Chapter 48

Etson National Forest, Etson - 9:29 PM

Once the pain became tolerable and eventually wore off, Kayla and Jeff were in much higher spirits than I thought they would be. The duo had taken a quick dip in one of the springs that were near everywhere in Etson National Forest, getting rid of the sweat and gasoline smell they picked up. While they did that, I went through the path we would take later and dismantled as many traps as I could. Not just for the safe passage of the Kobolds, but for the ammunition. Spears, arrows, bear traps, pepper spray, and plenty of rope filled out the rest of my inventory.

By the time I returned, the Mills were waiting by the river both clean and refreshed. Once they made sure they didn’t leave anything behind we left for the Kobold village, Wolvensden.

“So what do you think?” Jeff asked, turning to me as we walked. He held hands with Kayla, who remained vigilant but was much more relaxed than she had been before the fight.

“You’ve put a lot of practice into your craft, Jeff,” I praised. “I could tell that every strike was fast and deliberate, and I liked seeing how you threw strikes to control the field of battle rather than just do damage.”

“I feel like that’s something necessary for victory, you know? It’s not about hurting or killing your opponents…” He paused, then shrugged. “I mean, I guess it is now, but it’s about controlling the battlefield and using it to your advantage. Would it be better to put your back against a wall? Be a little less aggressive and let them push you back to where you want. If the opposite’s true? Renew the offensive and get them where you need them.”

“Yelling ‘ground’ helped,” Kayla said. “I didn’t even realize there was a trap there until you said it.”

“Apparently we just needed to get into a fight for him to be able to see them,” I said with a smirk.

Jeff shrugged, but smiled. “I can’t let you think I’m super amazing, I’m just regular amazing. The only reason why I knew it was there was because of the odd way she moved right then. She stepped over something, and the only time her footwork changed was when she danced around another trap earlier, which you helped me out of.”

“I was just doing what I said I would,” I said, waving my hand.

“So what about me?” Kayla asked. It took me a few moments to think about how I was going to answer her without hurting her feelings. “Anthony?”

“We need to get you more combat experience,” I said slowly. “And train you in proper knife fighting. I’m thinking MCMAP might be the way to go for now.”

“MCMAP?” Kayla repeated, arching an eyebrow.

“Marine Corps Martial Arts Program,” I explained. “It’s a full package fighting system that covers a few disciplines, but there’s a lot of focus on hand to hand combat and knife-fighting. It’s usually done with a Ka-Bar, but your daggers will work fine enough with just a little tweaking. Depending on how fast you can pick it up we can move to Pencak Silat, which will accommodate your curved knives better.”

“Okay, so what you’re basically saying is that I didn’t do well.”

I waved my hand, indicating fifty fifty. “It’s not about doing well. You obviously did well seeing as you killed her, but if you rely on Dagger Mastery then you have a good chance of picking up and keeping bad habits. Despite the name, it doesn’t give you everything you need to know about fighting with a dagger. It helps, but it’s up to you to gain true proficiency over the weapon. Take Jeff and his rapier, for instance. With the Needle Lancer class we’re aiming for, he’ll get Piercing Weapon Mastery which will help with the weapon he wants to wield. To him, it’ll refine and compound his skills.”

“It’s really fine,” Jeff said. “You’ve just never had to fight like I did-“

“I’m not sure if going to competitions to procrastinate college coursework constitutes as had to fight like it was life or death, Jeff,” Kayla interrupted quietly.

“Fair, but I can see where he’s coming from. The Mastery skills build upon a foundation, one that you’ve never had to learn because you didn’t need to. Right, Ant?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I don’t want it to seem like I’m insinuating that you’re never going to be a great knife fighter. Everyone has to start from somewhere, it’s just that you’re going to start from a place where your movements are going to be corrected by the system. It’s just learning.”

Kayla took a breath. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything more.”

“Hoping that you were some kind of knife fighting badass immediately?” I asked.

“You get to be effortlessly badass and take out bosses alone, why can’t the rest of us?”

