The Great Hunt was, in practice, a great slog. The grand, revolutionary crusade I had envisioned had quickly devolved into a series of tedious, exhausting, and profoundly smelly forced marches through the oppressive gloom of the forest. My Gutter-Guard, my new, divinely-sanctioned army, had the revolutionary zeal of a pack of particularly dim-witted hyenas, but the woodcraft of a herd of drunken elephants. They crashed through undergrowth, they snapped twigs with a sound like pistol shots, and they bickered constantly in low, guttural whispers that carried for miles in the still air.
I had given them a religion, a purpose, and a set of shiny new titles. I had not, however, been able to give them competence. That, it turned out, was a much slower, more painful process.
Elara was the crucible in which their incompetence was being burned away. She was a relentless, unforgiving instructor, her voice a constant, sharp counterpoint to their clumsy chaos. She drilled them in the shield wall until their arms trembled with exhaustion. She forced them to practice silent movement until their feet were raw. She taught them the simple, brutal geometry of the ambush, the art of the flank, the profound tactical advantage of not standing in a disorganized clump and shrieking.
Slowly, agonizingly, it was beginning to work. The clay was hardening. They were still a mess, but they were a coordinated mess. They had learned to listen for Gnar's barked commands, to trust Elara's silent hand signals. They had even managed to successfully hunt, bringing down a handful of smaller beasts—a scrawny Gristle-Boar, a pack of vicious but unintelligent Mire-Hounds—through a clumsy but effective application of their new shield wall tactic.
Each kill was a celebration. They would fall upon the carcass with a savage, joyous efficiency, butchering the meat and, more importantly, consuming the 'deep-meat', the Biomass that was the fuel for their sacred evolution. I watched them, my System interface a constant, silent observer, as their numbers slowly, painstakingly, began to climb.
[Gnar, Goblin War-Chief - Biomass: 412 / 1000]
[Gruk, Fang of the Pack - Biomass: 388 / 1000]
[Pip, Scout of the Hidden Ways - Biomass: 351 / 1000]
The numbers were moving in the right direction, but the scale of the task was becoming terrifyingly clear. After three solid days of relentless, exhausting hunting, the most advanced among them was not even halfway to the goal. My grand plan of returning to the camp in a few days with an army of newly-evolved Hobgoblins was a fantasy. At this rate, it would take a week, maybe two, of constant, successful hunting to get even a handful of them to the threshold. And that was assuming we didn't all get killed first.
The weight of this realization settled on me as we made camp on the third night. The fire crackled, a small beacon of order in a vast, chaotic world. The goblins, their bellies full of Mire-Hound stew, were boasting and sharpening their spears, their confidence growing with every small victory. Elara sat across the fire from me, a silent, watchful guardian, with Pip huddled at her side, meticulously cleaning her axe with a scrap of leather, his small face a mask of profound concentration. Lia, my new, tiny shadow, was asleep, curled into a tight ball against my side, her small hand clutching a fold of my tunic. Her presence was a constant, grounding weight, a reminder of the stakes of this insane game.
"The math is bad," I murmured, my voice low enough for only Elara to hear.
She looked up from the dagger she was sharpening, her eyes catching the firelight. She didn't need me to explain. She was a creature of the wild, a master of logistics and resource management in her own right. She understood the brutal calculus of calories and time.
"We're not moving fast enough," she stated, her voice flat. "The small game is getting scarce. We have to push deeper, into the territory of bigger things. That means more risk. More chances for a bad fight."
"It's the only way," I agreed, my own voice grim. "We need a big kill. Something with a high Biomass yield. A matriarch Gristle-Boar, maybe. Or a Shadow Cat."
A Shadow Cat. The words tasted like poison. A Level 12 predator that could turn invisible at will. The thought of facing one with my current army was enough to make my blood run cold.
