Chương 36: Chapter 31 — The Chieftain

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ Current XP: 1, 900 / 10, 000 The second chamber was at the end of a sloping tunnel that descended farther than Fenwick would have liked. Four guards. Taller than the standard cknolls, broader, their scales were a deep grey-green that caught the cave light differently. Stone-headed weapons. A pungent, skunky smell hit Fenwick before he fully registered what he was looking at. They were positioned around a figure at the far end of the chamber that made them look small. The chieftain was enormous.

The same gecko heritage as the guards — the eyes, the scales, the broad flat head — built on a scale that suggested a very different diet and a very long time to grow. It sat at the far end of the chamber, in patient stillness, waiting and watching as the party arrived. It wore a dark, mottled cloak, draped across its shoulders without ceremony.

Around its waist, a belt of poorly cured leather, stiff and uneven, hung with trophies — a large grasshopper leg, an ant's head, something that might have been an antenna from a creature large enough that Fenwick chose not to speculate. In one hand, a long staff tipped with a blade of chipped obsidian, dark and irregular. The guards started to approach. Faster than the standard cknolls. More coordinated. Two came wide, flanking left and right. One came straight.

The fourth held back — a smart play, the one that worried Fenwick most. Max took the straight one with a Pflug thrust — hilt low at the right hip, point up and forward, stepping into the guard's momentum, skewering it in the throat. Pulling the sword free in a shower of blood, he was already moving to block the left-flanking guard. A push as it went past him caused it to trip and fall. The right flank caught him across the shoulder with a stone-headed weapon that hit hard enough to stagger him a step.

Max shifted his feet, planting his back foot and facing the right flanker with his right foot forward. The Zornhau cut the guard diagonally, nicking the backbone as it cut through. The rib bones did nothing to slow the strike as Max shifted to confront the stumbling left flanker. The fourth guard came in low while Max was occupied. Fenwick's Magic Crossbolt caught it before it reached the shoulder — four bolts of crackling force that slammed the guard into the back wall.

As Max dispatched the last guard, its head rolling to the feet of the chieftain. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ +150 XP x4 NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED — FIRST KILL: +150 XP Current XP: 2, 650 / 10, 000 The chieftain had been watching all of this. It stood. The chieftain took a step forward and blurred. One moment it was there, the next it was not. Max instinctively blocked the obsidian-tipped staff inches from his face, before the chieftain body-checked him, causing Max to slip on the downed guard's blood.

Max hit the floor. The chieftain's teeth chomped onto Max's left hand at the wrist. Fenwick saw it happen. Saw the jaw work. Heard the ripping flesh and the crunch of bone as the hand came free. Max's expression was startled at a new sensation in this undead life. His newly reawakened mind was processing an unexpected fact. The chieftain pulled back and swallowed the hand in a gulp. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ HUNGER: 5 / 10 █████ ░░░░░ 5/10 The bar dropped three notches simultaneously.

Max looked at where his hand had been. The torn flesh and the white bone showing, less blood than a living being would have, but it did seep some fluid that smelled of death and decay. Max bared his teeth as the hunger dropped so quickly, and a shallow rumble of a growl began. The chieftain looked at Max, waiting. Max picked up the sword with his remaining hand. The chieftain reassessed. What followed was not clean. The chieftain was bigger, and it knew how to use that.

Max went down the first time inside thirty seconds. A shoulder check, sudden and total, using every pound of the size differential. He hit the stone floor and was up before the chieftain had finished its follow-through. The second time was a grapple. The chieftain got both arms around Max's sword arm and drove him into the cave wall hard enough to crack the rock. Max dropped to one knee. Got back up. A ghoul with one hand and a dropping hunger bar and no concept of stopping is a specific kind of problem.

The chieftain was discovering this progressively. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ HUNGER: 4 / 10 ████ ░░░░░░ 4/10 Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The chieftain continued to be in unexpected spots. Max barely blocking killing strikes, but now with less power. The sword found new angles one-handed with shorter strokes. Using momentum to get the sword into position and gravity as part of the strikes. They weren't the typical Combat Arts movements, but showed surprising adaptability.

