by Ivan Kal
Morgan turned around and raised his arm. The archers behind him readied themselves, as well as the orcs—who now instead of bombs had ropes woven around rocks. Morgan waited until the goblins reached close to the walls and lowered his arm. Both the archers on the walls and the ones behind him opened fire, and behind the arrows flew melon-sized pieces of rock. The goblins died by the scores, but many still reached the walls, bringing their ladders to lean on the walls again. They spread around the wall’s length more than they had yesterday, leaving the gate mostly alone.
Morgan fired his arrows, but kept his eye on the overall situation. He saw Vall and Clara move with their team to reinforce several sections of the wall as goblins managed to scale it. Morgan didn’t have the time to watch and see what was happening, however, as a group of goblins led by a chieftain climbed on top of the wall to the right of him, and at a glance Morgan could tell that Ves wouldn’t be able to get there in time as she was busy fighting off an attack on her own part of the wall. There was no one available to help, so Morgan turned around and ran toward the goblins. He jumped from the gate and over the heads of his people, aiming with an Energy Arrow and firing three while he was still in the air. Each found a target, and three goblins fell.
The chieftain noticed Morgan as he landed and pulled his string back again, letting a few more arrows fly. The chieftain had a large shield in one hand and a mace in the other—and, using his shield, managed to block all of Morgan’s arrows.
The goblin chieftain roared and smashed his mace into the head of a nearby Sky Guard before charging at Morgan. His bow raised, Morgan stood his ground and fired energy arrows at the goblin chieftain, then he drew one of his Arrows of Binding and fired at the chieftain’s legs once he had nearly reached him. The goblin’s legs were caught in the roots and Morgan reached out with a tendril of his power, manipulating the roots to stab into the goblin’s legs, and then started draining the life energy from him with his Power Siphon ability. He ran forward as the goblin tried to rip the roots out of his legs with his claws, but the monster couldn’t escape. Morgan reached him and fired an arrow at the goblin’s head from just a few meters away. The goblin chieftain blocked with his shield again, and then threw his mace straight at Morgan’s head.
Quickly Morgan activated his Arcane Shift, and the mace passed through his head as he fired another arrow into the head of the surprised goblin, slaying him instantly. Morgan created more Energy Arrows and fired at the remaining goblins on the wall, aided by the Sky Guards and the orc warriors near him. After retaking that part of the wall, and Morgan turned back to the field. Goblins were everywhere, throwing spears and stones at the walls, trying to climb with their claws and ladders.
It seems the Goblin King has sent more of them for this assault than he had for the last one.
Titus was throwing fire down into the field, creating large explosions and sending precise lances of fire to hunt down goblin shamans. Morgan helped by firing at the casters that were beyond Titus’s range, his arrows finding their targets all the way across the field.
But all the while, Morgan could see the Goblin King watching. He had tried to fire and take him out but the Goblin King had stepped out of the way of every arrow that Morgan had sent his way. From the looks the Goblin King was giving him from across the battlefield, he was getting very pissed off—which was why Morgan kept sending an arrow or two every once in a while toward him. Angry people made mistakes.
“Morgan!” Lucius called from the gate, and Morgan headed back as quickly as he could.
“What is it?” Morgan asked once he’d climbed on top of the gate again.
“The walls are being overwhelmed,” Lucius said. “The non-ascended are nearly out of arrows, and the goblins just keep coming. We need to use the last of the bombs.”
Morgan grimaced. He had wanted to keep them for a better opportunity, but he knew that what Lucius was saying was true. They didn’t have a choice. “Fine, get the—”
His words were cut short by a resounding crash as something slammed into the wall next to the gate and made the entire structure they were standing on shudder. Morgan turned around with wide eyes only to four ogres raising big pieces of rocks and throwing them at the wall. He turned to the place where the rock had crashed only to see cracked wood and an indentation framed by broken parapets. The wall was still holding, but it wouldn’t for long.
The ballistae turned and fired at the ogres in the distance, but they were far away enough that it was hard to hit them—still, Morgan saw one of them get hit by a bolt and stagger back.
“Incoming!” Lucius yelled out, and Morgan felt the man grab hold of him and pull him back, throwing both of them off the gate and down to the ground. Another crash sent tremors through the ground, and Morgan turned to see the great wooden gate cracked. It hadn’t been breached yet, but the rock could be seen peeking in through the splintered wood.
“Damn it,” Morgan hissed, and turned to the orc warriors standing close to him. “Ready the bombs!” Morgan yelled out.
The orcs pulled out the bombs and put in the crystals, priming them. “Throw!” Morgan screamed as he sent a tendril of his power down into the ground and spread it across the battlefield. Another crash sounded, and a rock crashed into the top of the gate, then ricocheted off before falling down into the courtyard and smashing into a group of non-ascended archers. Morgan didn’t move as he tried to keep his focus on what he was doing.
Lucius recognized what Morgan was attempting and immediately gave out orders. Vall and his group of Sky Guards ran over and entered into defensive formations in front of Morgan and the gate that was going to fall any moment. Another rock smashed into a ballista tower, sending pieces flying everywhere as more and more goblins managed to climb over the walls. Lucius started calling for a retreat from the walls as the orcs sent their bombs flying overhead.
