Vol.2 Ch.15 – Quality Over Quantity

Chapter 15: Quality Over Quantity

The next morning when Alisha, Selene and I came down to breakfast Yume was already sitting in the tavern, a plate of the probably-not-bird-egg omelet in front of her.

“Good morning”, she said, sounding a tad more smug than the morning before. “It would appear my master overslept terribly. I apologize that he is not here to greet you.”

“Oh well”, I said, just as smug. “I am sure he was exhausted. We did have quite the eventful day yesterday.”

Selene snorted behind me.

The three of us sat down with Yume and broke our fast, chatting about everything and nothing and soon enough the Chosen One came down the stairs, clutching his head.

“Good morning”, I told him cheerfully.

“Oh fuck off”, he groaned.

“Bad night?”, I asked, sounding as earnest as I could.

He groaned again. “I must have drunk way too much last night. I don't remember anything. What happened?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. I had Selene show me the sights last night, I didn't really notice much else.”

“You were hitting up that liquor stand pretty frequently”, Alisha told him. “I think you were saying something about needing to buy a few bottles of their brandy before we left.”

He frowned, then shrugged. “Can't have been that good if I don't remember it.”

Alisha wanted to argue, which made me think he actually had said something like that, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. There was no reason to start an argument over that.

**

A while later we were all prepared and on the road again. From Shackled Hollow our route was fairly simple. There were three nights left to our travel. The first and third we'd spend camping out while the second we would hopefully be able to rest at an inn in the final village on our way, Odin's Crown.

The first day went by without incident. Well, aside from the minor disagreement when the Chosen One once again refused to take a watch shift at night. Alisha made him eat dry oats for that one. Still, between Alisha, Selene, Yume and me we were able to work with two hour shifts, which were pretty much harmless as far as watch shifts went.

But then the second day came around. Honestly, I should have expected it. If the Dark Lord was already sending out raiding parties all the way to Shackled Hollow, that really only left two conclusions for Odin's Crown. Either the Dark Lord had already taken the village over or their defenses had managed to thwart him up until now.

Fortunately the latter had held true. When we reached Odin's Crown late in the afternoon the place still stood and, moreover, there were human guards manning the walls. What was less fortunate was the small army of orcs, goblins and cyclopes besieging the place.

From the outside Odin's Crown looked like a fairly typical fort, a round outer wall surrounding a multitude of houses and workshops. However, normally such forts were constructed from wood or stone and while it was possible to glean a stone foundation the outer wall was constructed of enormous pointed bones, either the ribs of giants or dragons or the fangs of something that dwarfed even those creatures. There were clearly small farms surrounding the outer wall of Odin's Crown, but all of them had been trampled or burned by the besieging force.

And what a force it was. At a rough count I saw about fifty goblins, twenty orcs and four cyclopes. One of the orcs was significantly larger than the rest, standing at about seven and a half feet instead of the six feet of a normal orc. His armor was also much more ornate and in between the coarse bristles on his back I saw several long bony spines. A chieftain, then. Orcs only started growing those spines if they held significant power, both personal and over their tribe. They were also much more effective commanders on the battlefield, able to bring order to even unruly orcs and goblins. In fact, this particular chieftain was so imposing that even the cyclopes listened when he gave them orders.

The cyclopes, meanwhile, confused me. Or rather, I was confused by how the fort was still standing with four of them around. Cyclopes were often described as one-eyed giants and while that was an adequate description it was also misleading. It made them sound as if they were just another type of giant when in reality the species had precious little in common. For one thing, adult giants started at forty feet and went up from there while cyclopes were in the twelve to fifteen foot range. Between that height, their bulging muscles and their giant clubs that still made them more than capable of smashing the walls of a fort. A true fortress they would struggle with, but this? Either those bones were far more durable than they looked or the defenders had another trick up their sleeves. Other than the height, cyclopes also had slightly more bestial features, with thick fur along their legs. Their ears were slightly pointed. Not as long as the ears of a goblin or an elf, but still slightly pointed, like those of a half-elf. They all had a slight under-bite that made their oversized bottom canines jut out and of course for their most distinctive feature they only had a single eye, which of course meant they had fuck-all depth perception, leading people to think of them as dumb and clumsy. It was, admittedly, a trap I had fallen into often enough but they weren't actually that dumb. They were prone to grabbing at empty air if you backed off from them, though.

Of those four cyclopes three wielded clubs that looked like young trees that had been ripped out of the ground and slightly trimmed and the fourth had a pile of boulders arranged in front of him, ready to throw them.

For now, though, the army seemed content to wait, though I didn't know what for.

