The faint smell of 'magic' led me to believe that the goblin that I had detected might actually be the shaman.

And looking at Morgan, she seems to have sensed it as well as it got closer. Upon noticing its presence, she immediately turned her head towards where it is and her shoulders shook.

"Wha-what!? The freaking shaman is here!?"

"What?"

"Oi Morgan, don't joke around."

"I'm serious you idiot, look over there!"

As she said that, she pointed towards the direction where the shaman is to which the rest of the group looked at as well. And they didn't see anything.

"What? There's nothing there. You're just being paranoid, Morgan. Or maybe it's that time of the month now?"

"I'm not playing your game, Sam! I'm serious!"

The priestess and Rus looked at the direction from where she pointed at dubiously. There's absolutely no signs of the shaman there.

As for Rodan, he looked at me to confirm and when I nodded, his brows furrowed.

"It's true. Ready yourselves. We don't know what it's capable off."

"Seriously!?"

Sam asked if Rodan was serious to which Rodan answered with no change in his expression.

But that didn't seem to convince him that easily.

It's understandable that he wouldn't so easily. After all, there's nothing to where Morgan had pointed to except for trees, shrubs, and more trees.

But that's because they couldn't detect shaman other than with their eyes. And this goblin shaman had somehow hid its physical features... somehow.

There's also the question of as to how it arrived here so quickly. And yes, I've only detected it recently. Never did I noticed its presence while we were walking briskly.

So us being followed isn't a viable explanation so how did it do it? Could it had used some kind movement magic? It should have been capable of moving instantaneously if that was the case for me not detect its presence while it's traveling.

...

Cutting that thought for the moment, an old looking goblin littered with strange looking... 'ornaments' hanging from its neck revealed itself. As for its clothes, its simply a dirty and slimy-looking cloth draped over it from shoulder below.

And at that point, the smell of goblins entered my nose. And it's not just from him, it's from multiple goblins, all of them coming from the direction to where the goblin village is, and they seem to heading towards us.

"A lot of goblins, coming towards us!"

"What!?"

"Damn! Ready yourselves! We'll take out the shaman first then hastily retreat!"

With what Rodan had said, the three male humans took out their swords and took a stance, their eyes carefully observing the shaman.

Then not even a second after they decided to do that, the shaman took action as it also brought out it's branch staff like Morgan's and raised it in the air.

"It's probably gonna cast magic! Watch out!"

"Can't you disrupt it!?"

"You idiot! I would've done that if I could!"

After Morgan's warning and unnecessary quarrel with Sam at the end, the shaman then released some sort of magic, but it doesn't seem to be apparent.

I've certainly felt some magic being released from the branch staff but somehow it vanished into thin air. No, more like it scattered.

Just then, I felt something moving from beneath me. The plants? No, vines? Where did this come from? And it's growing awfully fast too and it's tough as well despite being a plant.

The others soon noticed the vines' sudden appearance but from then on, it had already wrapped itself to their feet.

"What the...!?"

"Argh...! I should've have expected this...!"

"They're like snakes! Morgan! Burn them!"

"I can't use fire magic, idiot!"

Even Rus who was silent the whole time made made a reaction.

"Wawawawaaaahhh...!"

The vines also wrapped around Celidonia's feet and now it's making its way to her legs. Even after pulling on it strongly, she couldn't rip it off.

As for me, of course I can but it did took more effort than I expected. And after that, I removed the vines from her feet and shins.

"O-oh... You're quite strong for a child... Thank you. If you could, go help Morgan."

As what Celidonia said, I turned my head towards Morgan and she seems to be having trouble as well. Couldn't she use magic? Why not just use the thing she used before but with smaller area so she could cut the vines with ease?

Whatever the reason might be that prevents her from doing that, I helped her anyway.

The vines that wrapped around her is stronger somehow thsn the ones that wrapped around mine and Celidonia so it took me a while to remove them.

"T-thanks. What did you do to be able to easily remove them?"

"I pulled them off."

"Huh? That's it?"

"Yes."

Morgan looked quite dumfounded by what I just said but she quickly shook it off and focused on the situation at hand.

I looked forward as well and saw that the three had already removed the vines from their feet using their swords and is just about ready to run at the shaman at any moment.

The only thing that's stopping them is the fact that the shaman is readying another spell.

Rus fired an arrow with his bow but the fired arrow didn't even make contact and just bounced off from some kind of invisible field around it.

He fired a few more and it also resulted the same. Then, the magic that the shaman had been preparing was then released.

Immediately, a large vibration from the ground occured and once that was done, at the ground beneath Rodan suddenly grew upwards with.

"The bastard's summoning an earth [golem]! Quickly, finish it!"

In Morgan's shout, the three immediately rushed forward while she began chanting a spell of her own and from the sound of it, the chant is a long one.

With quick steps, Sam arrived in front of the shaman first and swang the sword held by his right hand towards the shaman with no hesitation. But just like before with the arrows, his sword just bounced off from an invisible force. Sam swang again and again in rapid succession but to no avail.

Rus then arrived a few seconds after and stabbed his sword towards the shaman but it didn't work either. The same case with Rodan as well. His heavy attacks weren't effective at all.

"It's mana field is strong... What the hell!? Isn't it just a goblin!?"

"That doesn't matter now. It looks like simply attacking like this would be useless."

With Rodan's conclusion, the three stopped attacking for the moment and took a step back.

