As One Swing stepped into the small clearing, the large metallic figure of the bunny began to twitch, and sparks began to fizzle from between its joints. Its once hollow and blackened eyes suddenly lit up, glowing a dim red. From atop its head, the long drill-shaped horn began to emit a dull buzzing sound, but ultimately did not move.
One Swing had no idea what the creature was, or if it even was a creature, seeing as it was made of metal. It looked similar to a horned rabbit, except it was much larger than one, and about the size of a horse and carriage. One thing was clear to One Swing, however, and that was that it was very old. It was covered in dirt and moss and an array of plant life had formed in between its joints and had sprouted out all across its metallic body. It had clearly been in this forest for a long time.
“What… is this thing?” Arrow Grain was the next to step into the clearing, her eyes fixed on the metallic creature. “Miss Barb— I mean, Barxy? Do you know?”
The older-looking wolf-woman stepped into the clearing too, a stern look on her face.
“I don’t,” she replied simply, examining the trinkets and effigies made of bone scattered across the creature. “But I think the kobolds were making offerings to it. They’re likely using it as an object of worship.”
'Worship…? Well, that would explain all the weird junk lying around…"
As the other adventurers stepped into the clearing and joined in examining the metallic creature, One Swing began to circle around it. Keeping his distance, he walked behind the creature, ducked around the other adventurers, stepped out of the clearing and back in again, zigzagged across the clearing. No matter what he did, he was certain of something.
“What are you doing?” Arrow asked, watching the man curiously.
Stopping in place, One Swing pointed at the creature in the center of the clearing. “It’s watching me.”
One Swing was sure of it. Everywhere he walked, the dim red glow of the creature’s eye would track his every movement.
“Or more specifically…” One Swing gripped the handle of his one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot sword and held it above him, its lengthy blade trailing fifty meters into the sky and above the trees. “It’s watching my sword.”
Sure enough, the glowing red eye shifted slightly with each movement of One Swing’s sword as he shook it from left to right.
“Huh… It is watching your sword,” Arrow commented, before breaking out into a playful grin. “Maybe you should give it up as an offering?”
One Swing smirked.
“Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!” he laughed. “What an offering that would be! Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah—!”
“So, what are we gonna—”
“—hah-hah-hah-hah-hah—!”
“Okay, it wasn’t that funny! Why does your laugh have to be so long too?! You’re definitely doing this on purpose, right?! Don’t you get sick of putting on this weird gimmick all the time?! I still don’t know what becoming the longest is even supposed to mean!”
“—hah-hah-hah! A fine offering indeed!”
“R-right… Anyway, what are we gonna do with this thing?” the purple-haired elf turned to the wolf-woman once again. “Barxy?”
“I’ll carry it back to the city on our return,” she said, before turning back to the forest. “But first we concentrate on the kobolds. I can still smell them. A lot of them.”
“You’re going to carry it back? Something that big? But how—?” Arrow began, before cutting herself off after a short glance towards One Swing and the giant sword slung across his shoulder. “Ah, never mind…”
As One Swing, Arrow, and the adventurers prepared to leave the clearing and continue their kobold hunt, one in particular remained near the metallic creature, looking over it curiously.
“I wonder where it came from…?” the man pondered aloud, approaching the head of the metal beast. “It couldn’t have come from the Capital. Perhaps it came from the Underground? Or maybe… Maybe it came from the Spire? It wouldn’t be too far from here, and that place always has been a mystery…”
Reaching his hand out, the man lightly touched the horn on the unmoving metal bunny’s head. However, as soon as his fingertips met with the metal—
Bzzzzzzz—!
The whirring hum of metal buzzed out across the clearing, quickly followed by the pained screams of a man as his entire arm was torn away, the flesh and bone now snapped and mangled across the spinning horn of the metal creature, spraying flecks of blood across the green clearing with every spin.
With sparks flying wildly from its base, the drill-like horn atop the creature’s head had begun to move.
The man immediately fell to the dirt, screaming in pain as he clutched at the shredded flap of skin hanging from what little remained of his arm.
Looming above him, the large metallic creature began to rise. With eyes glowing red, it jerked and twitched to its full height, the screech of scraping metal crying out over the buzzing whir of its spinning drill.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Lowering its head, it pointed its drill down towards the man on the floor and then—
It instantly exploded in a burst of sparks and scraps of metal. Large pieces of the metal creature were flung out into the forest, the mangled remains wrapping themselves around the trunks of thick trees, embedding themselves deep into the dirt, or being scattered wildly across the green undergrowth.
“Dammit,” Barbacoa spat, rubbing at her clenched fist as she now stood over the injured man. “I got careless.”
In a single bound, the woman had leapt in from the side, punching the creature before it had a second opportunity to attack. Her furry fist punched through the metal shell of the beast, tearing a hole through the beast and sending it and its sparking innards scattering across the forest in front of her.
Crouching down, she immediately started tending to the man's wounded arm. Whatever was left of it, at least. Ripping a strip of fabric from her own clothes, she tightly bound his mangled stump in a makeshift tourniquet to stop the heavy flow of blood pooling out across the dirt below him.
