“All right criminals, listen up! The scouts have spotted another group of demonlings headed this way in a hurry. There are at least twice as many as their last two attacks, and they’re led by leveled-up survivors from those attacks. Despite our reinforcements it’s going to be an ugly fight.”
“Under the circumstances the Commander has decided to deploy aberrations. The rest of you are getting spears and being put on the walls. DO NOT think this is an opportunity to escape! The demonlings have cavalry raiding parties harassing our supply lines. THEY WILL catch you and torture you to death. In addition we have a record of every one of you. If we can’t find you or your corpse after the battle WE WILL send trackers to hunt you down. And that’ll be a painful process, believe me.”
“DO NOT think this is a good time to settle score with another prisoner or a guard. We’ll be watching, and after the battle we’ll take a long hard look at any casualties we don’t like the smell of. If we even SUSPECT you of fighting your fellows instead of the enemy you’ll find yourself front and center for the next attack. OUTSIDE the walls.”
“Now, aberrations fall out and follow me.”
One of the guards poked Gloe in the back. “Smart-ass, that means you too.”
“Beg your pardon sir, but I’m not an aberration.”
“Whatever smart-ass, just get moving. We all know about your abilities.”
Gloe had found himself torn of late. He was finding that having a little bit of agency made things much more complicated. The other times he’d been imprisoned there’d essentially been nothing he could do about it. Escape had been all but impossible, and he’d had minimal freedom of action.
Now he found himself in this weird limbo. In one sense he could do whatever he wanted. He’d leveled up enough that only the chosen and sojourners here could stop him by force, and he was reasonably certain he could outrun or hide from them. They hadn’t exactly stationed their top-tier here.
No progress had been made on the subject of the Sky Sage though. He hadn’t found any way to become resistant to lightning, and he still had no idea how he had been tracked down in the first place. He’d done his best to obscure his identity- they actually had no idea who he was or where he’d come from. That’s why they called him smart-ass.
But he’d just been a nameless poacher when the Sky Sage had been sent the first time. If smart-ass escaped he’d probably have about the same status. And if they needed blood or possessions to track him the guards probably already had it safely hidden somewhere.
So escape seemed ill-advised, at least until he had leveled up some more. Complying meant he’d be able to do that, but silence implied consent. And he did not consent.
From the moment the trial had begun he’d known their notion of justice was farcical, and nothing had improved since then. There was no attempt at rehabilitation, no prisoner rights, not even a general sense of human decency. Some of the guards were okay sorts, but that only seemed to matter when they were alone with the prisoners. The rest of the time it was either indifferent neglect or active sadism. It could have been called a system of collective and corporeal punishment, except that certain guards were so enthusiastic it was less of a system and more of a playground for their misanthropic tendencies.
They couldn’t hurt him of course. Not really. They could damage him, perhaps even kill him, but they couldn’t inflict true pain and suffering. That didn’t make what they were doing okay. And of course he couldn’t continually eat everyone else’s share. He didn’t have the range or capacity.
Consenting was right out then. So he followed the guard quietly, until they went around a corner. Then, once the guard was past, he flipped up onto the roof, as quietly as he could.
He’d killed a lot of demonlings. He’d leveled. He could make lizard squirrel boots without lizard squirrel bits now.
Before he was even missed he flitted from rooftop to rooftop. The door to the equipment shed was sturdy, with a serious lock. The roof tiles were less secure.
So when the prisoners were led to the wall, newly-issued spears in hand, they were treated to the sight of Gloe standing in the field out front, a pick-axe in each hand. “Slaves! I’d call you prisoners, but there’s no prison here, because we’re too fucking incompetent to finish one!” He shouted in his best impression of the sergeant. “A fuck-ton of demonlings are coming, and we guards are scared shitless!”
“So we decided to hide behind ya’ll and use you as meat shields!” His impression wasn’t amazing. He didn’t have a natural gift for it. But he was still better than you might expect. Normal people have trouble picking up and practicing impressions because the fact that they’re so bad at them is embarrassing to the point where it’s difficult to continue. Gloe had realized a long time ago that he could eat that feeling and keep trying.
