Monstergirl Quest, page 4
The assassin girl grunted, reached into a nearby pack that she’d set aside, and pulled out a pair of skinned rabbits wrapped in a sort of protective sheet, to keep bugs away. “I’m about to cook your supper,” she answered. “That’s all you need to know for now.”
She took out a cast-iron skillet and spent some time frying up the rabbits. It was quite a utilitarian dinner, true, but she added a handful of spices that quickly got my mouth watering. When she finished, she tossed me one.
“Shit!” I said as I caught it with my bare right hand. The rabbit was goddamned hot, so I tossed it into my armored left hand.
And there it was, the second trace of a smile that she’d given up. As she watched me struggle, her smooth pink lips curved ever so slightly into a grin.
I laughed. “Oh, you like watching me suffer,” I said.
She rolled her eyes and bit into her dinner. Afterward, she made a batch of tea in a small iron kettle. I usually preferred coffee, but it was hot and the night was growing cold, and I was grateful for it. She had two clay cups and she filled one for me.
“So, Earthman…”
“Please, you can call me Mack,” I said. “Or Gamelord, which is what Ciara called me. Either one is more humanizing than ‘Earthman’.”
She sipped her tea and ignored me, although I noted the hints of that grin returning. “So Earthman, Ciara told you nothing else of your quest?”
“Nope,” I answered. “Like I said, we were interrupted.”
She stared into her steaming cup of tea. Suddenly, that grin vanished. A dead seriousness flooded her obsidian gaze.
“I tell you this now, Earthman,” she went on. “Ciara ordered me to watch over you and to help you when I can, but you must never forget that my true loyalty lies with her and the Mananymphs.”
I nodded. I liked this girl’s sense of duty and loyalty. It was certainly admirable. “Yeah, I understand,” I said. “But I keep hearing that word. What does it mean? What are Mananymphs?”
The assassin girl sipped her tea. “They’re the daughters of Mother Gaia,” she said. “They take many forms. Some are like elves, others like small spriggans. Some look like cats and others, like foxes. Plus countless other varieties. ” She shrugged. “The common parlance is ‘monstergirls’.”
I leaned back, resting against the wall behind me, then finished the last of my tea in one big mouthful. “So they’re, like, magical beings, is what you’re saying.”
The assassin girl nodded, then stifled a yawn. “Yes. Once, there were thousands of them, and they were great friends to the smallfolk of the kingdoms.” She paused reflectively. The fire shined off her dark eyes, making them glow bright orange. “The Emperor…” she shook her head and spit into the fire. “He’s threatened by them. Banished most of them. The ones he kept, he uses to exploit their magic to make himself more powerful.”
“This Emperor sounds like a complete asshole,” I added.
She cocked an eyebrow. “’Asshole?’ What does this word mean?”
“It’s an Earthman term for a petty bastard. Someone who needs to be put in their place.”
“Asshole is quite fitting for the Emperor, then.”
“So is there anything I can do to, you know, change his mind about these Mananymphs?” I asked.
“As I’ve said, first, we must secure Homehold,” the assassin girl said. “Then we’ll worry about everything else.” She downed her tea and put the clay cup away. “But I’ll tell you more of the Mananymphs and the Empire come morning. Get some rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
My eyelids were slipping shut before she even finished speaking. I quickly made a save point and drifted off to a heavy sleep.
Chapter Five
It was only a few hours later when I awoke in my bedroll. The fire was still going, though it wasn’t roaring as it had been when I first fell asleep.
I heard footsteps from elsewhere in the cavern. Groggy, rubbing my eyes, I looked over to the assassin girl’s bedroll and saw that it was empty.
My heart suddenly hitched in my chest. I sat up straight just as I heard it.
Clang! Metal on metal.
Animalistic grunting followed, then the sound of the assassin girl screaming.
