Chapter 13: The Last Stand
Jianguo stood at the gatehouse and watched his brother bleed.
The drumbeat was a physical thing now, pounding through the stone, through his boots, up through his spine. Goblins screaming. Arrows clattering against the blessed stone. The watchtowers loomed above him—those magnificent yet useless towers—their golden stone merged seamlessly with the old grey wall, their parapets chest-high, their internal staircases spiraling up from the courtyard. They should have been invincible. They should have won the battle the moment they rose.
But Hao was pinned in the north tower with a full quiver of arrows and couldn't lift his head without drawing fire.
"How many?" Uncle shouted up. His voice came out hoarse, scraped raw by smoke and shouting.
"Still got twelve shafts!" Hao's voice echoed down the spiral stairs. "Can't use a single one! Every time I so much as twitch, I get three arrows through the firing slit!"
"What's the situation at south tower?"
Cheng Wei's deeper voice: "Same! I've got eight arrows and a hammer and I can't use either! They've got dedicated squads on both towers—every opening covered!"
Uncle's jaw tightened. He turned to Feng, who was crouched nearby, pulling a throwing knife from a dead goblin's thigh. "How many still at the base?"
Feng wiped the blade on his sleeve. "Twenty-five, maybe thirty with the elites. They're cycling fresh warriors up the ladders faster than we can kill them. The vines are overwhelmed—too many bodies."
"The elites?"
"Still directing. Haven't committed to climbing yet. They're waiting for us to break."
Waiting for us to break. Smart. Patient. Whoever's commanding them knows what they're doing.
Uncle looked down into the courtyard.
Zhang Shou—his older brother, the man who had driven three days through a war zone to bring him home—lay on a stretcher near the well. His face was grey, the color of old ash, the color of things that had stopped burning a long time ago.
The shoulder wound was a ruin of torn leather and torn flesh, white bone visible through the gore where the axe had bitten deep.
The abdominal wound below his ribs was worse—a jagged opening that pulsed with each shallow breath, dark and wet and terrible, the kind of wound that killed men slowly and painfully.
Meilin knelt beside her husband, her hands pressing blood-soaked bandages against his side. Her hair had come loose from its bun and hung around her face in grey-streaked strands.
She was speaking—not to anyone in particular, just a steady stream of words. "Stay with me. Please Stay with me !!!" Her desperate broken cries echoing through the farm.
"Fifty years you promised. Fifty years isn't over. The children need you. I need you. Don't you dare leave."
Grandmother had brought the potions. Multiple glass bottles sat on a wooden tray beside the stretcher—some deep crimson, stoppered with black wax, the others pale green and faintly luminescent. Her gnarled hands moved between them with practiced precision.
Uncle could see the status windows from where he stood, the system's golden text flickering in his vision.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ RESTORATIVE POULTICE │
│ Tier 1 | Uncommon │
│ Effect: Accelerates natural healing when │
│ applied directly to wounds. Slows blood │
│ loss, reduces infection risk, stabilizes │
│ critically injured patients. Made from │
│ blessed astragalus root, hive honey, and │
│ purified herb sap. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PURIFICATION DRAUGHT │
│ Tier 1 | Uncommon │
│ Effect: Neutralizes common poisons and │
│ corruption residue in the bloodstream. │
│ Must be ingested. Acts as mild stimulant │
│ to maintain heart function. Made from │
│ blessed ginger, ginseng, and inner bark │
│ of herb trees. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
"The green one first," Grandmother said quietly. "The axe was goblin work. Their blades are always fouled. Poison, filth, corruption—the draught will fight it."
Meilin unstoppered the green bottle with trembling fingers and poured the luminescent liquid between Shou's grey lips. His throat moved—a reflexive swallow. The faint green glow spread through his pallor, a tracery of light along his jaw and neck as the draught worked its way through his bloodstream.
"The red one on both wounds. All of it," Grandmother said.
Meilin scooped the thick crimson paste with her fingers and pressed it into the shoulder wound. The poultice hissed faintly on contact with torn flesh, and the bleeding slowed—not stopped, but slowed. She moved to the abdominal wound next, her hands steady despite the tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face.
