slimes were responsible for providing the magical energy, not me... Although, I did model the process, and it looked like the light slimes copied it well. Each of them should have magical energy equivalent to one of the buck shots used for Light Shot. About ten, I think, in terms of numbers.”

“If the amount of magical energy is the same, I’d attribute it to the difference in skill between casters. Naturally, a more experienced mage can produce better results with the same spell compared to someone who hasn’t had that much practice with it. The process of coating something with magical energy is no exception... Are slimes that adept at casting magic?” Remily asked.

“They’re skilled at controlling magical energy, I think. From what I can see, they are very efficient when using magic.”

“Interesting. Once things settle down, I’d love to observe their spellcasting. And I hadn’t realized that’s how you made those bullets. You know, when a slime dies...”

“It does disappear entirely. But unlike regular slimes, it’s not uncommon for an advanced species to produce or excrete something,” I explained. “My theory is that since a slime’s body is composed of magical energy, it simply dissipates when they die. But look at it this way: water magic can generate physical water using magical energy. I think as slimes evolve into advanced species, their internal magical energy shifts to have a more physical aspect.”

“I’m no expert on slimes, but nothing about how spells and magical energy work contradicts that theory... So, it’s like the stone slimes are giving up a portion of their body, but they’re recuperating the lost magical energy by ingesting the natural stones you give them.”

“Yes. Slimes don’t like to part with more than a little bit of their body without eating, and I have verified that pushing them to do so weakens them.” As to what went on within a slime’s anatomy, I had yet to figure that out. I might find out someday that my theory was incorrect, but it was consistent with what I’d observed so far. “Using the same process, I’ve harvested iron from the iron slimes by feeding them ores.”

“Master Ryoma, could that be used as a method of refinement?” Sebas whispered, shock in his voice.

There were a lot of hurdles to achieve that. “Possibly, but I don’t believe it would be viable,” I said.

“Why is that?” Sebas asked.

“I glossed over this part when I explained the bullet-making process, but this method isn’t all that efficient. It yields less material. I’d have to conduct more research to give you specific numbers, but in the few experiments I’ve run, I’d ended up with at least thirty percent less iron than the amount contained in the ores. Sometimes, the slimes would eat half of the iron in the process.” The loss wasn’t a problem when there were near infinite rocks I could use as raw material, but it would add up quickly if I were to try to turn a profit from refining iron.

Sebas nodded as he listened, so I continued my explanation.

“I could probably harvest more at the cost of increased stress on the slimes and a smaller scope to the project. If I were to ever discover other ways to mitigate the loss, it might be a different story... Of course, depending on its composition, iron can vary in brittleness and bend differently. I’d need to look into a lot of other aspects, like what kind of uses would be best suited for iron refined this way. There would be a lot of work involved before making this process a reality.”

“That makes sense,” Sebas said.

Personally, I didn’t feel the need to reduce the amount of material the slimes skimmed. When distilling liquor, the portion of alcohol that evaporated was called the angel’s share. Similarly, the portion of iron lost in this process could be called the slime’s share. If I were trying to maximize my profits, that would be nothing but a waste... But I liked the idea of giving the slimes that were involved that little reward, and I wasn’t so desperate for profit that I’d sacrifice that. There were existing methods of ironworking that functioned just fine, so, even though I had some academic interest in it, pursuing this method was of rather low priority. Truth be told, I’d amassed such a long list of things I wanted to research about slimes that I would never have enough time to get around to ironworking. I had more hands on deck, thanks to my newly indentured goblins, but there was only so much that could be done when I was the only one who could supervise and give direction.

By this time, the horde of Undead was finally getting close. Grave slimes swallowed up one after another as the tide pressed on, the monsters pushing and shoving each other into the slimes. “Here they come! Shields!” I called, as some Undead were pushed past the grave slimes.

Hobgoblins—the first line of defense—squealed and raised their riot shields, pushing back the Undead like they were Black Friday shoppers or commuters on a packed train during rush hour being compressed into the train car.

Since the goblins were occasionally spearing the Undead that pushed through and whittling down their numbers, the situation was still under control enough that I could let my thoughts wander like that. I couldn’t let my guard down in case an elevated Undead showed up, but otherwise, it looked like the only thing the humans needed was patience.

“Do you think we’ll even get a chance to join the fray?” Reinbach asked. “Those goblins are much stronger than I’d expected.”

“Master Ryoma using his vast magical energy entirely for backup and support must be quite troublesome for his enemies, Undead or otherwise,” Sebas said.

“I’d say so...” Remily chimed in. “I know you usually like to fight on the front lines, Ryoma, but this is an experience that can only give you more options to use in different situations.”

“There will be times when you’ll work together with other adventurers,” Sever said. “However, the goblins could use some training. That would allow them to perform more complex maneuvers. Take how they use their shields, for example. They need to push with their entire body, not just their arms.”

With a lot more experience under their belts, the adults had already switched gears into spectator mode. As they watched, the slimes, goblins, and I fended off the unending waves of Undead until the sun rose high into the sky.