Chapter 22

Over the next two weeks Jack kept himself extremely busy, he went on a variety of hunts and harvesting jobs as well as regular visits to the training hall for sessions with Danny, he even did a few hunts for Steven the taxidermist. With every monster kill he made, he made sure to use its corpse for cultivation in an effort to grow stronger. He even quit his day job, now fully committed to the life of a hunter.

He no longer had his spear with him, having left half of it buried inside a mutated feral Dalmatian so he had to use his axe. He didn’t dare go to Gary to ask for a new one already. But the axe certainly worked, and the chain he’d found at the construction site was also worth holding onto given his lightning abilities.

The conversation he’d had with Danny about humanoid monsters stuck with him. Jack did a search on the internet about humanoid sentient monster attacks and the results were grim. Danny was right, goblins and other tool using monsters who’s intelligence was a cut above other monsters seemed to be far more dangerous than their feral counterparts.

A giant rabid bear like monster spawn going on a rampage through the countryside is one thing, it might catch and kill a few hikers before people were warned to stay away from the area and then a team of hunters would be dispatched. But a large group of orcs who had been slowly gaining in strength and numbers and weapons was another thing entirely. Their presence isn’t normally known about or reported until they decide to reveal themselves, and when they finally make a move the casualty rate is often high.

Humanoid monster spawns only accounted for around a little less than a ninth of all monster spawns according to a study published by the UK hunters guild, but the number of people killed by humanoid monsters was reported to be much higher than a ninth, it was more like a third of all people killed by monsters and mutated animals.

Knowing this Jack decided that if any humanoid monster hunts popped up, he would take them. Orcs, minotaurs, lamias and the like were a little beyond him for now but in the future he would take hunts for them too. For now however, there was still the odd goblin hunt he could take at his rank, every now and then, he even messaged Cheryl and asked her to inform him of any goblin hunts that came up to which she agreed. Within an hour she actually texted him and informed him of a goblin infestation on the north side of the city and that Stacey had already agreed to meet him there.

He was a little surprised that Cheryl and Stacey would be so accommodating but he didn’t otherwise question it and immediately grabbed his gear.

The hunt was high F rank, bordering on an E. It was an entire apartment building, nine floors tall, infested with the little creatures, numbers unknown. The building was newish, having just been completed a little over six months ago. When Jack arrived and met up with Stacey they saw a large crowd of people gathered around the front of the building, it was comprised of normal people, some wearing dressing gowns and pyjamas, police, paramedics with ambulances and worst of all, news reporters.

“Oh god, not again,” Jack moaned in dismay.

Stacey gave him a comforting smile. “You’ll have to get used to it Jack, hunting is a hot topic for news.” She slapped him on the back causing him to stumble forwards several paces.

She walked over to the gathering of police and Jack followed, he passed by ambulances that had people being treated inside them. Normal people, police and even other paramedics all bore wounds such as cuts and bruises that were being examined by other paramedics. He could just faintly hear gunfire inside the building, there were still people in there.

They reached the guy that appeared to be in charge, a slightly overweight police officer looking over a plan of the building surrounded by other police and several hunters. Stacey didn’t say anything and simply joined them in looking over the map, Jack followed suit.

They discussed various plans of attack but the hunters and police frequently disagreed with each other. The police special forces were highly trained individuals with numerous tactics to deal with these sorts of situations and saw the hunters as barely trained ill disciplined vigilantes, on the other hand the hunters saw the police as weak and slow non-cultivators who would just get in their way.

Jack allowed his attention to wander to the double doors that served as the entrance to the apartment building. All of a sudden that was a commotion and several wounded police stumbled out of the doors, some being helped others. Armed officers at the cordon and paramedics rushed forward to help them. One ragged, frantic looking policeman stumbled over to them and gasped out.

“They’ve got guns! Those little fuckers ‘ave got guns! They shot Lilly and Simon!”

The hunters and police looked absolutely horrified for a moment, before they devolved back into a mess of arguing and shouting. It seemed nothing was going to get decided, meanwhile the crowd behind them was getting more frantic and the reporters were whipped into a frenzy, targeting anyone they could get close to.

