We came to the crime scene within minutes. The goblins were attacking a town. While some armored residents, perhaps a town watch, were fighting them back, they were clearly losing. Their numbers were too different to begin with. Against the twenty or so residents, there were nearly one hundred goblins. They didn’t stand a chance.
“Tia!”
“Mm. Lowest setting to not destroy the town, got it.”
Still flying low to the ground, Tiamat opened her mouth. Then a beam of light swiped through the air with a roar. Her Laser Breath. A dozen goblins evaporated without so much as a scream.
Dumbfounded, the humans and monsters pause their brawl. While the pause only lasted long enough for a few grains of sand to fall in an hourglass, that’s all Baze and Hieronymus needed.
Ruey jumped off with me in his arms, and the Fenrir sped up faster and ran straight through the group of monsters. A beat later the heads of those goblins flew off, setting off fountains of blood. What was he, Blade Liger? Where was his blade, anyway? Besides, I thought he was a wolf, not a mix of a lion and a tiger.
“Lord Baze puts on quite the show.”
Hieronymus grinned like a mad cat. He waved his right front paw in a swish. That’s all it took for the goblins to turn their weapons against each other. The sudden betrayal sent the enemy battalion in a tizzy, naturally. Hieronymus’ spells were pretty nasty too. Seizing that opportunity, Ruey charged into battle, swinging his sword left and right.
“We came to help! Now’s our chance! Fight back!” he shouted.
The town’s warriors shifted from hopeless, to astonished, and now overjoyed.
With powerful roars, they attacked with renewed vitality. The battle was decided right there. Without putting up much of a fight, the goblins were taken out one by one. It was a matter of time before they were all killed. However, leaving every last one of them dead wasn’t too good for us. We needed to gain some information. Since we could no longer follow the party back to home base, we couldn’t let that information slip away.
“That looks like the leader over there. Let’s take him alive.”
Tiamat, who had been standing beside me, flapped her wings and went. I always wondered how she could fly with those little wings. I don’t think the laws of aviation applied to her.
She went directly to the large goblin she pointed out. A boss goblin, goblin chief, or the like. Dodging the slashes of its sword (dealt with an off-key scream), Tiamat grabbed the goblin by its neck and threw it high up in the air like a volleyball. Of course, a goblin couldn’t fly like a dragon could. It started to descend according to gravity. Tiamat caught the goblin with her tail, and tossed it right back into the air again.
I realized what this was. I read it in a comic book once. It’s the thing brown bears do to their prey to make it completely give up on resisting. After three or four tosses, the goblin boss sulked powerlessly. She didn’t kill it, did she?
As Tiamat was toying with it, the rest of the goblins were annihilated. I doubted that all of them were killed, though. Since their boss was being toyed with, the goblins were cowering, completely in retreat mode. A few goblins weren’t too much of a threat to a town though. The town watch or an adventurer could take care of them.
“Looks like that’s a wrap.”
Tiamat came back, dragging the dizzied goblin boss. What a wild girl she was.
“Let’s tie him up, I guess.”
I didn’t expect the goblin to fight back anymore, but we couldn’t very well leave him to his own volition. I didn’t know any fancy knots, but I figured if I just tangled him up with the rope... That’s when I realized that Mister Donkey wasn’t with us! He had all of my stuff! Right. We had left him behind when we hopped onto Baze.
“What am I going to do, Tia... Donkey gone...”
“You’re a grown man, don’t cry. It’s pathetic.”
“But...”
Mister Donkey had all of my things, including my wallet, food, and water. I’d lost everything.
“He’s headed our way at his leisure. Now that we’ve caught our breath, Baze or Hieronymus can go get him.”
“For real?! He’s not a lost little donkey?!”
“He can handle himself twice as much as you can, Eiji. Don’t worry.”
I didn’t know about those numbers. Only a double of me was still pretty bad.
I turned around to see someone running toward us from the town. It was an old, skinny man, most likely the mayor. He greeted Ruey, full of gratitude. He must have thought that Ruey was our leader. I get it; I would have thought the same!
Assuming that Ruey would explain our situation for us, I went back to keeping an eye on the goblin. Oh, I did have my shortsword drawn from my belt, by the way. I didn’t think I’d hit anything if I swung it, but keeping a weapon drawn would deter the goblin from putting up a fight.
There seemed to be a lot of injuries to the people of the town too, as Hieronymus was over there casting healing spells. He really was a jack of all trades. No wonder girls liked him. Soon the man from the town was brought to us by Ruey.
“Master Hermit. Thank you for saving our town from certain death.”
He dove to the ground. Not kneeling, but completely flat on the ground.
“Please, stand up. Of course we would help anyone being attacked by monsters. Anybody would, Hermit or human.”
I sheathed my shortsword and gave him a smile. I had passed on the duty of goblin-watch to Ruey. Baze walked past us, apparently to go get the donkey.
Godspeed, good man! That donkey has everything of mine!
As I thought of those things, I helped the man up. There were rushed introductions. His name was Dolitos, the mayor of the town of Wulds, which was about a tenth of the size of Mostail. I thought that would make Wulds a village, but in this world, the population of a settlement didn’t determine its classification. If the people called their settlement a town, it was a town. With how small it was, of course, there was no army there.
Dolitos was another representative, appointed by the noble that owned these lands. If I delved into this representative system it would get really complicated, so the short version is that powerful people in a village or town are usually the ones appointed for the job. So, most of the time, a representative was also the mayor.
What the town had was a town watch. Sometimes adventurers would join in, but there was no one officially trained in a military or specialized in strategy. They were at a level where they might have been able to deal with goblins of the same number as them.
The total number of town watch members and adventurers in Wulds was only sixteen. They wouldn’t have stood a chance against a horde of a hundred goblins. There was no option to run, either, as their town was being attacked. Mister Dolitos had resigned himself to death, too. That’s when we came in.
“Lord Eiji. Everyone has been treated. Fortunately, no one was embraced by death.”
No deaths. That was the best news we could get. I remember seeing some people with very serious injuries, but Hieronymus took care of them.
“That’s great. Then we just have to make him talk and tell us where their home base is.”
“Indeed.”
“On the other hand, we are a bit worn out. I think we can wait ’til tomorrow to restart our chase,” Tiamat said.
I agreed. Since we came upon a town, I certainly wanted to sleep in a bed. A little expectantly, I glanced at Mister Dolitos.
“In that case, please stay in our town.”
He returned a generous smile to us.