“We’re leaving,” she said, turning to the group as she picked the wounded man up and slung him over her shoulder. “The exam will be postponed until another day. For now, we’ll head back to the Capital and—”
“Skreeee—!!”
The loud shriek of a kobold echoing across the surrounding forest cut her off. It was quickly followed by another. And then another. The group of adventurers still gathered in the clearing glanced nervously out into the forest as more and more guttural shrieks cried out from every direction. A cacophony of hundreds, screeching out across the trees and dense undergrowth.
“Th-this is bad…”
“How many of them are there…?”
The panicked adventures in the clearing begin to back away from the trees, their weapons held shakily at the ready as they anxiously stared out into the forest. Though they couldn't see the kobolds, their sounds were deafening.
The low pattering of many small stampeding feet began to rumble in the distance. Hundreds of them. Louder and louder it grew as the source of the noise made their approach from every side. With their backs to one another, the adventurers in the clearing waited with bated breath for the moment of attack to arrive…
And then came the swarm.
Shrieking in wild fury, kobolds began to lunge from the surrounding forest in droves. From every side of the clearing they would appear, only to be cut down by the adventurers standing in wait. But there were far too many of them.
An adventurer would swing his axe across in front of him, gutting two kobolds in a single strike, but three more would soon jump out immediately after, biting and clawing at the adventurers with wild abandon. They appeared furious. As if the adventurers had disturbed and defiled something deeply important to them.
Covering half of the clearing on her own was Barbacoa. With the wounded man still slung across her shoulder, the woman’s coarse brown fur had been stained red with the blood of her enemies as she leapt from kobold to kobold, punching each one into a fine mist. Even with only one hand free, she was able to easily outperform every other adventurer on the field.
Behind her, Arrow Grain was a blur of arrows as she deftly picked off each kobold that slipped past the veteran wolf-woman. Even though Barbacoa was strong, even she wasn’t able to deal with the overwhelming number on her own. An overwhelming number that had quickly begun to get out of control…
Clawing and scrambling their way over the corpses of their fallen brethren, the kobolds began to overwhelm the adventurers. Slick with blood, their weapons had become dulled. Breathless from exertion, the adventurers were becoming slower and weaker. Every now and then, a lunging kobold would find its mark, leaving a nasty gash across the defending group before being cut down. And each one of those successful attacks quickly began to take its toll…
The first adventurer to fall was a heavily armoured man with an axe. Caught off guard by a kobold clawing its way out from underneath the wall of corpses, it had clawed at his legs, glancing off of his armour, but knocking him to the floor. The kobolds quickly descended upon him, clawing and biting at any parts that were exposed.
Soon, more adventurers followed, quickly being pinned to the floor beneath the attacking kobolds. Barbacoa had been able to swat them away with her single free fist, rapidly tearing through the swarm with every swing of her hefty hand. However, from the corner of her eye, she noticed the purple-haired elf becoming swarmed behind her.
“Row-Row!” the woman shouted, and leapt on the elf, using her own body to shield both her and the wounded man from the onslaught of the kobolds.
In a few short moments, all of the adventurers in the clearing had been pinned to the dirt, barely managing to wrestle away the hundreds of swarming kobolds attempting to tear them all apart. All except for one adventurer, however...
One Swing smirked.
“Apocalypse of the Eclipsing Moon—!”
—And then he swung his blade across in front of him.
Watching and waiting for an opportunity to act, One Swing had seen a path suddenly open up in front of him from the adventurers now pinned to the floor. And so he swung.
Lowering his lengthy weapon, he pointed the one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot blade out at his side, the tip of its fifty-meter length trailing out into the forest beyond.
Not only was One Swing a master of vertical length. He was a master of horizontal length as well. And so he swung horizontally.
The lengthy blade tore through the air in front of him, leaving a gleaming violet arc in its trail. The violet trail soon turned to crimson as his blade connected with the swarm of kobolds.
The kobolds had no time to act as everything above their waists was immediately erased into an explosion of red and purple. Their overwhelming numbers being immediately shaved away like a blade to grass.
In the forest beyond the clearing, every tree caught in the devastation of the swing exploded into splinters, disappearing alongside any kobolds still lying in wait behind them.
One Swing followed through with his swing, slicing in a full circle around him, before coming to a stop where he had started. As his blade came to rest, the thick miasma of blood hanging over the entire area was blown apart by the resulting air pressure, raining down across the forest in a shower of red.
The standing remains of the kobolds all plopped wetly to the dirt in unison—nothing more than a stump of legs and feet—before bleeding what little left remained of them into the soil below.
As the adventurers who had been pinned to the floor and were lying safely beneath the arc of One Swing’s blade arose, they heaved the mountains of kobold corpses from their injured bodies and looked at the scene before them
The entire area of forest had been cleared in a wide circle around the clearing. A perfectly circular field of tree stumps with shredded kobold corpses littered all across the reddened soil, stained with blood. Turning their attention behind them…
One Swing stood in the center of the clearing, a satisfied smirk still on his face.