Chapter 3
I stood frozen to the spot and considered my options. I wanted to avoid danger, but the chances of there being another town in the opposite direction that I could reach by nightfall were pretty much zero.
I wasn’t afraid to camp out in the wilderness, especially with my new powers, but it still would have been nice to have a tent and some pots and pans to cook with. I’d have to get into town to get those, but since that meant going through the kobolds anyway to get into this town, I might as well stay at the inn that I guessed was there.
No matter what, it seemed like I was going to have to murder this small army of little reptile-dudes.
And probably die a whole bunch of times trying.
“Fuck me,” I groaned as I headed after the horde.
I had already taken several steps along the curving track after the kobolds when I remembered my last save point. It wasn’t too far up the mountain, but I would run the risk of getting caught by the main horde if I had to start over again. Where I was now I had the element of surprise, and I needed to use every advantage I could get my hands on.
The tingling in my fingers felt like courage creeping into every nerve, and I took a long breath as I counted their numbers again.
I could do this.
The kobolds were screaming like a bunch of sleep deprived toddlers, so I didn’t have much of a problem stepping right behind them as they broke clear of the forest and began to sprint across the mile or so of open farmlands toward the walls of the village.
The farmland between the forest and the village was made of a short golden wheat that came up to my waist. It would have been great camouflage for these kobolds if they had the intelligence to bend over and try to sneak, but these dumbasses were still screaming and raising their shitty swords, spears, and crossbows into the air as they sprinted forward, so I had no doubt that the guards at the distant city wall would totally know they were coming.
I trotted behind the horde as I tried to figure out my best method of attack. The majority at the back looked like crossbow-wielders, and if I could take them down before they could fire at me, I would at least be able to avoid becoming a human pincushion.
The tolling of a bell filled the air and drowned out the kobold’s yipping. The town must have finally realized they were in danger.
Two of the kobolds, a gray-scaled kobold and a brown-scaled one, had shorter legs than the rest and were lagging way behind the rest of the running horde. The brown one was closer, so I closed in and drove my dagger through its spine.
Its excited yipping quickly turned to a pained yelp, and as the gray one turned my way, I drew my sword.
I silenced any snarls with a slash to its throat. I noticed that its blood was a sickly greenish color, though it still had the same metallic scent as my own blood.
It gurgled for a moment before falling dead at my feet.
The pained sound of the first had drawn the attention of the rest of the horde. By the time I had taken care of the second kobold, I was staring into the eyes of a bunch of angry lizard-dog monsters.
And the ones closest to me already had their crossbows on me.
“Human pincushion,” I sighed a second before the triggers were pilled.
I crossed my arms in front of my face to protect myself from the bolts.
Chime.
I was back within the trees at my newest savepoint. Without even thinking, I must have summoned my power to prevent a particularly brutal death. Why hadn’t I done that before when I plummeted down the mountain? Maybe it was turning into a gut reaction, and the more I preemptively respawned, the easier it would become.
I realized I’d been standing around thinking for a few minutes, so I shook my head to clear my brain. I had to take out the horde before it could reach the town and fucked their shit up, so I stepped out of the trees once more and paused to listen. The only sound in the air was the excited yipping of the kobolds.
They hadn’t reached the town yet.
I tore ass out of the trees and aimed straight for the rear formation of kobolds. This time, I needed to take out all of their archers, and not just the two. If I could get my hands on one of the crossbows and a quiver, that would be a bonus. Anything to keep the bastards from turning me into a pincushion or just mauling me with their claws.
I drew my blades as I closed in on the horde, and I didn’t even check my speed when I reached the back line. As I shot past the brown and gray kobolds, I swung my blades out and sliced each across the arm. The two shrieked in pain, and I slammed into a blue-scaled crossbow kobold. We tumbled to the ground in a whirl of limbs, and its scales scraped against my cheek and left it raw, like some kind of super tough sandpaper. That explained the lack of shields and armor. Why would they need to lug that kind of stuff around when their scales were as tough as leather and as sharp as nails?
The archer I had tackled landed on top of me in the tumble, and he kicked the sword from my hand as it dug its claws into me.
I winced but retaliated by shoving my curved dagger into the kobold’s soft belly, and my blade sprayed greenish blood all over the place. As the blue kobold squealed in pain, I grabbed the crossbow slung around its back and shot a bolt at the gray kobold I had already slashed. My aim wasn’t perfect, but I got the beast in the injured arm, and it yelped as it staggered back.
