Chapter 30

  Bloody Melee!

  The scene remained frozen for a moment. The Goblins stared at Elijah as he scanned them one by one, eyes squinted in typical standoff fashion. The only thing that destroyed the Wild West vibe was the gross Goblin pulling out seemingly endless snot from its nose. All present ignored the idiot.

  His attention lingered slightly longer on three of the combatants. Most of the monsters were poorly equipped, but these three were far better armed.

  First, there was a tall, tall for a Goblin, Goblin. Its head was roughly the height of Elijah’s nose, which, considering he was only five foot ten, wasn’t saying all that much. At least, that was his height before he had entered the Trials.

  Either way, this tall for a Goblin Goblin was gobbling up the body of a cat person. Blood covered its pug-like face and dribbled down its ill-fitting chainmail cuirass, over the rusty chestplate it had snagged from somewhere.

  A wicked-looking axe with a twisted handle and dark metal blade rested against the thing’s side, and a half-destroyed wooden round shield was strapped to its arm.

  The next creature Elijah locked eyes with in the tense near-silence was a slim, female-looking Goblin. If the bald, big-nosed creatures could be said to even have a sex. It was narrow-waisted and lithe.

  Various scavenged daggers were strapped about the thing, all bound up in the black cloth it was wearing like a ninja. It seemed to think it blended perfectly into the shadow of the battlement it was lurking in. The Goblin was surprised, therefore, when the teen locked its eyes with his.

  The final creature that Elijah thought was worthy of his attention, aside from the manic snot goblin that giggled to itself, was a rotten-robed goblin with a large pointed hood. It was covered in warts, and mushrooms grew on its mouldy clothes. If this wasn’t a mage of some sort, Elijah would eat the hat still standing proud atop his head.

  The smart thing to do would be to run, hope that he could outpace the greater numbers of his enemy, and try to return to a stealthy approach. Elijah didn’t even consider it.

  He launched himself towards the street filled with smoke, death, and Goblins, only sparing a second to activate Berserker’s Bark. His skin turned grey and craggy as it took on the appearance of a walnut tree’s natural armour.

  He couldn’t have done it a second sooner. The moment he moved, the spell was broken, and a horde of angry goblins began rushing him all at once.

  A jagged spear tip scraped across the toughened hide of his chest, leaving a tiny scratch. The teen smiled at the stunned Goblin who expected to impale him.

  Elijah punched it in the face with one hand, sending it reeling back and clutching at its bleeding nose, while with the other he held onto the half-sized weapon. For the first time, he was armed!

  Another spear jabbed at him from his left and a mace from his right. Unable to react to both, the teen chose to prioritise the heavy weapon. Even with his defensive Skill, it could still break bones.

  He raised the undersized haft of the weapon up to block the downward swing of the metal club. It split apart, showering him with splinters.

  Simultaneously, the teen was poked in the back, and the mace hammered into his shoulder. Thankfully, most of the strength of the blow was mitigated by the shattering of the spear, so no bones were broken.

  That didn’t stop it from smarting like Einstein.

  Elijah, angered, blood pumping in his ears, grabbed the mace by its shaft and yanked it towards himself, flipped it over, and smashed the off-balance Goblin on the top of the head. The thing dropped like a bag of rocks, dead.

  Two more pinpricks had stabbed lightly into his back, so he spun around, dislodging the tip-deep weapons. He came face to face with three Goblins, stabbing at him with fervour. Their attacks were little more than the brambles that scratched him on a countryside walk.

  He whacked the first on the head, then followed through with his right hand, punching the second in the face, sending it tumbling back. Using the spearhead that was still in his left hand, he stabbed the third in the neck, spraying him with green blood.

  Before he was even finished dealing with them, six more Goblins had encircled the young man. At this rate he would quickly become overwhelmed. So, despite the thrum of violence that filled his bones, he began to run.

  Not away, but further down the street, away from the smoke of the wall and towards the town square. He dashed across the cobblestones of the square, Goblins trailing behind him. His legs were longer, and he had decent Agility, so outpacing the little terrors was no problem.

  The inner town seemed mostly untouched. The buildings were made mostly of stone, and while some of the thatched roofs were alight, most weren’t.

  There was one prominent exception, however. The largest building, adjacent to the square, clearly some place of worship with a massive spiky spire, had seen the most fighting.

  The heavy oak doors had been bashed in, and the bodies of Goblins and cat people littered the ground around it. That had been the inhabitants last stand, he wagered.

  Quickly surveying the state of affairs - the frenzied stream of Goblins charging after him, the large axe Goblin directing them, the mage Goblin chanting something sinister, and the sneaky Goblin nowhere in sight - Elijah decided to reuse the choke point that was the church’s entrance.

