This time the script was flipped though, the bandits were the ones to go on the offensive not me.

They charge at me with immense gusto, screeching while they do so.

I’m a little flustered but I still quickly lash out with my appendages and manage to smack aside the first few with relatively little difficulty, sending them crashing into either the floor or their comrades.

It didn’t even bother them though, they just keep charging at me.

They’re actually suicidal in their approach. Hurling themselves at my tendrils and tentacles and just focusing on damaging me as much as possible instead of their own survival.

This wasn’t right, the other bandits had been cowards, why were these ones so aggressive?

I can’t actually fight them properly, I’m not used to this.

All I can do is skirt around their blades and dart my nimble limbs away from their aggressive blows.

Some of them were even getting up and close to me to try and stab me in the eye.

I swipe them away but more spring up at me.

I can’t even finish the downed ones off because if I pause to do that I’ll get ripped to shreds.

With the tide of battle tilting ever more in their favour as their glancing blows start actually connecting I’m forced to make a choice and break my first ever vow.

As one of the bandits trips on one of my severed tendrils I catch them off guard and stuff them into my mouth, before loudly and violently chewing them.

The effect this caused on the bandit's heightened morale almost made up for the horrendous taste.

Some of the bandits even trip over their own feet in horror, others back away, and some even freeze in shock.

A minority though ignore their friend's pain filled screeches and keep on hacking at me.

This ceaseless aggression of theirs helps revitalise their overwhelmed comrades before I have the chance to take advantage of the opportunity.

I don’t even get time to wipe the blood off my eye before I’m besieged on all sides.

Hurriedly I thrust a tentacle out in front of me to ward off some of my attackers.

But all it earned me was a moment of reprieve and a missing tentacle.

That moment of reprieve though was all I needed to come up with an idea on how to deal with these bandits.

I couldn’t see very well thanks to all the gore on my eye but I didn’t need to see for what I was about to do.

Curling up three of my thin tendrils, I lash out with them, stretching them as fast and as far as I can.

The reward for my gymnastics was the screeching sound raising immensely in volume as bandits got sliced open and gored.

Just judging from the dreadful sounds, I had managed to wound at least a good half a dozen of them.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It was probably nothing more than some flesh wounds but flesh wounds were still wounds and it bought me the time I need to clean up my eye and get back to focusing on the fight.

Unfortunately, all I could see once my vision was clear, was the vicious facial expression of the bandit with the enchanted sword. They were so very close and so very dangerous.

I instantly dart to the side, trying to put some distance between myself and them by getting some of the bandits between us.

I lost a few tendrils and gained a decent few cuts on some tentacles to pull off the manoeuvre but it was a necessity.

Who knew what that weapon could do to me?

But my sacrifices were for nothing.

The strong bandit simply shoulder barges their friends out of their way, practically frothing at the mouth as they rush at me.

And then, rather anti climatically, they trip over. A broken spear had just taken care of my greatest threat.

Just as I was considering whether this was a trap or not. The other bandits start moving towards their fallen comrade.

Taking advantage of what I hoped was an opportunity I quickly stepped forwards and with a brutally swift swing, I smash the fallen bandit's head into a pulp.

And nothing happened, this wasn’t a trap. They really had just been tripped up by a broken spear.

Now with the main threat taken care of and having manoeuvred my way around to a better position, I was the one who was on the winning side.

I didn’t have many tentacles or tendrils left though, so I couldn’t just grab someone and tear them apart.

I had to be careful and conservative with my attacks.

And then, it hit me. Just as I was stabbing outwards to rip open a throat, I had an epiphany

Why was I so intent on throwing around humans and using them to kill each other when I could just use their weapons instead?

Without wasting any time I pick up the broken spear that had helped me claim the threatening bandit's life and hurl it at one of the bandits who was trying to flank me.

Their skewered corpse fell to the ground a moment later.

With my conceptional idea now proven viable. I could stop just trying to bludgeon the humans to death with my herculean strength or tear them apart with brute force.

Now I could move on to throwing everything small and pointy that I could find at them.

And then before I could even put this new genius plan into action, a second revelation came to me.

The humans were fighting so hard because they were cornered, if the entranceway was clear then their morale would become dampened and their mindset far less aggressive.

And so I move back until I was a good dozen feet from the exit and just as I had predicted, some of the humans broke rank and begin to flee.

The already weakened bandit force was now even more pathetic and easy to pick apart.

Now I didn’t even have to use their weapons to kill them. I could just grab them, then tear them into little scraps of meat.

There just wasn’t enough of them left to stop me.

And so that's exactly what I do, grasping onto the closest bandit with my tentacles and tearing their arms off, all while keeping their friends at bay with my tendrils.

And then, once they were delimbed, I let them go and quickly grabbed a hold of my next victim.

Tearing them apart in exactly the same way, I let their corpse join their friends on the now blood soaked ground.

What followed was a brutal few minutes of violence before all of the bandits were dead.

If I were to exclude the earlier bandits who had broken formation after I moved away from the exit then only four bandits had gotten away from me. It was almost like an echo of my earlier battle.

Just as I started making my way back to the tunnel so I could run them down, I heard a noise behind me.

Turning around I flung out a few of my tendrils in a standard whip attack. Only to watch as a limping bandit that looked rather familiar slid under them, scraping the flesh off of their poorly protected body in the process.

Before I could even properly register the fact that the weapon they held was the enchanted longsword they leap up at me.

Jamming their longsword into my mouth and stabbing it into my one and only eye.