CHAPTER 234

“The lair’s not registering as complete.” Selena reported grimly. She looked pointedly over the destruction. The pile of bodies near them and then further beyond it the devastation wrought by Tom’s meteorites. Then she looked up the tunnel that led to the feast room. “This is bullshit. We cleared the upper sections. Everything was dead up there.”

“Our tunnels as well.” Everlyn said immediately at Selena’s look.

Tom, without doing anything knew the answer. Anyone who had fought goblins before would have guessed it, too. “They are playing dead.” He strode forward and thrust his spear into a stack of corpses. It went through two bodies into a third. The whole pile immediately erupted as that final, now impaled goblin tried to get away from the spear in it.

Tom pulled his weapon free, and a goblin exploded out of the mound. It was uninjured apart from the minor wound on its hip where he had just stabbed it with his weapon.

Crack.

It died, an ethereal bolt in its head.

“We need to do a sweep.” Everlyn said. “They’re going to be hiding everywhere. While we’re all here. What are we nominating once we’ve cleared the place?”

“Maximum experience and individual loot.” Selena answered straight away.

“Yeah, I guess we can go with that.”

The squad leader glanced at Everlyn in surprise. “Have you guys been using a different setting? Experience is the clear winner. You have to maximise it as the bonus.”

“Agreed. We selected max experience but party loot instead of individual.” Everlyn replied. “But combining the loot with our two groups doesn’t make sense.”

Selena considered that for a moment. “Does combining increase the rarity?”

Everlyn shrugged.

“With the individual loot, we got a mix of tier two and three stuff.” Selena continued thoughtfully. “Did your party option get you something better?”

Everlyn nodded. “Yeah, I reckon it pushed the loot up half maybe a full tier. In the last lair, the combined reward was a tier four trait stone.”

Selena whistled. “How much fate did that cost?”

“It was random,” Tom said, interjecting himself into the conversation. “We’re not using fate for equipment.”

“But tier four and a trait stone is impressive loot. Who used it?”

“We put it on the auction house…”

“To avoid party tension?”

Tom glared at her. “No, we couldn’t use it.”

“Then it won’t sell at auction or was it you personally wouldn’t get benefits but other humans might.”

“That,” Everlyn answered. “We’re not sure what we’re doing with the windfall.”

He could see Selena considering that. “Well, that was a great drop.”

“Yeah, but the reward before that got sold for scrap metal. Everything is hit and miss.”

While they had been chatting, they had spread out in a long line and collectively they strode forward, testing the bodies as they did so. By unspoken agreement, the melee fighters took the front while the ranged, Toni and three of Selena’s soldiers followed with their bows nocked and ready to take down runners.

Four goblins exploded from what had been an otherwise normal looking pile. One charged Jane. It was a stock standard normal warrior and Jane’s sword glowed and it promptly got cut in half.

The others ran.

Bows twanged.

Two went down. One of them surprised Tom by being a spear gob. While something with its skills, would run instead of fighting back was a mystery.

Crack.

The third that had survived the initial volley stumbled with one of Everlyn’s arrows in its leg. Unable to do more than slowly limp away it was an easy target for Selena’s archers. Toni threw extra air blades to ensure the ones that had fallen remained that way.

They continued and reached the middle section and the spot where the demon had gathered the goblins for Tom’s meteorite to eliminate them. There were charred bodies close and broken ones further away where the force of the collision had knocked them flying.

Visually it was horrendous, but the smell was worse. Sulphur from the meteorite, along with acrid smoke, combined with overtones of spilled cleaning products and underneath those offensive smells was the more pleasant one of roasted pork. Tom shuddered. It smelt like the roasts his mum used to make on Sundays. It was that last smell that almost made him double over.

As he got close to the piles on the edge of the blast zone, it was clear that numerous goblins were hiding. There were regular sites around the impact spot where the force of the spell had tumbled the goblin’s head over heels until they collided with a stalagmite. Each of those locations, had living, usually uninjured goblins busily hiding under the corpses above them.

“This is ridiculous.” Selena complained.

Clare laughed bitterly. “One of the many reasons I hate goblins.”