  If it could work for the cat people, it could work for him… Of course, it hadn’t worked for the cat people.

  He leapt over the mound of bodies and into the porch of the building, then spun to face his next three attackers.

  Slash. Slash. Bonk. Bonk. Thud.

  The mountain of bodies grew as Elijah struggled to defend the bottleneck. Sap dripped down his wooden body in place of sweat, an interesting side effect of his Skill.

  There was a break in the constant stream of attacks, then a cry from outside, and, all of a sudden, a dozen Goblins pressed through the opening at once, holding out the bodies of the fallen as shields and moving in lockstep.

  With this sort of tactic, Elijah had no choice but to move backwards to stay out of the bristling wall of flesh and steel.

  He tried something. He had been slashing with the offhand spearhead as if it were a dagger, and the action reminded him of the very first Skill he had acquired, one he had never used.

  Investing the Stamina required, Elijah activated Cerberus Slash and swiped the air in front of him with his bladed article. A white phantom paw, the size of the teen’s chest, materialised behind his attack. The long claws of the Cerberus slashed the wall of Goblins, causing three of them to scream in pain and another to drop dead.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  More rushed in to fill their place, however, and the line didn’t break.

  The Skill was far more effective than the teen expected. That said, its Stamina consumption wasn’t negligible, so he couldn’t use it with the reckless abandon he would have liked. With no other choice, Elijah retreated.

  As he ran into the main building, he saw there were pews facing forward, like the churches he was used to, though this place was far more colourful.

  Grabbing one of the heavy seats, Elijah dragged it in front of the entrance, hopefully buying him a few more seconds.

  He looked around. There was an enclosed stone spiral staircase beneath the pointed spire he had seen from the outside, the door to which was open.

  The teen rushed over, then began to climb. One foot followed the other as he swiftly made his way up the tight ascent.

  It didn’t take him long to reach the top. The staircase opened out into a cone-shaped room with windows on all sides. Above him, there was the pointed peak of the spire’s roof.

  He prepared himself at the top of the stairs; they were only wide enough for one Goblin at a time, so he couldn’t be pushed out like he was before. All he had to do was hold position, and he could win!

  Taking a moment’s respite, he surveyed his condition. Scratches covered his bark-like skin, and there were areas he knew would bruise, but that was quite good, considering.

  The cries of the enraged Goblins filled the echoey staircase as they rushed up with no regard for their lives.

  Elijah swung, and swung again, and swung once more. He swung his mace until his arm grew tired and he was forced to switch hands. He swung until lethargy set into his bones; he swung until he could no longer swing, at which point he started kicking the monsters down the steps.

  It was only ten minutes, but the fighting had been so intense that he felt like his entire life had been war. His body craved water, his lungs burnt with each breath, and the mix of slime and sap that covered his body stung as it poured off his brow and into his eyes.

  Still, he continued to fight. Despite his exhaustion, the anger that had been infesting him lately thrummed steadily, parroting his heartbeats. He continued to attack in time with the rhythm. He had found his flow!

  At one point, he fought through the fog of war that clouded his mind and realised that he had killed far more than twenty Goblins. Checking the notification log in the corner of his HUD, the young man discovered why.

  You have defeated a Lv 10 Zombie Goblin:

  Less Xp is awarded for defeating an opponent of a lower level. 90 Xp awarded. Xp automatically placed in escrow, US 2.7.1.

  At some point the messages had changed. He hadn’t noticed that he was fighting undead. They looked much the same as the normal Goblins; the bodies were fresh, after all. He had just assumed that the creatures he was attacking had somehow survived their horrific injuries and had gotten back into the fight.

  Once he knew the spell that mage Goblin had been casting, he switched to headshots only.

  Even so, this was untenable. He smacked one Goblin’s ear off as he smashed in the head, sending the monster tumbling back down the way it had come, but only seconds later, it came back, a strange green light glowing in its eyes.

  Not even the tried-and-true method of destroying its brain seemed to work. A headless corpse he had decapitated came stumbling up the stairs only seconds later.

  He could defeat the lower-levelled creatures fairly easily, but that didn’t matter if they could return ad infinitum. With each swing of the mace, each kick to the chest, each headbutt, and each tired push, he grew more and more exhausted.

  The thumping in his veins could keep him going, but for how long? Could he outlast the mage Goblin’s mana? At this rate, probably not.

  Elijah decided on a course of action and moved. He threw himself through the third-storey window of the spire chamber, filling the air with twinkling shards of silicon dioxide.

