Chapter 24: deep bite

The goblins moved fast, but Roger chased them down faster. He moved like a blur, catching up to a few goblins. His blade cut through the air, slashing through their heads in one move. The blood spilled into the air. He planted his foot into the ground and turned around.

"Leon, Snow, make sure you watch your backs," he yelled.

"I got this," Leon said before casting another spell. A massive ball of fire formed above his head. He hurled it at the goblins. It slammed into the ground. A massive explosion ripped through them.

He gained even more mana fragments from it.

"This seems easy enough," he muttered and got ready to cast a spell, only for one goblin to come from his blind spot. It lunged at him with its teeth bared. Leon stepped back and swung his wand at close range, using a wind explosion to push it back. The force threw Leon back as well. He stumbled to the floor while the goblin suffered heavy wounds.

Leon tried to get to his feet. He looked up, and one goblin was already close to him before he could get up. He pointed his wand and attacked with an ice lance. It pierced through the chest of the goblin, and blood spilled from its back as the ice tore through, yet the goblin kept moving, and then it leaped onto Leon.

It tried to sink its teeth into Leon.

"Shit," he cursed as he struggled. He used his free hand to cast a fire spell, a burst of flames through another side of the goblin’s chest, burning a hole right through it.

He got on his feet and staggered backwards, his breathing heavy.

’Shit, they are getting too much,’ he thought as he prepared to attack the next one. He used a water spell, his highest affinity, creating a ball of water that then split into multiple small balls of water. He unleashed them like bullets, each one penetrating through the bodies of the goblins.

He littered the floor with goblins while breathing heavily.

Leon bent over and started catching his breath, but the goblins had no intention of allowing him to go free. More lunged at him. His eyes moved fast as he located each one as fast as he could. He unleashed a barrage of ice bullets, each one penetrating right into the heads of the goblins.

He heaved a heavy sigh of relief before focusing again.

More came out of the forest.

Leon counted six heading his way and stopped counting because more were coming behind those six, and the number stopped being useful information.

He raised his wand.

The wind spell came first, a compressed burst that hit the lead goblin dead center and threw it back into the two behind it, all three going down in a tangle of limbs. He shifted the wand right and fired an ice lance that went through the fourth goblin’s skull before it had finished deciding which direction to come from.

Two left.

One lunged high, one came low.

Leon stepped left, let the high one pass over him, and caught the low one with a water bullet point-blank that took most of its head off. He spun and hit the high one while it was still mid-air, the fire burst catching it in the chest and dropping it before it landed.

He exhaled.

More came.

He moved between them now instead of staying in one place, using wind to keep his feet light, shifting his angles to stop them from getting behind him the way the last one had. A goblin came in from the right, and he sidestepped it and drove his wand into the side of its head, the wind explosion at contact sending it sideways across the ground.

Two more replaced it immediately.

He caught one with an ice lance that went through its shoulder rather than its head, slowing it but not stopping it, and had to follow up with a fire burst before it reached him. The second one he hit with a water bullet that punched clean through the throat.

The mana fragments kept coming in.

He could feel them now, the way they accumulated after each kill, something in the system quietly collecting what the dead left behind and adding it to whatever pool it was building toward. He did not know what the pool was for. He did not have time to find out.

A goblin grabbed his leg.

He looked down. It had come from the ground, crawling through the grass while he was focused upward, and its claws were dug into his ankle. He hit it with a downward fire burst, and it let go, but two more were already filling the space it left.

He backed up.

Fired.

Backed up again.

Fired again.

He was breathing harder than he wanted to be, and his arm was getting heavier, and every spell cost something, and the goblins were not running out the way he was running out. They just kept arriving at the edge of the forest, finding him, and deciding he was the priority.

He swept three more with a wide water attack that knocked them off their feet and used the second it bought him to reset his position.

Then he heard it.

A scream from the direction of town.

Not a combat scream. The kind that came from someone who had not been ready for what found them, high and short and cut off faster than it should have been.

His head turned.

The goblin came from the side in that moment, the moment his attention moved, the moment his eyes went toward the town instead of staying on the field in front of him.

Its teeth found his arm before he could bring the wand around.

The pain was immediate and sharp, the goblin’s jaw locked, claws digging in alongside the bite, and Leon’s wand dropped from his other hand as the force of it staggered him sideways.