Guy hid amongst the highest trees and watched the most horrifying village he ever saw. They almost looked peaceful. Civilized, even. They had houses, the monsters.

He killed five hobgoblins, but that barely put a dent in their numbers. They had yet to even notice. As for goblin mages, that was a whole other ball game he was unwilling to tackle just yet. Well, he was unwilling to take them on in their natural habitat, in this village where they were surrounded by all the hobgoblins and goblin warriors. If he could lead all the warriors out of the village and only have a bunch of mages who sucked at close range, it would be a slaughter.

He needed thirty goblin ears, and he had five hobgoblin ears already. He was pretty sure they would be enough, but getting all the goblin mages would get him a good reward. Perhaps it could even get him into the supervisor's good graces. Besides, hobgoblins were stronger than normal goblins, but he'd found he could still kill them easily enough, at least as long as they weren't with the mages. His plan was a good one, he assured himself. Not a reckless attempt to measure how much stronger he had grown.

The alarm went off in the village, and he could hear noises, like monkeys chattering, but somehow more ominous. The goblins and hobgoblins moved out of the village in small bands over the next thirty minutes.

As he had guessed, most of the goblin mages stayed behind. He was sure only about five parties left with a mage, and there were less than thirty warriors left with one hobgoblin. Guy pushed his aura senses to where the rest of his expedition was still fighting. It was far enough away from the new scouting goblin parties.

Still, if he didn't wrap up this business fast enough, they'd be in some trouble. Guy attacked.

He did not attack from the front where the thirty or so goblin warriors were still discussing something with loud animal noises and grunts. He went straight to what appeared to be a meeting of some of the goblin mages. He attacked the strongest one first, based on its aura. Even with its short green stature, it had been dressed very similarly to a human and was making the most monkey noises at the meeting. Probably some kind of politician.

The goblin's head flew before any of the others could realise what was happening. His second target died the next instant, but his sword bounced off the air on his third attempt. An invisible magic barrier? He cursed, but he was already running, avoiding elemental attacks as he got behind the goblin and killed it before it could adjust its shield. He launched himself into the air, narrowly avoiding a bolt of lightning. He clicked his tongue and dived away from this group. It had gotten dangerous.

The next group was still in some confusion when he landed among them. They were standing very close to each other, and all he had to do was thrust nine times in one second to kill half the group. He could feel his muscles pulling during the whole stunt. He didn't normally use techniques before a good warm-up, but it had been a good opportunity. He killed seven more with lightning-fast strikes before the last two rallied and began to shout. One used a magic shield, which when hit with Guy's strongest attack launched the goblin into a grass-walled house or shelter or semi-permanent tent, helping it escape. The other goblin had very impressive control over earth magic and used the earth to pull itself away at top speed, screaming at the top of its lungs.

Guy cursed under his breath but he was already running towards his next group of victims. He needed to be faster. His body was letting him down, slower to react to his instructions than he would like. He killed three groups of goblin mages before he found himself back to the group he'd attacked first.

He thrust forward five times, killed five times. His sixth attempt was blocked with a clang, the reverberations causing his arms to spasm as he was forced back.

It was a bigger goblin, almost the size of a human being, dressed in a shirt of hide and a loin cloth, and holding a crude shield. Crude but effective. He had barely caused the shield to shake with his last thrust.

Which was very reasonable. Whilst they were fatal, his thrusts were more speed-focused than strength. They could overpower a weaker opponent, but could only try and penetrate the guard of the strong - not necessarily stronger - opponents.

His rhythm broke when he bounced back from his failed attack. He had been in a trance of swings and thrusts and darts and lunges. It was almost like he was taking time to hone his basics, to warm up before the main fight. It seemed the hobgoblin who had been left in the village wasn't a run of the mill mob. His rusty-coloured and tangy-scented club proved that. Guy took his tip-down stance, took a breath, and once again his vision changed.

It was only him and the hobgoblin, who charged first. Guy tensed his muscles and swung, the sword clanged off the metal shield and sparks flew. Guy was launched into the air, he landed a few inches back, and the club was already coming for him. Letting the attack push him back, Guy got some distance. He crouched, trying to get ready again.

The club met sword in another shower of sparks, and strength met refined technique. Guy's sword should have been pushed back, but instead, it slid off the surface of the club, going upwards even as the hobgoblin froze. Like a snake, it launched forward and took a nibble at the goblin's hand. And a finger flew.

