Instead of feeling some sort of adrenaline rush, I mostly felt numb after the “dust” settled. There was one more thing for me to do here, and I wasn't looking forward to it. I repeated the water trick on my sword, and once it was safely back in the scabbard I knelt by the swordsgoblin and checked whether there was anything useful in the pouches on his belt. One of them held some sort of a figurine, or a charm maybe, woven out of hair. It felt wrong to even consider taking it, so I placed it on the goblin’s chest. It was as much of a send-of as I could provide to the poor creature.
The other pouch, however, held something that would be of immediate use to me. It was a small vial filled with an amber liquid.
Item: Lesser Health Vial
Type: Alchemical
Rarity: Specialist - Common
Effect: Restores a very small amount of health
The other two goblins also had these. I drank them all immediately, which relieved many of my aches. The colour of the wounds on the paper silhouette lightened, and some of the areas were only faintly pink now.
A thought then hit me that had I known about these I might have saved the sword goblin.
And do what with it then? I couldn’t take it with me, and leaving it here could have caused problems. I could have tried to knock it unconscious then. Though chances of there being an accidental fatality doing that were high.
‘Sometimes there are no good options, aren’t there?’ I softly sighed to myself.
To take my mind off such grim thoughts I pulled up my notifications.
Might as well see what I got for… defending myself.
The following attributes have progressed:
Strength: +98% (109% total progress to level 10)
Your Strength Attribute has increased to level 10 (4% total progress to level 11)
Your total health has increased
Dexterity: +50% (105% total progress to level 13)
Your Dexterity Attribute has increased to level 13 (2% total progress to level 14)
Agility: +70% (122% total progress to level 8)
Your Agility Attribute has increased to level 8 (11% total progress to level 9)
Endurance: +150% (157% total progress to level 9)
Your Endurance Attribute has increased to level 9 (28% total progress to level 10)
Your total health has increased
Your total stamina has increased
Vitality: +33% (98% total progress to level 8)
Willpower: +17% (22% total progress to level 13)
Resilience: +3% (18% total progress to level 7)
New Skill Acquired: Climbing- Current Level: 1 (62% total progress to level 2)
The following skills have progressed:
Bastard Sword - Two-handed: +65% (158% total progress to level 2)
Your Bastard Sword - Two-handed skill has increased to level 2 (28% total progress to level 3)
Stealth: +20% (20% total progress to level 3)
Earth Arcana: +78% (78% total progress to level 1)
The following spells have progressed:
Rock Spikes: +170% (170% total progress to level 2)
Your Rock Spikes spell has increased to level 2 (35% total progress to level 3)
Huh. So is combat rewarded with faster gains? Meaning what… those that go on killing sprees have the best stats? Not sure whether I like the implications of that.
I waved away the notifications and set off down the corridor. I wasn’t terribly concerned with concealing my movements. There likely wasn’t anyone nearby, as they would have gone after me by then and anybody coming from behind me would find… my victims.
I saw that I was closing in on another door located in the left-side wall. A dozen or so metres past it there was a four-dimensional crossroads. I decided to check out the door first. As I approached, I started smelling something rancid in the air. The smell got stronger the closer I got to that door and I started seeing blood stains on the stone floor of the corridor.
That’s the abattoir, isn’t it?
As I was correcting my course to avoid the room, I heard a faint sound coming from behind the door. Someone was crying.
I couldn’t leave them alone, now could I? So, I rushed toward the door and pulled the door open. Immediately, my senses were assaulted by a cloud of air smelling of rotting meat, excrement and other things I couldn’t quite identify, though they surely were nothing pleasant or sanitary.
I looked around the abattoir. Its centrepoint was a stone table red and brown with blood. There were leather restraints attached to it with crude rusty metal hooks. On the side of the table, there was a quite impressive collection of dull-looking knives and saws covered in crusted blood. Over it there hung various meathooks with rotting pieces of meat still clinging on to some of them. Shelves were hanging on the wall behind the table, on which there were jars filled with various small body parts preserved for reasons unknown. Under the wall to the left of me, there was a massive pile of refuse and offal just crawling with maggots.
Well… this place is getting a five-star rating from me.