"It's not enough," Song Na said from beside her. The nurse had been helping, her own sutures already in place where she'd tried to close the smaller lacerations.
"The abdominal wound is too deep. He's losing blood faster than the poultice can replace it. I need to sew the internal layers, but I can't do that here—I need clean light, steady hands, and time we don't have."
"Then we need to make time, apply more bottles" Meilin said, her voice cracking but absolutely certain.
Uncle turned away. He couldn't watch this. His brother—stubborn, silent, immovable, the man who had given him a forge and said work until you're tired, then work some more—was bleeding out in the dirt, and the creatures who did it were still hammering at the wall.
Focus. You can't save him. You can save the rest of them. Do your job. Do what you were trained to do.
He pressed his back against the gatehouse timber and tried to think. Tried to see a way through.
The despair was there. The old enemy. It whispered its familiar poison: This time, you lose. This time, everything falls apart. Your brother is dying. Your niece almost died. Wei is out there somewhere, maybe dead already. The wall won't hold. The towers are useless. You failed.
No. He crushed the voice down. I've heard you before. I heard you in the trenches when the mortars fell. I heard you when we ran out of ammunition and had to fix bayonets. I heard you when I came home and couldn't sleep for two years. You've never been right before. You're not right now.
"We need a miracle," he muttered.
"What?" Feng was beside him, silent as always.
"Nothing. Thinking out loud." Uncle straightened. "The elites. When they commit, the archers will have to shift their fire to support them. That's our window. The moment their suppression slackens, Hao and Cheng Wei start shooting. Every arrow we have. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Hao! Cheng Wei! You hear me?"
"Got it!" from the north tower.
"Ready!" from the south.
"Good. Stay down until I give the word."
He looked one more time at his brother, lying grey and still in the courtyard. At Meilin, pressing bandages that kept turning red. At the two clay bottles, their contents the only thing keeping Shou alive.
Hold on, brother. Just hold on a little longer.
***
Flashback — How It Happened
Thirty minutes earlier.
The towers had just finished merging with the wall, and for a brief, shining moment, the defenders had believed they could win.
It was maybe fifteen minutes after Wei had left. The golden stone had spiraled upward with that impossible speed—the two towers rising like living things, their bases thickening until they were twice the depth of the original wall, their heights reaching twenty-five feet above the battlements.
The internal staircases had formed within them, perfect spiral steps of gleaming blessed stone that let defenders climb from the safety of the courtyard without exposing themselves to enemy fire. And at the top of each tower, chest-high parapets had grown on all four sides, designed to protect archers while they fired down at the enemy.
When the merge completed, the east gate had transformed. The towers were no longer separate structures—they had flowed into the wall like water finding its level, golden stone weaving through grey, creating a fortress within a fortress. The gate itself had thickened, blessed vines spreading across its surface, iron bands gleaming. The whole structure glowed with the tree's golden light, a beacon in the darkness.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Gatehouse
│
│ Tier 2.5 | Rare │
│ Durability - 40000/40000
│
│ 2 watchtowers merged with the boundary
│ wall and main gateway making an near
│ impenetrable defencive structure.
│
│ Embedded with inner staircase and rooftop │ terrace with boundary line , laced with
│ ancient roots and vines, making it highly
│ durable.
│
│ Special features : Upgrading the Boundary
│ wall upgrades the Watchtowers embedded
│ with it.
│
│ Self restoration enchantment -Tier 3
│
│ Physical Attack Resistance - Tier 3
│
│ Magical Attack Resistance - Tier 2
│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Hao had been the first one up the north tower. He'd scrambled up the spiral stairs, bow in hand, quiver full, and emerged onto the firing platform with a whoop that echoed across the courtyard.
"This is incredible! I can see everything! The whole field! The goblins look like ants down there!"
"Are you going to shoot them or just admire the view?" Li had called up from the wall walk, her spear resting on her shoulder. She was smiling despite the blood on her sleeve.
