Ch: 113.11 (Patreon)

Acting was working overtime at the moment. It had been years since I needed to use it in any significant capacity, and now that it was the only thing keeping me from certain death, I was kicking myself for not training it further.

My skill helped me project an air of confidence when I had none by reminding me to keep my movement to a minimum and to maintain my posture, despite wanting to collapse in exhaustion. My overall size and the death of the level 69 hob were enough to scare the goblins momentarily, but I knew if I showed even a speck of weakness, the remainder of them would swarm me.

But in the darkness, there was hope. Every second my skill kept them from charging me, the more my Stamina would recover, the better my chances of survival were. Unfortunately, I'd overdrawn my Stamina, so it was recovering at a snail’s pace, but it was recovering, be it so slowly.

It also helped that a few goblins were distracted by the fight below us, and I could understand why. It was hard for me to take my eyes off it as well. The fight between the arch-goblin and Tabitha was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen. It blew the time Master and I challenged Pacore out of the water. This was a proper duel between two monsters close to each other’s level. Hell, the massive trees were trembling from the shockwaves their fight created.

I’ve always wondered what Tabitha would be like when she went all out, and now I knew. Her footwork was mesmerizing as she danced narrowly between the swings of her opponent, and her sword technique was downright beautiful as she utilized every opening she was given. I’d need another two dozen levels and improve multiple skills if I wanted to match Tabitha as she was now.

If she were up against anyone else, the fight would be long over, but sadly Tabitha’s opponent was just as eye-catching as she was.

The berserking arch-goblin’s attacks were simple and straightforward, and he didn’t seem to react to the many shallow cuts Tabitha was inflicting on him. However, where he lacked creativity, the arch-goblin made up for it with overwhelming strength and tenacity.

Each swing of the goblin leader’s massive arms sent Tabitha stumbling backward, whether she blocked his strike or not. And despite his many wounds, he hadn’t slowed in his assault in the slightest.

I desperately wanted to give Tabitha the benefit of the doubt and proclaim she was winning the fight, but the more I watched them clash, the more I started to worry.

Tabitha was being forced to constantly use her skills, mainly the one she uses, to change her stance instantly. I knew from our many sparring sessions that she could use it instantaneously and that it barely used any Stamina, or at least that's what I thought.

Unlike when she spars with me, Tabitha was using the skill back-to-back with no cool-down time to both defend and attack simultaneously against the arch-goblin. Even if it was a tier 2 skill, using it multiple times a second has to be incredibly draining. How long could she hold out like this?

Tabitha's shield and the arch-goblin's claymore clash again, and I feel another powerful shockwave pulse through the tree I was in. Again, I have to steady myself without the goblins noticing. Sadly, my act fools all but one goblin, who slowly starts creeping toward me.

Still looking down, I prepared to defend myself as he inched closer to my position.

The other goblins quickly notice him slowly approaching me and do a surprisingly good job of not making any noise. The group does its best not to alert me to his approach, which makes my sudden head turn all that more impactful.

The goblin flinches back in shock, but I wasn't done. For a brief moment, I glance directly at the goblin’s soul, long enough to elicit an attack response but not long enough to receive a backlash. It works, and in a fearful rage, the hob raises the spear in his hands and moves to charge me.

I’ll use what Stamina I have left to bash his brains in while he’s impaired.

He moves to take his first step, and I don’t know if it’s luck, but a particularly strong termer runs through the tree, causing the branch he's standing on to vibrate uncontrollably. Most of the goblins, along with myself, were able to steady ourselves because we had our feet planted, but the goblin close to me wasn’t so lucky.

Between my sudden glancing at him and using Sense Soul, the goblin was already off balance, and with only a single leg for support, he lost his equilibrium and started to fall over the edge.

For a second, I thought the goblin was straight up going to fall off the tree branch, but that was just a bit of wishful thinking on my part. After all, he was a horned hob, and even if it takes him a second to recognize that he's falling, he still has the stats to react in time.

As he’s tumbling over the edge, he lashes out with his spear, lodging it into the tree's hard bark, stopping himself from plummeting 500 feet to his doom. I watch as a relieved smile blooms across his face as he struggles to pull himself up.

Yeah, no.

Flash Stepping in front of the goblin, I ruthlessly kick him in the face and watch him, arms flailing wildly, screaming in horror, as he tumbles to his death.

After the goblin slams into the forest floor, and I’m rewarded with a pitiful amount of experience for how I killed him, I slowly turn to the rest of the goblins with a smile on my face. The smile hid the pain from using Flash Step when I shouldn’t have, but it was necessary to sell the lie that I could still fight.

