In other words, he kicked it down, he smashed its spinal cord underfoot, and he stole the club from its hands.
“There’s no point counting anymore,” he said. Faced with the dead pressing in from every side, what was the benefit in knowing how many you had destroyed?
Especially when those dead creatures were goblins. Then the goal was simply to survive.
A club. That’s the weapon for moments like these.
Goblin Slayer struck out with the club, right and left, trusting to luck to land his blows. Each time he sent a goblin corpse flying, creating a small space, he would immediately step into it, working his way forward. Bereft of the premise that death meant stillness, he knew he had to get out of this large room.
I will never fight with goblins in an open space again.
He remembered—it had been back in year one for him. How he had struggled to protect a village. Thinking back on it, he knew his performance had been pathetic, but still, he had learned much from it. It had become part of his experience. Confined spaces were his bread and butter—although even that could vary with time and occasion.
“Orcbolg! Wind direction!”
The party members he had gained since then were better than he was at other things besides hunting goblins. The elf, whom he’d known for years now, felt the instantaneous change, her acute sensory receptors catching the movement of the wind sprites.
She pointed. He peered into the darkness from behind his visor—and there, he was sure, was a passage.
“That way!” he said as he split a goblin’s head open afresh, trampling over the toppled corpse as he went. “Let’s go!”
At the same moment as he shouted, indeed almost in the same breath, he flung his club with a casual motion. It wasn’t as fast as the hammer of that famous thunder god nor the flying dagger, but it was the perfect way to kill a goblin.
As the object arced through the air, you would have had to have the vision of a centaur to avoid it. Even with the vampire’s monstrous field of view, if he registered it only just before it struck, it was too late. Or perhaps he didn’t feel it was worth dodging—but if so, he was wrong.
The club struck the vampire square in the back of the head, cracking his skull open. The bones broke audibly, and the brain made a squishing sound. The insides of the vampire’s head came flying out like fireworks.
That single blow gave Lizard Priest ample time to turn—
“Ha! Plain wood!”
Oops. No, it didn’t.
The vampire’s eyes burned bright even as he mopped up brain matter.
Blast! I don’t know what made me think using goblins would be a good idea!
Unbeknownst to the vampire, however, while they had been alive, the goblins had more than fulfilled their role as his shield. If that high elf had had even a single bud-tipped bolt left, it would already have been through his heart.
None here were aware of that fact, however. Not a single one of them.
“I see,” Goblin Slayer muttered. “He is indeed a monster.”
“Now you understand!” the vampire howled and lashed out with claws that grew from his hand. Perhaps this was the price he paid for his regenerative powers—his bestial, inhuman nature, like a bat or a demon, was made manifest in him.
“Hrrnn…ahhh!”
Lizard Priest struck the ground with his tail, kicking off the stones with his great clawed feet and launching himself into the air. His vestments tore with a riiiip, and the dragon fangs he carried as catalysts scattered everywhere.
A hair’s breadth: He’d lost crucial resources, but he still had his life. And the magic bag was still safe, too.
Then, well!
In that case, he had nothing to be ashamed of, this descendant of the fearsome nagas—he had only to live!
For the moment, his only task was to avoid follow-up attacks. It would take everything he had. He ducked low to avoid the inevitable blow—but then he blinked his eyes; twice, in fact, on account of his nictitating membranes.
The attack didn’t come.
For a second, for the barest instant, the vampire stood stock-still.
“Ahh! Mercy upon the misfortune of the crurotarsi!” Lizard Priest cried. He didn’t waste the precious instant in thought but sprung forward with all his terrible force. He cleared the zombies in a single bound, crushing a goblin corpse underfoot as he landed. Even a living goblin couldn’t have resisted him.
Death from above. None could measure the awful force and mass of a flying lizardman.
“Are you okay?!” cried High Elf Archer, going pale.
“Indeed—of course!” Lizard Priest chortled, thrusting his long neck forward. “Ahhh, my, my! Perhaps we could call it right here when I have triumphed in a battle of life and death!” Carefully clutching the bag holding the Earth Mother’s staff, Lizard Priest rolled up his tail and ran.
“Don’t think so,” High Elf Archer said, trying to put on a brave face as she darted past him like the wind. “I mean, he was already dead a long time ago, right?”
“Touché!” Lizard Priest bellowed, and then he was with his companions once more.
Goblin Slayer was swinging an iron sword he’d stolen from a goblin, working with Dwarf Shaman to secure the passageway. Lizard Priest dove past them, followed by High Elf Archer, and Dwarf Shaman after her. Last in came Goblin Slayer with his grimy armor, slipping away.
“…Damnable things!” the vampire cursed—almost literally—as he treaded on the white fangs at his feet. The adventurers didn’t realize that his eyes had been temporarily fixated on the teeth as they flew through the air. The instant it had taken him to count them—that was the instant that had granted the adventurers their lives.
The vampire had to count any scattered objects he encountered. It was an immutable law laid down by the gods. That was simply how vampires worked in the Four-Cornered World. If he rebelled against that stricture, he would no longer be a vampire—he would become nothing but a corpse.
That was how magic functioned. This creature had a monstrous field of vision, and it had only been one instant—but it was enough.
That was the decisive stroke. And what had brought it on? Fate and Chance.
Namely, the adventurers’ unremitting effort and force of will had dragged the outcome into being.