Transmigrated as a Ghost

With the information he had gotten from devouring the hobgoblin's soul, Marcus now knew the rough location of all of their bases, and the numbers they had.

It was certainly a frightening number since he estimated that there were nearly seven thousand goblins under one goblin lord, and they now had the strength to easily overrun every village in the area.

Of course, they would never have a chance of taking River Landing, but they could still do a lot of damage to the kingdom especially since it had not even been a year since the ice ants attack.

Luckily, Marcus had caught onto the goblins before they decided to leave the forest and even seven thousand of them in all honesty did not make much of a difference to him.

'Now I should clean up this mess before Lilia wakes up.'

After disposing of all of the goblin bodies, Marcus went back to his chair and began reading now that the goblins watching them had already been dealt with.

Soon the sun came up and Lilia came out of the tent while yawning and rubbing her eyes.

Of course, she had already known about the goblin attack, but she trusted Marcus to deal with it, so she had just rolled over and gone back to sleep.

"So are we going to deal with the goblins now." Lilia asked wanting to get right to it and eliminate the threat that was looming over the village.

"How about we have a quick breakfast and then we can get to it. The goblins are more widespread than I thought but if we are quick, it should only take us a day to clean up the majority of them."

Lilia was about to dissent and say she did not need anything to eat, but before she could, she heard the displeased growls of her beast companions that were not willing to go without their morning meal.

"Okay fine we can have a quick breakfast." Lilia said relenting on her hastiness.

With that settled Marcus quickly whipped up breakfast allowing for everyone to get their fill, although Roxene who had a six sense for food came out and demanded the caladrius meat Marcus had promised her the day before.

However, after a bit of a delay to give Roxene her fill, it was time for them to get to work on cleaning up the goblins that had taken over this section of the forest and were close to encroaching on the nearby human settlements.

"Okay there are fourteen smaller goblin bases that are surrounding the much larger underground goblin settlement. I am going to fly straight for the main goblin stronghold and destroy these four bases on the way, can I leave the rest to you Lilia." Marcus said as he pointed at the rough map he had drawn out.

Nodding her head Lilia said, "Leave it to me, with Aurelia and Zareen by my side we are sure to take them all out in no time at all."

Having finished up their battle plan, Marcus and Lilia began heading into the woods, with Marcus leading Lilia to the first goblin base that was around three miles away.

As they got closer Marcus began to detect a number of traps and they carefully moved closer to the base until it came into view.

It was a very short and wide base that was dug into the ground with a roof made of wood, that would certainly have been difficult to spot if Marcus had not known its rough location.

Luckily there was just one goblin on guard right now and it did not notice their approach.

"I will be leaving you here now Lilia, so go ahead and clean up this base. We will meet back up at the edge of the woods by the village in a few hours. Now good luck and see you later."

After saying that Marcus shot up into the air and began flying towards his destination which was the main goblin stronghold.

Flying across the sky it was not long before Marcus had made it to the first of the bases he was going to take out, and this one was a far cry from the other one seeming like a small fort instead of a scouting outpost.

Yet this made little difference to him as he sent a blast of pure mana towards the structure and blew it up into nothing.

He then flew down to check if there were any survivors, but it seemed that they had all died under his ariel assault, and all that was left was wood wreckage and a crater where his attack had landed.

Continuing along his planned path, Marcus did the same to next goblin bases he came across reducing them to ruble in just a few seconds before flying on to the next one.

Soon he was right above the area where the goblins had set up their underground town and he went back into his ghost form and slipped into the ground with none of the goblins the wiser.

Quickly he arrived into a massive open space where the goblins had set up shop, and all around him he saw crude wooden building but in the middle was a single stone castled that Marcus was certain had not been made by goblins.

'Hm this place must have been here before, and they moved in like a bunch of hermit crabs.'

Taking a look at the goblin town Marcus noticed that tons of the little green nuisances moving around.

But his main target was not the rabble on the streets but the leaders who were holed up in the castle.

Floating over Marcus noticed the other installation he had been looking for and found that the goblins had made a unrefined forge. 

Going inside Marcus was impressed to see a bunch of very buff goblins working on steel or iron weapons, but overall, the quality was certainly poor and well below what humans could make even without the forge skill.

Still, it was impressive that goblins were making their own weapons at all, since they were mostly known for just picking up whatever was lying around or taking items off of those unlucky enough to become their victims.

After thoroughly examining the goblins forge, Marcus continued towards the castle, slipped inside without any problems, and proceeded to look for the goblin lord.