Under the opposite wall, there was a row of three fairly cramped metre-high cages, two of which were empty if you ignore the waste left by their previous occupants. The cage by the trophy wall was occupied by a young girl I estimated to be roughly my height. She had now-dirty sky-blue hair tied into the sad remains of a ponytail. Thanks to this I could see she had slightly pointed ears. The grey tunic and brown pants she wore were torn and filthy. The strangest things about the girl, however, were the thin and quite long flesh-coloured arrow-tipped tail that twitched nervously; and a pair of short black-red horns that protruded from her forehead just below her hairline and curved upwards.
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Is she some kind of a demon? I wondered briefly.
Truth be told though, I didn’t really care about her potential infernal heritage, if this was even the case. Maybe people with horns and tails were normal here. After all, it’s not that I had much of a reference.
The bigger concern of mine was that her arms were tied behind her back with a thick rope and she was gagged with a filthy rag, for which I couldn’t find a good reason. After all… she was already in a cage. Why bind her any further?
The girl was looking in my direction, the look in her sea-green eyes pleading with me to rescue her. I rushed over to her cage and started trying to figure out how to open it.
‘Gonna try to get you out,’ I said with a reassuring tone and smiled.
The good news was I quickly found the padlock. The bad news was that it looked very sturdy, so I had no idea how to get past it. I would likely have to find the key, and I didn't have the first idea where to look for it. Then an idea struck me. It was so obvious, that I had no fucking idea why I didn't do it in the first place.
I looked at the cage again. Yup, the gaps between bars were wide enough that I could easily reach inside. My first move was to remove the girl's gag.
‘Took you long enough,’ she said with a bit of understandable annoyance in her voice.
Then her expression softened and she added:
‘Thank you. I’m Aki.’
‘Lilyth,’ I introduced myself. ‘Wish we had met under better circumstances. Anyway, can you try to turn around? I’ll untie your hands.’
Aki nodded and started squirming and twisting around. Eventually, she was in such a position I could reach the rope she was tied with. I frowned upon getting a closer look at her bonds. Whoever bound Aki’s hands really knew how to tie a knot. I felt it would take me too long to undo it. So I did the only thing I could think of and grabbed one of the knives.
‘Stay REALLY still,’ I told her. ‘I don’t want to cut you with this. The knife is not exactly sanitary.’
‘Sanitary?’ she asked, perplexed.
‘Any wound from this would likely get infected,’ I explained.
She nodded a bit scared and did her best to follow my request as I cut into the rope. A minute of very careful sawing later, her hands were free and Aki was massaging her badly chafed wrists. I frowned upon seeing that.
‘We need to get you a healing potion, I think, or maybe just some clean bandages. But first… do you know who has the key to your cage?’
The answer came in the form of approaching heavy footsteps. Aki cowered in fear.
‘Hide…’ she hissed. ‘The Butcher’s coming.’
But it was too late.
The light from the corridor was blocked by a massive goblinoid figure. It was maybe two metres tall and incredibly muscled. Honestly, the thing looked like it was coming straight from a body-building competition. The goblin? Orc? wore blood-covered sackcloth pants and a leather apron and was bald. One of its tusks was missing. To my surprise, I saw the goblinoid was carrying two of the smaller ones I killed: the one with the hatchet and the spearfella.
There was no point in hiding so I stood straight by the cage and stared the creature down. The goblinoid dropped the carcasses of its smaller brethren to the floor and turned toward me.
‘Hngh,’ it grunted and continued in broken Raivarian. ‘Elf, you kill small uns.’
It wasn’t a question.
‘An honest misunderstanding,’ I replied.
‘They meat now. The camp need meat.’
Cannibals.
‘You meat too,’ the creature continued.
No surprises there. Not that I am “meat” anymore.
The cramped abattoir was hardly an optimal place to fight, so I had to end this before it really began.
‘Who are you?’I asked, buying time. ‘So that I know who killed me.’
I started slowly moving my right hand to the grip of my sword.
‘Why meat need know this?’ the creature asked but answered me nonetheless. ‘I Grazzlag. I hobgoblin.’
‘Very well, Grazzlag the Hobgoblin. I’m Lilyth. Let’s dance!’
