Chapter 95: Chapter 92

Chapter 92

 

We keep moving. It’s getting harder for us to move as more people get wounded and scratched up.

Somehow in the last hour I’ve finally convinced Oleg to leave the road, but before we do some of the dwarves carved signals in dwarven on the road. This way,if the heavy armors came back to find us they’d see we were off the road and using the hills for cover.

I think it’s a good strategy. The road is too open, inviting an ambush. Despite it being underground I also discover it’s fairly similar to being able to ambush on the road above ground where someone could watch a road from nearby mountains or hills. We also think that there’s no way that the devious goblins could learn a difficult written language like dwarven, according to Oleg. Apparently its written form is tough too, just by itself. But the enemy also has the language enchant don’t they? Or is there something special about written dwarven in regards to that?

So the mystery isn’t solved. At this point I don’t know. But we trek on, keeping our weapons ready at all times.

Still the goblins will see something written there on the road. They just will need more time to figure out what it means. And I think he’s underestimating goblin sneakiness also.

It’s also strange that underground almost has its own open areas and how big the caverns can be is quite surprising.

Goblins...I can’t stop thinking about them as we move.

One on one we can beat them.

But, they come un waves like the ocean. That’s what’s so scary about them.

“This place looks like this whole place used to be some big magma pocket or bubble eons ago and then the dwarves made their own changes,” Rina said looking around whenever the light would show any type of evidence or something interesting. She’s using the light spell I’m emitting to pick up on some geology. I’d forgotten she’d had a bit of Earth science back home, and she’s remembering much of it now.

“Eh? You’re interested in geology and minerals? Some people think that but…who knows. This world has many such interlocking places. To think a pretty human girl would go after earth science makes me excited too,” Oleg looked happy.

Uh oh, does that mean I have to be protective soon? Oleg is not very good looking…so while we walk now I’m trying to gauge how much of a threat he is. Rina just made a huge mistake. He will for sure think she’s the perfect women. He’s grinning at her like a school kid.

“Un…” she admits it too late, and then realized what just happened. Her forehead suddenly cracks into stress lines, but she doesn’t get rude. She instead pretends to be occupied and ignored him.

Less than an hour after leaving the road we spot the heavy armors far away, near the town. It’s weird because they are supposed to be following Oleg’s commands.

We also received reports that our scouts had found and engaged several goblins scouts. Two of them are dispatched while moving solo by our team of two scouts together. It doesn’t seem like much, but as the reports came in Oleg explains that every goblin scout killed means reduced chances that we would have had a skirmish, since the troop movements are fed back and forth to leadership by the scouts on each side.

This makes sense! And I hadn’t heard a good explanation of it this way. It’s interesting to think about. The true war is to get rid of the scouts before they alert the main force! And it doesn’t help that if the goblin scouts are stronger than others of their kind, they are tempted to stick their neck out for a snack more than they should be!

So a lot of whether or not people live or die depends on the scouts one upping each other through sneaking, hiding, or by killing each other before an alarm is put out.

“So because their scout doesn’t report back in you really think they don’t know where we are exactly?” I asked.

“They for sure know we’re here and in the vicinity. A scout disappearing in a certain grid mark on a map rouses suspicion pretty fast. It takes time for that information to carry over to their spymasters however. But in one hour an army can march quite a bit. They are still thinking like in time progression. They don’t actually know where we’re at right now and they haven’t noticed their scout hasn’t come back yet. But they will notice in about an hour. They are thinking like where we were an hour ago and what direction we could have moved since then because that’s about the time it takes for a scout to go out a certain distance and check back in. They will be like where can the dwarves be within an hour of where they last engaged us. It’s like that,” he said.

This is so interesting.

“That makes sense,” I said carefully.

“Un…” Asakura nodded with me, faking looking alert.

“But won’t it be natural for them to just think we’re already headed to the dwarven settlement directly?” Rina said.

“True, that’s what the normal situation would be. But they are also thinking that we’re thinking what their movements would be and that we’re also not simple minded and can surprise them. So they have to think did the enemy anticipate and plan to move first against us, trying to ambush them,” he sounded partly excited.

