Marcel's heart dropped into his pants. He looked over the scene before him. A giant muscle packed goblin that looked like he could rip him in two without any effort was already enough to make him tremble. But the thing was backed off by over a dozen small tiny killing machines that wouldn’t hesitate to rip through his intestines if they got close enough.
He forgot about the hostages in the cages, even the heart wrenching sounds of their torture from earlier were forgotten. All Marcel could think about was running.
He was about to go for a mad dash out of here, but unfortunately a quick scan behind him showed him a handful of the goblins had circled behind him, now cutting off his retreat.
This was no fight he could win. Not even one he could run from.
Marcel had always thought he would be frightened in those situations. That fear, the silent killer, would slowly creep up on him, stunt him and slowly but surely tear him apart.
He had only been a low level accountant after all. That was what his old life had been. He wanted to dabble into adventuring, sure, but he hadn’t thought he would be faced with death. Hadn’t ever thought about situations like that at all in his former life. For every reason he should be deadly afraid right now.
But to his surprise that wasn’t the case. It was rather the opposite.
He stared at the small army of enemies in front of him and all he could feel was determination. It washed over him like a wave, fully engulfing him. The fear he had been feeling was quenched like it was nothing but a candle, leaving nothing but his will to fight, his will to struggle.
He lifted his spear and echoed a challenge in return.
Before he had even finished his scream, waves of goblins were upon him.
They came from all sides. Nasty greedy little creatures. Marcel let all his thoughts fall away and fully embraced his spear proficiency and heightening skill.
The first one lunged at him, a simple wooden spear in his hand. He simply sidestepped past the weapon, and burrowed his own spear deep into the creature's chest.
In one smooth motion he withdrew it, turned on the spot and parried a dagger thrust from another attacker behind him. The unbalanced creature didn’t have time to recover before Marcel ended his life with another swift thrust.
He continued his dance, trying to evade the globin attacks while keeping them at a distance. It went surprisingly well for a while. Marcel traded small cuts against life ending thrusts.
That was until one of the goblins managed to cut his left glute from behind. Sharp pain sprang up. mArcel cursed, felt blood. He turned and retaliated swiftly.
After that wounds started accumulating. Small cuts and blood loss were starting to hinder his mobility. More and more goblins managed to land some hits.
They started cornering him, slowly pressing him towards the giant hut that stood in the middle of the square.
Marcel activated watered body. Two tentacles sprang up from his back again, this time they didn't simply strike and vanish though. Marcel kept them up, focusing his entire mana flow into them.
He had to let his heightened skill go, he couldn’t manage two at once. But with the overwhelming flow of enemies, the two assistant water tentacles soon proved a better help.
They stabbed a goblin that tried to sneak behind his back. While Marcel deflected a dagger with the butt of his spear.
He stepped through, cutting the goblins legs, and finishing him with a strike from his tentacles.
The goblins were a little hesitant. They had seen over half a dozen of their brethren being slain by Marcel by now. They seemed to thrive on the gang up tactics, and with his water tentacles Marcel was putting them a little at unease.
That only lasted until their leader let out another roar. The big goblin started banging his chest and pushed his way towards Marcel. His brethren tried their best to scramble out of his way, but the big giant didn't care for losses. One of them didn’t manage to scamper away in time and was squashed underneath the monster's foot.
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The goblin chief didn’t hesitate though. He kept increasing his pace until he was charging at Marcel. At the last moment he leapt, surging in the air towards him.
In an instant Marcel deactivated his “Water Tentacle” skill and reactivated “Heightening”. He jumped out of the way. A moment later the beast landed, his giant wooden club pulverizing a part of the wall where Marcel had just stood
He swallowed heavily when he saw the devastation the thing could wreak with his weapon, and quickly scrambled up to his feet. The goblin slowly rose and looked towards Marcel, flashing him a bloodthirsty smile.
Marcel used the brief breather to glance around, but luckily the rest of the goblins didn’t seem to want to interfere in their leader's fight. It was one on one.
He kept his “Heightening” skill activated, not trusting himself to fight this thing without any extra dexterity. During this whole fight he had realized one thing.
While he was wading through the blood shed, while he was cut, pierced, scratched, his thoughts remained calm. During the whole dance of death that was playing out he had kept a tactical approach. Like a puppeteer he was controlling his body through this dance of death.
The goblin chief charged again, painting a wide horizontal arc with his weapon. Marcel ducked underneath. The wind of the swing rustled his hair, as he came up in one smooth motion and buried his spear into the goblin leader's side.
Or at least tried to. His weapon didn’t manage to penetrate more than an inch deep, before it was stopped by something that felt like hard steel. Marcel wasn’t sure if it was an extra thick layer of hide, or just the goblins ludicrous muscles.
All he knew was that he was fucked.
The thin sneered at him and threw a lazy backhand at him. He easily evaded that.
They continued trading like that, Marcel being a little quicker on the uptake than the brute thanks to his increased reaction, but never managing to truly hurt the goblin chief.
The thing swung his club down in a giant world ending arc. Marcel sidestepped to the side, ready to counter strike, but the knockback when the club connected with the ground set him off balance and stumbling.
The giant capitalized on that by swinging again. Marcel barely managed to bring his head out of the way. Instead offering his shoulder.
The club smashed down onto his side, utterly shattering his shoulder. White stars exploded in his vision and pain like he had never felt before almost tore his head apart.
His opponent bellowed out a loud laugh. It went forward to strike and finish off Marcel. He saw the thing twice. He couldn’t feel his legs, all of his nerves were shot.
This would be it, like he had thought.
Suddenly a loud pipe was heard and a giant stone thundered into the goblin leader. It was thrown backwards and buried under the stone.
Marcel looked around in alarm. What he saw on the rising hill almost made him fall over in disbelief.
There was a huge slingshot spanned, currently being loaded with giant rocks. There were over a dozen people bustling next to it. Only when looking closer did he realize, though, that they weren’t quite human. Their upper bodies were, but their underside was utterly goat.
They were satyrs, Marcel realized with a start. His eyes darted to the cage, and he realized the same held true for the captured creatures.
Had he just risked his life for goats?
Before anyone knew what was happening a mass of satyrs streamed out between the houses. They were equipped with long curved blades and they reaped the goblins around the cleaning. All Marcel could do was stand and watch as the chaos unfolded around him.
The leader was trying to shrug off the stone, but the moment it did, hordes of satyrs were upon it.
It wasn’t long until Marcel got an onslaught of messages.
„Goblin boss fell. Since the kill has been shared, you have been awarded a share of the experience.“
“Congratulations, you have reached level 2. You have free stats points.”
“Congratulations, you have reached level 3. You have free stats points”
“Congratulations, your Heightening skill has reached level 3.”
A huge wave of energy surged through Marcel, experiencing crashing through him like the ocean over the shore. Sharp pain surged up his head, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, he found the face of a satyr staring at him.
“Thank you, I was kind of in a tough spot there,” he said looking down at his arm. “Do you maybe have any painkillers or something?”
The satyr cocked its head. Marcel was no expert in satyric facial expressions, but he was pretty sure the thing was confused.
Marcel sighed. No matter how human they looked, they probably didn’t speak his language.
“Don’t worry, just, just thanks for helping.”
He struggled up to his feet and looked around the small cleared space next to the main hut. Dead goblin bodies littered the floor like fireworks the day after new years. The ground was tinted in blood, its metallic smell clinging heavy in the air.
So that's what adventuring is.