Chapter 106 - Once an enemy, always an enemy (1)

"Die!!!" Arnold yelled loudly as he finished off the last goblin and it fell with a thud on the ground, "Finally... I should run towards the base... It was a wrong decision to come out here alone, specially now that I can't even summon the monsters to help me out..."

He had his hands on his knees and was panting real hard, 'Come on out now... how long do you plan to keep me waiting.'

Arnold was still pretending to be weak and useless without his summons, hoping that his pursuers would soon reveal themselves and attack him.

'Maybe they're waiting for me to be fully spent first, those sly basta*ds.' Arnold thought and stretched for a bit before moving onwards.

But just as he was about to take a step he saw a group of ten or so green skinned monsters heading his way. These huge creatures were nearly 8 feet tall, on top of that, they an extra set of arms protruding from their shoulders. They wielded a different type weapon in each of their hands, that ranged from proper weapons to sticks and stones.

They had a multitude of scars and wounds all over their muscled body, they were still bleeding from a few places maybe they had gotten into a skirmish or something not long ago. Few of them even had a weird red coloured tattoo that covered half of their faces, but the thing that got most of Arnold's attention was the weird collar which every single one of them was wearing. It made them look as if they were someone's slaves and were doing their master's bidding. Whatever might've been the case Arnold instantly knew what the monsters were...

"Ogres..." Arnold mumbled.

He was conflicted. On one hand, he finally got what he was looking for - a chance to Fight against mutated ogres while on the other hand he couldn't possibly fight them at his full strength as he was trying to fool his pursuers into thinking that he was actually super weak without his summons.

He knew that doing the latter was more important than killing some monsters, thus he decided to continue acting like he was weak AF and started stepping backwards only to realise that he had already been surrounded by around hundred of them.

Meanwhile his pursuers (members of the church), had something different on their minds. After seeing Arnold desperately trying to hold on, they finally decided step out of their hiding place and ordered their tamed ogres to surround their target as well as to take him hostage. After seeing Arnold's reaction, the members of the church could confirm that he won't be able to a fight even a simple force consisting ten ogres at his current strength. This gave them the confidence to force Arnold into submission.

Before anyone could do anything, two men completely dressed in white, stepped forward through the rows of ogres and stood in front of Arnold.

Arnold quickly analysed their figures, one of them was around 5'10", had a narrow face, a well-formed nose, and thin lips. His brown eyes were shaped like an almond and had angular eyebrows. He had shoulder-length, frizzy, strawberry blonde hair which honestly made him look like a child molester. He had toned arms, a stocky torso with lightly defined muscles, while the other guy was a bit taller than his comrade and was well built. He had a large mark on the left side of his face which extended from his chins to his temple. The scar also divided his left eyebrow into two parts. His soulless eyes were focused on Arnold. He had a long face, a hooked nose, and greasy black hair oddly reminded Arnold of a wizard from a particular novel and movie. (Author's note : if you got that reference then you are allowed to pat your back and hats off to you!)

"Who are you?" Arnold asked, still acting as if he was intimidated and confused about what was happening.

"Don't worry. You won't be harmed if you willingly surrender yourself to us..." The shorter guy said, "and if you don't then, that'll be unfortunate for your health. Take a good look around yourself, see these ogres? They do whatever we tell them to, so it'll better for you to surrender and just come with us."

"Look man... I don't want any trouble. Just let me go and no one would get to know about this." Arnold raised his hands in air.

"Trouble? I think you're mistaken. You don't have a choice in the matter. Can't you see, you're surrounded?"

"I-"

THUD!

Just as Arnold was about to say something, one of the ogres standing behind him slammed his club on the back of Arnold's head and he fell down.

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!" The shorter guy yelled at the taller guy, as it was him who gave the signal to the ogre to attack Arnold.

"He was taking too much." The taller guy said as the shorter guy quickly ran towards Arnold to check up on him.

"Thank god he's just unconscious and not dead. The priestess would have exiled us from the church is something happened to him. She told us to bring him alive, remember!"

"He's alive. So stop yelling and get back to church before something else happens." The taller guy then instructed one of the ogres to carry Arnold and follow him.

"Still you're too careless."

"You're too loud. Maybe I should knock you out as well."

***

'These guys are truly idiots...' Arnold thought as his 'unconscious' body dangled along the ogres shoulder, 'They really thought something like that would knock me out? At least I got a free lift, so that's good.'

In the distance, he could hear the two men chatting amongst themselves, but sadly he couldn't make out what they talking about. So, instead of thinking about them, he wondered about the the weird collars of the ogres... as it was the only thing that was shared by the ogres.

'I have to get my hands on one of these. Maybe I'll be able to replicate them and if I am successful, I'd be able to control any monster without killing it... but first I've gotta put an end to this church.' Arnold thought, 'I think it's going to take a while before we reach the church, and since I'm already *unconscious* I should use the foresight and see what I'm up against.'