Chapter 14: First Encounter With Troblinkind

Chapter 14: First Encounter With Troblinkind

Hiral instinctively backpedalled as something burst out of the bush in a rush, knobby brown limbs swinging some kind of weighted club in an overhead chop. Up and over the thick end came, then thwacked into the ground where Hiral had been a second before. The creature scowled at Hiral as if it was annoyed he’d had the audacity to avoid it.

“Troblins!” Nivian shouted, more of the rough-skinned creatures charging out from both sides.

Their crude weapons wailed at the party of Growers, who seamlessly collapsed into a circle to protect each other’s backs.

A circle Hiral was on the outside of.

But he didn’t have time to worry about that—the Troblin in front of him was already recovering from where it had missed its swing, whipping the weapon around from the side for a second go at it. Some kind of guttural growl escaped its lipless mouth past teeth like thorns, its breath smelling like a pile of earthy dirt, and it stepped forward...

Directly into Hiral’s straight kick, which smashed its flat-nosed face. Wood crunched beneath his heel, and the Troblin flipped over backwards so violently, it actually landed on its chest.

This is level twelve? It’s so slow.

Hiral shook the disbelief out of his head and reversed the blade in his right hand into an upside-down grip. Then, as the Troblin pushed itself up to wobbly hands and knees, he stepped in and drove his sword into the creature’s wood-skinned back. The natural armor of the bark-like skin held for the briefest part of a second, but it apparently wasn’t nearly strong enough to deflect Hiral’sattack.

The masterwork blade punched straight through the Troblin’s back and out its chest, green blood splashing to the ground as the thing howled in pain. Howled, but didn’t die. Its right arm swung the weighted club around to try to catch Hiral in the legs. From that position, and with only one hand on the weapon, the swing was so slow, Hiral nimbly jumped back to evade it, but was forced to leave his sword embedded in the Troblin’s torso.

Growling like a feral animal and dripping blood from its face and chest, the Troblin once again took its weapon in both hands, struggled to his feet, and charged at Hiral.

The chest wound looks bad, but I must not have hit anything vital. Its End is probably a bit above average if I was able to punch through it, but not kill it, he analyzed as he dodged one swing and then the next. Out flicked his sword to parry a blow and test the creature’s Str—can’t be higher than ten—and then he stepped around the next swing and brought his sword down in a vicious arc, cleanly separating the arm at the elbow.

Another howl of pain, more spewing of green blood, and the Troblin staggered forward, but still didn’t fall. Yeah, Endmust be its highest attribute—maybe twelve. Dex is abysmal, somewhere in the range of five to eight. With enough information from the Troblin in front of him, Hiral darted in, spun past a weak punch from the creature, and grabbed the hilt of his weapon driven through the creature’s back.

Twist. Twist. Pull. He ripped the sword free and then kicked the Troblin in the ass, sending it stumbling to the ground. As green pooled around its chest, it didn’t rise again.

No way a level twelve Shaper would die this easily. Are creatures on the surface weaker, even though they’re the same level?

Hiral snapped his wrist to flick the green blood from his blade since he didn’t have an immediate answer to his own question, then turned his attention back to the melee. A dozen or so Troblins surrounded the Grower party, half that number again dead on the ground around them already.

Wooden armor, eerily similar to the Troblins’ skin, covered Nivian from head to toe, and his whip lashed out like a living thing, constantly moving. While the individual hits didn’t seem to do much damage, every Troblin caught by the thorns roared in pain and turned hate-filled eyes on the tank. Behind him, Wule and Seena glowed green, though Hiral couldn’t immediately tell what they were doing despite the small pulses of solar energy that signaled they were using abilities—or spells, or whatever they called them. Covering their backs, Yanily and Vix moved like greased lightning, darting in and out of the Troblin ranks and leaving green blood in their wakes.

While the bulk of the enemies was focused on the Grower party, another trio emerged from the woods, something about the one in the middle different from the others. Where most of the Troblins carried weighted clubs or crude blades and wore little more than a loincloth, this one had a staff similar to Seena’s and sported a wolf’s-head hat. Like Hiral had done, this strange Troblin looked from where most of the Troblins faced off against the Growers, and then turned its attention to Hiral.

Mouth twisting into a lipless, cruel smile, the Troblin lifted a hand to point at Hiral, and a blue notification appeared in front of him.

You have been afflicted with the Lesser Target debuff.

Lesser Target: Enemies will focus on you.

You have been afflicted with the Pile Ondebuff.

Pile On: Suffer slightly increased stacking damage for every creature beyond one attacking you.

