Chương 50: Chapter 49: Cries Of Chaos

The battle now changed so quickly that Ren barely had time to understand one problem before another replaced it. From the church windows, the village no longer looked like a set of prepared defenses holding against scattered attackers. Smoke drifted between houses, broken pieces of barricades littered the roads, and villagers moved from one threatened point to another with increasing urgency while more goblins gathered beyond the defensive lines. Ren watched with his stomach twisted tight.

Their leader still stood among the larger goblins instead of rushing forward, and that worried him more than another charge would have. Every time the defenders repelled an attack, the goblins withdrew farther than before and tried something different on the next attempt. Several of the larger ones would rush forward together, slam their clubs or shoulders into a barricade, then pull back before the defenders could do any real harm to them.

Spears caught them, arrows struck, and stones bounced from shoulders and skulls, but the attacks left more scratches and shallow wounds than dead bodies. The big goblins were learning how close they could get before the humans became dangerous. Ren held his breath through another rush. Three large goblins charged a barricade near one of the outer houses. One took a spear through the upper arm and still managed to smash its club into the wooden brace. The whole structure shuddered under the impact.

The other two struck beside it, then all three retreated before Hadrik could reach them. The defenders stayed behind the line instead of chasing. Ren felt a brief flicker of relief. At least they were keeping disciplined. Who knew what would happen if that stopped being the case? Hopefully he wouldn't need to learn that. The barricades had worked while the creatures treated them as simple obstacles between themselves and their prey.

Now the monstrous invaders had learned that the wood could be weakened without committing themselves to a full attack. Their leader had learned it too. Ren watched it gesture toward another group, and his chest tightened as the goblins began gathering. Nine of the large ones. Six smaller ones crowded between and behind them. Ren counted automatically and immediately wished he had not. They charged together. The smaller goblins reached the barricade first, forcing the defenders to commit their weapons.

Spears stabbed down. One goblin fell, and another climbed over its body before the larger creatures hit the barrier behind them. The barricade collapsed inward. Ren flinched hard enough for his shoulders to strike Elna. Two villagers died almost immediately. One disappeared beneath the first large goblin's charge, while another took a club across the chest before he could recover from his thrust. The defenders killed two of the charging goblins in return, but the rest kept coming through the opening.

Ren stared at the breach. Hadrik was already moving toward it, but he was too far away to reach them before the next few seconds became a slaughter. Other defenders were turning toward the opening as well, struggling to reposition around people already retreating from the charge. Elna reacted first. She tore one of Little Yara's wrapped charms from the basket and shoved it into Ren's hands.

"Ren." He understood right away. Mana Sense found the activation point almost as soon as his fingers closed around the charm. Compared with Yara's training tools this was absurdly simple. The charm had already been prepared for one purpose, and all Ren had to do was find the correct point and feed mana into it. He pushed. The charm answered at once, a sharp pressure forming inside it beneath his fingers. He held it out. Elna snatched it back and threw.

Ren barely managed to track the motion before the charm sailed away from them. It traveled much farther than he expected. As far as he knew, his mother had never trained Throwing, and Ren had no idea whether she possessed the skill at all. Even so, the small object crossed the distance between the church and the broken barricade with enough force to clear the people between them and land among the goblins. The sight reminded Ren again how different the physical baseline of this world was from the one he remembered.

Tessa could carry him far longer than a six-year-old from his old life should have managed, and Bren had become functional with a spear after only a couple weeks of brutal practice. Now Elna had thrown the charm grenade farther and harder than Ren would have expected from an untrained adult. But as incredible as that was… The goblins, unfortunately, benefited from the same world. The charm detonated. Up close, the effect was far more violent than Ren had realized from the earlier blasts.

Light burst between the goblins, followed by a sharp concussion that he felt through the church floor and in his chest. Several creatures recoiled as though the force had struck their entire bodies at once. One dropped to a knee while another threw both arms over its face, and small wounds appeared across exposed skin. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Had Little Yara given them the stronger versions? It still wasn't enough to take out any of them.

The blast had hurt them, but most of the goblins were still standing. But they were blinded, stunned, and disoriented enough for the defenders to take advantage of it. Hadrik reached the breach first. Ren had watched him fight before, but seeing him enter a group of large goblins without fear and faster than any person he recalled from his past life could manage was a sight to behold. He made the earlier impressions he had of him feel incomplete.

Hadrik did more than attack whichever creature happened to be closest. He shifted through the opening in a way that forced the brutes to react to him instead of the villagers behind him. A step made one turn. A strike checked another before it could advance. Every time one of the goblins tried to close around him, Hadrik moved just enough to spoil the attempt. Ren could not follow every motion from this distance, but he understood what Hadrik was accomplishing.

