Chapter 27

“Shun! Shun! Wake up!” Rina was desperately half shaking me to death with urgency. She had crawled into the lean-to structure but was mostly sticking half out of it, because I was barely in it myself. She’d had to stretch her arms out because there wasn’t a lot of room in it since Akira was so big, nor was there room to stand up in it because the roof had such a big slant. She was too upset to notice him, plus it was kind of dark in the back of the lean to anyway.

It seemed that the wound in my arm from the dream was completely gone. But I frowned knowing I hadn’t had a chance to ask the fox girl everything that I’d wanted to. I had no idea when she’d even let me talk to her, since it was obvious that she was the one in control of what had happened.

I struggled to become more awake. Right now sleep sounded pretty wonderful. And now I know why my conversation with that weird magic using fox girl was interrupted.

I couldn’t help but notice someone had redone Rina’s hair, which meant I’d probably been asleep longer than I thought. It was now in twin tail style hanging down by her ears where it was tied. Probably Yumi’s doing, I thought remembering her unnatural fixation on her. She didn’t realize she needed to do more buttons up on my jacket though, so I pointed at them for her to fix.

“Who vandalized your hair?” I teased.

She hit me playfully, “silly Shun. It’s not that bad.” She managed to crack a smile.

“Is he getting up?” Sensei asked desperately. Her voice was coming from outside of it, probably standing guard. They both sounded scared. I could hear someone else walking through the grass near her outside.

“Yeah, he’s fine now,” Rina answered back, turning her head to face outside.

“What’s going on? Why are you upset?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“Shun, something’s wrong. We’re like… I don’t know I’m hearing people are panicking near us for some reason. It just started less than a minute ago and we heard a bunch of shouting and screaming. But then it got really quiet fast. Now we heard it in another part of the woods but don’t know what it is,” Akira said in his deep voice. “I just got up a few minutes before you,” he explained.

“You’re sure? Is anyone checking it out?” I asked sitting up straight.

“You sure do sleep soundly Shun,” Rina said.

As if she had room to talk, I thought.

“Uh guys, we just saw like a whole bunch of the ranger kids run by and the defenders with them and their magic shields were activated. I don’t know where they are going, but it doesn’t look good. We just heard people like yelling and screaming from like a half a mile down trail in the other section of woods and huts,” Sensei called into the tent frantically.

“Just now?” I reply in shock.

She nodded back, as I was staring out the opening. “It sounded like...a big fight was about to start, with weapons...”

“Uh, that’s bad,” Rina confirmed from somewhere outside while looking scared. She’d also gone back outside after all, so Akira wouldn’t look down her shirt when she was leaning forward to talk to me, since she still only had my uniform outer jacket.

“Get everyone together. We need to get moving. We can’t stay here,” I said quickly.

“Where’s Yuriko?” Akira asked.

“I’m here to! I’m not going anywhere honey! I’ve just been standing guard,” She said, calling to us from outside.

“Eh? Did she just call him honey?” Rina whispered.

“That’s…I’m surprised. Survival creates those kinds of situations too, huh?” Yumi said.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Sensei said cutting her off, but also blushing. “People need relationships to survive, as long as it’s a healthy positive relationship, people should stay out of ther peoples business.” She seemed to be hiding a smile for some reason.

Akira heard her and gave her an annoyed look, “It’s not a big deal, really.” Also he clearly likes the attention from Yuriko.

“So you guys are going to have to be ready for an attack. Let’s all get our weapons ready too. It sounds like the orcs are back,” I said. “Or it could be something else. They wouldn’t have a whole armed troop run by with their weapons out just to go fishing.”

“Well if they did run by with something like that going on, why didn’t they say something?” Sensei asked.

“Good question,” I reply.

“Ah…” Rina gasped.

“There are two really good spears at the back of the lean to, make sure Yuriko gets one,” Akira said in pain.

“Got it,” Yuriko said. I heard some wood move at the back of the hut.

“Thanks,” Yumi said. It sounded like she had the other.

I glanced at his swollen legs. He was still in bad shape. I wasn’t sure if he’d be any good unless I could somehow pull out a few heals. It looked like he’d progressed a little bit, but not by much.

