Gilgamesh saw nothing but wastrels and cowards in the residential half of the Outpost. It had been over an hour since the Trial began and yet most had not even taken the first step. Though he felt disdain at the sight of them, the situation was to his advantage. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for; a small group of people huddled together who all seemed to be on the verge of despair.
“Do you want to pass this trial?” Gilgamesh asked bluntly with no preface. All of them looked towards him, though few fully registered his words. “We can help each other.”
A thin man with greasy long black hair clicked his teeth and muttered something under his breath, clearly distrustful of him.
Gilgamesh peered at their expressions with an emotionless face. “Why haven’t you gone to scavenge?”
“You think we didn’t try…” The same man muttered, a bit louder and a bit more hostile.
“...we lost some people to the rats.” A young woman with dull red hair answered for the group.
“I see…” Gilgamesh replied. His golem suddenly stomped into view, which sent them into a panic. Gilgamesh waited a few moments until it became obvious that the golem would not attack, and the clamour settled into a tense stillness. “Vermin are no issue for me.”
Gilgamesh saw in their eyes that he had their full attention now. “My golem will act as the vanguard. It will take all of the monsters’ aggression, and you will attack in the openings it provides. In that way, we can kill all the monsters we need. Everyone who wants to pass this trial should join me now. Or you can stay here and cower in the dirt.”
Hesitation crippled the group for a few moments until a gruff man in his thirties stepped forward. The red-haired woman followed soon after, and the shackles were broken. One by one, they joined him, either out of reignited hope or from simply following the will of the crowd.
“Good. First, we need to arm ourselves.” Gilgamesh led his pawns back into the scrap hills without a moment's delay.
---
Gilgamesh was the first to pass through the outpost gates into the forest with nothing new other than a simple leather pouch tied to his sash. He had intended to equip himself in any suitable armor he could find, but anything more than the loose cloth robes he wore aggravated his leprosy too greatly. That constant, blaring pain was enough to dull his keen mind, and he needed it to be as keen as possible.
He had also intended to find a second golem, but fortunate did not choose to favor him this time. It was a risk to lack a spare golem in case his Clay Sentry ran out of mana, but Gilgamesh chose to enter the forest anyway. He wanted to test the difficulty of the forest before he lost the daylight. Fighting monsters in the dark was simply too dangerous.
It was a dense, slightly mountainous woodlands, but not too dense that they would need to fear a monster hiding behind some tree at every step. Still, a heavy degree of caution was only prudent.
With his Clay Sentry at the front, Gilgamesh led his group into the forest. He glanced back at them in between scouting his surroundings.
The pawns were all equipped with a mishmash of whatever functional weapons and armor they could find. Gilgamesh had tried to outfit them all with polearms; spears, lances, halberds, and the like, as they were easier to wield effectively with no experience.
The red-haired woman wielded a bow at the ready that was in half-decent condition as she claimed to have experience hunting with one before. By the way she carried it, Gilgamesh believed her.
Her awakened Spell was Power Shot, same as one of the strangers from the previous trial. Only now, she had the means to make use of it. Gilgamesh had seen it performed when she tested it in the scrapyard, and it did have some potential.
None of the others had any Talents of significance. Gilgamesh hadn’t even bothered to learn any of their names. Of more concern to him than their equipment or abilities was their mental state.
Tense, skittish, distressed, and borderline overwrought already. Caution was good, fear was not. And his pawns seemed like they would be consumed by it upon their very first encounter. At this rate, they wouldn’t even serve as useful fodder.
“What do you think happens if you fail a Trial?” Gilgamesh asked without warning. Their attention turned towards him but no one responded. “I think it’s death. Maybe a swift one. Maybe worse.”
Gilgamesh let his words linger.
“But you all received the reward from the First, is that not so? Are you not stronger now than when this began?” His words still held no warmth, but they struck now with a certain invigoration. “We are punished for failure and rewarded for success. Hear me. If you fail this trial, you will surely die. But if you pass, you will surely be rewarded. So focus on the trial ahead. Give everything you have to victory. We can become truly powerful here.”
Their gazes steeled and their expressions tightened with focus. A fair portion of their anxiety was now replaced with optimism and greed. Just as Gilgamesh wanted.
“This is good enough.”
A monster emerged from the bushes in the distance. A humanoid creature, the size of a child. Green skin, a long hooked nose, long pointed ears, and a sharp jutting chin. It wore nothing but a dirty brown loincloth of animal hide and carried a crude wooden club.
[ Goblin - Monster (Iron Rank) ]
“Positions!” Gilgamesh ordered. The group moved closer behind the Clay Sentry and marched forward with it.
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At the sight of enemies, the goblin let out a guttural shriek and rushed towards them. Gilgamesh ordered the golem to attack without using its Feature, but the goblin was faster to act and struck first. Mana swelled around its club and as the goblin struck the Clay Sentry’s belly with enough force to blast open a small dent. But that was all. As the Clay Sentry started to repair itself, it slammed its open palm down in a simple, telegraphed attack.
The goblin clumsily dodged and attacked again with a shriek of frustration, but found the same result. When the golem retaliated again, this time, the goblin struck its arm. The arm endured but the damage was greater than its body had taken due to its lower mass.
The Clay Sentry swung its hand down again, but the goblin dodged with even better timing than before. A cruel sneer spread across its face as the goblin targeted his golem's arms again.