Okay. I was doing pretty damn good for my second attempt.
I saw three kobolds running at me, so I hooked my forearm around the neck of the blue-dude on top of me. Then I curled my legs inward, pressed the bottoms of my feet against his chest, and then threw my arm away as I kicked out with all my strength. The kobold flew up away from me as if he’d been smacked by a mule’s hoof, and he collided with the other three lizard-men like a thrown bowling ball. They all screamed as they went down, and I jumped up to my feet with a wide smile on my face.
I lunged for the gray one I had shot earlier and silenced its pained whimpers with my dagger across its throat. Then I grabbed its dropped crossbow and shot at the next archer in the group, a green-scaled motherfucker that had turned around from the front of the crossbow line.
My aim was better this time, and I got the beast in the thigh. It staggered with a yelp and clawed at the gray kobold beside it as he tumbled away. They both hit the ground with a thud, a whole lot of snarling, and a spattering of green blood.
By now, the rest of the horde had turned to see what was happening at the back.
“Well, shit,” I sighed as all of the sword and dagger wielders forgot all about the walled town and charged me.
“Muerraggahhhhh!” The largest of the horde was a big orange brute, and it bellowed out some kind of command. The rest obeyed without a thought.
Now I knew which one was the brains of the operation.
A blue sword-wielding kobold came rushing from the newly organized line as I stepped toward the remaining crossbow lizards. Its attack was difficult to parry, and since I had lost my sword to that blue asshole, I now only had my curved dagger to defend myself with.
A second kobold rushed in on my unguarded left and slashed at me with his dagger, but I was too tied up parrying the blue dude with the sword to block, so his blade got me on the hip.
I snarled in pain and swung my dagger wildly to get them to back the fuck up. As they dodged, I shuffled away to put some distance between us, and I risked a glance to where I thought my sword was. Movement in the corner of my eye jerked my attention back up, and I just barely dodged an attack from a green kobold rushing in from the right.
A crossbow bolt whizzed past my head a little too close for comfort. I took to referring the crossbow-wielding kobolds as “bow-bolds”, and the four remaining beasts were lined up to my left, each one ready to fire a bolt in rapid succession.
I somehow managed to dart behind the green kobold that had just rushed me, and the poor thing was pierced by the bolts.
These weren’t the fast-firing crossbows of my world. These had to be drawn back with a foot and nocked each time before a bolt could be fired again. That gave me just enough time to rush the line of bow-bolds and do some serious damage.
The first didn’t even get a chance to yelp as I drove my dagger into its throat. The second parried my attack, and the third managed to shove a bolt into my thigh with its hands or paws or whatever. I slashed my dagger at it to get it away from me, and I could have sworn the motherfucker laughed.
I stabbed a green kobold through the eye and dodged an attack from one to my left. Another came up from behind and slashed across my uninjured thigh. I growled in pain and swung around blindly. The beasts easily stepped back, and I realized that I was surrounded.
“Okay,” I laughed. “I did wayyyy better this time. Cool.”
Chime.
My second attempt at killing the kobolds had gone surprisingly well, but I knew I could do better this time around, so I did some quick math as I ran toward the horde. If I had taken out six this last time and there really were twenty in the horde, I only had to do about seventy-percent better this time to defeat them all.
No pressure.
I went with the same tactic as the last try but instead of going to the right, I swung around and went for the bow-bold on the left side. I drew my dagger just a few strides before I came in contact and used my momentum to drive the blade home. I left it in the creature’s back and used the crossbow on the next bow-bold in the line. My aim was getting better with each shot I made, so this bolt sunk deep into the kobold’s neck, and it was dead before it even hit the ground.
Fuck, yeah.
I didn’t give the kobolds any time to react to my sudden presence. I leaped to my feet and slashed at a dark brown beast with my sword. The blade cut across the back of its thighs, and it let out a shriek of agony as it collapsed.
From there, the fight seemed to continue along the same thread as the previous attempt. The bow-bolds tried to shoot me, I used another as a shield, and then rushed the line. More of the creatures fell to my sword, but in the end, they surrounded me again and stabbed me through the back.
Dicks.
It didn’t seem to matter which tactic I used. If I came at them from behind, they always caught up to my attacks and eventually overwhelmed me. I managed to take out all of the bow-bolds in one attempt, but the remaining kobolds didn’t need the backup. They were just as handy with their swords and daggers and cut me down like a sapling in the forest.