“Akira, I want to try again,” I said.

“Oh come on, we don’t have time for this closing your eyes nonsense,” he complained.

“It’ll be fast,” I reassured him.

“Fine.”

I cast heal another time. Because I’d rested up well it seemed to work well without too much drain on my physical stamina. I did feel a little weak though, so I knew I couldn’t just pump out heals like they were candy.

As the blue spark faded into Akira’s messed up and mutated feet I studied the effect. Slowly the tissue was becoming a little better, but more than anything the malformed and ill-favored feet had solidified their mutation into a full animal-like hoof. I couldn’t believe what I was staring at. It was a real live animal hoof! I almost gasped out that it was impossible but that might make him feel bad.

Hmm, so he the cure wouldn’t change him back to human though…I hope he wouldn’t blame me for that, I thought. I guess it was a failure in the end. It was best to keep my emotions masked, since that might make him react more.

Whatever...he’s stuck with it like this now.

“Hey, I think I can move around. What did you do?” he asked while smiling. From the look of it, his pain might be less too.

“Don’t ask,” I said, not wanting more trouble.

“Let me look…” he started to say and stared at his feet. He was too stunned to react, I think. But he didn’t take his eyes off his feet for a long time.

“How long were we asleep?” I asked.

“A good three hours, I think,” he said, looking at his watch with only a sweeping glance.

“Be careful sitting up,” I said.

“Huh? 3 hours?! That’s all?”

I pointed to his horns. They had grown another two inches beyond what had happened before and had become a more uniform shape from the changing state from before. After that I noticed he also had a tail. It wasn’t very long, but it wasn’t bad looking. It was the same color as his facial hair. I’d not noticed it before because he was lying down.

He felt up towards his head, “Ouch!” he accidentally cut his hand on his own horns, which made me snicker. “Not funny!”

“Uh, sorry,” I said. I need him to hurry though, so I could check out how the others were doing.

“Wish I had a mirror. What do I look like? As long as there’s no …” He was staring at his feet and had muttered something. Then before I could say anything, he said, “What the fuck! What the freaking hell?!” he continued a string of shock and surprise manifested in verbal form. It continued for a little while and I think he was about to start to hyperventilate. He was having trouble accepting this new reality.

He tried moving them and was confused at first, but then saw they seemed to move just like normal. But he still was feeling the hard hoof material with his hands for a while trying to figure it out.

“What’s going on?” Yuriko demanded.

“Akira is feeling better that’s all,” I said. What was I supposed to say? This was really confusing. If I pointed out he’d turned into some kind of monster would he get psychotic or … get crazy? Would it make the others attack him? How would my team react? If Rina and Asakura could handle it then maybe it might be OK…

“It’ll be OK, honey. Don’t worry I’m with you,” Yuriko said calmly.

“Really?”

“Yes! Absolutely! But we need to be careful from here out, and you need to get up,” she tells him.

That had a good effect on him apparently. He started to breathe more even and didn’t sound like he was going to go ape shizzle on everything. He still looked a bit stiff though.

“Let me stand up and walk around. I can at least defend myself now,” he said finally.

“What if they see you?” I wondered.

He shook his head, “danger takes priority and so does survival.” That sounded like the Akira I knew. Maybe it would be OK, after all.

We both left the lean-to, just in time to see Yumi pointing down towards a group of trees that had a lot of noise coming from them about a hundred yards away. If I remembered right a lot of the other huts were also down there.

“So what is that?” Rina asked, looking worried.

“I think there’s fighting or something going on down there. That would be where its all going down,” Sensei said.

“Ar-are you sure?” Rina countered.

“It’s fighting going on down there, I’m sure of it,” Yumi growled.

Akira picked up a huge log with only a little bit of effort, “hey I think I’m stronger!” He was testing it with a couple swings. He could somehow maintain a grip on it. The air vibrated with his swings. But it scared the crap out of us because we’d not seen such a thing like that before.

Everyone stared at him. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt nervous.

It is pretty intimidating seeing someone using a big log as a bat.

“You know you better make sure nobody is close to you when you swing that,” Yuriko said carefully and looking really worried. With such a long ass heavy weapon he was as much a danger to us as anything we were fighting after all. She added a smile at the end to keep his confidence up, but it did look forced.

