Chapter 34: Chapter 33

Chapter 33

 

Again we found Rina breathing really hard and having collapsed. Right now Sensei was sitting under cover of a big boulder that provided shade and cover, and had her in her lap. Feeling down with my hands I could see that Rina was in a cold sweat and very pale looking. Her arms and legs were askew with her eyes closed. Her skin felt a bit cooler than it should be, since she was having trouble keeping her body warmth regulated. But now Yumi was pulled away from the fight too. She was in a panic and since her ‘Rina obsession’ was fueling her ability to fight this was the worst possible situation that could occur.

Obviously Yumi wouldn’t be able to fight if she was worried about Rina dying. And it’s clear that she’s obsessed with her.

“Do something, Shun!” Yumi urged.

Damn. That was like double trouble. But I should have expected it could happen again.

“What happened? She was just walking around less than a minute ago?” Yumi exclaimed in frustration.

“I think she was on the last bit of her strength and afraid she’d pull attention away from the more pressing threat. How bad is it?” Sensei said, with a look of concern.

“Hm...we did burn a lot of stamina with all that traveling,” I admitted.

Yumi looked like she was crying, with red eyes and looking desperate. “Why does this have to happen now?” she cried out.

Sensei and I adjusted Rina’s posture and limbs to preserve body heat. Then tried to adjust her clothes for better warmth but it was almost impossible. We also didn’t have water bottles or anything useful like medicine.

In spite of having access to heal magic, it didn’t eliminate the need or want for medicine. I actually wanted to use both as much as I could and throw everything I could at this issue.

“We didn’t do anything wrong, she just went out like a light. I managed to keep her head from hitting the rocks,” Sensei said, obviously upset.

“That’s good. Thanks,” I replied.

“You can take care of it right Shun?” Yumi asked expecting a miracle.

Uh oh…now that I had heal magic the expectations from others were that I would always be able to do something impossible. That creates a ton of stress.

“Shun’s skill can save her...and save all of us,” Asakura adds.

“We won’t let anything happen. Don’t worry,” I said.

I knelt down next to her carefully. I was careful not to try to look inside her clothes, but needed to verify how she was doing with the young looking Asakura Sensei’s help holding her. This means taking her pulse, listening to her heart, and having to touch her. I put my ear up against her chest cavity to try to listen to the flow of the lungs, listening to her chest up as close as I could. There wasn’t as much warmth coming off her either and that wasn’t a good sign; lowered temperature. I could hear her breathing, but it was slow, raspy, and labored, feeling like the amount of time between breaths wasn’t quick enough. Next I was checking her neck and wrist.

Though I knew she had a pulse I also had to measure what her norm was. That could help me know how bad she was feeling right now.

And yes, it did check out that she’s weaker.

“Hey you, beat it!” Yumi cried out fiercely all of the sudden, her eyes had become daggers of vengeance. Her comment seemed random and completely out of timing, until I followed her line of sight. She’d apparently spotted a cockroach, a rather large one in fact.

I noticed some older boy near us, who was bending over trying to look down Rina’s jacket, because of her lack of a shirt. He ended up running away with Yumi chasing him with an orc club while he cried for mercy. She kept yelling at him, and chased him much longer than she should have, until I lost sight of them.

“How’s her pulse, and…whatever else you are checking?” Asakura asked, trusting me fully.

“Seems OK so far, in that she’s alive, and I think she’ll stay that way; I don’t like how weak she is though. Plus, we’re about to be caught up in a pretty desperate situation with combat, which will add humongous stress onto her over what’s got already. She shouldn’t have done that jog earlier, but there was nothing any of us could do. We had to run or all die, even though she shouldn’t be doing that kind of exertion,” I said full of stress in my voice.

“What can I do to help?” Asakura responded sincerely, while cradling her head.

“Just keep her alive, but you’ll have to stay with her. I can’t trust anyone else to do it. We probably won’t stay in this place,” I said. “When it’s time to go there won’t be a lot of time to pick stuff up and play nice with everyone.”

“Got it,” she said. “But I know you’re skill can save her,” she added.

“Now cover me a bit,” I said. Trying as hard as we could Yuriko and Sensei tried to provide cover while I slipped a glowy blue ball of heal mana into Rina’s chest. Mostly, it worked, but the blue spark is a bit brighter than I thought it was before! It seems a few people had already noticed. Even with them trying to cover it people were attracted to the small spark’s light.

