Sitting at about 200 meters outside the wall, just outside the range of our improved magical turrets, every single one of the enemies paces while waiting for the orders from the goblin chief.

The choice of distance could be just a coincidence, but I do not think that is likely. Something is telling me this was a conscious and deliberate choice and so while the mastermind moniker may be an exaggeration, it seems like a clear step up in either their observational capabilities or intel they obtained through other methods. Possibly even stuff the system informed them of.

Have no real idea what information they may get from the system.

All that seemed of much lesser importance when compared to the question of how they would proceed. I roll my perception field from side to a side thought the root connection always keeping at least a corner on their chief, but roaming through every single one of the enemies in turn.

I learn that the opposing army seems to be slightly stronger than the attack from last month with better equipment and weapons.

Besides that nothing else jumps out to me, not obvious strategies. So far they are ‘sitting’ in place.

That continues for another minute while their shamans talk with the goblin chief continue doing a few small works of magic one after the next.

What would I give to learn their language? I could listen in on their plans and that would give us such an advantage.

As a thought crosses my mind, I focus on the feedback of the roots trying to ascertain what spells they are casting.

I happily take in a picture with dozens of runes, the problem are the hundreds, maybe thousands of smaller interconnecting runes too small and entangled for me to make out that surround the main work.

I look closely with my senses extended by the roots underground while ignoring the dozens of minds in their very shallow connection growing and trying to ensnare the enemy with Merlin in the lead. It took a while for the others to get a hang of things, but they were learning how to communicate with Aspen and even the roots themselves. Even without me or Merlin, they could still be minimally effective.

Ignoring their struggle for the moment, I filter out the ripples of their actions passing through the network and pay my complete attention to the working the shamans are using.

There is something wrong, it doesn’t make sense for them to just park in our vicinity exposing them to much more danger if there was something slow they needed to prepare.

That magic must be important.

I let the thought consume me. Leveraging my high perception stat to the absolute limit, wringing out the last droplet of knowledge that I can through the limited mana sense traversing the network, I squint my mental eyes again and again whenever they cast this unknown magic.

Just like the teleportation of the wolves, this runic magic had a few stylistic distinct differences to ours, but it was still similar enough for me to get the gist of what they hey were trying to do, all I need is a better peek.

A minute, two minutes, three minutes pass as I get an increasingly better look and learn to leverage my advantages until finally, it clicks in my mind.

“Ohh shit,” I say instinctively unmuting my connection to Richard and the other commanders.

“What?” He asks me.

It takes me a moment to realize what I did, but as I gather my thoughts the implications only have more time to soak in.

“They are scrying our village,” I say.

Hearing that Richard calls out: “Merlin, Nash figured out what they are doing. They are spying on our village. Some scrying magic. Do you think you two could come up with a defense?”

“We can try.” He says a little distracted from his own magic slowly ensnaring a few of the enemy.

I can even say anything he withdraws from the joint work in his group and we get our heads together as I try to explain the little I learned about the enemy's scrying capabilities.

Another minute passes as we spitball possible defenses as I simultaneously build a couple of iterations to test. Feeding loads of mana through each of them until I feel a twitch from one of the shamans in his turn to cast the scrying spell.

The ‘defense’ is be nothing more than a way to blind anyone with magical senses, but it will serve its proposes for now. Seconds later, after another few shamans try and fail to get much of anything from our village, the chief swings his arm and every one of them halts instantly before they do what I had expected.

Tunneling underground, they slowly pass the meters trying to get to our walls, and I happily make full use of the magical disruptions helped by the hundreds of stones and other metal bars stuck on the ground to make their progression as difficult as possible.

Streams of mana flow to the runic disruptors underground. Though they need to get within about 150 meters for the more complex formations to start appearing.

But even as they have trouble and spend a little longer to advance through the ground, that is all my actions are, a delay. The exhausting magic being easily fed with my batteries and empowered by my will.

Within about 50 meters of the wall, their situation changes as dozens of Mages along with Merlin send their will and successfully disrupt the shaman’s efforts. Each meter is hard-fought and even with their sheer magical power superiority, my formations to disrupt them in another layer, and other small tricks I start to pull grounds their advance nearly to a halt.

The one meter they can dig per second with most of their 100 shaman complement now takes them about 15 seconds and each meter forward that time increase.

As each step forward weakens them as it adds more length to protect and shorten their distance to our mages reducing their range advantage.

I shift small formations around while donating as much of my will as I can to Merlin and the other’s efforts.

A stream of mana disrupts the magic-users who stayed behind as I make random quick attempts to collapse the tunnel. My main goal however is to distract them from the mass of roots being formed around segments along the tunnel.

As they approach the wall, some 30 meters from the group of mages and Merlin the fight becomes nearly even as they have to fight from increasingly smaller distances, but the enemy can still advance if at a slower speed. From the current pace, they might be able to overcome even the full group at point blank range, all they need is a constant stream of mana and their skills, both of which won’t change any time soon.

Although if other ‘part time’ magical users joined as they get closer, they won’t be able to keep advancing nearly as easily, or maybe at all, after all, we had hundreds of people that just didn’t have the raw stats and skill levels and range but were decent magic users. But for now, relying on just the 30 mages with Merlin, all we can do is try to keep up.