"Both! I can multitask! Watch this!"
He'd leaned over the parapet, drawn his bow, and put an arrow through a goblin warrior's chest at sixty yards. The creature crumpled without a sound.
"Ha! Still got it!"
"One arrow doesn't win a battle," Father had said from the wall, but there was a faint warmth in his voice.
He had been directing the defense with his usual calm precision, his own bow singing, each arrow finding its mark. He had thirty shafts left then. Plenty.
"It looks like a Gatehouse, I've seen in history books !" Cheng Wei had shouted from the south tower. "We have healing magic! We have walls that can't be breached! This is actually working!"
"Don't get cocky," Uncle had warned. "Battles turn fast."
But even he had felt it—that small, dangerous spark of hope. The Pulse of Life that Wei had left behind was still active, a golden warmth that washed over the defenders, healing minor wounds, lifting exhaustion.
Everyone had drawn strength from it. The spear line on the wall was holding. The vines were pulling climbers into the stone. The goblin advance had stalled.
"We can hold this," Bai Jun had said, thrusting his spear at a climber. "We can actually hold this!"
"Of course we can!" Hao had called down, nocking another arrow. "We have the high ground! We have magic! We have—"
Then he shot another goblin from a distance.
"See easy right ! we just need to hold them until brother arrives."
Bai Jun said "If he came late, we could even finish all of them before he reaches us." With a confident look.
The battle was looking good.
Seemed like everything will be a smooth sail.
But it was all a misunderstanding, A very BIG one…
Suddenly the five elite warriors started to move in coordination.
They came out of the darkness at the base of the wall in perfect formation—shields locked, axes gleaming, their heavy armor clanking. They'd been waiting, Uncle realized. Waiting and watching.
They'd seen the towers rise and had adapted in minutes. While Hao was celebrating, the elites had been positioning themselves.
"Hao, duck you idiot !!!!!"
Behind them, the goblin archers shifted their fire. The scattered, panicked volleys of the previous minutes snapped into focused, coordinated suppression.
Arrows began hammering against the north tower's parapet, driving Hao back from the edge. The south tower came under fire seconds later, Cheng Wei ducking behind his chest-high wall as stone-tipped shafts shattered against the golden stone.
"The towers are suppressed!" Uncle had shouted. "Spear line! Brace for—"
The elites were already climbing.
They didn't use the regular ladders. They had their own—heavier, reinforced with iron hooks, carried by teams of warriors who had been hidden in the chaos. The ladders hit the wall at three points simultaneously, iron biting into blessed stone, and the elites swarmed up with terrifying speed.
Li was on the left flank. She saw the first elite crest the wall—a massive creature, six feet of armor and muscle, its axe already swinging. She thrust her spear, but the elite's shield deflected it with a clang that jarred her arms. The creature pressed forward, and Li stumbled back, off balance, her spear angled wrong.
She was going to die. She knew it in that frozen half-second. The axe was already rising.
Father hit the elite from the side.
He didn't have time to draw his bow. Didn't have time to call a warning. He just threw himself between his daughter and the axe, his left arm coming up instinctively to shield her.
The blade caught him across the shoulder—a diagonal strike meant for Li's neck—and cleaved through leather and wool and flesh. It hit his collarbone with a sound like a wet branch snapping, then kept going, the follow-through catching him in the side, just below the ribs.
"Nooooooooo….. !!!!!!" Li screamed in panic.
The force of the blow sent both of them off the wall walk.
The goblin fell down with the stairs.
They hit the courtyard below. Li landed hard, the wind driven out of her, her spear skittering away. Father landed on his back and didn't move. Blood was already pooling beneath him, spreading across the packed earth in a dark bloom.
"Father , can you hear me !"
Li's screams cut through everything. The drumbeat. The clash of weapons. The shrieking of goblins. She scrambled to her knees, her blue jacket already soaked with her father's blood, her hands reaching for him.