“Am I right in thinking you'll want to take them on?”, the Chosen One asked from our hiding spot in a bush.

“Of course”, I said. “We can't just leave this alone.”

“I mean, we could”, he said. “If we kill the Dark Lord we could get them to disperse with no issue.”

“And what if the fort has already fallen by that point?”, I asked.

He groaned but I continued:

“But fine, here's another reason for you. If we ignore them, the Dark Lord could recall them at any time and I'd rather not get ambushed by this horde while we're trying to take on the Dark Lord himself.”

He thought about that for a bit, then said: “You make a valid point. So, I guess you have a plan?”

I nodded. “Yes, I do. Here's how we'll do it...”

**

Seventy-four against five were not great odds. Even considering that most of the enemies were goblins the odds were terrible. Goblins weren't that dangerous on their own, but fighting orcs while goblins were around to stab you in the back, or more likely the legs honestly, was not a great prospect. With a bunch of cyclopes along for the ride, the odds were plummeting rapidly. So of course the first thing we did was even the odds.

Light blue tendrils snaked out from Yume and poked a few orcs and goblins, making them more belligerent, and then making some others think they had been wronged. Soon enough, the orcs and goblins broke formation and clustered together. This ruse would only buy us seconds until the chieftain decided to get involved so when they were as tightly bunched as they were likely to get Selene unleashed her ice storm miracle. The last time she'd used it we'd been in mortal danger so I didn't have time to appreciate it but now that I could see it the miracle was far stronger than it had been when she'd been a Chosen One. Either Selene had gotten much stronger and now made a better conduit for those miracles or, more likely, when Freya had granted her gifts to Selene she'd given the miracle a significant boost in power.

Whatever the reason, the ice storm tore into the horde of orcs and goblins, outright killing many and debilitating many more. Before they could recover Alisha summoned dozens of air lances and launched them all at the cluster before the ice storm had fully stopped, tearing into them and causing particular devastation among the ones who had already been frostbitten.

After messing with the orcs and goblins Yume hadn't been idle and had started casting Stupor spells on the cyclopes while the Chosen One and me sneaked up on the big buggers. I didn't see what he was doing, though, because I had to worry about myself.

Cyclopes were dangerous opponents but also potentially extremely valuable. Their eyes, if left unscathed, fetched a staggering price. Unfortunately, fighting them while trying to keep their eyes intact was far more difficult since it was their biggest weakness and the easiest way to hobble them. However, I had an illusionist with me and had learned Qi techniques, so I was bolder than I otherwise would have been.

The first cyclops I reached was crouching slightly, which was perfect for me. I put my sword away, jumped onto its thigh, used that as a stepping stone and used a Qi Burst to jump all the way up to its shoulder. Even through the Stupor spell Yume had cast on it the cyclops tried to reach for me and I jumped onto its forearm until I was right in front of its ugly mug. Once there I pried my hands under his eyelids and grasped the enormous eye, planted my feet against its collarbones and used a Qi Burst to tear the eye right out of its skull. The motion flung me off the cyclops like a projectile and the fall knocked the wind out of me.

No amount of illusion magic could keep the cyclops calm through having its eye torn out and the beast howled, a shrill, pained noise that echoed through the valley. Blood poured out of the open wound as I got up and made the eye vanish into my bag of holding. I considered finishing the poor thing off but instead I dashed over to the next cyclops, hoping to repeat the performance.

This cyclops had a few of the surviving goblins surrounding him and I pulled the greatsword out of my bag of holding and spun it through a horizontal slash that decapitated two of them. The third had managed to jump back in time and tried to clobber me while I was off balance from swinging the massive sword.

One of the traveling masters I'd taken lessons from had taught me the dangers of holding onto my weapon when it was stuck or overextended, meaning he'd wielded a long thin wooden rod that he'd rapped across my knuckles whenever I had held onto my sword when I shouldn't have. The pain had been an excellent teacher and now that training came in handy. Instead of fruitlessly trying to bring the unwieldy blade around to block the little green shit's cudgel I instead let go of the sword, balled my hand into a fist and punched the goblin right in its pointy nose. Disoriented, the goblin let go of the cudgel and I grabbed it out of the air and brained the little shit with it. Only then, when all the assailants were dealt with, did I grab the greatsword and put it back into my bag of holding.

Unfortunately, the moment's distraction from the goblins had been enough for the cyclops to shake off the last of the Stupor spell and the beast was now fully alert.

Cyclopes were far smaller than giants, which made them seem less intimidating to face, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them less dangerous foes. The smaller stature made them significantly faster and more able to keep up with a human-sized opponent. They were less powerful than a giant, certainly, but a cyclops was still more than capable of turning a human-sized opponent into an ugly smear on the ground.

