Lys kept running.
His legs still worked, even if the rest of him felt like it was falling apart. With each step, his broken ribs turned every breath of his into a sharp stab that made his eyes water. His left hand hung uselessly at his side, fingers numb and tingling. The mana drain sat heavy behind his eyes like a bad headache that wouldn't go away.
But his legs kept moving. That was enough for him to escape from that limping goblin, for now.
He didn't sprint like a scared kid. He used the hunting skill's passive advantage as if it was in the back of his head. It showed him the cleanest path through the undergrowth: a narrow strip of firmer ground between two roots, a patch of moss that wouldn't slip, a gap between two bushes where the branches wouldn't snag his shirt. He stayed efficient all the way while running.
Not fast, but steady enough to save time and energy.
Behind him, the goblin's steps were still there, heavy and uneven. Sure, the limp made it slower, but it still hadn't given up chasing him.
Lys glanced back once.
There was nothing.
The trees looked empty. No green shape was crashing through the bushes. The limping must have finally slowed it down enough. Thinking this, a small, tired smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before the pain from his broken ribs wiped it away.
He let himself slow from a run to a fast walk. His ribs thanked him for it. His breathing sounded wet and ragged, like something inside his chest was leaking. Though he didn't like the sound, he kept walking, faster now.
The trees started to thin slowly. Open night-sky peeked through the branches ahead. Moonlight spilled onto the grass beyond the forest edge, soft and silver. The village wall was visible now, a dark line against the night, the gate still far but real, giving him hope.
Another few minutes and he would be there. Safe from this creature. He was thinking Pell would probably laugh at him for coming back looking like this, but at least he would be glad too that Lys came back alive at least.
He was already thinking about what he would say to the guard. But then suddenly the forest behind him exploded all of a sudden, making him look back almost instantly.
There was no sound of running feet. No warning growl. Just as he turned back, surprising him, a catastrophic impact hit him before he could react to it.
Something huge slammed into his back like a thrown boulder. In a fraction of seconds all his hopes of surviving the night from this monster were crushed.
The force lifted him clean off the ground. For three full seconds, he was flying, arms flailing, the world spinning. And then he hit a thick tree trunk face-first. The impact knocked out several teeth from his jaw and may have broken one of his hands.
Everything went white almost instantly.
The impact punched the last of the air from his lungs. Pain flared across his nose, his forehead, his already broken ribs. Everything was in too much pain than he felt or had to endure in his entire life.
His left hand went completely numb. He slid down the rough bark, scraping skin off his cheek, and collapsed onto the ground in a heap.
For a long moment, he couldn't move.
Not wouldn't. Just couldn't. From pain and the sudden shock.
His body simply refused to listen to him. He could hear his own breathing, shallow and desperate. He could feel the cool dirt against his cheek. He could hear something with heavy steps coming closer. Each step made the ground tremble under his ear. Yet he can't seem to even lift up his head to look that way, let alone get up.
'Get up…' he thought. 'Come on, get up…fuck..'
His vision swam back slowly, blurry at first, then sharper, slowly.
He turned his head, slowly focusing on the figure before him.
The goblin stood ten feet away.
But something was terribly wrong. Somehow it wasn't the same goblin.
It was now bigger. Wrongly bigger.
Its shoulders looked wider, its chest thicker, its arms longer than they had been just minutes ago. The knife wound on its wrist was gone, with smooth green skin like nothing had ever cut it. The scratches and smaller cuts from their fight earlier had also vanished completely. Even the deep gash on its forearm from CorpseSlayer earlier had sealed over, leaving only a faint pink line. The knee wound he had given it with the sword was still there, but it looked half-healed, enough for the creature to stand and move, though it still favored that leg with a slight limp.
It stared down at Lys.
This wasn't the hungry animal look from before. This was something colder. As if it had now decided that Lys was no longer just a food to him.
He was an enemy of his now. A problem that needed to be ended.