They reached the throne area. The damage the multiple meteorites had inflicted on the floor was impressive. Craters a metre deep had been gouged out of the ground. Tom saw Selena jump in one and shake her head in disbelief before moving on.

There was no sign of the warlord. He had probably been vaporised or at the very least buried under molten rock.

This area was more irregular than the previous room. They spread out to clean up the remnants.

“Help.” Michael yelled with a curse.

The healer was furiously retreating with his spear held firmly and fending off a chieftain that was missing an arm. Michael had already been injured because red blood leaked down his thigh as he desperately thrust and counterattacked to try to drive the monster away from him. His spear skills were adequate and if Tom had to search for a description, it would be no more glowing that calling it workman like.

Thor leapt forward to intercept it. His hammer slammed hard into the goblin’s chest. Some sort of magical skill activated and instead of staggering the creature the weapon bounced off it. As a result, Thor stumbled, spun and fell to his knees.

Michael stabbed forward with his spear and forced the chieftain to parry instead of striking at the helpless Thor, who started to scramble out of its range. The mini-boss was having none of that. Without taking its eye off Michael, it kicked Thor. The large man was lifted almost a metre off the ground and sent rolling away. You could almost see the ribs breaking from the blow.

Clare who was also in the group waved a hand and made it glow with a dull red colour. Whatever ability she was activating clearly disagreed with the chieftain. It spun, ignoring Michael, and then activated a skill to leap at the woman.

Her mouth opened like a fish in shock as the monster descended upon her, impossibly fast. The standard goblin glee filled its face as it brought its club down on top of the healer’s head.

Tom’s heart missed a beat. That skill it had used and the strength that had sent Thor tumbling, all of it focused into a single blow.

At the last moment, a sheen of magic surrounded Clare and reflected the strike. She gasped and stumbled. Her shielding cracked but held. It was some type of absolute shield ability and in its reduced state he was sure it wouldn’t survive another strike.

Tom was too far away to do anything and as was everyone else. There was no one who could intervene. For the next second, Michael and Clare were alone against the monster.

His mind searched for options.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

There was nothing.

He was over thirty metres distant, and in this context that might as well have been an eternity.

Without thinking, a stone was in his hand, a precious fragment of tier three rock shaped for this purpose. But he was too slow, the chieftain too quick. It was already bringing back its arm, that nasty club high over its head, and Clare’s stumble had not taken her beyond its range.

Tom’s own hand drew back smoothly to launch.

Michael released a burst of fate.

There was an explosion of light originating in the space between the healer and the monster.

He could no longer see, and with the explosion occurring he didn’t want to throw blindly into the maelstrom. If it had moved half a step backward, the rock would miss. If that happened who knows who would die before he got another shot.

It would be better by far to wait until he could guarantee a hit than to launch blindly. His battle awareness registered all that was happening in the areas he could still see. Clare flew backward like tumbleweed on a prairie. Michael yanked his hand away as if he had touched a hot oven while his other hand shielded his own eyes, but the destructive wind did not catch him in its grasp and toss him like it had Clare.

There were shouts all around. Tom attempted to blink to free his vision from the bright lights. His spell was supposed to guard against a shift in lighting conditions, but apparently it was still too low level to work against the magical blinding effects Michael’s spell had produced.

Crack.

Everlyn shot an arrow. Tom followed its flight through the space that a moment earlier had been too bright to see through. It slammed into a corpse that was against the wall over ten metres away from where the battle had started. It was distinctive in the way its right arm was missing, and there was no reaction to the arrow that smashed through its chest.

Whatever Michael had done must have been successful.

He had killed it.

Tom’s eyes kept flicking around to spot additional enemies, but none showed themselves.

He considered his options. He could stand ready to intercept any new monsters or heal the injured. The simple fact was that Everlyn was better at the first job and his own healing was probably the strongest out of those still healthy. Michael stood on his own feet even if he was swaying. He hadn’t appeared to have taken a head injury, so the specialised healer would be able to keep himself alive. That gave him a choice between Thor who had not moved from where the kick had thrown him and Clare who was groaning on the ground. It was possible that neither would be in a state to heal themselves. Thor because he had no spells and Clare if she had hit her head too badly.