“Smarter than a giant rat, at least.” Gilgamesh observed. That was of some concern. It already had attributes that could oppose the golem to some degree. Intelligence on top of that, even of the primitive kind, was dangerous.
[ Clay Sentry ]
Mana Capacity: 38/250
"Clay Sentry will lose too much mana if I let this fight continue as it is, but it is still early to expend my own mana. My capacity is only enough to wield Clay Sentry for 90 seconds in total." Gilgamesh thought. "But that is what I brought pawns for."
"Get ready to attack.” Gilgamesh told the two closest behind the golem. The thin greasy-haired man and the gruff man from before, who now wielded a spear and trident, respectively.
Gilgamesh then gave his golem a more specific command. Clay Sentry was 'smart' enough to follow maneuvers of some complexity, as Gilgamesh had tested back in the Scrapyard. The Clay Sentry slammed both of its arms on the ground at the sides around the goblin, to the creature's confusion.
“Now!”
The golem raised its arms back up, luring the goblin’s focus with it, and the two pawns rushed out from behind to attack from both sides. Gilgamesh had drilled them to perform this simple maneuver before they departed from the outpost, but they were not skilled enough to get the timing right. The thin man had moved too soon and a bit too fast, clearly hastened by nerves.
The goblin caught notice of them quickly, but its thoughts seemed stifled by indecision at the presence of three threats from three different directions. So in response, the goblin shrieked in rage at the closest one.
The thin man recoiled at the intense aggression like a coward, which allowed the goblin to focus on the other side. It dodged the trident’s thrust and thrashed it away with a swipe of its club.
Before it could swing its club again at the defenseless man, Gilgamesh drove it away with the Clay Sentry’s slamming palm.
“Commit to the attack!” Gilgamesh shouted at the coward as the two attackers scrambled back behind the golem. Shame filled the thin man’s face.
“Positions!” At his order, both returned to the front of the group and waited for their signal.
The autonomous Clay Sentry had managed to steal back the goblin’s focus with its incessant attack, but Gilgamesh could tell that the creature was more wary of its surroundings now. That was something he intended to use.
He commanded his golem block the goblin’s path with its arms again. The goblin’s vigilance heightened, clearly anticipating something. When Gilgamesh raised its arms, the goblin jolted its gaze to the sides, but no attack came. In its confusion, it turned its attention to the only threat in sight, the golem’s raised arms. Just as Gilgamesh wanted.
An arrow sank into the goblin’s side, shot by the Archer woman who seemed just as surprised it had landed as the goblin.
“Now!” Gilgamesh yelled. The two attackers rushed out at his command, and this time the Coward committed.
The goblin smacked away the Gruff Man’s trident again, but that gave the Coward an opening to pierce his spear through its stomach.
“I-I did it-!”
“YYYRRRRRRRRKKKK!”
A bloodcurdling shriek cut Coward’s celebration short. The goblin grabbed onto the spear and broke it in half as it lunged for the man with murderous rage. But the giant mace hand of the clay golem smashed it into paste against the ground.
Gilgamesh frowned. The fight was practically won already, yet he was forced to take direct control of his golem at the final stretch. He might have increased his mana capacity significantly, but this ability was still exorbitantly costly, and this was a large forest.
“Don’t relax until the monster is dead.” Gilgamesh lectured the man, before turning his focus to the monster.
[ Goblin - Monster (Iron Rank) ]
Attributes:
Strength - 21
Agility - 32
Vitality - 16
Perception - 27
Force - 6
Spirit - 8
Control - 9
Willpower - 10
Magic:
Bash lvl. 7 (bronze),
Traits:
Keen Senses (bronze), Lesser Disease Resistance (bronze)
[ Bash (bronze) ]
'Increases the blunt impact of a strike.'
Magnitude: 1.0
Mana Cost: 5
[ Lesser Disease Resistance (bronze) ]
'Holder possesses a slightly enhanced resistance towards Diseases.'
[ Keen Senses (bronze) ]
'Slightly enhances the holders physical senses.'
[ Magnitude ]
'The multiplicative power of a Spell. Magnitude is based on Force unless stated otherwise.'
It was certainly stronger than the giant rat, but not by as much as he expected. His Clay Sentry was the clear superior. Gilgamesh had thought the difference between vermin and monsters would have been Attributes by a wide margin, but that did not seem to be the case.
“Is the difference Magic and Traits, then? Or something else?” Gilgamesh wondered.
But this was no time for deep contemplation. The most important thing was that this much danger was manageable. Gilgamesh raised his badge and a wispy azure mist flowed from the monster's corpse into its engraved mouth.
“Next pair.” Gilgamesh said.
Coward and Gruff Man moved to the back as another two took the front, just behind the golem. Rotating the vanguard served two purposes. It conserved their stamina and allowed everyone to gain much-needed experience.
“Still, these fools are worse than expected…” Gilgamesh contemplated getting a few of them killed to cull the truly worthless from the group, but quickly discarded the idea. He had no faith that the tragedy would not break the spirits of those who survived.
Instead, he turned to them. “Hear me. Anyone who does not pull their weight will be banished from the group. If I think you are useless, you’ll be left behind and fail the trial. Remember what this is for.”
Gilgamesh led the way again with his golem, intent on draining every last ounce of value from his fodder.
