“It’s over.” Lina thought the millisecond right after she felt herself slip. The guy wouldn’t play games with her, he would instantly follow up, disarm her and then do what he promised. Luckily, that wasn’t what happened. Defying her general realism, her darkest expectations and everyone’s wildest dreams, in the attempt to not fall, her clumsy body by reflex raised her arms and thus the point of the sword. It was due to this stroke of luck, that when Lina opened her eyes, she found a dead body with a pierced throat on her blade.
All that trouble, the fear, the adrenaline, the pain she had caused and that had been caused to herself and the guys died like that. It felt surreal, not right. It felt like fruitlessly debugging for days, not getting closer to the solution only to find, that your program suddenly worked. She knew that feeling and feeling it now only made the whole experience stranger. She knew she should be happy and she was, but it was just too unreal.
Lina was brought back to reality as she heard the last man, whom she had completely forgotten about, if she was being honest with herself, plead.
“P-please don’t kill me. J-just let me go.” Stuttered the third guy, now free of the rope, standing right at the edge of the pond. He was obviously not as courageous as the other thugs and seemingly did not want to continue the fight.
Lina thought about it. Could she just let him go? They had tried to capture and possibly do unspeakable things to her, but this guy actually hadn’t done anything until now… However, she couldn’t trust him. On the other hand, what would he do? He had just a dull dagger and she had an abnormally sharp sword.
“L-listen I know what you are thinking, but I won’t do anything” the guy stammered, as he laid his dagger on the floor and kicked it toward her.
“See? I am unarmed.” He said while raising his open hands.
“What is in your backpack?” Lina suddenly questioned, her eyes thinning.
“Eh, w-what?” He stuttered, flustered by her sudden question, which to him seemed totally unrelated to anything.
“Your backpack, what’s in it?” Lina repeated, brandishing the sword.
“S-supplies, I was kind of just the carrier of our group, the support, the one to deal with all the mundane things. I can’t fight and I don’t have anything I could use to threaten you in there. Please believe me.”
Lina considered what he said. She always thought she was good at detecting lies, and he sounded like he said the truth. Well, additionally, this guy really did not look like a fighter. Plus, she really did not want to kill someone just to be thorough. She sighed.
“Then go, but first give me your supplies, your food, water and whatever else you have!... And leave the rope when you are gone!” Lina demanded. She really did not want to kill him, but she had literally nothing other than a sword and a dress, both of which wouldn’t help her survive in an unfamiliar forest. She needed to think of the future, not just of the next few minutes. Additionally, it kinda felt like the right thing to do and a good price for all the trouble she had to go through. But a thought struck her as she made her decision.
“How… how do you plan to get out?” Looking up at the snapped rope, she was certain the guy couldn’t reach it.
To her surprise, he responded differently than she had expected.
“No problem, I have the general telekinesis skill.”
With no further explanation, Lina observed as the wet rope slowly rose out of the water, the one responsible for that magic trick obviously highly focused. It did seem to take some effort, but not as much as Lina would have expected for something like that. How did he do that when she couldn’t figure out how even the most basic of those magic symbols worked? Soon enough though, her amazement waned, as the repair took longer than either one of them would have liked.
Lina observed as the guy failed miserably at knotting the wet, slippery rope for what felt like ages, both of them in uncomfortable silence. Eventually, though, after what felt like hours, he managed it and climbed up the rope while Lina still pointed her sword at him. She stayed like that, even after he was gone. When nothing happened for quite some time, she finally allowed herself to relax. The adrenaline and fear fading, she plopped down on the floor, tired from the events of the day.
Now that she was, kind of, safe, she thought about what had just happened. While everything was happening, she was too scared, and her body was too saturated with adrenalin for her to notice what she was doing, but now she realized, what she had done and felt her heart sink. She killed two people.
She had never even punched anyone before, but now she had taken two lives just like that. Yes, they wanted to hurt her, and she did not think there had been anything else, she could have done, but that did not really make it better. She just couldn’t help but feel terrible. Her heart felt like an ice-cold ball of steel, which tried to burrow itself through her chest and she felt tears streaming down her cheeks, as she sat there sobbing.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
She didn’t know, how long she sat there when her tears finally dried and her chest hurt too much to continue sobbing.
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“I am telling you, we won’t find them.” Sayu told her brother Konrad.
About five days ago, three guys had stolen her brother’s sword when the two siblings were sleeping. Truth be told, Sayu wasn’t especially sorry for him, because her brother had been supposed to be on watch duty. In her opinion, it was his own fault, his punishment for falling asleep and failing to do his duty. Besides, it was not like it was his only sword, good adventurers always had a spare weapon and different weapons for different circumstances. Konrad usually used a giant great sword, but since that wasn’t of much use in caves, hallways or other confined spaces like a dense forest, he always brought a more ordinary proportioned sword and a dagger with him. One could never be too prepared, after all.
