Chương 132: Chapter 49: Healthcare

Prior to being invaded by hobgoblins, the goblins who originally claimed this cave fortified a deep section with scrap materials. The entrance to the stronghold was built like the front gate of a city. No one approaching from the outside could easily pass through, and the goblin defenders had elevated positions from which to rain down arrows. There were no goblins here, however, and the hobs had smashed through the gate when they attacked.

We hadn't encountered any more enemies since the shaman with the Dark spell, but I suspected that was about to change.

"If everyone listens to calls and keeps their cool, we got this," the captain whispered. Usually, words like that from a cull captain gave me comfort. This was the first time they didn't. If this was a normal dungeon, the captain would have a good idea of what to expect in a boss room, giving him a basis for encouragement and reassurances. This run, though? He had no fucking idea what we were in for.

None of us had heard of a hobgoblin variant for a D-ranked goblin gate, so no one had a goddamn clue what we were about to fight. But it was his job to be the leader, and it was our job as a party to close the gate. The worst part of this situation? Nobody was recording. This run would for sure get attention online, and we weren't documenting a single minute of it. I wondered if Megan had similar thoughts but didn't ask. The boss room itself was a sort of goblin camp.

Roughly the size of a tennis court, the chamber was big but not the largest I had seen. Beds of straw and miscellaneous garbage were strewn about, and there were a few burned-out fire pits. At the center was a pile of goblin… goop. I recognized the features of goblin faces and limbs, but it was like a hundred goblins had been chopped up, deboned, and then shaped into a blob of flesh and blood.

The size of a boss slime, it kind of moved like one too: lurching starts and stops, sloppy wet squishes and burps, splashes and streaks of filth painting every place it had been. Two hobgoblin shamans, their bodies painted dark red with blood and their bodies adorned with bone necklaces and belts, stood at the very back of the chamber, their arms raised as they chanted in a language none of us knew.

"The fuck…" the captain gasped when the scene sank in. Which was great. That's exactly what you wanted to hear your veteran party leader say when they encountered a boss.

"Archer!" he shouted as soon as the darkness closed in around us, but I was already on it. I sent a volley of arrows where I remembered the shamans to be. One hit, but another few must have come close enough to disrupt the other hob as well. Wounding it would have been ideal, but interrupting the cast was something. The mass of goblin gore rolled toward the party and spit shards of bone as it advanced. Unlike a traditional monster, there was no indication that the mass was about to shoot.

No incantation, no pull of a bowstring. The shards just sped out. One embedded in my left forearm, the part of my body that was the farthest forward when my bow was drawn. It felt like a nail had been driven through my wrist, but I was thankful it hit my forearm instead of my chest. Then we learned that the shards were something of a misdirect. The captain raised his shield to block another spray of bone and was hit instead with a cannonball of goblin guts, knocking him off his feet and several yards back.

I risked stealing a glance in his direction. He wasn't moving. Even worse, the swords and maces striking the blob had no visible effect. The monster continued its advance unimpeded. I thought back to what the captain from my first squid run taught me: Every arrow matters. I could put ten arrows into the blob, knowing they were unlikely to have an effect if swords and maces weren't able to damage it either, or I could put those arrows where I know they would do meaningful damage.

"Megan!" I yelled.

"On me!" Without hesitating, she shuffled backward twice to get out of the blob's immediate range.

"Plan?" she asked.

"Shamans." She nodded. As a unit, we bolted sideways as if we intended to flank the blob. A spray of bone shrapnel flew in our direction. A few hit Megan, but she caught the worst of it with her shield. I felt a few stings on my back and side but did my best to ignore them. I ducked a cannonball of gore, the mass passing close enough that a streak of juice sprayed across my helmet. The shaman closest to us figured out that the blob wasn't our target and began to summon a wall of bone.

The white barrier rose from the ground to block our approach. I got arrows through before the spell could complete, and then Megan blurred forward, hurtling toward the unfinished bone wall and triggering Rapid Strike. Unlike the goblins we had fought together previously, including berserkers, the hob shaman was dishearteningly resilient.

I lined up a Piercing Shot, hitting both hobs with one go, and then I pushed myself to fire as many arrows as I possibly could, hoping to ride the speed bonus from Momentum to a future where I survived this. The first shaman fell to its knees, its entrails pouring out of its stomach from an open wound. The second hit Megan with a fireball, and for a moment, I pictured the back of the crasher the Iron Crawlers had killed with a similar spell.

I remembered the way the impact cratered his flesh as it scorched and cooked it instantly. The power of the spell spun Megan around, but I kept on it with arrows. Then a sword flew across the room. The hob ducked it at the last moment, but the guard had already closed the distance. She brained him with her mace and then smashed his broken skull several more times for good measure. Like a deflating balloon, the blob of goblin parts sank into stillness. I ran to Megan.

"I'm okay," she said with her back on the ground.

"I think my arm is broken."

"That's a strange definition of okay." She managed a smile.

"For real. Check the others. I'm alright." All of us had fragments of bone embedded in our armor and our skin. Glen bled from his head, and I couldn't immediately discern if that was from a projectile or a strike. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The captain stirred, and the guard crossed the chamber to tend to him, yelling that he shouldn't try to move. I don't know how long it took us to get back out of the gate. With our wounds, the universe shrank to mere footsteps.

The only thing that existed for me at any given moment was the need to step forward once more. And then again. And again. When we emerged into the cool early-morning dew of a peaceful farm, the guard put a call into headquarters. They were relieved to hear we were okay and that the gate was closed. Like the captain had predicted, the automated alert system triggered while we were inside, so a cull team was already on their way with medics.

"We're out of the woods," the guard said to the party.