“What the hell?!”

“What?”

“Satyr? Yeah…I think maybe it’s like a really big satyr. But I don’t have a lot of experience with this sort of thing,” Sensei guessed.

“I’m guessing elite satyr more like, or elder faun,” Yuriko said, seeing how big he was.

“They are the same thing though,” Sensei whispered.

“Are satyrs really that tall though?” Rina said nervously backing away carefully. “Satyrs…don’t like…get mad easy do they?”

“Oh, so that’s what it was,” I said. I wasn’t a monster expert, but after Sensei said, it did seem right. But for her to guess that was Sensei more of a gamer than I thought? I seem to recall also her talking about how evil games were during one of her lectures. Was that all fake?

“Eh?!” Akira looked panicked. “What about my face? I don’t have a cow or a goat face do I?! Ah crap!” he looked like he was going to cry, and there was more strings of profanity after that. And when getting upset, he accidentally emitted a goat bleating sound.

“Did you want a cow or a goat face? You can tell me which one you prefer and I’ll try to help you feel better about it either way. If you are stronger, then I’m guessing you might like some of the benefits? Also think about how much work you can do. Girls think guys that are working are hot. My dad says that men working and pictures of money are like porn for them,” I offered, trying to help.

The girls didn’t immediately refute what I’d just said…but then Rina gave me a look like I’d said something wrong.

“Yeah this is totally a level up for you, you know?” Yumi said. She tried to give him a thumbs up, but she looked like she was struggling to do so; so it ironically backfired.

“Eh? It is?” Rina seemed confused.

Akira looked stupefied.

“Hell yeah! Animal legs, fur, furry goat beard, massive strength, and becoming more animalistic and able to survive in forest stuff. It’s totally a level up. And maybe your face is better than before now too,” Yumi tried to encourage him but somehow she’d used the wrong words. She gave him the thumbs up signal.

D-did she just say goat beard?” Akira whispered to Yuriko with fearful eyes.

“Saying it like that, is probably not going to help,” Asakura said, raising an eyebrow.

“No! I don’t want a damn cow or goat face!” he was crying. It was odd seeing a satyr cry, because he was so tall, and his pants were struggling to hold in all the extra mass of muscle. Plus whatever would make a satyr cry would definitely be scary.

“I wouldn’t want a goat face either,” Rina admitted slowly. Her eyes narrowed while she was looking him over.

“Not helping…” I heard her whisper to Rina and annoyed.

“Shut up Rina,” Asakura whispered but the damage had been done. It’s true his face hadn’t changed much, but who wouldn’t cry over the fear of their face becoming like a goat’s? Goats don’t look very cute and their faces look kind of like an old man’s anyway.

If I woke up and suddenly had a cow or goat face I’d be mad as hell.

Yuriko came over and then looked him over while he gave her an odd stiff panicky look. Then she smiled. “You are fine, honey. You just look like you have hooves for feet and grew…a lot. Some girls like beards too and your jaw looks more masculine. It’s going to be fine OK,” Yuriko patted him on the back. She then tried to give him a peck on the cheek, but tripped and yelped when she fell in the dirt.

“Oof.”

He helped her up, lifting her with ease.

“Well his nose kinda looks…” Yumi started to say, but Rina clamped a hand over her mouth. We were fortunate it was before Akira heard it.

“I need a hug,” Akira said, like he was a small boy that had skinned his knees and stretched out his arms. Yuriko blushed, but then complied. He kind of like started sobbing on her. Then she finally pushed him away when he wiped his nose on her uniform jacket.

Oh I see how it is. Get girls to pity you and then ask for ‘benefits’. This guy is totally pulling the pity card as far as he can take it.

“Hey none of that kissy crap now. We are going to have to defend ourselves,” Yumi said. She looked scary and stared at both of them with her arms crossed.

“OK, everyone stays close, nobody separate from the group,” I said. “If they get you separated they’ll be able to concentrate their power on you.”

“But do we go down where the fighting is, or run away deeper in the woods?” Yumi asked.

Long silence.