However one insightful soul at the strategy table did helpfully point something out.

“Erm, if they’ve got ranged weapons and they know how to use them, then er, shouldn’t we be movin’ back a little.” Everyone looked around and realised they were only thirty or so metres from the building.

As if in answer to that, gunfire sounded from the building and impacts could be heard from several parked cars and vans, one person went down with a wound to his arm. The crowd screamed, any semblance of order was lost and people behind the police cordon scrambled to find cover or to run away.

Jack dived behind a police car followed by Stacey and a few others, some officers returned fire and just like that Jack felt like he was in a war-zone. The goblins and police traded fire for a few seconds until another unexpected event occurred. A bottle was thrown from one of the upper floors onto a police car, it then exploded into a wash of flame. The goblins had somehow managed to create molotov cocktails!

Jack shared an incredulous look with Stacey which spread throughout the other hunters, clearly this was a new development. The way Jack saw it, he had two choices; he could take his chances and try to flee across no man's land away from the building risking a bullet to the back, or he could take his chances and run into the building. He watched one man, neither police nor hunter, attempt to flee away from the building, he was gunned down, his cream coloured dressing gown now coloured crimson. The goblins were getting pretty good considering they’d never used guns before, or at least he assumed they hadn’t.

Watching that man get shot in the back and seeing another police car get set on fire decided it for him, he got up into a crouching position and crab walked to the back end of the car. He got ready to run towards the building, he looked at Stacey and she nodded, not needing to speak. He took a few shallow breaths, then exploded towards the building.

It was only thirty metres but it felt like it took forever, it was like he was moving in slow motion, like everything was moving in slow motion, the goblin gunfire picked up as they targeted him, he pushed himself faster and faster and eventually he made it, followed closely by Stacey and several other hunters. A few seconds later the police who had been sheltering with them also followed, huffing and puffing, gasping for air.

They quickly went through the double doors into the building, emerging into a small lobby with little cover. They looked for cover and saw a side door leading to a small room. They rushed for it and all burst into the room, seeking its relative safety. Everyone collapsed onto chairs or the floor breathing heavily, not from exhaustion but more from the stress of having just avoided a hail of bullets.

Jack leaned against a wall and slid down it, Stacey joined him.

“So Jack, how's life as a hunter so far?” she asked him between deep breaths.

“Well, at first I thought I’d just be taking on minor hunts and making a respectable amount of money, you know, nothing epic. But I have to admit, things have certainly escalated a little.” He looked around at the people occupying the room, police carrying automatic assault rifles, heavily armoured hunters who reeked of power, and then him. Not for the first time he wondered if he should even be here.

“What the bloody hell was that!? You didn’t tell us those things could use firearms!” The police officer in charge yelled at one of the hunters, a large man wearing black armour trimmed in white fur, carrying a massive tower shield. He had the tell tale signs of an earth cultivator, bits of grey skin around his eyes, he looked at the officer impassively.

“We didn’t know, that was unexpected,” he replied calmly in a deep voice. “It's never been seen before.”

“What are we going to do now?” one of the hunters asked.

“We have to get out of here!”

“We have to attack!”

Once again they devolved into arguing, only Jack, Stacey and the big hunter remained silent. Finally the police officer in charge spoke up.

“Not that it was needed but I’ve radioed for backup and likely the guild also knows to send reinforcements?” He looked to the big guy who nodded calmly. “We can’t go outside, we’ll get gunned down, best bet is to stay put. Besides, we don’t even have the plan of the building anymore, we had to leave everything outside.”

“No we didn’t,” Stacey spoke up. “I snagged the building plan when everyone was ducking for cover.” She held up the paper map for everyone to see. The policeman walked over and all but snatched it out of her hands.

“Rude,” she complained but he ignored her. He flattened it out onto a coffee table and once again everyone poured over it and once again they procrastinated. Meanwhile Jack found a comfortable low padded chair and sat back in it, Stacey sat next to him, putting her feet onto a table. He looked around, they appeared to be in some sort of break room for the building caretakers.

