Author note; 

So thank you for your support and reading. Very excited to be leaving you guys a note. 

I'm working on another release to be planned for end of January. Its a bit ambitious to release so soon but I'm working for it. There is a chance it could be first week in February instead. But I'm going to shoot for that as a release time range. I will post more on this next week. 

Thanks a bunch!

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 169

 

Adventurer #37, name, Vennie point of view continued;

 

“Stand your ground,” the punk teenager mage said. Well technically he’s not a kid but just looks young.

Shun, I think that hottie called him. So that’s his name huh?

I still don’t know what Hottie Girl’s name is.

The assassins tried to pepper us with arrows and to my astonishment as we are bracing the hall to hold it, I have like twelve crossbow bolts hanging in the air around where the kids magic shielding is floating. It looks like it will collapse soon though.

I should be dead. Twelve crossbow bolts probably four of them would have hit something like a major organ. But none of them connected. That magic glass shield thing is amazing! What is that? Is it made of light blue pretty and shiny mana?! I guess it’s not glass but resembles a glass shield in a way. I reach out to touch it but my hand passes through it. This thing is kind of weird but effective.

“Eh?! I’m alive?!” I gasped.

“Shut up and fight dumb ass. And get down, stop standing there like a moron,” Kitty called back. She stabbed an enemy in the neck. As usual Kitty is kind of bloody actually. She’s also got a terrible bedside manner with how she talks to people in general, and people she’s close to.

“They don’t have shielding and we do? Does this mean we win now?” Stan asked. He’s trying to fight too. I should do my part. He still sounds like he’ll piss himself any second.

He also managed to stab an assassin in the stomach, but only after several tries. Hell, a stomach stabbing is a shitty way to go.

But for all that, the kid mage has to keep refreshing our shields, but seems to cycle through spells like he’s been doing this a while. I’ve seen rookies cast spells and though I can’t tell much of what’s going on you can tell if someone knows and feels confident in what they do. If they are new they will stutter and fumble through drawing runes in the air. The shield, both mine had almost collapsed and so had Stan’s. Kitty’s is holding because she can dodge and block better than we can.

The young guy gets them back up pretty fast.

The Hottie Girl is protecting the young mage. And both of them have to keep an eye on the back window.

“Watch it the snipers are moving,” the hottie girl said.

“So we move too, we can’t just let them shoot us,” Kitty shot back.

Why is her nick name Kitty when she’s a cat beastkin anyway? Isn’t it like naming a human, ‘Human’? If I ask her she’ll get mad and that’s why I haven’t so far. I’ve been adventuring with her and Stan for almost two months. It’s taken some time to build up trust. Then this crap happens.

“Um…are we going to the roof or the ground floor?” I asked quickly.

“That’s a good question. If we pick the wrong one we’re dead,” Stan said.

“No shit,” Kitty growled like she’s all PMS.

I try to block but it’s hard and I can’t keep up. I try my best but these assassin guys are no joke. Pound for pound they are all better than us. We would have died long ago if it weren’t for the kid’s shielding technique. Even with it, we still might die.

He’s casting it pretty much non-stop to compensate for our weaknesses. He avoided my question?

But every once in awhile he does something weird and one of the assassin’s falls on his face. Then the other Hottie Girl pounces on it and punctures the neck, sending arterial spray all over us. We probably look like we’ve gone to some kind of red paint festival by how much blood is all over the room.

These two are merciless, but they are effective. I need to steel my willpower like they are. But fighting human opponents isn’t fun. We’d joined this to make money and fight monsters. Who would have thought humans are sometimes monsters?

The gore slick has sprayed so bad that it’s even all over the wooden hardwood floor in pools such that Stan has slipped a few times. He doesn’t die though thanks to his shield protecting him from the exploiting shadow guys. He gets back up as soon as he can.