Selena’s team was in play. Three, including one of their healers were headed straight for Clare. That made his choice easy.

He ran to where Thor had landed.

At twenty metres, he launched an undirected healing spell with twenty percent of his mana. Tom couldn’t see how injured the other man was, but the spell should buy him the second he needed to reach him in order to deliver more efficient healing.

Then he slid in next to the man baseball style.

His hand landed on the man’s helmet and then his fingers pushed under the edge of the helm to find skin.

Healing Tranquillity kicked in and Tom assessed Thor’s state.

Two broken ribs, a number of organs suffering bruising and a mild concussion. That last was eye opening. The blow had been to the ribs, so if he had a concussion it was purely from the whiplash of the force of the kick. The low level of additional damage was testimony to how effective Thor’s armour had been.

The key nugget of information was that there was nothing life threatening.

He did not sink all of his mana into the healing. He wanted a reserve to fight in case any more chieftains were hidden and he was forced to engage them.

With a focus on minimising energy expenditure, he triaged Thor’s internals. Most of the injuries could be dealt with by boosting Thor’s natural healing in order for Tom to minimise the use of his mana. Some of the damage was things he couldn’t ignore. His consciousness focused on Thor’s head. The concussion, the whiplash that had knocked him out briefly. That needed a softer touch. With careful application of power, he reduced the swelling in the brain and directed immediate healing to mending several broken blood vessels. In moments, the head was fixed. His mind then flicked over the rest of the body and found nothing more concerning. There were a couple of spots of internal bleeding that he healed because doing it with focused awareness was far more efficient than letting the natural healing process deal with it over time.

Basically the leaking blood did continuous damage, so addressing the root cause of the problem early had immediate benefits. For the rest, he kept to the plan and only enhanced Thor’s natural healing. Instead of a day to heal the remaining injuries, including the rib bones, Tom’s intervention meant he would be a hundred percent healthy in less than ten minutes.

Tom disengaged Healing Tranquillity, and his keen eyes searched the room. Nothing had changed after all only a fraction of a second had passed.

The contrast between his team and Selena’s couldn’t have been starker. Her team had split into two groups to deal with the strategic situation. A trio was with Clare. Two of them standing guard, while the third healed and then the main team was approaching a break in the wall where the chieftain must have emerged from. They had their weapons drawn ready to engage any threats, and they kept their heads on a swivel. Despite the impressive speed they had reacted with, they had even been tactical enough to ensure a tank was in each of the two groups. Absolutely professional.

In contrast, his team was scattered.

Harry had gone to defend Michael. Toni had rushed forward and was by herself in no man’s land though she had gathered together magic to strike out at any threat that emerged, so she was not undefended. Rahmat was back-to-back with Keikain, once more nowhere near the action. Everlyn had her bow drawn and was likewise holding back and providing over watch for the rest of them.

After this, Tom decided, they were going to do some drills to ensure they reacted better to these type of scenarios.

“It came out of there.” Michael pointed to a gap in the wall.

Selena’s team immediately focussed in on the spot, as did Tom. He glanced around him and confirmed that the opening in question was the only one present near him.

The professional squad advanced smoothly. Tom could have beaten them, but he didn’t see the point.

He lingered near Thor.

When they approached the entrance, they shifted their formation to allow them to enter the space two abreast. It was done effortlessly, with not a single person going to the wrong spot. A moment after they entered he heard the sounds of fighting. Tom moved forward to help and then stopped himself.

From what he could hear and sense via the earth, there were no signs of panic. From the feet impressions, their formation remained unbroken with no sudden jerks that would accompany one of them actually being damaged. His ears also reported nothing alarming. No raised voices or rushed blows, just calm orders and the sound of weapons and the occasional scream of a goblin. In moment’s it was over and the squad came out looking untouched.

“There was another chieftain—”

There was a ding in Tom’s mind.

“—It was hurt more than the last and… that was an alert.” Selena said. Her eyes went unfocused, and the animation left her for a split second. She smiled in relief. “Done it is clear.”

