The guards hadn't made it all the way back to the wall before they started collapsing--Lucas's mom was maybe fifty paces away, and she and the [Warrior] pinning her were by far the closest of all. The goblins were only around a dozen paces beyond that, frenetically going from guard to paralyzed guard and meting out horrifyingly final strikes. Lucas flared each and every Skill he could in order to get to his mother before any one of them.
Between his high agility and the boosts piled on by [Accelerant Frame] and [Quick Step], Lucas chewed up the intervening distance, but each second passed agonizingly slowly. He watched the wave of monsters pass over the village's defenders and desperately pushed himself to move just a bit faster.
One particularly large goblin carrying a grisly axe at the from of the wave took notice of him. It looked between the two of them and, when it saw where Mary laid prone upon the ground and looked back at him, Lucas swore it smiled. It set its eyes on the disabled [Healer] and started charging.
He wasn't going to be able to make it. His mom was going to die...
"AghHH!" Lucas screamed and curved to the side, snatching up a couple of crude weapons from near the closest corpse pile before putting himself back on target and throwing one as hard as he could. Then he dump all the mana he'd been able to [Overcharge] earlier into [Quick Step].
The worn cudgel he'd thrown flew true, straight at the goblin, and was easily knocked to the side. But the brief distraction gave Lucas time to get between it and his mother and get his scavenged short sword up, just as the goblin closed the final stretch and swung its axe in an overhead blow. Suddenly, the two of them were directly face to face, and the goblin viciously snarled.
[Goblin - leV3| ?%]
...
[*ERROR*--
Lucas hurriedly blinked the abrupt notifications away and kicked out his right foot into one of the monster's knees. It collapsed with a pained screech and dropped its axe, falling just low enough and at the right level that--when Lucas swung his blade around--it sliced right through the thing's neck. Lucas was painted in a light spray of red, and he stood frozen, panting, staring down at the monster for a few crucial moments.
"SKReaaa!" the next closest goblin cried, and they all charged.
Lucas didn't stand there waiting, and scooped up the axe the first goblin dropped before charging as well. He adjusted his grip on the two weapons as he ran, neither of which he was overly familiar with, but they'd just have to do. In the smaller creatures' hands, both weapons would have seemed too large to wield one-handed, but in his they were comfortable enough to wield together.
Just before he collided with the wave of monsters, he veered of to the left, changing his angle of approach slightly. That was all the strategy time would afford him before he jumped in the middle of the chaos and had to dodge three thrusting spears at once. Lucas went under one and pushed two to the side with his sword before cleaving the axe into one goblin's neck, moving all the while.
He pushed through the goblins' advance and did his best to stay alive. By necessity, [Accelerant Frame] stayed active the entire time and he even employed [Quick Step] whenever possible as well. He only scored the shallowest occasional slice on an enemy, but each second he stayed alive was a victory. Then Lucas tried to dodge around another incoming blow and moved just a little bit too slow, earning himself a burning tear across his back before he was able to spin away.
After that, he came out on the other side of the wave and made a bit of distance while keeping an eye on the monsters as they turned. Lucas dropped [Accelerant Frame] and breathed, then channeled enough healing into his back to stop the bleeding.
I survived, but only took out one of them. I need a new plan.
Unfortunately, nothing came to him. He needed to keep all of the monsters' attention to prevent them from moving on the village, and while jumping right in their midst was incredibly dangerous and reckless, it also got the job done. He had no more time to consider it, either, as they were quickly on him and he had to jump back in, reactivating his augmentation Skill.
Lucas jumped and twisted and slid and slashed. Along the way, he collected a few more cuts and scrapes, but managed to bury his sword into one goblin's back and cleaved his axe into another's head. Unfortunately, the weapons were stuck well enough that he didn't have the leverage required to get them back out, and he was forced to move on without them.
The goblins immediately pressed on him harder, slicing and thrusting and swinging all they could now that whatever slight caution his weapons gave them was gone. Lucas panicked a little and scrambled out of the way, but when he got too close to the wave's outer edge, the goblins closed ranks and blocked his path. He couldn't get out, and it only got worse.
Lucas felt as if a soporific cloud had descended upon him as he tried to keep ahead of the monsters' questing blades. His vision started to blur, so he leaned more heavily on [Vigilance] and his other, enhanced senses. They faithfully guided him for a time, over and between two arching swords, past incoming spear points, and out of the reach of crude hammers--but he was no longer hitting back.
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Then he slipped. The ground had been churned up into mud, so he could be forgiven for not realizing the insecurity of the step he took. The goblins were constantly slipping. But his mistake counted against him much more, and as he fell, it was like the soporific cloud pressed him down further. Lucas's vision blurred even more and began to darken.
Get up, Lucas, GET UP!
He couldn't move. The goblins had to be right there, nearly on top of him. He just couldn't move--the exhaustion was too much. He was going to die.
His mom was going to die.
Who knew what would happen to the rest of the village.
No no no no, come on!