The hottie and that mage don’t slip on the gore somehow. They are more experienced. Well, they probably haven’t had been drinking like Stan and me. Stan and I slipped several times on it, falling to the ground and getting it all over us. But Kitty only didn’t slip on gore because she’s a cat beastkin with better agility than us. Plus, she has her claws out.

Beastmen have so many unfair advantages!

We keep trying to wade through the blood in our combat moves while keeping the enemy back. A cut over my eye appeared when a blow slipped through the transparent shielding buff’s hole when the damage was severe. Then it closed back up again.

The Shun guy did an alchemical heal again?

My cut closed up but still feels all itchy like crazy.

Then suddenly another assassin goes down. But when one goes down it just seems like there are like five others behind it. How many are there? The problem is that there are still like twelve others coming from the stairway.

And it’s so dark. Even with my emergency pocket mana lamp it’s hard to see.

I tried to block some assassin attacks with two of those fuckers shooting me but somehow their bolts go through the shielding and it collapsed. The kid mage got it back up right after but it was close. I know have a thrown knife sticking out of my gut.

He casts that warm fuzzy spell and my wound is closing up again. Then there’s another that seems to be the warm fuzzy over time thing. I’m getting more tired because I’m fighting and exerting myself but at least it hurts less when the young guy takes care of the wounds and stuff.

Maybe I’ll live?

But it’s too soon to tell.

I almost fainted. Then Hot Girl pulls me back in the room from behind me and I fall on the ground.

I think I’m going to die. I’m starting to feel sleepy…

“Don’t go to sleep when you’ve lost a lot of blood!” Kitty screeches loudly.

“…right…” I yawned.

The others are trying to cover for me. But when I’m face down on the floor suddenly I see something else that almost made me shit my pants.

There’s a face staring at me from the high ceiling above us. I’m sure of it. She’s looking right at me and it scares the shit out of me. The camouflaged being consists of two long pointed ears like a cat girls but longer and sort of red. But the body is long and very slender somehow and she’s laying against the roof, with long legs as if it’s the floor while defying gravity? The eyes blink and camouflage girl or whatever is staring down at me like I’m prey.

I think I almost screamed. She almost gave me a heart attack, but then I see her fingers go to her lips motioning silence and to keep a secret instead of finishing me off like I thought she might have. But she doesn’t smile, just that intense stare.

I gulped slowly once not able to take my eyes off her.

Shit. She’s like tall huge with long legs stretching over like half the room while hunging upside down. I try to think about what kind of creature she is. What kind of creature is that tall, skinny and slender but half again the height of a man with slender ears of a rabbit. Wait a second. Those don’t look like rabbit ears, they are fox ears aren’t they?

Eh?

…

Then it registered…she’s a foxkin.

They are kind of rare. And I hadn’t seen one before, though I’d heard about them.

Then she slowly creeps forward across the roof while upside down so quietly only the kid mage knows she’s there. They even had signaled to each other.

“I can’t keep this up. Too many arrows,” Kitty said.

Do I tell her about it yet or wait a bit more?

“OK, everyone fall back further into the room and I’ll take care of it. Stay away from the door,” the Shun guy said.

Hmm what’s he going to do?

You know usually mages are like supports not like commanding forces that crush an enemy’s offense. This is weird. I think many of the mages I was with in the past were kind of weak too.

Kitty and Stan scream when they realized what was over them. They’d seen it because I had been staring at her this whole time. It was like a spider sneaking up on you.

I hear moments of shocking screams when the assassin guys suddenly see a huge blue energy flash and the sound of thunder and lightning lights up in the hall. While we were here there’s like a flashing outline in the room where it’s going off from the light being reflected back close to us. It felt almost like the whole inn was struck by lightning and then it got super quiet.

There’s no more of those assassin guys. For now.

“Um, was that all of them that were in the building?” Kitty asked.

“Probably not, I’d assume no until we confirm it,” the young mage said.

“So um….what do we do?” Stan asked.