The laugh came out before I could stop it, startling both Kayla and Jeff. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t expect to be called an effortless badass today,” I said, still chuckling. I pulled my bowie knife from my belt and nodded to Kayla, stopping. “Pull out your dagger and show me your stance, I’ll give you a short and easy lesson right now.”

They stopped, and Jeff crouched down to give Corwin attention as Kayla summoned her Vanishing Dagger. She lowered herself slightly, but her stance was wide and full of holes. “Okay, so the physical discipline of MCMAP is all about having a tight stance they call the basic warrior stance, so copy me.” I hunched over slightly and shifted my feet. With my left hand I protected my body while my knife hand was always pointed at her.

Slowly, she copied my stance. “That free hand is important for protection. Use it to cover your head and neck foremost, but also your chest. Hold still.” I approached her. Starting with her legs, I moved her feet into a more solid position and shifted her body so she was more at an angle away from me, talking as I did. “You’re rarely going to move forward or back unless it’s necessary, so try to keep your movements at an angle relative to your enemy.”

Taking her knife hand, I lowered it to waist-level and pulled it to under one of her shoulders, then raised it up to her neck and her other shoulder. “They call this area the box. Always keep your knife in this box if you can help it because it’ll prevent you from swinging too widely and leaving yourself open. Quick and dirty jabs and slashes are where it’s at. Minimize the area they can hit you in while increasing your chance to hit. Always go for high damage targets like arteries, nerves, and joints for the critical hits. I’m sure Jeff wouldn’t mind lending you the goggles if you want them.”

“Ugh!” Jeff said, throwing his arms into the air. “I forgot about the Spot Weakness skill. I totally should have used it at the start of the last fight.” When he saw us staring at him, he tilted his head. “Oh! Yeah, I don’t mind sharing the goggles.”

“Maybe next time,” Kayla said, adjusting her glasses.

I stepped away from her and put my knife away, indicating that she should do the same. “There’s not a lot of time right now, but work on that little bit when you get the chance. Feel the differences between the stance and where the system wants to put you and go from there. We’ll get you in fighting shape within a few weeks or so.”

With a flick of her hand, Kayla made her Vanishing Dagger disappear. “Were you in the marines before going to school? Is that how you know all this?”

“Nah, I learned from a friend,” I said, a small smile blooming on my face. Jamie had been one of my teachers in Atlanta, and I was looking forward to seeing them again after Etson. “And I promise to help you learn, too. If I’m too busy, then I’m sure Jeff wouldn’t mind sparring with you.”

“Yeah!” Jeff yelled, suddenly standing up. “I’m one hundred percent okay with helping you turn into the ass kicker of the century. I would have sooner, but you never showed any interest in it before, you know?”

Kayla shrugged. “Better late than never?”

Corwin suddenly bolted off at full speed. Jeff pulled his rapier and Kayla returned her dagger to her hand, ducking into a rough approximation of the stance I just taught her. We heard Corwin bark and a yell from a familiar voice.

“Stop it, you blasted beast!” Came the voice of Elder Tet. The three of us ran towards the voice to see Corwin leaning against the Kobold with his belly exposed. Tet was trying to push him away, but the labradoodle was insistent. Behind Tet was a group of eight Kobolds wielding crossbows with curved swords at their waist. Each were lightly armored in leathers and wood.

“Elder Tet?” Jeff asked before whistling for Corwin. The dog came immediately.

“I’m glad we found you,” the Kobold said gruffly, patting at his green robes. “We’ve put it to another vote, and we’ve decided to help you. Perhaps I was too hard, but it’s up to me to act with the care and concern Wolvensden needs to…”

Kayla had opened her inventory and pulled out Talspra’s head. She calmly walked forward, Jeff and I on her heels, and offered it to the village elder. “We’ve already taken care of it.” With wide eyes, Tet dropped his staff and took the head in both hands.

[[Quest complete!]]

You have delivered the head of the Kobold’s Jailer, Talspra, to Elder Tet as promised. Now that they are free of fear of the trap-filled forest, the Kobolds have a chance to leave the forest before the Vespae figure out that their first line of defense is gone.

Reward: Trap Sense Skill Book, +50 points.