Moving around them to make an attempt from the front seemed impossible. They had such a headstart on me that even if I ran full bore, they would reach the town before I could kill even one of them. Even if I tried to go around the horde, they would easily see me in all the open land. Trying to use the trees as cover would just slow me down.
But after a dozen or so tries from the rear, I had to give it a whirl.
My first attempt for the front ended exactly how I had predicted. I tried to run while ducking in the tall grass, but my sword kept knocking against the ground. The five nearest kobolds noticed me in a heartbeat and broke off from the main horde to attack me. I would have gotten away, but a bow-bold shot me through the calf and knocked me to the ground. The rest of the party pounced on me and tore into me with fangs and claws.
Dying really wasn’t a fun experience.
The second time around with this strategy, I let the horde reach the outskirts of the town. The tolling bell rang through the air and from the quivering of the kobolds, I knew that they were too intent on their target to notice or care what I was doing. I managed to use the bell tolls as cover for my banging sword, and I circled around to the front of the horde.
When I got closer to the town, I realized that there weren’t actually proper walls. The entrance was surrounded by a deep trench and a wall of sharpened logs that acted as a barrier. Neither would keep the kobolds out for very long since they could easily run around either side and enter the town from another location.
During my first few attempts at killing the kobolds, I had heard the distinct sound of metal on metal from the village, so I had guessed that someone in the town had been defending against the horde. A group of swordsmen would be a comfort at my side, but, unfortunately, nobody showed up now that the invading lizard-men were right at their doorstep.
I was going to have to fight alone.
I growled out my frustration as I broke away from my cover of tall grass. The closest kobold was in the middle of a taunting bark, and it turned into a strangled squeal as I slammed into it. My dagger pierced its stomach, and its scrabbling to knock me off only made the blood flow faster, so I yanked the blade out as fiercely as possible to give it a quick death.
The beasts on the far side of the horde hadn’t noticed me, but the ones nearest turned toward me with their teeth bared. One of the bow-bolds near the back shot in my direction but missed by a mile. Then a sword-wielding kobold charged and slashed at me wildly, but I dodged and then swung my dagger up at its chest. It dove back to avoid my attack and knocked itself and a companion down to the ground.
I pounced with both weapons drawn and snuffed out their lives like a pair of candles.
A gray kobold rushed me before I could remove my blades from my two victims. That mistake would have cost me my life if the attack hadn’t been blocked by a sword. The kobold seemed just as surprised as I was, and the sword-wielder used the pause to slide the blades apart and pierce the creature through the gut.
“Get up and fight!” a female voice roared at me, and the hand that pulled me to my feet was stronger than I would have guessed for a woman. “Or are you trying to get yourself killed?”
The woman was shorter than I was, but she was definitely built for battle. An iron helmet covered her head, and the hair that poked beneath the edges was black. The armor she wore was a combination of leather and iron. The leather seemed to act as padding for the plates over her torso, arms, and legs, and it protected the joints where the armor was too bulky to cover. The only bit of visible skin was her chin, and the tan there was the color of melted caramel.
She must have noticed me staring because the blue eyes beneath her helmet narrowed dangerously, but she didn’t say anything else. She just tore away from me, leaped at the nearest kobold, and slashed the head of the beast off with a practiced precision.
My gawking was cut short when the rest of the horde converged on us, and I quickly yanked my sword free of the kobold body and parried a spear thrust aimed at my chest. I tried to do the same sliding trick the woman had used, but my blade only jolted an inch or so toward my enemy. The kobold was giving me no ground, so I kicked it as hard as I could in the knee. It buckled, and the tension left the sword pressing against mine, so I was able to free my blade and rip it across his chest.
A bolt flew past my face and nearly took off my ear. When I saw the line of bow-bolds aiming at me, I snatched up my recent kill and ducked behind it. The hollow thunk of bolts hitting their mark was followed by the spray of blood as a few pierced right through the creature’s body. Some blood splashed against my lips and filled my mouth with the taste of mud and something metallic that was different from my own blood.
While the bow-bolds were reloading their weapons, I leaped up and lunged into their midst. Two of them fell like sacks of flour, and another managed to block my dagger with its crossbow. The blade sunk deep into the wood and was torn out of my grasp, so with my other hand I swung my sword in response and was rewarded with a spray of blood from a slashed throat. I retrieved my dagger and attempted a cool throw at the next bow-bold, but its curved blade didn’t really soar through the air so well, and it merely bounced off of the creature’s blue scales and tumbled into the grass.