“Just follow Shun for now till the danger is over. Then you guys can go your own way,” Hot Girl said.

That made me feel anguish. I don’t really want to separate from Hot Girl much, but it’s true they aren’t really our group but just giving us charity.

“OK,” Kitty bit her lip. She has two canine fangs hanging down while looking fierce.

Then the others caught a glimpse of that monster sized fox kin hiding up against the ceiling while sneaking along it.

“What the fuck was that?” Stan asked sounding like he might pee himself.

“My gosh, it was like ten feet tall and sneaking on the ceiling,” Kitty exclaimed.

“Only 8 feet actually. You thought ten because of being afraid of the dark,” the one called Shun corrected.

They instinctively raised their weapons.

“Don’t attack! Lower your weapons away from her,” Hot Girl ordered.

Somehow they lowered their weapons nervously.

“That’s my pet. She’s harmless, unless you make me mad or go against me. So be careful that you know she’s playing for my team,” the kid said.

Who the fuck has a sneaky pet like that?!

“Eh?” we exclaimed.

It’s intimidating that the boy mage looks like ten years younger than us.

“That….thing looks feral,” Kitty’s eyes narrowed while staring at it. It stared back. I’m hesitant to look into those eyes very long.

And the Hot Girl is still looting bodies, putting everything in one of the inn pillow cases. She acts like she has no fear. “Hey these guys have some money on them,” she said. I also heard the counting of some coins.

“Watch for poison Sung. Just touching the wrong gear could be bad,” The boy said. He casted something on each of her hands and both of them look more at ease.

“Got it. I just hope your magic shielding holds,” she said quickly while her guard is up.

“They’re using poison?” I gulped.

“Wait, actually there’s a correction. Not all of them have it. Poison is expensive so its cost prohibitive for most of them. But the ring leaders and their team leads have it very likely on some of their gauntlets and weapons. The rest are probably just fodder homeless people that they promised a good life if they could live through this,” the Hot Girl…Sung I think it was, said.

“Oh I see,” that other guy said.

Dang.

“Stay away from the window,” the guy with her said when Stan wandered too close. Sure enough a couple of crossbow bolts rebounded off the dresser in the room. Two of them stayed impaled in it, and three others just were going too fast and skittered off onto the floor.

“So there are at least five shooters outside the windows still,” Sung confirmed.

“I’m trying to think. Will this be all of it? Are we at the point where the fighting will die down or will this be just them trying to get a second wind before round two?” The mage guy Shun asked Sung.

“I don’t know…but if the snipers are still here we can’t relax,” she said back to him.

Damn.

Now all of us are staying low, except the kid mage. “Damn. I hate it when people shoot at us,” he said.

“I know right? So unkind…” Sung said back. She seems confident but is staying low too.

And that freaking monster is still out there in the halls roaming somewhere ahead of us solo, clearing the way without even needing any backup support.

“One…” the kid said.

…

“Two…” he counted again.

There’s a bit of a silence.

Then suddenly there’s a crash of thunder and lightning again that goes throughout the whole inn shaking everything and almost knocking us off our feet. A mage skill again, likely the same one; some kind of lightning element attack.

Briefly bits of the inn walls had tiny minor flames and sparks from the lightning impact, but they died out.

“What the fuck was that?!” I said too loudly.

“Fucking monster,” Stan is rocking back and forth on his heels.

“Hey, be nice. She’s saving our asses. And it was her lightning bolt spell,” Sung said glowering at him.

“I didn’t know Foxkin were that overpowered,” Kitty said to Sung.

“Yeah but who is she?” I asked but they ignored me on purpose I think.

“They are over powered. It makes me jealous trying to compete with her all the time,” Sung assured them.

It’s now a waiting game.

Everyone is hoping the guards will show up. But strangely the others don’t make any showing to try to leave yet. I wonder why.