What I mean to say is, when that fucker tried to smash me with his giant club I used a Qi Burst to dash away, just to make absolutely sure I dodged the attack. But this presented me with the next problem. I had a lot of tricks in my arsenal that would let me deal with a cyclops, but precious few of them could do it while keeping the eye intact. And I wanted those eyes. If this journey went off properly I'd have four mouths to feed afterwards, more if I were to decide to put a baby in Alisha. I could have used Qi attacks but I was already feeling the exhaustion creeping up and I needed to save something for the rest of this army. Alisha's enhancement miracle would have taken care of my exhaustion but something told me that we'd be needing every miracle allotted to her before the day was over. So it was time to fight smarter, not harder.

I was pretty sure I could get away with using a single Qi attack on this cyclops, I just had to make it stick. It swung its club at me again and finally I saw the path to victory, literally in this case.

I'd already gotten a feel for the range of the club the beast was swinging and, as I said, it had fuck-all depth perception, so after dodging the second swing I positioned myself to be at the very edge of his striking range. I stood there for a second, making myself a perfect target and then crept backwards while the cyclops wound up a mighty downward swing. When the blow came the beast probably thought I'd be right underneath the heaviest part of the club but instead I stood a comfortable foot away from the club, none the worse for wear. Before the cyclops could react, though, I sprinted along the club. The club and the arm holding it made a perfect bridge up to its shoulders.

For just a moment I considered ripping the eye out like I'd done with the first cyclops, but I'd never manage it in time with the beast fully alert, so instead I pulled out my longsword, held it to my side and channeled Qi into it as I dashed up the cyclops' arm. When I reached the beast's bicep I unleashed my Qi Burst with a horizontal swipe of my sword, cutting through the beast's throat so deep that only the enormous weight of the head kept it from flying off. Still, blood gushed out of the wound and I was suddenly very glad I hadn't tried something stupid like poisoning it because so much of the blood splattered all over me that I would have taken a lethal dose of whatever poison I could have fed it as well.

I had to jump off the body when it toppled like a felled tree and then had to wipe the blood out of my face before I could walk over to the fallen cyclops and rip its pristine, unbroken eye out.

With one cyclops dead and another one blinded I finally took some time to assess the situation. As I did, I heard Alisha's voice ring out:

“Heal!”

A cone of light surrounded the Chosen One, who had been in really bad shape before the light touched his skin. One arm hung limply at his side, bending in places it wasn't supposed to bend, but the miracle fixed it right up and the popping sounds from his ribcage made me think he'd had some broken ribs as well. Had the idiot tried to block a swing from a cyclops?

Then I looked over at the cyclops and understood. The arm that would have held the club was cut off at the elbow and the club looked like it had exploded and was now nothing more than a pile of burning splinters on the ground. The cyclops' remaining hand had blood on the knuckles. At a glance, I assumed he'd chopped off the cyclops' arm, blown up the club with his legendary sword's fire enchantment and then the cyclops had punched him in retaliation, shattering his arm and a couple of his ribs.

Selene had waded into the fray, fighting several half-frozen orcs and goblins at once while Yume stood at Alisha's side, one of the light blue fire snakes created from her fire magic and a Qi technique I didn't know the name of swirling around the two women, keeping a bunch of goblins at bay that had apparently decided to attack while Alisha had been distracted with her miracle.

At a quick count, only five orcs were left alive, one of them the chieftain who looked none the worse for wear for having just been in an ice storm and pelted by air lances, though I assumed the empty potion bottle at his feet had something to do with that. Of the goblins, only about a dozen were left, most of them swarming around Alisha and Yume. Never mind, make that ten, the fire snake burned another two as I watched. Of the cyclopes, one was dead, one was flailing around with a missing eye, one was missing an arm and the rock thrower... oh fuck.

The cyclops with the pile of rocks had one of them aimed right at Yume and Alisha. The rock was too large for me to block or deflect, so there was only one thing for me to do. I pulled on my dwindling reserves of Qi and pushed them into my leg. As the Qi Burst accelerated me I used another Qi Burst on my longsword, pushing more into it than I'd ever pushed before, and the sword sank up to the hilt into the cyclops' leg, breaking his concentration. Then a ringing, splintering sound echoed through the valley and when I tried to pull my sword out the hilt pulled away easily. Easily because there was no blade attached to the hilt. I'd just hit that fucker so hard I'd broken my longsword.

