069 Second-Tier Elite

The Goblin Forest was not particularly vast; according to the intelligence currently in Karen’s possession, it covered roughly a thousand square kilometers. A thousand square kilometers might sound expansive, but in fact, it was less than a tenth the size of the prefecture-level city where Karen had lived in his previous life. This place could only be considered a tiny buffer zone between the Silver Hand and the Bourbon Kingdom. If it had any particular significance, it was the relatively abundant mineral resources and the goblins who had dwelled here for countless generations.

Yet, in this thousand-square-kilometer stretch, there were some twenty or thirty goblin tribes, numbering in total several tens of thousands. They had lived here for generations, mining, hunting, and gathering to sustain themselves. During food shortages, they would raid human cities. Life, for them, had been comfortable enough.

But inevitably, this comfortable existence was about to be shattered. They would soon be driven from the forest or exterminated entirely, for Karen had set his sights on this area. And between expulsion and slaughter, Karen decidedly favored the latter. Only through mass slaughter could he acquire the territory energy and corpses he needed. This was precisely what he now set out to do.

No sooner had his territory leveled up than Karen took action.

He possessed a map of the Goblin Forest, provided by Old Jack, marking the general locations of the goblin tribes and some basic information. With this map, Karen began his campaign.

His first target was neither the nearest goblin tribe nor the weakest. Instead, he selected those that were relatively remote, situated far from the others. Using these criteria, a particular goblin tribe soon drew Karen’s attention.

According to the map, this tribe was about fifteen kilometers from Karen’s own, known as the Redwater Tribe, numbering around two thousand goblins—considerably larger than the goblin tribe Karen had previously destroyed.

This time, Karen brought far fewer troops than before, leaving behind all undead below the second tier and bringing only those ranked second tier and above. Though he had only a little over sixty such undead, he did not anticipate much difficulty in taking down a goblin tribe.

Moreover, deploying elite undead allowed for greater mobility; if he had marched with over a thousand undead, it would have taken half a day just to reach the target, and the massive force would have been too conspicuous, jeopardizing his operation against the Redwater Tribe. Karen had never intended to fight a pitched battle.

Against the Redwater Tribe, Karen employed the same tactics as before: fire attack. He began once again by sending the Skeletal Boar in to ignite the Redwater Tribe.

But this time, unlike before, Karen did not have his undead block the entrances to the tribe’s mine. Instead, as the flames roared to life, he and his undead silently observed the goblins’ response.

When the fire broke out, the Redwater Tribe immediately had goblins step forward to organize firefighting efforts. But the flames had been conjured by five goblin mages’ Nether Fireballs, and the highest level among them had reached tier three—no ordinary fire that could be easily extinguished.

The more desperately the goblins tried to fight the fire, the greater their casualties. For this particular fire burned blood; any goblin splashed by a spark would have their blood ignite instantly. Water could not put it out; only those with a combat energy seed within could withstand it. In short, this fire was specifically designed to target zero-tier weaklings.

While it was less effective against those of the first tier and above, it was brutally efficient for clearing out the rank-and-file.

A tier-three fire could burn for an hour, and by the time it died down, nearly a thousand goblins of the Redwater Tribe had been killed or wounded.

Such devastating losses were unprecedented for the tribe, and after the inferno, the entire settlement was plunged into a wailing gloom.

Karen understood the goblin tongue, and he could sense the profound sorrow that now pervaded the Redwater Tribe.

What surprised Karen himself, however, was that he felt no emotion at all. No pity, no guilt—only cold detachment. His gaze remained utterly impassive as he surveyed the scene. Without hesitation, he ordered his undead to attack.

The undead, who had been waiting in formation for over an hour, launched into action at Karen’s command.

The Skeletal Boar, accompanied by Little Green and the two goblin skeleton leaders Karen had named Song One and Song Two, charged into the Redwater Tribe, quickly seizing the mine. Simultaneously, all the undead under Karen’s command, himself included, joined the fray for a merciless massacre.

Fewer than seventy undead confronted a thousand goblins.

The disparity in numbers was stark, and the battle was hopelessly one-sided. The goblins were the ones utterly suppressed and slaughtered.

After all, their average strength was at best first-tier fodder. Even with nearly ten second-tier goblins among them, they could not withstand Karen’s ferocious assault.

Karen’s own performance in this battle was outstanding. He had already reached second-tier ordinary, with over a thousand experience points. The territory’s upgrade had granted him two thousand energy, pushing him to the verge of advancement.

This battle brought Karen a wealth of experience, allowing him to break through to second-tier elite in the midst of combat.

As a second-tier elite, and wielding his level-11 Heavy Strike, Karen was nearly invincible on the battlefield—no one could withstand a single blow from him. Even the goblin chieftain, himself a second-tier elite, was felled by Karen in one stroke.

The battle quickly came to an end in a torrent of slaughter. Of the Redwater Tribe’s two thousand goblins, more than seventy or eighty percent were cut down by Karen. The few survivors fled.

There was little Karen could do about that; with so few undead at his disposal, he could not achieve total annihilation.

But a handful of escapees mattered little to him. He had already prepared to reveal himself, and thus did not bother to pursue the fleeing goblins. After securing victory, he swept the battlefield.

He led his undead into the mines, extracting all the second-tier and higher corpses. He also sent Little Green back to their graveyard to frantically gather the Whisper of the Departed.

He worked tirelessly until the latter half of the night. As dawn approached, he returned to his territory with forty-nine second-tier corpses and one third-tier corpse.