19.

Santi slashed down, the curved saber slicing skin as the goblin screamed as its flesh split. The saber was sharp, tearing through the paper thin skin like it was nothing. Black blood gushed out of the grievous chest wound, staining the ground as the goblin collapsed to the ground. A notification dinged letting Santi know it was dead.

All around him the convoy was fighting viciously. They had barely made it two blocks before these red skinned goblins had started attacking them. Coming from destroyed buildings, ransacked homes, and even once from a sewer grate. They were weak, but the horde was starting to wear everyone down.

Santi spun, his spell alerting him to displaced air behind him. The flat of his sword smacked the club away from him. Santi took a half step lunge, the curved blade sliding through the pointed chin and angling up into the goblins skull. It fell limp and died instantly, the small club clattering to the asphalt.

“Sant! How far are we to the safe zone?” Tank yelled from the center of the convoy. He was busy wrapping bandages around a long cut on someone’s leg. The convoy had managed to nearly quadruple in size from its original thirty.

The first batch had been survivors of the other dorm towers. Those who had managed to barricade themselves into their rooms or fight off the kobolds. Then as they marched down the street, more and more survivors came out. Santi was beginning to worry that he hadn’t secured nearly enough supplies, but he hadn’t stopped anyone from joining.

“Four more blocks! We have to go deeper though. More residential!” Santi was forced to yell to be heard over the fighting that was happening up and down the long stretched out group.

Only a handful of people were refusing to fight, most had grabbed anything they could hold, including shovels, a snapped flagstaff, a gardening hoe, and a wild assortment of kitchen cutlery. Against most foes their weaponry would have been inadequate. These goblins were poor specimens, even for goblins.

Hardly four feet tall, with long droopy pointed ears, spindly noses and bulging eyes. Their red skin was the color of a Hawaiian tourist after they fell asleep by the resort pool. Weeping black sores afflicted all of them, their black eyes were cloudy, and they stumbled about uncoordinated in their attacks.

No one had died so far, which was an accomplishment. Several people had leveled up as well. Santi had even gotten a shock to see Chloe, the goth girl he had met at the hardware store, stand at the forefront with her axe. She was carving apart the goblins like a saw mill, the axe a blur as nothing could survive her wrath. Her three friends clustered to the side, keeping any sneaking goblins from getting behind her. Chloe was a huge reason they had managed to get through all the ambushes without deaths so far.

She had to be closing in on level three, Santi thought to himself. That or she had dumped every stat point into dexterity and strength. She was moving smoothly and powerfully, like a prime olympic athlete. Every now and then Santi saw a silver blur around the edge of the axe, some type of skill she was using to great effect. If someone was keeping track of goblin kills, she was easily in the lead.

“Alright! Chloe, get this show on the road. Everyone, get closer! Stop hunting them, cluster together. All wounded, come to the center for healing!” Tank had a loud voice naturally, and when he decided to project his voice it was as if Zeus had descended upon them.

Santi saw Daniel emerge from the shadows of a house, his body blurry even as he buried an iron knife into a goblins skull. Some type of scout class probably, Santi hadn’t had time to see who had taken what skills or classes yet.

Paulie was fighting with a pipe he had found from somewhere. He dashed in and out, cracking bones with every blow. Unorthodox, but who was Santi to judge?

“Take a left at the intersection and go down two blocks!” Santi yelled to Chloe. The woman didn’t acknowledge him, but just started to carve a path forward. The sickly goblins came in staggered streams that allowed her and her crew to dispatch them quickly and efficiently without bogging down.

Santi took up position near the rear of the group, letting the others pull ahead of him. Clubs and jagged flint knives were strewn about the pavement, the only weapons the small monsters carried. Some had grabbed the clubs, but they were poor weapons and the knives were too small to use.

As the group pulled away, Santi took a few moments to inspect the goblins. They were red skinned, a variety that he had seen frequently in more desert-like rifts. The sores they had though, he hadn’t seen anything like that before. Quarter sized pustules that leaked a yellow pus. He made sure not to touch any of the sores, but a worry started to bubble away at him.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The world had been upgraded, and he couldn’t be sure of the changes. There could be all sorts of changes that could get him killed before he knew what was happening. Including any type of magical plagues.

Goblins were so weak that they were susceptible to nearly anything, but the sores worried him. If there was a monster or a caster nearby who was doing this, then they would become a priority to eliminate. Until they started gaining levels for their healers, a magic plague would rip them apart with ease.