Guy flowed past the goblin, landing behind the behemoth. It screamed in rage and the whole forest froze. Guy knew it then, and it filled him with no small amount of horror and pride.

Here before him stood someone so much stronger, so much more resilient, impossible for him to defeat. He had landed upon the big bad boss, probably the leader of this whole forest goblin settlement. And the goblin's body was swelling. It got taller, its muscles bulged out. It was almost the size of an ogre.

“Why? Why you puny humans come to our home, kill us?! You are weak. We capture your homes…”

Guy took a breath. He could feel his stamina flagging. As for the rest of the expedition force. They were withdrawing, he could tell from their movement patterns. Hearing the roar of a mutant creature, they must have decided they were in over their heads.

Guy took another stance. He couldn't win under normal circumstances, sure, but these weren't normal circumstances. He could feel it. His body was tiring, his muscles torn, his breaths laboured. He could not escape from here. But he didn't need to. He was on the verge of something. If he survived a few more minutes of this, he was pretty sure something big was going to happen.

He could almost feel the world edge him on. He remembered Noid's words about the world being a trial and whatnot, then he promptly dismissed them. He crouched and launched himself forward with a lunge.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The battle resumed. The trance took him, deeper than ever before. His breaths were slow, his senses were elevated but focused. He noticed everything his opponent did to the smallest detail. They exchanged attacks hundreds of times over the next thirty seconds, and hundreds of wounds gathered on the goblin's body. Still, at the end of those thirty seconds, Guy was launched through five houses of mud and rock and grass.

He landed with a crash, dug a furrow with his body, and blocked his sight with a cloud of dust. There was pain, sure. But for some reason, he could ignore it, cut the sensation off. He had been in pain since the moment he had seen the world tear. It felt like this world was always trying to reject him.

He wondered why he couldn't die.

Not that any of that mattered. His body bruised and battered, his engine dry, Guy forced himself to his feet mere moments after his crash. He launched himself sideways even though he couldn't see, and a crash and subsequent dust cloud told him he'd done the right thing.

He crouched in a ready position. His enemy charged. He charged too, though with more grace than his enemy. They met in the middle. Their weapons clashed. He was not pushed back.

He could not suddenly overpower the hobgoblin. He could, however, steal all the momentum from its hit, using its strength against it. As the club came down, his sword came in from the side and slightly angled. Instead of being pushed back, the hit pushed him to the right and down, inside the monster's guard. With that same momentum, he slid past the monster's body, leaving a slash on its gut.

His body was flexible. Almost like it was made of rubber. His soul hurt like it was wrung dry. He did not have any more stamina, yet he could still move. His attacks were weak, and effortless for the beast to tank, but he could still move as long as he didn't stop. If he stopped, once he stopped, it would be over.

He moved back to attack, and he could see the angle where he'd need to put his sword to steal the monster's momentum again. He couldn't imbue strength into his attacks. A trade-off for this new boost? Still, the little scratches would add up.

Again and again and again. The monster cried out in pain, the wounds on its body accumulating. But it was an evolved monster, and so too its mental faculties. It had seen the trick or thought it had. It was simple really, the beast's plan. And it might have worked too, if only it had been fighting someone else.

It decided not to clash with him. Instead, as it charged, it swung its club from overhead with both its hands. Guy was charging it when he realised he wasn't the target. It hadn't decided to just leverage all its strength to give him a burst of momentum he could not hold. No. It decided to destroy the ground once he was in range, make him lose his footing, and raise a dust cloud all in one go to limit his vision. Guy could not stop, so he came up with a plan on the fly.

He was out of stamina, out of energy, but he could still move his body, his eyes sharpened, his legs pumped. Guy needed to move faster.

The club slammed into the earth and a meter around the hobgoblin, the earth shuddered. Guy kept his eyes on the club. Even as the earth he was stepping on started to rise. He ran in the air, fighting against the rebounding pressure. His feet landed on the club and he never stopped running with his waist bent and his head pointed ahead to streamline it.