Max took a second hit across the ribs that would have broken something in anything that still relied on intact ribs. ⟨ Warning ⟩ Warning HUNGER: 2 / 10 ██ ░░░░░░░░ 2/10 The chieftain, seeing Max stumble from the hit, backed up for a running tackle to take him down one more time. The expected blur happened again. This time, Max knew what to expect and pretended to trip right in front of a rock, wedging the pommel of the sword on the rock. He used his remaining hand to hold the sword up at the right angle.

The hit made Max fall as the chieftain expected. What the chieftain didn't expect was the 20 cm of sword sticking out of his back. Max rolled and recovered while Fenwick held on as they approached. Fenwick looked down from the shoulder at the chieftain, the sword buried to the hilt through its back, the obsidian-tipped staff dropping from its hand. Max's remaining hand was pulling out the guts as the chieftain fell, eating quickly, the sword still buried between them.

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ +500 XP — NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED — TOTAL: +1, 000 XP Current XP: 3, 650 / 10, 000 The cave was quiet except for a low growl between bites. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ HUNGER: 4 / 10 ████ ░░░░░░ 4/10 Max was busy eating. Fenwick sat on the shoulder for a moment, looking at the hunger bar, looking at the stump, looking at the chieftain on the cave floor that had what he needed inside it. He climbed down. He emptied the acorn bag. Three acorns.

He put them in his robe pocket with the melancholy care of someone who had not given up hope of having a normal day at some point in the future. He found his knife. He did not look at Max while he worked. Max was occupied, the hunger bar was climbing, and that was fine, and Fenwick was fine, and this was simply a task that needed doing. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ HUNGER: 5 / 10 █████ ░░░░░ 5/10 HUNGER: 6 / 10 ██████ ░░░░ 6/10 He found the hand.

He cast a preservation cantrip — a minor working, barely worth the slot, but it was what he had — and placed the hand in the acorn bag and tied it closed and put it in his robe pocket with the acorns and did not think about that. He climbed back onto the shoulder. The cloak was still on the cave floor where the chieftain had fallen, the mottled fabric settling into stillness now that it wasn't being worn. Fenwick looked at it. There was a shimmer to it that had nothing to do with the cave light.

A faint aura clung to it, the quality of something that had been deliberately worked on and still held the work. He thought about Max, who needed to be able to move through the kingdom without causing incidents, who was currently waiting at the treelines while Fenwick handled settlements. He picked up the cloak. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ HUNGER: 7 / 10 ███████ ░░░ 7/10 Max was looking at where his hand had been.

"Max," said Fenwick. The head turned.

"We need to go to Nibbles." Max looked at the stump.

"Fix?" he said.

"That," said Fenwick, "is what we are going to find out." Corvel was waiting at the farm entrance. He saw the Hero stop at the forest edge. Fenwick crossed the open ground alone. Max waited at the treeline, looking at his wrist.

"Done?" said Corvel.

"Done," said Fenwick.

"The cave is clear. I'd recommend against boarding it again. The Guild can arrange a ward." Corvel looked past him toward the treeline. At the sword. At the place where Max's left hand was not.

"Is he—""Fine," said Fenwick.

"We're going to go deal with that now." Corvel looked at Fenwick again. Blood on his robes and caked into his paws.

"Are you ok?"

"I'm fine too." Corvel nodded with the resignation of someone who had decided some questions were not worth asking. He paid them. They walked home. Max kept looking at the wrist the way he looked at new words on the screen, turning the fact over, finding its edges, deciding what to do with it. He tried flexing fingers that weren't there twice. Stopped. Looked at the stump again. Fenwick watched this from the shoulder and said nothing. He had the hand in the acorn bag in his robe pocket.

He was aware of it the way you're aware of something that does not need to be thought about. The preservation cantrip would hold for a day, maybe two. Nibbles would know what to do with that information, or would know someone who did. That was the plan. That was enough planning for now. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ [Sindy — Private Log — Day 64] The chieftain took his hand. He picked up the sword with the other hand. HUNGER dropped to 5/10 on injury. Continued damage took him to 2/10.

What would have happened at 1 or 0? Fenwick retrieved the hand. I watched him work. It is in the acorn bag. We are going to see Nibbles. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ He asked if they could fix it. ▌ He said, "Fix?" ▌ He wanted it back.