For roughly twenty hours the plan continued without a hitch. Instead of sending out two groups they sent one big one consisting of two hobgoblins and six goblins. He had no problem taking them down in a similar fashion to the previous encounter. However, Locke was now forced to make his move.

He was afraid of this but several hobgoblins were making their way to the cage area. They were either going to let the worgs out of their cages for the next food run, or butcher them. Locke assumed their goal was to prepare a feast with the worgs as the main dish, mainly because letting them out seemed like a terrible idea. The beasts are starving and would be more likely to try to eat the goblins rather than obey them. Unless the goblins were really stupid their goal shouldn't be to let them out.

With this in mind Locke had to give up his position and start raining Ice Javelins down on the fort. He never used this spell much because the extra mana cost only added longer range and the distance ice spear travelled was already quite decent. The intent here was to cause chaos, confusion, and to lure them out. They should be weaker right now if hunger worked the way he hoped. Of course there was still quite a lot of goblins down there preventing him from fighting them all at once, it would be suicide.

Due to how far the enemies were Locke couldn't hit every attack, but he did land a few. These javelins were cast at minimum mana cost making them quite weak. They couldn't kill a goblin in a single strike, but that didn't matter as he needed to conserve his mana.. There was chaos in the camp until the leader started shouting, the goblins moved behind cover and started launching arrows towards their assailant. Locke was ready to dodge, but realized he didn't have to as the arrows never made it to him at all.

The goblins were weak with tiny shortbows which didn't allow the arrows to fly the distance and height required. This continued on for a bit until an arrow pierced his left shoulder causing him to fall backwards due to the force applied.

Shit.....who shot that one, was it the leader? My hp dropped by 100 from that shot alone.

Locke pulled the arrow from his shoulder and began using healing touch immediately. He was currently out of vision which was good.

Alright it's time to end this. They don't know if I'm injured or dead, they will most likely send out a party to finish me off. With them splitting their forces even further I might be able to get inside easier and release the starving worgs. Just have to make sure they don't eat me instead. First things first I need to load up the other ladder into my inventory.

He had to turn on his strength boost to make sure he could carry the log into his inventory. One point of strength equaled fifteen pounds of inventory space. It took a bit but he got the inventory window in position allowing him to push the log in. Once that was finished it was time to rush down to the fort while avoiding the detachment they were most likely going to send up to check on him. There was a brief thought that surfaced that told him he could just kill the goblin detachment instead but decided against it. It was time to take a gamble, the enemy hopefully is not going to expect him to invade their fort and release their worgs. As long as the worgs are hostile to the goblins there should be plenty of opportunities to finish this quest today.

Locke found a decent spot to pop his head out to quickly scout which direction the goblins were going. With two ways up to where he was at the goal was to rush down the path they do not take. He saw that a party consisting of five hobgoblins were moving up towards the cliff edge. This meant that there were twelve goblins, three hobgoblins, and the sergeant still left inside.

It didn't take long to get down the edge of the clearing. Currently he was hidden in the edge of the forest while observing the fort to quickly come up with his next course of action. It was roughly one hundred feet from here to the fort wall. There were two manned watch towers that would spot him the moment he rushed forward.

No time for distractions, no cover on the way to the fort, bright sunny day out, no items or spells that can help, can't take out both sentries at once........it's either go in now or retreat. Retreating here results in taking way too long completing this side quest.

Locke sighed, “what a pain.”

With no further delay he started rushing towards the wall as he could not guarantee his spells landing at this range. Shouts were coming from the watchtowers as the two small goblins raised their bows and loosed their arrows. One arrow missed, one dodged. Next volley, one arrow dodged, and the other slammed into his shoulder throwing him off balance. He was forced to slow down to a halt to keep his balance. Due to how fast he was moving it was hard to dodge their attacks but it didn't matter now as he was in range.

