Chapter 221

Everlyn peered up the tunnel that everyone knew led to the second spot on the surface.

She frowned. “Not good. I was hoping for a messenger, but it sounds like a full war party. Maybe twenty in total.”

“Should I collapse it.”

She appeared intrigued by the idea. She thought for almost two seconds, which felt like an eternity in the situation.

He couldn’t hear the goblins yet, but it was only a matter of time.

“Yes. Definitely, but use it to trap them down here with us. I don’t want any running for reinforcements.”

Tom nodded and immediately got to work. The familiar thrill of preparing a trap under the spectre of imminent death if he failed had him focusing perfectly. His senses reached out, and he berated himself for not doing this earlier.

He was getting sloppy and to used to being around other people. In the tutorial, there would have been no way he would have rested without understanding every bit of his environment and preparing traps in case things had gone wrong. Here… He had not bothered and instead had chosen to trust Everlyn.

For the first time, he was aware of the details of each of the passages past what his sightlines had given him. The entrance had a slight curve to it, but beyond that rather than straightening like the version they had come down in this case the twisting became more severe. It continued winding toward the surface, and he was surprised by the number of turns. His range for Remote Earth Manipulation was only twelve metres, but the way they coiled the goblins would have over sixteen metres to transverse after they first entered his area of influence. Unless they were unusually spread out, he could trap them all.

He focused and probed the rock and dirt at the edge of his capabilities. There were seams that he could pull on and existing fault lines that could be manipulated. If he tugged with a majority of his magic, there would be an abrupt catastrophic cave in. If he timed it right, he could definitely achieve Everlyn’s aims of trapping them all down here.

Luckily, the instability in the stone had already been present, so it had only taken him a few seconds to find the weakness he needed. In different circumstances, he would have got in trouble. If they were going to do this multiple times today, he would have to get better. No more relying on Everlyn to protect him. Things were out there that could hide in solid rock that his abilities could find instantly… Everlyn would be completely blind to them.

“It’s ready.” He informed her.

She nodded at him without looking. Her eyes were glued to the tunnel and her magical bow was out and at full draw. “Collapse it when I fire.”

Tom could hear the incoming monsters. They were talking to each other in their mixture of grunts and squeals. The sounds breaking over the continuous jangle of their poorly fitted armour pieces banging against other ill-fitting armour parts they wore and their companions that ran next to them.

He tensed and double checked his connection to the rock that he wanted to pull down. They were running past his deadfall area. They would be here in a matter of seconds. There was what sounded like a curse, a sharp grunt that conveyed fury, a thud of a body crashing into unyielding stone followed by a squeal of pain.

Goblins, he thought dismissively, always fighting amongst themselves. Like usually it backfired on them. The noise they generated allowed him to easily pinpoint their location. They were on the other side of the closest turn.

Any moment now, he thought.

Tom was ready his mind spread between where he was going to use his magic and the room he stood in so he could hear the signal to attack.

Crack!

The instant he heard the noise of the bow string Tom’s consciousness instantly left his body to focus on the roof wall eleven metres away. The pre-planned flexes occurred. He expanded rock on the fault line, cracked stone three metres up to separate an enormous chunk from higher supports. Then to bring it all down he wrenched on the lower section.

It rumbled, slipped slightly, but didn’t break free.

Tom poked another seam and disabled it, shattered some stone on the same side, and then did a second pull.

The mass of rock was suddenly no longer supported, and it crashed downward.

He jumped back into his body. The floor under him shivered, making his teeth ache, and then there was a wave of noise as the sounds of the collapse reached them.

Four goblins had rounded the first corridor and the presence of humans had lit that feral hatred in their eyes. A fifth, which because of its size must have been a hobgoblin, had fallen over with that first arrow Everlyn had fired, having penetrated into its forehead.

Rahmat had positioned himself at the entrance. He was dual wielding short spears and despite his excellent Skills Tom knew that the other man would be hard pressed to fight four verses one even if he could keep them in front of him.

