Aaron woke up in a tremendous amount of pain. It felt like there was not a single inch of his body that had not been damaged. He knew instantly, even through his dazed and confused state, that he had broken a number of bones.
Even though he was extremely out of it, he was still able to perform the most important tasks in such a situation, that is to say: ‘status’
Status: Name: Aaron Species: Human Sex: Male Age: 16 Level: 6 Perks: 'Chosen One' Titles: None Attributes: Strength: 6 Dexterity: 5 Intelligence: 14 Charisma: 3 Luck: 4 Faith: 2 Destiny: 11 Energies: Energy Current Max Regen / minute Health 2 50 0.5 Mana 90 90 0.9 Stamina 45 45 0.45 Status effects: Classes: Effect Duration Class Level Bleed N/A Haremest 6 Fracture N/A
Holy shit! Fuck! Crap! Aarons mind reeled at the realisation that he was seconds away from death. He couldn’t move most of his body, including his right arm, it simply induced far more pain than he could handle, to the point where he would be risking passing out. His left however, he could use.
He fumbled around his belt. Several of the potion vials had been smashed, only the metal ones, containing the more expensive potions had survived. And of those potions, there was only one stamina, one health, a ‘clot potion’ and that high grade rejuvenation potion.
Aaron used his left hand to retrieve the health potion and after a bit of fumbling, managed to open it and down it. He then repeated the process with the clot potion, to remove his bleed status.
He now laid back in the tree that he was currently half suspended in and waited for the healing to work. They were some great potions and would only take a minute or two to complete their job.
Aaron took the opportunity to note his current situation. He remembered falling down the ‘hill’. The tree he is currently propped up in must have broken his ‘fall’, well it had broken a heck of a lot more than that. But ultimately it had saved his life, because looking down, the tree was literally leaning at an angle over an edge where the steep hill turned into a sheer cliff face.
If he had gone over that he would be dead, no do overs. He sometimes wished he had the option to save and load. As if to punctuate the deadly fall that he had narrowly missed, Aaron could see the body of a dead goblin on the ground, far below. Probably the one that had gotten him into this mess, serves you right fucker!
He needed to find Rita. He could not have been unconscious for very long or his bleed status would have killed him.
As soon as Aaron could manage it, that is, as soon as all his bones were functional again, he began the tedious task of clawing his way back up the ‘hill’. He nearly made several rather lethal missteps in the process, but did eventually make it up.
Rita was nowhere to be seen. Neither were any goblins for that matter. They must have all gone home when he went over the cliff. Aaron wasn’t sure about how to feel about this situation. On the one hand, no dead Rita body was a sign that she was probably still alive. On the other hand, it means the goblins took her, undoubtedly back to their camp. And he had a pretty fresh memory of what the goblins did to women.
Aaron was left with a choice not much different to the one he had faced when choosing whether or not to come with Rita on this suicide mission. His reasoning and motivations since then had of course not changed so it wasn’t a very hard decision to make. Rescue Rita. How you ask? Fuck knows. But when he did, if she was still alive, he was going to fucking kill her for dragging him into this kamikaze run.
Aaron glanced through his available skills and decided his best chance was ‘Peeping tom’. It seemed to be a stealth skill, so he purchased it and gave it a quick test.
His body immediately shimmered out of existence. An amazing camouflage, that looking at his own body, he could only tell he was still there if he looked very carefully. This would work. As long as there isn’t somebody in the goblin camp with some ridiculous vision or other detection skill, he should be okay.
For now Aaron deactivated the skill, it would drain his mana rather quickly, so he could only use it once he was literally on top of the goblin camp. Aaron began a brisk walk in the direction of the camp. He did not bother with the stamina potion, since running would likely attract attention too easily. No matter how anxious he was about Rita’s well being, he was quite sure that he was only going to get one shot at this.
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Aaron fortunately did not have much trouble finding the goblin camp, although by the time he did it had probably already reached midnight. And while the passage of time had bothered him, he was now grateful for the cover of darkness.
He was unfortunately quite shocked at the sheer amount of goblins present. There had to be a good couple of hundred, mulling about. The camp itself, was little more than a really large collection of hastily erected and poorly made shelters. Aaron could not see much from this distance.
That also meant that he had not yet found Rita, he would have to go in blind. He could not risk waiting around the edges of the camp, doing more reconnaissance. He risked being caught and doubted he had the luxury of the time it would take.
Aaron activated ‘peeping tom’ and strode towards the camp, with a full status. As he got really close to the camp, he slowed down as much as he dared. Yes he was on a time limit and all, but he was quite sure the skill did not mask any sounds he made or any terrain he disturbed.