Meanwhile, Morgan was reaching for the roots beneath the field. He turned all of his will onto them, forcing them to obey his will. He could see flashing in the corner of his eye as notifications appeared, but he ignored them and forced the roots to move and stop supporting the ceilings of the tunnels.
He heard a crash, and the ground shook as the field in front of the gate collapsed, and then the bombs exploded among the stunned goblins. At the same time, another rock smashed into the gate and it finally broke apart, allowing goblins to spill through.
Morgan didn’t move even as the goblins smashed against Vall and the other defenders. He couldn’t see the field from the walls, but he still forced the root tendrils up, to burrow through the ground and stab upward. He felt some of them stab into living things and he pulled the life force from them, draining it from them and using it to grow the tendrils even further.
The notifications in his vision were still flashing, as Morgan realized that he could sense something in front of him, beyond the wall. It felt like his Nature Sense, only it seemed to be limited to what was near the tendrils; still, with how many there were out there, he could see almost the entire battlefield. His vision darkened and disappeared until only the sense of life remained. He pushed his roots to hunt them down and stab into the goblins, and pull their life energy from them. He felt it flow, felt the goblins who didn’t die from the stab wounds perish from his draining them.
Soon, he could feel something stabbing into his head, almost as if seeking attention. Morgan ignored it and focused on his control of the plants. He could feel lifeforms around him, he could feel them fighting and dying, but he could feel the plant life more—it moved by his will and the goblins died. He could feel small wisps of life energy trailing through the now infused roots back to him via his tendrils of energy, filling him up with power. He felt something in the core inside of his stomach, a heat bubbling up.
He continued what he was doing, as he knew that for every goblin that he killed out there, there would be one less coming through the wall. And then something happened—the stabbing in his head stopped. Through his Nature Sense, he stil
l had an awareness of the roots, and he felt the life energy accumulated in them ripped out as the roots shriveled up and died, the life energy along with the entropic energy released by their deaths traveling back though his tendrils and slamming into him. His eyes opened and he looked at the fighting in front of him. Vall and Ves were in front surrounded by Sky Guards and orc warriors, keeping the goblins that had breached the walls at bay. The gate was a wreck, completely broken apart, and the corpse of an ogre lay just inside the walls with two ballista bolts having pierced it. Undeterred, the goblins came over the corpse and rushed forward in a frenzy.
Lucius was standing close to Morgan, swiping his short swords in front of himself, sending blades of air to decapitate scores of goblins at once. Clara was kneeling next to a fallen Sky Guard, healing him. Morgan attempted to stand up, but realized that he had couldn’t. A touch of panic assaulted him as he realized that he had no control of his body.
The line was being pushed back, and Morgan saw Ves shatter all the ice armor on her body, sending it flying forward in a hail of icicles that felled the entire front line of the goblins. As they started to retreat, Vall sent a wave of fire toward the next line of goblins and then they were all running back.
“Morgan! We need to move!” Lucius said as he reached him and grabbed his arm. But Morgan couldn’t speak—something was happening. He tried to bring up his notifications up, but he couldn’t even do that. It was as if that part of him was busy doing something else; Sabila, his soul-implant, was the one who enabled all of that, and now she was doing something else? Fucking Skynet is taking over. Oh fuck me sideways, I knew this was going to happen! Hey! he screamed mentally. Sabila, do you fucking hear me? Give me back my body! Morgan continued yelling inside his head, but got no response.
Lucius cursed and put Morgan’s arm around his shoulder and started carrying him. Someone caught his other side and Morgan was moving toward the town. They entered the town proper and Morgan was dragged over a barricade—Lucius had argued successfully that they should prepare the town in case the goblins managed to get inside the walls, so it had checkpoints that they could defend.
“What is wrong with him?” Ves asked as she and Clara arrived.
“I don’t know,” Lucius answered. “He collapsed the battlefield and then he was just like this.”
Clara leaned down and put her hand above him and attempted to heal him. “His body feels fine, but there is a lot of energy inside of him, swirling in the middle of his stomach.”
“Try to help him,” Lucius said and then walked away, issuing orders for people to fire from the barricades.
Ves looked down on him for a moment. “Take care of him,” Ves said, and then she ran toward the barricade as well.
Morgan tuned out everything happening around him and tried to focus on what was happening inside of his body. As Clara had said, there was a lot of energy inside of him, energy that he had somehow drained from the goblin army and the roots. It hadn’t been his intention to do that, it had just happened, but now he had a problem. He could feel the core that had appeared inside of his body when he had advanced his intellect and will and he could feel that it was filled to the brim with power. That power was turning in a circle, slowly.
Then he felt it explode with a thousand tendrils out of that core, burrowing throughout his body—and it hurt, it hurt like nothing Morgan had ever felt before. For a moment all was just heat and pain, but then after a long while it abated, and Morgan could feel his body again. It felt different, in the same way as it had been different when he hit the first threshold of twenty attribute points, when he had passed what an ordinary human could ever become. He tentatively tried moving and was elated when his body obeyed. He slowly tried standing up, but Clara was there.
