Class Shift 2- Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 2- Uninvited Guests

When I reached the main floor, I found a scene of horror. It wasn’t a myemar attack as I had expected. Instead the bouncer was struggling to hold the door shut while bleeding from a number of smaller wounds. The windows were broken in, seemingly by rocks, but a couple of the inns customers were laying on the ground clutching wounds. One appeared to have been shot by a crossbow and was gasping for breath while spitting up blood.

Atticus had a short, gladius style sword drawn and was standing between Cecelia and a trio of men. On the other side of the common room, Kayla was circled by a group of men. They had her tangled up in a net which was keeping her from reaching them. All of the attackers were dressed in gray garb and had masks on their faces. Another pair were each making their way through the front windows.

Once again my ability to sense the relative power of the individuals came in handy. Kayla was the strongest in the room, excluding me, then the bouncer. Three of the gray clad men were sojourners but fairly weak. Most of the battle was happening between the flats who were customers vs the attackers forcing their way in. For the moment even with Kayla tangled up the advantage lay with the inn’s guests, but that was quickly turning as more of the intruders forced their way in and Henri, the bouncer was forced to try and hold a bunch of them back at the door.

I took the scene in and reacted immediately. My long sword sprung from my soul pouch while casting Ice Blast at one of the sojourner’s who was attacking Kayla. The level difference resulted in an auto-crit and caused. The man’s body was covered in ice and blood as the jagged shards penetrated his armor and the force of the impact slammed him up against the wall. Kayla gave me a slight nod of thanks. That told me she would be okay now. I couldn’t say the same for the intruder’s foolish enough to attack her beloved inn.

Meanwhile I activated my anklets of speed and raced across the room to tackle the sojourner who was beating Atticus down. The man had just taunted, “Let’s see your feeble patrons stand up to the one above.” Whatever else he had intended to say was lost as my long blade was driven right through him. Seeing my two friends in danger removed any restraint I might have otherwise felt about fighting a fellow human.

Slaying monsters was one thing. Humans were quite a different matter. But once you endangered my friends you became a monster to me. Even the critical blow didn’t finish him, but that was fine because I hit him with an Ice Blast. Making human popsicles was becoming one of my favorite past times.

A quick glance showed me that Cecelia as unhurt but Atticus had a cut on one cheek and a long gash across his chest. I turned my body to stand between them and the rest of the chaos while I pulled upon my mana to cast Nature’s Lesser Healing on Atticus. His wounds closed before my eyes as he gasped with the relief from pain.

“Praise the Patrons and their chosen Herald. Thank you so much, Tim,” Cecelia said.

Her use of that word made my skin crawl. I could still see the streaks down her face from her earlier tears and yet here she was treating me like some messiah. It just didn’t sit right with me, not that I would do anything less than protect them. I began to shepherd them back behind the bar. It seemed to be the most defensible position and I wanted them behind me. No one was going to lay a hand on either of them.

“Thank you and I don’t meant to tell you how to do your job, but Cecelia and I will be okay. You should save the others. That is what sojourners do.”

I just shook my head. “I’ll help as I can, but this sojourner isn’t going to let any harm come to his friends.”

As soon as I finished speaking, I fired off another Ice Blast. This time it struck a flat, or rather a regular human. I really needed to be careful about how I used that slang term. The result was instant death, but strangely, I felt no remorse. It was the cycle of nature and the circle of the oak taught me that all things die in their time.

Atticus started to protest again, but then Mischief shot out of his pouch. He was nearly level six now and so more than a match for most of these regular humans. Seeing a mouse, who was tiny even in his expanded battle form rocket across the room and bring a grown man to his knees was as much of a reality check greater than most of what I had experienced in Iocusinte.

Hearing that same mouse shout his own battle cry took it to a whole new level. I had told Mischief all the stories I knew from my childhood. He quickly disregarded the big mouse from Florida, but many of the others stuck with him. Mischief tended to blend them together and twist up the stories, whether it be Reepicheep, Mighty Mouse, Speedy Gonzalez, Pinky, Jerry, or even Splinter who I made sure to describe as a mouse rather than a rat given how Mischief felt about his cousins.

The one story that seemed to stick with him the most lately was from a stupid cartoon movie I had watched. So now his battle cry was, ‘Prepare to be flushed down your own potty.’ I gave up on trying to explain why it only worked if you knew how to make it rhyme. Besides, I was the only one who could understand what he was saying.

Not that it mattered if the intruder understood or not. Mischief still dropped him like a toilet seat. The thug crumpled to the ground as Mischief used his high Hardiness to slam right into the man’s gut. He never had a chance. The club he was wielding missed, but Mischief ran up his sleeve to his shoulder, biting all the way.