I was thinking about this situation carefully. It wasn’t an easy trade off and we for sure wouldn’t have everything go the way we wanted. We had to think about our survival and balance that against that of others and with what we might have to give up in order for everyone to live and come out alive. But with Akira, I thought we’d have a better chance of rescuing the others, I concluded.

“We have to just stick with as much as we can handle and we’ll move forward. But no matter what stay together,” I started to work it out verbally while I was thinking on my feet.

“Run to the woods?” Rina suggested in a kind of goofy like way.

“Nah, we have to fight them sooner or later. Plus we are already in the woods. Even if we run away, we’d just fight them still and only buy a few minutes. Plus what if we run to an area that we get cut off and surrounded in? We have better ground if more of the other students are alive with us and have a chance to join us. We gather forces and fight back. But if we only try to help ourselves, no one will be able to get away to join up. I think that’s the real reason so few people escaped from the ruin of the school. After we get enough survivors together we can then worry about trying to get some kind of fences or fortify-able areas. If we get too many at that point we’ll signal a controlled fighting retreat,” I said.

“OK, Shun. You decided this. Just remember that I let you decide and we decided that this is the right thing to do,” Akira said.

“You are letting him decide?” Yuriko wondered.

“Well what he said was true,” Asakura reasoned.

“Well he’s kind of mad at me for the king stuff…plus Shun is better at figuring out stuff,” Akira said kind of sadly. “Plus he …healed my feet and body?! Shun…you can do magic huh? If you hadn’t healed me feet I would be a sitting duck right now, and be unable to move my legs still.” he had big eyes.

“Shut up about that! Don’t tell anyone and keep your voice down,” Sensei said quickly in alarm.

“What?!” Yuriko was really confused.

“Why? If you heal everyone, they’ll be saved. We could hold back an army with a healer,” he said.

I face palmed myself…stupid Akira. He was either looking or really, really stupid. I wondered how many other people he was going to tell. If he told Yuta, things would be even more dangerous when he perceived me as a rival. He would not like anyone who looked more powerful than he was.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Rina said cutting in. “He only has enough strength to do like one person every few hours at best, even with rest. That’s why he had to rest. If you tell everyone he can heal people he will die from energy loss, or get mobbed. Think about how many people were in the school battle. Some of them had really bad wounds too.” She glared at him with hands on her hips.

“But it is magic. In games the magic types always end up being bad ass in the end,” Akira protested.

“They do?” Yumi looked surprised.

“Yeah, and magic has a high cost. We’ve seen how it drains him just to get a small gain that has to be fought for. We need to not have him waste it,” Asakura made sure he understood.

“Would be nice if there was enough for others,” Yuriko sighed.

“There’s not enough for everyone. Rina needs me too and needs quite a few heals each day,” I said.

“Fine…” Akira sighed.

I pulled out the three other weapons I had in the demon box. One of them was from earlier escaping the school, and the others from fighting fox girl’s minions. After distributing them, everyone had a weapon. Except I switched things around so Yumi had the club, since she was stronger. I had to keep Rina and Asakura from the front line because they were weaker so I ended up giving them the spears.

But we were unprepared for how fast things were already moving.

“Shun! Save them!” Yumi pointed at a nearby hut. Two orcs were facing three or four of our students, who had been surprise attacked and were losing. They were completely shocked and terrified that the orcs were back, in addition to being in a real life or death fight again. They were bigger orcs than before, so it took more of the smaller humans to face them. They also looked pretty confident and were sneering at us and trying to disarm the other kids.

How smart were orcs really? The experiences in the demon box suggested some of them were or had potential to be.

We watched as one of the students was hacked to death by both orcs going after him at once. The others were screaming and tried to run away, but Yumi yelled at them to fight back and to grab tree branches for clubs. Clubs were better than nothing, but I think the more muscle a creature had then the more club blows you would need.

As we rushed forward to save them I felt a huge whooshing sound and saw Akira’s …tree trunk whoosh overhead bashing one orc’s skull into a mess of green pumpkin juice and slime. Then he followed up with another swing into the other one. Both died instantly from head shots before the rest of us had even properly gotten our courage out. The orcs looked terrified of him even before the blows hit him. The second orc, hadn’t gotten hit in the head initially but the blow was so heavy it carried through as a head shot.