Floating through halls and rooms Marcus eventually found the goblin lord in a central chamber sitting on top of a stone throne that was weathered and like the castle must have been here for years.

Inside the chamber along with the goblin lord were a score of other strong looking goblins and they seemed to be having some sort of heated discussion though Marcus really did not have any idea what they were saying.

Even after absorbing the soul of the hobgoblin he did not miraculously learn their language so whatever they were saying went over his head.

'A few level thirty goblins and hobgoblins but most of them are in the low or mid-twenties. And the lord itself is actually pretty strong at level thirty-six, however the presence behind it is far more dangerous.'

Floating behind the goblin lord's throne Marcus could tell that some sort of invisible creature was hiding there, and when he used his creature appraisal on it he got a surprise to see.

'Level thirty-nine bugbear. And judging by its stats it is an intelligent monster and a caster since its intelligence and spirit stat are above its physical stats. It must be the true mastermind behind the goblin's growth. Unfortunately, it could not escape my life sense and it is not strong enough to beat me.'

Reappearing right in front of the bugbear the monster was immediately alarmed by the sudden appearance of a person and quickly started a chant for a spell.

Nevertheless, Marcus had already brought out his scythe and with one quick swing slice cut the magic using bugbear's head clean off.

As its head slid off, it fell to the ground and made a loud resounding sound through the goblin throne room, alerting all of the other goblins and causing them to stop their discussion.

Marcus then walked out from behind the throne room and said, "Sorry to interrupt your meeting, but I am afraid this is the end for all of you. Next time just be content to play in the forest and not cause trouble for others."

After saying that Marcus summoned his iron golem and had it crush the goblin lord with one big punch.

The goblin lord tried to defend itself with its skills but even though it was the strongest goblin here, it still ended up a grease stain under the brute force of Marcus' iron golem.

'Well, the most troublesome ones are dealt with now, so time to deal with the city.'

Going back into his ghost form Marcus left the remaining goblins in the room to his iron golem, giving it the command to rampage through the castle and kill any goblin it came across.

Back outside the castle Marcus made sure that his next target was the forge that the goblins had made.

He did not want a single goblin with the ability to make even crude iron weapons to escape so he went with a bit of overkill and dropped a thunderbird strike spell and flame tiger strike spell on top of the building reducing it to ash.

After that the goblins in the town definitely noticed that something was up and began to swarm towards the castle to see what was going on.

Unfortunately, this was a horrible mistake, and they should have abandoned the area since what was coming next spelled the end for the thousands of goblins in the underground town.

'Fire Storm.'

Casting his recently acquired tier five fire magic spell, a massive blaze of flame blasted forth from Marcus consuming hundreds of goblins and their wooden structures.

With one spell Marcus had destroyed what would be equivalent to three city blocks and killed hundreds of goblins.

Yet the fire from his spell continued to rage on as the shoddy wooden structures made by the goblins went up in flames like they had been doused in oil.

'Fire Storm.'

Casting his tier five fire magic spell again, Marcus turned another portion of the goblin's stronghold into a raging hell fire.

Another after another, Marcus continued to unleash fiery death upon the goblins until the entire underground cavern that they called home was up in flames and filled with smoke.

Looking down at the scorching town Marcus was actually a bit scared by his own power. He had laid waste to the equivalent of a small town in under a mintue, and he had not even been trying very hard.

If he wanted to, he could turn his power towards a place like River Landing and destroy it before anyone that could stop him could arrive.

'This world truly is terrifying, sometimes I wonder how civilization exits at all.'

However, the world seemed to have some sort of balance, so Marcus decided to put those thoughts to the back of his mind. He had no intention of going around blasting civilizations off the map, well unless they threatened those he cared about.

With his work done Marcus floated out of the goblin's underground town and found that a few of them had managed to survive crawling out of tunnels like ants.

Sighing Marcus cast his tier five iron magic spell, and with a swarm of iron feathers quickly dispatched of the remaining goblins.

'Whew now I should go to the meet up sight and see if Lilia is done.'

Flying through the sky Marcus quickly made his way to the edge of the woods where he and Lilia were to meet back up, and sitting on the path, there she was already having finished up her task.

Dropping down to the ground Marcus landed right in front of Lilia who had taken out a ball of string and was playing with her two beast companions.

Looking up at him Lilia said, "What took you so long I have already been here for twenty minutes."

Shrugging his shoulders Marcus said, "It took longer to search through the goblin lord's castle than I thought it would, but everything is wrapped up now so we can go back to the village. I know they have been preparing a feast for us so we should go and enjoy it after all our hard work."

The two them then began walking towards the village that was none the wiser of the danger they had been in.