"Father, please—please don't—"
Meilin's scream followed a heartbeat later. She was already running from her position on the wall, her cleaver forgotten, her feet slipping on blood-slick stone. "No, no, no—dear—don't you dare die here—"
She dropped to her knees in the blood-soaked dirt and pressed both hands against the wound in his side. Blood welled up between her fingers immediately, hot and red and impossibly fast.
Grandmother appeared from the house. She'd came running after hearing Li's scream. Somehow, she'd known. 2 types of clay bottles were already in her hands—the red poultice and the green draught, the same ones she'd been brewing since the first shimmer, using herbs from her garden and sap from the medicinal trees.
"The green one first," she said quietly, her voice cutting through the chaos. "The axe was goblin work. Their blades are always poisoned."
Meilin unstoppered the green bottle with her teeth and poured the luminescent liquid between Shou's grey lips. His throat moved—a reflexive swallow. The faint green glow spread through his pallor.
"The red one on both wounds. All of it."
Meilin scooped the crimson paste with her fingers and pressed it into the shoulder wound. The poultice hissed on contact, and the bleeding slowed. She moved to the abdominal wound next, her hands trembling for the first time in Uncle's memory.
Song Na arrived, her nurse's bag already open. "The abdominal wound needs internal sutures. The poultice is slowing the bleeding but it won't hold. I need to operate."
"Do it," Meilin said.
"Here? In the dirt?"
"There's no time to move him. Do it here."
Song Na nodded and began laying out her instruments.
On the wall above them, the elites were still advancing. The defenders were in chaos. Li was still on her knees, her father's blood on her hands. Hao was pinned in the north tower, unable to help. Cheng Wei was trapped in the south tower. The spear line was crumbling.
And Uncle Jianguo stood frozen, looking down at his brother, and felt something cold and dark and absolutely certain settle in his chest.
They're going to pay. Every last one of them.
***
Present.
Jianguo didn't remember climbing down from the wall walk. He just found himself at the base of the north tower, his spear in his right hand, his hand-axe in his left, his heart hammering with a cold fury he hadn't felt since the war.
The remaining four elites had gained the wall walk. They'd followed their leader up the ladders and were now forming a shield wall on the narrow stone, advancing toward the defenders with methodical, crushing precision. Their axes were dark with blood—his brother's blood—and their yellow eyes showed no fear. Only hunger.
The regular goblin warriors were behind them, using the elites as mobile cover. The archers were still suppressing the towers, their fire slackening only slightly as they adjusted to the elites' advance.
Four elites. Shield formation. Axes. Heavy armor. Weaknesses: limited mobility on the narrow wall walk, limited visibility through helmet slits, overconfidence from their success.
"I've killed worse. I've killed men who were faster and stronger and smarter. These are just goblins. Just bigger goblins."
He climbed the internal staircase of the north tower, his boots ringing on the blessed stone. Hao was crouched behind the parapet, his bow in his lap, his quiver full. Twelve arrows. Twelve perfectly good arrows and he couldn't use a single one.
"Uncle! What are you—"
"Get ready. When I give the signal, you and Cheng Wei start shooting. Every arrow you have. Don't stop until you're empty."
"What signal?"
"You'll know it."
Uncle vaulted over the parapet.
The drop to the wall walk was fifteen feet. He fell through the darkness, the wind whistling past his ears, and hit the stone in a roll that absorbed the impact and brought him up with his spear already thrusting.
The nearest elite—the one at the rear of the formation—had turned at the sound of his landing. The spear point found the gap between its helmet and gorget, punching through the throat with a wet crunch. The elite went down gurgling, black blood fountaining, its shield clattering on the stone.
One.
The other three elites turned to face him. Their shields came up. Their axes rose. Behind them, the goblin warriors hesitated—they'd been using the elites as cover, and now their cover was turning away from the spear line to face a single man.
"Come on then," Uncle said. His voice was quiet. Almost conversational. "Let's see what you've got."
The first elite charged. It was big—bigger than the one he'd just killed—and its axe came down in a diagonal arc that would have split him from shoulder to hip. Uncle sidestepped, let the blade whistle past him, and drove his hand-axe into the creature's wrist.