“Holy Sh--!” Yuriko exclaimed.

“Could you not spray their guts onto us?” Yumi complained, completely disgusted. She tried to wipe the green and black blood off her uniform jacket, but it just smeared.

“Satyrs are so strong!” Rina gasped. But that only seemed to make Yumi hate him more for her laundry problem.

“If it’s like that shouldn’t we all become satyrs too?” Sensei said in surprise.

“Doesn’t the idea of having goat legs bother you Sensei?” Rina said.

Sensei blushed, “ah yeah, I kind of forgot about that part momentarily. But it would help in getting rid of orcs. Sometimes I get sort of scatter brained.”

“Don’t stop, there are more. And no I don’t want to be a satyr,” Yuriko said. I wonder how Akira would react hearing that. Would it bother him? Was it just me or was he swinging that log a lot harder now.

“Eh?!”

“Wait, don’t let them run! Make everyone fight or there will be more casualties!” Sensei exclaimed at the three other students that were sneaking away.

“Hey!” I yelled at them. Then I pointed at Akira, “You guys are going to help fight and defend the others or I’ll have our pet rip your arms off!”

“Uhhhh….what is that?” one of them said.

“Is that…m-monster?” A girl sucked in her breath.

“What? I’m a pet now? That is so not fair,” Akira sounded hurt.

“Just help fight or we’ll use your teeth to check the density of rock gravity. Or turn your jawbone into an orc ass hair scraper,” I said ignoring Akira’s complaints.

“Ok…” they said stiffly, like kids having to cough up lunch money to an older kid. They slowly started walking back towards us. They were too cowed to look at us because Akira was scary.

“When did you get an intimidate skill?” Akira asked me suddenly.

“Uh, that wasn’t a magic skill, but just telling them how it is. Right now we can only fight back or die.”

Now we had more troops. Quickly we rearranged them around us, while Akira snapped off huge branches for them to use as clubs in just a few seconds of tree violence. He left the sharp stumpy parts on the clubs he was making, since they’d add pain on impact hits, but rapidly cleaned off the other twigs and leaves.

“They’re coming. There are more of them. Hurry up,” Yumi announced quickly, as we saw a steady stream of more orcs pouring into this part of the woods. It was now getting scary because we had no idea how many were going to come at us at once. Plus they were smarter than the others.

“Shouldn’t one of us go to the other huts to get more support?” one of the new people said.

“Right…and you expect us to believe you will come back on your own?” Yumi said sarcastically.

“…was worth a try…” someone muttered while crying.

“I don’t want to die!” someone said with a snotty nose.

The front line of the orc scouts hit us quickly. About five of them came at us at once, with two of them being killed instantly. Akira’s giant club savaged one, and my steel axe went right through the club and chest cavity of another. Chest cavities are a sure kill with an axe, but so hard to free the weapon though and they get messy when the axe gets all wet with gore I soon found out.

“I want one of those,” a girl said in fear while she blocked an orc’s savage of blows with the club she’d just received. Contrary to popular belief, when orcs attack they don’t just do one hit and one attack at a time. They do whatever they can get away with. Some of them like try this flurry of blows kind of tactic and some will try to do kicks or other dirty tricks. So the girl and two others were trying to hold off a huge barrage.

“Sensei and Rina lend support by going after orcs already engaged by others. Also stay behind Akira and I,” I ordered.

By then the two girls were on their backs in the grass, from their weapons being knocked aside and alo having been kicked into the dirt. It wasn’t an accident I noticed. The orcs had gone for the girls first, using incapacitation maneuvers. They’d tried to avoid killing them so they could strip them of clothes and weapons.

“Help!” they both were screaming, while Yumi bashed and speared one of the orcs through the hips…it was a critical hit because it was between his legs. The orc had a very surprised look on his face and couldn’t even scream, and then he fainted.

While that was happening, I saw the two spears of both Sensei and Rina go through the last one while its death screams grew weaker.

“Good, repeat the pattern. We need Yumi up front to block, Yuriko…” I started to say but she cut me off.

“I’m staying in the front with Akira. I’ll also block and hold the line,” she said.