“Hey Stace, who’s the big guy with the shield?” he asked her curiously.

“Hm? Oh that's Russell, he wasn’t actually here to fight originally. He’s rank B, the director just sent him to act as a liaison between us and the police and to observe in case things went to shit,” she explained nonchalantly.

“In case things went to shit huh? Does this qualify, I wonder?”

“Hey Russell! Does this qualify as things going to shit?” Stacey called over to Russell who loomed quietly over the coffee turned strategy table.

He turned to her and replied. “I believe this qualifies Stacey.” He nodded with a slight upturn of his lips.

The strategy meeting continued, in the end all that could be agreed upon was that they didn’t know how many goblins there were, where they were in the building, what weapons they had or how best to proceed. So basically they agreed they didn’t know anything and also that they didn’t know what to do. Fantastic, thought Jack.

While everyone continued to argue Jack headed over to the door, he opened it a little and peeked outside. He saw movement, goblins were coming down the stairs and moving across the lobby. He could hear their high pitched cackling and gibbering, but he also heard other things from further into the building, screaming; human screaming, men, women and children.

The goblins in the lobby were running, chasing something, someone. He heard a scream and cracked the door open further, he saw a small child, a little girl on the floor with several goblins standing over her. One of the goblins cackled, raised a knife above its head, intending to bring it down on the girl. Jack stopped thinking entirely as an instinctive furious rage surged up within him, with an animalistic rage filled roar he burst out of hiding, unhooking his axe from his back he crashed into the surprised mob of goblins, sweeping his axe through their small bodies. He stood over the girl, hacking with his axe left to right, catching the goblins as they tried to attack him. He was doing well, he’d murdered five of them in just a few seconds, it was then he saw one of the goblins on the stairs level a rifle at him. He didn't contemplate the fact he was about to die, he only snarled in anger and made to charge the gun wielding goblin when all of a sudden the goblin's head disappeared into a gory red paste. The rest of the goblins were likewise killed in quick succession and Jack looked around, he spotted Russell, he wasn't wielding a weapon, instead he hefted his shield in one hand and used the other to shoot out splinters of stone which zipped forward like bullets.

Soon enough all the goblins in the lobby were dead. Jack and Russell surveyed their handiwork and were joined by the other hunters and police. Overall there were seventeen of them, nine police, two paramedics and six hunters including Jack and Stacey.

One of the paramedics rushed over to the little girl and checked her over, Jack stepped aside. He walked over to where the other hunters gathered around Russell. Russell looked at Jack and nodded silently.

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The police are gathered around the corpse of the gun wielding goblin on the stairs.

“That's not a police issued firearm,” one said in confusion.

“A sawn-off shotgun?” another asked.

The hunters headed over to the police and joined them in looking down at the goblin. The police officer in charge sighed heavily and rubbed his brow in agitation.

“It's the black market, we’ve been seeing more and more sales of illegal firearms for the past year now, for obvious reasons.” He grunted in frustration and wiped his sweaty brow.

“Well, what would you rather buy if you were a normal person? A proper rifle or a short sword?” one police officer asked rhetorically, but shut up when the officer in charge sent him a glare.

“Can we have a plan yet?” one of the hunters asked.

Almost immediately Jack could sense the same belligerent energy build up within the group and an inevitable deadlock forming once more. However he also began to hear the sounds of goblins from up the stairs pickup, the unmistakable high pitched gibbering and cackling was getting louder and closer. It seemed they had drawn attention. Russell also seemed to have noticed.

“Company," he stated.

Everyone stopped arguing and looked at the stairs, the cackling was getting louder and louder, they could hear little feet form the sound of a stampede. It sounded like a genuine horde rushing down the stairs towards them.

Russell stepped forward. “We’ll catch them as they round the corner on the stairs, flamers throw everything you have into the goblins when you see them. Don’t stop until I give the signal,” he instructed. The three hunters other than Stacey, Russell and Jack all nodded. “From there we’ll move up the stairs slowly, killing everything that comes at us. I and the police will pick off any goblins with guns. Once we’ve dealt with that we’ll identify where the goblins have made their main nest and assault it.” His commanding tone brooked no argument from the others, even the police listened meekly. “Any questions?” There were none, not that anyone had any time because the goblins had arrived.

