Darius initiated the battle by reaching to the quiver on his waist.
He pulled a red-streaked arrow from the container and nocked it to his bow.
Fletching across his chin.
Swoosh!
The arrow flew and struck the goblin at the very center.
The moment the arrowhead pierced the monster's head, its entire surface and the whole length of its wooden shaft fragmented.
Glimmering red light pierced forth from under the cracks along the arrow.
Boom!
A fiery blast erupted at the middle of the goblins' formation.
The explosion killed eight of them. Leaving 19 remaining.
Not finished with his turn, Darius retrieved three arrows from the quiver on his back.
He rapidly loosed each of them straight to the goblins strewn across the road beyond us.
Shuck! Shuck! Shuck!
Each projectile pierced through two goblins at once, unimpeded by the flesh and skull the arrowhead forced through. One arrow even hit three in a single trajectory.
Seven killed. 12 remaining.
Even before we engaged the goblins, we already halved their number. And I had not casted my offensive spell yet.
This was thanks to the enchanted arrows I equipped Darius.
With those arrows, we could reduce the frequency of my spell casting. And it already proved effective from this first battle.
The dozen remaining goblins tried to recompose and reorganize themselves after the ambush.
But it was too late.
Before they could ready their weapons, Jonah and Shanny had already stormed into their midst.
Swiftly Jonah impaled two goblins to the ground with his throwing spear and skewered two more with his second one.
Three goblins approached Shanny from different directions.
The woman simply responded by leaping while extending her sword-hand.
She spun her body and with her landing rolled three snouted green heads.
Two crossbow goblins aimed their weapons toward the shepherd and the maid.
Ping!
Ping!
My two comrades took notice of the projectiles and nonchalantly parried the bolts away.
A shadow rushed past both of them, straight to the crossbow goblins.
Catching them off guard in the middle of reloading, Trudy tore off the limb of the first goblin with her blade, sliced through the second one's throat, and returned her arm to behead the first one.
The final three goblins tried to ambush Trudy.
But an arrow landed on the head of the foremost goblin. Dark blood splattered to its two comrades.
Jonah and Shanny darted past the blue-haired swordswoman and dealt with the remaining two monsters as easily as plucking a flower off its stem.
Without having me chanting a single spell, my comrades were able to obliterate 27 goblins on their own.
This number of enemies were nothing to my comrades considering how many times they had been practicing on the eighth and the ninth floors against more.
However, I did not let them savor in the victory too long.
While keeping my climbing stride through the mountain path, I addressed my party.
"Let's go! This is nothing but barely the beginning of our long battle. We've still got plenty of fighting left ahead."
My comrades nodded to me and we hastily continued our hike.
We did right to proceed quickly for we soon encountered another group of goblins about forty steps later.
[Goblin Lv.9 x39]
It did not take long for me to conclude this was how the rest of our journey would be like.
Enemies after enemies after enemies.
We needed to defeat all of them to reach our objective, the sixth floor valley.
It would take us all day if we just fight them at our own pace like we did on the eighth and the ninth floor.
We did not have all day.
It was only a matter of time until the overwhelming monster army breached Loro's outer walls and infiltrate the city.
We had to fight through the monsters as quick as possible.
[Maha Agni]
I raised my hand and casted my spell. Trails of flame formed around me.
[Ignite]
The blazing fireball blasted from my palms to the second goblin horde.
Boom!
Thanks to the narrow mountain path, the goblins were grouped up together.
My assault killed around 28 of them.
Armed with the enchanted weapons, my comrades had no trouble disposing the rest of the goblins within seconds.
"Onward!"
I called my comrades as I ran past them.
I no longer waited for them to be ready.
They all understood the need to rush and immediately sprinted to catch up with me.
Every moment mattered and we too must minimize the loss of time from facing the third group.
[Goblin Lv.9 x41]
Their number was not that much different from the second group and the mountain path was still as narrow as before.
[Maha Agni]
We repeated the strategy used on the previous group.
The goblins could not put up much of a fight given how strong we were.
I remembered when Jonah, Shanny, and I struggled facing against this many on the fifth floor.
We continued on with rushed steps.
After passing through the third group, we found ourselves way up the mountain path that we were now looking down on Loro, which had begun to turn miniscule.
From the slopes where we were on, we could see the thousand silvery dots of armored soldiers fighting through the many-more folds of greenish dots representing the monsters on the eastern side of the city.
The same went for the southern side except the silvery dots were only around the hundreds.
The line the Loro soldiers were holding had begun to waver here and there. But it was holding on still.
Protruding structures which I made out as the siege towers were slowly creeping toward the walls. They were pushed by the bigger greenish dots which represented the ogres.
The going of the war was definitely worth paying attention to but we had other things to focus on.
The path began to widened. We were nearing the peaks of Surga's northern mountain range.
It was when the slopes just started to flattened when we encountered something definitely worth noticing.
Sitting on the top of the mountain path beyond us was a row of stone walls. Huge iron gates was settled at the center.
My comrades and I recognized the structure from our visit to the ninth floor.
Only this time, the garrison looked in almost perfect condition.