The moon had risen and fallen by the point we reunited with the others once more. We were now all huddled around the main dining room, talking about what quest we were going to do.

Charles, taking the lead, one-sidedly announced, “So, to explain for the crafters, we selected two quests. One to uncover an assassin in the priesthood, and the other to help subjugate the yearly green-skin mass. The former is more inclusive. Naturally, ‘S’ and miss Jacqueline cannot attend. Although not explicitly banned, necromancers and the undead are very much taboo. And since Mask has sworn an apology for his crimes leading to his traitor title, it makes sense that him, Sam and I fulfil the quest for the church whereas the others achieve the others. ”

I butted in however in a monotoned confession, “I have an objection. I am also a traitor, and unlike mask, I will never apologize for my actions which lead up to it. So I will join miss Ess and Jacqueline instead.”

Even though there were eight other people in the room previously eating in amidst the conversation, it was silent enough to hear the mild wind outside. Everyone, aside from S- who had no emotion on her skull- and Serv- who seemed completely unperturbed- stared at me with a mixture of scorn and shock.

The silence ended with Charles, now laughing out of what can only be described as delirium, asked, “You’re kidding, right? How the heck is someone as young as you a ‘traitor’.”

Looking into my eyes however, his laughter became staggered before quickly dying out all together. Like the others, he fell silent.

-

The awkward silence ended only to acknowledge the change in the split. The crafters headed to their respective workshops with Serv and Jessica. Out of the two carriages outside of the base, Mask and Charles head inside of the one not drawn by Jacq’s undead horses, whereas she, S and I went into the one which was.

Most of the trip followed the awkward silence, I spent this time watching the scenery pass by. From the regularly placed buildings of the city centre, the image became more rural throughout the duration of the journey.

As a general pattern, the carriage went north-west of the city’s outskirts. Mostly flat ground with hills and only grasses for miles around. And once officially out of the city’s reach, it went about ten miles longer until a thick forest of varying tree types breached the horizon.

Near where the forest-line started, there was ten other carriages. The people previously occupying which were standing in a large crowd with one person standing adjacent to then.

Upon our arrival, Jacq unsummoned the carriage and we joined the crowd. Hearing mid-way into the speaker’s speech, who became derailed after our carriage- apparently the last one- to ask if everyone was here.

In a loud, but unstrained shout, the armoured female knight acting as the speaker announced, “Good greetings everyone, my name is ‘Claudia’ of The Guild of Red Fangs. I welcome our representatives of: The Guild of Bloody Swords, The Guild of Blue Wolves, The Guild of A Thousand Flames, The Guild of The Golden Touch and, last but not least, The Guild of Black Sheep. And wish to express my pleasure in working with you all.”

She took a small break from her announcement to allow for everyone to look around at one another. As the late-comers, most gazes are directed our way.

Unlike our clan, who generally wore whatever we wanted due to no one sharing the same discipline, the other clans were more or less colour coded. Claudia and the people wearing the same armour, all had full suits of bluish-grey full-plate armour, with emblems of a blood-red, sharp and long tooth- root and all- on a black background. Their weapons were almost all polearms, with most using spears, a handful using tridents and one or two sword users. There was eleven people other than Claudia who had this pattern of dress, split evenly between men and women based on first glance knowledge.

Those with similar, but fundamentally different emblems- of a blood-red silhouette of a plain sword on a similarly black background- varied their armours from light, scarlet-tanned leather to similar plate armour. But whereas the Red Fangs had their emblem attached to their shoulder pads, all the bloody sword members had black and red swords, the hilt of which had their emblem attached. There were also twelve people with a similar getup.

Others who belonged to the blue wolves all wore leather armour, dyed navy blue. Their weapons varied from throwing knives with a diverse range of types, daggers, rapiers and one with an arbalest, which looked heavy considering the person with the second most fragile-looking build- second only to me- was visibly shaking as he carried it. They seemed to be the most numerous, with about twenty of their number.

Next, there were people wearing cloaks and tall hats sharp enough to be considered a weapon. Some held staves with others holding nothing, with daggers secured to their waists. They were the second lowest in number, counting eight in total.

Finally was a party of people dressed in white robes. Emblems of golden silhouettes of an open hand adorned their robes. They had fifteen members, split into three smaller groups of five.

With vague introductions out of the way, Claudia gained our attention once more in saying, “For now, before we begin, I will state our goal: Foremost, save any survivors of the twelve parties reportedly working in the area as of yesterday. Otherwise slaughter any and all greenskins from the area, the numbers of which are between three and four digits based on the information we have received. They are, for now, scattered amongst this forest. And, although they might not daunt any of you, I shall remind you that more people died last year from goblins than any other monster, with orcs in the top five. Final reminder, the job ends when we meet the other team on the other side.”

Realizing no one was moving after she turned away, one of her guild members quietly spoke to her then she turned back explaining, “Oh, yeah… Formations. Firstly, my guild’s parties will vanguard for The Guild of Thousand Flames, and will do so centrally. To our left, we request the parties of the Blue Wolves to fight. To our right, we request the bloody swords. You three from the Guild of Black Sheep, feel free to join whichever flank you wish. Finally, those of the Golden touch, please split evenly behind us. For if we retrieve any casualties, you will be critical in helping them. Now then, without much further ado… I wish us all to be successful with casualties. Let us prepare our lines and begin on our count.”

