Chapter 10: Goblin Warrior
The clearing went quiet.
Everyone knew something important was about to happen. Vedas stood with his spear at the ready and his shield on his arm. The Taurus stood opposite, axe resting on one shoulder, and neither of them looked at anything except each other.
Then Arthur clapped his hands.
"Wait."
Everyone blinked.
Arthur quickly grabbed Vedas by the shoulder, Mithra by the sleeve, and gestured for Melo to come closer. And soon, they formed a huddle as if they were doing a team meeting.
Cassian stared.
The followers stared.
The Taurus stared.
Nobody could hear them.
Only quiet muttering.
The huddle produced: Arthur pointing at the Taurus with one finger. Mithra saying something while gesturing to the left, and Melo flicking her tail in a specific direction twice.
Vedas nodded.
Then nodded again.
Then once more.
Then it broke apart, and everyone returned to their positions.
Cassian looked at Arthur. "What was that?"
Arthur thought about it for a moment. "Teamwork."
"Then are you finished?"
"Probably."
"Probably?"
"We made most of it up as we went."
Mithra immediately covered her face.
Melo closed all three eyes.
Cassian looked ready to explode.
"You okay there?"
"... I will be in the next ten seconds. Let’s start the fight now!" Cassian roared out.
The Taurus stepped forward. Vedas stepped forward. And the fight began.
...
The Taurus moved first, and the axe came crashing down.
Vedas caught it on the shield.
The impact traveled through the shield, through his arm, through his shoulder, and launched him backward. His boots slid through the dirt before he found his footing. But then Taurus was already rushing at him.
A follower grinned. "There it is."
"Taurus is stronger," another follower said smugly.
Arthur said nothing and kept watching.
The Taurus swept its axe sideways, and Vedas barely ducked under it before the weapon clipped his shoulder and sent him spinning.
The Taurus followed immediately. A second strike, then a third, and a fourth each came crashing against Vedas. Each one stronger than the last. Vedas was forced backward again and again, shield up and spear searching for a gap that wasn’t appearing.
The difference in raw strength was clear to everyone in the clearing. The followers relaxed. They thought the fight was over.
Cassian folded his arms.
Then the Taurus charged.
Vedas’ eyes narrowed.
Then a voice surfaced in the back of Vedas’s memory.
You don’t have to fight fair.
The Taurus charged.
Vedas kicked.
Not at the Taurus but at the ground directly in front of it. His feet connected with the dirt, and a cloud of it exploded upward into the Taurus’s face. It rushed into its eyes, and the beast’s charge broke apart as it recoiled and shut its eyes against the impact.
"What?!" Two followers shouted it at the same time.
The Taurus stumbled sideways.
Vedas immediately lunged, and his spear struck.
Armor Piercing activated.
The attack cut across the beast’s shoulder before it could fully recover. The Taurus roared as crimson blood dripped down to the ground.
Arthur grinned. "Hahah, that’s my partner."
Mithra smiles. "He learns fast."
The fight changed after that.
The Taurus came forward again, but Vedas moved before the axe arrived. The axe crashed into the ground, cracking it while Vedas appeared on the left. He thrust out his spear towards Taurus and made it cry out in pain.
The Taurus grew heavier in its movements as the frustration built, swings getting wider and more committed, the economy of a confident fighter beginning to erode.
The Taurus committed to a wide horizontal sweep, its whole body rotating behind the axe, and another memory surfaced.
The axe comes from the side. Duck. Then hit here.
Mithra had pressed two fingers against the center of her own chest when she had said the last part.
Vedas dropped low, and the axe passed over his head with enough clearance to feel the displaced air across the top of his ears. The Taurus’s chest was in front of him, open, for exactly the time it took the follow-through to finish.
Vedas drove his elbow forward.
Vedas’s elbow slammed into the Taurus’s chest, and the impact echoed across the clearing. The Taurus stumbled backward, one step, then a second, its feet scrambling to regain its footing. Every conversation in the clearing stopped.
Cassian’s arms dropped from where they had been folded.
The Taurus had been pushed backward.
By a Goblin Warrior.
With an elbow.
Arthur laughed before he could stop himself because Vedas had done it.
The Taurus came back furious. Any control it had at the start was gone. Its axe smashed through a tree that had been between them, the trunk snapping at the base.
The top section crashed sideways, and the blade continued toward Vedas without losing momentum. He jumped clear, landed, and felt the third memory arrive. Melo’s tail had pointed toward Mithra, then swung toward him.
Move like her. Not perfectly. Just enough.
The Taurus’s next swing came, and Vedas moved with it instead of away from it, the smallest shift in his footwork. It wasn’t Mithra’s movement, just a small piece of it. The axe missed by a margin that was narrower than the previous ones but deliberate rather than lucky.