“Now some of you might think that the fact that we need you to help save our sorry lives means you have a bit more bargaining power, but you’re wrong! If you do anything we don’t like, you’ll die. We’ll stick you outside the walls for the next attack. Now you may be asking why I don’t just kill you and get it over with? Well the answer is simple. I’m chickenshit. I don’t dare kill any of you without written orders in triplicate from the Duke. And I can’t even read.”
“Some of you might be wondering what I’m going to do if some slave escapes, and then goes out in front of the walls all on his own? Well I don’t know either. I don’t have much of an imagination.”
He continued in this vein for some time. The guards threw a few rocks at him when he did his impression of the commander, but they weren’t great shots. He had just gotten down on his knees and started doing Corporal Baur when the demonlings came into sight.
As they drew near he stood, took the time to give the finger to as many guards as he could make eye contact with, then turned around and counter-charged. In his previous encounters he had learned that the basic demonlings had only rudimentary intelligence. They were highly aggressive, and capable of very basic coordination, but only seemed to have a set number of tactics. Whether this was due to instinct or instruction he didn’t know, but it had held true both times.
During the second attack there had been bigger, stronger demonlings. It was common knowledge that everything- monsters, people, demons- could level up through kills. Presumably these demonlings had scored sufficient kills during the first attack to advance. In engaging them Gloe had learned that not only were they superior physically, they also were smarter. They’d coordinated to box him in, then literally pinned him down, impaling him with knives and leaving him skewered to the ground and dying. They hadn’t finished the job that time, so he’d recovered.
This time however, he saw even larger demonlings. They were beginning to resemble chimpanzees more than monkeys. He decided to designate them C-Types. If any of them had been involved in his previous defeat he couldn’t count on them forgetting him. He wasn’t real certain what would happen if his head got twisted off while he was detached, but he wasn’t in a hurry to find out. He’d have to be careful.
Not careful perhaps. That would be counterproductive. Better to say, deliberate.
Accelerating to his full speed, Gloe kept it there. Leaping and flipping through the oncoming horde he only lashed out with strikes when he could do so without losing momentum. He kept it as unpredictable as possible, jagging off at sharp angles, meandering without any clear purpose, backtracking at times. His primary goal was to stay alive and mobile, and only secondarily was he trying to get kills. He couldn’t let himself get boxed in again.
The leveled up demonlings had more juice though, so it wasn’t as if he was trying to avoid them. Far from it. If he ran across several that seemed to be coordinating he tended to shy away, or hit and run. Eventually though he caught one unawares, and sank both his pick-axe blades into its skull. The resulting surge of incoming power was significant.
For a while he ran helter-skelter through the back ranks. He wasn’t doing anything directly to support the walls, but three more times he managed to catch a distracted veteran demonling and remove it from the fight. The vets began looking for him, trying to actively engage him. He evaded for some time, but eventually one backed him against the wall.
The vets carried wicked long knives rather than short ones, and Gloe and his opponent exchanged a furious serious of blows. The knives were handier, more maneuverable and sharp. The pick-axes had a bit of reach and were weighty enough that the vet had to use both blades to parry one. The demonling was too fast to fall victim to the arcing swings of the heavy tools, but their continual sweeps only left a tiny window to launch attacks.
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It darted in and out repeatedly, landing a dozen or so shallow stabs and slashes. None were deep enough to sever key muscles, but the pain and blood-loss should have been debilitating, especially as the fight wore on. Instead, it was the demonling that began to tire. The pick-axes never let up, and the demonling had to keep dodging without respite.
It was driven back steadily, shrieking. Presumably it wanted assistance from its lesser kin. This proved to be its undoing.
As the demonlings swarmed in Gloe caught one with a blow that sent its corpse hurtling off-center into the vet. The latter stumbled, and Gloe launched forward, driving home a series of blows. They weren’t precise or hitting vital areas, but they were delivered with a great deal of force, relentlessly. The vet couldn’t recover, couldn’t find a window to dodge. The blows took their toll, and the vet eventually died from cumulative damage, still scrambling to evade.
Well that had been interesting. Gloe had been using the sheer number of enemies to make it harder to track and follow him, but he hadn’t considered other ways that particular strength could leveraged. Fleeing through the crowd he pondered for a bit, then grinned.
