Bzzzap! Right when he ducked back down, magical energy burst into the logs, splintering off a chunk of wood.
“The dogs have a barricade that way, and they’re shooting magic bolts from behind it... they’ve got staves!”
Their assumptions were all wrong. The kobolds they had been picturing were primitive, savage monsters, barely able to hold spears. They had never imagined that the beasts would be able to use magic weapons developed by humans.
“Damn it, they swiped those from the last battle.”
“Right, the humans with them must have taught ’em how they work!”
Even as they spoke, the next shot slammed into the logs. They all reflexively ducked their heads down. The small arrows the kobolds used with their little bows wouldn’t kill them even if they were hit by a few of them, and their minimal armor would probably deflect them anyway. But that wasn’t the case for the magic bolts these staves shot. Those would bore holes in the adventurers regardless of the physical size of the shooters.
“Calm down and aim better.”
“Sorry, Red Eye.”
“I’m tired from using all my magic. Switch with me. I’m gonna cool the staff in water before it gets too hot, too.”
The adventurers could hear the kobolds conversing from somewhere out of sight. They could hear them preparing another shot, too. The kobolds clearly understood how the magic staves worked.
“Hey, how’s Maureen?”
“She hasn’t moved at all! I dunno!”
“We can’t just sit here. I’ll go around and attack them from behind!” An axeman leapt out. Moving quickly, he avoided a magic bolt shot at him and successfully dove into the bushes on the other side of the path between the trees.
“That guy’s got guts.” Aubrey gave an impressed whistle.
The axeman would be protected by the trees as he approached and he would probably be able to destroy the kobold’s defensive encampment. However...
“Agh! Aaah!” The axeman’s anguished cries sounded from the bushes, telling his companions that he must have triggered some trap.
“Dammit! There are traps on the side of the path?!”
“Look closer! There are nets over there!”
“Goddammit! The barricade, the logs, they were waiting to ambush us here from the beginning!”
...An ambush. As soon as that word was uttered, doubt surfaced in Aubrey’s mind. They’d probably cut the trees down here to create an area with no obstacles for their staff shooting. That made sense. And by planting traps on either side of the path, they could keep the adventurers wary of launching counterattacks against them. “...Why would they leave lumber we could hide behind...?” He gasped and looked up to see another group of kobolds with staves up in the branches of a thick tree. Right when Aubrey opened his mouth to swear, the kobolds began chanting.
Bzzzap! Aubrey hurriedly stood and a magic bolt from Red Eye’s staff squad stabbed into his neck. The short-haired leader toppled to the side without so much as a sound.
Next, a spur of magic stabbed deep into another adventurer’s thigh. The man screamed in shock as the attack pierced him down to the bone, a scream of pain quickly following.
...The adventurers had been lured straight into a kill zone the kobolds had prepared for them. As a result, three more of the originally eleven-strong group were shot dead and two dropped out of the fight after falling into traps as they fled. The only two adventurers remaining were left to scurry back to the area where the magical beasts were still rampaging.
＊
“You figured out how to spot the traps?” asked a younger adventurer with spiky hair.
“Yeah,” came the female hunter’s subdued reply. “Look...see those fallen leaves?”
The adventurer looked at a pile of brown leaves. It took him a moment to notice a twig standing up in them, with a small flag fashioned out of bark rope tied to it. “Huh, didn’t notice those.”
“If you don’t know about them...you have to really look closely...to see them.”
The man gave an impressed grunt and was about to step closer to get a better look, but the hunter quickly grabbed his sleeve.
“Earlier...when the dogs were running...they avoided the spots...with these flags.”
“I get it. They didn’t fall for any of their own traps ’cause they made markers for them.”
The hunter nodded again. “Plus...there shouldn’t be so many leaves...at the bottom of this kind of tree. I think they brought leaves from somewhere else...to hide the traps. There were a few other areas...like this, too.”
“You’re smart!” The young man’s eyes sparkled with true admiration.
“I’m in the forest a lot,” the hunter muttered, scratching her nose and brushing a strand of hair out of her face, embarrassed. “So...we just have to avoid these flags...too. It’s easy...once you realize what they’re doing.” She avoided the marker and went through some other trees. “If we follow their example...we won’t fall for the—waaah?!” An unmarked arrow trap triggered, shooting her in the left thigh. “Oww...oww...”