"Tomorrow," I said, more to myself than to her. "Tomorrow we push north, towards the rocky hills. The game there will be bigger. More dangerous. But the rewards…"
I trailed off as a sudden, profound silence fell over the clearing. It was not a peaceful quiet. It was a dead quiet. The constant, chirping, clicking symphony of the forest at night had abruptly ceased, as if a switch had been thrown.
Every goblin froze. Their boasting died in their throats. Their heads snapped up, their nostrils flaring, their beady eyes wide with a sudden, primal fear. They were creatures of this forest. They understood its language. And the forest had just screamed a single, silent word: Predator.
Elara was on her feet before I had even processed the change. She moved with a fluid, silent grace, the firelight glinting off the axe in her hand. She didn't look at me. Her gaze was fixed on the wall of impenetrable darkness that surrounded our small circle of light.
"Something's coming," she breathed, her voice a ghost of a whisper. "Big. And close."
I gently disentangled myself from the sleeping Lia, my heart hammering against my ribs. I drew the short sword Leo had crafted for me, its weight a small, inadequate comfort in my hand.
"Wall!" Gnar roared, his voice a raw, panicked bellow. "To me! Form the wall!"
My Gutter-Guard scrambled to their feet, their brief moment of pride shattered, replaced by the familiar, cold grip of terror. But their training held. They moved, clumsy and shaking, into their ragged shield wall, their spears a bristling, pathetic hedge of sharpened points. They faced the darkness, a small, terrified island of order in a sea of unseen menace.
We waited. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Every second was an eternity.
Then, from the darkness, came a sound. It was not a roar or a snarl. It was a low, guttural chuckle. A sound of deep, arrogant amusement. It was the sound of a predator that knows it has its prey cornered.
Three figures stepped out of the darkness and into the firelight.
They were massive. Easily seven feet tall, with broad, powerful shoulders and arms as thick as tree trunks. Their skin was a sickly, mottled green-grey, their faces a brutish caricature of porcine features, with sloping foreheads, broad, flat noses, and yellowed tusks jutting from their lower jaws. They were clad in heavy, mismatched scraps of iron plate and thick, cured hide, and they carried weapons that were not tools, but instruments of pure, brutal destruction.
One held a greataxe, its head a monstrous, chipped slab of pitted iron that looked like it could fell a tree. Another carried a massive, spiked club, a log of dark wood studded with sharpened shards of rock and metal. The third, standing slightly behind the other two, held a crude but powerful-looking bow, an arrow the size of a small spear already nocked on the string.
They were Orcs.
My mind, a cold, terrified engine, screamed the data at me.
[Target: Orc Berserker (Level 14)]
[Target: Orc Thug (Level 14)]
[Target: Orc Archer (Level 14)]
Level 14.
The number was a death sentence. We were a collection of Level 2s and 3s, led by a Level 8 Ranger and a Level 4 Scholar who was, for all intents and purposes, a non-combatant. This wasn't a fight. This was an execution.
The Orc Berserker, the one with the greataxe, took a step forward, his heavy, iron-shod boots crunching on the forest floor. He looked at our pathetic shield wall, at our trembling spears, and he laughed again, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrated in my chest.
His gaze swept over the goblins with utter contempt, before settling on Elara and me. He saw through the shimmering, pathetic illusions instantly. He saw the humans hiding among the runts.
"Well, well," he grunted, his voice a gravelly avalanche. His words, like the goblins', were translated directly into my mind by the ever-present System. "Look what we have here. A pack of sniveling gits, and two lost little lambs. What's the matter? Did you get separated from your flock?"
The Orc Archer raised his bow, the point of the massive arrow aimed squarely at my chest. The Thug with the spiked club grinned, a horrifying sight, and hefted his weapon.
There was no room for negotiation. There was no path for retreat. The time for plans, for strategy, for clever words, was over.
"Hold the line!" Elara screamed, her voice a sharp, clear bell in the sudden, terrifying silence.
The Orc Berserker just smiled. "Line?" he sneered. "That's not a line. That's a snack."