I think I could see why.

We keep trudging down the road.

I wish we could see better. That’s the part that makes us so nervous. We have such limited light, and the dwarves want to cover up what light we have so it won’t be spotted.

“After you see how complex it is, it’s more interesting,” I said as he showed me his map and it’s grid lines briefly.

“Yeah, it’s not easy like people think. We also will have to come up with ways of shaking up their intelligence too, giving them wrong or mixed signals, and anything else we can do to promote chaos among their ranks or make them scared to fight,” he said.

Within the next hour, there are many more goblin scouts coming from the same direction, which by itself means the goblins are suspicious of this particular grid on the map. We’re trying to move quicker to get away now. We dispatched a few with the main body of the platoon acting together, but some of them got away and that’s got the men upset.

Always we can hear them rushing at us over gravelly patches of ground before we can see them. But it can be unnerving when its so dark.

But I trust in the magic skills to help keep us save that we’ve worked hard to build.

It turns out our scouts are eventually disabled from heavy wounds after hard fighting. It can’t be helped. They did good and had been strong all this time, but there were just too many enemy scouts they’d tried to beat down over time and too many skirmishes through the ever night of underground. Because so much relies on having really good quality scouts they are really key to producing a good victory. So the dwarves use their best people as scouts. You have to be strong, durable, quick, good at fighting and navigation, and have good wits while moving quickly in light armor. It relies on a lot of complex skills that are necessary to survive in this world, so that helps me become somewhat interested in them.

But that means they can’t replace them with just anyone. They were tempted to try me as a scout but I can’t do it while I have Rina and Asakura to care for. It’s a daunting task with everything and just surviving after all. Plus, there’s also the risk of if a scout is outnumbered and can’t get away fast enough, because they are moving solo. Yeah, that would be bad…

As we are thinking about what to do about our wounded and disabled scouts I’m able to look at them better from a medic’s point of view; the two dwarves come back into the group bleeding heavily ahead of a small goblin ambush team chasing them only minutes ago.

Mana is really tight right now with so many unknowns up in the air.

I grip my equipment more nervously now that mana is starting to drip down. My sweat is on the handle of my weapon now.

The dwarves are hurriedly jabbering a bunch of jibberish to Oleg. He talks with them briefly and quickly despite their terrible wounds. It seems the dwarves don’t have the red tape nonsense of bureaucracy. They believe in sacrifice and helping one another and some of them can be a bit pushy when they want the leader to do the right thing.

But I can already see they need emergency aid. We try to stabilize them quickly so they won’t die. These two look badly injured. They’d been dragged back to the line of safety by their comrades while gushing blood.

“Times like these I wish I had a wagon,” Oleg said frowning.

“Why don’t you have a wagon? The wounded are slowing us a lot and we can’t exactly leave them behind,” I said. I gave him a calculated look.

But he wasn’t trying to hide anything. He just sort of slumped in defeat. “I was told it wasn’t in this month’s equipment budget. But I’m hoping for one next quarter,” he said. “Wagons are more noisy though, and harder to hide so it’s a trade off even if I do get what I want.”

That’s true. The wheels of the wagon would make a bunch of noise, he’s right. But probably not more than a whole troop of marching booted dwarven boots.

Did that mean dwarven government did their defense spending on quarterly reviews?

“Hurry we can’t stop for long. I can only give you five minutes to stabilize the wounded. After that if we stay here we’ll get surrounded. That will be very bad,” he emphasized.

Oleg is smart. Of course he can keep to long term goals in a firefight like this. I had momentarily been caught up in the chaos.

Rina’s eyes are wide as she hopes I can do that much in so short a time to stabilize the wounded scouts. Asakura remains a blank face watching what I will decide to do. But there’s something strange about the way she’s looking out into the darkness.

Seriously? Do they know how much of a miracle they are expecting?