Aaron did his best to give each goblin as wide a berth as he could manage, while making his way deep into the camp.
Once he neared what he suspected to be the center of the camp, he found a rather alarming sight. The center of the camp had very few shelters, it did however have a number of campfires that were all busy roasting various kinds of meat.
Aaron had not seen anything that looked like farms or animal pens, so he had to assume that the goblins were either raiding or hunting for all their food. He wondered just how much damage a group of this size must be doing to the surrounding areas.
The part that was actually alarming was the giant goblin in the middle of it all. Aaron wasn’t even sure if perhaps he should call the thing an orc or something. Super-goblin was busy talking in goblinese to a few other goblins, one of which looked like some kind of shaman. Aside from the shaman, only super-goblin seemed to be doing much of the talking. The situation felt a bit like super-goblin was actually goblin-leader.
As interesting as this lot was, Aaron could not afford to dawdle. He continued to scan the area, until at last he found what he was looking for. Three wooden cages. In the middle one was Rita, who for one, still had her clothes on, a good sign if ever he saw one.
The woman in the cage next to her however had not been so lucky. She must be one of the villagers that Mara had spoken of. There were a couple of naked goblins in the cage with her, one of which was busy humping her. The woman however was just lying there motionless, Aaron suspected she might already be dead. Wouldn’t put it past the raunchy buggers to overlook such small details as necrophilia
Aaron began making his way over to Rita’s cage, but was soon interrupted by what appeared to be shouting. Glancing over in the direction of the comotion, Aaron noticed the shaman was pointing in his direction, actually was pointing right at him. Shit! Did it have some kind of detection skill?
Knowing the chances of success had just dropped drastically, Aaron tried to move further in Rita’s direction, but shaman’s pointing hand tracked him perfectly. There was no longer any doubt. Aaron decided to give up on rescuing Rita at the moment, he would have to retreat and try again later, there was no way he could pull it off under these circumstances.
Aaron turned around intent on fleeing, but found his way barred. Even though it seemed the goblins could not see him, except for the shaman, that had not stopped the shaman from coordinating them. Aaron now found himself completely encircled by a literal wall of goblins.
Shit! Should he try and charge through, hopefully he would be able to bulldoze through them, being invisible and all? Aaron quickly drank the high end rejuvenation potion, he had a feeling he was about to need it. Its effects would last a full two minutes and with its absurd regen rates, he would be close to immortal, except for being one-shotted.
Before Aaron could even contemplate the idea of running however, he heard the shaman stop shouting in goblinese and instead start chanting something. Having a bad feeling about this, he spun around to see what the shaman was doing. Just as he did however, the shaman softly tapped his staff into the ground and in the next moment, the ‘peeping tom’ skill dissipated.
Aaron wasn’t sure how the shaman had done that, but now he knew he was good and truly fucked. The goblin leader, now able to see him, spoke, “Dumb human! You come, you die!”.
Setting aside the fact that a giant man-sized goblin just fucking spoke to him, we’ll deal with that absurdity at another time, Aaron needed to do something and do it now. The goblins were clearly about to pounce him.
He couldn’t think of anything he could do to get out of this, except maybe a distraction. It would have to be Alpha. But he doubted if it would be effective enough, based on the level of effect it had on Mara back then. He needed more.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Aaron quickly purchased the ‘Power yell’ skill. He then activated it and proceeded to shout the most pompous and ballsy thing he could think of, “KNEEL BEFORE ME!” He activated the ‘Alpha’ skill the second the last syllable left his lips.
This should give him a 1500+ charisma stat, hopefully enough to stun or shock them for those precious three seconds, so he can make his escape. It would be only the briefest of windows, but it would have to be enough.
Wait- what?
The goblins all around him fell to their knees, some even fell to the ground unconscious. Heck some of them were bowing to him like he was some kind of deity. Even shaman and leader had fallen to their knees. What was going on? Did 1500 charisma really have this kind of effect on people? Was it because they were a ‘lesser species’. It certainly didn't have this level of effect on Mara that time, was that because she was a demon? She was maybe resistant to it?
Aaron was so shocked, that he had wasted a few of his precious seconds. He should have been running his ass off, but he was instead being bloody indecisive. Truth was, he felt that there was a small chance he could actually rescue Rita, instead of abandoning her. So he stayed.
Even after the effects wore off, the goblins carried on bowing to him. He had literally put the fear of god in them. This could work! He could actually pull this off!