  He slid down a roof, then tumbled into the street, landing hard. He didn’t waste time and started running.

  He leapt over the corpses once more and found himself back in the cat people’s church, behind the enemy.

  There was a fresh pile of Goblin corpses at the base of the staircase, and the mouldy Goblin was standing over them, dark green mana fluttering around him as dead bodies arose at his call.

  Elijah wasted no time and sprinted right for the mushroom-covered Goblin. Caught up in its spell, the creature didn’t have time to react before it was tackled to the ground and a spear was stabbed into its chest. The ghostly claw of a Cerberus finished off the monster, cutting it into five equally sized pieces.

  The teen was too distracted making sure the caster was dead. He didn’t notice the axe that swung at him until it was too late. As it turned out, an axe was super effective against wood.

  The weapon struck his exposed side, and a wedge of bark-covered flesh fell out. He was sent flying several feet, ending up sprawled out on the stone floor.

  Elijah coughed; he thought there should be blood mixed with his phlegm, but the monster still sleeping inside him wouldn’t allow that.

  The tanky Goblin cried out and charged the prone teen. His battered mace and spear had been sent flying in the attack, and he looked about for them frantically.

  The mace was on the floor, ten feet away. It was so close, but not close enough.

  Almost on instinct, Elijah rose to his knees and raised his left, bark-covered arm to block, whilst his right transformed into a thick tentacle and squirmed over to his weapon.

  Two things happened at once. The warrior Goblin struck Elijah’s arm, sending splinters of muscle spraying everywhere, chips of bone adding to the macabre display, and Elijah’s Tentacle Limb wrapped around the haft of his weapon.

  It only took a second to draw the weapon back to him, but in that time his other arm had been brutally severed. Now he was stuck with a whip-like tentacle, slick-skinned and suckered, instead of a right arm.

  With no small amount of panic, Elijah surged to his feet, trying to push the stocky Goblin back.

  It was like trying to move a mountain. Although the Goblin was shorter than he, it was far stronger, and his attempt to create space did nothing. The monster stayed in range as it continued to swing away.

  This time, however, the teen was able to snap his new limb back in time to deflect the blow. Metal rang, and sparks flew as the weapons clashed.

  Elijah tried to attack, his tentacle moving erratically as he attempted to swing the mace attached to him at his foe.

  This too didn’t work.

  Unlike the other Goblins, this one actually knew how to fight. Elijah’s flailed strikes bounced off the remains of its shield or were deflected by its axe. Although the teen tried to keep up the frantic attacks, the monster was able to maintain its defence with minimal effort.

  When it thought it had got his measure, the thing smiled at the teen, showing off half-rotten fangs as if to say, “That all you got?”

  Elijah took the opening without hesitation. He headbutted the monster, landing his wood-hard forehead directly on the creature's overlarge nose.

  Blood sprayed, and the creature was stunned. He had put all the retaliatory force the Berserker’s Bark had been building up throughout the fight into that strike, and still, it didn’t do more than cause the creature to stumble back, its eyes unfocused.

  The sixteen-year-old tried to capitalise on the opportunity, but something wet and about the size of a basketball struck his tentacle, driving it into his body, where it stuck.

  Elijah looked to his right, finding the snot Goblin cackling as it pointed and laughed at the teen, stuck together by mucus.

  This wasn’t any ordinary mucus either. It was as sticky as glue, and Elijah found he was unable to unstick his tentacle from his side.

  It didn’t matter; he still had legs, and the warrior was still dazed. He would kick it to death if he must.

  As he stepped forward to do just that, a sharp pain exploded in his lower back. Turning around, he saw the assassin Goblin sneaking back into the shadows of the church, having left a knife in his kidney.

  His body burned with pain, but he still tried to use what little time he had left before the warrior Goblin came back to its senses to strike it down.

  Just as he raised his leg to kick, fighting off the agony of a missing arm and a stab wound, something struck him from across the church, and in less than a second, he had burst into unholy dark green flames.

  He ran about, desperately trying to put out the fire that caught so easily on his bark skin. It hurt like the seven layers of hell all rolled into one.

  While screaming and rolling, he saw something that was impossible. The Goblin mage he had shredded was stitched back together, its flesh withered and the same green light as the zombies glowing in its eyes.

  As the pain grew white hot and his grip on sanity began to waver, Elijah knew this was the end. He would do better next time. The thought brought him some small measure of comfort.

  Just as he accepted his death, he exploded. Spikes of blood tore out from inside him, turning him into an anemone and putting out the infernal flames.

  That wasn’t to say the pain went away. No. Impossibly, it doubled as he was shredded from the inside out!

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