Using the tip of his sword, he pushed the bodies around. Aside from their severe emaciation, there was little he could see about them. They carried primitive weapons, their clothing little more than badly cured furs. Little to no metallurgy, in fact, most of their myriad of piercings were bone or stone.

“Damnit. Maybe a nest?” Santi talked to himself as he started to catch up to the convoy.

His sense warned him again, saving his life.

He fell to the ground, a spear flying through where his chest had just been. Rolling away and behind a car, Santi got back to his feet. Looking around the top of the car he saw his new opponents and cursed.

A pair of staggering hobgoblins. Five and half feet tall, thin but strong. Dressed in bronze armor that fell to their knees, blood decorated them like paint. Some of it was their own black blood, most of it was red though. They both had pustules on their knobby faces, but not to the extent the other goblins did.

Hobgoblins were the next step in goblin evolution. Bigger, smarter, and meaner. A single hobgoblin squad could compare to a small horde of regular goblins. Metal armor with properly built weapons and the discipline to put it all into effect. Of all the weaker level monsters, hobgoblins normally caused the highest casualty rates. Santi couldn’t let either of these get to the group.

One carried a spear, the white wood stained with blood and ash. The reddish metal of the spearhead still glinted in the bright late morning sunlight. Six feet long, it was a well made spear, a twin of the one that had just tried to impale him.

The second hob was pulling a long knife from its belt. A curved blade built for slashing, the hobgoblin spun it a few times in its hand as they slowly marched toward Santi. The convoy had turned the corner and were now almost out of sight, lost in the sprawl of suburbia.

Santi charged them, not letting them split further apart and flanking him. He angled his attack so the spear wielding hob couldn’t attack without skewering his ally. Saber lashing out, Santi threw a series of slashing attacks at the hobgoblin without hesitation. The hobgoblin blocked once, its knife twisting in its hand to fall to the ground.

Santi’s second slash ripped apart bronze armor, digging through flesh with ease. The hobgoblin was looking wide-eyed at him, shocked at the strength and speed of Santi’s attack. Santi was busy thanking his Cockroach title that had given him such a boost in stats.

Before Santi could finish off the wounded hobgoblin, the spear wielder arrived. It jabbed at him, forcing Santi to dance backward with his saber lightly deflecting the spear tip away from himself. The spear hobgoblin forced him further down the road, actually getting closer to the convoy and his allies.

The wounded hobgoblin had stooped to pick up its knife, movements slow and timid. Santi had to bite back an oath as Daniel came out of the shadows of a car, his iron dagger slamming into the exposed base of the knife hobgoblins neck. It died instantly, never even aware Daniel had snuck up on it.

The spear wielder didn’t realize it was now pincered. All Santi had to do was keep its attention as Daniel worked his way closer, sticking close to parked cars on the side of the road. Staying in the shadows of the cars his form blurred and grew indistinct, stepping into sunlight broke the skill.

Something gave away the game right as Daniel rushed the final feet, iron dagger ready to plunge into the back of the hobgoblins head. It spun on the ball of its foot, spear tucked to its waist and swinging around in a disemboweling strike.

Daniel managed to stop himself just in time, the red spearpoint passing inches from his soft stomach. His face blanched at the close call and he hesitated. It was the worst mistake, the hobgoblin smoothly pivoting from a spin into a lunge to impale him.

Santi wasted no time though, attacking the moment the hobgoblin began to spin. His boosted stats let him cut the ten feet distance between the two of them in one bound, his saber falling with the weight of a guillotine on the hobgoblin. It died, spear slipping out of nerveless fingers, mid attack.

“You good?” Santi asked Daniel as he stood over the dead hobgoblin. It had been a relatively easy fight for him, his years of experience standing in good stead. To Daniel though, it had been a rapid escalation of skill and risk, going from mindless kobolds and goblins to the hobgoblin.

“No. I think I’m going to throw up,” Daniel said, his faded accent making him sound much too proper.

“There’s some bushes over there. I’ll wait for you,” Santi promised. He was tempted to loot them as Daniel rushed over to relieve himself of his anxiety and breakfast. Santi couldn’t trust any of the weapons not to carry traces of the disease. Fighting them was bad enough, but to carry their bloodsoaked weapons back to the base was folly.

Looking around the corpse-filled street, he knew he was going to have to find this monster den and quickly if he didn’t want this plague to spread.