Red figures ambled through the forest, climbing over tangles of roots and rubble. A few of them sported a gash here and there, but the party were also dragging along several carcasses of rats nearly their own size. They had lost one of their own to a rat large enough to rival an evolved Turuk, but Harunuk, who led this particular band, had crushed its skull with his fists and had fed upon its flesh.

Now all they had to do was get back to their tribe. The tribe was growing hungry, as only one in every three hunting party returned.

A screech caught their attention, as they turned to face the trees.

A white monkey sat on the branch, its red eyes studying the small figures arrogantly. The monkey threw something, and it splattered against the head of one of the goblins. A rotten fruit of some sort.

The goblins, understandably, exploded with anger, and some even rushed to the tree and began climbing in an effort to catch the-

With a twang, red-tipped arrows sang through the air, finding and sinking into flesh. About a dozen goblins fell, some clutching at their wounds, others dead on impact. It was a full half of their hunting party.

The hob-goblin leader screamed in anger, blood mist beginning to bubble up from its body. It had taken two arrows in the shoulder.

Another twang, and another handful of goblins died. This was almost insultingly easy.

The hob-goblin screamed and began emitting a red mist as it charged towards where the arrows had come from. It didn’t even notice when a hand holding a blood-red dagger slipped out from behind a tree and sliced through its neck. Blood spraying in the air, the force of the hob-goblin’s charge carried its body forward as it fell in a tangle of limbs.

Ed stepped through the shadows completely, his eyes glowing as they stared at the back of the goblins who were beginning to flee.

“Go.” He said, and the Hunters let out a woop as they began to chase the scattering goblins through the woods. Not a single one of the fleeing goblins would make it back to their tribe.

He recalled the meeting from three days ago.

----

Ed and the Hunters arrived at the Den easily. None of the beasts of the young forest beginning to take hold of the city bothered the large group of humans, and Ed moved with the grace of a predator, slipping between shadows and moving ahead of the hunting party to check the terrain ahead. His eyes occasionally blazed yellow as he swept his gaze ahead, though he was careful not to provoke any of the beasts with his sight.

By circulating the slivers of manna produced by his small bit of shadow essence manually, he found that he could move faster in the shade of the trees without activating Shadow-Step, which moved his manna almost mechanically and in predetermined patterns that seemed clunky to him.

Wutang jumped about freely above the branches overhead, white fur flashing in between the dark green patches of leaves.

Mustafa had greeted Ed with a grin when he’d made his way up to the top of the tallest building that existed in the center of The Den. The former office, now roofless, simply had a large stone table in the center. The building had once been a sky-scraper, it seemed, and had been reduced to a roofless six-story stone building that had the same moss-coverings that made it look ancient as the rest of the village.

The Den did not have a clear boundary between it and the rest of the city. The village simply existed in the center of the ruined buildings of the financial district. Creeper vines, moss, and other plants gave the area a look of a ruin from hundreds of years ago, and the people of the Den lived in its ruins. The villagers of The Den, dressed in black pelts, had watched as the Hunters had entered the village. Many of them were accompanied by wolves. Though they were large enough to be alarming, all of them seemed tame and followed their humans around like a rather calm dog.

Mikhail, Alexander, and Juan had all arrived before him, it seemed.

“You always seem to be last somehow, Ed.” Juan said lazily, though a small smile played on his face.

“It was a long road.” said Ed, smiling back.

“Our Wolf-Rider scouts report that the goblin hunting parties have been traveling further and further out. And also more and more hobgoblins have been sighted. Almost all their hunting parties have one now.” Mustafa said.

He had said Wolf-Rider with emphasis. Most likely a class then, which made sense, considering all of the wolves Ed had seen in the Village itself.

“The Vault is ready to fight anytime.” Mikhail said.

“But we won’t have a lot of mobility once the fighting begins, and we’re slow on the march. Our men will be the most useful once a full-frontal battle has occurred.” He said, nodding to Alexander and the two other men who were all fully clad in steel.

“Many of my men are more… wild, then organized. We would do better in a guerilla-type of war-fare.” Juan said.

Ed remained silent as the other leaders continued to discuss logistics. They were still a bit reluctant to share too much detail about their forces. An extension of trust would have to be made first, Ed decided. The alliance had to be united, if they were to win against the much larger force of goblins.

“The Hunters and I will pick off the goblin hunting parties then. When they realize that none of their hunting parties are coming back with food, they’ll make a large move.”

Juan’s eyes gleamed.

“And that’s when we strike.”

The rest of the council nodded in grim unison.

---

They were ready.

Finally.

The High Mother let out a cry of primal joy as she gazed upon the horde of Turuks in front of her. More than a hundred True Turuks at the front of the crowd raised their daggers and spears as they screamed in response.

“Go. Bring back flesh, and we will feast.”

“Go!”

The shrill sounds of shrieking filled the air as a hundred True Turuks and a thousand of their lesser brethren moved as one.

They crashed into the forest like a red-flood, an unstoppable wave of bodies and hunger incarnate. A few of the evolved beasts attacked these invaders with their smaller brethren, but were quickly buried under the blows, claws, and fangs of dozens. The horde devoured their remains in mere minutes, and moved on to the next.

After a couple of hours, they closed in on the village of humans who rode the black wolves. The humans that lived here had demonstrated their dangerousness when they had wiped out a weaker, but still sizeable tribe of goblins that had lived there.

But the force of the First Tribe right now was enough to crush such a tribe ten times over. They cackled as they sauntered into the ruins. This would be no different from all of the other dens that they had smashed into smithereens on their way here.

