Chapter 24
“The reunion with the two idiots. Part 2”
The orc cried out in pain, dropping his massive axe and bringing his hands to his wounded eyes. Where the arrows Kalysto had shot had buried themselves halfway in, unlike the one she had shot against his neck, which had barely buried itself in the orc’s tough skin.
A tiny clearing surrounded by trees opened up before Kalysto as she moved forward and took a better look at the scene in front of her.
The eight-foot orc with green skin that had been attacking Edward concentrated on his own wounds and ignored the young man completely. Next to him, a goblin with a loincloth and a knife in his hand was waiting his turn to join the fight. Kalysto immediately shot three arrows into his throat as soon as she saw his intentions to attack Edward, now that the orc had stopped toying with him.
A couple of meters away from them was a second orc, a little shorter, brandishing a club back and forth as if he were shooing flies instead of trying to hit Koden, who was much faster than him and therefore could evade his blows with ease.
Far away from them and well hidden inside the bushes, there were three other goblins watching the fight.
Waiting in complete silence for their turn to pounce on the fleeing prey.
“Kalysto? You’re alive!” Edward got excited, with his messy dark brown hair much more disheveled than usual. And his brown eyes.
From where Kalysto stood, she could swear she saw five different colored leaves tangled in the naïve nineteen-year-old’s hair.
And unintentionally, a thin half-smile tugged at her lips.
Two windows opened before her.
[You have gained 30 experience points. ]
Kalysto immediately closed them.
“Second place? Are you alive?” Kalysto’s smile died as soon as she heard Koden’s annoying words.
“I have a name, you idiot! Anyone would think that after two years of not being able to surpass me, you would have learned it by now. But it seems your ability to memorize is close to zero, just like your manners,” Kalysto criticized him. And she readied her bow again, firing two arrows at the neck of the goblin that had begun to approach Koden’s back, taking advantage of his small moment of distraction.
“Hey! That almost killed me!” The young man was startled, but as soon as he turned to see where the arrow had landed, he was surprised to see the body of a fallen goblin. “Where the hell did that one come from?” he shouted. As he dodged another attack from the second orc, “And I have good manners! I just don’t use them with everyone.”
“And that’s why you planned to sneak into my tutoring class without asking my permission?”
“... Eh...” he averted her gaze, concentrating on evading the orc, who despite his clumsy movements did not desist in trying to corner and crush his prey. Ignoring the others.
Kalysto shot an arrow into the hand with which the first orc had been holding the axe, and with which he had been covering one of his eyes.
“Oh, good aim!” Edward congratulated her at the same time. “You had told me that you liked archery and that you practiced from time to time, but I never thought you were so good,” he looked at her with his face full of surprise, then he stared at her bow in silence and then turned his head to see the fallen axe buried in the ground that the orc had dropped, then he looked again at the bow in her hands. And then he nodded his head, full of determination, and approached the axe with every intention of digging it out, but despite all the effort he made, the axe did not move an inch.
“I have a good teacher,” answered Kalysto as she watched him struggle in a vain attempt to lift the heavy axe.
He sure doesn’t have the stats to use it. She thought.
Immediately two more windows appeared before her, announcing the death of the second goblin, and she hurried to close them.
[You have gained 30 experience points.]
“Edward put that down and come here,” she said, trying not to laugh at the strange grimaces Edward was making as he pulled hard on the axe handle. While the orc, with a single pull, tore the arrows out of his eyes and roared again in pain.
“Edward, back off!” Kalysto shouted, and taking advantage of the fact that the orc still had his arms up she shot an arrow right into his armpit, then pulled one of the goblin arrows from her inventory and shot it into the orc’s neck, then, after re-shooting two more into each of his eyes, she shot another into his stomach.
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Just as she guessed, the goblin arrows buried themselves easily in the orc’s skin.
I really need to get my hands on that penetration stat. She thought.
“Wow, that’s great, where do I get one of those?” Edward asked.