He charged.
He didn't run. He moved like an avalanche, a terrifying, unstoppable mass of muscle and iron. The ground shook with his footfalls. He covered the twenty yards to our shield wall in a handful of thunderous strides, his greataxe held high.
The goblins braced, their knuckles white on their spear shafts, their shields trembling. They were terrified, but they were holding. For now.
The Berserker didn't aim for the center of the wall. He aimed for the weakest point. He aimed for Pip.
The axe came down not in a vertical chop, but in a brutal, sweeping arc, a scythe of rusted iron designed to clear a path. Pip, his eyes wide with terror, tried to raise his shield, but he was too slow, too small.
Elara moved.
She was a blur, a streak of grey leather and dark purpose. She threw herself in front of Pip, her own small, round shield, a piece of scavenged goblin gear, raised to meet the blow.
The impact was a sound I will never forget. It was not the clean ring of steel on steel. It was a dull, wet, percussive CRUNCH, the sound of wood, iron, and bone all giving way at once.
Elara's shield exploded into a shower of splinters. The force of the blow threw her backward, sending her crashing into the goblins behind her. The shield wall, its anchor point shattered, dissolved into a chaotic scramble of screaming, terrified bodies.
The Orc Berserker roared in triumph, stepping into the breach he had created. The Thug was right behind him, his spiked club a whirlwind of destruction, sending goblins flying with every brutal swing.
From the darkness, an arrow hissed through the air and slammed into the chest of a goblin who was trying to scramble away. It hit with the force of a thrown spear, punching through his crude leather armor and out his back, pinning him to the ground like an insect to a board.
It was a rout. A massacre. My army, my holy warband, had been broken in less than five seconds.
Rage, cold and pure, washed over me, extinguishing the fear. I saw the battlefield not as a chaotic scrum, but as a problem to be solved. A violent, bloody, impossible math problem.
"Gnar! Gruk! To me!" I yelled, my voice cutting through the chaos. "Flank him! Now!"
I activated my skills, my mind a whirlwind of calculation. Analyze Weakness. I focused on the Berserker, the biggest threat. The world dissolved into a sea of blue data streams.
[Target: Orc Berserker. Analyzing…]
[Vulnerability Identified: Over-reliance on power attacks leaves him open for 0.75 seconds after each swing. Armor is weaker at the joints, particularly behind the knees.]
"His knees!" I screamed. "Go for his knees!"
At the same time, I focused on the Thug, the one with the club who was currently trying to pulp Mog's fat head.
Activating Skill: Subtle Influence (Tier 2)
The mana drain was a sharp, painful spike. I didn't have time for a complex suggestion. I pushed a single, simple, disruptive concept into his brutish mind.
The archer is stealing your kills.
The Thug's swing faltered. He glanced over his shoulder at the Orc Archer, a flicker of paranoid resentment in his piggy eyes. It was a momentary distraction, a half-second of hesitation.
It was all Elara needed.
She was back on her feet, her shield arm hanging limp and useless, but her other hand held her axe. She ignored the Berserker. She ignored the Thug. She charged the Archer. He was the force multiplier, the one pinning us down, preventing us from maneuvering. He had to go.
The Archer, surprised by the sudden, suicidal charge, fumbled to draw another arrow. He was too slow. Elara was on him, her face a mask of cold, murderous fury. She didn't swing her axe. She drove the sharpened point of it forward like a spear, punching it deep into the Orc's throat. He gargled, his bow falling from his nerveless fingers, and collapsed.
One down.
The Berserker roared in fury at the death of his comrade and turned his attention to Elara. Gnar and Gruk, following my command, darted in from the sides. Gruk, with a desperate bellow, slammed his shield into the back of the Orc's knee. The Orc stumbled, his leg buckling. Gnar's spear, a pathetic piece of sharpened wood, jabbed into the exposed joint. It didn't penetrate the armor, but it made the Orc roar in pain and frustration.
