“Come out and get some”? Get some of what? The dwarf wondered confused.
The other person inside Red has shown up, Poly analyzed, watching Red’s whole demeanor transform completely.
Dwindle stopped in his tracks at the sight of a monster peering over at them from an opening in the cliff face that seemed to be a cave. He tried to move his mouth to warn Red that a fight was brewing, but he felt fear strike him in the moment, seeing the hulking creature huddled halfway out of a shadow, stealing away his voice.
Poly sensed his nervousness and halted with him. Goser kept back as well, his dark eyes narrowing at the shape skulking in the darkness.
Typically, immature trolls were handled by a team of Rank 2’s, the same level as Red and Dwindle, while Goser’s Rank 5 could handle one or two. Dwindle felt his confidence growing knowing Goser was with them.
The troll eyed the group with hostility, blood dripping from its mouth.
Its thick, hairy body tensed, seeing that it had been noticed by the intruders in its home. The thing had muscles bulging from its nearly seven-foot frame, which flexed as it readied itself. Being bipedal, the troll seemed all the more daunting standing there at full height. Its jagged and yellow decaying teeth protruded from its lips, giving it a savage appearance.
That does not look like an immature troll, Dwindle thought, frightened. I think that thing is full grown! The sound of hastened footsteps caused Dwindle to turn. He caught Goser running away.
“Goser,” Dwindle yelled, “Where are you going?”
Goser didn’t bother responding as he hurried beyond the nearby trees.
“I think that human abandoned us,” Poly murmured, her mind panicking, thinking she shouldn’t have decided to join up with Hunters.
“Finally, you show yourself, dude,” Red said, relaxed, pointing at the troll, “Kickboxing for me is life and love, bra. For you, it’s going to be pain and misery.” He still had somewhat of a thin frame even after training, and he looked even thinner in comparison to the bulky figure of the troll.
The monster’s beady eyes shrunk into narrow slits as it began to become furious at the gall of the human that dared to challenge it.
“H-hey champ, maybe we should come back another time,” Dwindle stammered, his eyes wide with uncertainty. Poly nodded along as she began to lower herself to try and appear like a plant, unnoticeable and unimportant.
Their young companion didn’t respond. Suddenly, he darted toward the troll in a sprint.
“Red!” Dwindle shouted out alarmed. Poly began to bite her nails.
The troll watched as Red sped toward it and bellowed out a roar that sounded half beast, half nightmare.
It then charged forward toward the thin youngster. The distance between the two shrunk in a matter of seconds until they were toe to toe. Neither of them slowed or stopped in their movement as they became a foot apart.
The monster’s large forearms were raised in the air above the its ugly head, veins pulsing madly on the spotted skin of its immense arms. The troll then brought both arms down in a crushing attack against Red, causing the ground where it landed to break apart and crack. Its beady eyes watched as Red moved easily under the attack, steeping into another angle on its body from the side.
Red threw a straight right punch that landed cleanly and with technical perfection over the troll’s shoulder and onto its massive jaw.
It fell asleep unconscious.
Poly and Dwindle watched the short exchange anxiously gripping their small hands into fists. When they saw the troll crumple and fall into a heap onto the floor like a sack of potatoes, they stilled. Both couldn’t register what had just happened.
Red raised one arm in triumph. His mind played the sounds of cheers from a crowd both the boxer and kickboxer had in their memories. The sound of commentators entered his mind as well, “First round K.O! First round K.O!”
“Red!” Dwindle shouted as he ran toward Red, unconcerned about the uneven terrain. He and poly appeared before Red, who still had one arm in the air. Dwindle threw his hands in the air as the dwarf shouted, “Champ! You did it, Champ!”
Poly had no words, her golden eyes full of wonder, only now realizing how marvelous the young man before her was.
Their excitement affected Red’s foreign memories some more, causing Red to react.
“And the winner,” Red shouted in an announcer voice, “By way of knockout, Red Rumble!”
Dwindle jumped up and down while celebrating. He whooped and hollered, and even danced. Poly all the while kept staring, her hands balled into tightened fists, not knowing if Red was a dream she was having while still asleep in the Fruitless Forest .