The cyclops kicked out at me and I scrambled to dodge away, then it threw the rock after all. I was terrified all my efforts had been for naught but then I noticed the light blue haze around the two women and when the rock hit it struck nothing but empty air. I breathed a sigh of relief. My distraction had given Yume just enough time to use her Phantom Step spell, messing up their positioning to throw off ranged attacks.

That was all well and good but now I stood right next to a cyclops who was practically unharmed except for a sword stuck in its leg, without my favorite weapon and really feeling the exhaustion of using yet another two Qi techniques in quick succession.

The throw completed, the cyclops turned away from the two women and towards the one who'd hurt it and as it did I noticed that it now had a pronounced limp. That sword in its leg must have hurt like a son of a bitch, like the world's worst splinter. It grabbed yet another rock with both hands and held it high over its head, intending to slam the rock down on top of me, when a massive column of air from Alisha hit it in the back of the neck. The huge beast stumbled and momentarily let go of the boulder, which dropped right on top of its head with a surprisingly hollow sound.

Cyclopes had prodigious strength, far in excess of what their massive bodies should have been able to provide, but their durability was just slightly higher than what their size could explain. The result was that they were much easier to hurt than their attacks were to block. Among other things that meant that they could lift boulders that could crush even them, so when the cyclops lost hold of that rock it didn't just bounce off its thick skull. No, the rock flattened the beast underneath it. Now, the boulder didn't do quite as much damage to the cyclops as it would have done to a human, but it did enough damage that it took the cyclops a few precious seconds to push the rock off and scramble to its feet, precious seconds I didn't intend to give it.

I'd lost my favorite weapon type and I didn't carry spares, but that didn't mean I was out of weapons. A lot of the stuff I carried would have been of little use against a cyclops. A spear was barely enough to annoy them, a mace wouldn't possibly be strong enough to hurt their bones through the thick layers of fat and muscle, an ax had too little surface area to do much, but a scimitar? Curved swords weren't usually something I bothered with since I enjoyed a longsword's ability to both slash and thrust, but thrusting attacks weren't very useful against cyclopes anyway, so I pulled the scimitar out of my bag of holding and began hacking at the beast's throat as it tried to get up.

I'd been using Qi techniques so much lately that I'd all but forgotten how tough the hides of some monsters were. Without using a Qi Burst I barely managed to cut an inch into the cyclops' skin so even after six good slashes at the beast's exposed throat I'd only barely gotten half as deep as I'd need to kill it. I mean, sure, the cyclops was gushing blood to the extent that I could probably just wait for it to bleed out but doing so would give the beast enough time to kill our entire party twice over.

“Icicle Crash!”, Selene intoned. She didn't usually call out the names of her miracles so I had to assume that she'd done it as a warning because the miracle was headed my way. I immediately backed off from the cyclops to get my bearings. She'd never used this miracle before and I had no interest in getting caught in it.

She'd clearly spent an inordinate amount of time positioning herself before she let loose with this miracle. And what a miracle it was. A dark cloud appeared in front of her and drifted forward at deceptive speeds, dropping enormous icicles onto everything below it. She'd positioned the cloud in such a way that it would pass over the remaining normal orcs, the chieftain, the cyclops I was fighting and the cyclops I'd blinded.

The orcs were mowed down by the attack, buried under a sudden avalanche of sharp ice spears. The chieftain hunkered down while holding a massive shield covered in spikes above himself to weather the storm. The cyclops I'd been fighting had been far too focused on me and was slammed to the ground for the second time in a minute, rime covering his body wherever the icicles hit, and I didn't have enough attention to spare to see how hard the one I'd blinded was hit.

I only just gave the cloud time to pass over us before I was on the cyclops again. The ice miracle had made the skin around his throat wound brittle and I was worried I'd break my scimitar hacking at the hardened skin, but I had just the thing. Before, my ax had been impractical because it wasn't able to strike as much surface area as the scimitar, but now with the wound already inflicted that was no longer an issue. What's more, with the skin having been made hard and brittle the extra weight of the ax would be far more effective. The first swing of the ax caused a crackling sound that made me cringe in disgust, knowing it had come from living flesh. The second swing dug another two inches into the beast's throat and I heard a whistling sound, indicating that I had managed to pierce through its windpipe. For the third one I concentrated and used Qi Projection. Projecting the attack outward was the most common usage of this technique and the one I'd mostly used, but I knew it wasn't the only use for the technique. It could also be used to spread an attack out over a larger area and that's what I did. When the ax hit it didn't dig into an area the size of the ax head. Instead, it dug into an area four times as big, nearly decapitating the cyclops.