That idea didn’t work, but I would learn from it.
The warrior woman had been grunting and growling as she took out her own enemies, but her shriek of pain tore through the air over the tolling of the bell and pierced me more painfully than any bolt from the crossbows. Two more kobolds fell to my sword as I tried to get to her side.
I reached her just in time to watch the big orange kobold bring his sword through her stomach. Her eyes widened in surprise and met with my own. There was a certain acceptance in her expression, but I could also see the fear of death take over just a second before the light finally faded.
This woman had saved my life at the expense of her own. And I didn’t even know her name.
“You fucking assholes!” I shouted as I rushed toward the big orange bastard. I had to leap over and weave around the bodies of the kobolds the woman had killed. She had been a much better swordsman than I was, and she had still died.
I knew I was going to reset this, but it still pissed me off that they’d killed her this round.
In my haste for revenge, I forgot that I hadn’t killed all of the bow-bolds, and a bolt pierced my spine just before I reached the orange brute. The impact and pain threw me off balance, and when I tried to bring my sword down, the orange kobold parried it easily. It made a quick adjustment and brought his own blade up, and the inferno of death engulfed me once more.
Chime.
“Fuck!” I shouted when I returned to the trees, and several birds shrieked in alarm and scattered into the air.
Going for the front was the best tactic I had tried so far. The woman was way better with a sword than I was, but I couldn’t stand the idea of her dying to make things easier for me. I had to figure out a way to get her to help me while still keeping her alive. Or I had to just kill all these assholes before she had a chance to come out and help me.
I broke away from the trees and made my way to the front of the horde as I had the last time. Instead of throwing myself at the side of the enemy, I slipped around to the side of the town where the trench began. When the kobolds were looking the other way, I darted from the tall grass and did a baseball slide into the ditch. I landed awkwardly on my sword’s sheath and held back the groan of pain. The kobolds probably couldn’t hear me over the tolling of the bell, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I crawled through the trench until I reached the entrance of the town where the horde was waiting. I could hear their excited panting and the rustling of their scales against the empty scabbards at their sides. From down here, it sounded like there were fifty or a hundred of the beasts, and anyone in the town that couldn’t actually see the horde would be expecting the worst.
Was that why the woman was the only one that came to defend the town?
As if summoned by my thoughts, the woman appeared from within the town and strode confidently across the land-bridge to meet the horde. She looked even more impressive from that angle. The helmet she had worn last time was in her hand, and it let me see her face a little better. She had shorter black hair that just barely touched her shoulders. The light breeze in the air pulled it away from her face, and with the fierce look in her blue eyes, she looked every part the warrior that saved my life and risked her own.
She was absolutely beautiful.
The woman took a deep breath and put the helmet on without taking her eyes off of the horde. She knew she was going to die, but she was going out to fight them anyway.
What a fucking badass.
As she drew her blade, I scrambled out of the trench. My sudden appearance made her do a double-take, but she merely gave me a small nod before turning back to the kobolds. I drew my own sword and gripped it tightly. Having her at my side had a comforting effect, and I thought this might be the one to end it all.
The horde spread out before us like the defensive line of a football team. None of them actually stood on the path leading into the town, but they were split almost evenly down the middle, with twelve standing to the left, and eight to the right. The big orange one was practically two kobolds all on its own, so it made sense the others looked to it as their leader.
The crossbow-wielding kobolds made up the back end of the horde, and they were all readying their weapons when they saw us standing between them and the town. The rest drew their swords or daggers and snarled at the woman and me.
I tried to stay close to her, but it didn’t work very well at all. Although it made for some pretty epic kills when we worked together, we mostly just got in each other’s way. When she snapped at me to spread out, the orange kobold came up and shoved his sword into her back. I avenged her that time by slicing across the bastard’s face, but there were still too many remaining in the horde, and I fell to their attack.
Chime.
Just like with my attempts at the rear, it seemed that every attempt from the front was a failure. After several more attempts, I managed to defeat all of the kobolds, but the woman had died in the process, and I was bleeding all over the place from various wounds, so it didn’t feel like much of a victory. A man from the town had rushed to my side and called for someone named “Dora” before I blacked out and woke in the trees.