Dwindle halted as he thought about what Red had just said. Poly gave the dwarf a curious look.
“You mean this ugly beast is only unconscious and still alive?” Dwindle asked, jumping back away from the sleeping troll in fright, pulling Poly back along with him.
Red knew what his short friend meant and brought his foot all the way up over his head. He then brought his foot down in a straight perpendicular line, landing on the troll’s skull, crushing it with what his kickboxer memories called an “axe kick”. Blood spurted out in different directions as the troll’s head caved in from the powerful stomp.
Poly shrieked.
“Hammer and wrench,” Dwindle exclaimed, stepping back at the sudden scattering of blood, “Could you have done that to it in the fight instead of punching it?”
“I can’t crush a skull this thick without loading up first,” Red explained.
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“Loading up?”
Red clarified, “It’s when my mojo is at its fullest, bra. Like, when I reach way back with a punch, I can put more juice in it like I did with my awesome kick just now.”
The memories of the kickboxer began flooding into Red as he spoke. The kickboxer may’ve been on the same level intellectually with Red, but he was an expert in how to fight.
“But if I load up on an attack,” Red expounded further, “It’s going to take longer to throw, giving my enemies more of an opportunity to dish it to me first or counter. I had to go with the sweet straight in case big bad troll reacted differently. My choice of a normal attack left me room to groove. Loading up might have put the monster on edge. Luckily, it reacted as planned and was easy to deal with.”
“Easy to deal with…” Dwindle repeated in amazement.
The dwarf had hunted an immature troll before, alongside other Basic Level 2 Hunters and it was not “easy”. They had to plan, strategize and adapt when changes appeared during the fight, retreating if the battle went south. Sometimes troll quests were known to end in a complete massacre of a team that was sloppy or unready. What he felt more flabbergasted by was the fact that what lay at their feet was a fully mature troll, stronger and deadlier than an immature one.
Dwindle couldn’t guess what quest rank a fully mature troll was. It was probably a couple ranks above theirs.
“So,” Red said with a smile, “Are we done here?”
“Most definitely,” Dwindle said, returning the smile, but the expression vanished. “Goser ran off on us, Red.”
“Dude,” Red exasperated, “What a bummer. No wonder I was picking up bad vibes from the dude.”
“He must’ve been afraid,” Poly guessed.
“That’s no excuse to run out on your bros.”
Putting the cowardly Hunter aside, Dwindle stood staring at the troll, calculating their profit. They were in dire straits financially. A full grown troll could help relieve some of the burden.
Dwindle walked alongside Red, all the while patting him on the back, unable to stop congratulating the young man. Poly kept her eyes on Red’s broad back. They didn’t have heroes in her culture. Every Ahweldi elf was equal in the eyes of nature, no elf above the other and no elf below. But as a child, she had a guilty pleasure in reading about human heroes, and such stories always made them out to be larger than life. However, when she grew up, she believed the tales of such people to be exaggerated.
Now, as she looked at Red, she knew they weren’t.
A growl alerted them, causing them to become still. From the darkness of a cave nearby, two trolls were staring at them menacingly.
“The quest failed to mention the troll had friends…” Dwindle murmured, paling at the sight of the monsters coming out of the shadows of a cave.
“…Red, what are we going to do?” Poly whispered.
Red couldn’t help himself and grinned.
And in this corner, his mind started announcing, we have two heavyweight contenders, troll number one and troll number two!
“If we hurry,” Dwindle began, trying to keep his composure, “We might be able to sneak on by…”
Red was not paying attention and charged the creatures that were hidden. Dwindle could only watch Red dash carelessly into danger once more.
The trolls roared as they discovered they were being targeted. They charged forward to engage Red in combat. One troll swiped at Red, causing the young man to take a step back, while the other troll pushed past its brethren to take its turn to strike.
Red calmly watched the oncoming troll try and grab him in its wide hairy hand, but it grasped only air as Red moved away athletically while hopping on the balls of his feet. Red found footwork in the boxer’s memories that the boxer had copied from someone named Muhammad Ali, or what the man referred to himself as, “The Greatest." The kickboxer memories put forth a muay thai fighter with similar footwork named, Samart Payakaroon.
