Eritance - Chapter 23

The club came down, and I thought it was the end for Ciara. However, something unexpected happened. Ciara side-stepped the club and grabbed the goblin by the wrist. She turned around and used the momentum from the swing to throw the goblin over her shoulder.

It hit the ground with a heavy thud. The goblin had a confused expression on its face as it suddenly was looking at the clouds. However, before it could do anything else, Ciara took her long knife out of her belt and slammed it down heavily through the goblin’s neck. The goblin let out a gurgle as blood poured from its throat and then the light faded from its eyes.

The other goblins saw this and ran towards Ciara enraged. She immediately sprinted towards the closest one and slid across the ground under a swing from a spear and slashed the goblin’s legs. This caused the goblin with the spear to kneel and she stabbed it through the back as she stepped up.

I was amazed, but I got over my shock quickly and ran over to help her. As the other goblins got close to her I swung my fists and sent two of them flying. Maybe I didn’t have finesse like she did, but I had the strength of four men. It was easily enough to send two flying with punches that cracked their ribs. The last goblin that was standing there swung its club at me, but I caught it with one hand and punch it in the face. Its nose was crushed, and it fell back. As it fell back I was immediately upon it beating its face in until it stopped moving. As I did this Ciara rushed over to the other two goblins that had been injured and finished them off before they could get back up.

When it was done I stared at Ciara with a strange look. She looked back at me and said, “I told you I had other means of defending myself. If it weren’t for the orc chieftain and the stupid dress, I would have jumped in during the ambush” she said as she shrugged. I again started thinking about what kind of strange life she must have had.

As I thought this, I realized that I was getting stronger. “Ross, check my status” I said.

Orin Strength 2.1 (2) Stamina 1.4 (0.3) Speed 1.4 (0.3)

Wow! My stats had gone up after killing a goblin. I guess it made sense, since goblins were semi-intelligent, but in many aspects, they resembled beasts. I guess at the end of a day, a monster is still a monster. This was an excellent discovery for me to make!

“Come on” she shouted as she dashed towards the village again. She was trying to make her way to the mansion. There was no way we could defeat all these orcs and goblins. I grabbed her hand and pulled her towards one of the alleys. “I know you want to make sure your father is safe, but if we go down the main streets we won’t survive, we need to take the paths with the lowest number of enemies” I quickly said.

We began sneaking behind some of the burning and unburnt buildings weaving our way towards the lord’s mansion. As we went through this route we encountered some more goblins, but Ciara quickly killed most of them. Her style of fighting was very quick and well suited for killing goblins silently.

Once we got close to the mansion though, two orcs appeared. They saw us and growled.

“Ross, show me their stats” I said.

Orc Strength 3.5 Stamina 2.5 Speed 1.2

I knew orcs were strong, but this was just ridiculous. Each orc was almost as strong as I was and there were two of them. I could easily kill one of them alone but there were two of them and they had short swords. The only thing I had was a long knife, just like Ciara.

We didn’t have time to waste though, these orcs were standing before us and getting to the mansion. “Ciara, we’re going to have to work together somehow” I said warily while keeping an eye on the orcs. “Just don’t swing your body around wildly and I’ll take care of the rest” she said.

I felt a little indignant at that, I had always thought I fought well, but apparently to her I just swung my body around wildly in fights. “I’ll try to be more careful.” I said.

With that I ran towards the two orcs and Ciara followed closely behind me. As I got close the orcs raised their swords. They were thinking that one would block me and the other would attack me while I was open. However, once we got close, I stopped just out of their strike range. They decided to close the distance themselves, but as they did this Ciara jumped high into the air and pushed on my shoulders to give herself a boost. This boost let her go over the heads of the charging orcs and land behind them.

Noticing this the orcs turned around with a confused expression and Ciara slashed at one of their legs as she spun around. The orc cried out in pain. While the other was distracted as lunged forward and stabbed into the other one’s shoulder. It cried out in pain as it turned back to me.

The orc with the leg injury tried to strike Ciara with its sword but she jumped backwards and dodged. As the one with the shoulder injury raised its sword to strike me I kicked it in the groin causing it to scream in pain.

The orcs momentum had been taken from them. From there it was easy to beat them. All we had to do was press in on them and keep attacking. After a few more blows with my fists the orc had died, and I pulled my knife from its shoulder. Ciara herself was just finished off the one with the leg injury after giving it several deep slashes all over its body, sealing its movements. Each cut on its body was aimed at a joint or a muscle to make moving difficult. Ciara then stabbed it in the chest when its movements became extremely sluggish.