“Flamers now!” Russell commanded.

The other three hunters stepped forward and all sent large continuous plumes of orange fire directly onto the stairwell as a tide of goblins surged down it. It was a wide stairwell, about five metres across, but the flames completely engulfed it all. The goblins caught in it screamed shrilly in panic and pain, they emerged from the conflagration as blackened, smoking, shrivelled corpses landing at the foot of the stairs. More goblins kept pouring into the flames from above and back out again at the bottom, pushed on by the weight of numbers from the horde of goblins still surging down the stairs.

Eventually the number of goblins plunging into the flames petered out, the goblins from above now able to stop. Russell gave the command to cease and then led the group upstairs. They had to push through a wall of blackened goblin corpses before they got to the stairs proper, dozens of them. There was a sickly sour smell of charred meat heavy in the air.

Russell led them upstairs with everyone following closely behind. They met the rest of the goblins milling in confusion on the stairs around the corner, when the goblins spotted them they didn’t immediately attack, still in shock from the flames poured over their compatriots. Russell gave the order to attack and immediately began conjuring small stone spikes and flinging them into the mass of goblins. Jack and the rest of the hunters stepped forward.

Jack channelled lightning into his axe and hacked into the cringing confused mass of goblins with abandon, he made sure to push forward as much as possible and keep a distance from the other hunters so he didn’t accidentally hit any of them. The goblins got over their confusion and began to attack en masse with renewed glee, uncaring of the casualties they suffered. Jack didn’t know how much time had passed, he just kept hacking and slashing, moving further upstairs. Multiple times he received light wounds to his face, arms and legs, but he couldn’t feel them, the adrenaline overpowered any pain, fuelling his strength.

He drew more and more on his core, he put more and more strength and speed into his axe blows, his axe was now visibly emitting blue lightning sparks and going straight through entire goblin bodies, sometimes several at once in a single swing. Everything seemed to slow down slightly as the goblins threw themselves at him. He felt a sense of elated calm combined with a sense of vicious euphoria, losing himself in the flow of the fight, it felt like this was where he was supposed to be! No where else but here! He let out a wild laugh and drew on more power from his core, pushing forward even more.

He didn’t know how long he fought, he’d lost all sense of time, he only knew what was in front of him, but the light from outside was starting to get dim when before it was bright. Before he knew it, the last goblin was standing in front of him, or more accurately, on its knees, shivering frightfully in front of him having been cornered with nowhere else to go. As Jack got near, it desperately lashed out with a kitchen knife, Jack contemptuously swung his axe one handed, disarming it. Looking down at the small creature, he didn’t feel pity, he felt hatred, thinking back to the little girl down in the lobby, of all the human screams he’d heard echoing throughout the building. He reached out with his right hand and grasped it by the front of its face, he then lifted it up one handed and smashed its head against the wall, several times until its skull crumpled completely, he felt a savage sense of satisfaction as he felt the goblin skull fall apart like rotten fruit in his hand.

He stood there for a few moments, breathing heavily and shivering as the fight left his blood, leaning with his hand against the wall, with bits of goblin between his fingers. He felt something touch his shoulder, he turned around quickly and saw Stacey talking to him, but he couldn’t hear her words, just a faint distant voice barely audible over the rushing of blood in his ears.

“Are….okay……ack…..you…..it….don’t…”

He blinked in confusion before she began to make sense.

“Jack! Jack! You good?” She lightly slapped his face, bringing him back to his senses. His heartbeat slowed and the rush of blood and adrenaline faded, he took a deep breath.

“Er yeah, yeah, all good. Erm, how about you? Are you okay?” he asked shakily.

“Yeah I’m fine, everyone made it thankfully,” she said, sounding relieved. She was covered in goblin blood and had several light scratches on her face.

