Chapter 108: Montage or: Eye of the Meles

Kaius did up the last buckle of his cuirass, the cold alloy wrapping him in a comforting protective weight. They’d stopped by the gate to the city, the shattered and twisted steel blown inwards to reveal a familiar arterial road lined with austere and blocky buildings. Rows of barracks and smithies, the military industrial backbone of the fortress.

The walls of the fortress city loomed over him, draping both he and Porkchop in a deep cloak of shadow as its bulk hid them from the crystal sun suspended over the centre of the city.

Hidden behind a shard of stride-thick steel as large as a barn door, his skill sharpened eyes slid over the dozens of bodies of dwarven heavy shock troops, wrapped in enough metal to arm a whole warband. Instead, it was the teeming masses of goblins that caroused in the street, and lounged in the shadowy alleys, that held his attention.

The biome had reset in their absence.

Thankfully, or perhaps unfortunately, the Champions had not. They would have come across the mounted goblin Outrider in their blitz through the fungal fields if they had.

He held up his left hand, seeing the High Lothian lines of his runic hymns peaking through the gaps in his armour. With his latest increase to Intelligence he had been able to inscribe a full eighteen charges of his spell. A weighty payload, considering each one promised death to all but a Champion.

Tightening his grip until his knuckles went white, he felt his newly enhanced strength, the way his hardened flesh resisted the pressure. Even the sensation of pressure was heightened.

Beast-blooded. Kaius still didn’t understand the full depths of his transformation. He would soon.

Dropping his arm back to his side he drew A Father’s Gift.

“You ready?” Kaius asked, keeping his eyes locked on the goblins just inside the gate.

Porkchop let out a soft, rumbling growl, anticipation and primal aggression flooding through their link.

Kaius smiled at that, feeling his heart start to thrum with the drums of war. He drank deep from the river of their bond, falling into its embrace. Porkchop did the same, a well of insight and understanding flooding between them.

On some level it was similar to the raw dissolution of self that he experienced when they had forged the skill. Yet if that was a raging forest fire that threatened to consume him from within, this was the warmth of shared brotherhood found around the campfire that held back the dark.

The lines between them blurred. He could feel the dirt beneath Porkchop’s pads, the way the tepid wind of the cavern ruffled his fur, how his thick barding weighed comfortably across his back and shoulders. When Porkchop took a step forwards, he knew the motion as if he had done it himself. The weight and speed of it, the direction and motion. The intention.

Yet still, he remained himself. There was no gestalt, no dissolution of self. Simple awareness and understanding, heightened to a level that only those who shared a centre might understand.

They charged forwards, a cry of delight and a promise of violence on his lips. To his side, his brother roared a challenge, daring the goblins to meet them on the field of their doom.

The goblins paused, staring at them almost incredulously. Frozen in shock, even if just for a moment.

Racing through the gate, they made no move to head for the alley. This was a battle of might and fury, not of tactics and insight. Kaius’s left arm snapped up, flicking towards the goblin archers that lined the roof of the tallest building to their left. The barracks they had first explored.

One after another, azure darts snapped into existence, lancing through the air to punch through the flimsy leathers of the archers and settling deep in their chests. Before he had taken three more steps, a staccato of wet booms echoed through the city. Ribs distended before rupturing totally, goblin flesh and organ meat fountaining from gaping holes that had been blown in the archers torsos.

One by one, they fell from the roof. Hitting the ground dead.

**Ding! level 13 Goblin Archer slain**

…

**Ding! level 12 Goblin Archer slain**

As they impacted the stone with a sickening splash, the spell that enthralled the mob of goblins on the street was broken. They howled, racing towards them in a tide of green bearing all manner of crude clubs, machetes, hatchets and more. Tributaries streamed from the alleys, merging with the greater wave to bolster their assault.

True Sight sharpened, and he drank in their ranks. He could see it. The lacking coordination. The way they jostled, shoved, and clawed their way forwards. The weak points in the lines. The cracks in the bulwark.

This was no regiment. It was a rabble.

**Ding! Explorer’s Toolkit has reached level 20!**

Porkchop saw through his eyes, and understood.

Kaius lept forwards even as Porkchop activated his amulet, slamming into the horde like an avalanche of fury. Bones shattered, and diminutive bodies were tossed to the side in the destructive mayhem of the collision. Then Kaius was there, his blade flashing between mid-guard, to high, to inside, caving in skulls and taking heads in a fluid dance of destruction.

Porkchop laid into the mob with raking swipes of glowing blue mana blades, splitting skin and tattered armour with equal ease.

Despite their fury, strength, and speed, the goblins were almost innumerable. They pushed on, the tide of green surrounding them from all sides as they fought their way into the centre of the group.

Kaius felt doom flare from behind him, seeing through his brother’s eyes as half a dozen knives and clubs raced for his back. He moved, twisting with unnatural speed and stability, lurching away from the crushing strikes.

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 2!**

Bending backwards at the hips, a heavy hobnailed club sailed over his chest. Kaius flowed with his movement, whirling his blade in a horizontal blur of silver that rent the life from three of the goblins who pressed him. They were a drop in the ocean, more depths-born stepping forward from the thrum of bodies to assault him once more.

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Danger pressed from every angle, his mind aching as enhanced sight drank in the depths of his enemies, every muscular twitch and shift of their eyes belying their intentions. Adamant Body worked with Uncanny Dodge to keep him whole, sliding through a blitz of steel with an unnatural quickness and dexterity.

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 3!**

…

**Ding! Uncanny Dodge has reached level 7!**

Yet even skill enhanced agility was not enough to avoid the torrent of blades and bludgeons. When his dodging failed, it was his armour that saw him through the day, micromovements and smooth adjustments sending the goblins inferior weaponry skittering off his enchanted scalemail.

**Ding! Adamant Body has reached level 20!**