“You know there is also something wrong with your heavy armor team. Why are they going in circles?” Rina asked pointing in the distance. Normally we wouldn’t see that far underground but some of the heavy armors have their lights on. We can see the lights from this distance moving in circles. But to do that I wonder what they are thinking.

Are they trying to be seen or send a signal? Why would they be doing that?

Her comment makes me immediately suspicious of something being wrong with what’s going on with them. They shouldn’t be going in circles. Was Rina right? It looks like it, after I check it. But I’m more worried about the wounded dwarves.

“Do you need needle and thread?” Oleg asked.

“Nah, I’m good.”

Since awhile ago I’d been trying to research advances in forming the cure spell into a needle like points of mana to more directly affect certain areas that had received the most damage like where the sword or spear point had directly impacted. I was also at the time trying to save mana. But sometimes we were on the move and I wasn’t able to heal all the flesh at once. So I had to do small pinpoints like stitches on a line with open spots between to keep things meshed together and hold the wound closed even though it could tear open very easily. Because of it, it’s evolved to a form of ‘cure’ mana stitches for use when I don’t have enough mana or time to fully heal a wounded person. This type of skill didn’t cure the wound but did stop the bleeding and hole the wounds together so they wouldn’t get infected and bleed to death. It has a few other applications as well.

Asakura would be impressed if she weren’t in her strange mental state right now. I weave some mana enforced stitches and suddenly realize I’ve got a new healing skill. Not only that but it’s an extremely valuable healing skill to boot. This is an amazingly good skill to have when you don’t have a lot of mana to use and need to sew someone up and keep them from bleeding to death. After all, even if I’d used a small heal, the flesh would still be torn open, exposed, and therefore have bled them to death.

I immediately worked and barely got them into a manageable situation before we had to move. Five minutes goes by fast when lives are on the line.

After that we’re forced to stop. I think it’s the best I can do for now. Though I wished I had more time I do think I got them to a stabilized position.

We’re travelling a bit quicker now. The rocky terrain is bad. We’re hoping to make it and close the gap with the heavy armors before we reach the settlement.

Soon after we are about to hit the goblins as they’ve surrounded our heavy armors…which aren’t doing very well? The heavy armor golem like machines are fun and interesting to study. If the dwarves would let us study them up close more I would do so. But they won’t, which is understandable.

But in this case...

I’m still not quite sure what the heck is going on with them.

Some of them are just going in circles with their weapons dancing around like kids playing with sparklers. It’s not as effective as it should be. They are missing a lot of the goblins half the time and wasting energy with no gain on random strange movement patterns like they are high on something.

Is it because it’s a machine?

They are still alive, but totally surrounded, while barely keeping goblins at bay because of their superior combat abilities. Two of the armors are broken and stuck in the mud plus have a ton of damage from the goblins’ attacks. The legs are broken off one of the two in the mud as we can see by how its trying to compensate with its arm like extensions, and the other eight units are going in a circle around them like horsemen would.

There are a serious shit ton of dead goblins in a big wide ring around their fighting area. Still, but some of that is from before they deepened into whatever chaos they are in.

Are they under the influence of some kind of magic I wonder? It could be like a mass debuff right or maybe a confusion application? How did it happen? That’s bad, it means the enemy probably has a whole squad of spellcasters that worked this out. I hadn’t considered what would happen if enemy spellcasters were near.

What’s even worse is not knowing how close to us they are. Spellcasters are for sure going to be trouble and cost lives. At first I start thinking that goblins can’t have spellcasters that are any good, but then I realize if I think that way I will surely underestimate them and that will get me and my team hurt or killed.

I have to fully appreciate the danger and skill of the goblins.

As I study them, I can also feel the dark energy acting on them. I do wish Fox were here to confirm what dark energy from magic casts would feel and look like. Still, I’m pretty sure that’s what this is. I can see the heavy armors can hit hard still, and can still attack it’s just that they are swinging around at air half the time and completely erratic. They are probably one of the few things here that can dispatch goblins quickly.

Is that…?

I need to be sure.

