"Mana Slash!"
*Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
A wave of mana rushed forward, and sliced the unmoving goblins in half, taking dozens of lives in a flash. Kali's revolver was also able to take the lives of a few more, but not to the same amount as Aster did.
"Woah! We cleared almost half of them before we even entered melee distance!" Aster cheered, seeing how effective Lory's skill was.
Soon, the liquefied ground started to return to normal. The goblins who got pulled into it ended up stuck inside solid ground, further limiting their movements.
"Alright, let's finish them up!"
Aster commanded as he rushed forward, the rest following right behind.
However, with the goblins stuck in the ground, literally, they weren't able to provide any proper counterattacks. Their clubs, swords, and bows ended up mostly half-stuck in the ground too, so they weren't even able to wield their weapons!
The group of 100+ goblins ended up being wiped out in less than a minute!
More than the hunt, collecting the loot actually took more time, as they had to pull the dead goblins out of the ground first, to check out all the accessories they had, including anklets, bracelets, belts, and piercings.
After collecting the loot, Aster turned to Lorelai and smiled. "I'd say that's a 10/10 performance. You did great, Lory!"
"Thanks! I'm happy to be of help." She replied while being humble.
There's a drawback to her skill, however. Although it did manage to shorten their hunting speed, the added time they needed to extract the goblins out of the ground made the total time they spent, including the gathering of loot, mostly the same, if not slower, than before.
Still, it couldn't be denied that they spent less energy, which means they could face multiple hordes of that size with no problem.
'But as expected, we'd need more long-range attacks.'
The only "proper" long-range attackers in the party were Aster and Kali. The rest didn't even have guns to use, so they were practically unable to participate in the initial clearing after the swamp was cast.
"Argh! Really? Shoot, man! I thought we were goners, seeing you have a dragonkin in your party!"
The scout, hearing Aster's short apology and excuse, quickly changed his attitude and smiled a friendly smile.
"Well, seeing that you have the ability to hunt a goblin settlement stably, I guess we'd be dead if a skirmish broke out." He shrugged, estimating Aster's strength from the scene.
As the atmosphere started to loosen, his party also loosened their tense shoulders and sighed, laughing lightly afterward. Aster, however, decided to take advantage of the situation.
"You're all heading to the Crypt, right? Do you mind if we tag along?" Aster asked. "We can pay you with a few goblins' accessories for the trouble."
He showed about six accessories in his hands. Each one of them could be worth around 10 to 20 thousand Tels each, a pretty large sum for simply allowing someone to tag along.
"Really?! Sweet!" The scout rejoiced. "We don't mind! Rather, do you need help in gathering the goblins' loot? We can do it as a bonus service, you know?"
"Haha, then maybe I'll ask for your help."
After that, the other party, composed of 8 members—5 girls and 3 men—helped Aster and the others gather the goblins' accessories. While they were busy, they ended up talking about each other.
"So your party is called the Hollow Knights?" Aster repeated it, thinking that he had heard of it before—something like a game title.
"No, not hollow, but hallowed!" The scout, named Cedric, corrected. "We're the Hallowed Knights, which means Holy Knights!"
From his talk, it seems that half of their members were lucky enough to get some holy-level uncommon classes. Holy Knight, Holy Priest, Holy Spearman, and Holy Assassin. Other than the last one, which sounded contradictory, Aster could understand the first three classes.
"Sounds powerful," he commented.
A few minutes after that, they finished gathering all the accessories from the goblins.
"Well then." The Holy Assassin, Cedric, smiled at Aster and spoke. "Follow me!"
With his lead, the two parties started on their way toward the Crypt.