Tom relaxed slightly and glanced back to Thor who was stirring.

The bigger man, shifting awkwardly, appeared confused then met Tom’s eyes. “Did I get him?” There was a shit-eating grin on his face.

“No. You idiot.” He said, walking the short distance back to him.

“But I lined him up. Hit him with all I had.”

“And got totalled in response.” Tom told him and nudged Thor gently with his toe. He was careful to target the fighter’s hip to be far away from the man’s injured spots.

Thor shifted away from the toe and winced.

Tom had not been going for that. “Nothing life threatening, but you got screwed because your attack was countered by one of its skills.”

“Did it get Michael?” Thor asked more seriously. “Did I save him?”

“Yes, you saved…” Tom adjusted what he was saying on the fly to reflect the truth while giving Thor the validation that he was after. “Michael. You distracted it long enough for Clare to buy extra time.”

“But…what happened to him?”

Tom followed Thor’s eyes to where the healer was now crouched over in pain.

“That was self-inflicted. Michael got caught with the blow back from his chaos bolt at close range.”

Thor chuckled and immediately grimaced. “He didn’t leave six metres?”

“About two from what I saw.”

“Idiot.” Thor pushed himself gingerly up into a proper sitting position. “I think some of the ribs are shattered. Can you fix them?”

“Only cracked.”

“Wait. You’ve already healed me?” Thor looked concerned. “How bad was I?”

“You weren’t.” Tom said dismissively. “I only triaged you because there might still be monsters around. You’ll be healed in like five minutes.”

Thor shifted again and visibly stopped himself from crying out. “More than cracked,” he hissed.

Tom said nothing. If he had got hit again even lightly, the ribs would have broken into multiple bits, but technically each rib was only cracked. It was just that it happened in multiple spots.

Thor prodded the hurt area. “Can you fix it?”

“Sure, take off your helmet.”

“Are you testing me?”

Tom shook his head.

“If the lair wasn’t cleared, I wouldn’t do this.”

“So you don’t need healing.?

The helmet was placed on the ground next to him. “If it was a war zone, I’d wait. But it’s not.”

Tom put a hand on the other man’s head. His healing magic flooded through Thor, speeding everything.

He immediately stretched and groaned in appreciation. “That hits the spot. Broken ribs historical has been the trigger to push me to get better healing spells.”

Tom said nothing. That seemed like a strange reason. Broken ribs could be painful, but were nothing when compared to more serious injuries.

“Every one select your rewards.” Selena yelled out.

He selected the multi loot option. Clare was up, so he walked over to check on Michael. Out of everyone left, he seemed the most distressed.

“Do you need a hand?” Tom called out.

“Is that a pun?” Michael asked, holding up his arm that ended in what to all extents and purposes was a mummified claw.

“A mistake. I’m not really a pun guy.” Tom examined the hand crucially. “That looks painful. But maybe not. All the nerves are burnt away so you can’t feel a thing. Right?”

“Partially.”

“Well, we should fix that. I’m here and I can help.”

The healer studied his own hand, and then finally nodded. “Sure. Reduce the pain and then we’ll cut out the dead tissue.”

“That bad?”

“It’s not cursed, just energy damaged. I could heal through the damage, but better to cut away and grow new stuff.”

“Bones as well?”

Michael bobbed an affirmative.

“I assume we’re re-growing the flesh and then extracting the bones second?”

“The other way around won’t work, will it?” Michael snapped more than a little grumpy. “If you are up for it, you can do the cutting.”

Tom did as instructed. He immediately numbed the hand and started to cut the dead flesh away from around the wrist. They would regrow on the scaffolding of the dead bones and then prize each bone out and replace it with a living one once it was surrounded by restored flesh.

It was not fast, but nowhere near as slow as resorting someone’s leg from scratch.

“I wonder how much experience this fight will grant us?” Tom wondered out loud. And what he was going to purchase with it? He thought to himself.

“You’re doing surgery on me. Focus on that.”

Tom chuckled. “I learnt my bedside manner from the best.”

Michael gave him the stink eye but a small smile quirked on the edge of his lips.