“What happened here? Have you seen anything like this before?” I asked Oleg.

“They really have been going in circles. But I don’t get it. They shouldn’t have separated from us,” he muttered nervously.

Our own formation hits the back line of the goblins and causes confusion now that there are two fronts. But we’re unlucky in that the goblins still outnumber us. This will be a real battle. I reinforced our shields and there are some good cover fire positions where we can snipe the goblins with good protection. Some of the dwarves hit a few right off the bat because the goblins didn’t know that we were there.

Rina is getting better at being reliable but is not quiet. I can hear her cursing at the goblins. Is she wanting to fight? She’s crazy.

Oleg has an expensive crossbow out this time. It looks beautiful beyond anything I’ve seen so far. It’s a double loading metal reinforced type with some special materials. He got one in the eye, but it still won’t die. A few other dwarves concentrate their fire and three goblins are dead just like that. I hadn’t pegged him for a sniper wannabe but that’s apparently what he is.

But we’re unlucky. Too late. I didn’t see another goblin assassin had snuck up behind us.

We’re lucky that the lights on all the dwarven heavy armors have given us more light to fight, and did inadvertently reveal the goblin assassin!

But thankfully, Asakura has spotted it at the last couple of seconds before it could strike, even before it gets within range of the light spell. She’s already moving against it, as it’s trying to maneuver towards the area where me, Rina, and Oleg are close to. It’s weapon is going for Rina’s neck. I scream just in time and Rina ducks at the same time Asakura is almost upon it on the other side of Rina.

Strangely Asakura goes berserk when it goes after me. Seeing a choice good looking human girl to go after, the goblin at first smiled and sneered at her. Wow, she moved fast. I hadn’t thought whatever had affected her could speed up her ability to move this quickly!

But then she bashed it with her shield twice and smashed its kneecap almost before it knew she was there. It’s bawling like mad but refused to go down without a fight. There’s a spray of blood from it being knocked around by her brute strength.

Wow, she’s gotten stronger!

I parry an attack from the goblin that would have hit Asakura’s forearms and she’s going at it like a rabid dog without hardly even worrying about her defense. This is unexpected. The demon pheromones cause like a very protective reaction when the person who uses them gets attacked. I can see that Asakura is seeing red and holds no quarter, even while the goblins are tearing up her runic shielding.

I have to reinforce her shield but within a minute the goblin is bashed to death. I have to signal her to stop mutilating the body as other goblins try to also sneak up on us. Asakura also spots them before they get within the light spell’s range.

Strange.

Has the demon DNA from the pheromones given her a form of night vision? This would be an amazing gift right now. A few seconds later I realized it must have because she’d seen the goblin assassin sneaking up from beyond my light spell’s radius. It’s totally unexpected but pretty useful.

One of their spiked clubs bounces off my runic shield leaving a softball sized hole. I counter by hooking my fire axe under its knee and from the side in a disabling maneuver I’d used in a few other battles. The fire axe is a beautiful weapon and slices cleanly through the goblins wrist, severing his hand.

After that Asakura ambushed it from the side and its skull is crushed.

You are reading story Kidnapped to Another World at novel35.com

I then heard Rina scream.

Three goblins are trying to drag her off and have grabbed her, two by the arms. They’ve disabled about a third of the runic shielding and somehow reached in and grabbed her arm with two of them pulling it and a third coming up from behind to push her off balance.

I yelled at Asakura desperately to help me and we make it in the nick of time before Rina got pulled away from the dwarves. Oleg shot the one in the back that was closest to us, and it falls to the ground. As we race by to counter the other two I clip its neck with the force of a heavy blow from the fire axe.

The crunch of its broken neck is sickening even though its goblins. Their black green blood sprayed across the ground like a whole bucket of bad smelling vile paint.

But I hadn’t anticipated some of the goblins are really good at fighting. Like on a level of being near a champion of their people awesomeness. This guy is freaking strong! This is really bad! I have to think quicker, and react and move faster I told myself.