Tom threw himself toward the battle.

A blast of air blew one goblin right off its feet and when the wind struck Tom, it was with sufficient force to cause him to stumble. It had been caused by the collapse behind them and it had stuffed up the goblins’ far more than it had affected him and Rahmat. One of them, the leading one, had been blown forward in front of the others and had dropped its weapon. It was leaning down to grab it.

Tom never carefully considered the best strategies in the heat of battle. There was never time for logical decision making. Everything came down to the application of instincts. He teleported offensively, using the magic to realign his leg, spear and arm position slightly. The trip caused by the gust of air morphed into a lunge and he channelled most of his Power Strike into the blow. Briefly, his spear tip was as blinding as the sun but with clinical blue instead of yellow.

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It was fully bent over, and his tip slammed into the base of its neck. Boosted by magic, it went straight through the backbone and entered the torso and cut through where the heart was. He immediately tore the weapon out and sent the limp body of the dying creature flying away to the side.

Then he was in front of Rahmat, positioned in the narrow confines of the exit passage. Once more, he didn’t ask questions and trusted his well-honed instincts. He dematerializing his spear while simultaneously drawing both of his daggers. They were cheap almost disposable toys, but they were better than his raw fists.

Crack.

An arrow flew past him.

The goblins were trapped, and the best way to win this fight was for Tom to bottle them up while the other two whittled away their numbers from the outside. Dust was everywhere and a new wave of goblins burst around the corner their eyes instantly switching from fear at the rockfall to hate at seeing sapients here in their caves where sapients shouldn’t have existed.

Tom felt time slow down.

Rather than going defensively like he usually did Tom altered his tactics to the situation and threw himself at the surrounding creatures to try to score strikes and hurt them. Both Everlyn and Rahmat would be more lethal if they could attack distracted opponents. His senses blared warnings at him. They highlighted the more dangerous blows, but Tom mostly ignored them and used the time his dodge skill granted to position for offensive attacks.

An elbow here, a dagger into a leg there, his knee slammed into a goblin’s face and he felt the long nose shatter. It was very satisfying.

Crack

Everlyn was shooting and almost every arrow would reap the life of a goblin. Tom threw his large body in the small cave around liberally. His very presence slowed the goblins down and he ensured they would think only of killing him by using his daggers constantly.

Both weapons were bloody as he teleported sideways and watched as the goblins that had been trying to impale him instead dealt grievous blows to the three monsters he had been lying upon.

Some of them were actually lower ranked than him and that combined with his superior equipment and the advantage that dodge provided beyond the obvious meant that they did not come close to threatening him.

More and more of the goblins died.

A lucky non-skill enhanced dagger thrust went through a monster eye.

He yanked it out and its other eyes glazed over as it toppled in slow motion. Tom launched himself forward like a berserker to fall upon what on his count was one of four left alive. It had been caught by a stray elbow and slipped hard to land on its back. It left it open, and he thrust both of his daggers into its chest area. Gravity and his rising strength turned it into a serious threat.

Yet, presumably winded or concussed the monster did not roll aside. One dagger went in all the way to its hilt, but the second hit rib and was deflected away. The miss was inconsequential one right through the heart was more than enough. Monsters and people, for that matter did not die instantly when their heart was stabbed. While a human might clutch their heart and stumble around, monsters had a single instinct that overrode all the other ones. As he crouched upon its chest, it weakly stabbed him in the legs, trying to complete its purpose in life even as it lay dying. The attempt achieved nothing, as his pants easily rebuffed the dagger.

Tom pushed off the pathetic creature and wrenched both weapons free with his foot on its chest and a kick, sending it flying. He spun to face the final monsters.

Crack.

The one closest to him suddenly somersaulted backwards an arrow through its heart.