A few minutes later the foxkin girl comes back. But she has trouble standing up in the room because she’s so tall and big. I also see she’s got cleavage showing like that other girl, though her tits aren’t as big. But if I try to peek Kitty will hit me again.

Too bad. In a way she looks more exotic than Sung, which is actually saying a lot because for some reason that Sung character looks really exotic. Although Sung’s boob size is wonderfully bigger than anything I’ve seen before.

Hey…that kid can’t have both of them right? Does this mean I’ll have a chance?

I listen to them talking, hoping for an opening to prove myself to one of them and also to look for a way we can do something to improve our situation.

“I think there’s still a couple teams of them but mostly downstairs. They seem nervous that they can’t reach any of the teams on this floor and aren’t willing to come up here yet. But that’s assuming their boss doesn’t do something to exercise leverage to make them come up,” the Fox girl said while hugging the mage kid.

“Good job Fox,” Shun said while hugging her intensively.

Even Kitty looks pitifully jealous too so it’s not just me.

Fuck. He just broke my dream. He has two women, there’s no mistaking it now that I can see both of them have their hands all over him. And both of them are considered hottie of hotties material. I want to die. I sniffed. Life’s so not fair. This is too much.

The boy is still talking to her in low whispers. They are planning something. I want in, it just seems like they are confident and can win, despite only being a couple of them together.

“I’m mostly worried about the mage not the assassins. We can hold out with my barrier if we need to. But that mage had a field wide magic canceler that even took out all our buffs at once,” Shun said to the Fox girl.

She appeared to be thinking about that. She’s scratching her cheek. “A spell like that would cost a lot of juice. I’d wager he can only do it two or three more times before all his mana has been drained. And it’s risky for long term damage to go to zero power.”

“That’s what I thought too. I’m glad you agree,” Shun said.

Then they gave each other high fives. Sung looks jealous while they are holding hands. They keep staring at each other a long while.

“But do think someone like that might have other abilities besides a field canceler? If he has an offensive power too that has me worried,” Shun said.

Shit, are they serious?

“Aren’t field cancellation mages kind of dangerous?” Kitty coughed out nervously.

“Yeah that’s got me a worried,” Shun said like he seemed composed.

“So we’re being hunted like mice huh?” Dammit!” I cried out.

The others look at me oddly. I know I’m too emotional but losing Forsythe and the others made me that way.

“We’ll get out of here don’t worry,” Sung said to me.

“Yeah we just have to buy time until the city guards get organized,” Shun said.

I don’t respond.

We keep waiting even longer while we hide. Sometimes we change rooms so we can avoid snipers trying to know where we are.

And longer still it seems as time passes.

Now my feet hurt and my joints feel stiff. I wish we could relax our guard and rest but we can’t.

The enemy is scared now that the fox girl thing just took out two of their teams with that lightning blitz thing. And that’s not counting the team from before. So there must be like at least thirty of them because we’ve already matched up with the tree team skirmishes and there’s a team of snipers outside.

After another hour the mage kid inspects my wounds again.

Surprisingly they are almost gone but there’s still a little bit of scabby stuff remaining. I also still feel woozy from blood loss. Still, he doesn’t act like he’s out of mana, why doesn’t he heal more?

Furthermore how is it he did heal me? Was it a life siphon or something alchemy related? That’s the usual method lately or alchemy but I don’t see signs that point to either. I doubt he’d tell me anyway.

“Another hour until day break,” the Foxgirl said.

Of all of them, I’m the most afraid of her.

I hadn’t noticed it until about an hour ago but her fingernails are long and thin like sharp knives. She looks feral too.

Wait a minute.

I remember the feral type foxkin are dangerous. I also hope Kitty doesn’t remember that either. Stan isn’t that smart to have heard about it, I guess unless it were to somehow come up in bar talk.

What’s going on here?

I think we might be rescued soon. But how long can we be safe with this foxgirl?

“Hey can I have your attention please?” Shun asked.

“Sure what is it?” Kitty asked.