One of them kicks sand from the cavern floor in my face trying to blind me. It doesn’t work, but I lost sight of him trying to protect my eyes and then I’ve got two huge slashes on my runic shield. Asakura has engaged the other one and it’s become a rough and tumble battle between the two of them. She’s engaged it with nonstop swings like she did the other one and seems to be able to hang on.

It’s weird to think she can fight this well though, since I’m used to her being still clumsy and new at physical sports. How did this change work? With a runic shield spell back in place and reinforced on Asakura she’s fighting even better now.

I can hear Oleg and the dwarves just trying to stay alive. When I call for help none of them can reach us to save Rina in time.

I am hoping in my heart and praying that nothing else can come close and nab Rina while we’re engaging the other two. It seems Rina is wounded in the side too. I can see a knife sticking in her side that’s buried pretty deep. It’s a bad wound. Even if I get to her in time I have to do something about it fast if I’m going to save her life. The blood flow coming out is a deeper red than normal blood should be. It mostly only does that when it’s a deep wound.

Damn it!

I cursed aloud by accident. That has to be dealt with now. It’s a really grave wound.

The veteran goblin fighting me is really good. He parries all my strikes and even dodges to the left when I try to kick him in the balls. Then I have to get my axe in time so he doesn’t ravage my leg while I’m pulling it back.

Somehow I managed to hang on.

I get hit the in the face by his club and part of the damage goes through the runic shielding spell scratching up my left side of my face. Thankfully the shield got most of the damage, but it’s left another big hole in my shield.

“Oleg!” I cried out, but it’s no use.

Why is this guy so strong? Is he a leader or champion? He’s stronger than most humans would be!

He counters me again. I keep trying to find an opening but he’s got some really good fencing and dueling skills. He uses a lot of blitz and spin moves to both confuse and overwhelm at the same time and he’s so good at it that he doesn’t even have to think about what he’s doing and just uses a casual routine while I struggle to keep up. Too late, I notice his gear is too good for a goblin to have too. That means he’s killed humans for their equipment more than once. He also doesn’t have any scars.

But I have my new stun spell that I haven’t used much yet. The only reason I hadn’t used it recently is the worry of running out of mana and lack of practice with it yet. I quickly charge a pulse of magic, while retreating. Retreating while charging gives me the chance to not be interrupted, so that I can hit him directly.

It only takes about two seconds, during which time I avoid two head chops that he throws at me, narrowly missing my ear on the last one. But he’s somehow got some protective charms on magic. My stun spell hits him directly but then I’m surprised when his tattoo evaporates from his face.

Gotcha!

The stun spell now puts things in my favor!

Weird…

Is that goblin shaman magic? They store like a pre-set charge against offensive magic in their skin to absorb incoming dark magic, is my hypothesis. Regardless of how it works, it’s clear that it was some pre-written spell blocking mechanism. That also means this isn’t an ordinary goblin.

I almost freeze in despair. His body is covered with tattooes. That must be a clue! The only the one on his face disappeared. I try to reverse back the other direction since I was running out of room to maneuver, by going under and around his blade attacks.

I score a hit but then another one of his tattoos disappears. This one was a violent lion like face tattoo on his shoulder. But I’m inwardly in a panic because this whole time I’ve only gotten that one blow through. Then when I finally get a hit, his spell protections absorb it?

Eventually my stun spell wore off, but not until I’d wrecked a bunch of his magic tattoo protections. That also made him crazy mad with rage.

Unbelievable!

We continue our jabbing and parrying at each other for a few minutes, while I have to retreat because of the difference in our strength and speed. He’s obviously better than the dwarves even with his fighting skills.

Is he a shaman of some kind or just a mage killer or general? Or he could work for the shaman?

Still, I’m curious what will happen if I do a reverse buff on him? His body is pre-disposed to holding enchants. So if I can manage to score a buff that is reversed it would debuff him right?

I’m careful and miss some of his hits while retreating.

But he’s no dummy. He’s noticed that I have to use a retreating set of moves to charge up magic so that I’m not interrupted. He renews his fury and charges quicker to compensate. I barely get out of the way of a massive power swing and a charge.