Of the other two still standing. One had one of Rahmat’s spears through its shoulder. It was not a mortal blow. But it had pinned it to the cave wall. The last goblin was facing Rahmat one on one and it was woefully unprepared for the challenge. The spearman lunged forward and his weapon blurred to land multiple hits in the time it would take Tom to complete a single thrust.

The goblin, shocked stumbled away with blood pouring out of various wounds.

Crack.

An arrow slammed into the head of the goblin pinned on the wall. The fight was over. There were only dead and dying goblins around him. Absently, he healed the half a dozen slashes he had suffered during his frenzy. Then produced his spear.

Casually, he started thrusting it into the nearby corpses to ensure they weren’t acting dead. Rahmat began to do the same.

“Tom, scout the tunnel.” Everlyn ordered. “I can’t sense anything but if they were staying still.”

“Going,” he answered instantly. Tom moved forward carefully. He took pains to stay well clear of the bodies without obvious mortal wounds on them. It would not do to step over an apparent corpse and have it magically come alive in a position to stab him before he could react.

He used Earth Sense.

Immediately, he was aware of everything around him. The absence of life was noticeable. The physical positioning of Rahmat crouched in the exit and Everlyn still propped up against the wall. Then there were the mostly dead goblins creating additional pressure on the ground and in many cases affecting the consistency of the earth by dint of their blood soaking in. All the corpses were very apparent in the flood of information. Three of them, however, were still living because Tom could sense the slight movements they made and of course their heartbeats. Two of them Tom was sure were dying… the third he suspected was only playing dead.

Tom dug his hand into the tunnel wall next to him and plucked out a fist size piece of stone. “Watch that one.”

He used his accuracy improvement skill to toss the stone over. The rock hit its exposed leg with a thud and it twitched far more violently than it should have.

Crack.

An arrow slammed into its head and the way it violently spasmed Tom figured he had been correct in assuming it had been playing possum.

“Little cowardly shits.” Tom said.

“Smelly, diseased, blights on the land.” Rahmat added good-naturedly.

Tom having paused for the conversation started advancing again. The only other life he could sense was up near where he had collapsed the tunnel, but he moved slowly in any case. A stealth skill or a goblin with thick shoes which was also not moving might be missed because of his limited control over Earth Sense.

He bounded slowly forward on all fours with his eyes checking out everywhere nearby. When he rounded the second bend, he saw the results of his handy work.

Large boulders, jagged chunks of stone had filled the cave along with a lot of dirt. He could see multiple mangled bodies under the collapse. All of them, apart from the one that he had already sensed were well and truly dead. When the alive one spotted him, its eyes went from pained to furious hatred in an instant. It stopped trying to pull itself free and instead struggled to reach him while waving a rusty, long dagger around as if it could hurt him.

It was pathetic.

His spear reappeared in his hand and he waited till its sword was out of position and then thrust forward, driving it straight into its brain and putting it out of its misery. Tom paused for only a few moments to drive his senses into the rock fall. More of the roof had fallen than he had been attempting. It was well and truly sealed off and they would not be leaving the system through this exit.

It would be more cost efficient for Tom and Keikain to create their own exit than stabilise this rock fall.

He returned to the other room and Everlyn. He was not surprised to see that both her and Rahmat we’re in position to meet an attack from the feast hall. Her shots had been loud and the sound could very well carry too sentries positioned deeper into the cave system or to the actual feast hall if it was close enough.

Tom, joined them and having learnt from earlier immediately placed a hand on the wall and started feeling out where he could collapse it.

This time, he was not working under an imminent time constraint and within thirty seconds, he located multiple spots where a minimum expenditure of power could bring the ceiling down and seal the feast hall off from them

The previous battle had only used his personal mana, and he hadn’t touched his storage crystal during it, so he had mana available immediately, if it was needed.

“I can collapse the roof if necessary.”

“Good.” Everlyn had said her focus remaining on the passage in front of her. “That’s a useful tool to have in reserve, but given they can’t flank us, it shouldn’t be needed.”

It was clear if they came Everlyn wanted to fight them.