I jumped up from my bedroll, gripping the Soulguard into a fist as I snatched my firesword and sprinted around the corner. In the dim moonlight coming in through the entrance to the cavern, the goblins were mostly covered in shadow.
At the moment, there were too many to count. The assassin girl was at the foot of the cave, desperately taking on several of them.
She whirled and pirouetted, her twin daggers glinting a deadly shade of silver in the moonlight, but she couldn’t take them all.
I rushed toward the entrance, firesword held high over my head, and stabbed the first goblin I saw through the mouth, and stared into its primitive eyes as its skull burst into flames.
“What the hell is going on?” I shouted to the assassin girl as we fought, side-by-side.
She grunted, stabbed a goblin in the belly, then knocked the beast aside with a roundhouse kick then sent it flying.
“I’m not sure,” she said, panting and out of breath. “I thought it was an animal poking around the cave. When I checked it out, they were already storming toward me.”
We definitely killed plenty of goblins, but there were far too many. We had to fight while we backtracked, back toward our small camp.
Once we were closer to the fire pit, I got a better look at these creatures.
They were vicious and primitive, but not wholly unintelligent. They looked like a cross between a gorilla and an alligator, with pointed ears and viscous saliva trickling out over rows and rows of pointed teeth.
Their weapons were half-assed, however. Dented iron shortswords and wooden spears. Some had slapdash shields made of wood or discarded metal.
Behind them, a goblin warlord shouted instructions in their alien, primitive tongue. That one was easily the largest, with rippling muscles. It held a large staff in one hand, some sort of war token. There was a ram’s skull at the top, decorated with bits of broken glass. In its other hand, it held an iron longsword.
Despite their dull nature and poor weapons, they just kept outnumbering us. They seemed to come as quickly as we could kill them.
The battle was sloppy and brutal. Their dead piled up on the ground, making it hard to move. One wrong step and me or the assassin girl could trip over a goblin corpse and tumble to the ground.
Though the assassin girl was an effective fighter, she seemed better-suited to a stealthy approach. Yeah, she held her own against the goblins, but a full-on melee wasn’t her strength, so I had to keep her close to ensure her safety.
But that proved to be impossible.
During the battle, my skills shot upward. No wonder, considering how long and brutal the fight became.
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +3
ATHLETICS SKILL INCREASED +1
BLOCK SKILL INCREASED +5
Lucky for me, my heath and fatigue restored every time I went up a level, but the assassin girl had no such advantage.
Her daggers seemed to weigh a ton in each of her arms. She was out of breath, pale in the face, and the desperation was palpable in her coal-black eyes as the goblins just kept coming.
As I hacked through the goblins, I noticed that the fire damage from my sword was starting to thin out. The steel still rippled with that cool fiery glow, but now it looked as though it was getting dimmer. Quickly, I checked the weapon’s stats.
STEEL FIRESWORD
WEIGHT: 10 LBS
DURABILITY: 340/800
CHARGE: 18/100
Shit. If I kept this up, my sword would be useless. I could probably handle the goblins with just the Soulguard, but I didn’t want to give them any advantages.
Figuring that I could demoralize them, I shoved past the encroaching horde and went straight for the warlord. I was sorry I hadn’t done so earlier, but the battle happened so quickly, I hadn’t been thinking clearly.
The warlord roared in defiance and came at me. I’ll give the beast that much credit; it was no coward.
It wore a sparse sort of armor, cobbled together from trash and little animal bones, which provided the creature little protection from my onslaught.
I’d just leveled up again, so I was completely rejuvenated. The goblin warlord thrust its longsword at me. I parried it with my own blade, cracking the goblin’s weapon in half in a little fireball.
The warlord grunted in shock right before I drilled him in the face with the Soulguard, crushing his skull instantly.
“Alright!” I shouted, because the warlord’s minions began to flee the moment his corpse hit the ground.
Ah, but not all of them ran away.
I turned around and what I saw completely evaporated any sense of triumph I felt.