Chime.
I respawned fewer times than I had in the catacombs and at least I didn’t have to listen to a monologue each time like then. I only had to deal with the knowledge that my best chances were to take the horde out from the front and that the woman who fought at my side was going to die.
I tried so many times to find a way to fight without her. Flat out telling her not to fight earned me an angry glare from the proud warrior woman, and trying to defeat the horde before it reached the town always resulted in my quick death. And she always met the horde when it reached the town. Sometimes other men came out with farm tools and butcher knives, but she was the most capable fighter the town had, so they all ended up dying trying to defend the town.
It made no sense. She was clearly armed to protect the town, and it was large enough that she couldn’t have been the only defender. Had the others been killed in previous raids? The age of the wood on the buildings made me think it wasn’t a newly settled town, so it wasn’t like the townsfolk couldn’t have sent word out for guards before the attacks began. If the raids had been happening since the start of the settlement, the town wouldn’t still be standing. It would have been abandoned a long time ago.
I could let the woman die, of course. That would be the easiest way to victory, but I couldn’t have that weighing on my conscience. Killing the sorcerer’s men was one thing, since they were evil and trying to kill me. If I let the woman die, it would be like I was running my sword through her myself.
She was on my side, so I couldn’t just let her die.
But trying to save her life was really fucking hard. Every attempt I made resulted in her death. It didn’t matter if I tried to get the horde to chase me, or if I came from the left or right, or if I set fire to the tall grass around the town. Either the horde would just turn around and slaughter me, and I had to start all over again, or the woman joined the fight and she died.
In one particularly low moment, I tried to return to my savepoint just outside of the catacombs. There must have been another route down the mountain that would bring me closer to the town than where the horde came from. But my powers must not work like that because whenever I focused on returning to my savepoint, it always brought me to the trees behind the kobolds, even if I concentrated on the entrance to the catacombs or the little brook. Even spawning at the stone dais would have been a comfort if it meant I could get to the town sooner and somehow save the woman.
“It can’t just end like this!” I shouted as I pulled at my hair.
I didn’t even know her name, and yet I just couldn’t imagine walking into the town victorious without her there. My goal was to save the town, and she was part of it.
“I don’t care if it takes me a thousand tries,” I growled.
I was going to save that amazing warrior woman, too.
I respawned again to the trees and took a deep breath. Then I ran after the horde and circled around to the trench again. This time I didn’t wait for the woman to appear before scrambling out in front of the town. I knew she would show up.
She always did.
The kobolds grew more excited when they realized I was going to stand and fight them. The bow-bolds ducked down in the back, and the front line came rushing forward.
“Let’s go, you dumb fucks,” I growled. Then I met their attack in the middle and sliced through a gray kobold on the right and a greenish one on the left. One of the large brown ones came at me like a raging bull, and I drove both of my blades through him. I fell with him and used the impact to dig deeper into his flesh.
Another brown kobold came at me, and I remembered the woman blocking with her sword when I had used both of my blades.
She was just behind me with her weapon at the ready, so I spun around and snatched it away from her before she could enter the battle. The surprised look on her face made me grin.
“Thanks!” I said to her as I easily parried the kobold’s attack. “I kind of lost my sword in that guy and needed a new one.”
Her mouth dropped open slightly, and although I would have loved to just stand there and stare at her adorably confused face, I had a horde of kobolds to annihilate.
I cut through the brown kobold like he was made of water, and I concluded that her sword must have been at one-hundred-percent durability.
It was right then and there that I realized I could do this. I could save the town by killing all of the kobolds, and I could keep her alive. She had no weapon of her own at this point, and if I grabbed my sword from the other kobold, she would be left with only a dagger if she chose to take mine from the body of the kobold. I had only seen her use the sword, but I imagined that a dagger would be no problem for her. But it wasn’t the best weapon to use in the face of a large horde.
I had found the key for the lock. Now I just had to figure out which way to turn it.
If I could learn to wield a sword in each hand, even without any real skill, I could save the town and the woman. The key was being able to parry an attack with one hand while killing with the other. That had been too tricky with a dagger, but with two swords, it was possible.
I had all the time in the world to learn and study the movements of the kobolds now that I had decided on my tactics.
I died a dozen more times, but I discovered that it was always a gray and green one on each side that I took out first, and the big brown one would always come charging at me after that.
