Chapter 22: Pursuit

The Collector galloped across the cleared and light lit path in the darkwoods, shoulder bashing trees that came into its way to bulldoze them.

As it traveled the path, following the strong stench of an entire horde of goblin kind, it noted that the path became wider with fewer trees to block it the further it traveled in.

There were more of the light generating rocks lining the path here. Bigger rocks, too.

Indicated the inner stronghold possessed more resources than the camps. From extracting the memories of the various normal hobgoblin specimen the Collector had consumed in the camp, it knew that the stronghold was no temporary encampment either.

It was a natural landmark. A yawning pit in the ground, its edges lined with a blue light. Deep. Possessed five layers. The lord occupied the deepest layer. Each layer possessed half an encampment's number of hobgoblins.

Then at minimum, seventy hobgoblins total. However, none, or at the least, only an exceeding few, were special.

The thrall and the lord, this Zoll were of particular interest.

There was exceptionally little information regarding them even among the memories of the hobgoblins. Both goblin variants seemed to lead isolated lives, rarely if ever interacting with the normal specimen.

Seventy mundane hobgoblins was a sufficiently large enough force to be wary of, for though the Collector possessed durable carapace, powerful muscles, and exceptional reflexes with the mental processing power to utilize them, when there were enough enemies, there were too many variables to sufficiently account for all possibilities.

So be it.

Warrior strain collectors were no strangers to battles of uncertainty, of variables.

The Collector welcomed the challenge.

===

The Collector came upon the fleeing horde of hobgoblins and goblins within five minutes.

Five minutes. That was the extent of time the goblin champion bought for his people.

Not enough, evidently, for they were only barely halfway to the stronghold at this point.

Cries of alarm rose from the hobgoblins straggling in the back as the Collector closed the distance between them with each of its gliding strides, strides so agile and graceful while carrying a payload of half a ton of biological weapons systems, muscle, and armor.

"Here! Here! It is here!"

"Has champion Juzo fallen!?"

"No run anymore! Fight big monster!"

"No, retreat, back to the stronghold!"

The Collector's porcine ears twitched as it picked up the sounds of discord among the white and red skinned variants. A weakness of the tinkerers, this was. Chaos bound to occur from the troublesome traits of individuality.

So many different purposes clashing with each other. Whereas now, the Collector devoted itself to only one: extermination.

The Collector aimed to spear the closest target to it. A running red variant hobgoblin female who held an offspring in her arms, compromising her ability to engage in combat. The female variant shrieked at her imminent demise.

"No!" In response to the Collector's rapid approach, red variant male rushed back to cover her instead, wielding a broad blade of volcanite.

Though, as the Collector noted while stabbing right through the male's stomach and tossing it away, the volcanite did not glow or hum and had distinctively less of a glossy sheen on its surface than that wielded by the champion and special red variant.

Perhaps a difference in the mineral's extraction and processing procedure. Regardless, it meant that there was a high likelihood that the duller volcanite possessed no explosive or heat producing capabilities within them.

"Protect the women and children!" A shout rose across the ranks of goblins, and this unified both the red and white variants.

The female and her offspring disappeared as a throng of white and red skinned male hobgoblins halted their running and rushed to meet the Collector in battle.

"Good. Do not flee. Meet your inevitable end with some shred of pride, primitives." The Collector clicked its mandibles and analyzed the situation, the sensitive hairs on its back rising to detect the rapid rush of movements from the incoming hobgoblins.

A change in air pressure.

The Collector stepped back a meter, and where it was, a projectile, an arrow as it was called, lay embedded in the dirt. Sharpened head of metal attached to a lengthened wood base. Barbed head to prevent removal from flesh. Feathered at the end for aerodynamic performance.

Primitive. Would not penetrate hyperalloy carapace.

Yet, judging from the angle of descent and landing zone, meant to skewer an eye.

The Collector made some distance, leaping backwards to dodge errant sweeps with ice clubs and volcanite swords. While it soared in the air, its hairs twitched, sensing arrows, and it twisted its body and ducked its head to ensure that six arrows crashed against its hyperalloy carapace.

The arrows clanked off its carapace in showers of little sparks.

"It running! We winning!" shouted the deep timber of one of the white variants.

Utter foolishness. In taking briefly to the air, the Collector had assessed their numbers and combat capabilities. Most importantly, from the higher vantage point, it spotted four white variants and two red variants behind the group wielding tools of wood and twine - bows, it recalled from extracted memories - meant to be pulled taut to unleash projectiles.