A flash of pain interrupted his thoughts. Looking down, he saw the head of a guard’s spear protruding from his chest, blood oozing over it. Well shit, he’d been impaled. Again.
Glancing over his shoulder he could the shaft of the weapon coming out of his back. Ahead he also could see the C-Type demonling that had thrown the projectile, as well as the fallen guard it had originated from. The perpetrator seemed eager to finish what it had started, and was rushing closer. He didn’t have a lot of time.
Pulling the spear free should have been prohibitively painful, but that wasn’t an issue for Gloe. The real problem was how difficult to get a grip on the thing given how thoroughly it was coated in his blood and viscera. He ended up having to to break it off on the backside and then grip it so hard that he damaged both his hands, but he finally got it out. Once free of the unwanted decoration he made a break for it.
Not a moment too soon either. The large demonling was hot on his heels. Gloe pushed himself, despite the amount of fluids he was losing from the complicating internal injuries his movement inflicted. The howls of the creature behind helped motivate him. It was fairly clear Gloe’s corpse would not be left unmolested this time.
The burst of speed allowed him to reach the wall first, and he scurried up it, zipping past the demonlings who were climbing at a slower pace. A few swiped at him, but none landed a crippling blow. The guards up top swung reflexively at him as he reached their level, but he was able to take their strikes on his arms.
Leaping over their heads he reached the wall of the watchtower and continued to ascend. Nearing the top he dodged a point-blank arrow and flipped up and over, landing on the tower’s roof. Once there he looped one arm around the flagpole, jammed his heels into the roof tiles, and laid down. From here he could see his pursuer. It hadn’t been willing to follow him up the wall and into the blades of the defenders. Given the way it was howling and beating the ground it seemed likely it was frustrated by his escape. For his part, Gloe breathed a sigh of relief, then closed his eyes and focused on triaged regeneration.
A hesitant voice roused him some time later. “Smart-ass? Is that you up there?”
Looking down, he could see where his blood and other assorted ickiness had been flowing down the roof and off the side. It probably looked fairly alarming from below. “I’m up here.”
“Oh.” There was a long pause. “May I ask what you’re doing?”
“Resting. I got impaled again. One of those big fuckers.”
“Ah. Well…I hope you feel better soon.”
“Thanks.” Not all the guards were complete assholes. Or maybe the archers just below him were afraid he could kill them all before relief could make it up the stairs. Either way, it was pleasant to have someone be moderately polite for once. Alright, back to regeneration.
Once he had healed for a bit he didn’t need to concentrate as much and his mind wandered. It would be great if he could kill the demonling that had attacked him before the battle was over. He was fairly certain it would remember him, and if it survived and got sufficient kills it might be even bigger and more powerful for the next attack. He didn’t think he was a match for it one on one though, much less trying to fight the thing in the middle of the horde.
His gaze meandered across the battlefield, and he slowly began to realize there might be another way. Something more in line with his skillset. That played to his strengths and the demonling’s weaknesses. Still healing, he observed the battle-lines carefully and began to plan.
...
An hour or so later he was ready to put his plan into action. Discretely he picked off demonlings and vets in small groups, always choosing those who were isolated at the rear of the enemy formation. They were all extremely aggressive, and he took advantage of that, drawing them back into the ditch before killing them whenever possible. This kept him (and the growing piles of corpses) out of sight for as long as possible, delaying detection. It had other benefits as well, but that was for later.
He was able to eliminate a surprising number of enemies this way. It was a shame he hadn’t been doing it from the start, but he looked at it as a learning experience. He’d underestimated the enemies’ aggression and overestimated their ability to communicate. He made a mental note of that and kept killing. He was past the point where it progressed his plan much, but that was fine. He was flexible. As long as he was whittling down the horde and gaining experience he would shelve the plan and keep doing what worked.
It just kept working. The demonlings were so intent on their assault of the walls that they rarely looked behind them, and there was already so much shrieking and noise that only those very close heard the alarm cries when he was spotted by a demonling. None of them seemed to possess the intelligence to try to keep track of their fellows. Certainly they seemed to recognize each other, but they didn’t wonder where their compatriots were or what they might be doing. That felt like confirmation of Gloe’s suspicions. The demonlings were cannon fodder designed to probe defenses and wear down those manning them.