With a quick movement, I pointed my left hand toward Grazzlag and tried to fire off a volley of Rock Spikes toward the creature’s head. My head was assaulted by a sudden piercing headache when I did that which both told me this was the last time I was able to cast the spell for a while and caused my hand to jerk slightly. Two of the spikes missed Grazzlag completely, but one pierced his left shoulder, staggering the hobgoblin.
I used the few extra seconds this bought me to draw my sword and charge the creature. Unfortunately, Grazzlag must have been an experienced fighter because just as I lunged at him he backhanded me with his other hand which threw me off my path and caused me to instead crash into the door frame. Before I even had a chance to recover I felt the hobgoblin lift me over his head, and then I flew through the air and crashed straight into the trophy wall, my body shattering both the shelves and the jars of body parts. I must have looked like a porcupine of glass and splinters. I heard my sword clatter to the floor, as my hand, still clinging to it despite all of this, finally let go. The paper doll in the vision was helpfully flashing dark red.
So this is it, eh? I thought. I had a good run. Too bad I wasn’t able to save the girl.
I briefly looked at Aki. She was struggling with her padlock. I couldn’t blame her. I turned my attention back to Grazzlag. He was leisurely approaching me, one of the larger knives from the table held in his right hand.
He leaned over me, grabbed me by my neck and lifted me to the height of his head so he could stare directly into my eyes. There was a wicked smile on his face as he plunged his knife into my chest.
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Aki was desperately trying to open the padlock on her cage door with the lockpick she stowed away in one of her boots. The goblins had never searched through those. Their mistake. Just when she almost had it she saw Lilyth fly through the air and impact those awful shelves. This made her lose that sweet spot, but Aki now knowing that the lock could be opened only intensified her efforts. She had to help her new friend. Aki’s heart froze when Grazzlag walked past her cage, but the Butcher was so focused on Lilyth, he paid the blue-haired girl no heed. Just as she felt the lock finally click, the hobgoblin lifted his quarry into the air. Aki watched in slow motion as one of those horrible knives effortlessly entered Lilyth’s chest.
NO! She screamed internally and swung the cage door open.
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The stab didn’t cause me too much pain. Was I this far gone?
Wait… I thought, confused. Shouldn’t I be dead? Oh, right.
I smiled despite myself. Being stabbed wasn’t that effective against me. If I was surprised by this turn of events, Grazzlag was utterly astonished.
‘Why you smile elf?’ He asked and looked at the wound he just caused me.
He must have seen there was no blood.
‘You no elf!’
‘What… can… I say?’ I croaked. ‘Appearances… can… be… deceiving, my… friend.’
Suddenly, something blue flashed in the corner of my vision, Grazzlag screamed, let go of my neck and I crashed to the abattoir’s floor.
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Aki crawled out of the cage. Her limbs were stiff and weak from her imprisonment, but she couldn’t worry about that. At least not right now, if she wanted to live. Aki saw the knife Lilyth used to cut her restraints open. She picked it up. Yes, it would do nicely. Shakingly, she got up. Hope arose in her chest when she heard Grazzlag complain about Lilyth not being dead. Aki summoned what strength she had and lunged towards the hobgoblin stabbing him with the knife just below his ribcage. She let go of it and grabbed another from the table. She slashed at the back of the monster’s knee forcing the creature down, screaming. So another knife went into its back. And then another. Suddenly, she saw Lilyth rise in front of the goblin, holding her sword once again.
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The abrupt meeting with the ground didn’t help my wounds any, but there was still a job to do. I picked up my sword and rose. I noticed that Grazzlag was now on his knees, panting Aki standing behind him. There was blood coming out of the creature’s mouth. I had no idea how she got out of her cage. I would need to ask her about it at some point. I gripped my sword tighter and kicked Grazzlag in the chest, which sent him sprawling on the ground, which drove the knives deeper into the hobgoblin’s body. I could see the tips of two of them emerge from his torso. The kick almost made me lose my balance, but I managed to steady myself. With the last of my strength, I reversed the grip on my sword and plunged it into his chest, piercing the hobgoblin’s heart.
Level 8 Grazzlag the Butcher has been slain
You have earned 400 experience points (800/1000 total experience points progress to level 2)
The last thing I remember was Aki’s face which showed a mix of relief and concern. Then the floor rushed to meet me, and the world went black.