Things had changed in their combat formation on their final day in the forest. Martin no longer watched over Jay while Adam fought. Or at least not as closely. Instead he hung out at a distance, running over watch, but also forcing Adam to pay attention to the younger boy during a fight. It was his final test, so they needed to make it as authentic as possible. They were, of course, ignoring the fact that he would be watching over two children, in addition to working with their normal complement of guards. Still, it was a good evaluation of his capabilities.
The first sign of something wrong was Martin bouncing a rock off of Adam’s shoulder. Until that point he had been inspecting the remnants of his shirt. There wasn’t much left after the thorny bushes shredded through it. In order to divest himself of the remnants he had pulled the top portion of his apron over his head, letting it hang past his waist and leaving himself shirtless. With the obvious warning, he quickly ducked his head back into the apron strap, and stepped between Jay and the direction of where he saw another rock bounce off of a tree at the clearing’s edge.
A quick brush against the front of his apron assured him that most of his knives were readily available, although he had to add his bread knife to his boning knife on the useless list. He was down to his cook’s, carving, and paring knives. If he thought he had the time he would have started swearing, again, over the lack of preparations on his armaments. With Jay present, Mama Bear was both more and less reliable than he liked to be relying on. He motioned Jay to keep moving backwards, subtly leading the boy away from the eviscerated bodies that the bushes had likely been feeding from in some fashion. He’d seen the “gear” that was near them during the fight, so he was less surprised than he wanted to be when a small group of men walked out of the tree line.
They were a motley crew of four, with none of them the same race. They looked like the start of a bad joke Jay had heard at the training grounds in the estate. A human, a dwarf, an orc, and an elf walk into a bar. When told by the guards he was familiar with the joke normally ended in the human coming out looking superior in some way, but Adam was worried that he didn’t have what it would take to show any of these four up.
The dwarf wasn’t heavily armored, but that didn’t remove the threat of crossbow that was broader than Adam was tall. Or the beard that weighed more than he did. The elf had more knives than the entire kitchen crew at the estate and dead eyes. The orc had muscles bigger than he was, not to mention the massive battle axe strapped to his back. The human looked like he’d been raised by the ambulatory thorn bushes judging by the number of scars on his visible skin. Even his face was a map of pain and suffering, but the scars tugged his features into a smile that made it look as though the man had enjoyed every second of it. The rest of him was covered with a mixed collection of ill-fitting leather armors, and he had a short sword and a couple daggers strapped to his waist.
Two to one odds was never a good situation, but they had to add a dependent as well. It wasn’t all bad news though, as none of the four looked very old. Certainly they had years on Adam, but they couldn’t have been much past Evolution. They were still dangerous, and outnumbered them though. Martin could probably handle them through hit and run combat if he could drop the dwarf early. Not that it mattered with them anchored to the unawakened Jay.
There were only three ways Adam could see to get out of the upcoming violence alive. First, and the least likely, was to talk his way out. It was a possibility, no matter how remote, that the men weren’t looking to murder, rob, or enslave them. Second, and equally unlikely in his opinion, was divine intervention. Since neither of those options looked tactically sound, Adam was betting on option number three: Martin stabbing them all in the back while he kept them distracted. Even his final chance wasn’t the best odds, as the reason he thought his teacher might get all backstabby was because he’d never seen the man in anything heavier than leather armor.
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They stopped roughly ten paces from the boys, the human in the lead. He never even glanced at the remains to his left, although Adam never once doubted the man was aware of them. His first words simply confirmed the worst of the boy’s suspicions.
“So, you’ve found my possessions. Far too late to save them though.”
Adam had a hard time judging the man’s emotions as the scars distorted his facial features, not that any of it was needed. The threat in the man’s voice was clear. There was no point in talking, but neither was there benefit in attacking either. So he simply waited, dreading the next steps.
The other men shifted about as their leader waited on Adam’s response. He recognized the shifting as them adjusting their weapons or position to be more ready when the action began. As expected, the human didn’t wait long before losing his patience and the thin excuse he was using in an attempt to capture them without bloodshed. “Hmph. Take them.”
Just like that, the time for preparations was over. Adam didn’t have a lot of options despite his skills. Mama Bear was probably the best option he had, but it was also a very one dimensional existence. A great skill for defending some children when there were people around to handle the attackers, but less useful when he was by himself as bears were fairly predictable and limited in their attacks. Option three would be a great time to use Mama Bear, but they were currently going through his final assessment, which meant that Martin was expected to wait until he was near death to intervene. Faced with a bunch of slaving bandits he realized that the skills he had been so proud of not long ago were nearly useless in situations like the one before him. He had no damaging skills, no finishers, and the only crowd control skill he had would only be useful on mages. He’d been relying on Mama Bear to get him out of most things, but now he was faced with a perfect counter to his greatest skill. People.
The dwarf, elf, and human all hung back as the orc approached. Adam wasn’t certain why more of them didn’t come to help, but the likely reason was that they were children and therefor weak and helpless. There arrogant blindness was more help than they realized. Yes, the other three were the ones most likely to be smart enough to figure out how to fight his bear form, but only the dwarf and the orc had weapons that worried him. If he could take the massive battle axe wielding orc out of the fight early, they might have a chance.
The brute didn’t even bother taking his axe off his back, just reaching out to grab both boys, one in each arm. The best part of how the orc tried to catch them to Adam’s eye was how he blocked the view of the other three. To the orc’s great surprise, the closer of the two cowering children went from whining to weapon in a split second. He didn’t have time to do more than grunt in surprise as one blade sank into his heart, and the other tried to take his head. His forward momentum tugged loose Adam’s grip on his blades, the carving knife in the orc’s heart but notched into the ribs and the cook’s blade stuck in the vertebrae. He’d tried to use Cut to the Heart to get through the whole neck in one blow, but didn’t quite make it.
The orc started to fall, the blood fountaining out in a geyser from the orc’s nearly severed head, and rained down over Adam. As he was revealed to the three remaining bandits, he no longer looked like a weak and harmless child. Instead he appeared to them as a shirtless, blood-soaked, Halfling Berserker.
With a paring knife.