The others quickly formed up according to the plan, whereas Jacq explained, “We should join the left flank. The blue wolves do not have many genuine vanguard, the bloody swords are generally seen as elitists and the other two guilds have their bases covered for the most part.”

Upon S and I nodding in response, we followed Jacq to the left flank. This leading those from the Blue Wolves to eye us with curiosity. Shortly after, I grabbed my bow and- for now- a single arrow headed with a dimly-glowing stone. S wielded her sword and equipped her helmet and Jacq summoned ten of her larger skeletons, the eleven skeletons then headed to the front row. And after doing so, the other’s curiosity seemed to be saited as they placed four of their own members to stand with S and the skeletons at the front, and six- including the man with the arbalest- stood with me and Jacq in the back row. The rest made up a middle row, spacing the vanguard in teams of six with spaces between them for them to make their attacks and fall back effectively.

The closest of our section to the centre was still about fifty or so metres away from them. And the front row was split into 4 teams of three vanguards who were all spaced a metre apart, with five metre gaps between the teams for the middle row to properly attack into and out of effectively. The main reason for the space though was due to the forest not being uniform, having the space meant we could split trees between us without losing overall time. The healers being a safe but close enough distance of ten metres behind the back row, with a few metres between each row. I was on the left side, as was S. Jacq being more central.

There wasn’t a need to communicate further, and since the other three clans were set up already, so the countdown started immediately after one of the blue wolves gestured to the others that we were done.

At the end of the countdown, we marched through the forest at a cautious- yet not boringly slow- pace. And to start with, apart from me or one of the other ranged rearguard killing the occasional goblin munching on some dead animal or magic beast before it realized we were even there. Unlike in the dragon fight, I only used my magic to get new arrows from my interdimensional storage. Relying on good aim to shove an arrow in their necks-or their eyes or mouths when I wished to show off.

But this changed eventually, with a slightly muffled yet audible call out from someone in another team. Who simply called out, “Large group, don’t let any escape.”

The fight from the centre party spilled over onto our side as we closed the gap. With our forces making a near-surround on the tide of greenskins.

Initially it was only goblins, who- to Jacque’s skeletons- died in one hit. The arbalest user’s shots were far slower than mine, but cleanly cleaved heads off of whatever goblin got in its crosshair. The forest up to this point was even ground, which made hitting things far-off hard when they got too close.

As the tide felt like it was fading, a wave of delirious and fleeing Orcs ran into our vanguard. Although most went down as swiftly as the hill of goblin corpses, some survived the initial attacks by Jacq’s skeletons. With one or two being in bad positions for us, managing to get a hit or two off before a middle-ranked fighter could help finish it. They only increased in number from then on, at a rate of almost replacing every dead orc with two more.

Before long, we had another fight on our hands. With a surge of orcs lead by a troll, which towered a head above its fellow orcs, hitting our left flank. So whilst we surrounded the middle lot, they were almost surrounding us. One of the other rear-guards near the other sections called out the news in a loud and succinct tone.

With even S having to fight the left conglomerate of the ten or so orcs lead by the ogre, I started firing once more. Due to how close the fight was and how tall Jacq’s skeletons were, I was forced to aim for joints in their arm or shoot over. As, for the most part, heads were completely hidden in the mess and we had no vertical terrain like a hill to benefit us.

The left orc force gained numbers faster than we could slay them, soon risking to spill over into a surround. With this being so, an order to fallback ten or so metres in the middle was given by one of the middle ranks. And as we did so, the two flanks- instead of surrounding us completely- mindlessly went for the path of least resistance, meeting where we had fallen back. But rather than gaining numbers, the two seperate forces instead attacked one another as well as us.

Even though the fight had turn into an easier one for the middle two teams of vanguard, the ogre on the left finally reached striking range with the left-hand flank, which contained S. Even though I could- and therefore did- shoot in its eye due to its increased height, it didn’t die from the first one, and covered them for the rest of the fight with its arm. The arm regenerating every wound before it became an issue, completely glancing off arrows going through its joints. Whilst countering me effectively, its other pummeled blindly into S and the other skeletons on the flank.

Although not hitting, as it got closer S and the others ran out of space. And even with attacks from me and many people in the middle ranks, none made it even flinch. With mostly knife users and broadsword users without much space, and less every second, the ogre uncovered its face to hit an opportunity attack on one of the non-S skeletons.

Given this chance, one of the arbalest user’s arrow then whipped through the air. Before the ogre could react, its left ear and most of its surrounding face were torn off. Causing it to wildly miss its mark, get into a daze and left it hopeless to our attacks. S and one of the other vanguards got heavy attacks off to its waist, I got an attack off to its eyes as some throwing-knife users made a pincushion out of its body. Finally, an attack from a vanguard’s sword severed its head from its body, an attack even an ogre couldn’t survive.

The mop-up of the three remaining orcs went far easier, and whilst we were focusing on the ogre, the other side had completely finished its fight, having even made sure no survivors had fled from behind by pushing plenty forwards. This result lead to a joint sigh of relief from the majority fighting.

-

The general pest control continued for over an hour, without another large group to be seen. The forest had gotten more dense, so even though it was still around noon at this point, none of that light could reach through the canopy.

Eventually we heard muffled screams from our left. So, us in the left half of our flank split to investigate it, as the others asked for a temporary pause.