Again, Penbrooke moved on from the fight without paying much attention to the scene he left in his wake, his thoughts elsewhere as he mused aloud: “Could that have been my latent hero potential, the last minute power up to protect my nakama? Though, I don’t exactly have anyone with me to protect…”

Huh, so he doesn’t know where that sudden strength came from; I guess some of his supernatural powers must be inexplicable even to him, then.

By now the sun was dipping below the horizon and casting a deep-amber glow onto the world. From the forest came incessant chatter made up of chirps and peeps, the sky’s airways no longer as populated with only a dozen or so flocks continuing to migrate through the twilight hours.

When Penbrooke glanced towards the sky, there was a flock in particular that caught Cal’s eyes for they seemed to be going nowhere: indistinct silhouettes circling something far away in the plains, evidently giant birds given he could see them from here.

I wonder if those are carrion feeders picking apart a corpse. If so, maybe they’ll clear away the goblin corpses before tomorrow morning.

When Penbrooke had gone fifty steps from the second ambush site, he stopped and scanned about himself. He kept this up for a good while and appeared to be in search of something – although Cal wasn’t sure what – yet he must have not found it, as afterwards he tapped away at his phantom terminal in frustration.

“It says the last one to finish the combat tutorial quest is here.” He glanced around his surroundings once more. “But there’s nothing here…”

So that’s why he seemed so unperturbed when ambushed: he must have known about them in advance. To be specific, he couldn’t have known about the first ambush since that caught him totally off guard, meaning his phantom terminal must have only shown this information after the first fight. Why is that?

Cal sensed a common string of reasoning shared by these events and Penbrooke’s actions from when he’d first taken over, a parallel in the knight’s behaviour that could be discerned. A prerequisite to see stuff on his omniscient phantom terminal, perhaps?

Before Cal could join the dots, however, he became distracted by the knight’s unexpected action: having dawdled for a while waiting around, Penbrooke suddenly decided to take initiative and widen his search by treading into the forest.

The birds nestled in the branches tittered away at the sight, providing running commentary on his progress, while layers of decomposing leaves squelched beneath his boots.

He had come some thirty paces in when he stopped, stunned by the sight ahead: in a small glade, there was a red-and-white gingham blanket laid out, over which lounged a hobgoblin on its stomach with its feet kicking in the air and a picnic hamper beside it.

What on teral is going on here…

Wearing a long leather tunic, the hobgoblin had rustic skin and looked tall enough to reach Cal’s shoulders, but otherwise had the same features as the goblins before. Engrossed in a book, it licked its finger and turned the page, oblivious to the human staring at it from the edge of the clearing.

Equally oblivious to his presence was another greenskin a few feet away moving about with dynamism, facing the other way from him. Muscular and brutish, the orc wore a scanty hide loincloth that just barely met the minimum level of decency.

The orc had its arms raised to shoulder-level and slowly swinging from side to side, its fingers clicking every other second, simultaneously shuffling its feet back and forth; from the way the orc would grunt and repeat this motion over and over, it almost looked like it was practising a dance move…

Damn, he’s good! Those orcs really must have modernised their ceremonial dances recently as this is not how my textbooks described them. And here I thought the holiday assignment last year to write an essay weighing up the arguments for and against an imminent dance revolution within orc society had been plain silly… how wrong I was!

Having finally perfected the move, the orc started on to the next one in the set: it whirled around on its heels with flair and pointed playfully at the thickset tree behind it. The tree was presumably standing in for the prisoner-of-war that’d be sacrificed during a real ritual, and if that was indeed the case, Cal felt it was an odd gesture to be making towards someone who was soon about to meet a brutal end.

Then again, perhaps the modern spirits wanted to see a jig and a dance to lighten the mood before blood was spilt? They’d seen it be done the traditional way for several centuries already, so who could blame them for wanting something fresh and frisky after that?

The orc’s pointed finger soon changed targets, however, and fixed onto Penbrooke himself whilst the orc gawped at him. Foreign words rushed out of its mouth all at once, likely directed at the hobgoblin seeing as none of it made sense to Cal.

In response, the hobgoblin pulled out a pocket watch from its hamper, though its eyes remained fixed on its book. It glanced at the watch and replied to the orc’s hysteria with what was presumably the time, before lowering the pocket watch again and returning to its reading.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Only after a long moment did the hobgoblin pause, take another look at the time, and finally curse under its breath. In a panic it sprung to its feet, and followed the orc’s gaze to find Penbrooke staring at them both with a blank expression. The hobgoblin facepalmed hard.

As is typical of one who finds himself in such a situation, the hobgoblin turned on its partner with a colourful string of swears while waving an accusatory hand at the setting sun; these complaints, however, were met by more of the same as the orc had harsh words of its own to voice while pointing (not so playfully anymore) at the book and pocket watch.

Seeing that the blame game was going nowhere, the hobgoblin addressed Penbrooke instead. “Shoo, shoo,” it said, making the appropriate motions. “One moment, uh, we be with you.”

The compliant knight did as instructed, and trod back over his steps towards the dirt path, shrugging. “I guess they weren’t ready yet.”