My smile has the desired effect on the remaining goblins; some start running as soon as I look in their direction, while others look around in fear.

Wait, that didn’t make sense?

I feel another tremor, stronger than the last, and even more goblins panic. The shaking felt a little much to be caused by a fight, even if both participants were over level 90.

The goblins started fleeing in every direction, all heading for the nearest tree trunk, confirming that I was missing something important.

Glancing down, Tabitha was still fighting the arch goblin, but his two bodyguards were busy barking orders to an increasingly worried group of goblins. It was then that I noticed the termers were increasing in frequency and didn’t match up with the clashes between Tabitha and the arch-goblin.

"Oh, fuck!" I curse, remembering a popular dinosaur movie from my past life. Those weren't shockwaves from the fight I was feeling; they were footsteps, and whatever was causing them was getting closer by the second.

Whatever it was, it was enough to spook a group of goblins that still numbered over sixty strong. Of course, with my skill, I couldn't sense anything in the immediate surroundings, which meant it was still at least 600 feet out, but the way the goblins were reacting, that knowledge wasn't making me feel any better.

I wanted to rush down the tree like the goblins, but now that I was alone…

I couldn’t help but fall to my knees and start panting. There was simply nothing left in my tank.

Then, I felt it; a massive concentration of mana stepped foot into Sense Mana’s range, and what a foot it was. Whatever was walking in this direction was absolutely massive in size. It was hard to determine what I was seeing, but whatever it was, it contained enough mana to blind its surroundings to Sense Mana and alter the natural mana currents of the forest.

The best way I could describe it was that a magicite deposit had crawled out of the ground and was now walking toward us, if that was even possible.

The shaking intensified as it rapidly approached our location. It covered a span of fortyish feet every couple of seconds, meaning we had less than a minute before whatever I sensed was upon us.

"Tabitha!" I tried shouting down at her

to give her a heads-up on what was approaching us. And I immediately see the folly of my actions.

The arch-goblin was still pressing his attack, even though he had to have felt whatever was coming. Tabitha was trying to distance herself from the goblin, but he refused to let that happen. So even if she could hear me over their fight, my calling out to her was pointless.

“Get up, damn you,” I urged myself to move, but my body wasn't having it.

It was agonizing, being forced to watch everything happen without being able to help.

The giant beast was closing in, and when it finally came into view, my jaw threatened to slam into the branch I was crouched on.

Waves of mana so thick they threatened to push me off my perch rolled over me as a 240-foot mountain on feet walked into the clearing.

All the goblins except the arch and his two buddies immediately turn and flee at the sight of the…. Golem? I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at.

The titan looked made of stone, but countless plants were growing out of it. Chunks of moss grew out of every orifice, and vines and other ivy were crisscrossing across its surface, but what stood out was its eye, or what I thought was its eye.

Right in the center of the mass of moving stone was a green gem the size of which I'd never seen in any lifetime. The rough stone looked to have a diameter of eight feet and had to be tens of thousands of carats.

Looking at the gem made me want to throw up, with how much mana was contained within. It was so bad that I had to deactivate Sense Mana lest my brain oozed out my ears.

I quickly grip the branch I’m kneeling on as the massive titan takes another step into the clearing. If the shaking was that bad as it approached, what would it be like now that it was almost under me?

And there is shaking as its foot touches down, and I do need to hold on to keep from falling out of the tree, only not as much as I imagined.

As countless leaves rain down around me due to the rumbling, I look back at the way the giant came, expecting to see its craterous footprints.

You can imagine my surprise when I see no such thing. Somehow this thing, the size of a literal mountain, didn't leave so much of an indent on the forest floor.

While I was trying to understand how that was possible, the giant stopped directly under me, and I could see it turn and focuses on Tabitha and the arch-goblin, who, despite the current company, had yet to settle their fight.

To my abject horror, the titan raised its rocky fist far above its head, knocking down countless tree limbs and almost reaching where I was.

"Watch out!" I scream as the giant brings his colossal fist down on the still-fighting duo.

The size of its fist blocks out my line of sight, and I barely have time to grip the branch I'm on with all my worth before it crashes into the ground.

The giant's stomp did nothing but its fist…. When the giant’s fist slammed down, it was like a nuclear bomb went off. No, like a meteor struck the earth.

The shockwave alone tore branches from the trees stronger than stone. Dirt and gravel peppered the air like shrapnel and ripped apart what remained of Mana Skin like it was paper. I could see nothing through the cloud of dust, and without Sense Mana, I was effectively blind.

