Chapter 43: Sticking Around (Patreon)

Chapter 41 is getting a slight rewrite. Nothing major, just clarifying a few of Edwin's thoughts and hopefully making him look a little more competent at actually fighting. If I'm lucky, that will come out some time today. If I'm not, it'll come out tomorrow.

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Edwin mentally berated himself for trying to fight in melee. He was not cut out for this in the slightest. He didn’t have the Skills (or skills) for it, wasn’t as strong as his opponents, and it opened himself up to way too many retaliatory attacks. Why had he thought this was a good idea, again?

Oh right. Because he had a stick and figured that he could be the cool hero who struck down foe after foe with ease. As it turned out, a few days of training from Lefi and about two weeks and a few weekends on Earth spent learning about fencing was no substitute for actual combat experience and System assistance. He should stick to doing what he did best- throwing random stuff and hoping it worked out.

It was still annoying that throwing wooden dice at Minfour was more effective than smacking him in the head with what basically amounted to a baseball bat, though.

Having snatched the tiny cubes off the table, he sent them flying at the bandit, aimed at his eyes and face with what he felt was surprising accuracy. Each time, the minion was forced to raise a hand to block the attack, letting Edwin slip a bit further away. Now that he had made it onto the stairs, pointedly not looking at the slowly suffocating Mintwo, Minfour kept trying to climb up after him, but Edwin was more or less successfully keeping him at bay.

A spark of inspiration struck Edwin as he threw his tenth dice- only two left- and he uncoiled a length of rope from his forearm. The next time Minfour tried to climb the stairs, Edwin tossed the rope at him, easily ensnaring his face with the tangles of woven cord. From there, the next step was easy! Totally easy. He didn’t need to hesitate. Do it, Edwin!

It’s really cruel, though, he couldn’t help but think, Also really dangerous. What if-

The delay meant that Minfour had enough time to untangle his head from the rope, and he started pulling on the rope, trying to get Edwin to release it or be pulled down the stairs. Edwin’s eleventh dice got him to pause for a moment, but no longer. It was long enough for Edwin to get over his hesitation, at least, and he assessed the situation. Minfour had wrapped the coils of cord around his arms and was grasping it all firmly, insistently yanking on it all. It wasn’t ideal, but… it would do. This time, Edwin didn’t wait too long. With a deep breath, he let loose.

Firestarting.

Minfour swore profusely as the rope he had so firmly wrapped around his arms erupted into flames. No doubt traumatized by the last time Edwin set him on fire, he tried to release the burning rope like it was a live snake, but that did little for the lengths bound to him. Parts fell to the stairs, and Edwin hastily canceled his Skill before the tower was set on fire. It did nothing to the already-burning rope, but hopefully it would prevent the wooden interior from igniting.

Minfour, wrapped as he was by the quickly-burning fibers, had no easy escape, and his palms and forearms were already burned pretty severely. Edwin grimaced, but threw his final dice at the bandit. On instinct- no, it was some sort of Skill that compelled the action, Edwin could tell this time- the man raised a burned hand to intercept the projectile, but was unprepared for the explosion of pain that came from the tiny, wooden object bursting a fairly sizeable blister and becoming lodged inside the wound.

He howled in pain, but it was enough for Edwin, who took the opportunity to jump, kneeing Minfour in the face as he jumped past the man, landing with a stumble on the floor below. He scooped up his stick and didn’t relent, smacking the Hulking Minion in the face as hard as he could.

Altogether, it proved too much, and Minfour toppled backwards, slamming onto the stairs. Edwin half-expected the boards to give way. The sickening crack wasn’t from the wood, though, and Edwin couldn’t bring himself to look at first, though he couldn’t avert his gaze forever. When he finally did chance a glance, he saw the bandit lying unconscious on the floor below where he had fallen off the steps, arm at an angle Edwin knew wasn’t it wasn’t supposed to be at.

He had a moment to spare, so Edwin loosened Mintwo’s suffocating noose, then withdrew the key for the manacles from his belt pouch and chained the two fallen minions together. Minfour’s broken arm should even help in keeping them disabled, as presumably Mintwo would be hesitant to cause too much pain to his friend to try to fight or move quickly.

He didn’t have the time to admire his handiwork, though, as he stomped out one patch of the floor still smoldering from where burning rope had fallen on it. No sooner had he managed to do so, however, the descending stairs started to squeak and tremble as Minfive and Minseven barreled up them.

As he had… more or less adequate warning, Minseven got a solid stick-to-face collision as soon as his head popped up past the hole in the floor. Unfortunately, Edwin didn’t have the best angle of attack, but his club still hit the man’s forehead like it was a golf ball, and the sudden attack seemed to, amazingly, knock him out cold in a single blow. He toppled backwards, bleeding from the center of his forehead, partially landing on Minfive and sending him stumbling down a couple steps.

Minfive recovered quickly, too quickly for Edwin to retrieve his iron ball, unfortunately. The bandit dropped what he was carrying and caught Minseven, gently setting the Outlaw Laborer down on the stairs. Then, he retrieved his club and stepped over his fallen ally. Edwin tried the same golf-club swing attack again, but Minfive was ready for it, and used his club to block the blows.

The Elite Bandit Bodyguard- shoot, that was an intimidating Class name- bounded up the stairs and doubled back around to face Edwin in an instant. He said something, but Edwin tuned him out. That was apparently the wrong move, as when Edwin didn’t respond, he bellowed in rage and brought his club around in a devastating swing. Edwin raised his stick to try and block it, but the blow knocked it clear from his grip and across the room, then continued on its trajectory. Edwin felt a rib break as the club connected with his side, sending pain lancing through his entire torso and knocking Edwin into the wall. He narrowly avoided falling into the stairwell, but revised that assessment as Minfive started to bring down his club onto Edwin’s head.