While Cal couldn’t fault the logic of this statement, he was nevertheless baffled that this was all Penbrooke had to say after everything he’d seen there.

Was there really nothing else you wanted to comment about there, like the hobgoblin reading a book, or the orc practising a dance? Really? So to your eyes it was perfectly normal that they were having a picnic while waiting for you to turn up… Am I the odd one for thinking that was strange enough to be worthy of a comment at least?

As usual, Cal’s complaints went unheard, meanwhile Penbrooke tapped his feet waiting for his foes to turn up.

Shortly after, the two greenskins (yes, that’s right: hobgoblins still count as greenskins because greenskin is a racial term, not a literal one) rushed out of the forest and joined him on the path, looking sheepishly apologetic for their tardiness.

The hobgoblin carried a makeshift bow and had a quiver slung across its back; whereas the orc, whose body was criss-crossed with scars, wielded a crude length of metal that had cloth wrappings around its bottom for grip. This two-handed weapon looked like the bastard child of a sword and a club; and although dull edged, its weight alone looked sufficient to crack bones.

Taking in the sight of the two greenskins armed with weapons, Cal felt something was seriously off (besides the general bizarreness of the whole situation, of course), even in comparison to when he had observed them earlier in the glade. He couldn’t explain this dissonance except for that it looked plain wrong to see the hobgoblin holding its wonky bow and the orc holding its awkward mish-mash weapon.

Perhaps it was as simple as fear, reflecting the fact the greenskins were now armed, but Cal’s instincts claimed otherwise… Nonetheless, his instincts had little to go on – especially when considering Penbrooke wasn’t experiencing similar feelings of unease despite viewing the same scene – so he concluded it must all be in his head after all.

The orc signalled to the knight with a nod, and Penbrooke responded in kind. Without further ado the orc came for him, though not with the gusto it had practised its dance moves but at a lumbering pace.

When it was still a few steps away from him, it started a choreographed chop downwards.

Yet, the incoming orc charge – however controlled it may be – induced a different set of emotions to the goblin charges from before, as evidenced by Penbrooke who scampered out of the way; the orc made a small shake of its head at his evasion, its blow landing on the ground with a thump.

Penbrooke’s focus had already shifted, however, onto the arrow which swished past him. Granted, it passed by a good degree to his left, but its sound alone – the whistling of penetrated air – was enough to raise his hackles on end.

Offering no time to rest, the orc growled menacingly to regain his attention as it stepped up to make another attack. Penbrooke faced an onslaught of threats from multiple angles, his tension spiking, adrenaline pumping; this was his moment to clutch up. Consequently, he fumbled his footing and tumbled onto the orc’s bare feet.

Luckily, not only did the orc miss him, but it also chopped with too much power and managed to get its weapon stuck in the ground, thereby providing him the opportunity to scramble back to his feet and reestablish distance.

When Penbrooke then glanced up to regard his foe, Cal was surprised to see the orc had indeed lodged its weapon deep into the ground, which was all the more bewildering given its previous attack had produced a thumping sound on the ground.

The greenskin warrior’s breathing was heavy and ragged, its bulging arms displaying a web of veins as it tried to dislodge its weapon: all the signs of exertion were present, yet Cal couldn’t help but noticing how its eyes were trained on him the entire time. Only when Penbrooke raised his cudgel, signalling readiness, did the orc manage to free itself with an effortful yank.

Another arrow swished past, but this time Penbrooke held his composure – the breather had done him much good as he’d finally caught on to the fight.

At once the orc advanced on him, preparing a sideways slash; and this time Penbrooke surmounted his fear to swing against the choreographed attack. Against expectation, his parry not only stopped the orc’s swing but also appeared to make it take damage from the impact at collision, its body visibly shaking.

Undeterred, the orc tried the same attack again, and Penbrooke made a forceful deflection this time, his confidence bolstered by his prior success. This sequence of actions repeated many more times: the orc testing him with attacks from different angles, and the knight continuing to block them without fail.

Following each parry, the orc’s grip grew increasingly shaky until eventually it dropped its weapon and fell clumsily onto its face. It didn’t make any motions at returning to its feet, seemingly dead, although it was unclear what exactly had killed it.

Perhaps Penbrooke’s score multiplier had increased with each consecutive parry until it had gotten too high and humiliating for the orc to bear, thereby triggering a heart attack….

Never mind, actually – it had to be something else; dying to a score multiplier was too ridiculous to be reality. After all, what would the orc’s parents think when they heard their son – who had carried on its shoulders their hopes and dreams – had died not in a war, not in a battle, but in a minor banditry incident where it’d been parried too many times in a row… Oh, the shame!

From then on, they’d never be able to show their heads around the other uncle and aunty orcs, else risk hearing news about how Mr and Mrs X’s son had just died in an inferno, having just raided a village and torched it and then run back in to douse the buildings with still more fuel because the flames hadn’t been burning bright enough. Or how Mr and Mrs Y’s daughter had just died after showing up to a war uninvited, having no allegiance to either side or even rationale for making an appearance, turning up purely for the vibes.

Now those were real orcs dying how an orc should, not in some sissy-boy fashion getting parried by a human. By gosh, the shame!