Lucas cycled through each and every one of his Skills to find something that would get him out of this. He even tried [Stealth], as laughably idiotic as that attempt was. He still did everything he could. [Hyper Processing] gave him a few precious moments as the sounds of the goblins drew near. Lucas used every damn Skill he had.
[0r4#@*]
...
[*ERROR* - identification failed!]
What?
There was no time. None of Lucas's other Skills had any effect when he just couldn't move, but [Identify] of all things had caught on something. Lucas still couldn't see, so he didn't know what it was, but out of pure desperation he latched onto the new development and pushed his Skill as far as it could go.
[0r4#@*]
...
[*ERROR--
Again.
[Cr4#@--
Again.
Something clicked, and Lucas's vision opened up before him.
[Corruption]
It was mana. The same thing that clouded his vision, the cloud that seemed to sap all his energy, it was the same mana he'd seen in and around the changed goblins. It blocked his sight with the unnatural twists of the currents it cause, and it held him down somehow. Lucas knew what he had to do. With the last few instants he had, he tried to manipulate the corruption away with a flood from his own reserves.
And failed.
"Crragackena?" a goblin's voice sounded from right next to him, followed by another from his other side. They were upon him.
But through some mercy, they didn't immediately end his life. Lucas felt himself hoisted up by a couple pairs of hands and dragged over somewhere. The goblins didn't care for his comfort, and he felt himself get a few scrapes and scratches along the way, but that didn't matter. They'd given him time.
Lucas tried to push off the corruption once again, but his mana got as far as the surface of his body before it could go no further. Still, he strained and kept at it as he felt the goblins drop him back onto the ground. It wasn't working. Lucas took hold of each and every single little flow of mana he had and shoved it out, anything to survive, but the blanket of corruption pressed it down just as it did his body.
Until it didn't.
[*Warning* - foreign influence detected!]
The corruption started pressing inward, and he knew it was trying to make him like the goblins. Lucas fought against it but it kept pressing in. It invaded his body from every direction at once and worked its way to his core--then it touched on something, and by instinct, Lucas took ahold of all the mana in his body--including the corruption, and suddenly the pressure was gone.
[Foreign influence consumed by [----------]!]
[Limited Mana Authority has risen to Lesser Mana Authority!]
Lucas's vision cleared right alongside the dark and twisted mana, and he shot to his feet. His sudden movement shocked a goblin on his left for a moment, causing it to stumble away a few steps. Lucas took the opportunity and activated both [Accelerant Frame] and [Shock] before throwing out a lightning-clad punch.
The result was much more than probably either of them were expecting. Lucas's punch hit the monster directly in the throat and then a flood of lightning washed over it, briefly reached up into the sky, then grounded with an explosive boom at its feet. The goblin was nearly blasted apart and what was left when the dust cleared was little more than a blackened mess.
Lucas stood there stunned, not even fully noticing the surprised and outraged screeching that started up. Then blinding, constricting pain twisted at his insides and he turned a horrified eye to his status.
[HP: 410/680]
[MP: 2396/1000]
Shit. That's bad.
Lucas started burning, but the goblins were all now headed his way. He stepped forward, then stumbled and nearly fell, before gritting his teeth and righting himself. He leaned down and scooped up the newly-dead goblin's spear and activated every single mana-consuming Skill he had, then jumped back into the fray.
----------------------------------------
For a time, Lucas lost himself in the flurry of battle. Every step was a [Quick Step], every strike a [Shock], and every second boosted by his augmentation and held together through his healing. After a little while, the burn of massively [Overcharge]d mana stopped holding him back so much, but it never stopped making him feel as if he'd swallowed red hot coals.
Lucas parried another thrusting spear with his latest sword and slashed out, cleaving the offending goblin in two and blasting the remnant pieces some distance away. The monsters' weapons were far too crude to handle the abuse he was putting on them, and the sword crumbled in his hands, forcing him to once again move on to his next weapon.
He spun and threw the spear at the next nearest enemy like a bolt from the heavens. Visions of a similar moment in ages past briefly flashed before his eyes for a single moment, then were gone. That had been happening repeatedly since he overcame the corruption and woke back up.
Lucas wasn't sure if the visions were brought on by his feverish state or something more, but with each one it was as if he gained vastly more familiarity with whatever weapon he was using. For now, it didn't matter. Lucas would use everything he had to finish these creatures.
So he jumped and dashed and struck, fighting without a single concern for his mana because it was practically unending right now. Goblins fell one after another to his strikes, but none of their's ever mattered. Lucas regenerated and healed from any wound faster than they could make it, and after a certain point, he stopped caring if they landed a hit. All that mattered was taking the next one down.
All too soon, the goblins were no more. Lucas was surrounded by a charred and cratered clearing, littered with what once might have been corpses and trees--he hadn't even noticed the fight pull that far away from the village wall. But it was over, and he could finally collapse. He fell first to his knees before the momentum carried the rest of him down to the ground. The last thing Lucas saw before the creeping darkness took him was a brief flash of his status.
[HP: 571/680]
[MP: 1501/1000]
Then he was gone.