They looked back down the stairs to the rest of the group, everyone appeared relatively unharmed, a couple of other hunters were breathing heavily with their hands on their knees. Russell looked completely unfazed, standing amongst the carnage, it wouldn’t have even looked like he’d been in a fight at all if it hadn’t been for all the blood and gore that plastered his shield. The police also appeared fine since they’d kept to the back, shooting down any gun wielding goblins. One or two of them however looked completely traumatised and were sending more than a few horrified looks Jack's way for some reason. He looked down at himself and realised he was completely covered in blood and gore.

“Er do you have a wet wipe or a cloth or something?” he asked Stacey with a smile, to which she just snorted in amusement.

They walked down to the main group to see what they were doing, stepping over the innumerable piles of freshly slaughtered goblins. It was then that Russell spoke up.

“We’re heading back down. This was far more goblins than expected, if this many goblins were sent to respond to an encroachment on their territory then we’ve severely underestimated their numbers. We’ll secure the downstairs area and wait for reinforcements. I need to contact the director and speak with him about this,” he said as he led their group back downstairs.

“Good, I need to speak to the chief superintendent too,” the police officer in charge stated.

The group headed back down to the lobby. As they walked one of the flame element hunters approached Jack.

“You kill goblins good mate, don’t often get to see a bloodbath like that,” he complimented Jack.

“Ah ha, thanks,” he awkwardly accepted the praise.

Russell also turned his head to Jack. “Was that your first time blood raging?” he asked Jack.

“Blood…..raging? I don’t know? I’ve never heard of that term before. What's that?” He replied in confusion.

“It's what happens when a hunter draws on their core to fuel their strength directly, but it combines with their adrenaline, and when you’re still inexperienced you can’t control it so good. So you lose yourself a little. Blood raging isn’t a widely used term, I expect other branches and other hunting institutions have different terms for it,” Russell explained.

“Huh, I guess it was my first time then. To be honest I think I kinda liked it,” Jack said wonderingly.

“You certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself, you fought like a crazy bear!” Stacey giggled at him.

“Heh, um hey, have you ever seen this many goblins before? Do infestations get this large usually?” he asked.

“No, never, I have never ever seen this many goblins all in one place before today,” Stacey said firmly and a little worriedly.

“This is an unusually large spawning of goblins, the largest one I’ve ever heard of,” Russell also said. The other hunters also stated the same.

They arrived back into the lobby, clambering over the pile of incinerated goblins once again. They made their way back into the caretaker's breakroom and all tiredly collapsed once more into chairs or flopping down onto the floor. The two paramedics were there with the little girl who now had a bandaged arm and several plasters on her face. They then moved amongst the police and hunters, seeing to those that were hurt and injured.

Jack spotted a vending machine in the corner and wandered over to it, he used some loose change in his pocket to buy a couple of canned soft drinks for him and Stacey. While he was doing this he listened to the little girl haltingly tell her story about the goblins. The police officer in charge also helpfully filled in the backstory.

From the sounds of it, the infestation had been brewing for a couple of months but no one had been able to get a definite glimpse or sign of any goblin or other monster. Things kept disappearing, odd whispering and cackling was heard occasionally by the building residents but nothing more than that. The building manager had contacted the hunters guild and police several times to do a search but almost every time they did a search they found nothing. On the last search however it was discovered a group of teenagers had been playing pranks on the building residents and that they were behind the theft of various items from different flats. It was thought that was the end of it, but then even more items started disappearing, then pets, then people. Then the goblins let themselves be seen one day, that's when things went to hell all at once.

The little girl who’s name was Mary and ten years old, her first experience with a goblin was particularly traumatic as it had quite literally crawled out from beneath her bed and tried to drag her under it. Jack and a few others shivered, he made a mental note to check beneath his bed every time he went to sleep from now on, and inside his closet, and inside his draws, his kitchen cabinets, behind his curtains. Or maybe just go with a more minimalist lifestyle and get rid of some furniture, maybe sleep with his machete under his pillow too actually.

