Frowning, Soraya looked on with doubt as her maid nodded grimly to the suggestion.
Agravain rubbed her head, her face still pale after his battle with the pigs.
“Don’t worry too much,” he told her, “I will come in if things look dire.”
“I trust you,” the princess hesitated, “It’s just that...”
“Only when she’s near death, mind,” Jophiel said, swiping at her codex, a gesture that betrayed the real nature of the thing.
The voice again rang in Agravain’s head.
Custom Daily Training completed:
Bonus experience to Focus Attributes and Weapon Skills received.
The bonus didn’t even amount to one point to either attribute, talk about lame.
According to the angel, since Soraya had the master ring, every minute change in his information was also broadcasted into her head. But the young princess was having a far bigger concern on her mind.
“She’s joking right.” She glared at the angel’s suggestion to allow her maid to be beaten near death.
“Ignore her,” he shrugged, “I won’t let that even come close to happening.”
Oh his side, the maid crouched down, and from that position drew a dagger from the side of her boot.
So she did bring one along, after all. But for what god-forsaken reasons she had not taken it out till now.
Maybe she really wasn’t confident in her skills with it.
“It’s fine. You don’t have to worry about me,” she said.
The tension in her voice hardly inspired confidence. The girl was clearly still shaken by her earlier failure to guard the princess.
Their destination was the large hut at the village’s center. Sounds of loud crashes and hurried shuffling of feet came from within, but so far none of the pig-like creatures had come out to confront them.
Holding firmly the battle axe in his hand, Agravain gave the maid one last glance. He had the mind to overturn Jophiel’s decision should he deem the girl too nervy for battle. But Rania’s face was set.
Her tightly pressed lips reminded Agravain of a certain fearsome woman in his old world.
He wondered how much of this tenacity was innate and how much was thanks to her nature as a genie.
He probably should have trashed Jophiel’s notion of an emotionless genie by now. Rania’s behaviors had been anything but rigid or robot-like.
Guess it didn’t matter.
They entered the hut.
Hut though the barbarian might call it, the interior was spacious, almost as large as the hall he had fought with the desert ogre. There were timber beams supporting its structure, and traces of furniture that seemed to have at one point served as a gathering place for the whole village. And it was rancid, only a degree less filthy than the aftermath of his last battle.
The ground was strewn with dead pigs and those still barely alive in the pools of their own blood, clutching their mortal wounds. Those still mostly intact huddled together in a corner.
In the middle of it all, a large pig stood.
It was smaller than the desert ogre, but unlike that naked beast Agravain had fought, this one was clad in crude armor. Though to call the patchwork armor might be overstating it. Rather, it was a mass of leather, iron and rags sewed haphazardly together. Bones varied in origins and sizes hung clattering all over this incomprehensible get-up. Its limbs were larger than the other pigs, and its hands more closely resembled that of humans. In those, it clutched an oversized club, one wrought entirely from some dark metal and covered at the large end with studs. So large was the weapon it dwarfed even the burly creature, as long as a man and half again.
As soon as his group entered the group, the chief of the pigs uttered a chain of gibberish. Whether the passionate speech was a curse in its language or mere beastly insanity, they would never know. Only madness would drive one to seek the futile understanding of such a species.
And so they prepared at once for battle.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Go,” Agravain told the maid, “I will take care of the small ones. Remember, there’s no shame in calling for help.”
Rania did not answer. She angled the dagger in front of her body, and charged in.
It seemed hopeless no matter how he looked at it.
The closer the maid approached the pig, the more her already small figure seemed to diminish, her knife infinitesimal compared to the metal club of staggering length.
Yet the pig was slower, slower than Agravain and slower than its own underling, burdened as it was by the haphazard armor and the weapon that defied understanding.
By the time its club had slammed heavily on the ground, the girl had dodged cleanly from its path, circled the creature, and lodged her knife in one of the armor’s tiny gaps.
When she yanked her knife out, blood came in a stream, yet this small wound did little to deter the sturdy beast. It turned around, swept the club in a large arc, almost grazing the maid as she rolled out of striking range.
Again she came, again she dodged, and again she inserted the small blade through a chink in its armor. And too this wound could affect it little more than the last.
As this repeated, on and on again, Agravain had finished dispatching the smaller pigs from life. Wiping the axe on a fallen pig’s rags, the barbarian shook his head.
“This is pointless. Where’s the point in carrying this on?” he asked the angel.
“It’s tiring, yeah,” Jophiel nodded. “I suppose she must have learned how powerless she is by now. That is a must for someone to start working their ass off to improve.”
