The goblin charged.
It came straight at him like a green avalanche, feet slapping wet stone, its club already swinging in a wide, ugly arc.
Lys's hand shot for CorpseSlayer out of pure reflex. His fingers had barely brushed the worn leather hilt when the large goblin's club connected with his chest.
CRACK.
The impact slammed into his ribs like a sledgehammer made of bone and rage. Pain detonated across his left side, so sudden and massive it stole every thought he had. He left the ground completely, flying backwards. His back smashed into the cold, wet stone wall behind him with a sickening thud. All the air punched out of his lungs in one wet, gasping wheeze.
For a heartbeat, the world went silent except for the high ringing in his ears and the distant gurgle of the stream.
He slid down the slick rock, boots scraping uselessly, and crumpled to the ground in a heap. His chest burned, and every breath he took felt like he was swallowing broken glass.
'Shit… shit… get up…fuck…'
Lys blinked hard, trying to clear the blur in his eyes. Cold water from the stream soaked his left boot. The rough stone pressed against his spine.
When he could see properly, the only thing he could see straight ahead was the goblin filling the narrow passage like a living wall, shoulders hunched, yellow eyes glowing with something far too clever for a mindless beast.
There was no way forward. No way around it. The stream hugged his left side, the stone wall hugged his right. Lys was completely boxed in tight.
Then the goblin moved. It didn't rush this time, though. It took one slow, deliberate step. Then another. The club dragged along the ground with a wet scrape that set Lys's teeth on edge. Its cracked lips peeled back, showing jagged yellow teeth.
Seeing this scene, Lys knew it was enjoying this. He knew that this thing knew he had nowhere to run.
He somehow pushed off the wall, legs shaky, ribs screaming with every movement he made. He yanked CorpseSlayer free from his sheath this time. The faint blue rune along the blade pulsed just for him, warm and steady in his grip. The sword felt right, like an old friend.
He slowly moved forward toward the goblin and swung with everything he had left when it was in his reach.
The goblin lifted its thick forearm like it were blocking a fly. The blade bit deep, opening a long, ugly gash in there. Dark-red blood welled up and spilled down its green skin. But the creature didn't flinch. It didn't even grunt a little. It just grabbed the front of Lys's shirt with one massive hand, fingers thick as sausages, and flung him sideways like he was an empty feed sack.
He hit the wall again, shoulder first. White-hot pain flared so bright he saw sparks behind his eyes. CorpseSlayer flew from his fingers, spinning through the air before clattering onto the stream bank five feet away, half-submerged in the shallow water.
Now he had nothing.
And the goblin came on slow and steady, almost patient, like it had all the time in the world to end Lys's life.
Its club rose. Lys tried to roll left. But the blow still caught his side with a meaty thud. Another strike slammed into his thigh, buckling his leg. A third cracked across his back when he tried to scramble up.
Each of these hits were measured, almost thoughtful, like the goblin was working through a checklist of ways to break him slowly.
'Fuck….This thing isn't just mad!,' Lys thought through the red haze. 'For some reason I'm sure…It's hunting. It's enjoying this.'
He tasted his own blood in his mouth. His left side felt like one giant bruise that kept getting bigger and bigger. He couldn't tell what was broken and what was smashed to powder. But his eyes kept flicking sideways, past the goblin's thick legs, to the leather bag lying in the dirt a few feet away.
The herbs.
The blue-leaf. The silver moss. The rare night-bloom he had spent almost one hour to find, and still found only two. Everything that the desperate woman at the village gate had begged for with her thin hands clutching the wooden post.
He could still hear her cracked voice: "Someone like me…" She had looked at him like she had already figured out in her mind that her quest would never be accepted like a citizen's would. Like fifty copper pieces was all she had left in the world, and she knew placing the quest with it was like gambling, for someone like her whose entire livelihood revolves around maybe between 10-20 copper per month or so.
Suddenly disrupting his thoughts, the goblin grabbed his ankle.
The world flipped upside down.
Lys was hanging by one leg, head toward the ground, blood rushing to his skull so fast it made his ears pound. His ribs screamed louder than ever. As if it knew what was about to come.
The goblin lifted him higher, feet planted wide, muscles flexing as it prepared to slam him skull-first into the hard dirt and end the game all at once.
But then Lys's eyes locked on the bag. On what the goblin's huge, dirty foot came down.
Crunch.
The sound was small, almost nothing under all that weight. But Lys heard every single leaf and stem inside the bag flatten. The blue-leaf herb. The silver moss. Every rare piece he had collected. Every common one he had thrown in for good measure. All of it, destroyed. Crushed into useless paste under a careless heel.
And seeing this, something inside Lys's chest clicked.
Not the clean, hot anger of a fistfight. This was older. Deeper. It came from his eighteen years of scraping by on nothing back on Earth. From watching people with nothing get stepped on anyway from arriving in this cursed world and seeing only injustice and unfair treatment of poor people inside and outside the village, and also from seeing a woman bet everything she had just to save her daughter with some herbs that would never reach her now.
His upside-down face changed completely.
The fear drained away from his face. The pain didn't disappear, but it stopped mattering to him. His eyes narrowed, cold and flat, like it wasn't him anymore, someone else was now looking out through them.
The goblin paused for half a second, head tilting, as if it felt the shift in the air.
Lys's voice came out low and calm, even while hanging like a slaughtered pig.
"…You just made a big mistake."
The goblin roared and started to swing him down toward the ground without hearing anything.
But something in Lys had already broken open. Whatever he was going to do next was not going to be gentle.