I died another dozen times. Or maybe it was a hundred. Or maybe a thousand. I didn’t care. The shocked look on the woman’s face was always worth taking the sword from her, and I smiled at her each time I knew I was saving her life. She didn’t care too much for the time I told her that a beautiful woman like her shouldn’t be fighting, and the pain that blossomed in my face after she decked me told me she probably broke my nose.
I kept my joking light hearted after that and always got the adorable confusion and the gaped open mouth for my effort.
I fought a thousand mini-wars.
I learned, and I got better, and before long, I was easily cutting through these kobolds. It helped that I pretty much knew what they were going to do before they did it, but I also got better at holding my swords, and twisting my hips to deliver the strongest possible blow. Eventually, I was cutting through their masses like an angel of death, and I knew there was only going to be a few more tries before I’d killed all of them myself.
I got in front of the horde once again and took a deep breath before I drew my two weapons. I could feel that this time was different from the others. It was going to be my final attempt at taking down the horde, and this time, I was going to win.
I rushed forward before the kobolds recovered from my sudden appearance and took down the gray and green ones easily. The big brown bull rushed forward, and I buried my sword into his gut right to the hilt, like a perfect sheath. Then I turned and snatched the sword from the woman and gave her what I hoped was a confident grin.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I said as I parried the oncoming brown kobold, and her eyes widened. “You don’t need to worry anymore. I’m going to take care of everything.”
And I just knew that I was right.
I shoved the brown kobold back and drew my sword from the big bull’s body. If I had a bit more skill, I would have spun the blades around all epic-like how they do in action movies. But I had tried that in one of my previous attempts, dropped the thing, and gotten my ass murdered, so I just tried to look like a badass by killing every single kobold without being too flashy.
The brown one fell to a follow-up slash with the woman’s sword. Then the speedy green kobold tried to get under my defenses, but I had already learned to keep my openings tight. I feinted, and as it tried to sneak in closer, I sliced its head open like a watermelon with the woman’s sword. I dropped my sword and grabbed its body to use as a shield against the brown bow-bold that tried to take me out from the left. The astonished look on its face paired well with the tip of my sword going through the middle of its forehead. I picked up my sword again and faced my next opponent.
A pair of green kobolds tried coming at me from opposite sides, but I knew they were coming. I let them get close enough to see the excitement in their eyes before I dropped to one knee and swung the swords at them. Her sword sliced through the meat and muscle of the left one’s leg. My sword cut a deep gash, but it wasn’t as satisfying. I pulled my leg up and shot backward just a second before the two smashed into one another. They yelped and shrieked as they clawed one another in their tumble, and I silenced them with a blade each to the chest.
I easily dodged the bolts from a pair of bow-bolds standing behind me because I knew they were coming, and then I danced around a third bolt fired at me. I rapidly closed the distance, and the first two bow-bolds screamed in panic as they tried to reload.
“Too slowwww!” I sang as I swung my swords out and took both their heads out, and then I kicked the skull of the asshole on the right so that his head David Beckhamed into the face of an oncoming lizard-man.
While that dude was distracted, I swung both blades together at the fourth kobold, and it died with a piercing shriek that was drowned out by the tolling of the town’s bell.
I was already halfway through the horde, and I made it look so easy.
I cut through a pale brown kobold with the woman’s sword on my way to finishing off the three remaining bow-bolds. They saw me coming and loosed their bolts at me at the same time, but I knew they were going to do that since they had done it a dozen times already. I used the pale one’s body as a shield, and then slapped the other two bolts out of the air with my sword like I was swatting flies. Then I tossed the body I’d used as a shield aside, pounced on the nearest bow-bold, and jammed my sword into his ribs.
I swung her sword at the other two and managed to slice off the gray one’s arm. While it shrieked, I used my foot to yank my sword out of the first body, and then I continued the momentum to spin around. I silenced the one-armed kobold and drove the sword in my left hand through the final bow-bold’s stomach.
Now I didn’t have to worry about getting a bolt stuck in my leg.
A bellowing green kobold rushed me while trying to use a one-handed sword with two hands. Its face was twisted in pain, and I could only assume I had just killed its mate or child or whatever. The rage made it a little bit harder to kill, but I had already done this a dozen times before, so after a few parries back and forth, it left itself wide open for my sword to tear its stomach open. Greenish blood seeped into the ground and splashed new color onto the golden stalks of the plains, and then my follow up stab ended its life.