The Collector would prioritize them, for with its injury hampering its ability to react to multiple enemies at once, especially projectiles, their ability to strike the Collector's eyes presented a confounding variable more significant than the slow, uncoordinated mess of melee hobgoblins trying to swamp it.

The Collector took in a breath and pumped blood and strength into all its muscles. It swelled up in size, towering over the hobgoblins, and their confidence wavered.

They paused.

The Collector pawed the ground with its good front hoof, drawing a deep, thick line across the dirt.

The hobgoblins understood what was to come. Some of them shivered.

"Hold fast!" shouted a red variant, and that shout kept the more cowardly among them from fleeing.

They held up their weapons, tensed up their bodies, dug their feet into the dirt -everything to try and get them to stand up against the Collector's charge.

The Collector charged, the enormous muscles in its hind legs bursting into a flexion of power that drove sprays of dirt and foliage back like miniature explosions. It blurred in a bone white, bone shattering battering ram.

Red and white skinned hobgoblin bodies flew into the air with major fractures to their skeletal systems as the Collector bowled past them, reaching within seconds into the backline of bow wielders.

A final volley of arrows clanked on the Collector as it angled its carapace helmeted head down, only giving the arrows hardened hyperalloy carapace to bounce off of.

"Annoying little creatures with your little imitations of firearms." The Collector whipped around, brutalizing one hobgoblin square in the stomach with its clubbed tail. The continued momentum of the tail carried the hobgoblin and crashed it into two others, knocking them breathless or unconscious to the ground.

The Collector zigged and zagged around the other three, its remaining four arachnid arms moving like surgical clockwork to sever their heads from their bodies.

Blood sprayed and sputtered, marking out contrasting splotches of red on the Collector's white carapace before pores within it opened up, draining it all.

The Collector turned to meet the rest of the hobgoblin and saw that they no longer approached it.

When it stepped forwards, they stepped back.

"Pathetic. In engaging with your champion, I had thought your primitive species infinitesimally less savage than before. Yet, disappointing. None of you are even worthy of joining the Collective, though your flesh, I will still take," said the Collector.

Then, the unexpected.

The Collector did not sense anything with its sensitive hairs adaption. It was its compound eyes, capable of a wide field of vision, that perceived it first: a circle of pale blue light spanning underneath it.

The Collector did not sense anything aberrant about the light, or anything at all, and this absence of sensory input caused it to immediately become wary and cease its attack, leaping backwards.

In a flash of light and chilled air, a pillar of ice manifested, its dimensions large enough to have encased more than half of the Collector's body. A wispy aura of chilled air wafted from the pillar, though not cold enough to affect the Collector through the layer of Frostboar blubber on its ultrafiber musculature.

Yet a flash freeze like that, if placed properly, would have immobilized the Collector.

"A mere beast, not even a magical one, can escape the clutches of my ice prison?"

The Collector recognized this raspy voice from the memories it had extracted. This was Hrunt, the so called 'thrall', one of the three superiors in a position of authority among this populace. It located where the voice projected.

Approximately eighty-seven meters down the lit path, towards the direction of the stronghold.

Outside of the ten meter range of the sensitive hairs adaptation. Further attempts to extrapolate this 'thrall's location through optical systems proved futile. Interference from trees and the path curving to block line of sight.

How was it, then, that this 'thrall' possessed the means to not only accurately determine the Collector's location, but also to generate ice in localized flash freezes? The means to project its voice to such an extent?

By now, the Collector did not expect any of these species to wield sufficiently advanced technology such as coolant lasers.

No, this 'thrall' was one of the special types. Like the champion.

Another high priority target for consumption.

The Collector tensed up again, its muscles swelling, and then it charged, explosively releasing power out of its hyper-flexed ultrafibers to shoot it right into this 'thrall's' direction at top speed.

"Wh-what!? Such haste!" came the thrall's voice.

The Collector ignored the curving, light lit path leading to this 'thrall', instead taking a shorter, diagonal path through the lightless darkwoods. When it left the path, its figure disappearing in the darkwoods, the thrall's voice rang in the air again.

"Where did it go!?""

The Collector smashed through trees a plenty as it barreled onwards. Within ten seconds, it was out the other side, right where it calculated this 'thrall' would be.