The Thug, his brief moment of distraction over, turned back to the fight, his club raised to smash the life out of the nearest goblin.
This was it. The critical moment. The point where the battle would be won or lost.
I looked at the chaos, at my terrified, bleeding goblins, at the two towering engines of destruction, at Elara, her arm broken but her spirit burning bright.
The Scholar's mind went quiet. The time for analysis was over.
I drew my sword, the clean, simple lines of Leo's craftsmanship a stark contrast to the brutal, primitive weapons of our enemies. I took a deep breath, the smell of blood and fear filling my lungs.
And for the first time since arriving in this godforsaken world, I charged.
My charge was an act of pure, unadulterated desperation. It was not the calculated advance of a warrior, but the frantic, suicidal lunge of a cornered academic who had finally run out of theories. The short sword in my hand felt alien, a clumsy extension of an arm more accustomed to turning pages than taking lives. The air was thick with the coppery tang of blood and the high, thin sound of goblin screams. Fear was a cold, solid knot in my gut, a paralytic poison that threatened to root me to the spot.
But then I saw Elara, thrown back like a rag doll, her shield arm hanging at an impossible angle, and the fear was burned away by a sudden, incandescent surge of rage. It was a cold, clean fury, the anger of a chess master whose most valuable piece has just been senselessly swept from the board. She was my Captain. My partner. The blade to my brain. And that lumbering, tusked monstrosity had broken her.
My target was not the Berserker who had struck her down. He was a problem for later. My target was the Thug, the one with the spiked club, who was wading into the dissolving shield wall like a man reaping wheat. He was the immediate threat, the agent of chaos who was turning our desperate stand into a rout.
You have to be realistic about these things. I was a Level 4 Scholar. He was a Level 14 engine of destruction. My Strength stat was a joke. My Dexterity was barely adequate for walking without tripping. A direct confrontation was not just suicide; it was a statistical absurdity.
But my Intelligence… my Intelligence was a god-tier weapon, and I was only just beginning to learn how to unsheathe it.
As I closed the distance, the world seemed to slow down. The chaotic scrum of the battlefield, the screams, the firelight, all of it faded into a muted, grey backdrop. My mind, my true weapon, kicked into a higher state of processing. It was not a conscious decision. It was an instinctive, desperate activation of every cognitive resource I possessed.
The Thug saw me coming. His piggy eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in contempt. A human? A scrawny, unarmored human with a toy sword? He turned from the goblin he was about to pulp and swung his massive, spiked club in a lazy, horizontal arc, a gesture of casual, contemptuous dismissal.
And I saw it.
It wasn't precognition. It was data processing on a level that defied human comprehension. My mind took in the variables—the Orc's shoulder rotation, the mass of the club, the speed of his swing, the tension in his muscles—and it spat out a solution. I saw the attack not as a blur of motion, but as a series of ghostly, blue-white vectors, a probability map of the club's trajectory. I saw the arc it would travel, the space it would occupy, and the precise, infinitesimal window of opportunity it would create.
My body, clumsy and untrained, reacted to the data my mind provided. I didn't try to block. I didn't try to parry. I simply dropped.
I threw myself into a low, sliding crouch, the world dissolving into a blur of motion. The wind from the club's passage stirred my hair, a breath of displaced air that carried the stench of old iron and violence. The club passed over my head with inches to spare, its passage a dull whump that vibrated in my bones.
I came up from the slide inside his guard, too close for him to bring the club back around for another swing. For a fraction of a second, I was in the eye of the storm, a space of impossible, terrifying calm. His massive, stinking body loomed over me. I could see the cracked, yellowed leather of his armor, the wiry black hairs on his forearms, the flecks of spittle on his tusks.
I stabbed.
