The last few days had been fun. They had been just like the mindless bores of yesterdays and the days before, but now he had two idiot goblins to take care of… That at least kept him from slitting his own throat. But needless to say, the days had gone by with nothing happening. No monsters, no disasters, nothing. It was all around a spectacular time…
And then today happened.
Something was wrong. Elliot couldn’t help but think that as he and his pair of goblins made their way through the forest.
It wasn’t that they were going the wrong way, or even the weird fact that despite two days having gone by, neither he nor the goblins had felt any type of sleepiness. He’d put that to the fruits being magical or some bullcrap. Besides, looking too much into it would be like looking a gift horse in the mouth.
…Maybe he shouldn’t call the gods horses.
No… but that was just a small part. Elliot felt a cold sweat run down his spine as something in the trees shook, in a way that made it seem as if it had just been the wind if he hadn’t been paying attention. Something was in the trees, watching them for the past hour. He tried not to make it too obvious he knew, knowing that most predators tended to pounce when they realized they’d been noticed.
Mint and Pepper seemed to notice his discomfort, but kept their happy attitude when he ordered them to shut up and eat one of the fruits. His fruits. He tried to tune out the sound of his worthless summons eating his supplies and shifted his eyes to the tree above.
He finally saw it clearly, and he gasped. It had a human face, but its body was covered in green feathers. Only a small part of its stomach was bare, as well as its shoulders, but they had the same texture as normal bird legs. What was most prominent was its arms, completely decked out in feathers to make some kind of mix between hands and wings.
The weirdest things were its eyes, their pupils wide and slanted for some- He just looked straight into its eyes, didn’t he? “Oh, shit. Pepper, move!” He jumped out of the way as the bird monster swooped in and slashed through the back of his shirt.
The goblins were quick to act. Pepper jumped onto the bird monster and tried to hold him down, while Mint tackled its side to tear it apart. It almost seemed like an easy win before the monster bit down onto Mint’s throat with deviously sharp teeth.
“Gauh!!”
He couldn’t help but watch as his poor goblin fell, dead before they even hit the ground. Elliot tried to help out but before he could, the monster clawed through Pepper’s stomach and was able to escape. It flew off before Elliot could grab it, and it disappeared into the trees. Gone so quickly it had been as if nothing had even happened…
He knew it wouldn’t be over that easily, though. He grabbed Pepper by the shoulder, the poor goblin moaning in pain as blood poured from his stomach. Panicking, he tore a piece off his ruined shirt, attempting to haphazardly tie it around the goblin to stem the bleeding. He could… see inside, and that shouldn’t have even been possible due to the blood pouring out.
Pepper was looking at him with fear in their eyes, and Elliot couldn’t do anything about it. He tried calming it, his voice shaky and scared. “C-come on, buddy. I really need you right now, this… this thing is going to kill us if we don’t- Oh, shit!” He fell back along with Pepper as the monster flew down again to scratch them.
He couldn’t even turn before the monster once again vanished out of sight into the tree line. His breathing became erratic as he realized there wasn’t anything he could do in the situation. “We… We need to get out of here. Come on, Pepper…” If they made it to someplace narrow they could lower the range of attacks, right? He pulled himself and Pepper on to his feet, and began walking.
Until he realized that the goblin had already died in his arms. Their skin was a pale brown, and their eyes were wide open, plainly showing how it felt in its last moments, the aftermath before its death.
In his arms.
“Ah… Ahahah!”
Well, that broke him.
Panic seared his brain as he realized he was alone now, alone in the midst of something that had killed his companions. He dropped the corpse, bolting in a random direction with crazed eyes. There was no plan, not anymore. His brain was just focused on escaping this place as fast as he could.
Mint and Pepper were dead, and he was all that was left. All due to a monster bird that was a head shorter than him. If he didn’t move quickly then he’d be next. The leaves underneath him sounded like sirens as he ran in the silence of the forest, alarming the damn bird to wherever he went.
He always saw it just in the corner of his view. Just before it attacked him he slammed into a tree, bracing his back against the bark. It was only then he realized just how stupid he was. In his attempts to limit its attacks, Liam had accidently cornered himself in the process. The monster had found this out as soon as he did, lunging down with all the speed it could muster. His life flashed before his eyes at that moment, and he almost blacked out, giving in to his untimely demise. In a final burst of adrenaline, he decided to try one final thing, though.
Pepper had still been alive when he had captured them, so why would this be different?.
He stretched out a hand and with all the fear in the world he used the only spell he thought would make a difference in this situation. “C-capture Fiend!” His hand felt almost as if it had caught flames as mana burned through his arm. Immediately, spiked chains burst from the ground and stabbed through the monster, forcing it to the ground as it screamed and struggled. It looked at him with pure hatred as it slashed at him from the ground, more chains coming up to take it down.
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This was completely different from the time before… It was as if his life was being fully expelled through the arm, like he was being squeezed like an empty bottle of toothpaste. He tried to stop it but it kept burning away, making his body feel heavy and weak. At this rate, if the damn bird didn’t get captured he’d waste away into nothing. With the small remaining strength he had, he charged forward to the wounded monster, ready to end this.