Three goblins remained. Though they were bloody and wounded, they’d knocked the assassin girl’s daggers aside.
They forced her on her knees. She was bleeding from her nose, from her mouth, and she was completely helpless as the goblins descended upon her.
I was on the other side of the cave, so no matter how fast I moved, there’d be no way that I could reach her before the creatures tore her apart.
“NO!” I shouted, then shut my eyes and quickly returned to my last save point before the goblins could kill her.
The world rippled.
“Get some rest,” the assassin girl said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
The moment I heard her voice, I breathed a desperate sigh of relief. I closed my eyes and thanked God that I hadn’t made a save point when I first woke up during the goblin attack.
Now, we’d have time to prepare.
I paused, curious, then looked at my stats. Good shit. Reverting to this save point hadn’t erased the skill increases I’d gotten during the battle.
Then I took a look at the steel firesword and pulled up the stats.
STEEL FIRESWORD
WEIGHT: 10 LBS
DURABILITY: 770/800
CHARGE: 82/100
Awesome. I’d retained the XP I got from that battle, but my weapon had reverted back to its previous state. That boded well for me.
“You got any coffee in your supply pack?” I asked the assassin girl.
“Some,” she answered. “But it’s late, Earthman. Go to sleep.”
I shook my head, frowning. “No,” I told her. “Make the coffee. We’ve got planning to do. I’ve had a vision of the future. There’s going to be an attack very soon.”
“An attack?” she asked, confused. “By who?”
“A pack of goblins,” I said. “Twenty of them, maybe thirty. Led by a goblin warlord.”
She laughed me off. “Earthman, you’ve had a long day. You’ve traversed the ephemeral void between realities. You shouldn’t –”
“Listen to me, very carefully,” I told her, cutting her off. The vague sense of annoyance in her face vanished when she saw that I was serious. I held up the Soulguard. “You’re not the one wearing this thing. I am. And I just saw you die.”
She paused, considering what I was saying with a grim look on her face. “You did?”
“Well, almost,” I said. “I came back here right before the goblins could finish the job. We managed to kill most of them, but there were too many…”
I looked away from her, still angry that I hadn’t been able to spare her life in that battle.
Well, this time I would. I wasn’t sure when I became so attached to this pretty assassin girl with the bad attitude, but I wasn’t going to lose her.
********
We crouched at the foot of the cave, trying to figure out which direction the horde would come from.
The assassin girl, by now, had finally decided to heed my advice. She took those dark-lensed goggles and wore them over her eyes.
“How can you see in those?” I asked.
She grinned. “They’re enchanted,” she said. “I can’t see through the dark, no, but the goggles have a life detection enchantment.” She pointed down into the woods. “There’s a deer down there. A rabbit, as well. I can see their auras.”
I grunted. “That’s going to come in handy,” I said.
Well, given that there was only that winding, single path leading to the cavern, at some point, the goblins were going to have to climb it. It made me think, what if I remained here, for the brunt of their assault, while the assassin girl hung out down at the foot of the path, in the trees? There, she could pick them off in the dark, relatively safely.
When I told her my plan, she grimaced. “Earthman, you don’t think I can hold my own against those monstrous dullards?”
I shook my head. “I know for a fact that you can,” I told her. “But a straight-up brawl isn’t to your advantage. You’re built for stealth. Assassinations.”
I looked at her quite seriously. She met my eye. She nodded with a grudging sort of respect.
“So you’ve thought this through,” she said.
“You’re the one who told me to pay more attention to detail,” I said, grinning.
She rolled her eyes and took her daggers from her hips then stood up. “Very well, Earthman. I’ll go down into the trees.”
“And don’t get overzealous,” I said. “We have to use a little bit of patience and strategy here.”
“What’s your strategy, then?” she asked.
I tented my fingers, deep in thought. “When we first got to the cave, you lit a match. Do you have any more?”