“Are you stupid?! You didn’t figure it out at all!”
“Ugh... So what are those flags...?”
Naturally, the flags were another ruse from the Kobold Army. Based on Gaius’s experience, they’d set all manner of misleading markers on the traps. The kobolds were able to keep track of the traps because of the command center’s management and because they had marked them with scents that only they could distinguish. Their complex web of traps was not something an intruder could easily negotiate.
＊
Four of the five members of a different party had managed to escape together. They stopped running once the magical beasts were no longer in sight and crouched down in some bushes at the orders of their leader, a man with a scar on his face.
“Hey Boss, isn’t it gonna be hard for the others to find us in a place like this?”
“That’s fine. It’s better for us if they don’t.”
“What do you mean?” A bowman with curly chestnut-colored hair wrangled into a ponytail asked the scarred man.
“We’re gonna pretend we got lost in the forest and retreat back to the entrance.”
“Why?! They killed Lionel! We can’t just leave!”
Lionel had been the party’s main frontline fighter, a brawny man with a falchion and a round shield. When he’d been struck by the bugbear a short time ago, his head had snapped around to face behind him and that had been that. They hadn’t had time to retrieve his body, of course.
“That’s why we’re getting out of here. We’ve all got clear roles, right? That goes for whether we’re escorting a caravan against bandits, lending our strength in some conflict, slaying magical beasts, or fighting other parties, right? Well, our party can’t function anymore.”
The bowman groaned and swallowed his retort. Just as his leader had said, when the party was acting together, Lionel had always drawn the attention of their enemies so that their archers and sorcerers could handle the offense. There was no denying that their party couldn’t exert their full force now.
“It’s too bad what happened to him, but if we stay here, we’re all gonna get wiped out. And I have no intention of dying or letting you guys die either.”
“...We got it, Boss.” The other two nodded along with the archer.
Their leader’s decision could be called heartless, but it was likely the right choice if he wanted his team to survive. And “his team” didn’t include the other adventurers of the guild, or Wyatt and his knights. They were more like people in the same business who sometimes worked together, but nothing more than that.
...And so, this party would return alive, save one unfortunate victim. The same thing was happening with other adventuring groups; several parties were leaving the battlefield with most of their fighting power intact.
＊
It was possible for the kobold squads to lure the enemy into traps and trick them, but when that was difficult, someone needed to fight them directly. Darke’s attack team existed to pick off small groups when that was necessary.
“Here we go!” With that laidback shout and a depraved smirk, Darke stabbed her curved blade into an adventurer’s neck. The adventurer tried to put up some last feeble resistance even as he coughed up blood, but the black-clad swordswoman anticipated it and dodged back, silencing her target with one last blow. Nearby, Rain Grass and Blue Gale were coordinating with their teammates to finish off the other two adventurers, racking up their own achievements in battle.
In this latest series of fights, one more member of the attack team had been injured, so their number had dwindled to about half of what they’d started with. However, they still possessed the spirit and strength to take down adventurers who were broken up into small groups.
“Sheesh. They work you pretty hard back in the Public Safety Bureau, but that’s nothing compared to the treatment you get in the Kobold Kingdom. I’ve gotta update all my records. My average time-to-kill has gone way down since I was fighting bandits out on missions for the public safety bureau. His Majesty the King is gonna owe me a hefty bonus for all the work I’ve done after this! He’ll pay me with his body!” She shook the blood off her sword and gave her croaking, frog-like laugh. Her expression was the same as it always was, so it was hard to tell how serious she was being.
“Information from our scouts. There’s another group, more than ten, heading this way,” Darke’s spirit messenger reported, looking nervous.
“Ten might be a bit much, Darke,” one of the warriors with her warned.
“So they’ve managed to put that many people together. I agree, I don’t think I want to face that many head-on either.”
“What shall we do, Captain?!” the spirit messenger quailed.
“Well, don’t panic. Our beloved Lady Denan will surely come to our rescue.” There was a flippant smile on her pale face as always.
“Orders from the Command Center. ‘Retreat to the northeast and lead them to the hidden depths.’”
“There. See?”
“Ah... That spot...” Rain Grass responded in a low voice, wiping adventurer blood off his face.
“There...?”
“I don’t really want to go there...”
The kobolds all nodded, revulsion on their faces. They couldn’t help feeling some amount of sympathy, even for their enemies.
＊