Four chains had already pierced the monster, and with it already being at death’s door. All Elliot really had to do was stomp the creature’s head until it went down.
It had managed to get its claws on him a couple of times but he didn’t care, the adrenaline in his body ignoring the pain. Fortunately, without the wind and gravity on its side it didn’t seem to have much strength in it. He didn’t know if it actually died by his hands or by the capture spell, but either way, the thing soon started sputtering its last breaths. It gave him one last look of spite before its head thudded onto the ground, eyes still wide and glaring, though now they stared at nothing.
It died.
He did it…
Elliot fell down in exhaustion, the adrenaline leaving his body and leaving him with noodle legs. His legs were scratched to oblivion, finally started sending the message to his brain that he was in fact bleeding quite a large amount. Despite the lingering sense of weakness and pain, it didn’t keep the proud smile off his face. “I did it! Hahaha! I did it!” He pumped his hands in the air, groaning as the force of it aggravated the gash on his back.
He won!
“Ugh… Ahaha! HAHA!” He picked himself up from the ground, haughtily laughing as tears went down his eyes. He was tired… He was sad…
But he did it! He made it! He was alive!
And best of all, he had a new monster! Shakily, Elliot stood, making his way back to… wherever it was his goblins had dropped the food. Speaking of which, he really should properly summon them again. It had only occurred to him after his glorious battle, but having them gone actually felt like they had died, and Elliot had fallen into complete despair when it had happened.
Having to fight another one of those again would ruin him if he was alone. He needed someone else to do the grunt work, and those two were the only ones that could do that… The book appeared in his hand at a thought, and he opened the first page only to notice a few strange things.
“Summon fiend” (3/5) (F-rank)
Mint-(Goblin) (F-rank) [unavailable]
Pepper-(Red Goblin) (F-rank) [unavailable]
(Harpy) (E-rank)
+6 intelligence
+2 agility
The first thing in his mind was ‘Aw, they have their names in the book. That’s adorable.’ The second thing he saw was that the harpy had netted him an extra 2 points in intelligence and agility, which was awesome. It must have been the rank that caused it, E… was before F, right? After a bit of mentally singing the alphabet, he was happy to find out it was. He could have just stopped there and been happy, but unfortunately, he had to keep reading.
He read past the names and finally, he started worrying. “...Unavailable? What the hell does that mean!?” His mind raced as he started fearing the worst. No, he’d felt his body be drained when he had captured the harpy, so was it just a case of having too little magic in him? No, if that was the case then the harpy would have also been unavailable.
Moreso, actually, since it was a higher rank.
Was it because he had left their bodies behind!? Shit! He put an arm out and tried summoning, coming to the sad realization that he actually couldn’t. Damnit, he was completely joking about returning to the place! How the hell was he going to find his way back in this maze of trees!? He looked around in the forest, the soft red haze of the tree’s leaves blending together.
How the hell was he supposed to make his way out of this mess? He had the compass and the map, but that only helped to find a village, not his damn goblins. Think… climbing a tree would do him no good, the trees were too high up for it to be of value. Blindly walking would only get him even more lost, he remembered hearing that somewhere… Ah! The harpy! He didn’t even open the book, too hurried to find his companions.
“Summon fiend, Harpy!”
The process was the same, only he fell to the ground in pain when he activated the spell. His stomach felt like it had been punched in the gut, and he was out of breath during the entire slow process. He groaned, having to be helped up by something soft. “Thanks… agh.” He flinched when he saw its face, a grim reminder of the monster it had just been.
It seemed kind of young, like a woman in her twenties except on the shorter side. It was pretty in a sense, but… That face had just tried to claw him open, and succeeded in tearing apart his friends.
He couldn’t help but have conflicting feelings after such a thing. “You… Go fly and tell me where Mint and… Where the two goblins you killed were. …and bring me back a fruit as proof.” The harpy squawked excitedly and burst into the air with a much faster speed than he had originally seen. He didn’t like the thought that the harpy hadn’t been using its fastest speed before, possibly just to play with him…
So he simply didn’t think it.
Elliot stayed sitting on his thumbs for a while, checking his compass and now extremely crumpled map. He couldn’t have possibly strayed to the point where the village was impossible to find, right? Yeah… no way that was true. Despite not being able to do anything about it, he didn’t look away from the map until something fell on his head, splitting open and covering him in juices. For a second he thought another monster wanted to finally finish him off but he realized it was the harpy, flapping above him. “You piece of… Wait, did you find them!?”
He forgot about the obvious attempt the creature had made to anger him, instead focusing on finding his buddies. The harpy nodded, floating down and landing next to him. “Yes! Yes!” He backed off a bit, caught completely off guard. The bird could talk!?
“When the hell could you… Wait! This isn’t the time!” What if the goblins could only come back during a limited time!? “Take me to them! Let’s go!” The harpy nodded and started running south, humming a simple song as it almost bounced with every step.
The way she ran seemed so lazy and whimsical almost made him angry, nearly telling it to go faster in impatience before realizing he had started lagging behind. “Hey, wait! I need to find them too, you know!” The harpy looked back at him and smiled cockily, jumping and fading in amongst the trees. Shit. He decided to stop thinking and put the pedal to the metal. He wasn’t going to lose to some punk bird in a running contest.