A quick contortion had Edwin dropping onto the stairs below, the sudden stop as he landed hard on the steps renewing waves of agony from his broken bones. He cut a hasty retreat downstairs as he fumbled to pull out his healing salve, tugging his shirt loose and applying the paste where the pain was most acute. He managed to get the lid back onto the tub before his fingers, slippery with sweat and salve, let the precious medicine slide from his grip, the ceramic container bouncing downstairs step by step.

He’d Infused the container, which was likely the only reason it didn’t break, but it still was firmly out of his both literal and metaphorical grasp. He hastily tried to retrieve it, but wasn’t able to stow it again before Minfive was behind him. A haphazard toss of a small length of cord got Edwin mere seconds as the bandit hit it from the air like a baseball. Okay, he’d have to do some quick thinking.

The first floor of the tower was strewn with random rubble; broken lumber, piles of discarded cloth, a twisted tangle of lightly rusting, but very pointy metal, and some rocks. Edwin wasn’t sure where the rocks had come from- the tower walls, perhaps? There weren’t any obvious holes- but that didn’t matter too much at the moment. He swept over to the pile and slipped his healing salve in a pocket before picking up a pair of rocks, throwing them as hard as he could at Minfive. Packing helped, he could tell, he wouldn’t have been able to lift such heavy stones without it, but the real benefit came from his Throwing Weapons skill, which helped guide each of the sizable rocks at his target. One was swept aside by Minfive’s club, but the other struck the bandit’s shoulder… and left no obvious injuries. His arm barely even moved. Great.

Edwin grabbed two more stones, each slightly smaller than a volleyball, and threw one underhanded, the other overhanded, as though he were playing dodgeball and was trying to sneak a hit in. Minfive’s club blurred, and shattered the overhand throw, closing his eyes to endure the spray of stone fragments. His club moved on its own in an attempt to block the arcing underhand toss, but it missed, the stone colliding with his outstretched arm and forcing it to buckle. Okay, so he wasn’t invincible. That was good.

Minfive took a second to wipe the dust from his eyes, which Edwin did not waste. By the time he had finished, Edwin had scooped up two handfuls of small pebbles, throwing them like they were scattershot at the bandit. His club wasn’t able to block all of the rocks- it tried snapping to one at a time instead of sweeping aside all of them- and a few connected with his face, blinding him once more. Edwin grabbed another handful of the stones and started circling Minfive, trying to get back to the stairs. Going back up held a lot of potential, after all.

Shut up. No more jokes. I need to focus.

Next time Edwin tried to blind the minion, he had already grown wise to the tactic, closing his eyes the moment Edwin started his throw. Fortunately, Edwin was able to react quickly enough that he was able to delay his actual attack for a second, long enough for Minfive to suspect a feint and reopen his eyes- just in time for Edwin’s projectiles to connect, opening a new string of cursing from the bandit as he wiped his eyes free once more.

With his last handful of pebbles, Edwin truly did feint his attack, and the bandit shielded his eyes with his hand, abandoning his two-handed grip on his club. It still obscured his vision, though, and was even better for making it hard to defend from Edwin’s true attack, a high-speed rock hastily retrieved from a nearby rubble pile. The projectile smashed into Minfive’s hand, actually leaving a visible mark as a pointed corner of the stone tore open some skin on the back of his hand. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

At this point, Edwin had finally managed to reposition himself such that he was at the bottom of the stairs, and after throwing his last blinding attack- Minfive blocked it by shielding his eyes with his hand- he darted up the steps. Minseven was starting to stir, but Edwin solidly stomped on his face as he passed, and the outlaw slumped back into unconsciousness, blood trickling from his nose.

Edwin’s thoughts raced as Minfive clomped up the stairs behind him. He’d only have a single chance to make any of this work, and as he reached the top, he realized he’d already missed his chance. Minfive had jumped over the body of Minseven, and was just mere steps behind Edwin, eagerly reaching out to try and snag Edwin’s jacket. In response, Edwin drew his knife, confiscated from the dwarves, and threw it, the weapon traveling mere inches through the air before it pierced the bandit’s outstretched hand, the steel tip poking through to the back of his hand.

To his credit, Minfive didn’t cry out in pain, though he did unleash a dreadful tirade of cursing as he shook his hand in a fruitless attempt to dislodge the offending weapon. Realizing it wouldn’t work, he removed the source of his agony, pulling it free in a single smooth motion, though releasing his club let it clatter to the floor below.

Edwin didn’t waste his chance, and as he hefted the heaviest thing he was able to find on short notice- the iron ball he had used to such great effect thus far, looped around a leg of the table- and slammed the entire contraption as hard as he could into Minfive’s head. The bandit fell backwards, his foot coming to rest on Minseven’s body. The step he was on creaked ominously, but before it could settle or Minfive could recover, Edwin threw his entire makeshift weapon at the pair. It slammed into Minfive’s body, and the sudden force proved too great for the precarious stairway, and the wood gave way, sending the two bandits plummeting to the floor below. In most circumstances, Edwin wouldn’t trust the mere ten-foot fall to take them out, but specifically where they were… peeking over the edge, he saw them both lying lifelessly on the pile of scrap metal and discarded weapons. What appeared to be the tines of a pitchfork had pierced Minseven’s chest, while Minseven’s neck had been split open by a rusted… plow, perhaps? Besides, the man’s skull was half-crushed by the iron ball, even as the bandit himself was nearly decapitated by the metal blade.

Edwin looked away, fighting not to lose his dinner at the sight. He couldn’t help but grimly think that at least his manacle situation was simpler now, though. He breathed out, trying to clear his head, and drank deeply from his canteen.

The tower fell silent, the only noise being the pained breathing and whimpering of his surviving victims.