Although I don’t like this situation, Rina’s bad health is forcing my magic skills to be more powerful quickly!

Plus we still had to maintain cover from the missile fire going on.

“What’s that? I think I saw something,” I heard someone whisper.

“Something’s going on over there,” another said.

A few heads had turned this way.

Ah hell. I couldn’t have waited though, with her life on the line.

“Oh damn,” I said.

They will figure out my skill. That’s going to be a mess when there’s too many wounded to help, all demanding help!

“Just ignore them. We’ll take care of her and keep her safe. You go to the front and keep the orcs back,” Asakura said. I regarded her words carefully. Sensei wasn’t actually telling me what to do, I realized. She seemed to already trust me with what she knew I was already going to do anyway from knowing me as a person.

Immediately Rina started breathing easier, but still was asleep. Sure enough, the choking fog of sickness seemed to ease up. I didn’t bother to wake her though we tucked her into a rock crevice among some boulders where Asakura and she could be safe. We’d wake her when we had no other choice, so there wasn’t any point in bothering her resting. I continued to monitor her for a bit to make sure.

Turning to Yuriko I said, “Can you stay with them and keep an eye on both of them?”

She nodded slowly.

But then we heard the orc ram horns again, sending a signal down through the valley. Leaving the girls I went to the edge of the hill facing the valley below where Akira and Akimoto were gathered with the two ranger aides.

As we looked out below us the block of orc troops was starting to move towards us, marching slowly towards our fortified hill. The other two half formed blocks of orcs troops were still gathering however and resembling cracked egg shell shapes of massed people in not having enough man power yet. I could see an ogre on each of the half formed block of troops that weren’t ready to advance yet, yelling and pointing at them trying to get them to move into formation and line up faster. In a few cases they would beat on a few defiant orcs, before moving down the lines. It was just like ant’s nests forming from our view.

How will we get out of this mess?

This is a lot of orcs! The whole hill is being surrounded slowly!

So that’s how they used the ogres huh? They were used to push the smaller and more fearful troops to the front and keep the better troops in the back.

Many of the students began crying out in fear and despair.

“This is just like the school incident!” someone said.

“Pfff, you call almost nine hundred people getting killed an incident?” some girl answered back.

“It’s not just like school! This will be different!” Akira growled loudly trying to gather up resistance and keep spirits up. I wondered if he was mad but then he slyly gave me a hidden thumbs up. Good, he was on board for this. Morale was good.

“Gather around us! We can do this!” Akimoto yelled. He started yelling at students at random, trying to animate them to fight harder. It was like a sports team coach, except the yelling was real and like sports was their religion.

Slowly students gathered at our point, which was where the orcs would hit first. Piles of rocks were also being assembled by those that couldn’t throw as good while the rangers and others with the best aim kept throwing rocks down into the block below.

Many of the hits were connecting, and some of the boys could throw hard enough at the orcs to actually keep a few of them from getting back up. The thrown stones were kept up to a steady pace, while the column was growing closer inch by inch. Contrary to popular belief stones aren’t bad weapons if you could hit the right vulnerable spot, I noticed. But this was mostly due to the fact that the orcs didn’t have armor.

Because the orcs were parasitic in nature they lacked the ability to have crafting and industry for the most part. There were a few orcs with salvaged pieces of armor that they applied or tied to their arms or shoulders, or a thigh, but they didn’t have enough to cover up themselves very well since it was all stolen from the dead they’d killed. And because their bodies tended to be more grotesque and ill formed but bulky they weren’t the same dimensions as humans, thus not all armor salvaged from victims could be used.

Akira next to me could throw the hardest of all of our allied forces so far, but the rangers had their slings which whirred eerily while swinging them before they released the stones to strike at enemies. With the row and column order of the orcs it was also hard to not miss, but not every blow would kill.

“Need you to yell more when you throw Akira; because you look scary, it will raise their fighting spirit. Right now our people don’t need nice, but they need fierce and merciless,” Akimoto suggested bluntly.

Akira didn’t say anything. After all he didn’t like being a goat man. But he kept throwing the rocks a lot farther than I’d expected. When he released some bigger rocks the orcs below us coming up the slope, didn’t have enough time to get out of the way and he started killing them quickly.

