SNAP.

The sound of the whip silenced the gigantic empty room. The Hob looked at us from the northern entrance.
The goblins there stood in single file. On the one hand, they used a piece of wood as a buckler; on the other, a crude spear.

They weren't simply standing in line; like any group of goblins can do that alone without a hob breathing down their necks.
When I was a desk jockey, I usually told adventurers to look behind them when this happened, because that is how Hob tactics work. These monsters usually didn't have the best equipment; they were Class C. But where they lacked equipment and strength, they made up for it in tactics.

The Hob gave a slow, closed-mouthed smile, pointed at Laika, and said something; his gaze then flickered to the eastern door. The goblins nodded almost in unison.

I gripped the crossbow hard and then slipped back.

Look who was happy that his plan was working better than he expected.

It then said something in its guttural dark voice we couldn't understand.
One of the six goblins looked at the Hob, nodded, and ran through the door behind their back.

Laika put her hand on the ground, going on all fours. "Don't! If you go right now, they are going—"

I grabbed onto her rags and started to pull back. "Stop! We need to plan this."

Laika pushed me back. My hand fell on something that was wet and warm. I was going to throw up.

"Laika?"

She wasn't the shy girl of this morning anymore.

She was focused on the goblins; her ears weren't twitching.

Her claws were on the ground, scraping the floor, and then she turned her head to her side, looking at me with a single eye.

I jumped back.

"Stay there. I kill them." She snarled, slobbering all over the floor.

I tried to stand up, but I slipped on some goblin gore. Reaching with my hand forward, I brushed against Laika's hind legs, missing her by a hair.

She was gone. I was left with my arm outstretched.

Her claws scratched on the floor as she ran directly at the goblins.

The goblins entered formation, not leaving a gap between each other and pointing their spears at Laika.

She lunged head-on. I held my breath.

Her rending claws met their shields., stopping them like a wooden wall.

The spear was still through her shoulder; another was through her leg, and they stayed buried, dragging her weight sideways. She snarled, trying to push away.

I held my shoulder hard on the place she got stabbed and closed my eyes for a moment.

As if she had just realized what had happened, she whined, her face turned to me.

Her pupils contracted. Her jaw unclenched. Her eye was asking for my help.

My gut lurched.

Focused on her, I was going to help her.

I will comply.

"LAIKA!" I shouted, pulling my crossbow. I didn't even measure how much we had left. I pulled the trigger. "DUCK!"

The goblins went back into the tank instantly, protecting the Hob as five pencils got stuck in their shields, with the exception of one.

One reached the Hob on the chest plate; it stood there. He looked at it and laughed.

The asshole let the pencil get buried in the metal, on his chest, right above his heart, just to mock me.

The Hob took hold of it for a second and flicked it.

That pencil stayed there, ineffective. I took a look at my useless fucking crossbow. I only have 3 more pencils before I am empty, but what does it matter? I can't do anything; I am just a logistics officer with a bunch of sharp pencils.

I looked at the crossbow once more and almost threw it to the ground. C class versus zero.

Laika jumped back as they regrouped.

The spears were still anchored in her; the one on the leg seemed to be buried deeper, but she wasn't even limping.
With her bulkier form, she put herself in front of me.

She grabbed onto one spear on her shoulder and threw it to the ground, and growled at them.

Even when she was at her bestial worst, she was protecting me. What does she really think of me?

I could see him eyeing the other door; he couldn't help but give away what he wanted.

"We need to get out of here," Laika said.

She grabbed me by the Torso and pulled me up effortlessly.

I held her hand, saying, "No, wait!"

She was strong and didn't want to let me go.

I pulled from her hand, and her claws broke my shirt.

She didn't stop until I bit her hand.

She yelped and gazed over me.

Her ears went floppy, and her tail drooped between her legs.

"If we go that way, we will be sandwiched between the hobgoblin and the forces he just sent to the east." If I am correct, they would be waiting for us at the barricade.

She looked at me; she was in a panic, eyes darting both ways.

I looked around. This room was mostly empty. I had already counted the big tiles, trying to find a solution, until my eyes fell on a lectern in the corner, which was standing on a raised bit of floor.

Wait, that was the simulator console, the knowingly unreliable and expensive one that caused several fatalities until it was changed.

I rushed to it and looked at Laika. "Stop them from reaching me." 

As I ran, the Hob looked at the console and snapped. Its whip, the goblin changed pace. They weren't turtling anymore. They were running. One of them threw a spear in my direction.

I reached the lectern console machine. I pressed the big red button on the top, and the machine powered up.

The lights of the room turned on, making the Hob look up, and Laika and the goblins stopped and looked at me.

Laika stabbed one of the goblins and threw it to the ground in that distraction, and the fight continued.

"Err... " I looked at the console several times. The Hob started to walk in my direction, hitting the whip over and over. I pressed three random buttons.
Nothing happened.

"I don't need your help," I interjected. I pulled a lever, turned some notches, and kicked the machine.

"Fucking WORK ALREADY!" I slammed my fist against the machine, but it didn't respond to my request.

Obviously. 

I saw the Hob getting closer. Why wasn't the manual around here? Fucking hunters.

Even the photocopier upstairs had the manual. Wait, no... it didn't. We just kept hitting it until it worked. 

Fuck it.

I pulled out the crossbow and shot the console.

Sparks of electricity and flashes of light made me cover my eyes.
The room started to rumble wildly. 
The walls changed color, matter, grass, fur, sometimes organic, sometimes stone.

The normal controlled environment that the machine was supposed to produce was replaced by a mélange of mixed walls. It was for training after all.

The goblins started to look around. Laika disengaged in my direction as several goblins started to descend from nowhere; they had a light sheen, but they were holographic goblins.

The goblins stopped, and that gave Laika a chance to lunge in my direction and land next to me.

The room was filled with deformed, uglier goblins with a light sheen surrounding them. They moved toward the normal goblins.

SNAP

The Hob signaled the goblins, who went back to back.
Before he could do anything else, a deformed goblin bashed his head with a shield; he stumbled against a crevice between two raised walls.

The Hob got stuck between two moving walls.
I started to hear the sound of cracking. I saw his cheap chest plate form fissures all converging on the pencil, the useless thing I had shot.

My fucking shot.

He grabbed the pencil, trying to remove it, but it was stuck, and the wall started pushing and pushing.

And he was pulling and pulling.

He was shouting, showing his teeth, and at one point, he tried to whip the floor to make the goblins take notice.

The metal kept cracking and bending as the pencil's shaft shortened. I heard a bone crack, and the pencil disappeared. The Hob stopped moving, and blood started to seep down from his foot to the floor.

I heard the crack of more bone. I swallowed hard.

"I guess he didn't see the point." Laika hit me in the ribs.

The goblins turned to the crack. A lone one broke ranks and got near his dead boss, then looked at the others, and at the door.

They dropped their shields and stuff and ran away in any direction.

Laika fell next to me. She seemed to be shrinking. She was really exhausted. 

I fell to the ground next to her and watched the chaos continue for a few seconds.

"Hehe... You saved me."

 "If you even knew..." A flickering light. The smell of lavender and the elevator door closing.

I swallowed.

"We saved each other."

My legs relaxed for the first time in hours. I noticed the cold, metallic floor of the raised podium.

The crossbow fell from my hand, and it bounced a few feet away.

I sat down next to her and watched the fake goblins. We were near the console; they just didn't notice our presence. After a few minutes, everything started to slow down, the goblins disappeared, and the room normalized. And I, with Laika, drifted away.

Something cold and metallic kissed my cheekbone.

I woke up with a gun barrel pointed at my face.

"You are coming with us," the man holding it told me.