She had been keeping close behind him while pushing Soraya along. The princess never took her eyes off the desperate battle her maid was engaging in, her face fraught with anxiety.
Even as they were talking, Rania seemed to have grown impatient. She rushed in with greater frequency, even when the club was still swinging in her direction.
And finally, inevitably, she was caught. In an eager attempt for the pig’s throat when its body had turned awkwardly, she failed to read the club’s trajectory. The weapon smashed against her flank. And despite having recoiled in time to yield herself to the direction of the strike, the girl was sent flying.
For any normal human that impact would heavily imply a few broken bones.
Jophiel had never mentioned that genies possessed exceptional endurance. To his knowledge, they were only as fragile as humans.
“My turn now,” he said, switching to a two-handed grip of his battle axe.
“Seems so,” the angel said simply.
With a roar he redirected the beast’s aggression. It was easy enough, now that its other foe had fallen, and the one approaching by all appearances proved the more troublesome enemy.
Yet it judged wrongly.
Even as the two sized up each other before charging into maddened combat, a small figure dashed from the edge of Agravain’s vision for the beast.
Once more the maid came on, knife glinting in hand. As though the devastating hit had not winded her at all, Rania’s eyes behind the askew glasses glinted with an intensity to rival that which Agravain had marked in her older colleague.
This time she made a small leap, lunging at the beast who could not react in time.
One hand clutching a metal piece jutting from the beast’s armor, she hung her entire body on it, her other hand stabbing in rapid succession its throat, its chest, its face, its every space of exposed flesh. Not just a series of attacks enacted like her life depended on it, it was as though all of her reasons for being had been condensed into the sole purpose of killing this beast. She stabbed away without a care.
Even then the beast refused to reel, it whirled and whirled in violent circles, trying to shake the girl off. And inevitably it did, no matter how determined she was to hold on. The force sent her staggering off a good distance.
Covered in its own fresh blood, the chief of the pig charged at Rania on the ground, smashing its weapon wildly. Pained by her own unreserved effort thus far, Rania gave a cry and leaped away in the nick of time.
To even the barbarian’s amazement, the beast seemed even then undaunted by the many wounds it had suffered. Its loud squeal betrayed a wealth of vitality still ample in its sturdy body.
“Cease this foolishness,” Agravain cried, “You are only wearing yourself out! Let me deal with it.”
Somehow, the maid still found the time and a breath in her to answer him as she dashed from the pig’s earth-shattering strike, “Stay out!”
“Ah, the folly of youth,” Agravain sighed.
“You are not too old yourself, stop acting sagely,” Jophiel sneered, “come here, I just found something curious.”
“Can you not multitask? That girl might be dead any second now.”
“She’ll be fine. I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I think!” she hissed, “just come!”
By then the angel and Soraya had rounded to the back of the building. Soraya was watching the battle still, her hands wringing, paying no heed to the thing engrossing the angel at their feet.
Warily, he strode over, an eye on the maid’s life and death situation.
It was a box Jophiel was digging into. One normal looking in all aspects, the sort a poor man would store his clothes, keepsakes, and other belongings precious only to himself within.
“You know what this is?” the angel asked.
“How the hell should I know? Some rags?”
“You’re one big spoilsport, you know that? This is something to be excited for, it’s a boss chest.”
“So rewards you get from beating a boss?” he scratched his chin and eyed her with doubt. “But that’s after beating a boss, isn’t it?”
“Who cares!” she flipped the lid open unceremoniously, “it’s right there. And it’s not like anyone’s around to stop you from taking a peek.”
“You really have no dignity, do you? So much for your talk of respecting the aesthetic.”
“Shut up,” the angel ground her teeth, glaring, her voice grew dark. “I will kill you.”
“Not like you can. All right, all right. So what’s in there.”
He crouched to examine the box’s contents. There were some changes of clothes, a tiny pouch with a few coins within--hardly enough to purchase a decent meal at a respectable inn, some crude tools--chisels and hammer, and a pair of gauntlets.
“So this?” he picked up one of the gauntlets, the only thing remotely interesting within the chest. The steel article was bland looking, barren of any luxurious carvings or decorations. It could cover the wearer’s wrist and back of hand but not fingers.
A voice rang in his head.
Item obtained:
Gauntlets of Perseverance
Rarity: Rare
Quality: Superior
Effect:
+2 physical defense
+1 magical defense
Skill bonus:
Prevail level 9
“Isn’t this nice?” he said, slipping his hand in the gauntlet, “but still, I don’t see the rush that you have to call me over...”
“Who said anything about you?” the angel snapped. In one swift move, she snatched the gauntlet off of him. “Call the maid over, these are for her!”