The Taurus overextended.
"Now!" Arthur’s voice cut across the clearing.
Vedas trusted it without checking.
War Shout erupted from his throat, and the sound hit the Taurus in the instant it was most off-balance. The beast staggered forward into the shockwave of its own failed swing. One second of disruption was all the opening needed.
Vedas lunged.
Armor Piercing activated.
The spear drove into the side of the Taurus’s leg and found the gap in its natural plating. The Taurus’s knee buckled, and Vedas roared and drove forward. The larger was sent crashing into the ground with a groan.
Vedas was on it before it finished falling.
He did not give it space to recover.
One punch.
Then another.
When the Taurus heaved upward to rise, Vedas brought his shield down against its face with everything he had, and the beast went back down and stayed there.
The clearing was completely silent.
"Not bad." Mithra laughed with a thumbs up at Vedas. "You actually listened."
Arthur looked at Vedas.
He remembered the tiny goblin hiding under a chair. Now that same goblin stood over a defeated Taurus.
Arthur couldn’t stop smiling.
Vedas stood in the clearing with his spear in one hand and his shield on one arm and his chest rising and falling from the effort of the last several minutes, and he was looking at the Taurus, and the Taurus was still.
He started clapping.
The sound was the only thing in the clearing for a moment, then Mithra’s hands joined it, and then Melo made a sound from somewhere above them, and the three of them filled the quiet that the followers had left when their confidence had run out of things to say.
Arthur walked forward. Vedas looked over as he arrived.
He held out his hand.
The Goblin Warrior looked at it for a moment, the same way he had looked at Arthur’s hand under the chair in Greenleaf Town. Vedas smiled as he looked at the hand and then took it.
Arthur pulled him upright. "See? I told you! You could do it."
Vedas looked at the Taurus. Then back at him. Something moved across his face that he made no effort to conceal. "You were right." He paused. "...again."
Cassian was still staring. The worst part wasn’t losing. The worst part was realizing the Goblin wasn’t special. Arthur simply believed in it when nobody else had.
Arthur stopped in front of Cassian.
Cassian looked at him.
Neither spoke.
Then Arthur reached over and took the Evolution Mark from his belt before heading back over. Cassian didn’t even try to stop him; he simply stared at Arthur’s back with a dazed look.
Arthur raised the Evolution Mark. "We won!" He looked at Vedas. "That’s two impossible things you’ve done already."
"Yep," Mithra said.
He patted Vedas’ shoulder with a smile. "See? That wasn’t even that hard."
The followers froze before one of them said. "...What?"
Vedas sighed and dropped to the ground. "...very hard."
"Really?"
Vedas stared. "You weren’t the one getting hit."
Mithra burst out laughing.
"But still doable."
Arthur beamed at him while Mithra and Melo came over before patting Vedas on the shoulder, making him laugh.
A warmth spread through his chest again before a notification appeared.
[Synchronization Increased]
[32%]
Arthur smiled. "Looks like we’re getting closer."
Vedas looked confused.
Arthur looked at the Synchronization.
[32%.]
"Let’s see what’s waiting for us at the next one."
"Uh... No more crazy challenges."
"No promises."
Vedas groaned.
Arthur looked at the destroyed battlefield and laughed. "Mom is never going to believe this one." "He rubbed his chin. "If I tell her Vedas beat a minotaur..." He shook his head. "...No. She’ll think I made the whole thing up."
Vedas nodded seriously. "I would."
Arthur laughed harder.
Vedas looked at Arthur for a second. "...Your mother sounds nice."
Arthur smiled. "She is."
Mithra tilted her head. "You tell your mother everything?"
Arthur blinked. "Of course. Why wouldn’t I?"
Mithra smiled. "She must really enjoy your stories."
Arthur looked toward the sky. "I hope so. I’m planning to give her a lot more."
Then the forest roared.
Not the Taurus.
Not any creature they had encountered in the Entrance Realm.
It sounded like an eruption. Before a pillar of golden light tore upward through the forest and into the sky above. Everyone watched in disbelief as an explosion of light turned the area into gold and drove away the shadows in every direction at once.
A shockwave swept through the area. The trees around bent, and it almost sent them hurling back. Only after a few seconds did the light fade away.
Yet nobody spoke.
Vedas tightened his grip on his spear. Melo rose to full height and all three eyes fixed on the glow above the trees.
Cassian stared at the light, clearly rethinking his entire day. Arthur watched the gold fade, and he already knew what it meant.
Somewhere past those trees, the impossible future from the vision was already moving.
Arthur couldn’t stop smiling. "Vedas..."
Vedas looked over.
He looked toward the golden light. "Adventure."
Vedas looked at it and then sighed.
"...Adventure."
Arthur laughed. "Let’s go."
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