And perhaps, it was also a way to develop more advanced underlings. Demonlings who secured enough kills grew into the bigger and stronger vets. If they continued they became the chimpanzee-like demonlings, which were not only even more powerful but also seemed to be relatively smarter. So if this went on long enough…
Speak of the devil. One of the C-Types seemed to have finally noticed that they were missing troops and was coming to investigate. It hadn’t noticed Gloe yet. Better yet, it happened to be his target, which just happened to be hanging out close to his area of operations. He hid in the ditch for a while, peeking out until it got closer. Waiting until its back was turned he leapt out and rushed forward. If he could sneak in an undefended blow he wouldn’t need to put his plan in action. He was fine with that.
Alas, it wasn’t that simple. As he’d feared the larger demonlings were simply more alert to danger. It spun at the last second, parrying mostly on instinct. Instead of dual-wielding it carried one over-sized machete, the weight of which easily equaled his own normal pick-axe. Scary stuff. Gloe fled.
Predictably, the large enemy was right on his heels, pounding along on three limbs with machete raised high. If it had been just a bit smarter it might have wondered how it managed to stay continually just on the brink of catching up without actually doing so. Gloe picked up a tad more speed as they came to the trench and hurtled it neatly, skidding to a stop and whipping around.
The advanced demonling’s leap was just as prodigious, but not as unopposed. Gloe braced himself and swung his weapon forward and down with most of the might he could muster. The creature parried, losing most of its forward momentum in doing so. It didn’t just resemble a chimpanzee physically though. It was clever. It looked down to check where its forced landing was going to take it, and saw the neat little pit trap Gloe had made out of its lesser kins’ knives. It twisted, easily avoiding it and landing off to the side.
Just as easily it parried Gloe’s follow up strike, reducing what would have been a killing blow into one that merely staggered its off-balance bulk slightly. A stagger that snagged it neatly on the knives protruding from far wall of the trench. They were imbedded deeply enough that only their tips stuck out, so they were very difficult to see from the wrong angle. They covered both the ‘safe’ landing points adjoining the knife trap. A human might have looked at the amount of blood in the bottom of the ditch and wondered if there was more to the trap than there appeared, but chimpanzees aren’t really all that smart, and neither was this monster. More clever than the base demonlings, but not actually intelligent.
When Gloe swung his follow-up blow the beast moved to parry while leveraging itself off the blades behind it. Again it mis-judged, as the attack missed by inches and the pickaxe went into the dirt, by way of the demonling’s lower left foot.
It was a tough monster though. It ripped the pick-axe blade free and lunged for its tormentor. Gloe took off once again, scrambling up the trench wall and running alongside it. The demonling hesitated for a moment. Pursuing hadn’t worked out too well so far. But the human was unarmed now, so its aggression came back to the fore quickly.
As it climbed the dirt wall Gloe looped back around and slammed into it bodily. The injured foot couldn’t hold and the demonling fell back in. Squarely onto the knife trap it had initially avoided.
Its own weight worked against it now, and it was too cut up to be able to quickly find a safe way to pull itself free of the blades. It blocked Gloe’s first few strikes from the retrieved pick-axe, but each parry drove the blades in deeper. This proved distracting, and the distraction proved fatal.
Whoa. Gloe blinked as he drew in a deep breath. That was…a lot of experience. The vets gave more than the demonlings, but the C-Types blew those proportions out of the water. They must have killed a lot of people as vets to advance. No wonder there were comparatively so few of them.
They were probably very powerful too. He had neatly boxed this one in and it still had taken a lot of killing. The experience was tempting, but Gloe wasn’t going to court disaster. He dragged the corpse clear and went back to baiting demonlings and vets.
The battle dragged on for hours, but finished before sunset. When the guards found him he was in the trench, sorting through demonling equipment, testing their qualities. Significant piles of corpses littered the portions of the trench around him. They reached a rapid unspoken agreement to refrain from trying to chain him back up.