Chapter Forty-Four: Breadcrumbs in the Forest

FORTY-FOUR

Roan launched the spear with a grunt, the long weapon sailing with deadly precision as it punched through the large goblin. The creature gasped and staggered, but didn’t die. Roan cursed as he ran faster toward the eight foot behemoth that was swinging around a tree trunk sized club. Still forms lay at its feet, climbers who had tried and failed to kill it already.

This was his fifth fight already and was looking to be his first failure at reducing or at least directing climbers towards Darren’s makeshift camp. Nobody was running around the massive beast as it hollered in pain, one meaty hand reaching up to try to pull the spear out of the center of its chest.

Its beady eyes weren’t even pointed at Roan as he got closer to it. Roan couldn’t tell if it was arrogance or stupidity, but when the warhammer shattered its knee, the giant beast screamed in pain as it fell to the ground. The spear’s butt hit the ground and went further into the massive chest, popping out the back in a spray of black ichor. It gurgled and spat as it started to get back up, both massive hands on the ground as it started to push itself up.

Roan broke the monster. It was slow, methodical, painful work. Every blow of the warhammer shattered joints and left the massive beast howling in pain on the ground, enfeebled as its elbows, knees, wrists and ankles were destroyed. Its massive round head was in the dirt, the ground muffling its screams as Roan lined up the attack. Its skull shattered but the creature didn’t die. It took two more blows before he finally got the alert he’d been waiting for.

POOR GRADE

OGRE (GOBLINOID)

HORDE LIEUTENANT

200 CREDITS

It was a nice infusion of cash, but after the windfall of Lester, it seemed to pale in comparison. Roan hopped on top of o the muscular body and grabbed the slick spear under the head and pulled with all his strength. Pulling a spear through a body was not easy. He rolled the ogre over but it had nothing on it but a necklace made of teeth, which he took.

The three dead crawlers had been relatively poor. Two of them had been using the inferior-grade skeleton weapons of the last level. What they had was mostly bandages, a food ration, a short sword similar to Darren’s which went on Roan’s belt, and a backpack. It was the pack that Roan was most interested in.

Unfortunately it was mostly empty with just random squished up items from the last level in it. Amulet shards, a few pressed grave petals, and a single jar with a sliver of the cleansed mushroom in it. Even off the level the thing still glowed with power. Roan emptied his pockets into the pack and threw the tooth necklace into it as well.