“Very clever,” I admitted to him verbally, though I doubt he understands me. The look in his eyes as he studies me is cold like ice and a callousness of someone who could see hardened crime in front of their eyes and not even blink from it.

We continued to try to look for openings in each other for a good minute. Then I manage to score a reverse buff on him. Inwardly I’m jumping up and down in excitement. It’s the first time it’s worked. It was a reverse version of the movement speed buff and a very almost minutely small debuff on his attack speed.

This is one of my toughest fights ever so far in this world!

That means if I’m right my buff is a 10 to 12% movement speed buff and 1% attack speed increase. So his de-buff that I hit him with, my ‘modified’ buff, would be -10 to 12% movement and -1% to attack speed!

He snarls in fury, realizing what I’ve done to screw him over. He’s clenching and unclenching his hand to try to rub it off but it’s not working. I’m actually lucky I managed to sneak the debuff through his other magic tattooes. So his magic defense isn’t impenetrable after all.

That’s bad. He’s that smart that he realized it?

I barely renew my runic shielding spell in time, before his next blow goes through. The spiked club seems to be getting closer to me with each swing. He has some clever attack patterns too that aren’t what I was expecting. What’s interesting is that the shielding spell solidified itself again while about an inch of his weapon was within the shield’s normal solid radius and because of it, there’s a small hole there as he pulls back his spiked club for another strike.

If I hadn’t debuffed him, perhaps I would be broken and bloody on the ground right now…

Slowly I’m getting pushed back. I keep losing ground, but it’s like I can’t move faster than this and I feel sluggish wishing I can go faster, in face of his obviously better martial skills. He’s some kind of freaky boss skill like madness personified.

I noticed just in time that he tried to push me off a small cliff edge. But I roll away just in time. It doesn’t feel good to have my knees and palms in the dirt though. I got up in time, but the most unthinkable thing happened right after that. As I’m trying to get back up, he kicks my knuckles sending pain through my fingers and then takes advantage of my opening.

He stole my fire axe! What?!

Was that a steal weapon skill he used?!

Unbelievable!

I can’t believe it! How? It was like the most agile set of moves I’d seen so far in this world. I’m completely astonished how he’d completed an expert disarm and then hooked it with his leg even while his other hand punched me in the face.

Crap. I’m in serious shit now. How did that happen?!

I managed to dodge him as he turns more aggressive. But I’m lucky that wasn’t my only weapon!

I’ve been planning for something like that however, and I had a dwarven warhammer as a tucked through my belt. I brought it up in time, but now he’s dual wielding my fire axe and his own spiked club. It’s tough to fight this way, but there’s an advantage in that dual wielding isn’t easy. It seems to divide your strength and balance a lot, so when you bring one weapon against someone they can counter it with applying both their arms’ worth of strength against you. But for it to work the weapon being used in question has to be built very tough, so it won’t work with a thin blade like a sword.

I use this strategy against him.

His spiked club ricochets off my warhammer, and then he swings the fire axe at me. I’m cringing as I try to get the warhammer up in time. I think I can make the block in time but it will be close.

He gasped in astonishment when the fire axe suddenly dissolves into a bunch of starry sparkles. The shiny sparkles evaporate into the night sky.

What the hell just happened? We’re both shocked. Was the fire axe not real? Why did it always work before but dissolve now?

But his hand is swinging in empty air and missed me as he realized the weapon has dissolved in mid air. He’s also open on that side now and trying to figure out what the hell just happened and so his ribs cave in as I swing the hammer in the open area. He has no magic, and suddenly he’s rolling on the ground with at least two broken ribs. At least I heard the ribs crack. But he’s somehow a tough little bugger. He spits up a bunch of blood on the sandy ground, but is still up and fighting.

I’m actually more scared of him now than before since he can take a hit like that and walk it off like it’s just a weak punch. He’s holding his side and still parrying my attacks as I try to follow through on the opening and his new wounds. He’s really good. He still blocks me with ease, even though he must be in unimaginable pain that should make it hard to even remember your own name.