Then they saw them. A small group of humans stood on top of the tallest building.

At the thought of human flesh, many of the Turuk’s favorite, red flowers began to bloom as the True Turuks interspersed amongst the horde released their manna. Each feast had strengthened the pool of the hunger and blood that lay at the core of each goblin, and these True Turuks were eager to test out their new strength. Eager screams rang out through the ruins as they raced to be the first to sink their fangs into the soft pink flesh.

As the hobgoblins charged forward eagerly and separated from the main body of the horde, dozens of red-tipped arrows sang as they sped out from the windows of the ruined buildings surrounding them, digging deep into the flesh of the charging hobgoblins.

They did not even seem to notice, and many were able to shrug it off if they had been struck by an arrow or two. It took three or four arrows in the right places to bring down one hobgoblin, and those that fell were buried beneath the flood of red bodies rushing over them in the blink of an eye.

Then another wave of arrows sang through the air as they found their marks as well.

Then another.

And though the hobgoblins did not stop, yet the Blesseds stood their ground.

----

Mikhail gripped the golden staff in front of him. An enormous amount of manna was swirling around it, which Ed could literally feel through his skin. He needed no Dao of True Sight to be amazed by the amount of manna being commanded by the elderly man.

“Deployment.”, Mikhail uttered in a voice reverberated through the air as he brought down the golden staff with a clang, and fifty bodies, fully clad in steel appeared in formation exactly in front of the group of hob-goblins that had been rushing in blindingly fast.

Almost immediately, even as the first hobgoblin smashed into the formation, a silver light pulsed out from the figure in the center of the formation. It was Alexander. The silver dome of light expanded rapidly with him at the center, extinguishing the red mist that were just blooming from the hob-goblins, dispersed as though it had never been there.

This only seemed to enrage the hobgoblins further, and they crashed into a wall of shields and armor with claws and fangs. Men’s screams and roars began to join the thundering thrum of battle that was beginning to blanket the entirety of the village and echo through the forest.

The wall held, but barely.

It was a good thing that they didn’t have to hold the wall by themselves for much longer.

Ed fell into a pool of his own shadows, stepping through the shadow of a particularly vicious hobgoblin, emerging from behind him as he grabbed its shoulders and slit its throat before it could even turn. He bloomed with red mist as well, but it was a deep-red color richer than anything that the hobgoblins had produced just a few seconds ago. Eyes glowing yellow, he blurred into movement as he charged towards yet another hobgoblin.

Juan’s own eyes transformed to resemble a reptile’s as patches of green-yellow scales grew over his skin and face. With a hiss of a battle cry, he heaved in a massive jump from the top of the sixth story building, landing violently into the midst of the hobgoblin wave.

For a moment, it seemed like he might be buried under the flood of red bodies, but the hobgoblins that took his punches and kicks head on almost exploded into gore or were otherwise flung back ten or twenty feet, knocking back others of their brethren and inadvertently clearing a space around the reptilian Blessed. Any wound that managed to puncture his scales seemed to heal almost immediately.

Mustafa mounted one of the wolves that had been by his side as a whole pack continually materialized from smoke behind him, snarling viciously. Followed by the entire pack, he leapt down from the building. As each wolf approached the ground, the air around them seemed to distort, and they landed softly as if walking on clouds. As soon as their paws touched the ground, however, they exploded into a blur of motion, crashing into the nearest hobgoblin.

Mustafa had dismounted as soon as he’d landed, and was expertly weaving through the horde of hobgoblins, cutting through their limbs and bodies almost casually with a longsword. He never hurried to move, but his entire figure seemed to distort from time to time and speed or slow him up, when he would otherwise have been wounded or his attack just a bit too short. Mustafa was nigh unstoppable, and effortlessly slipped through the groups of hobgoblins that tried to surround or corner him.

The horde of unevolved goblins were also occupied and unable to rush to the aid of their evolved siblings.

With a large cry, a hundred human warriors bearing all kinds of steel weaponry poured out from behind the rubble in groups of five and tens, towering over the regular goblins and slashing through their ranks. At their head was a gray orc and a girl with a tall axe, and they worked together seamlessly to become a tornado of steel blade and swinging punches that cut deeply into the ranks of the surprised goblins.

Humans riding tall black wolves leaped out from their hiding places and also began to wreak havoc on the rest of the horde. There were a few hobgoblins that had remained with the rest of the horde, but red-tipped arrows had been continually whizzing through the air as though the hobgoblins were magnets.

It seemed that the humans were winning for a few minutes.

Then an abnormally large and ugly hobgoblin reared over its unevolved brethren from the rear of the horde, eyes rolled back as it screamed an utterly blood-curdling call. Two dozen goblins near it instantly became mummified husks of themselves as their blood-essence exploded out of their bodies in a wave and were sucked into the hobgoblin’s body.

A guttural scream ripped out of the hobgoblin's throat as it began flinging balls of red manna into the ranks of the charging humans. Any human hit by the red manna began bleeding through all orifices, collapsing with a terrified scream as their blood essence went haywire.

Similar scenes were happening all around the battlefield, with a wounded goblin who was unable to fight becoming instantly mummified as their blood essence began to flow into their more able brethren, healing their wounds and seemingly filling them with renewed vigor.

Shields buckled and broke against the renewed onslaught, and the red demons threw themselves at the black wolves and humans alike three or four at a time, as many times as needed. A whirlwind of madness and claws was beginning to sweep through the battlefield.

Even the Blessed began to sport multiple wounds, some deeper than others, as they continued to face off the hobgoblins, and the battle began anew as true blood-lust and madness descended upon the Den and its would be defenders.