The axe bit through tendon and bone, and the elite's grip on its weapon failed. The axe clattered to the stone. Uncle followed up with a spear thrust to the face—the point went through the helmet's eye slit and out the back of the skull with a spray of black blood and grey matter.
Two.
Suddenly nearby goblins fired arrows towards him.
He raised a nearby corpse with an inhuman strength and blocked the incoming arrows.
Hao screamed, "There goes another son of a bitch !!!"
The other elites were more cautious. It approached with its shield high, its axe held low, trying to bait
Uncle into overextending. Its yellow eyes were calculating behind the helmet slit. This one had been paying attention. This one had seen what happened to its companions.
Uncle feinted with the spear—a quick thrust toward the elite's face. The creature raised its shield to block, exactly as he'd expected. In the half-second it took the elite to adjust, Uncle dropped low—his knees screaming, his back protesting, he wasn't young anymore—and swept the creature's legs with the haft of his axe.
The elite stumbled, its shield dipping, and Uncle was on it before it could recover. He drove the spear through its chest, through the gap between breastplate and backplate, and the creature went down with a strangled gurgle.
Three.
But the third elite had used the opening. It had watched Uncle commit to the kill, and it had moved while he was still bent over the second elite's body. The axe came in from the side—a horizontal cut aimed at Uncle's neck.
Uncle couldn't dodge in time. He threw up his left arm, and the axe blade caught his leather vambrace. The blessed leather held—barely—but the impact sent shockwaves through his forearm and drove him sideways into the parapet. His hand-axe flew from his grip and spun over the wall into the darkness.
The elite pressed forward, its shield slamming into Uncle's chest, pinning him against the stone. Uncle could smell its breath—rotten meat and old blood. Its yellow eyes were inches from his. It raised its axe for the killing blow.
Uncle grabbed a goblin warrior that had been cowering behind the elite and yanked it forward. The goblin screamed as Uncle used it as a shield, and the elite's axe buried itself in the goblin's spine instead of Uncle's skull. The goblin died instantly, its body going limp.
Uncle let the corpse fall and drove his knee into the elite's stomach. The creature doubled over, and Uncle grabbed its helmet with both hands. He twisted—hard—and the helmet came off with a snap of leather straps. The elite's ugly face was exposed, yellow eyes wide with sudden fear.
Uncle drove his forehead into the creature's face. Once. Twice. Three times. Bone crunched. The elite's nose flattened. Its jaw cracked. It went limp, and Uncle let the body fall.
Four.
He stood breathing hard, his chest heaving, his left arm throbbing where the axe had struck his vambrace. Blood was dripping from a cut on his forehead—he'd split his own skin on the elite's helmet. The goblin warriors on the wall were staring at him, their advance stalled, their elites dead at his feet. Four armored elites, and one man had killed them all.
That's the signal.
"Sniper units ! NOW!"
The goblin archers, still focused on the towers, hadn't shifted their fire. They'd been so intent on suppressing the platforms that they hadn't noticed the fight on the wall walk. And now, with the elites dead and the warriors hesitating, the defenders had their opening.
Hao rose from behind the north tower's parapet. His first arrow took a goblin archer in the chest. His second caught another in the throat. He was firing as fast as he could draw, twelve arrows loosed in thirty seconds, and every single one found its target. The goblin archers scattered, their suppression broken.
Cheng Wei, from the south tower, dropped stones on the warriors below. The heavy blocks of rubble he'd stockpiled crashed down onto the goblin ladders, shattering wood and bone. The warriors at the base of the wall panicked and broke formation.
The defenders on the wall walk—Bai Jun, Liu Wei, Feng—surged forward, driving the remaining goblins back. Feng's knives flashed in the darkness, silent and deadly. Bai Jun thrust his spear with grim determination. Liu Wei, empty-handed, picked up a fallen goblin blade and kept fighting.
Uncle leaned on his spear, his legs threatening to give out, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The cut on his forehead was bleeding into his eye, and his left arm was going numb from the axe blow. But he was standing. The wall was still theirs.
