35:

“There’s just one question left, then,” Sarah muttered under her breath as she peeked out to get another glimpse of the rift goblin encampment below.

“Just one,” Jack repeated solemnly.

“Are we really doing this?” Sarah asked, turning away from the encampment and gazing directly into his eyes.

“Every fiber of my being wants to say no,” Jack honestly replied, not turning away from her piercing gaze. “It doesn’t take a doomsday prepper to tell you the odds we’re fighting here. Not to mention, whatever it is that lies within that fog.”

“Then why are you still here?” Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

Jack watched her closely, only to notice that the spear loosely held to the side in her right hand was quivering alongside her grip. She was scared, terrified even and she had every right to be.

“I told you before that this world wants to break us, to reforge us into weapons of war,” Jack slowly recalled, his every word weighing upon him as he confronted the challenge he was about to take on upon himself. “I also told you that I would not let it take my humanity from me. As much as I want to survive, I know that avoiding challenges now will only lead to a gruesome death later. Twenty thousand TP though, if we manage it, it would mean an advantage from the tutorial shop that would only snowball with time. And if we can earn those points while committing to a noble cause, well then… if I die, I will die human.”

Sarah continued looking him in the eyes, searching for something that she appeared to have found when she turned away and nodded.

“Dying human,” She softly repeated, her gaze hardening as she turned to look in the direction of the rift goblin encampment. “That sounds a great deal better than running. I am tired, Jack. I’m sick and tired of running for my life, of being hunted down relentlessly by these foul creatures. No more. I’m either going to die human or become the hunter here and now.”

Jack offered her an understanding nod, before his expression reverted to a state of calm.

“Take your position, then,” Jack said, his tone gentle yet firm.

“Jack.”

“Yeah?”

“If this is how it ends,” She managed the shadow of a smile. “It’s been an honor.”

“The honor was all mine,” Jack replied softly, as his features warmed with a genuine smile that stood in stark contrast to what he was going to do to the camp of rift goblins.

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Jack stood crouched before the escarpment, his unsheathed Moonsword held in his right hand and his Shield of Greater Reflection held defensively before his chest in his left.

His gaze turned to his left, down the edge of the plateau they were looking down upon the goblins from, finding Sarah lying prone a distance away from him, the length of the rift goblin camp separating them.

Her moment to act would come, but first Jack needed to create the distraction of a lifetime.

He had long deliberated the target he should choose with his two Qi Projections. Logically, it made sense to target the area near the cauldron, where the rift goblins were clumped together as they gorged on whatever horrid stew that was bubbling. That would give him the most kills, at least two and maybe even three if he got lucky with his shot. The second Qi Projection he could use on the storehouse shack. It wouldn’t take much to bring down the wooden shack and with it, Jack hoped a good chunk of the rift goblins’ weapons would be damaged if not outright destroyed.

As logically sound as his decision was, his instincts didn’t agree as his Moonsword lit up with the glow of Qi Blade. The fact that there was no heat source the smith could rely upon to heat the red-hot metal ingot bothered him to no end and the proximity of the staff-wielding goblin that was crowned in a feathered bandana was scratching at the back of his mind.

While Jack couldn’t be sure and leaping to conclusions without the entire facts wasn’t something he was fond of given the mystery surrounding his own origins, the only thing that could substitute a forge and bellows while evading his sight was Qi.

The Rift Goblin Commander had used Qi Arrows to harry him and Sarah, but that had still been a known element as one of the starter classes.

The staff on the other hand, one that could heat a metal ingot until it was red-hot, that was an unknown and a terrifying one at that.

He couldn’t leave such a foe to follow him and from the looks of it, it was the only one that carried a staff.

If the staff-wielding goblin could heat metal until it was ready to be forged, what could it do to flesh?

As Jack rose to his full height, knowing that it would be mere seconds before the rift goblin camp would spot him and his glowing sword, he hoped not to find out as he raised his sword above his left shoulder, taking a moment to confirm that the staff-wielding goblin was in the same spot he’d seen him minutes before and angle his blade, before cutting downwards in a diagonal slash.

To Jack, it felt like the world went still besides his own Qi Projection and he watched as the arc of azure energy blur downwards in what felt like a straight line.

As his Qi Projection cut through the goblin smith who was positioned before the ingot, Jack activated Qi Blade again. But the staff-wielding goblin’s movements kept his eyes locked onto it, as the creature raised its staff in the air before him as if it could shield him from an arc of concentrated Qi— even as the goblin smith’s body was scythed open in a spray of blood and viscera.

Jack watched in abject surprise as a convex dome formed entirely out of Qi materialized before the staff-wielding goblin, shielding it from both the spray of blood and his scything arc of Qi.

He watched with rapt focus as the shield formed out of Qi defended the rift goblin from an attack that was yet to fail Jack. Cracks spiderwebbed across the concave dome’s surface, yet it was his arc of projected Qi that grew smaller and smaller before winking out of existence.

Jack’s sword arm was instinctively moving before he’d even realized it, a single thought permeating in his mind.

This creature has to die, He thought as he unleashed a second arc of scything Qi headed right in it’s direction.

This time, it was the shield that shattered.

[Congratulations, Class: Swordsman (Basic) has reached level 6! +5 Free Points, +1 Qi Pool has been awarded. ]