Chapter 108 - 108. Choke Point Strategy
He was thinking if he could sneak into the main hut undetected. After observing for some time, he decided it was impossible. The encampment was not very big, but the numbers of lizardmen were quite dense, he would meet with one no matter which path he took.
Even for rangers with their Silent Step skill, sneaking through the camp was a stretch. Furthermore, there was still a Boss guarding the treasure inside. It would be utterly foolish to successfully sneak into the main hut only to end up fighting the Boss and then got surrounded by the rest of its minions.
After studying the encampment and understanding that there was nothing he could do here, Jack decided to leave. He kept staying low as he paid attention to his radar and moved away from the camp.
He could see some lizardmen going on patrol. They always moved around in a team of two. Unlike the disorganized gnomes and Goblins, these lizardmen seemed to move around in fixed paths around their encampment.
As he had gone quite close to the encampment, he also sometimes saw patrols on the way where he was heading. Hence, he moved carefully. When he was hiding from one patrol, he saw a path where the ground descended into a slope.
Jack crawled to the slope to stay away from the patrol. He checked his radar and estimated that there were no monsters under the slope. He went down and came to a ravine that stretched quite far. He followed the ravine as the path got narrower due to the cliffs on both sides come together close to one another. The narrow path continued for a while, it opened up at some parts and closing in again at other parts. Most of the parts where it closed in, could only be passed by one person.
Jack stopped walking after some time and looked back at the terrain. He thought for a while before asking the Fairy, "Peniel, if I attacked the Lizardman in the encampment, will they come out to chase me?"
"Of course," Peniel said. "Why did you ask that dumb question?"
Jack ignored her mocking. He asked another question, "How far away will they chase?"
"It varied from each settlement. It will depend on the size of the settlement and the type of monster in the settlement."
"Can you make an educated guess for that Lizardman encampment?" Jack continued to ask.
"Don't tell me you are planning to do something with that encampment," Peniel said with a surprised expression.
"Just answer my question first, will you?" Jack said.
Peniel stared at him with uncertainty. She was probably thinking if the guy had lost his mind. But after seeing his serious expression, she figured she should just entertain him. She floated up high and looked in the direction of the Lizardman encampment.
After a while, she flew back down and said, "well, I cannot say for certain, but I would say that if they chase an intruder, it will be till the area around the part ten meters back there to this place here where you stand."
Jack observed the place some more and then looked to the other entrance of the ravine. It was still some distance away on the opposite end. He then gave her another question, "if I kill the lizardman from that encampment far away from the encampment, like, say here, for example. Will they respawn again?"
"If you kill a settlement monster inside its settlement or all the way out here, they will stay dead. Well, until they respawn again the day after, as long as their settlement has not successfully been raided yet."
Hearing the answer, Jack gave the matter some more thought. After a while, he finally decided.
"All right, let's give it a try then!" He said.
"Give what a try?" Peniel asked.
"You will see," he replied as he took out a whetstone and used it on his sword. He then cooked a chicken soup and consumed it. Afterward, he walked back to where he had come from.
"You really are going to disturb that hornet's nest, aren't you?" Peniel asked him.
"Hehe," Jack replied with a grin.
Peniel gave him a helpless sigh. "Up to you, let's see how you fare then. Your speed should be fast enough to run away if something goes wrong anyway."
Jack came out of the ravine and boldly strutted towards the encampment. The sun was already set at the time, but visibility was still enough due to the light from the full moon. A lizardman patrol was coming out of the encampment as he came near it. The lizardmen stopped with a stunned expression as they saw a human had come into their territory.
They started to shout loudly in a strange language as a warning to their other brethren. Jack responded to their incomprehensible cries with a Mana Bullet. It hit one of the lizardmen squarely on its face. Its mate gave an angry roar at Jack, and came running soon after. Jack heard many footsteps and then saw many more lizardmen appearing from the encampment.
"Wow, so many... It's really like a hornet's nest," Jack commented.
After enraging an entire camp, Jack turned tail and split. He ran at full speed towards the slope. He could see from his radar many red dots were coming after him. There really could be a hundred of them, Jack mused as he continued running. His Dexterity stats made him faster than the lizardman, but he kept a fixed distance with them so as to bait them to keep on chasing after him.
He went into the ravine until the part where it was a narrow part where only one person could pass. He went a bit more distance before turning back. The closest lizardman was struggling to run through the narrow pathway and make its way towards him, as its frame was bulkier.
Jack sent another Magic Bullet, it crashed on the Lizardman's chest. He then sent continuous range attacks from his staff. The lizardman could just take it bluntly as there was no space for it to do an evasive maneuver. When it was closed enough, it stabbed forward using its spear. Jack switched his staff from range attack to Magic Shield. As his shield blocked the stab, he landed Power Strike to the lizardman's head. It received critical damage.
He continued to block and attack the lizardman in that narrow pathway. The other lizardmen arrived behind him but they cannot move forward as the path only allowed one lizardman at a time. So they just queue up behind as the one at the front was combatting the intruder.
Jack was not afraid that there would be lizardmen coming from behind him, as they would need to walk a long distance around the ravine to enter from the other side. Halfway through the travel, they would have reached the limit of their pursuing distance and turned back to return to their settlement.
He was at first afraid if there were indeed some lizardman chasing after from the top of the ravines, maybe they could not go to the other entrance of the ravine as it's too far, but what if they simply jumped down from up there? He would have to abandon this tactic if so. Fortunately, no lizardman rained down from above.
As the Lizardman continued to pile up at the choke point, Jack continued to hack through the one at the front. It took him roughly one to two minutes to slay one lizardman, he continued to kill one lizardman after another. Good thing he had prepared lots of basic healing potions and basic energy potions. Those potions were prepared for tomorrow's dungeon, but he could care less about it now, he just used one potion after another whenever his health and stamina or MP got low. He would just send a message later to ask Silverwing to bring more potions to replace the ones he had used.
He also activated Heightened State to increase his mana and stamina regeneration whenever the skill was off cooldown. Despite their comrades kept on dying at the frontline, the rest of the Lizardmen continued to queue behind, obediently waiting for their turn. As Jack persevered for more than three hours, the number of lizardmen started to thin out.
When the last lizardman fell, Jack looked at the pile of loots stacked along the narrow path. He was panting after a long non-stop fight. If this was in the real world, he would have long dropped to the ground due to exhaustion.
"This was surprisingly going according to plan, without a hitch," Jack exclaimed.
"Well, they are basic low-level creeps, after all. So their levels of intelligence and attack patterns are rather low," Peniel commented.
"That's a good thing for us. Never complain about a plan goes well." Jack said with satisfaction while sitting on the ground trying to catch his breath.
"You had better collect those loots, they will only be around for three hours after they dropped. The first lizardman you killed was more than two hours ago," Peniel said.