"Guys! Get out of the way!"

Then Morgan shouted. The three quickly stepped away from the shaman and as they did, Morgan release her magic and what came out from the staff is a massive ball of air, that may be transparent but this ball has enough air in it to actually distort the image when you're looking through it.

This ball of air almost instantaneously traveled through the space between Morgan and the shaman and directly hit it to which the shaman flew off in an amazing speed before its body crashed into the tree behind him, almost toppling the tree.

The goblin's face distorted in pain as dark red blood came out of its mouth.

But just then, the thing that the shaman had summoned has now fully came out from the ground. It revealed a large mass of earth that is somehow able to move. It only posses one main body with four limbs like us, all made up of compact dirt.

"We'll take care of the golem! Morgan, you deal with the shaman! It seems like magic is what's effective against it!"

With Rodan's orders, Morgan started to chant the same magic as before

As for the three, they're simply dodging the golem's attacks as they're not even attacking themselves.

But I guess it is the logical thing to do when you're fighting against a mass of dirt but still... They wouldn't be able to defeat it if they're just moving around like that. And the golem's attack is fairly slow as well. They didn't have trouble dodging about.

[... Let this lower being borrow your strength! "Air Burst"]

Soon, Morgan finished preparing her magic and released it towards the shaman, but the ball of air couldn't make a physical contact with the shaman as it was dissipated by the same invisible force. Strange... that didn't happen before...

"Tch! Looks like it's able to switch what property it's mana shield blocks! One of you, go an attack the shaman. I doubt it's able to block physical attacks now."

"You heard her! Go for it, Sam!"

"Alright!"

Sam dashed towards the shaman and as soon as he is in range, slashed forward horizontally, hitting the shaman squarely on the chest. And the blood that came out of where Sam had hit it indicates that the attack went through

But Sam's next attack bounced off.

"Morgan!"

"You don't have to tell me!"

Morgan then immediately prepared her next magic. This time it's the wind cutter one from the sound of it.

For the meantime, Sam kept on pressuring the goblin shaman while attacking continuosly but this time, in a much lower speed than he usually attacks. Probably to conserve energy. At some point in his attack the invisible force was now deflecting his attacks so from that, he went into defensive and blocked or dodged whatever small scale magic that the shaman had threw at him in rapid succesion.

And when Morgan shouted that she's ready, Sam immediately stepped back and Morgan released her magic, making a deep wound on the shaman's collarbone. But it didn't seem to cut all the way through unlike the hobgoblins before.

Anyway, the two continued this kind of attack while the other two continued their dodging on the golem.

As for me and Celidonia, we just stood there watching.

Actually, it's only me that's watching and while Celidonia is watching as well, she's occasionally doing her priestess powers on the others despite them not having any wounds. I wonder what it does? I'll ask her later.

Since I'm the only one that isn't doing anything, I feel useless.

I want to help somehow but from Sun and Night's warning, if I showed my strength here, they might see me as a threat or at least become very suspicious of what I am. Though I already showed Celidonia and Morgan... But since they didn't ask much about it, it should be fine to move that worry aside.

That being said, I'll have to avoid that scenario. I'm already troubled about them being suspicious as to why I know exactly where the goblin village is already. It's really fortunate that Rodan hadn't asked further, or any of them asked any further because I'm still thinking up a story as to why I got that information.

For now, I should behave like what I look like. A simple, small human with no amazing powers whatsoever. Except for the fact that I somehow know where the goblin village is...

The fight continued until the shaman looked to be on the brink of death. It's mana shield doesn't seem to be up anymore as well so Sam is simply slashing on the shaman with no pause.

He had hit the shaman so many times that Sam's sword is completely covered in blood. It smells quite putrid because it came from a goblin but it was nonetheless blood so it made me hungry a little.

Sam then made the final hit on the shaman before it finally lost its life. And upon its death, the golem as well suddenly lost its life and it immediately crumbled on the ground.

"Guys, the shaman's dead! Ahahaha!"

"I can see that. Good job."

"Well, that was rather boring."

"Oi. Don't go saying something so dangerous now, Rus. It was weird enough that a goblin shaman is capable of summoning a golem that large and that quickly. Usually, they needed to do some kind of ritual in order to do that but this guy just did it normally which indicates that it possesses a large sum of mana. Furthermore—"

"Woah. I gotta stop you right there. I don't understand I word your saying."

"That's because you're a fuc—"

"Leave your bantering later. Kid, how far are those goblins by now?"

Did he mean what I said earlier before the fight began?

Then...

"Odd. They didn't come. They've returned back to the village."

"Hm..."

Rodan narrowed his eyes on me before turning around and gesturing to the whole group to leave at once.

Ah... Did he think I was trying to scare them? If so, that wasn't my intention human. It really wasn't.

It really is odd to find that those goblins that seemingly been rushing towards us, for some reason, retreated. I think they did that when the shaman was about half dead.

As to why they did that, I have a guess.

Maybe they somehow found out that their shaman is about to die and they left right there and then, believing that whomever best the shaman, they wouldn't be able to beat it either. As such, they ran away.

Or maybe the goblin chief recalled them? Now that I think about it, what does the goblin chief look like? Is it a bigger version of a hobgoblin or does it look old and weak like the village chief? We never got to see it.

But while I was thinking such useless thoughts like that, I've noticed a presence behind us.

When I turned around, I saw the shaman's body somehow rising from the dead with black mist enveloping it.