“Don’t even think I’m going to give you one,” she said, “and besides, even if I gave it to you, you wouldn’t know how to use it,” she replied objectively. “Better say ‘status window’ so I can get an idea of what I can give you that will be useful to you,” Edward frowned but still followed her lead.
“Status window,” he said.
And just as had happened with the twins, she could clearly see his statistics. Also, like them, he only had two tabs.
Another one with no inventory... That meant Koden didn’t have one either.
She then fired a couple more arrows at the orc and approached Edward, pulling him by the arm and moving him a bit away from where they had been while the surprised young man stared open-mouthed at the blue window that opened before him.
“What the heck is this? At what point did I become a video game character?” He frowned. “Oh look, Kalysto!” Edward got excited again.
“What the hell are you two talking about? And why does everything look like colored blobs with a blue filter?”
Blue? Kalysto frowned before answering him.
“Slide one hand from right to left in front of your eyes. So you can remove it” and watched as Koden did as she told him, only to see him scream the next second and trip over his own feet.
“What the hell is that horrible thing?” He screamed, his face as pale as the walls of a hospital.
“That’s an orc,” she replied as she shot another arrow at the first orc, keeping it at bay, “the smaller ones are called goblins. And we are no longer on Earth but in another world called Elinor. Didn’t you read the welcome sign?”
“How was I supposed to be able to read it if I lost one of my contact lenses? Besides, what kind of moron would waste time reading that while we’re surrounded by monsters?”
“I did,” Edward answered immediately. “I just didn’t know how to close it,” he added, and closed all his windows. “Status window,” he repeated, surprised to see it pop up again.
“And how come you’re so calm about all this?”
Seeing a scene like that didn’t even surprise her.
Compared to my new boss being able to stop time from another planet, this doesn’t seem like a big deal.
“I’ve seen even crazier things in the last few hours. And if I were you, I’d worry more about not getting crushed by that thing,” she said, and shot an arrow into each thigh of the first orc, knocking it back as she walked over to Edward and looked at his stats.
[Status window]
Name: Edward Grant
Age: 19 years old
Race: human
Level: 1
Fatigue: 52
Class: Warrior (Heroic)
Profession: N/A.
Title: N/A
Affiliation: Kingdom of Balsac
HP: 85/100
MP: 100/100
Strength: 7
Vitality: 8
Agility: 5
Endurance: 5
Intelligence: 8
Charisma: 0
Luck: 6
State: Agitated
Available points: 0
“You have almost no strength,” Kalysto worried when she saw Edward’s low stats.
If it wasn’t for his luck, he would surely be dead by now. Then she remembered the two swords that seemed to be lighter that she picked up with the twins and pulled them out of her inventory.
“Inspect!” she said, and two small windows opened before her.
[Sword. Class: common. Requires 10 points of strength to use.
Strength +10]
She clicked her tongue, annoyed. And pulled out the other one.
[Sword. Class: common. Requires 5 points of strength to use.
Strength +10]
This is it!
“Edward, take this and cut off the Achilles’ heels of that orc. If you can slit his wrists afterwards, all the better.”
“But I don’t think I can...!”
“I’ll cover you,” Kalysto interrupted him, shooting another arrow into the neck of the first orc.
“Oh! All right!” He then gripped his new sword and inhaled sharply to give himself courage, “Ok, cut his tendons, that’s all I have to do. Just cut and that’s it.”
“I’m going to distract him. You just attack him from behind, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Hey, second place!” Koden growled, using the nickname he had given her after Kalysto came in second place in a competition between universities a week ago, giving the victory to the enemy team. “I need a little help here too!” Koden shouted as he dodged another blow.
“And why should I help you?” Kalysto answered him without any remorse as she shot another arrow in the other eye of the orc. “Edward attack, now!”
And the young systems engineering student did so. His first strike missed, hitting the ground instead of the back of the orc’s leg and alerting his enemy to his presence. But before he could turn around and face the uncoordinated young man, Kalysto launched two more arrows at his neck.
How many more arrows do I need to shoot at this thing before it dies? The young woman worried.
“Edward, now!” Kalysto instructed.