The first troll to attack moved again and jumped through the air to slam its fists down onto Red’s constantly moving form. It missed, but still left cracks where it landed.
Red didn’t move as far as he did before in dodging and simply took a different angle on the monster, lining it up. When he found his footing, he spun on a dime and kicked the troll's face, sinking his foot deep into its flesh with a spinning side kick. As the other troll swung at him again, he moved quickly away. The troll he hit made a move to attack again but stumbled.
It was dazed.
Red’s fighter memories started replaying commentators, “He’s hurt!”
The dazed troll did not give in to the rattled brain and attempted to continue ahead, but this only made the troll sloppy, causing it to collide with the other monster. The obstructed troll slipped in its footing and had to take a few steps away from its stunned companion for a clear path.
That was all the time Red needed.
Red took an angle on the troll trying to get past its brethren, appearing on its side and as he stepped one foot down, his other came up in a roundhouse kick that hit directly onto the troll’s nose. It promptly blacked out and went limp onto the ground.
The troll that was still awake was regaining its senses, but it was still a little wobbly on its feet.
It went at Red with a muscle-bound arm, causing its shapely muscles to contract as it swung. It missed completely once again. The state of its brain had not yet returned to normal. The attack brought it in range with Red, who was grinning as he went low and then shot upwards, bringing with him a fast and lethal uppercut.
The troll’s large teeth cracked as the punch connected on its wide chin and its eyes went blank as its brain entered the realm of dreams. It had fallen unconscious.
Red thumbed his nose at the creature in a coma and then put an arm up in victory.
“You are witnessing the makings of a legend, folks,” a commentator in his head commentated.
Red moved his head lazily toward Dwindle who stood there in complete shock. Poly had gripped her hands so tightly that they had become white. But Red couldn’t address either of his companions seeing that something was coming up behind them, fast.
Without thinking, he began sprinting as quickly as his feet could take him.
Dwindle and Poly looked at the young man coming at them in confusion. They were then abruptly shrouded in a shadow. They turned their small faces around to see a troll lifting its hulking arms in the air above them, ready to strike.
I’m dead, Dwindle thought.
I should’ve stayed in the forest, Poly thought, her face drained of color.
Before the arms could crush them, out of their peripherals, they saw a toned body streaking through the air toward the troll. It was Red and he was moving faster than Dwindle had ever seen him move.
Red's body resembled a thrown spear, his knee the point of the spear, landing it directly on the hideous face of the troll. The knee caused the gigantic head of the troll to become indented like a castle gate broken through by a battering ram. Blood gushed out of the point of impact like a geyser, spraying it in the air before raining down on the two short figures below.
As the troll started to fall, Red unlatched his knee from its now concave face and pushed off into a somersault. He landed gracefully behind Dwindle and Polly, putting a reassuring hand on each of their shoulders as he landed while the troll opposite them hit the ground with a thud.
“Gnarly way to go, dude,” Red commented, seeing the mangled face of the troll, "Tis the circle of life, man."
Dwindle remained in place with his mouth open in utter disbelief. Red wouldn’t stop shimmering in Poly’s eyes. The young man had transformed into a mythical creature in her mind.
“Looks like the party’s over, bra,” Red mused, then looked around to make sure none remained and became somewhat disappointed finding no other opponents.
His dwarf companion tried to say something, but he couldn’t say more than a groan. The dwarf’s brain wasn’t working properly. His logic had been challenged by what he had just witnessed, coming up short trying to make sense of it all.
Poly began shrieking with joy. She never expected to meet a genuine hero when she came to human lands.
Red huffed out air still dissatisfied with the lack of challengers and started to walk toward the trolls that were unconscious a couple of yards away. Hovering over each body, he cleanly dispatched both trolls with a stomp a piece.
He examined their bodies before shouting over at Dwindle who was still watching him dumbfounded, Poly cheering and clapping beside him, “Hey Dwindle, where are those life cores you mentioned before? I don’t see them.”
Dwindle came back to reality after finally hearing something that made sense.
“Oh,” he said, coming out of his daze, “Let me do the dirty work, champ. I’ll get those life cores out in no time.”
“I can cook troll meat!” Poly added happily.