Stan is also alert and listening.

“You can’t tell anyone about the foxgirl. She was never here,” Shun said. It took me a sec but I noticed he didn’t request it. He’d ordered it.

What’s going on here?

I feel like someone stuck us between a bunch of giants and said try to not get hit by them throwing boulders at each other.

“Can you do that?” Shun asked persistently and glaring at us.

Sung is also glaring too now.

“Fine. We’ll do it. As long as you can guarantee she’s not a feral or harmful to others,” Kitty said.

Shit. I was right.

Feral foxkin are unpredictable.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

“And if we don’t?” Kitty asked.

“Then I throw you out that window,” the foxgirl said with a smile on her face.

I think I need to retire and become a farmer. This is totally not worth it. Yeah I could get the tools, some cheap livestock and then go open up a ranch somewhere at the frontier. That would work. Maybe I can convince Kitty and Stan to join me.

Svinn point of view, at his house during the early hours of the night

Bam, bam, bam.

“What’s going on?” I woke from my bed. It’s like way early in the morning. As I sleepily opened my eyes, I see my water clock says its like 3 AM in the morning. Whoever it is this time, I’m going to have them fired. I hate being woken up.

The banging on my door continued. It’s desperate and heavy. Crap, is it the orcs? Did they finally decide to attempt the wall?

“Sir? Are you up? It’s an emergency! It’s bad!” one my house bodyguards is there.

Whew…

It’s always scary when some ass is doing that in the middle of the night. I get dressed as quick as I can throwing on my short and boots. Dwarves always sleep with our pants on and a weapon under our pillow just for this kind of thing happening.

I had a short sword hidden under the covers by my hand also, in case it was a sneaky assassin trick to get in my room at night.

After I leave the bedroom my attendants are helping me get armed and get equipped with leather chaps and some knee and arm guards, a leather smock, and some padding. It’s not technically full armor, but as a city leader I’ve gotten access to it. But it’s hard to put on myself.

“Time,” the bodyguard hits his stopwatch.

“Damn,” I breathed out.

Two minutes was our train time in an emergency to get geared up. It means I need to get out the door. Other teams actually are allowed five but I know that every minute can mean the death of civilians or other guards.

We’re now running to get out of my private fenced house. It’s kind of like a mini fort, and I even have my own two guards permanently at my fence gates.

“What’s the situation?” I asked my attendants, bodyguards, and runners. There’s about ten of them, and eleven if you count the runner, but I doubt he’ll be much good in a fight.

“Someone attacked the inn. There’s a mob outside, we’re trying to get our men there. But it’s not looking good,” my attendant briefed me.

“Those idiots. I told them building an inn outside the city walls was a freaking dumb idea,” I swore. Two years ago some beastkin wanted to build their inn where even non-dwarves would have unlimited access. I suspected also they were involved in dark trades or black market stuff or they wouldn’t have bothered.

“Not that inn sir…this was one of the inns inside the fortress,” my attendant said.

“WHAT?!” I cried out and almost tripped while we’re hurrying along.

We’re huffing while we run down the street. Some of the city guardsmen that see us in uniform join us, just instinctively knowing something is up. Some of them probably wanted to respond earlier but needed to make sure they were in sufficient numbers to do so. You can’t go in solo when your one guy and the enemy has whole squads.

They aren’t bad guards. It’s just a dog eat dog world. They have to gang up just to survive this job.

But as we’re running down the street another runner comes up to us. The one thing going good for us right now is that it’s so early and night out that there’s nothing blocking the streets and no crowds out.

“Sir, we got another report of another attack going on at the same time at another inn also in the fortress city,” the second runner said.

“What?!” I exclaimed with the others.

“Wait, it’s a duplicate report. This has happened before. Remember your training,” I said.

“Not a duplicate report. The Blue Jay Inn near the foreign quarter was the first attack, The Bottomless Beer Barrel in the north side of town, and mage Cassius’ mansion,” the runner reported.