“Morgan? Are you all right? Do you know what happened?” she asked in a rush.
“I think I am fine, and I have no idea what happened,” Morgan said as he stood up. He felt better than he ever had. He could feel conduits through his body, and power coursing through them from the core inside his gut. He turned to look at Clara and saw her glowing with energy—he could see her own core, and it was a small orb below her navel. He looked around and saw that everyone was glowing, every ascended at least, because he could see people who did not have such energy inside them. Instead, they glowed with a gray dull color.
But it wasn’t just them. Everything around him had some kind of a glow to it. The houses, the ground, the air. It was overwhelming, and just as he thought about it the glow abated and dimmed, but did not disappear completely. He could see far better now. He wanted to check his notifications, there were still many queued up and flashing in the corner of his eyes, but he knew he had no time.
They were in trouble. The goblins were attacking the barrier and Morgan saw most of the Sky Guards evacuating further into the town and then up the mountain to the Guild Hold. The non-ascended were running away, and the only people around him were Vall, Ves, Lucius, Clara and a few Sky Guards.
Just then, Lucius ordered a final retreat.
Morgan ran along with the others as the goblins climbed over the barricades and gave chase. As he thought about firing on them, he realized that he had dropped his bow somewhere, so he used his gauntlet to fire bolts of energy behind him as he ran to the next barricade. He frowned, then, as he realized how fast he was moving; he wasn’t much faster than the others, but he was faster than he had been before. The power that was turning slowly inside of him and spreading to fill every part of his body somehow made him stronger. He could feel life all around constantly, as if his Nature Sense were active. He felt the decaying of the dead plants in the ground beneath the town, the worms and the rodents, although his sense of the animals seemed a bit dulled relative to those of the plants. It was all so overwhelming, and he did not have the time to check his screens to see what precisely had happened.
They climbed over the next barricade and, trying to slow down the goblins, fired at them with everything that they had—but soon it became apparent that they would be overwhelmed again. Lucius called for another retreat, and the remaining ascended ran ahead while Lucius, Ves, and Vall remained to send a few more blasts of their power into the mass of the goblins and slow them down. Finally they turned and started running, Clara and Morgan joining them as they ran down the street and into the large square that they had been using as a marketplace, which was now empty. The stalls that had been there had been used to make the barriers.
But then, as they were halfway across the square, something jumped from a nearby building to land in front of them, and Morgan found himself face to face with the Goblin King. Standing barely thirty meters apart, it was clear that the Goblin King was not like the other goblins. He wore armor, and held a long and wide two-handed sword that glowed with faint white light. His eyes were red, and filled with intelligence and malice. There was rage there, and hate. Morgan and his group stood still, even as goblins rushed from behind them. But somehow, they didn’t attack. Instead the goblins spread around and surrounded them, filling the square.
“Great,” Morgan said. “And now we’re dead.”
“Not the first time we’ve been in a certain-death situation,” Vall said as he stepped close to Morgan.
“Vall is right, although I don’t quite see a way out of this one,” Lucius said. “Still, I have faith that we will triumph or die gloriously.”
Morgan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no. I don’t think it’ll be that easy this time.”
Ves walked over and stopped next to him. There were five of them and a few hundred goblins surrounding them, not to mention the Goblin King himself.
“Well, I guess we should get this over with, huh?” Morgan said as he took a step forward.
The Goblin King kept his sword point to the ground and held in one hand, but he didn’t react when Morgan took that step forward. Instead, his nostrils moved as he inhaled, and then he did something that Morgan had not expected: the Goblin King spoke, his tone dripping with hatre
d.
“You look like him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Morgan looked at the goblin—the Goblin King—in shock. The goblin had just spoken, and Morgan had understood him. Ever since he had arrived to this world, he had heard from everyone that goblins were monsters, creatures of lower intelligence that, while smart, weren’t really sentient. But now, one of them had just spoken in a language that Morgan could understand.
“You can talk?” Morgan asked in shock.
“I wonder, will he continue to keep his distance? Or will he interfere once I split you open?” the Goblin King asked. But Morgan wasn’t really paying attention—he was still reeling from the revelation. He looked around at the goblin horde, and now he saw something different, no longer just monsters.
“If you could talk, if you could understand us… Why would you do this? You…you eat people,” Morgan said slowly, the realization hitting him in waves. If the goblins were intelligent, then the things they did…they were far more despicable. Morgan could understand a monster doing what was in its nature, but a being who could reason? That was something entirely different. Then, he felt anger swell up inside of him. “You really are monsters.”
“You think you can judge me, little human?” the Goblin King said. “You are just a pebble in my way. You might be smart, and filled with primitive tricks, but you are not strong—and I see now that it is best I take care of you myself. I might not be strong enough to fight him, but you are nothing. At least you remind me enough of him to satisfy me.”
“Why would you do this? Why attack? You could’ve talked with our people, found a way to live in peace,” Morgan said.