Russell and the police guy were both on their phones, everyone else was resting, so Jack took this opportunity to do some cultivation. He made his way to the door and at Russell's questioning glance Jack told him he was going to stand watch on the stairs, Russell nodded and turned back to his conversation on his phone.

Jack left the break room and headed for the stairs, he heard footsteps behind him and saw Stacey casually following him, still sipping from her can. He nodded his thanks wordlessly with a slight smile and proceeded to go back up the stairs, blood had dripped down the stairs in a red flood and their boots came away sticky. They walked upwards and rounded the corner.

The sight that greeted them was one of absolute carnage, goblin bodies were splayed out on the stairs all over the place, the corpses couldn't even flop down the stairs because there were so many, the actual stairs no longer even visible. They both stopped and were momentarily stunned, even though they were responsible for it. It's difficult to comprehend something like this unless you look at it with fresh eyes. Red blood was still dribbling down the stairs and faint multicoloured vapour was emanating from the piles of goblin corpses.

“Better hurry up Jack before you miss your chance,” Stacey urged him.

“Uh right.” He kneeled down and began his work. They were there for about an hour with Jack cultivating and Stacey standing over him, watching over him. There were plenty of goblin corpses for Jack to choose from and this time he didn’t need to put Stacey to work, dragging any corpses over to him. In the end he managed to cultivate from twenty three of them, that was significantly more cultivation than he’d ever managed to do before. He made sure to wring out every last drop from each goblin so that no monster corpse remained behind.

He stood up from the last one, he felt full. His muscles twitched randomly and his brain felt like it was pressing against the back of his skull. He stiffly turned to Stacey.

“I think I’m done, like done done, ya know,” Jack tiredly said to Stacey.

“Yeah, I think we both are. There's no way this is still an F rank, and if it is then its job done I reckon. The guild will probably either bump this up a couple of ranks or divide it into multiple lower ranked hunts for more than one team.” She nodded tiredly.

It was dark outside now and the stairwell lights had stopped working. They both leaned against the stair railing and silently watched the multicoloured vapours rise from the dead goblins, filling the air around them with strange distorted lights. It was actually sort of beautiful, almost ethereal.

The air became thicker and thicker with multicoloured vapour and rainbow light. He then realised that some of it was even emanating from the blood and gore that plastered the front of his armour and his arms and hands, even his face and hair. He raised his hands and looked at them wonderingly. Stacey drew her sabre and watched the blood slowly fade away from the blade into multicoloured vapour. Jack wiped his hands on his trousers and took out his pager, he brought up the camera option, Stacey stepped to his side after flattening her hair down and they both posed with a smile for the selfie.

After another half an hour two police officers came up to relieve them of their watch, they descended the stairs and came to a lobby full of police in riot gear wielding rifles, shotguns and riot shields. Amongst them were more hunters milling around or gathered around Russell and director Adrian Welts himself.

The director spotted them and waved them over.

“Ah! Stacey, Jack, I hear you’ve both been busy, excellent work both of you.” He beamed at them.

“Thank you sir.” Stacey replied and Jack silently nodded in response.

“So I’ve decided to assign this situation temporary priority, any hunter team that participates will get D rank pay. How about it, you up for continuing?” he asked cheerfully.

“Urgh,” Jack involuntarily let out a groan. He was past worrying about upsetting his superior at this point but Welts just laughed it off anyway.

“Ha ha ha, of course. That's more than understandable, you’ve had quite a day. Anyway I’ve already confirmed that every hunter that entered this building earlier will be assigned C rank pay, that's one thousand five hundred pounds,” he explained.

“Thank you sir!” Stacey thanked him with surprise and shock.

“Er thanks,” Jack replied.

The director smiles. “Of course, now before you leave please make sure you check in with our medics outside. And don’t worry, the police have cleared the front of the building of any goblins with guns.”

They both thanked him and tiredly left the building, nodding to Russell as they passed him. He nodded back quietly with a slight smile, the other three hunters also joined them on their way out, no one wanted to stay. To be honest Jack was relieved in more ways than one, he was too tired to keep fighting, too sore from cultivation and he really didn’t want to find out what had happened to the people still trapped in the building with the goblins.