“This sucks,” one of the aides said, releasing a thrown high velocity stone from his sling. The sling had a wonderful effect of being able to stir up the speed of the throw and make a cool whirring noise. They looked fun to try out.

The rocky hill won’t run out of rocks to use at least...

I noticed his blow did manage to clip a goofy looking orc in the head. It went down instantly.

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Within a minute ten orcs were killed and more wounded, but soon they’d be able to reach the top part of the hill where we were as they struggled against the slope. We didn’t have enough people moving yet. We also needed to adjust our formation to have more come this way and to provide more fire power.

But I hadn’t expected how desperate people become when they are in danger.

“Everyone come fight. Anyone not throwing rocks in the next ten seconds dies!” Akimoto said suddenly, brandishing his spear violently. He started eyeing the troops and glaring down the line to watch everyone.

What the hell? What was he thinking? He wouldn’t really try to cut people down would he? In the back of my mind I couldn’t shake off what he’d just said.

How would that apply to Rina and Sensei?

“You should worry about yourself and killing on your own,” I warned, not daring to let it go.

He ignored me. What a crazy idiot, I kept thinking while shaking my head.

True to his word Akimoto ran out animating some of the wounded kids and getting them up here. There actually were a lot of kids here, but so many of them were afraid to fight. I don’t think he was wrong to want to have people fight, but how he enforced it might need monitoring. The rock throwing picked up as more people started coming over, who happened to also be dripping blood and looking a bit loopy. Some of them didn’t have very good aim; but we had less than half a minute before the orcs would be in melee range.

But then the orcs started firing back and trying to rally themselves. They saw this as their chance and also they were trying to desperately cover the block that was trying to maneuver against us. A few arrows started whistling over head and some stones every once in awhile would hit our side. Some of them would hit big boulders people were using for cover, but others got even closer. First a student ten feet to our left took an arrow to the chest, falling down the hill into the sleep of death. Then after that, someone took an arrow to the arm, near the bicep area. They are on the ground instantly, unable to fight any longer.

“Ah, my arm!” she screamed. She fell to hit the rocky ground hard, jarring her knees while she was clutching her arm.

“Dang. That was her throwing arm,” someone whispered.

“Wasn’t she a tennis champion?” Someone else said.

The missile fire continued until I heard a scream. I recognized the voice.

It was Asakura.

Akimoto had grabbed her arm and was trying to stop her from defending Rina. She was looking at me desperately and looked terribly afraid, while Akimoto had his spear out.

What the hell was he thinking?!

“That stupid asshole,” I thought aloud.

Running over I caught up just in time. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? They are my team.”

But where was Yuriko and why wasn’t she watching over the two of them? Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted her back with Akira, feeding him rocks to throw to speed up his killing speed. Why had she moved without telling me?

“Go to the line to fight, or I’ll kill you,” Akimoto said feverishly, towering over Asakura. His eyes looked full of fear. People did stupid things when they were scared. This was one of those times.

“Rina needs me! I’m following orders!” Asakura said, standing her ground. She pulled Rina closer to herself.

“We need all our people fighting. You follow my orders!” Akimoto yelled.

The other students were afraid to intervene, even though they didn’t like what he was doing. It seems that most of them didn’t feel strong enough to move against him. One of Akimoto’s aides was about to leave to go help his boss and had spotted me moving over there, when Akira’s hand clamped down on his collarbone and shoulder with such force that he was forced to the ground.

“I don’t think so. Where do you think you are going?” he growled in his deep voice.

Now suddenly it was a confrontation between Akimoto, and Akira and I!

My legs ran like they had a life of their own; someone had to protect Rina and Asakura!

I blocked the spear thrust of the ‘Ranger Prince’ that was about to become ‘Ranger Pudding’ as he tried to push his spear into Rina. “What the fuck are you doing?!” I yelled. I was tempted to chop him up with the axe but needed to resolve it in a way, such that I could try to get him to come to his senses and help kill orcs.

We crossed weapons again, when he tried another stabbing thrust at me, and I knocked it down heavily using the greater mass and solidity of the axe handle. Then he tried to kick me but I used that against him, by hitting back at his pelvis and wrecking his one legged balance. Then he fell down into the dirt. Most of these were dirty surprise attack moves like kicking sand in someone’s eyes but I didn’t care. I had to win at any cost.