She nodded, then pointed to a pouch on her belt. “I have many.”
“When you see the horde coming, spark one of them, very quickly,” I said. “Then I’ll know they’re on the way. When they’re close, I’ll draw them up the hill, toward me.”
“The entire horde?” she asked.
“If we keep them on the path, they’ll be bottlenecked,” I said. “I can take them two or three at a time, no problem. Then, once I’ve engaged them, you start creeping up their ranks from behind. Slice those ugly green throats open.” I looked at her, saw that she understood that my plan was sound. I smiled at her. “Then we’ll meet in the middle and finish off whatever’s left of them.”
The assassin girl rolled her eyes again and started down the path. “You think highly of yourself, Earthman.”
“What?” I said. “Don’t you?”
I heard her laugh as she walked down the sloping path, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her trim form, glowing in the moonlight.
********
It wasn’t long before they came. Staring down the hill, I saw the faint, fire-red flicker from the assassin girl’s match.
Even through the darkness, I could see the trees and bushes rippling with movement down at the foot of the path.
“Alright you fuckers,” I said. “Let’s try this again.”
But then, I called an audible on my plan.
I’d forgotten that the goblins had simply stumbled upon our cave. They’d likely been looking for a place to camp themselves. If my gamer knowledge proved correct, I figured that goblins probably preferred moving at night, then sleeping during the day.
So no, I didn’t get their attention just yet. They were going to come to me no matter what I did, and I preferred to keep the element of surprise as long as I could.
Hopefully, the assassin girl understood this change of plans. I was sure she would. She had a good mind for strategy.
I decided to use some stealth myself. I kept to the shadows, listening as their grunts and footfalls got closer.
They came tramping up the path, two-by-two, shoulder-to-shoulder. I waited until I could see the moonlight dancing in their dull, dark eyes.
“Hey fellas,” I said.
The first two goblins grunted in surprise as I pounced out of the shadows. I ran one through with the firesword and crushed the other’s skull with the Soulguard.
Fear and confusion rippled down through the horde as I slashed into the next two. Down at the foot of the path, I saw the dark shape of the assassin girl spring out of the trees, raining death on those unlucky stragglers at the back of the horde.
I was right about the assassin girl, by the way.
As tough as she was in a straight-up fight, she was exponentially deadlier in the shadows. As I hacked and slashed through the front of the horde, I kept an eye on her at the rear, grinning at what I saw.
She was like a tiny grim reaper. Little lady death. She moved so quickly and quietly that the goblins down in the middle of the horde weren’t even aware that their buddies in the rear were dropping dead every few seconds.
Soon, the horde was gone, save for the goblin warlord. It grunted at me, clanging together its ram-skull staff and longsword. Behind him, the assassin girl was creeping up, silent as a snake.
“I already killed him once,” I called out to her. “This time, he’s all yours.”
The warlord grunted in confusion, wondering who I was talking to, but he never got the chance to get an answer.
The assassin girl appeared behind him and opened his throat, ear-to-ear.
Out on the horizon, the sun was just starting to peek over the mountains. I grinned, because I’d gone up two more levels during that last battle.
The assassin girl approached me, grinning as she wiped goblin blood from her daggers. I did the same with my firesword, not to mention the Soulguard, which was a mess of goblin blood.
“I reluctantly agree that your plan was sound,” the assassin girl said.
I grinned. “I’m glad I have your approval.”
She looked back down the path. “For a while, I’d feared that this was an exploratory force, sent by King Darkheart,” she said. “But now, I don’t think so. This was just a random horde.”
“Either way, it’s better that we took them out,” I said. “I’m sure there are plenty of townsfolk who pass through these mountains.”
The assassin girl nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “The duke will be glad that we slew the horde. But we should get moving. I’ll make us a small breakfast. If we keep a good pace, we should reach Homehold before noon.”
She started back, into the cave, then I called back out to her. “Hey, hold up,” I said.