The others don’t get a chance to help.

The thick stream of mana flowing all around reveals the real changes that I had done to the tunnel. The shamans realize that I wasn’t just ‘wasting’ thousands of mana points trying to collapse the tunnels. I was creating something outside their control, thick roots that constrict the tunnel and manage to overcome even the reinforced walls and actively controlled chunks of dirt entirely bypassing their defenses.

Six points along with the tunnel collapse behind the large mass of shamans in a staggered sequence. Through comm runes in the underground network, I hear the hisses from the goblins not buried as they are without much recourse.

They stop pushing forward and huddle together for a minute.

The very first time I ever saw a goblin that wasn’t the chief talk to another in such an obvious strategic planning session. My initial instinct seems to be correct, they are different them the usual breed of enemies.

Their will and mana continue to permeate the stone all around, so we can’t push them back, but at least for the moment, we reach a brief stalemate.

Accounting for the few goblins occasionally speared through from the heavy crossbows, or ballistae as I used to call them, are a slow but steady change in the status quo on our favor. It will take hours to even get a decent chunk of the enemy, but every single one they lose before they hit our walls is an advantage for us.

Over a minute pass without any more progress except for the few wolves and goblins speared through in the distance. Just as I am about to withdraw my will from the fight on the tunnel and send it elsewhere the discussion ends. All the shamans withdraw their mana from the forward part of the tunnel where the main contention point is and make their way back, this time more easily and faster the further they get from us.

With the help from my roots, nearly bypassing their control of the Earth and physically moving the dirt around I make myself as much of a nuisance as possible, but outside the range of the other mages, I don’t have the strength to keep up with so many shamans.

Their progress is slowed but never halted with about 90 Shamans soon back in the fold as they stop just beyond most of our mage’s range. About 60 meters from the wall they start spreading out the tunnel and making an exit and an earth wall on ground level.

Soon the entire army is making their way into the tunnels.

It seems like this is just another step that I can’t avoid, a step I can at most delay. However, as the thought crosses my mind, it all clicks together.

They are all in an enclosed space incapable of dodging. Although I can’t directly control the earth and do any damage in this way, as long as I avoid the shamans I can grow runes and do just about everything I want down there.

Moving a few of the closest formations and growing a few more as fast as possible, I send waves of fire in the tunnel accumulating a little damage. The Shamans get together and ignore their attempts to further grow the wall above and start on a fairly familiar formation.

One I have only seen once from one other group of Shamans.

A truck hits my will and repulses my control of the roots. Inch by inch I recede as they gain ground in the underground network.

Irritation.

The mental image from Aspen is clear. He does not like this one bit and even before I can strategize with him, the enemy begins to be pushed out with extreme prejudice. He does not take kindly to someone messing with the extension of his body spread in the instances, not even a little.

Counting on him distracting the shamans, more effortless than last time, I withdraw most of my will as serendipitously as possible and prepare the largest and most powerful combined attack I can at the very mouth of the tunnel.

Thirty seconds gathering mana and finishing the connecting runes to help the attack I have in mind.

Right at the start of the tunnel ten thousand mana flow from the formations to form a slightly diffuse but still deadly fireball that covers most of the 2-meter tall shaft. The goblins all shriek at the same time and try to retreat from the attack. The ones already inside have little recourse but push the mass of people ahead frantically trying to rush as far away down the tunnel as possible.

Their efforts are useless.

A moment later they all stop moving as the roiling furnace engulfs them only amplified within the confined space.

Nearly a hundred goblins and about 20 wolves were dead in a few instants. Every kill somehow echoes through my soul as my will rod behind the fireball. Every single permanent end a small stab in my heart and consciousness.

I didn’t want to do this, but what choice did I have? Roll over and die?

I close another tunnel on top of the result of my fireball as the ones in front are injured but still able to move around. I try to form another large fireball, but this time the shamans are ready and over the next minute all the mana I convert into fire mana is dissipated.

I can accumulate it in the very roots without any trouble, but as soon as I start to draw it out and form the fireball or any other attack, they are on top of it and with one or two synchronized strikes easily disrupt my control of the mana. Porbably payback for all the times I used formations to make their rituals and other castings harder.

We reach a strange stalemate as they split their greater numbers and just about 60 work to me hold back from any effective use of magic inside the tunnels, while the others retreat back up to the enemy army.

With the remnants of my will, I can see what they are doing. They move the thick earth wall forward without even having to go underground.

Accomplishing little with my current attempts, I withdraw my will while keeping an eye to collapse the tunnel as soon as they falter.

For now, I reach for two familiar formations above and with a large stream of mana and activate the most powerful version of the mana disruptors. Grabbing the stuff of magic in the air and earth as they exhaustingly push forward, the formations send pulses of mana basically making it behave erratically, almost like it wants to go berserk and the results are the same as every single time I attempted to use it.

A few of the enemy shamans split off to deal with my interruptions, but this time they don’t have enough and their progress is ground to halt. At least that is until the others rejoin them a few minutes later.

This is exhausting and we had barely got through a tenth of the enemy's number. A much longer fight them usually.

Ohh, the good old days of goblins charging headlong into combat.