I didn’t care about how uncool kicking sand in someone’s eyes was either, and did so now just to be safe.

Somehow I outfought him! Desperation was a good teacher!

“Everyone fights or I cut down the cowards,” Akimoto still tried to say fanatically, as he got back up, giving me an ugly look. I noticed he also had some kind of war paint on. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I hadn’t expected that.

“You aren’t in charge of my team!” I said. “Separate team, separate commanders. We’re not your fucking slaves to do with as you please dumb ass. If I have to I’ll cut you down,” I reminded him.

“Don’t you mean Akira’s team?” he suggested mocking me.

“No, my team came to help you. Akira is in my team, not in charge of it. Period. If I have given one of my team permission to rest that’s what happens. They follow my orders,” I barked. He wouldn’t understand it if I played nice, and the stakes were too high. Playing tough was the only way to go with him right now.

Akimoto lunged again at Rina with his plundered orc spear, but I blocked it again, “what are you doing?! We don’t have time to fight!” he said.

“That’s my sister. And if you don’t think I won’t cut you down, I will,” I said with all my willpower; if it came to it, he was worth less than my family. “And we’re not doing a king period. No King Akimoto, no King Yuta, and no King Akira.”

Well...even though I said sister, as in step sister. It’s confusing because she’s technically my cousin.

“You aren’t strong enough to even have a say in the matter,” he said, but he looked hesitant.

He thrust his spear at me again but it lacked killing intent, with a fake maneuver to try and was an attempt to go around me. It seems his thinking was that if he got one of the girls out of the way I’d be forced to fight orcs too, but I’d been expecting it. Then I countered with a heavy wrap on the knuckles from the axe handle, which he hadn’t expected. Unfortunately if I beat him too senselessly then there’s be that much more orcs for me to kill instead.

So I decided not to pursue killing him. Plus if I had escalated any further his aides would have stopped me and tried to help. I think the only reason they didn’t help now was they were confused by Akimoto’s strange behavior.

But I momentarily had the worry that he might also try to save himself like Yuta had, abandoning the others.

“Back to the front line now! That’s where you are needed,” I ordered.

“You can’t make me. I’m in charge,” he said venomously.

“We won’t allow you to just kill other people that you have no authority over,” I added.

“I can crush you like the other orcs we fought though. Don’t push it,” I leered back at him. I maintained an “I so will kill you glare” at him. After about ten seconds of looking at me he stopped and then relaxed, with his back turned to me as he went back to the front line to face the orcs. He knew I couldn’t hurt him because we needed people to take care of the orcs. But if they weren’t there I’m not even sure how far he would have gone.

It was so tempting to end future trouble right now, but I was also scared. He hadn’t been serious in his fighting with me. If he were, he probably had more combat abilities than I did.

But the damage was done. He’d never be a friend I’m sure. And I’d never be able to turn my back in front of him nearby because he’s such an evil prick.

While walking back he was giving me a pretty intense look. I’d have to watch my back after this. Not only that, instead of worrying about the orcs people had been distracted by having to worry about if Akimoto was going to execute their wounded friends. It had instead of helping people get motivated to fight harder, confused the hell out of people and even halted their progress of killing orcs.

Only Akira, Yuriko, and the two ranger aides had ironically been the only ones who didn’t stop shooting orcs down. The others were uncertain, even holding weapons up that they’d been about to strike with, but now doing nothing.

Funny...Akira didn’t actually help me fight him either. He could have easily have stopped it.

Was he letting me, a rival, get taken down to allow himself more opportunities?

This whole thing is nuts.

I also realized some of them were going to be really tempted to run away because of what Akimoto had done. He had done the opposite of what he’d originally intended by not considering the effect of his choices.

In some ways he’d helped when he animated people to defend each other. It’s just that he didn’t realize you can only take it so far.

As a result, the orcs had reached the top of the hill now and were starting to engage people here. Now we were fighting for our lives, and they were upon us.

What a headache!

All thanks to Akimoto being a dumb ass.

A whole slew of them were suddenly at the top crashing into students that were trying their best to hang on, but not very many of them were armed well. Some of the students were completely bowled over into each other. The others were clubbing or stabbing or slashing, anything that got near them, as they could. But now that the orcs were right in front of us, rocks weren’t going to do much good anymore and a lot of people lacked good weapons.

Now how do I get out of this mess alive?

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