The skill book appeared in my hand, and I opened it quickly to get it out of the way.

[[Notice]]

You have learned the passive Trap Sense.

[[Passive]]

Trap Sense: Whenever you are within ten feet of a trap, you become aware of the existence of traps nearby. Trap Sense does not prevent traps from activating nor does it give you the trap’s exact location.

I nodded to myself. Trap Sense was a great passive for traps that were much better hidden than Talspra’s. I had to give credit where credit was due, she had done an excellent job of hiding the majority of her traps, but once we started getting into magical traps then things would get exponentially harder. Some had sigils that marked them, making them easy to spot to the trained eye, but others were completely invisible to anything short of magical detection.

“I see,” Tet said. He was still shocked and didn’t do much more than stare at the severed head in his grasp.

“Elder, should I go and prepare the village for departure?” one of the other Kobolds asked.

“Yes, please go and do that, Ked,” Tet responded. With a bow, Ked ran off in the direction they came in.

I nudged Jeff and nodded my head towards the village. He coughed and took a step forward. “We should get moving, too,” he said. “We should be working on saving the forest’s mother.”

That snapped Tet out of his vacant stare. He passed the head to another of the Kobolds and picked up his staff. “Yes, let us be off,” he said. “The faster we’re out, the more at peace we’ll be.”

We began following the Kobolds back to Wolvensden. “So we know that the Vespae have been oppressing you,” Kayla said. “How did it start?”

Tet grumbled before answering. “They wanted a war against the humans, and the queen herself came to form the alliance. Our peace with the Vespae was already tentative, and I thought that an alliance would assure my people’s survival and usher in an age of prosperity. Though,” he gave us a sideways look. “If we were allowed to fight, I think it might not have led to anything but our downfall.”

“I’m glad we won’t have to find out,” Kayla said with a smile. “But if you agreed to the alliance, how come you were treated this way?”

“Because I didn’t agree to it,” Tet snorted. “I was going to until I heard the terms of the agreement. We Kobolds would have been fodder for the wasps, sent in first to scout out the humans’ capabilities while they built their nests in the city.”

“Cannon fodder,” I said. “That’s the same kind of deal we’d get if Father Alexander had his way.”

“We’re absolutely not going to let anyone treat you that way on our side,” Jeff said grimly. “Some might try, but I’ll give them a good walloping.”

“You three do seem to be different from what we’ve heard about humans, but being fodder was only the beginning,” Tet said. “Only the warriors were allowed to go to war, but the rest of the village would be forced into manual labor to create implements of war. The only real change would be that the Vespae would own us instead of avoiding us.”

“In what world would that be considered an alliance?” Kayla scoffed.

Tet looked up at her with sad eyes. “The Vespae are born conquerors. We managed to survive because we did not fight back and did not posture that we were better than them. To them, being pulled into their empire is the greatest achievement another civilization can hope for. If you’re not a Vespae, then you are beneath them, and to them an alliance is slavery.”

“So you managed to survive because they didn’t think you were a threat and you minded your own business?”

“There was no reason to fight us, especially with a war brewing,” Tet said.

“But that’s just because of the system, right?” Jeff asked. “Do they actually want to do it?”

“They would have attacked much sooner if they weren’t bound by it,” I said before Tet could say anything. Talking about the system was difficult for some who were born within it. Though I wasn’t sure if it was something inherent to the system itself or something the administrators caused, I still wanted to save Tet the confusion and pain. I made sure to catch both Kayla and Jeff’s eyes and shake my head while mouthing “system” to them. They frowned, but nodded.

“Yes, it is as Anthony says,” Tet said. “From what I know of the queen, I am surprised that she had the restraint not to attack as soon as their nests in the city were destroyed. She is not known to take upsetting news well.”

“What can you tell us about the queen?” Kayla asked.

“We’ll get into that on the trip back,” I interjected again. I gestured forward as Wolvensden came into sight. We approached from the open gates this time and several Kobolds were running back and forth, piling up various things they needed to take with them near the entrance. “Let’s focus on getting these people on the road and then we’ll talk about how god awful the Vespae queen is, shall we?”