I'd cut into the beast so deeply it couldn't even make a sound when it died, so when just seconds later I heard the sound of a cyclops in anguish I knew it had to have been another one and, sure enough, when I turned around I saw the cyclops the Chosen One had been fighting topple backwards, a hole burned clean through its head, from the eye socket all the way to the back of its head.

Only a moment later the fire snake Yume had conjured rushed into the blinded giant's empty eye socket, burning through its head as well. For a second I was worried about her sending off her goblin protection but then I noticed the charred corpses of nine goblins lying around the two women.

In fact, as I looked around, the only thing still left alive was the orc chieftain and I hurried to Selene's side to help her with him.

“Careful”, she said as I approached. “That guy is tough.”

The orc chuckled, which sounded a whole lot like a series of short snorts coming from his pig snout. “You have no idea”, he growled and rapped his weapon on his shield.

Both his weapon and his shield looked brutal, which meant they went phenomenally well with their brutal-looking owner. The shield looked like it might once have been part of a wooden portcullis, planks of hardwood held together by bands of black steel, but with enormous metal spikes worked into it. Some of the spikes were covered in blood and considering how fresh some of it looked I was all but certain Alisha had had to use at least one healing miracle on Selene already. The orc's weapon meanwhile was a machete, but a machete sized to be a two-handed weapon, a curved sword but curved inward instead of outward and with jagged metal teeth added onto it in post, giving it the appearance of some bizarre metal jawbone.

I thought about Selene trying to block this slab of metal pretending to be a sword with her tiny little parrying shield and decided to take over blocking duties. I pulled a kite shield and a rapier from my bag of holding and took position on Selene's flank.

When the chieftain swung his weapon I intercepted it with my shield. It shoved me back a couple inches but the shield held and the jagged teeth of the weapon couldn't reach me and as the orc was off balance I retaliated with the rapier. I was usually not a fan of rapiers, similar to how I wasn't a fan of scimitars. The rapier was designed solely for thrusting while the scimitar was designed solely for slashing. A longsword meanwhile could do both. However, the rapier had advantages. It was a very small and light weapon, which was precisely why Alisha wielded one, and it could easily be thrust at enemies while holding them off with a shield. The same could be done with a spear but the rapier was of course far less cumbersome. It encouraged taking the enemy down with either many small hits or one decisive stab once the enemy was exhausted. Come to think of it, that might make it amazing in conjunction with Qi techniques. Yet more to think about.

Either way, I thrust out with the rapier, not at the orc's chest because he wore tough plate that covered most of his chest, but instead at his naked arm. If I could get him to drop the weapon, we'd win. I managed a relatively deep stab but the chieftain was so bulky it didn't debilitate him. Worse, when Selene tried to take advantage of the opening he shoved forward with the spiked shield and she had to scramble out of the way or risk getting impaled. Her armor was tough, but probably not tough enough to withstand this.

Then he wound up another swing with the machete and I got my shield up again but this time it'd been a feint and he instead kicked out at my shield, sending me sprawling onto my back and he attempted to bring the machete down on me with a mighty smash.

He still kept Selene at bay with the shield and I scrambled away from the slam. He'd timed it perfectly and I was sure I wouldn't get clear of the slam in time but then a barrage of air lances slammed into him. They weren't enough to knock him off balance but they were enough to interrupt his attack and force him a step back, just long enough for me to get back up.

“Three to one and I'm barely breaking a sweat”, he gloated. “I'm starting to wonder why I even brought all this dead weight with me if I'm doing a better job on my own.”

Honestly I couldn't disagree. Just a few more of these chieftains and we'd be in trouble. “Since you're feeling chatty”, I said, “why were you just standing around? You had four cyclopes. You could have taken this fort.”

He snorted again. “Maybe I was just waiting for reinforcements.”

In all the excitement I had completely forgotten about the Chosen One and apparently so had everyone else because absolutely nobody was prepared for an invisible battering ram to slam into the chieftain's shield and shatter it into so much lumber, breaking the orc's arm in the process.

The one who had been the absolute least prepared for it had been Selene, so when one of the metal spikes of the shield slammed into her it hurled her several feet through the air, putting an awful dent in her armor. Alisha immediately hurried over to her and began healing her while I pressed the advantage, this time with my axe, hacking at the orc's overextended weapon arm once, twice, thrice, until something gave and he dropped the weapon at which point I raised the axe over my head.

“What's coming?”, I asked him.

The orc snorted again, knowing he'd been defeated. Disarmed, one arm broken and the other almost chopped off, his healing potion already used and even if he'd had another one he had no arms with which to use it, so proud warrior that he was he accepted his defeat.

“My Lord sent a Jabberwock. Say your prayers.”

And with a mighty downward swing I cleaved the chieftain's skull in two.