The only problem seemed to be the goblin leader. He did not seem convinced, as he was in the middle of a heated argument with his shaman. Aaron tried to look as imposing and uncaring as he could manage, he idly wondered if he would get an acting skill for this.
The leader had seemed to have had enough of this charade and had reached for the nearest weapon, a spear. Shit. Now he was fucked. If he tried to run or dodge a spear throw, his act would most certainly start falling apart. What could he do?
The leader threw the spear while yelling, “False God!”. Aaron could tell, it was a perfect throw. It would definitely hit him.
He knew there was only one way the leader would back down. He activated ‘Power yell’ once more, his mana having refilled almost instantaneously, thanks to that amazing rejuvenation potion. He then yelled, “BLASPHEMER!” and immediately activated ‘Last stand’.
The hope was that ‘Power yell’ with its extremely generalised effect would pump up the pain resistance given by ‘Last stand’, to a theoretical 75%. He needed to make it look like this spear meant nothing to him, that leader goblin was absolutely no threat to him. He needed to take the spear head on and not show any effect to it.
Aaron hoped that 75% pain resistance would be enough for him not to balk. He hoped that the spear would not instakill him. There was an awful lot of hope happening here, but he was just gonna have to trust that his level two ‘Plot armour’ would be able to tip the scales for him.
He was seriously about to shit his pants, but he could not afford to even close his eyes. He braced himself with everything he had and took the spear to the chest. Aaron grunted, a little from the pain, but mostly from the force of the impact. Even as the spear buried itself in his chest, he only took one step back.
The spear had seemed to miss anything too vital, but had still taken 70% of his fucking health in one hit! That had been too close! Aaron quickly reached up and yanked the spear out, ignoring his new found bleed status. The rejuvenation potion was so potent his wound closed up immediately and his health refilled in mere seconds despite the reduction the bleed status should have had on its effectiveness.
Aaron tossed the spear aside like it was nothing, showing little concern. A masterful performance if he did say so himself. The most surprising thing, was that the bleed status actually disappeared as soon as his health was full. So it seems if you can manage to fully heal yourself, bleed automatically stops, good to know.
The shaman had joined every other goblin at this point in their worship of him. Only the leader remained standing. Fucker! He still wasn’t giving in. He looked scared as hell and wasn’t making any other moves against Aaron, but Aaron knew it would not last, the guy was clearly too stubborn.
Aaron was wondering what he should do about this, when he noticed for the first time a pile of stuff near the leader. It contained everything, from clothes, to ceramics, coins and even jewellery. Aaron was not a 100% sure it was the right one, from this distance, but it looked like it.
It would be a gamble, certainly not the first one he had taken today. He did not know if Mara had recovered enough mana by now to materialise and if she had enough in her to kill the leader. It was risky because if he called out for her, and nothing happened, he may lose some of his ‘street credit’ and that would be very dangerous.
Regardless, he could think of no other solution to this stalemate and decided to act while the leader was still extremely wary of him.
“Mara! Kill him!”
And Mara did her part beautifully. A quick spawn from the amulet and a spear to the back of an oversized goblins throat, and presto, no more problems. Aaron did note that it looked like Mara was at her absolute limits.
“Anyone else wish to challenge me?”
There was of course no response. Although Aaron doubted they could even understand him. Well, except for the shaman. The shaman was also looking at him expectantly, as if to say ‘so what now?’.
Aaron took the opportunity to address his new minions with a short speech, even though he knew only the shaman could understand him. To his pleasant surprise however the shaman seemed to immediately translate whatever Aaron was saying, for the benefit of the other goblins present.
So after a warning for them to not fuck with him and basically get lost within the next day, Aaron instructed them to free the prisoners. They did exactly as he asked, opening both cages and stepping aside.
Rita, along with Mara, went over to the woman and helped her up, she was incredibly weak, but apparently still alive. Aaron decided to rather wait where he was, instead of lend a hand, he wanted to continue to look imposing.
They eventually brought the woman over. Rita gave him a weak smile. He then gave the goblins one more ‘arrogant’ look over, and then left, beckoning The girls to follow. He let them support the woman, without lending a hand himself, until they were well out of range of the camp.
“You guys okay?” Mara was looking a little bit better and Rita nodded, but was clearly exhausted.
“Mara, can you handle her from here?” Mara nodded to Rita’s request and picked the woman up in a princess carry.
Aaron had to look away. Despite the condition the woman was in, everything ‘down there’ was in full view, leaving his desire to ‘sneak a peek’, making him feel more than a little uncomfortable, given the situation.