But I can hear him wheezing badly. He’s sweating more than before too and I can see him straining to stay on top. The one blow I’d got in on him, has shaken him up and he’s trying to retreat. As he’s about to retreat suddenly he’s set upon by vicious snarling and some other rabid fast moving figure.

She’s literally thrown him into the side of the rock wall facing our flank so hard that the rock facing cracks.

It’s Asakura, and she’s gone totally berserk, having seen I was about to pulled under or killed. I’m not even sure she’ll calm down for me when this is over. Her eyes have this violet ring that’s glowing around them, as she’s snarling at him and tossing him around like a rag doll. Her balance is weird too. She’s hunched over and in almost primal like gait that you might see on an animal like creature with rabies or a rabid vampire. But I’m confused too because I’m clearly sure she isn’t a vampire…I think.

Strange, her hair’s white streaks are more visible now too.

But the down side is the tough goblin champion got away. After being thrown around by Asakura a few times he somehow was able to get away by jumping off a small cliff. I thought he was dead, from a fall that bad but sure enough it’s too far for us to jump from and I can see the goblin retreating with a heavy limp. Is there such a thing as a safe fall skill in this world? That should have busted him up to fall like that. Thinking of the practice to learn such a skill probably wrecks someone’s knees for life, so I’m not that interested in it beyond how to stop an enemy from doing it right in front of me.

We finally rescued Rina before she was violated by goblins.

I hug her while she cries. But I had to push her away to calm down Asakura. It takes a minute of reassuring her and petting her her. It seems to work well if I comb her hair with my fingers but the aggression is still there.

We’re lucky Asakura is intact, and seems undamaged. But she’s gotten really fierce. I’m actually afraid to be around her when she’s this mad and seething with hate.

“Careful now. It’s going to be OK,” I reassured her.

She doesn’t reply right away. Finally her eyes seemed to recognize Rina and me. But she’s still walking around agitated.

“Shun? Why is it so quiet all the sudden?” Rina asked. I can feel the fear in her voice.

“What?” I look at her perplexed.

“I don’t hear the dwarves near us anymore,” she said with a voice that sounds like it’s about to cry again.

“What…?” I looked around.

Somehow we’re also separated from the dwarves? What the hell is this? Did Oleg retreat and leave us out here then? Or did they just force march thinking we’d known where they were going?

Being underground and out of our element this is beyond stressful. There aren’t words to describe how awful this feels like.

We’re alone! The dwarves are gone! They ditched us!

We’re probably surrounded by a few hundred goblins and we’ve lost our platoon? If I kill my light spell we won’t be able to see either. But it’s also letting everyone within a five mile radius know where we are.

“Rina did you get a look at their map and which way to go?” I asked. I had been busy with trying to keep Asakura sane, check Rina and health of dwarves’. I hadn’t anticipated that I might have to act as a navigator on this trip.

There’s a long silence.

“Um…no? I think?”

Freak.

We are so screwed.

But I don’t want to alarm Rina. She’d been pinned down by her wound and the goblins so she probably also doesn’t realize like I have that the goblins have some really badass champions among their troops. If I tell her that she’ll be paralyzed with fear.

“Oh wait. I think I did actually,” she said changing her mind.

“Eh? Are you sure?” I asked. Her uncertainty does worry me.

“Yeah I did. Sorry, I wasn’t sure where we were at first. But I think I know now. Can you shine your light out that way?” she asked.

“OK? But I may have to kill the light soon,” I warned her.

I do so and she studies the terrain around us. “Um. I think we go North from here,” she said.

Good, that’s a step in the right direction. Normally they say to stay in the same area when you get lost. But that advise doesn’t count when goblins are all around you.

“North? And which way is North?” I asked.

“Good question. Hmm, let me think,” Rina said.

Still, I also am curious what Asakura is changing into. The night vision can probably save us actually. This is like running out of matches in a snowstorm kind of luck though.

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