“The others will also hold the front line with blocking and defending, while Sensei and Rina will go for ambushes on already described orcs. Do not accidentally stab one of our own,” I said to confirm.

“Hmm, you have this down pat, don’t you?” Akira said, as he kicked an orc between the legs. Oh if you could have seen its eyes…apparently being kicked in the nuts by a satyr is like a whole new level up over the normal version.

“No…but organizing is key. We have to keep solidarity and unity or our front line will collapse. If our line of defense collapses then people will run away.”

“Good point,” Sensei added. As usual she’s trying to stand close to me when she can.

Before we could do anything else, more orcs were streaming from the woods towards us. We hadn’t even gotten a chance to scavenge for fence material or to get up fortifications. We were at least lucky it was still light out enough to tell when they were coming.

“Hold the line!” roared Akira, acting as a gathering point. The others had to stay clear of Akira when he swung the huge log around like it was a baseball bat, but he was rapidly becoming our spearhead partly because he looked scary. Whoosh, another orc got popped into gore, expiring quickly. We were hit harder this time when the other six hit us. All of us had to keep our weapons up to block and parry. One of the girls nearly fell over from the blow, but the others held. But if we didn’t dispatch them quickly we’d get mobbed by the others coming up from the lowlands.

As I blocked the blows coming at me, I kicked out at its knees right after the blocking connected. It threw his balance off and after that I was able to swing the axe around so hard it went clean through the orc’s arm between the shoulder and elbow. He started screaming like crazy and collapsed. Then I stepped on his groin before chopping him straight on the neck. He died quickly.

By the time I’d gotten up though with the one I was fighting, one of the girls that had joined our defense was being dragged off by another orc. The others were screaming for support, while Rina and Asakura had dispatched two more orcs, but had been too late to help her. “Shun! Help her, please!” Rina screamed. We tried to keep fighting but the girl was getting dragged off by even heavier and stronger orcs. They ended up holding her shoulders and legs above their heads so they could move her more quickly.

“HELP!” one of the girls gasped.

“Help!” Akira also pleaded at almost exactly the same time. The orcs had cleverly realized he was a death trap and the only way to survive would be to dog pile him. They had rushed up and were all hanging onto his log and grabbing at his arms. One of them had made the sacrifice for them to pull of such a maneuver. He was trying to kick at them, but they’d gotten smarter and parried his kicks. Akira was swinging madly but they were trying to tackle and push him down onto the ground, seeing him as the most dangerous. He almost fell several times in just a few seconds right in front of me. If I didn’t hurry they would soon pull him down into a dog pile and incapacitate him.

“Eh?! They can do that?” Rina exclaimed, while trying her best. But she wasn’t very coordinated.

The other students weren’t assisting, and scared to help. Suddenly seeing Akira getting mobbed people were getting really worried.

“Hey! You can’t hesitate! Every death of our team helps them that much more!” I yelled, singling out the cowards.

I didn’t stop to wait for them and swung the axe as hard as I could at one of the orc’s back. He collapsed from his lungs and ribs being turned into corn and beef hash. It was really gross and I had trouble getting the axe free because his ribcage was so tight. When he fell to the dirt, I could see parts of all of the ribs on one side.

By the time I’d freed my axe the other two orcs were dead, as the others followed after me in the opening.

“I’ll save her!” two of our new allies said, rushing after the girl that was being carried away. They were almost fifty feet away and now the orc was trying to hurry while the girl kept screaming and crying while she tried to get lose. The two of them tried to run faster to catch up, but they’d lost a lot of time. She was kicking up her heels and trying to get away but being dragged by her arms while the orc was cackling in laughter.

“Stop!” Yumi screamed and pointed to the new threat, but the other two were blinded in their rage to save the girl.

The two new kids going to save her hadn’t been able to see the fresh set of orcs that had been coming towards us as they rushed forward. They’d sort of come in from the flank to try to surprise us while their friends were engaged and were now in their blind spot.

Several of us screamed warnings, but it was too late. Now we were short three people, and about ten more orc raiders were headed this way. They didn’t last even ten seconds.

Akira threw some huge rock at them hitting one in the back and he fell in the dirt and didn’t get back up. But that still left nine others to account for…and they looked like the bigger type, not the smaller ones.