He ran up the hobgoblin’s arms and leveraged his sword’s tip below the hobgoblin's jaw. And then the rebound came, equal but opposite from the beast's momentum. He rode the wave, his legs flailing like a flag on a windy day, his hands firm, holding onto his sword as he leveraged it below the beast's head with all his body weight. It drove through the beast's jaw, and even as he flew he pushed inwards, and the blade kept going upwards with him. He didn't quite make it to the posterior, but almost two-thirds of the beast's head was bisected vertically.

He saw, as he flew, groups of goblin mages flying around him with their magic focused on the hobgoblin. They'd been buffing it. He hadn't even realised the beast had gotten almost as fast as him, and almost twice as strong as it had been at the beginning, and that was after whatever midfight evolution it had gone through. Not that he hadn't had his evolution. If he hadn't been about to break through in some way, Guy wanted to think he'd have had the sense to run.

A hobgoblin supported by goblin mages? That was a death sentence for more experienced adventurers. It was lucky he specialised in speed, otherwise, the mages might have had a more direct impact on the fight by targeting him. He fleeted around too fast to be pinned down though.

As he dropped, he tried to lower the impact of his landing. He was not able to prevent at least one of his legs from breaking, but at least he didn't just splat like some of the soft goblin mages. He had no idea how he was supposed to escape though.

And then the roar reached him, and with a mass of blood and pulped brain for a face, the hobgoblin ran toward him in one final instinct-fueled charge. He could see the flesh of its face trying to knit itself back together, but he had cut it straight to the bone. It wasn't going to live. He couldn't run, and whatever had been fueling him before was now exhausted. The club came down, just as the first squads of goblins were getting back to the village. Guy was crushed, then smashed, then pulped until there was nothing left.

When he woke up, the big monster was draped over him, and the other goblins hadn't noticed his revival. Mostly because he was covered in blood and so much pulped and burnt flesh, most of it his. The stench was sickening. They were distracted by something. He felt the condition of his body, and aside from a kind of weariness he could feel deep in his spirit, he was in peak physical condition. He sent a tendril of awareness into the woods, then further to where he'd left his party.

They were trying to run. But they couldn't. The goblins and hobgoblins were there. Not as many as were here with him in the village, but he had a feeling that once whatever was distracting them was over, they'd be going after the humans.

Waiting a few moments, he scooted out from under the former ruler of this community. He tried to be sneaky as he crawled into the bushes, but he'd never trained in that sort of thing.

He snapped a twig with his leading hand. For a moment, everyone froze. He would have laughed if he wasn't so terrified. He recovered first, getting up and bending as he started to pump his legs. His sword had not been removed from him, and his rugs still clung to his body. A hobgoblin got in his way, but he cut through it with a simple swing. He wanted to frown but he had no time. That had been too easy.

He cut through a wall of fire but continued to run even as the whole forest started to burn around him. The massive spell even killed a few goblins. His mind settled into that state where nothing but his goal mattered. He cut through three more hobgoblins, almost ten spells, and just as many goblin mages. He dodged a few spells flung from behind him, cut through swathes of goblins he couldn't even count. And around him, the forest fell.

He found them in an encirclement. Orlandir was panting, holding two blades and trying to scare the goblins to keep them back. Grunter was just behind him, spotting more wounds than Guy could count. The supervisor had the rear, holding some kind of wand with a shining book floating next to her.

The other two girls were in the middle, both wheezing and doubled over. The elven girl looked pale, the other looked a little better. He could see the devastation they'd wrought on the goblin population. It hadn't been enough. They had to escape the moment signs of a monster surge appeared. He shouldn't have been too cocky and gone into their village. This was his fault.

He took a moment to get out of his head with a heavy breath. He'd play the blame game later. For now, all he needed to do was help them escape.

He fell on the goblins from behind, and in his wake came spells that devastated the goblins even if they'd been sent by their allies. He'd timed it just right, ending up in the area where the goblin line was the thickest. His arrival broke the peace.

He spared a bit of attention for the others as he danced among the goblins. The supervisor called forth a bolt of lightning, splitting it into three, six, nine before it fell amid a cluster of goblins, and if he hadn't been very busy with a fight Guy would have stopped to gawk. The flame-haired girl pointed in the direction he'd come from, and a massive stream of lava burst out of the earth. She whirled about, and everywhere she turned lava bubbled out.

Guy was forced to jump into their little ring to spare himself from roasting. The supervisor cooled the lava in the direction they'd come from with an ice spell. No one needed any encouragement to run.