It was not a warrior's thrust. It was a desperate, clumsy jab. The point of my sword, a beautiful piece of Leo's burgeoning craftsmanship, scraped against the thick, cured hide of the Orc's thigh. It didn't penetrate deeply, but it drew blood. A thin, dark line of it welled up, a shocking slash of crimson against the mottled green of his skin.
[-9 HP!]
The damage was pathetic. A mosquito bite. But the insult was profound. I had drawn his blood. Me. This tiny, insignificant human.
He roared, a sound of pure, frustrated rage, and he swatted at me with his free hand, a backhand blow with a fist the size of a small ham. The blue vectors appeared again, a ghostly map of the attack. My mind screamed duck left, but my body was too slow, still recovering from the lunge.
The blow caught me on the side of the head. It wasn't a direct hit, more of a glancing impact, but the force of it was still staggering. The world exploded into a starburst of white-hot pain. My ears rang, the sounds of the battle dissolving into a high-pitched whine. I was thrown sideways, stumbling, my vision swimming.
He didn't give me time to recover. He brought his club up and slammed it down in a brutal, vertical chop aimed at my head. The world slowed again. The ghostly vectors of the attack were there, a clear, precise path of destruction. But this time, I saw something else. My mind, working on a level of pure, desperate instinct, showed me a dozen different outcomes, a branching tree of probabilities. If I tried to dodge right, I would trip on a goblin corpse. If I tried to dodge left, I would be too slow. If I tried to block with my sword, the blade would shatter and my arms would break.
There was only one path that didn't end in my immediate, pulpy death.
I didn't dodge. I stepped into the attack.
As the club descended, I took a single, desperate step forward, bringing myself inside the optimal impact zone. Instead of meeting the full, crushing force of the blow, I took it on my shoulder. The impact was still immense, a sickening, grinding crunch of bone and muscle. Pain, white-hot and absolute, lanced through my entire left side. I felt my clavicle snap with a sound like a dry branch breaking. My arm went numb, the sword falling from my nerveless fingers.
[-58 HP!]
[Status: Broken Clavicle (Left). Minor Lacerations. Stunned (1 sec).]
I crumpled to the ground, a broken heap, my vision turning grey at the edges. But I was alive. And I had bought myself a precious few seconds. The Orc, his powerful swing carrying through, was momentarily overbalanced, his own momentum working against him.
From the chaos of the main fight, a spear flew through the air. It was a clumsy throw, a desperate prayer of a weapon, but it flew true. It was Pip. The runt, seeing me go down, had hurled his weapon with all his meager strength. The spear struck the Thug in the back of his un-armored calf, sinking in a few inches.
[-4 HP!]
The damage was, again, insignificant. But the pain, the surprise, the sheer audacity of it, made the Orc roar in fury. He spun, his attention momentarily diverted from me, and ripped the spear from his leg.
It was the opening. The one I had bought with my own broken bones.
I pushed myself up with my good arm, my entire left side a symphony of agony. The world was a blurry, swimming mess. I couldn't fight him physically. Not anymore. But I had other weapons.
I focused my will, drawing on the cool, deep well of my mana. The pain in my head from the earlier blow was nothing compared to the sharp, clean hum of power that now filled it.
Activating Skill: Minor Illusion (Tier 2)
I didn't create a duplicate. I didn't create a sound. I did something simpler, more insidious. As the Orc turned back towards me, his face a mask of brutish rage, I created a shimmer. A small, almost imperceptible distortion in the air directly in front of his eyes, like the heat-haze rising from a sun-baked road.
He flinched, his eyes trying to focus on the anomaly. It was nothing, a trick of the firelight, but his simple, brutish mind couldn't process it. He blinked, shaking his head, trying to clear his vision.
In that moment of distraction, I scrambled back, scooping up my fallen sword with my good hand.
He charged me again, his club held ready. But this time, I was prepared. I was no longer a clumsy scholar trying to be a warrior. I was a puppeteer, and he was my marionette.