That's for you, Shou. Now stay alive.
****
Other part of the farm : Wei
Twenty minutes earlier. The rice fields.
Wei was losing.
The hobgoblin's blade came down in an overhead swing that would have bisected him from crown to groin, and he threw himself sideways into the freezing paddy water.
The massive sword buried itself in the mud where he'd been lying, the impact shaking the ground, cracks spiderwebbing outward through the flooded soil. Wei scrambled up, his feet slipping, and drove the scythe into the creature's side before it could wrench its blade free.
The curved edge bit deep—past hide, past muscle, grinding against something hard that might have been a rib. The hobgoblin roared and backhanded him across the chest.
He flew. Hit the water. Everything went grey.
Pain. Everywhere. His ribs—broken, definitely broken, maybe more than before—grinding with each breath. His back screaming where the earlier corruption bolt had hit him. His left wrist throbbing. His vision narrowing to a tunnel.
'Get up. Get up. Mei and Jun are in the root cellar. Grandfather and Grandmother. Li and Hao and everyone on the wall. You PROMISED. Get UP.'
He pushed himself up on shaking arms, gasping, spitting blood and mud. The hobgoblin was advancing through the water, its massive blade dragging behind it, its orange eyes fixed on him. Behind it, the surviving elites—still seven of them—were re-forming their line.
And the shaman that was still alive was pressing its twisted hands against the hobgoblin's wounded side, channeling sickly purple light into the gash Wei had cut earlier. The light was knitting flesh, closing the wound, healing the creature that Wei had spent so much blood to hurt.
You fucker, you don't get to heal. That wound is mine.
He started to push himself up for another charge—and then he heard it.
A scream. Not a goblin scream. A human scream, high and terrified, cutting through the chaos from the direction of the east wall.
Li.
His head snapped toward the sound. He couldn't see anything—too far, too dark, too much smoke and chaos—but he knew.
He knew his little sister's voice, had known it since she was five years old and pointing at the fish-shaped knot in the ceiling beam. She was screaming. Something had happened. Something terrible.
The hobgoblin's blade caught him across the shoulder.
He'd stopped moving for one heartbeat—just one—distracted by the distant sound of his sister in danger, and the creature had capitalized with brutal efficiency.
The jagged edge tore through his jacket, through his skin, through the muscle beneath. The impact sent him spinning into the shattered remains of the wall, his shoulder exploding with agony, his left arm going numb from the elbow down.
'I need to focus. I can't help her if you're dead. FOCUS.' His soul screamed desperately.
He scrambled backward through the mud, putting distance between himself and the advancing hobgoblin. The creature was slower now—the wound in its side was still bleeding, the shaman's healing interrupted—but it was still coming, still dangerous. The elites were still behind it. The shaman was still alive.
The fruits. The stat fruits I was saving. For the orcs. For the real fight. I didn't want to use them yet. But if I don't survive this, there won't be any real fight.
He pulled two fruits from his spatial pocket as he stumbled through the flooded paddy. One was a deep crimson, pulsing with inner fire, warm against his palm. The other was silver-blue, cold to the touch, seeming to flicker like lightning caught in glass.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BLOODFIRE PEACH (Tier 2, Uncommon) │
│ Effect: Temporarily increases Strength by
│ +30% for 1 hour. Also restores a moderate
│ amount of stamina on consumption.
│
│ Stackable with other temporary fruits.
│
│ Notes: A peach infused with the essence of
│ battle. Warriors prize these for desperate
│ stands.
│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STORMBERRY (Tier 2, Uncommon)
│
│ Effect: Temporarily increases Agility by
│ +20% for 1 hour. Also restores a moderate
│ amount of stamina on consumption.
│
│ Stackable with other temporary fruits.
│
│ Notes: A berry that crackles with static.
│
│ Hunters use these to chase down prey that
│ should be faster than them.
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
I was saving these for the orc camp. For the moment when we finally went on the offensive. But there's no way around it now. I need every edge I can get.