"In these circumstances, the CDM will spring for proper healing magic, so hang tight, and we'll all feel better soon." No one talked much the twenty minutes it took for help to arrive. A dinged-up white van pulled into the field, followed by two ambulances. A secondary cull team emerged from the van and took control of the scene. The most seriously wounded, the captain and Glen in this case, went in the ambulances. The rest of us were ushered into the vans.

The backup cull team collected our car keys and promised to deliver our vehicles back to HQ. Megan leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, doing her best to baby her arm as we bounced down rutted back roads on our way to the city. Instead of bothering her, I opened my system profile: Dorion Carmino Class: Archer Level: 6 XP Progress: 258/3200 Str: 6 Dex: 12 Con: 6 Int: 4 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Momentum Spells: (none) Ah, level 6.

That wasn't a terrible consolation prize for the nightmare we just endured. Following my rule of not making major life decisions when I was tired, stressed, and frazzled, I held off on allocating my three stat points. I did, however, take a look at my newest unlock options: Dual Nocking Class: Archer Type: Ability Cooldown: 10 seconds Duration: Instant Prerequisites: Piercing Shot Fire two arrows with the accuracy of one.

Both arrows automatically receive the Piercing Shot bonus and are considered individual attacks for the purposes of applying other bonuses and buffs. Additionally, Dual Nocking reduces the cooldown of Piercing Shot by 5 seconds. Farsense Class: Archer Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual Prerequisites: Farsight Your ability to selectively smell and hear is now equivalent to your Farsight magnification. If you can see a location clearly, you can smell and hear it as well.

Improved Sharpen Class: Archer Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual Prerequisites: Sharpen The chance of your arrow ignoring armor is increased by an additional 10%. According to my build guide, Dual Nocking was the ability I should take next. The whole point of a dex build was to attack as often as possible as quickly as possible, and shooting two arrows at once was the obvious choice for supporting that objective. The problem with system choices, however, was that you wanted everything.

Farsense and Improved Sharpen both sounded awesome. Getting through armor would always be useful, and the combined benefits of Farsight and Farsense would be amazingly helpful for hunting wild monsters. No crawler gets to do everything, and that was especially true for martial classes like mine, where we might not see levels beyond 12 or 13. I closed my system without making a selection and shut my eyes.

If I had been injured outside of a CDM crawl, I would have sat in the emergency room like everyone else, waiting to get plain old stitches. But not only were my wounds from a government-sponsored cull assignment, it was also an exceptionally challenging cull that came dangerously close to a surge. Healing potions and Healing spells were so amazing that I felt guilty benefiting from them.

A normal civilian wouldn't be able to afford either, and it didn't seem right that my injuries were considered more important than someone like Nathan, who could get hurt a thousand different ways on a construction site. We were both just trying to pay our bills. Despite my guilty conscience, I was grateful for the magic healing. Doctors removed a total of seven bone shards from my body and then closed the wounds with Healing potions. Though the effects looked instant, full recovery would require a few days.

My body still had to supply the energy for the healing process, and the potion making it happen all at once created a deficit that my body had to correct. Additionally, the wounds that mended were hard to the touch, like strips of cement had dried beneath my skin. The gash on my forearm, for example, was healed, but I could feel the solid mass shift as I flexed my forearm and moved my wrist. That stiffness would gradually fade over the course of the next week.

I was one of the first members of the party to finish treatment, but I stayed in the waiting room. Glen and Megan were both being treated, and it felt wrong to leave them behind even if there was nothing productive I could really do. I let Nathan and Beth know that we were both okay and not to worry, and idly scrolled on my phone. Nathan tried to keep me entertained. The day before, Japan announced that they intended to be the first to land on the surface of the moon.

The memes were primarily jokes about abandoning Earth completely because that was easier than recovering the wilds from monsters. My email dinged endlessly like always, but I was relieved to see one ordering me to take the day off. The sun was already rising, and after a night like that, I would have been worthless in the office. I was glad the CDM agreed. Glen and Megan exited at the same time. He was on crutches, and she had her shield arm in a sling. By this time tomorrow, they wouldn't need them anymore.

"Aw, you waited up for us," Glen said, forcing a tired smile.

"What about our kits?" Megan asked.

"The CDM sent them to the quartermasters for cleaning and repairs. We can pick them up tomorrow morning if we want." The pair looked relieved. Dragging all that gear around in their state would have been a pain.

"The woman at the desk said they would call us cars whenever we were ready to leave. Want me to let her know you two are good to go?"

"Please," Glen answered. I returned a moment later.

"She says we should turn left and follow the green line to the pickup point." As we slowly made our way there, Glen spoke, his words punctuated by the click of his crutches.

"Did anyone tell either of you what the hell that was?" Megan and I shook our heads. The only thing we were told was to not talk about it. We could say we were hurt on a cull, but we were not permitted to discuss the hobgoblins or the abomination they sicced on us in the boss room.

"I tried looking it up," Glen continued.

"Couldn't find shit about hobgoblins appearing in D-ranked gates, and nothing I read sounded like that… thing."

"So it was an extremely rare variant," Megan said.

"There are a bunch of variants that have only been documented once. Not the craziest thing."

"I guess that's true. How often do variants have unknown monsters, though? Usually it's a more difficult version of the standard run, and maybe a few extra monster types appear, but not totally new ones."

"You got me there," Megan admitted. A few minutes later, I helped Glen get himself and his crutches into the first car to arrive, leaving Megan and me waiting outside for our rides.

"Sorry for barking at you back there," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"In the dungeon. I just yelled at you to follow me. I wasn't thinking clearly enough." Megan shook her head.

"It was the right call. I trust you, Dor. Don't hold back on making calls like that in the future. Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Promise me."

"I promise."