As he swung, I cast another illusion. A sudden, brilliant flash of golden light, a stolen memory of Samuel's holy power, bloomed to his left. He flinched, his swing instinctively pulling in that direction. The club slammed into the empty ground, sending up a shower of dirt and sparks.
I darted in, my sword a flicker of silver. I didn't aim for his armored torso. I aimed for the exposed flesh of his arm, the thick, powerful bicep that was now tensed from the missed swing. My blade, guided by the cold, precise calculations of my mind, slid into the muscle, a sharp, clean cut.
[-11 HP!]
He roared, more in frustration than in pain, and spun, his club a blur. I was already moving, dancing back, my feet finding purchase on the bloody ground. My body was a wreck, my left arm a useless, throbbing appendage. But my mind was a fortress of icy calm. I saw his every move before he made it, the ghostly blue vectors of his intent laid bare before me.
The fight became a strange, brutal dance. He was the storm, a whirlwind of raw, unthinking power. I was the matador, a fragile, broken figure who survived not through strength, but through a profound, intimate understanding of the beast he was facing.
Flash of light. He swings left. I dart right, a quick slash to his ribs.
A shimmering wall of illusory water. He hesitates. I lunge, a quick stab to his thigh.
A chorus of phantom goblin shrieks from behind him. He turns. I am not there.
With every missed swing, with every small, stinging wound, his rage grew. He became sloppier, his movements more powerful but less controlled. He was a drowning man, flailing wildly, and I was the water, yielding before him, surrounding him, slowly, inexorably, pulling him under.
The goblins, seeing my strange, impossible dance, had rallied. Gnar and Gruk, their fear replaced by a savage, opportunistic courage, were harassing him from the flanks, their spears darting in to poke and prod, forcing him to divide his attention. They were a pack of yapping dogs, distracting the bear while the wolf prepared for the killing blow.
And then I saw it. The final move. The checkmate.
Frustrated beyond reason, the Thug abandoned all pretense of defense. He raised his club high over his head with both hands, his entire body coiling for a single, devastating, all-or-nothing overhead smash that would turn me and the ground I stood on into a crater.
The blue vectors of the attack were a stark, simple, vertical line. But my mind saw more than that. It saw the consequence. It saw the way his arms would be raised, the way his chest and throat would be completely, utterly exposed for a full 1.5 seconds. It was a lifetime.
I did not retreat. I did not cast another illusion. I waited.
The club began its descent, a falling star of iron and hate.
I moved.
I threw myself forward, under the arc of the descending weapon. The wind of its passage was a roar in my ears. I didn't aim for his chest. I didn't aim for his arm. I aimed for the one place that was soft, vulnerable, and full of life.
My sword, held in a fencer's grip, slid forward. I put the last of my strength, the last of my will, into that single, perfect thrust. The blade, guided by a thousand silent calculations, found the soft hollow at the base of the Orc's throat.
There was no resistance. The sharp, clean steel parted flesh and cartilage with a wet, sickening sound. It slid deep, severing his windpipe, his arteries, his very life.
The Orc's roar was cut short, turning into a choked, gurgling gasp. The massive club, its guiding intelligence suddenly extinguished, fell from his nerveless fingers, crashing to the ground with a deafening thud. He stood there for a long, frozen moment, his piggy eyes wide with a final, profound surprise. He looked down at the sword hilt protruding from his neck, at the small, broken human who had put it there. Then, like a great, felled tree, he crashed to the ground.
The clearing fell silent for a heartbeat, the chaos of the battle momentarily paused.
Then, the adrenaline that had been holding me together, the divine fire that had been fueling my impossible dance, vanished. The pain, which had been a distant, academic concept, returned with a vengeance. My shattered clavicle screamed. My head throbbed. The world, which had been a sea of clean, precise data, dissolved back into a blurry, spinning mess.
My legs gave out. I collapsed to my knees in the mud and gore, my sword still clutched in my good hand, my breath coming in ragged, painful sobs. I had done it. I had killed a god. And it had broken me.