~In the middle of a shabby looking village, four hobgoblins, with the one in the lead being smaller than the three behind him, face off against a larger hobgoblin with two goblin lackeys behind himself. The hobgoblin the four are confronting is the leader of the Gasric tribe, Hama.~
"Hama, you are a coward. I believe the tribe would be much better in my hands." I say to him directly.
"Your opinion has no weight. You are an outsider." He replies, his eyes glowering at me.
"I may be an outsider, but I have done much more for this tribe than you, the tribe 'leader' has done." I respond with a sneer on my face.
"Well the tribe follows me. And since you are an outsider, I have every right to throw you out!" He barks.
"Since you will not give position of the tribe leader over peacefully, then I challenge you for your position." I say.
"HA! You make me laugh! With what strength can you beat me? You, a newly born Hobgoblin? You may have had a rise in power, but you can't even use your strength properly! I will simply crush you!." He mocks.
"Hama, under your lead, we have had no new hobgoblins. Other goblin tribes have stolen our women. Everyone is starving under your lead. All four of us agree that there needs to be change." Bearg says with some lament on his face.
Upon Bearg's comment, Hama's face twists with a scowl as he glares hard at him. His knuckles are gripped so tight that they turn from green to white. Hama is not an idiot. He fully realizes that while his side only has himself and the other two goblin hunters, which is only a one person difference between both sides, All of the members of Bearg's hunting party is at the very least a hobgoblin. This is both a difference of quantity and quality. Even if he himself can kill one or two of them, he will inevitably lose. He realizes that he has no choice other than to fight.
"Bearg, I named you! I gave you freedom and let you eat a share of the meat that was hunted! why do you side with this outsider?!" He speaks through his teeth.
"We are only delaying the destruction of our tribe. Just because I have meat does not mean I will be happy. I want to grow strong. I want to be able to hunt everything in this forest without fear. Under you, I can only run and hide, occasionally catching a large animal. The outsider is smart, and used one mana stone to turn all of us into a hobgoblin. Imagine if all of us were hobgoblins. There is a chance that our young will also be hobgoblins. Under you, this is impossible." Bearg says with some lament.
With frustration in his eyes, Hama glares at me. Veins bulging at his temple, grinding his teeth, it is obvious that he is placing all his anger on me. Even though he is a coward, He is fully confident that he can defeat a fledgling hobgoblin. He has some hesitation in his mind however, as this new enemy he has placed within his own tribe has unique methods. With no other choice, he spits out,
"Fine. I accept your challenge outsider. I will destroy you and crush this little rebellion of yours. I don't believe that you can defeat me, who has been evolved for over two years!"
"Bearg, you will preside over this challenge." I say to him.
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With this Bearg turns towards the rest of the starving, emaciated goblins and shouts. "A CHALLENGER APPEARS FOR RIGHTS TO LEAD THE TRIBE THROUGH BATTLE!"
Although the other goblins cannot speak very well, they can understand some words, such as "challenger", "lead", and "battle". Within their eyes, a bit of curiousity is formed. They had all noticed that one of the two hunting parties had all turned into hobgoblins, however this had nothing to do with them, so they originally did not bother to find anything out, however this commotion sparked their interests. With a spark of interest ignited, they all slowly gathered around, forming a ring, about 10 meters in diameter around the hobgoblins. All the hunters aside from Hama and myself stood off to the side.
Pivoting my body so that my my left foot is front, I lift my fists. Hama directly pulls out a bone kris and shield.
"FIGHT" Bearg yells.
As soon as the yell went out, Hama went straight for me, swinging his blade down, immediatly using mana to bolster his aura. The early pressure is enough to make me dodge, however my movements are careful and precise. While his rush tactics are smart on his part, his cowardliness shows his lack of actual combat practice.
Each swing he makes is fast, yet not quite precise. He swings with the intent and force behind it to kill, but he leaves himself open.
With a grunt, I focus my mana only at my fist and smash down directly on his sheild. His arm buckles under the force causing him to stumble backwards, but I leave no time for him to recover as I smash down with my other hand. He blocks it with the kris, which bends and an odd angle, permanently damaged. I stop swinging to look at my fists while he rolls away to recover. The energy in this world is a lot more chaotic, it requires very precise control, which is extremely difficult in this body. While I can direct it to one part of my body, I do not have the minute control to spread the force evenly. It is simply like forcing a bunch of mana out of my fist in a blast, causing my mana to exhaust quickly.
The only reason I am even with him at this moment is I am only using mana on one part of my body at a time, while he uses it on his whole body. He has better control, but he is wasting just about the same amount of mana as I am. The only issue is, he has a larger mana pool.
*Ke* He spits "You are wasting mana. I'll finish this!"
Dropping his weapon and sheild, he weilds his claws and rushes straight towards me. Looking at his rage filled face, I spread the mana over my whole arm and make a blade with my hand. Lastly, I send mana through to my legs, not to cover the outside, but to the muscles in my leg. With this I dash straight towards him.
In a collision that causes a low muffled boom, his claws are covered with the blood and skin from my arm and shoulder, while my blade arm pierces his chest, gripping his spinal column.
Staring into the fading light in his eyes, I say "You lose".
With a final grip, I shatter his spine and watch as his body slides off of my mana covered arm. Due to the mana, the blood evaporates at a high rate forming a mist, making me look extremely ghastly.
Utter silence fills the small tribe.
Bearg swallows with difficulty, realizing I still have enough energy to fight. He realizes just how much stronger than him I am.
"HAMA IS DEAD! A NEW LEADER IS BORN!" He shouts to the surrounding crowd.
The hunters besides Hama's lackey's all cheer, the tribe has mixed looks of excitement and indifference.
I turn to everyone and say
"Starting from today, everyone works. If you work, we hunters will feed you. In time I will make you all powerful enough to hunt for yourselves. I don't intend on letting this tribe die. I will make it strong."
The meaning is simple. Work or die. Eat or starve. Eventually you will be strong. We will all be strong. It is a simple promise, but it gets the blood pumping in all of the goblins. They might not have all understood everything, but they got the key meaning. With this exclamation, even Hama's two followers look a little excited.
I walk over to his corpse and shove my hand through his skull and grab. Finally, I rip out a dim, sky blue stone, the size of a thumb nail.
"Hunters, come with me, we have work to do."