The man made a God awful racket. So much so, that one of his compatriots tried to help out by aiming to smash Mischief while my familiar was perched on the thug’s shoulder. His friend’s aim was not nearly as good as his intentions so all he ended up doing was walloping his friend along side his head. It was too good and I found myself watching the scene unfold as I stood guard over Atticus and Cecelia.

“Is that mouse yours?” Cecelia asked softly from behind me.

I glanced back, not daring to take my eyes off the ongoing battle for more than an instant. “Yeah, but don’t tell him that. He thinks, I belong to him.”

“That seems to be going around,” she replied.

Before I could get drug into an argument with Cecelia, a pair of thugs mistook my hesitancy to join the larger battle for fear and came straight at us. Before they were even within sword reach I fired off an Ice Blast dropping one and surged forward with my sword aimed for the others. To his credit he managed to get weapon up in time. It appeared to be a large carpenter’s hammer, definitely not designed for combat but deadly enough in its own way. His action cost him a hand but saved his head. Well it saved it for a second as my return stroke relieved his shoulders of the dead weight they had been carrying.

A moment later, the fighting had all but died down. Kayla had cleared the rest of the room and the only action was the press of men who were trying to force their way past Henri as he held the front door. The assassin turn innkeeper looked at me and nodded her gratitude then glanced down at Cecelia with a pained look on her face.

Kayla said, “I’d better see what I can do about the front door. We’ll see how they like a poison bomb tossed out the window.”

Tim grinned as she pulled a pair of small spheres from her soul pouch. He’d seen just how effective her poison smoke bombs could be inside the dungeon known as the Grinder and that had been against the monsters of a B ranked dungeon. Normal humans would drop like flies before her attack.

Then the pressure on the door gave up before Kayla even did anything. Henri continued to hold onto the door in case it was a trick but the noise outside seemed to die down. Then the bouncer looked back at his employer for her instructions. Just then the door was hit by a new level of force. It was shattered to so much kindling and blasted off its hinging sending the now off guard Henri sprawling across the room.

A creature out of nightmares stepped through the doorway. Actually, that wasn’t quite accurate. It was far too large to fit so it ripped the door frame and surrounding wall apart. It was bent over as it entered the inn and only the high ceiling of the common room allowed the creature to stand erect. It was a nightmare of twisted angles with bones nearly bursting out of overly taunt skin. This could only be a myemar but it was larger than all but one I had seen before.

I assessed it just to make sure.

Myemar Goliath Level: 15
 Tribal Creature HP: 2740

Sure enough it was the same type of creature I had seen outside the gates. That one had been killed by the archfiend, Bal’drock for reasons I didn’t understand, but this was the veritable bull in the China shop. He could kill the regular humans with just an errant swing of the tree trunk he called a club. I couldn’t let my mind go down the path of wondering how such a creature got inside the walls, I simply had to act.

I charged forward, sword at the ready and shouted, “Mischief, you go low, I’ll go high. Kayla watch for the kill shot.”

As I jumped to tackled the monstrosity, I missed my Explosive Leap skill and I missed the strength I had in my bestial form even more, but at least I managed to fire off an Ice Blast right into his face. The creature shrieked in agony as the fluid inside his eyes was frozen solid.

That bought me enough time to slam into his chest while driving blade into the shoulder of his club wielding arm. I didn’t want him flailing about with it and wrecking Kayla’s place anymore than it already was. Mischief did his job admirably as he ripped into the monster’s hamstring. Combined with my weight landing on his chest the giant fell backwards.

Tim may have miscalculated though because that ripped an even larger hole in the front wall of the inn. At least the monster was down. That is until he batted Tim off with his uninjured arm. Tim made a mental note to remember that a naturalist was not a front line fighter. He hit the ground and rolled before coming up with a new plan.

He called upon the roots in the ground outside the inn. Fortunately, the cobblestone street wasn’t very sturdy and his ability to control plants enabled him to make them rip up and entangle the giant. If he had to guess it had a strength over forty but Mischief’s Rat Bite Fever debuff was working on him and the vines held long enough for Kayla to jump into the fray.

As always, her blade was a precision instrument. She sliced open the goliath’s neck and danced away as arterial spray filled the air. It was just a matter of time now, but just like sojourner’s monsters couldn’t be counted out as long as they had a single HP left. So, Tim doubled down on his vines and made them sprout thorns to pierce into the beast. He didn’t think this would kill the creature, but he only had to hold it long enough for Kayla’s blade to do that.

“Stay back, Mischief. It’s already dead, but too stupid to realize it yet. Don’t let it crush you by accident.”

Once the creature gave up its final gasp, Tim released the vines and took in the sight of the wrecked inn. Kayla was almost in tears over it and Cecelia was still looking from Tim to Kayla and back again. Charles had definitely been right, it wasn’t safe to be outside tonight, but Tim wasn’t sure if anyplace would be safe for hi now.