Another brown bull came at me with its head down while my sword was stuck in the skull of the angry green one. This brown asshole had knocked me down and killed me once before, but if it thought it was going to get the drop on me again, it was about to be surprised.
It let out a triumphant howl and, just before it could knock me over, I twisted and dropped the green one into its path. There was no time for it to correct its movement, and it tripped over its companion.
“Ole!” I shouted all Spanish-bullfigher-ish as it fell, and then the woman’s sword ended its life quickly and with a satisfying squelching sound.
The next two kobolds were dealt with in rapid succession. They came at me as one but weren’t very coordinated. The darker one was younger than the other, and that made it too eager. It swung its sword at me, and I just stepped to the side to avoid it.
As the young kobold went hurtling past me, I lunged for the older one. I easily parried the slash at my face, and I tore the woman’s sword across its unguarded stomach. All of the older asshole’s guts spilled out like a turned over bowl of pasta, and it let out a dying scream as the young kobold came rushing back into the fight.
“Too late to save your friend,” I taunted as I flicked my left wrist, shifted the sword in my hand, and impaled the little devil’s chest right to the hilt of my blade.
The final kobold was always the big orange brute. It was always at the corner of my eye, but it had never jumped into the fray to try to save its companions.
A final showdown between us was just fine by me.
I had watched it kill the woman so many times that I felt like I was avenging her all over again, even though she was still alive and had no idea how many times she’d tried to save my life, I’d tried to save her life, and we’d both died.
The orange brute was walking backward with a taunting sneer on its face. I knew it wasn’t actually trying to run away completely because it had done this a few times before.
I followed the kobold to the back of the group and shoved my original sword into the last body I passed. Using the two swords worked when I needed to keep both sides covered from multiple attacks. With just one enemy, I only had to watch wherever it was, and besides, there was a certain poetry to using her sword for the final battle. The woman wasn’t dead in this attempt, nor in any of the most recent tries, but I still felt the need to avenge her death from the times before that.
Plus her sword was way better than mine, and I could use all the help I could get.
I was kind of hoping that the orange kobold would lift his hand and motion me forward like in all the epic last-battles from the cool movies. But it just stood there and readied itself for the fight.
So disappointing.
It lunged at me, and I just barely managed to block the heavy overhead sword blow. I gritted my teeth and tried to throw it back, but it was like trying to move a mountain because its hind claws were extended into the ground to help anchor it into place.
I guess I had to remove the anchor.
I released some of the tension in my sword so that the kobold’s blade slid closer to me. Triumph glittered in the beast’s eyes for a second before turning to surprise as I ducked down. I pulled my sword with me, and the kobold staggered forward. As the left claws retracted, I thrust the blade along the ankle. The metal scraped against bone, and I felt a strange release of tension like I had cut a string. The kobold shrieked above me and lifted its left leg up with its claws extended to slash through my eyes.
I rolled backward out of the way and used the momentum to spring up to my feet. The kobold was leaning most of its weight onto its right side, so I sprang forward and clashed swords with it again, and because of the injury, the kobold couldn’t hold its ground against me. I pushed it in a circle, and its snarl of pain told me its endurance was quickly fading.
I was going to win.
I leaped back for a second before I lunged in again. I feinted to the injured left side before I dragged the sword along the exposed right thigh. The kobold shrieked and staggered back again, but I followed and easily parried its weak attack. It tried to keep some distance between us, but I continued to bear down on it while parrying its pathetic attempts at defense.
My blows became too much for it in the end, and its legs collapsed out from beneath it. The kobold let out a begging sort of simper just before I plunged the woman’s sword deep into its chest. Then I put all of my weight down on the hilt until the creature’s head lolled forward in death.
I withdrew the woman’s sword from the kobold’s body and looked around at my accomplishment. The tall grass was trampled on either side of the faint path and was drenched with the greenish blood from all the kobolds. I gave myself a quick once over to check for injuries. My left sleeve had been torn open and a small scrape welled with blood, but that was the worst I had to endure. Compared to the twenty lifeless bodies around me, I was lucky.
I’d won.
Fucking finally.
I turned toward the town and retrieved my sword from the body I had left it in. Both blades were covered in the greenish ooze and would need proper cleaning. For now, I merely wiped my sword on the grass and then shoved it into its sheath. Then I made my way back to the first brown bull, pulled my dagger free of its stomach, cleaned it, and then put it away.