He ate them both. The Bloodfire Peach was hot and sweet, flooding his limbs with sudden fire, the taste of cinnamon and iron and battlefield resolve.
The Stormberry was cold and sharp, like swallowing lightning, making his nerves sing with electric clarity. Strength up. Speed up. Stamina restored—not fully, but enough to keep fighting. Enough to finish this.
The hobgoblin was advancing again, but the shaman was still behind it, still trying to heal the wound in its side. The purple light was knitting flesh slowly—too slowly, the wound was too deep, the shaman too weak—but it was working. If Wei let it finish, the hobgoblin would be back at full strength, and he would die.
"I need to take down the shaman first. Always kill the healer first. "
He charged.
The Stormberry's speed was a song in his blood. His feet barely touched the mud as he closed the distance.
The shaman saw him coming—its eyeless face turned toward him, its chanting rising in pitch, the purple light flaring as it tried to finish the healing before he reached them. The hobgoblin turned to intercept, but Wei was faster.
He feinted left at the last second, dodged around an elite's shield, and brought the scythe down on the shaman's staff.
The staff shattered. The purple light exploded outward in a wave of sickly radiance, and the shaman screamed—a high, keening sound that made Wei's teeth ache—as its connection to the hobgoblin was severed. The half-healed wound in the hobgoblin's side tore open again, black blood gushing down its flank.
Wei didn't stop. He reversed the scythe's arc, the blade a blur of gold, and took the shaman's head off at the shoulders. The body convulsed once and collapsed into the mud. The purple light died with a faint hiss.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Corrupted Shaman killed. │
│ Credits +40 | XP +20 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
No more healing for you, you bastard.
The hobgoblin was staggering now. Wei could see it clearly—the way its movements were heavier, slower, the way its orange eyes flickered with something that might have been pain or might have been fear.
The stomach wound he'd given it earlier was fully open again, black blood pouring down its legs, darkening the paddy water around its feet. It was trying to back away, trying to put its remaining elites between itself and Wei.
Six elites left. Six armored warriors with shields locked and axes ready. And behind them, the hobgoblin, wounded but still alive, still dangerous.
Wei focused on the creature, and a panel appeared.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ??? — WOUNDED │
│ Threat: High (reduced from Critical) │
│ Strength: 15.8 → 11.2 (massive blood loss) │
│ Agility: 10.3 → 7.1 (internal injuries) │
│ Resilience: 17.1 → 9.4 (stomach wound │
│ partially healed but reopened) │
│ Notes: Suffering from severe hemorrhage. │
│ Inner injuries from earlier scythe wound │
│ remain unhealed. The shaman's healing was │
│ interrupted before it could repair the │
│ internal damage. Creature is fighting at │
│ a fraction of its capacity. Finish it. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
There. The stomach wound I gave it—the shaman was only healing the surface. The internal damage is still there. It's bleeding inside. It's weak. It's hiding behind the elites because it knows it can't face me directly anymore.
He scooped up a fallen goblin sword from the mud—a crude blade, chipped and stained, but heavy and sharp. The scythe was a slashing weapon, good for wide arcs and sweeping strikes, but he needed something he could thrust. Something he could drive through armor with all his weight behind it.
He charged the elite line.
The elites braced for him, their shields locking together, their axes rising. They expected him to stop. They expected him to try to break their formation. They didn't expect him to keep coming.
The first axe swung at his head. He ducked—felt the wind of it ruffle his hair—and kept moving. The second axe came in low, aimed at his legs. He jumped, let the blade pass under him, and landed in a spray of mud. The third axe caught him across the ribs—a grazing hit, not deep, but the pain was white-hot and his vision flickered. He kept moving.
Can't stop. Can't stop. The hobgoblin is right there.
He reached the first elite. The creature raised its shield to block him, but Wei didn't slow down. He planted one foot on the iron-rimmed edge of the shield and vaulted.
For one suspended, eternal moment, he was airborne.
