The Peerless Kobold - Chapter 51
Considering the time it would take for him to secure any aid and then plan their movements and travel, I could not rely on the reinforcements to arrive in time. Realistically by the time the earliest reinforcements arrive the goblins would have long disappeared into the forest.
“Then who leads the cat kin warriors?”
“If it’s the head of the village warriors, then it’s my father.”
I had the feeling that her father was the leader earlier based on our interaction in the forest, and I was right after all…
“Around how many warriors are there?”
“Ahh, if you include my daughter, then there are 19 warriors.”
Hmm, including us, that makes it 23 warriors… I do have my intermediate magic, and considering that most of the goblins are weak individually, we could take out about 50 of them, so the problem is the 3 goblin variants and the 8 cat women they captured. If we were not careful with this, then they could be used against us as hostages.
As I considered what to do, I momentarily locked eyes with Wallace, who sat facing me.
“…Well, let me ask you this, you knew the state of the village and the enemy forces when you came here, didn’t you?”
“Wauh.” (Yes.)
“Can you tell us about it?”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t heard of it either, Archer.”
There was no reason to hide it from them, so I wrote on the ground when they prompted me for information.
“Over 50 goblins are camping inside the village right now, and they have captured about 8 cat women.”
“…It is really unfortunate, but we probably can’t save those people.”
“Can we really not do anything for them, Dear?”
The couple’s faces clouded over as they contemplated the fate of their captive brethren. Liz, who could not stand such a scene, tugged at my fur and asked,
“Hey, is it really impossible for us to rescue the captives?”
Hmm, there was the option of waiting for it to get dark and launching a night raid. In that case, since the number of enemies that could respond to the attack would be quite small, we could create a situation where we destroy them one by one.
However, the goblins would naturally be alert for any night attack, and there was a high possibility that they would use the captured women as hostages. So if we failed in the ambush, then we would be caught in a standoff.
But if we wanted to prioritize rescuing the captives over destroying them, then it would be necessary for us to reach the girls in a flash. In that case, then we have to ambush the goblins when they are on the move back towards their base and use the break in their ranks to extract their captives.
At that time, if we destroy the greatsword-wielding goblin leading them, then there would be no chances of pursuit by the other party.
“I can’t guarantee that we can successfully secure them, but……”
“Eh, you can do it?”
“Where did those goblins originally come from?”
“Hmm, they were originally spotted in the eastern woods.”
I unfolded the map and followed a tributary of the Sherna River that runs near Lucua Village to the east. Even if they are goblins, as long as they are living beings, then they cannot escape from the curse of needing a water source to survive either, so although I am just using that as a guideline, I already had an idea where their base was.
Moreover, as soon as they depart from Lucua village if we follow their path and make informed guesses, then we would be able to set up an ambush attack.
“Wallace, I have a suggestion.”
If there was a possibility of rescuing their captive brethren and decreasing the threat of goblins by whittling down their numbers, then this was worth considering as the head warrior of Lucua village…