Locke sent a 40 mana ice spear into the head of the right side goblin who fell from the tower on the opposite side. A crash could be heard as it must have landed on something. While dodging another arrow he charged up a second spear towards the other one. Just as the spell left the palm of his hand the goblin quickly dropped to the floor to avoid it. He frowned at the thought of wasting mana. With his boost running his mana regeneration was only slightly more than 1 mana per second.

Opening his inventory he took out the log ladder, shoved it against the wall, and started climbing. The nearby worgs were howling and barking due to the commotion, most likely alerting the entire fort. Once he reached the top the first thing he noticed was the sentry goblin was making its way down the watchtowers rope ladder. The second observation was the two small goblins as well as one hobgoblin on their way to investigate the scene. They were still a ways away though, he had some time to react before they arrived.

The sergeant is not in sight..... need to clean this up quick while also conserving my mana.

In quick succession he jumped into the tower then pounced towards the goblin who just made it to the bottom of the ladder. A frightened shriek bellowed out from the goblin as Locke landed on top of the monster forcing it to the ground. He drew his short sword and pierced it's neck, there was no way for it to resist in this state. Locke's eyes darted back and forth until it landed on both the bow and arrows that were dropped. He was about to pick them up but remembered something very important in the heat of the moment.

Right only one arm....probably wouldn't have hit them anyways, I suck at archery.

Scanning the scene he noticed only one goblin and hobgoblin were charging at him and were very close. The other one was running the opposite direction. Recognizing the situation he dropped his shortsword.

I doubt its fleeing for its life, the goal is most likely to notify the sergeant. Need to kill it now.

Locke darted towards his enemies with the intention of avoiding the two in front and killing the one retreating. There were some faraway watchtowers that noticed his attack as well and were sounding the alarm but it didn't matter. The goblin still needed to die, even if it only bought him a minute or two that was enough. It was impossible for him to know the strength of the sergeant, he needed to avoid fighting it directly. At the very least until he had some sort of advantage going for him.

Dodging both the great maul swing from the hobgoblin and the arrow from the goblin he quickly moved forward and launched an ice spear. The spear missed and the running goblin quickly dropped to the ground in a crouch and looked back. Locke continued to dodge the attacks coming his way and fired a second shot which also missed. Turned out it was hard to aim while dodging, who knew.

The hobgoblin seemed to bark an order causing the crouching goblin to stand up and continue to run. It was too late though as the third shot connected into the back of its head killing it instantly.

That took 120 mana just to kill that single goblin....I have already used over half my mana.....no it's fine as long as I get a minute or two here to regen most of it back.

Locke turned in anger towards the two foes that have been attacking him without pause and drew his longsword from it's sheath. They halted their attacks at the sudden change and slowly backed up.

“You two shouldn't have done that,”

It didn't take long to finish the two off. Looking around it seemed like there was still some time before the enemy force arrived. Locke sheathed his longsword and picked up the greatmaul. The worg cages were very close by and he needed to act fast. Moving around the corner the sight of the six beasts throwing a fit. They were definitely raring to go and Locke didn't want to be on the receiving end of it.

What to do, come on Locke you have been in more dire situations than this there has to be something. Okay..... it's simple, but that should do the trick.

He noticed the top part of the cages were quite durable looking and there was a building nearby that he could jump off some boxes to get to the roof. Locke jumped off the boxes onto the roof then with a second leap he landed on top of the cage. Once he was in position with the worgs freaking out below him it was time to slam the gate with the great maul over and over again. It was a bit awkward with one hand but having 30 strength was able to overcome that. He didn't really check if he could just open the gate from the bottom without resorting to this method. Based on how strong the worgs looked they most likely would have just run him down before he could get out of harms way. The goblins were slow which was Lockes main advantage he had over them, these worgs however were most likely faster.

After the tenth slam the cage gate started to crack and buckle. A couple of the worgs slammed into it as well breaking it open. They were free and their heads were darting all around seemingly figuring out what to do first. Locke had already jumped over to the building rooftop and discarded the great maul. Staring down at them he was pleading in his mind.

Please....please do something useful you mutts, I need some sort of advantage here.