The night sky stretched above him—stars cold and indifferent, the same stars his ancestors had watched from this same land. The battlefield spread below him—the flooded paddies, the shattered wall, the bodies of goblins and the glow of corruption and the distant golden light of the Tree of Life. And directly beneath him, the hobgoblin.
Its orange eyes went wide. It had been hiding behind the elites, expecting their shields to protect it, expecting to have time to retreat, to regroup, to heal. It hadn't expected him to come over the top. Its massive blade was too slow, too heavy to bring up in time.
Wei's borrowed sword came down with all his weight and all his strength and all his velocity behind it. The Bloodfire Peach's fire sang in his muscles.
The Stormberry's lightning quickened his nerves. The blade caught the hobgoblin at the junction of neck and shoulder—that vulnerable place where even the thickest hide gave way to flesh and blood and bone. It went through.
Through skin, through muscle, through the spinal column. The hobgoblin's head separated from its body in a spray of black blood that steamed in the cold air.
The head hit the mud at Wei's feet. The body stood for one more disbelieving heartbeat, arterial spray fountaining from the severed neck, and then toppled sideways into the water with a splash that sent ripples spreading across the entire field.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ??? — HOBGOBLIN WARLORD SLAIN │
│ Threat Eliminated │
│ Credits +150 | XP +80 │
│ Bonus: First Tier 3 creature killed. │
│ Additional XP: +50 │
│ Achieved: Warlord's Bane │
│ Total Credits: 1,219 │
│ Experience: 798/2000 toward Tier 3 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Wei hit the ground hard, his knees buckling, the sword falling from his grip. He managed to stay upright for one breath, two, and then his legs gave out and he was on his hands and knees in the mud, gasping for air, his chest heaving.
The temporary strength from the fruits was fading—or maybe it was just exhaustion finally catching up with him. His vision was blurring at the edges. His arms were trembling uncontrollably. The grazing hit from the elite's axe was bleeding freely, hot and wet against his ribs.
Four elites still standing. Four. They'd watched their warlord die, and for a moment they'd frozen—their yellow eyes fixed on the headless body of their leader. Now they were turning toward Wei, their axes rising, their yellow eyes burning with hate and the desire for vengeance. They began to advance, their formation tightening, their shields locking together.
Four left. Four. I can't. I can't fight four more. I don't have anything left. The fruits are wearing off. My mana is almost gone. I can barely lift my arms. This is it. This is really it.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms wouldn't hold. His legs wouldn't respond. The world was swimming, darkening at the edges, narrowing to a tunnel of grey and pain and the distant gleam of goblin axes.
'I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Li. I'm sorry, Hao. I'm sorry, Mother and Father. I tried. I tried so hard. I killed the warlord. I killed the shamans. I just couldn't kill the last four. I'm sorry.'
The elites were ten feet away. Eight feet. Six feet. Their axes were rising for the killing blows. Wei's vision was almost completely dark, the tunnel closing in, the world fading to a single point of distant light.
And then, somewhere in the distance—absurd and indignant and perfectly, impossibly normal—a goose honked.
Báixuě. Still alive. Still furious. Still defending his pond with the single-minded determination of a creature who had never once considered the possibility of defeat.
The sound was so familiar, so ordinary, so completely out of place in this landscape of blood and death, that Wei almost laughed. A wet, broken sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob.
At least the goose survived. Hao is going to be absolutely insufferable about it. He'll probably write a song. "The Ballad of the Invincible Goose." It'll have seventeen verses.
The elites were four feet away. Three feet. Their axes gleaming.
And then the ground began to shake.
Not the hobgoblin's footsteps. Not the crash of the wall. Something heavier. Something bigger. A rhythmic pounding, like drums but deeper, like the heartbeat of the earth itself. The paddy water rippled with each impact.
The mud trembled. The elites stopped. One of them turned its head, its yellow eyes going wide with something that might have been confusion or might have been the first stirrings of fear.
The ground shook again. Closer. Closer.
Wei's vision went dark.
He collapsed face-first into the mud, and the world faded to nothing.
***
End of Chapter 13