Two goblins fell to his attacks, and now five of the largest goblins were occupied with him while the other defenders fell on the ones still recovering from the charm. For several breaths, it looked as though they might contain the breach. Then wood cracked somewhere else. Ren turned toward the sound before Elna did, and his stomach dropped when he saw another barricade collapsing on the far side of the defense. Too many villagers had already shifted toward Hadrik's position.

The people left behind tried to close around the new opening, but the line folded before they could organize. One villager disappeared beneath a club. Another vanished behind a crush of bodies, and when the fighting shifted, he remained on the ground. A third tried to block the opening and was struck down almost immediately. Ren stared. Three more people had died while he was still trying to understand what had happened at the first breach. Elna ran toward the next window.

Tessa stumbled beside her, one hand still twisted into Elna's dress, while Ren struggled to breathe against the tightness in his throat. Elna already had the second charm out by the time they reached the opening. She pushed it into Ren's hands, and he activated it almost as soon as his fingers closed around the wrapping. Mana found the prepared point, the charm responded, and Elna took it back and threw. Old Mavren reached the breach from one direction. Bren arrived from another.

Ren's entire body tightened when he recognized his father. Bren joined two other villagers near the old man and planted his spear as the first goblin pushed through. The grenade detonated among them. Light swallowed the street, and several goblins staggered blindly. Mavren moved at once. He slipped around a wild club swing, struck, then shifted clear of another attack while people less than half his apparent age struggled simply to keep their footing around the creatures. Bren fought beside them.

Ren did not care that his movements lacked Mavren's ease. His father kept the spear in front of him, watched the people at his sides, and thrust whenever something entered his reach. A goblin lunged and Bren caught it. Another forced him backward before Mavren crossed its path and drew its attention long enough for Bren to recover his footing. The defenders closed around the opening.

Ren pressed himself against Elna's chest and watched his father survive one exchange after another as the breach slowly came under control. The first opening was still chaos, but this one was becoming manageable. If they could hold both long enough for Hadrik and Tovin to reorganize the defense, the defenders might still recover. Ren had believed they were prepared, and even now he still thought the village might survive. Then the goblin leader moved. Ren saw it enter the street and felt his stomach drop.

For something so large, it crossed the ground with terrifying speed. One moment it stood behind the other goblins, and the next it was already charging toward the defenders at the breach. Mavren turned. Bren turned with him. Ren understood what was about to happen before his body could do anything with that knowledge. The charms were gone, Hadrik was still elsewhere, and from Elna's arms there was nothing Ren could reach or change. The goblin leader covered the remaining distance in a handful of strides.

Bren raised his spear. The goblin struck. The movement was so quick that Ren barely understood what he had seen until his father disappeared beneath the blow. Ren stared at the place where Bren had fallen and waited for him to move. Around him, the battle continued. Mavren shifted backward, villagers scattered from the leader, and the creature turned toward someone else. Bren stayed down. Ren tried to scream, but his throat closed before the sound came out. Elna's voice tore through the upper floor instead.

"Bren!" Tessa froze beside them, her face crumpling as she stared through the window.

"Papa?" That small, confused word hurt worse than anything Ren could see below. He could not make himself look away. The guilt was unbearable. He had warned them. He had told his parents the truth, Hadrik had found proof, and the village had prepared. Bren had trained, Yara had made medicines and charms, barricades had gone up, and defenders had been organized before the goblins ever arrived. Ren had spent the entire loop trying to create every advantage he could reach. And his father had still died.

The question Ren had spent days pushing away came back hard enough to make him feel sick. Had he missed something? Could he have found another way to prepare the village, warned Hadrik about something else, trained one more skill, or somehow convinced them to act sooner? He had told Bren what might happen, and his father had carried that knowledge with him for days. Bren had trained until his arms bruised simply because Ren had given him a future terrible enough to fight against. And now he was dead.

Ren's vision blurred until the street below smeared together. He hated the goblins for coming here. He hated how little strength he had. He hated the village for being so unprepared and far from anybody able to help. Most of all, he hated being trapped in a body too small to stand beside his father when it mattered the most. Another loop could give him another chance. That thought should have helped. Instead, the idea of living through this again made his stomach twist harder.

Just then, a horn sounded somewhere beyond the village. Ren nearly missed it through Elna's crying and the noise below. The note was long and sharp, unfamiliar enough that he looked up despite himself. People in the street reacted. So did the goblins. Ren blinked tears from his eyes and searched toward the far side of the village until movement appeared on the road. Riders. Armor caught the light as they approached.

Ren counted without meaning to and reached roughly twenty men before the meaning of what he was seeing finally settled in. The knights had arrived. They were actually here. Relief tried to rise in him and found nowhere to go. Below, Bren still had not moved. Elna was crying against Ren's hair, and Tessa kept whispering for Papa as though he might hear her and stand back up. The knights had arrived in time to save the village. They might even be in time to save everyone who was still fighting.

Ren watched them ride in through wet eyes. They had arrived in time. And yet still too late.