Adam was in a bit of a bind. He wanted to talk to Jay in the hopes of calming him down and getting him to follow along with the plan. The problem was that everytime he even got near the new kid his System Assistance would kick in, once more turning him into Super Mom. It was both frustrating and a waste of time. To further add to the madness of the situation, if he had been honest with Martin in the beginning, then he could explain his problem with his System Assistance and get all the help he needed. Martin wasn’t exactly oblivious, however, so he had figured out some of the issues. As a result, Adam was leading their little outing while Jay joined Martin on the bench of the cart.
Without the rest of the duke’s travel contingent they had made great time on their return to the Blue Sea Forest. Originally, Jay had tried to escape several times, but the farther they got from the city, the wider his eyes became. Apparently, he’d never been out of the city and had heard horror stories of the monsters in the countryside. Upon realizing that the boy was too afraid to run, they could have told him that the types of monsters he had heard about were only really found in the forest or near the mountains in the nearby areas. The farmland they had been traveling through was safe. Martin had been reluctant to use the authority the duke had given him over the boys, so letting the misconception stand was their best option.
As it was, they needed the boy close now. They had reentered the forest.
Martin was quietly explaining the reason behind their trip to Jay for the third time. It didn’t seem to be going any better than it had the first two times. For some reason the boy didn't think the duke using him as a stressor and monster bait was a good idea. For his part, Adam was beginning to come around to the duke’s view on the entire thing. Jay was an annoying little shit as far as he was concerned, horrible life or not. Add in the difficulty he was having in actually finding monsters, and Jay was starting to look like excellent bait.
The final piece of the entire mess, as far as Adam was concerned, was that the System was pushing at him, trying to get him to use Instant Family. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the benefits to doing so, he was just concerned about the cost while the connection existed. Specifically as Mother Knows Best applied to Instant Family.
Instant Family: Everyone has a family, even orphans. As an orphan you get to choose your family. Instant Family lets you choose the family you always wanted. More importantly, it also lets you choose who isn’t family anymore. You’ll always know who your family are.
Designate people as Family or not. Identify Family or Foe.
Mother Knows Best: Raising a child takes a sublime understanding of all things. Yet it is not enough to simply know things, Mothers have to know them better than everyone else because Mother Knows Best. How else are Mothers to know everything their child is doing?
Knowledge skill. Provides more knowledge about everything one learns. Includes everything needed to raise a child. Know everything your child gets up to.
Mother Knows Best had kicked in while the duke had told them the story of Jay, but it hadn’t actually given him any more knowledge. He could feel it waiting for something, could see that little old witch in his head smirking and stirring her cauldron. He just knew it was full of all the horrible indignities and suffering that Jay had experienced, and she was just waiting for him to use Instant Family to dump it all on him. He could admit to himself that he was scared of that knowledge.
That being said, if the goal was to grow his skills, levels, and understanding of raising children the combination of the two skills was perfect. In fact, it was why he had originally purchased both skills. Instant Family hadn’t gotten any use yet, but he had been planning to use it on the duke’s children the moment they were placed in his care. If he didn’t use it, then it was a wasted skill point, and he refused to accept that loss. He was somewhere between hoping and praying that he didn’t have to use the skill on Jay, but he feared it would become necessary. The forest was dangerous, and they didn’t have any back up other than Martin.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Jay’s whining voice rose in volume as he continued to argue with Martin, and Adam turned to Shhhhhh him. As he turned he spotted a goblin trying to hide in the bushes near the road. One goblin wasn’t much of an issue, or a fight, but goblins were like deer. There was never just one.
He wasn’t sure if it was his actual reaction, or if System Assistance kicked in, but Adam did something he had never once practiced with Martin. He threw a kitchen knife.
He’d been marching along in his apron, complete with pockets full of knives and cookies, so producing a knife didn’t surprise the two in the cart. Martin was stupefied and disappointed to realize that they had completely neglected the throwing aspect of knife fighting. Jay was mostly surprised that the knife was flying in his general direction, although not too much, it wasn’t the first knife he had had thrown at him. Nor the first to hit something else before it got to him. It was the first to kill a goblin right in front of his eyes, and pin it to the wagon right next to him. On a closer look, Martin was surprised to find that it was a bread knife. It was an odd choice for throwing, being both unbalanced and serrated, but effective nonetheless. He turned his attention to the fight.
After throwing his bread knife, Adam was quietly cursing in his head. He’d have to get by without the massive bleed damage of the bread knife, as well as its longer length. It would have been helpful to have the extra half a hand against the spears of the goblins. Instead he pulled a boning knife and a cook’s knife. The two were a bit of a go to if he was being honest with himself, the boning knife for the finger guard to help when attempting to slide a blade away, and the cook’s knife for length and stability.
Realizing that their ambush had been disrupted, the remaining goblins rushed to attack. Adam was torn between cursing or thanking his rotten luck. He was clearly enveloped by the wave of filthy, green monstrosities, but the cart, and its vulnerable passenger, was far enough back as to be ignored for the moment. He had enough knives that he could have thrown more, but he had already grabbed the best blades for fighting. As the swarm neared, he ducked under the first few, badly thrown spears, then turned into a spin. He pushed harder, mentally, at his blades, knowing there was something intangible about the process to activate skills. It was another thing that Martin had only briefly touched upon, thinking that they had time, a dangerous choice in retrospect.
He felt the stuttering of his blades skipping along ribs, a sensation he had grown accustomed to in the kitchen. In its new environment, the feeling made him have to fight back nausea. He didn’t have the time to feel things like that, even Multi Task was already stressed to its limit trying to track both weapons as well as the goblins. He wasn’t getting any kills at the moment, simply trying to draw the ire of the entire group before they had a chance to head for Jay. There were a few impacts against his chest and legs, but the only pain he felt was along his arms where a couple of spear points had scratched as they were deflected past him.
He spotted one spear thrusting for his face, and had to yank his arm up in an attempt to deflect it. The cook’s knife cleaved right through the spear, far surpassing his expectations, and caused the goblin to stumble as its strike hit nothing at all. Seemingly without any thought from him, Adam’s arm swept down again and swept the goblin’s head from its shoulders, Multi Task doing its thing once again. With that one out of the way, he suddenly realized he had pushed through the throng, and turned to face what he knew was coming.
Instead of a charging horde of slavering, green midgets, Adam instead faced a slaughterhouse floor. There were plenty of goblins, but very few were still in fighting condition. The stuttering of his blades he had thought were ribs, was instead his knives severing limbs. Even the injured goblins without missing limbs looked to be dying. Each wound he inflicted, whether it removed an appendage or not, left the target hemorrhaging blood like a fountain.
Some of the goblins, those nearest to him when the ambush broke, hadn’t been struck, but had tried to chase him through their tribesmen. In a way, their fate was worse than that of their fellows, as they were blinded by spraying blood, tripped by severed limbs, and eventually stabbed while they were down as Adam quickly finished off anything still breathing.
Wide-eyed, he looked at Martin, trying to make sense of it. The only explanation he could think of was that he had managed to activate Cut to the Heart, and it was far beyond what they had thought it would be capable of.