“Time to smooze,” I said as I made a new savepoint before I headed toward the woman.
She still stood on the land-bridge and looked around the battlefield with an expression that was equal parts amazement and horror. Her eyes finally came to rest on me, and I could see the questions spinning in her brain.
“This belongs to you.” I handed her sword to her before she could open her mouth.
“Uhhh… How… Did… What?” She hesitated before she took it from me, and even then, seemed to regard the weapon like it was something she had never seen before.
“I would have cleaned it before I gave it back,” I laughed, “but I don’t have anything to clean it with properly.”
I was hoping for a laugh or something, but when she finally dragged her eyes away from her blood-stained blade, she simply gaped at me.
As I opened my mouth to ask her name, a cry of relief filled the air. I barely noticed the bell had stopped tolling since there had been too much death and angry kobolds around me to pay any attention to distant sounds, but I looked back to the town and saw that the citizens were surging out onto the land bridge between the two trenches, and they eventually surrounded the woman and I. Over a dozen hands reached out to me and dragged me toward the town. It seemed like a thousand hands were coming from all directions to try to tug or touch me.
The townspeople were shouting over one another in a confusing mass of voices.
“That was incredible!” someone shouted.
“You’ve saved us, you’ve saved us!” a woman cried.
“What if the kobolds return? What if this only makes them angrier?”
I tried to pinpoint the worried voice, but there were just so many people around me, and I could barely hear myself think over all the noise.
“Don’t just stand there!” Someone nudged me from behind. “Come in, come in!”
“Hey, wait, what?” I had no choice but to stumble along as the hands continued to shove or pull me.
I was dragged in front of a muscular man with auburn hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore an iron chestplate, but was only wearing one vambrace over his left arm, so I had to guess that he had been in the middle of suiting up when I swooped in and saved everyone. He wore a wide smile on his face, but as the townspeople pulled their hands away from me, he gave a hesitant glance out to where the piles of kobold corpses were, so I guessed that he was either still worried about them attacking again, or he was worried about me.
Maybe both.
“You have come at the most opportune moment, my friend,” he said as he shook my hand. His voice was deep but filled with exhaustion. “I am Elrin, the lead miner of the town of Addington.”
“And our leader!” someone chimed in from the back.
I expected that this should have been met with laughter or some humble nonsense from the man himself, but it was met with tension-filled silence.
“When we saw the kobolds coming, I thought it would finally be the end of our town, and our lives,” Elrin said with an air of defeat. “And then you appeared out of nowhere and slaughtered them all single handedly. Amazing!”
There was a burst of applause, but it didn’t last long nor was it accompanied by any cheering.
“How did you do it?” Elrin asked. “You barely have a scratch on you. I’ve never seen anyone fight as you do.”
“I guess I’m just lucky,” I said with a shrug, and was met with total silence.
It was like I had suddenly returned to the catacombs. The silence was absolutely deafening, and I could tell from frightened and angry looks in their eyes that not a single person believed a word I said. They must have thought I was a demon or a warlock or something bad, and that didn’t bode well for me.
I wasn’t about to wait for the accusations and the stone-throwing. After two intense battles almost back-to-back, I was tired of fighting. I let out a deep sigh and concentrated on the most recent savepoint I had created.
Chime.
The ice flowed in my veins, and the woman was standing before me looking astonished again and her sword was still in my hand.
“I believe this is yours,” I said as I handed the sword back to her. As before, she looked at it in wonder. “It saved my life more than once out there. Thank you.”
She turned her face up to me, and I had to resist the urge to kiss her on the cheek. The questions were swimming in her eyes, but I still remembered the one attempt where she had busted my nose. I would get my chance to kiss those full lips of hers, I just knew it.
The crowd surged forward as I entered the town and I was once again accosted and dragged before Elrin. The man introduced himself the same way and looked just as haggard as before.
“How did you do it?” Elrin asked. “You barely have a scratch on you.”
Humility had been the wrong answer. The truth seemed like a worse option, but the poor town looked like it could use some good news.
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.
“A long story?” he asked as his eyes narrowed.
I shook my head as I thought about all that had happened since I had been summoned to this world. It felt like it had been a thousand lifetimes ago, but the sun overhead said it had only been a few hours, tops.
“I was summoned in the Great Catacombs by a sorcerer named Raijin Thornheart.” I certainly had their attention now. “I am the God of Time, and I have come to champion this world.”