I'm forced to wait for the dust to settle, hoping and praying Tabitha somehow made it out alive. I wasn’t even sure her armor could withstand something like that.

Slowly, the dust in the air settles, and what I'm greeted with when it does, is a crater like no other. The earth in front of the giant was gone; the only remaining substance in the pit were fragments of the massive tree roots that once snaked their way through the ground.

I start hyperventilating when I don’t immediately see Tabitha.

On the edge of the destruction, I could see the two horned hobs that stayed behind with the arch-goblin, huddling in fear. And On closer inspection, I noticed that they were standing over a body.

“Screw it,” I grit my teeth in frustration and once again activate Sense Mana. My eyes start to water as the mana put off by the stone giant burns my vision, but I push through the pain and zero in on where the goblins are standing.

To my relief, it isn't Tabitha they're standing over, but the arch-goblin. Surprisingly he was still alive and conscious, so logic would have it.

I continue to push Sense Mana past the giant and do my best to scan its surroundings for my senior sister.

I nearly collapsed in relief when I find her a few feet to the side of the giant, and she was..... Meditating!?

Tabitha was calmly sitting on the forest floor, dirty but alive. And for some reason, she had her sword sheathed and her eyes closed.

“Tabitha!” I shout. The forest had gone completely silent after the giant’s attack, so my voice finally managed to reach her.

I start to stand up, intending to rush to her side, but pause when I see her raise a hand in a stopping gesture.

But why?

Suddenly, the giant starts to move again by slowly retracting its enormous arm. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I also see the arch-goblin being hauled to his feet by his two friends. The female even offers him his sword, which he takes.

The arch-goblin snarls up at the towering giant, but his head quickly shifts to Tabitha, sitting next to it with her eyes closed again. Dude, you haven't had enough yet?

The arch-goblin shakes off the arms of his companions, who were obviously trying to hold him back, and starts running towards Tabitha with clear hostility. Tabitha has to hear him running at her, so why is she not moving?

I again considered trying to help her, even though I didn't know what I could do in my state, when the stone giant started moving again. This time, it raises its other hand and makes a swiping motion at the goblin charging Tabitha. It has to lean forward to reach the arch-goblin, and insane as it sounds, the crazy goblin raises his large claymore to meet the giant's hand head-on.

For a split second, the arch-goblin manages to fight back against the colossal hand of stone, but he doesn't last long before being swatted away like a fly into the forest. The two hobs run after their defeated leader as he soars into the distance, leaving Tabitha and me alone with the murderous construct.

Once the goblins are entirely out of sight, the giant turns its attention to Tabitha, who still hasn't moved despite its second attack, further tearing up the terrain close to her.

I wait with bated breath as the golem stares down at Tabitha, but the attack I expected never comes. Instead, it looks up at me, and my heart threatens to jump out of my chest.

Why is it!?

"Calm yourself!" I hear Tabitha shout up at me. "Show no hostility!”

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I nervously grip my hammer tightly.

At this point, the giant was winding up its hand like it was reading itself to throw a punch. Could he reach me up here?

What was I thinking; of course, it could! I needed to move, find a place to run to, and look for an opening to save Tabitha. I’ll find a way if it kills me, even if I have to kick this walking mountain's ass!

I move to start sprinting away when Tabitha’s words finally register. Glancing down at the giants’ feet, I spot Tabitha still sitting there with her sword put away, though now looking up at me with concern.

It finally dawns on me what she wants me to do and why the giant continued attacking the arch-goblin and not Tabitha. I hurriedly drop my hammer and raise my hands above my head in a non-threatening gesture.

But it isn’t until I clear all hostile thoughts from my mind that the stone giant begins to lower its arm. Again, I stare into the humongous glowing gem for what feels like an eternity. And finally, after the worst staring match of my life, the golem turns away and continues walking in the direction it was originally traveling.

I don't move a muscle until the vibrations from the giant's footsteps fade entirely into the distance, and once I do, I bring my hands up to my face and wipe away the tears that start to form there.

Somehow Tabitha and I were still alive, and I couldn’t be happier.

**********

2,900 words.

How did you like the surprise ending? This was always what I imagined, Tabitha and Aaliyah fucking up some goblins but eventually having their fight be interrupted by something scarier. I tried to foreshadow it a little last chapter, as Aalyiah shouldn't have felt any shockwaves that far away. Did anyone catch that, or should I go back and add a line or two?

Either way, I hope I did the scene justice. Please comment below and tell me what you think, and as always, stay safe.