NeoRealm – Staring Back Into the Future

‘7 novice warrior goblins down, way too many left to just keep doing that. A few more should be sent when they don’t come back after a while. I guess I can just deal with that then roll with whatever happens.’

Making up his mind Jason sneaks back to the goblin village. In a bit less than an hour the initiate who sent the first group off has gotten a bit angry. Shouting at all the novices near him he storms over to the initiate witch doctor. After bowing it seems to explain a few things before pointing at the 2 novice witch doctors then in both the direction the regular goblin had come from and departed in.

After thinking about it for a while the initiate witch doctor nods. Pointing at another initiate warrior he shouts a bit and then mumbles back at the initiate in front of him. Finally he turns to his students and talks to them a bit before finally letting out a final loud shout. This seems to get all of the goblins in the village moving.

The initiate warriors soon collect a group 6 novices each along with a novice witch doctor. After bowing to the novice witch doctor the groups each go off in the two different directions. This development makes Jason quite happy. He can’t exactly deal with the main village still but the two groups should be quite possible.

After considering it for a bit Jason follows along behind the group going towards his last battle. They could actually find something that way after all.

It doesn’t take long to before they come to where the battle happened. Though it looks like Jason didn’t need to worry about them finding it anything. It seems that while most animals have fled the area, goblins still aren’t quite the top of the food chain. Before them a small group of 5 wargs have snacked on the corpses. Then without warning the wargs all look up at the goblin group and snarl.

Not having a choice now the initiate warrior yells at his group before falling back to defend the witch doctor. With someone covering him the witch doctor starts to cast a spell. The rest of the group forms up at the front just in time for the wargs to charge at them.

Only 3 of the wargs get blocked by the novices. The goblins barely being able to take on the wargs.

The remaining two wargs slip past the line and try to get at the caster. Sneering the initiate slams one of the wargs into the other knocking them both down. A few moments later the witch doctor finishes up his spell and suddenly the wargs all glow purple for a moment before slowing down.

With the curse this battle turns in the goblins favor. Watching from the sidelines, Jason frowns. He was hoping for a more even battle so he could clean up easily. Sighing he searches the ground and soon finds a number of small rocks before settling down and waiting for the right moment.

The battle continues and the initiate warrior is trouncing the two wargs. Before they stand up a quick kick to the gut sends a warg into a nearby tree. The other warg tries to take a bite but only nips him. The warrior bellows in rage as his leg bleeds. Not willing to take this affront he starts to pummel the warg.

Having been distracted by anger the other warg manages to run back over and jump on the initiate warriors back. On the side the witch doctor takes this chance to send a sickly green bolt at it. Whimpering the wargs continues to hold on and try to savage the warrior despite clearly being poisoned now. Luckily for the wargs it appears the witch doctor needs to channel the poison spell.

Meanwhile the novice warriors are doing ‘okay’. They have actually killed one of the wargs. This would probably put them in a winning position if it didn’t take the lives of two goblins as it died. Wrestling back and forth they fight while Jason watches and waits. Then a goblin starts to step back. One stone throw later and it stumbles and falls backward. Like dominos their skirmish falls over.

One warg goes for the throat of the downed goblin. A couple goblins take the chance to stab it while the last goblin is being killed by the remaining warg. Then before dying the stabbed warg takes out another goblin. Wrapping it up the final remaining goblin gets a good swipe on the warg but ultimately falls. Over on the sideline Jason is honestly quite shocked. He had just wanted the goblin to stumble a little.

The bleeding warg wines a bit but decides to charge over at the initiate witch doctor. At this point Jason joins the fight. Body close to the floor he runs at the witch doctor from the opposite side of the warg. It isn’t until he gets within a couple body lengths of it that anyone notices. By then it is too late.

The warg has just launched its attack and Jason comes in with a quick kidney punch. While not dead the witch doctor goes down while dropping his poison spell. Now left facing a warg alone he backs off quickly and goes into a more defensive stance.

Looking somewhat confused at a new challenger the warg lunges at Jason. Having been prepared for it though he is able to knock it over with a sweeping kick. With the warg downed he turns the momentum into an elbow drop onto its back.

A loud crunch can be heard. At that the warg stops moving and seems dead if not for some whimpering. Jason not being one for excessive cruelty takes another moment to finish it off with a quick elbow to the head. Then he reaches over and a quick neck snap kills the witch doctor.

While this was happening the novice warrior notices it but can’t do much. The last two wargs are ravaging it though they do seem a bit nervous. Now being quite frustrated the warrior grabs the one on its back and throws it over its shoulder onto the other. Following that up with a bellow at them finally convinces the wargs to cut and run.

The novice warrior turns to Jason and is clearly enraged. With another bellow it charges at him while slashing its dagger around.

As it approaches Jason steps into one of the swings and grabs the goblin in a bear hug. Being already hurt the warrior gives up on living and decides to just not go alone. Dropping its dagger the goblin starts to claw his back to shreds.

*-1* *-1* *-2* *-1* *-1* *-1* *-2* *-1*

This was definitely not what he planned but Jason couldn’t exactly back down now. With a burst of strength he squeezes it to death. Though not before it gets one final scratch in.

*-1*

Jason collapse to the ground. Tired and in pain he checks his basic stats sheet.

Seeing it he actually freaks out a little bit. He almost died there. Just one more swipe and he would have died. This however isn’t what is really freaking him out. He reached level 3 just now. He has reached level 3 but he can’t see any spendable stats points. That is not cool. Originally he wanted to finish off this village, but it looks that a bit of questioning of Penny just jumped to the top of his to-do list.

Akhier

Things I wanted to mention but didn’t:

Wargs are commonly seen around goblins. The only reason for this is because they find goblins quite tasty. Higher rank goblins tend tame them by sacrificing many basic goblins to them. Society is quite happy to see wargs being kept by the savage goblins as while they can make it a tougher fight it does mean that there are many less goblins running around.

Wargs aren’t monster wolves. While similar they tend to go down the magic route instead of qi (which is the wolves preferred advancement path). Scholars hypothesizes that modern wolves and wargs come original from the same ancestor race but at some point a schism happened that centered on this divide. The only support for this though is myths of a pair of godly wolves/wargs that fought for a 100 years. One wielding the power of Ice in his claws, sharpened beyond mortal limits and the other breathing fire, hotter than any normal fire. While it is only a half remembered story now it is true that wolves tend to evolve into winter wolves and wargs generally end up evolving into demonic wargs. However there is a branch of researchers who think that wargs are simply a demon version of wolves (and thus explaining the common demonic path they follow).

Now no one will likely ever know the truth in the story but I am the author so I will drop a few more tidbits. The first theory is right but the second isn’t wrong. The 100 year fight is a bit exagerated but not wrong. Two extremely high level wolves ended up becoming so powerful that their packs encompassed every wolf in twice the area of the currently known world. Finally they both fought for dominance and it did last for years. Eventually the ice qi using wolf won. However the fire magic wolf was so powerful he cast a planar travel spell. It transported him and all his pack to a demonic plane. With the passing years they have spread through all the fire related planes of existance. Eventually wizards who dabbled in summoning started having them show up. At that point they looked different enough they received the name 'warg'. A quirk showed up with them though in the fact that they aren't actually extra-planar entities. Unless the spell actively sends them back wargs will just stick around. This is rare as many demons have ways to stick around anyway but enough have been summoned over the year and stuck around that a proper breeding population has developed in most areas.