Hiral blinked at the notification, then quickly dismissed it as he looked at the Troblins all suddenly turning in his direction. And it wasn’t just the ones around the Growers, but more rushing out of the trees to join them. At least twenty, including the strange Troblin that had apparently used Lesser Target on him. The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.

Twenty Troblins, each increasing damage by even a slight amount, could get pretty dangerous pretty quickly, despite his decent End.

“They used Pile On on Hiral!” Seena shouted as the mass of Troblins rushed toward him like a wave.

“Something called Lesser Target and Staggering Blow,” Hiral said, swords still at the ready, though Nivian, Yanily, and Vix had things well in hand. “Seena, there was a Troblin dressed differently than the others. It was the one who gave me that Pile On debuff.”

“What did it...?” she started to ask. “Oh, wolf’s head for a hat? Got it. Vix, new target.” She pulsed again with green light.

Vix’s head immediately turned to look at the strange Troblin, and then the man practically vanished from sight. Appearing beside the Troblin a heartbeat later, Vix ignored the two guards it had with it and laid into it with a vicious combo of punches and knees. The poor monster didn’t have a chance, and it dropped to the ground in a bloody mess before its allies even had a chance to react—but even that didn’t save them from Vix’s follow up.

Whatever the strange Troblin was, its death had an immediate effect on the battle. Two of the red icons vanished from Hiral’s vision, and the remaining Troblins all paused and stumbled, like somebody had punched them in the face. Already getting routed by the party, the creatures’ sudden stupor spelled the end of the attack, and the last bark-skinned creature quickly fell.

At the same time, there was a pulse of solar energy from Wule, and warmth flowed into Hiral’s body, quickly sweeping down and gathering at his hip.

You have been healed by Nature’s Mending.

Nature’s Mending: Recovers minor injuries, and removes minor debuffs.

Staggering Blow has been removed.

Hiral let out a breath as the pain in his side faded, then shifted a little back and forth to make sure it was completely gone.

“Thanks, Wule,” Hiral said. “That’s a great ability. Er, spell. Whatever.”

“It’s a mid-Rank spell, and it has a cooldown of ten seconds, so try not to swim in Troblins again,” Wule said. “It also doesn’t mend broken bones.”

“That cooldown isn’t too bad,” Hiral said. “Some tattoos have much longer cooldowns between abilities.”

“You two can talk shop later,” Seena said. “How’d we do?” she called ahead to the other three sweeping through the Troblins to make sure they were all dead.

“Didn’t quite hit nineteen,” Yanily said. “Maybe one Troblin short.”

Seena rolled her eyes but didn’t comment. “Anybody injured? Vix? Nivian? Okay, Wule, can you see to them too? Great. Yanily, you check the bodies for anything valuable; Hiral, you’re with me. Two minutes and we’re heading to the dungeon.” She gestured for Hiral to follow her over to the strange Troblin.

Hiral almost missed the gesture; his eyes were on some flashing notifications that had started popping up during the fight, but had stayed oddly out of the way. He felt like he could pull them out and look at them if he wanted to, but...

“You’re probably seeing experience notifications,” Seena said. “This is your first real fight, right?”

“Oh, is that what those are?” Hiral asked.

“Yeah. Our PIMs automatically keep them minimized during combat so they don’t distract us. You only see the important notifications, and I’m not sure if you noticed or not, but you don’t even really need to read them. They pop up, yeah, but somehow your mind knows what they say without taking the time for your eyes to really register all the words.” Seena crouched down at the strange Troblin as they got to it.

“So much I don’t know about the PIM,” Hiral said, “but I can ask those questions later. What was this guy?”

“No idea,” Seena said. “First time I’ve seen one of these. Let’s see, based on the experience notification, this was a Troblin Shaman. You said it debuffed you?”

“Yeah, two debuffs. Lesser Target and Pile On. I think one may have caused the other.”

“Something like that. I have a Target spell myself—no Lesser part, though. It’s what I used to let Vix know what I wanted him to kill. It probably combines with Pile Onto make the Troblins frenzy like they did. By the way, seriously, good job staying alive. I’ve only ever seen Vix move like you do. You have some kind of movement-based class?”

“Uh...” Hiral started.

“Nothing of value at all on these guys, and no way I’m doing more than looking,” Yanily said, coming over to join them. “From a distance. If they keep their stuff under their loincloths, well, they can keep keeping it.”

“That’s fair—they don’t usually have much,” Seena said, but grabbed the wolf’s-head hat. “Taking this, though. Okay,” she called, turning back to the rest of the group, “let’s get to that dungeon. We’ve wasted enough time here.”