“What? All three places? All being attacked on the same night? That’s not right,” the attendant asked.

“Wait, so which are we going to first?” my bodyguard asked.

…

Stay calm…

Which one do I pick first?

There could also be political fall out if I pick the wrong one, and help low tier adventurers over high tier adventurers first, as a representative of the government and the dwarves.

I can get other squads activated but it’ll take extra time since it’s like the middle of the night or early morning. And without knowing the full numbers of the enemy, I can’t make a good decision either, since sending too few city guards can get them all killed if the enemy is strong.

Crap.

I have to decide.

Err…wait a minute.

Wasn’t Shun at that Blue Jay Inn?

He can probably handle it right? And Cassius is a national war hero. But the north inn has the most civilians too. Arggh…so complicated.

If I were to pick having the least casualties then I could do it that way.

“The north inn first,” I said reluctantly.

It wasn’t personal. I just wanted to save the most people. Cassius’ mansion is also near the north inn too. He’s got a ton of house guards and stuff.

“But who is attacking anyway?” my bodyguard asked.

I looked at the messenger. “We don’t know yet. All the reports just say men dressed in black similar to like night warriors of some kind.”

“It can’t be a coincidence. Those are places where a lot of adventurer’s that do government work are stationed. Plus Cassius a war hero, with three armies outside,” I said.

“So you think it was the orcs that started this?” my bodyguard asked.

“It’s not like them to be this smart. I can’t figure it out. They’ve never done something this tricky before. They shouldn’t even know or have that information,” my other attendant said.

He’s right about that.

Forsythe point of view

At a much later time that same day….

I wake up sitting up straight.

Wait, something is wrong here? Why is it so dark?

Huh?

How did I get here?

I feel slow and sluggish. Something is wrong with me.

I try to talk and call out to Kitty, Stan, and the others but then I heard this awful screeching and moaning instead.

What the fuck is that?

Am I locked in a box?

I tried to cry out again. Again I heard that awful screechy moaning or some such. That sound is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

I pound at the box I’m in. Yeah, that’s what it is. I’m locked in some kind of box I think. Strangely that awful moaning continues.

What’s going on? Where am I?

Wait…

Did I die?

The last thing I remembered was being stabbed through the heart and hearing Kitty and Stan cry out. They tried to save me but it was too late. They left me to die before I was already completely dead and that added to my anguish.

Fuck…

I have a bad feeling about this.

Then suddenly the box opens.

I try to thrash out at the hooded and robed figure in front of me but somehow I’m paralyzed.

And shit that light hurts like hell. I can’t move. But my body doesn’t hurt, even though it should?

What is this? What the fuck is going on?

That wailing continues and suddenly I realize it’s me?!! I didn’t even know I was wailing and screaming. But whenever I try to talk that’s the only thing that comes out. The wailing is endless and even though I feel irritated at my own wailing agony I can’t seem to shut my mouth.

And there’s like a shit ton of drool going down my mouth, nose, and eyes. Oh and some of it’s blood…

NO!!!!

What’s going on?

Then I see my hands…………………..

I also have wounds open all over my body and my skin looks grayish white and discolored.

OH fuck. I’m an undead. I can tell by how tore up my flesh is. I can’t feel my flesh and I can see also my bones on both wrists from the open wounds but for some reason at least there’s no pain.

And that young guy in front of me is just standing there watching me.

Behind him I can see other bodies against the wall, in the stone room all standing there. They all look lifeless and sort of shambling around without being able to focus on anything clearly.

Ahh fuck it.

This guy is a necromancer isn’t he?

How the fuck did I get here?!

Kitty! Stan! How could you abandon me?!

“Hey there! How are you?” a smiling teenager with strange black hair and an oriental face chuckles at me.

I can’t respond or even talk while in my flesh cage.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

He’s turning me into…

…

drool...