As the four of them walked back to Goran village, they all kept an eye over their shoulders for any sign of goblins, but none were ever noticed. During the entire trip back, Rita never said a single word. She didn’t even seem to be doing much in the way of thinking, she just seemed far too tired for it all. Mara also for once had the sense to keep her mouth shut. And of course Aaron, well he wasn’t entirely sure what had all transpired, but he knew better than to disturb her right now, so they all just walked back in silence.
Upon arriving back at Goran village, it was already quite late in the following morning. The four of them caused quite a stir returning with a former prisoner.
The chief and most of the village soon started piling out, to greet the returning ‘heroes’.
“By gods, Juana!” The chief exclaimed. “Hurry, go get the doctor!” He examined the woman in Mara’s arms a bit before carrying on. “She’s alive. I take this means then you defeated the goblins?”
“Not exactly, no.” Aaron replied, “We did however apply enough pressure to convince them to give back the prisoners and leave the area within the next day. So you shouldn’t be having any more trouble with them.”
“Oh! That is marvelous!”, the chief exclaimed, practically beside himself. “Wait, prisoners? Is the other woman alive as well?”
“No, I’m afraid not. She wasn’t at the goblin camp, so we can only assume that she already died.”
“Still, that you people could drive away the goblins and even bring one of the prisoners back alive is incredible. Truly it is cause for celebration.”
At this point a man approached the group, presumably the doctor. The chief motioned towards the woman.
“Mara, will you carry her for the doctor?” Aaron asked.
Mara seemed to be growing, tired of being on her best behaviour, as she gave Aaron a look that clearly said, ‘for real? Do I look like a pack mule to you.’
“Pleeeeaaase-” Aaron pleaded playfully.
Mara rolled her eyes and followed the doctor while carrying the woman. She looked none to happy about it. Aaron noted that despite Rita’s original concerns about having a demon in the village, the people paid Mara only a cursory glance at best. Or perhaps it was just the goodwill acquired from returning one of their own?
“People, gather around!”, the chief suddenly shouted. “Our brave guests, have not only faced the goblins and returned our beloved Juana to us, they have also driven the goblins away! They will no longer be attacking the village!”
There were a mixture of mumblings and cheers coming from the crowd.
“Not only that, but they wish for nothing in return.”
The cheers grew louder and more pronounced at that.
“In honor of our saviours, and the day of the salvation of our village, we will host a party. Let no expense be spared!”
The cheers erupted with abandon at that point.
Aaron leaned in close so the chief could hear him, “Please, you really don’t have to do that.” He felt more than a little guilty about this ‘party’. It was quite plainly obvious that the village was poor and struggling after all.
“Nonsense my boy. Did you not hear my speech? The celebration happens, I will brook no discussion on the matter.”
Aaron inwardly frowned.
“Now. I assume you two must both be exhausted. Why don’t you two come back to my home, you can wash up maybe even take a nap, before the festivities begin tonight. I have a feeling you’re going to need your strength”, the chief chuckled.
“Thank you, that would be much appreciated”, Rita finally chipped in, having spoken only now for the first time. Aaron suspected, that she really wanted both the bath and the nap.
The two of them followed the chief, back to his house, where they set about cleaning up and napping. Back in his room, ready to nap in his comfy bed, he reviewed his status.
After he had left the goblin camp, his ‘Alpha’ and ‘Last stand’ skills had both levelled, to level two. His main ‘Haremest’ class and character level had also advanced to level seven. Note to self, method for fast level advancement, perform one death defying act after another.
He sighed. He was getting rather tired of nearth death experiences. He assigned his two new attribute points to strength. He was quite confident that he had enough mana for now, especially after managing to pull through an encounter like what he had back at the goblin camp. And honestly, he needed to bulk up a bit. So up with the health it would be, at least for a while anyway.
He had also unlocked a new skill: ‘Arse pull’.
Skill: Arse pull Type: Passive Element: Divine Cost: N/A Description:
When backed into a corner, you can always pull through, even if it does mean you have to pull a solution out of your arse. Effect:
Unreasonable feats that stretch logic, or seemingly come out of nowhere will be possible.
The effect of this skill will increase with its level.
Wow. Aaron didn’t even know what to say to that. The skills’ description was by far the most vague of any he’d had to date. He did however have a feeling that a skill that can be applied in such a broad and nondeterministic way would likely be incredibly powerful. He suspect after all, that the only reason he was alive, several times over now, was because of his ‘Plot armour’ skill. That skill truly was living up to its namesake.
Aaron did not purchase ‘Arse pull’ for now. He only had one skill point at the moment and would try keep it in reserve, as he always did.
Aaron pulled the blanket over himself, and let some much needed sleep take him.