“And I am telling you, we have to go through this forest anyway, so why are we even arguing? It is not like you have to do anything, but look for people and a shiny sword, which you should be doing anyway, if you don’t want to get ambushed, that is.”
“I guess… I still think you should just let it go and buy a new one.”
“You know, how expensive good swords are.”
“Yep, I do, but you do have enough money for a new one. We just have to kill 3 or 4 monsters to earn the money back.”
Konrad did not respond, instead, he just grumbled, kicked and felled a tree, that had the temerity, to stand in his way.
Sayu sighed. “Stop destroying the forest. You won’t ever find a girlfriend if you act like that.” She teased him. She knew full well, that he could easily find someone if he wasn’t so shy and serious, but that was exactly, why it was so much fun to tease him.
A few hours later, the two adventurers were taking apart the corpse of a giant boar-like creature with scales instead of hair.
“That was it, right? That was the dragonscaleboar we were tasked to kill?”
“Yes, it was weaker than expected. I wonder how that thing managed to kill anyone. People, who are able to travel through the forest, should be able to run away from that great big thing.” Sayu lamented.
The monster was the reason the two adventurers spent their last few days in the weald in the first place. Now that they had slain the beast, they would go back to town, which Konrad wasn’t as happy about as he would normally be.
“We still haven’t found my sword. Let’s stay a bit longer, maybe we will find those bastards.”
“You don’t really believe that. Just accept the loss and get over it. What are you, a baby?”
“I just can’t believe I have already lost it. I just bought it!”
Sighing and shaking her head, and knowing that she was too nice for her own good once again, Sayu conceded.
“Ok, let’s compromise. I don’t want to just walk through this forest, looking for people who are probably not even here anymore, so let’s do another monster hunt, you know that I always copy all the quest notices.” Sayu offered.
Konrad frowned, “But they are all ranked at least low 2 stars. We aren’t ready for that.”
“Oh come on, that thing was supposed to be high 1 star and we totally demolished it. We can handle a 2-star monster. Or are you scared?” Sayu teased him.
“I am not scared, you...! Alright, but if it gets too dangerous, we run.”
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“This was a bad idea!” Sayu shouted as she nocked an arrow.
Konrad responded with a pained groan, as he tried running from the forest troll they had tried to ‘fight’ If you could call it that.
Sadly, the forest troll was faster than it looked, so running wasn’t really an option. The problem was that Konrad couldn’t do anything. The troll’s hide was too tough for his dagger to penetrate, and Konrad’s great sword was too unwieldy in a forest like this. And even if he could manage to land a swing Konrad suspected, that it wouldn’t amount to much more than a shallow cut through the skin. The problem with trolls was, that they weren’t only strong and had tough skin. No, the real problems were their unnaturally potent regeneration and the fact, that they had a layer of extra bone, that was stronger than most metals, right under their skin.
For all those reasons, Konrad had decided, that the best course of action was to use his dagger to try and stab the troll’s joints to immobilize him, which, regretfully, didn’t work as well as he had hoped, due to the troll’s unexpected nimbleness. The siblings had expected a lumbering giant, a monster, that was easily beatable if you just went slow and steady, but this wasn’t the case. Although looking like it should be slow, the monster was no slower than a human, a very fit and agile human. The result was, that Konrad was slowly getting closer and closer to receiving a real hit, which would shatter his bones and end his short life. His only hope was, that his sister could do something with the opportunity he gave her by making the troll focus on him.
Sayu was flitting through the forest, trying frantically to get far enough in front of the troll and her brother to get into a good position. She had done that a few times already, but sometimes Konrad was forced to change direction and a few times, she had missed her shot already, which wasn’t a surprise. When you needed to hit small, vulnerable parts of a big thing, every hit, that hit the thing, but not an especially tender part, was a miss in her book.
Finally, in a good position, Sayu took an arrow, dipped it in poison and nocked it on her trusty hunting bow. Her arms burning from exhaustion, Sayu pulled back the bowstring, she couldn’t let something as mundane as pain stop her, she knew this shot had to count, Konrad’s time was running out, he had already received a few glancing blows, that left him battered and beaten, and she could see how tired he was. The moment the troll was in sight, Sayu took a deep breath, calming her mind while emptying her lungs, her raging emotions giving way to a familiar calm.
As Konrad struggled to somehow not get smashed by the troll’s strikes while occasionally pricking it with his dagger, Sayu fired her arrow. It wasn’t just a normal shot, however. She had used her skill “snipe”, which drastically increased her accuracy and power and this time, the troll didn’t manage to turn away at the last second. The result was an arrow, that hit the screaming troll like a sledgehammer and not just anywhere, but right in the eye, which knocked its head back and caused the troll to fall over like a felled tree.