Chapter 13-Group Fight

Eric thought that he could reach the town in about 4 hours or so, but it turns out Eric isn’t good at estimating travel time when walking and from what Eric could guess it took him about 10 hours of walking. He is surprised that he didn’t collapse in exhaustion at some point, but he took breaks occasionally and somehow managed to walk all day. Whenever he got hungry he ate some chips and when he was thirsty he grabbed his water orb and drank water directly from it. At one point he had the fun idea to put the orb in his mouth and channel mana into it from his mouth, but he didn’t do that for fear of something going wrong and his mouth exploding.

At one point the forest ended, giving Erik a view of the town that he wanted to find. It was a small town with no large buildings and it looked as if it housed a few thousand people at most. He didn’t see any monsters roaming the streets from where he stood, but he also didn’t see any signs of humans still being present in the town, which is equally worrying.

Slowly heading past the first houses Erik hears something which he would have to say is battle a few streets over. They are shouting over the sounds of combat. Moving towards the sounds Eric is careful not to attract attention, that of both monsters that might attack him and people.

Eric is under no illusion that the normal rules of society with which he grew up don’t apply and that is is a world where you survive or don’t survive, for all he knew these people want to kill him for the food he caries or the rolls of toilet paper.

Approaching the street where the battle is taking place Eric looks around the corner of the house to observe the people. There are 4 of them, 3 close range fighters and one spell caster. They are too far away to analyze. It looks like there are half a dozen large boars are attacking them.

The spellcaster wears robes and has a staff like his, except his robe is dark blue with white spots which gives the image of the night sky with stars. The staff is of the same blue except for the orb on top is white.

The first melee fighter wears a cuirass for the torso and greaves for the legs, they are using a mace and shield as their weapon and if the long hair is any indication, then she would be a girl about his age. The color scheme for this fighter seems to be white and yellow, or gold as it is hard to see from the distance. She is holding off one boar with her shield and is smashing another one with her shield.

Eric would classify the next fighter as a swashbuckler and is clearly female. She is wearing leather that accentuates he lithe body very nicely and has her brown hair tied into a ponytail which is swishing about as she dodges her enemies strikes, jumping back to dodge and jumping forward to attack.

The last melee fighter looks to be dressed in a robe similar to a spellcasters robe and is also carrying a staff, but instead of casting spells he is swinging his staff around and hitting the boars with it, holding off 3 boars from running past him towards the spellcaster. He is over 2 meters tall and built like a bodybuilder.

The three melee fighters are in an intense battle with 6 boars and from Eric’s gaming experience would say that they have good teamwork, the spellcaster is regularly casting some spell, but instead of a projectile flying out of his staff, a boar stops moving for half a second, allowing the melee fighters to get a direct attack in.

Even though their teamwork is good this is a losing battle for the people, they are all on the defensive and are having trouble hitting their opponents, while the boars have gotten good hits in and the swashbuckler is already limping from a leg wound, which is slowing down her movement. They are all tired as seen from their sluggish movements and the spellcaster seems to have run out of mana.

In the distance, Eric can see that three zombies are shuffling towards the group and when they reach the group then the group will lose, but they can’t disengage their current opponents.

Just then one of the boars attacking the giant of a man gets past him and starts to rush at the spell caster. The spellcaster starts to stumble backward but trips on his robe, falling hard on the ground and not wanting to see the caster die Eric decides to get himself.

“SHADOW BALL”

Even though the boar seems to activate a charge skill and then trying to leap at the spell caster to kill him. Eric’s spell flies straight and true, hitting the boar midair, knocking him off course.

Level Up!

3→4

Level 3 +1 Strength 11 +2 Constitution 10 +1 Dexterity 13 +1 Agility 13 +1 Intelligence 24 +5 Wisdom 19 +3 Charisma 10 +1

‘Yes, another level up.’

In Eric’s rush to save the spellcaster he ended up shouting his spell, announcing his participation in the battle. All the eyes of the humans shift towards him for a split second, before being attacked by boars again and remembering that their enemies aren’t dead.

While Eric is running towards the people he starts casting his other spell, aiming at zombies that are a few seconds out before entering the battle themselves.

“Abyssal Tendrils”

“This will buy some time before they reach us,” Eric says to the tells the spellcaster who can’t seem to decide between passing out from exhaustion or from peeing his pants.

“Thanks.” Is all the response Eric gets before the spellcaster gets up.

‘Hopefully he can still cast a spell or two.’

Taking stock of the situation Eric can see that the swashbuckler has the biggest issue. Being injured on her leg has slowed her movement, which resulted in the boar landing more hits against her. The boars seem to favor biting their enemies or stabbing them with their massive tusks. Analyzing a boar gets me the following screen.

Name - Level 3 Race Boar HP 49/150 Description: Boars are tough animals to kill and can skewer people with their tusks that can be up to a meter long.

‘Normal boar my ass, that is not normal according to what I knew of them, but then again mana seems to make everything more dangerous.’

“Leather lady. Dodge! Shadow Ball”. Not knowing how else to call her Eric describes her as the first thing that pops to mind and immediately casts his trusty shadow ball.

Even with her injury she immediately reacts and jumps sideways out of his way, when the boar tries to bite her. The spell flies true and enters its open mouth before the boar can react. The boar gets knocked back and collapses onto the ground.

“HA!”

Grunting like martial artists do when attacking the big guy stabs at one of the boars he is attacking with the staff. The staff at this moment seems to be glowing a with a gray light, and when the staff hits the boar the light seems to be drained into the boar in an instant, the next moment the boar is nocked 2 meters back and is in a daze.

Eric already wants to cast a spell to kill it, but the swashbuckler jumps at it and stabs it right through its brain. She then proceeds to attack the other opponent of the big man from behind.

In the meantime, the women in the armor somehow managed to kill one of her opponents, so that she is fighting only one enemy. This doesn’t give him much space to attack the boar as Eric doesn’t want to hit her by accident, so he looks towards the zombie and analyzes them.

Name - Level 4 Race Basic Zombie (Human) HP 160/160 Description: Zombies are undead beings that can turn other creatures into zombies upon their death. This one is a Basic Zombie, meaning that it doesn’t have any conscious thoughts and acts purely on instinct. Zombies possess the trait Horde Mind. Name - Level 3 Race Basic Zombie (Human) HP 140/140 Description: Zombies are undead beings that can turn other creatures into zombies upon their death. This one is a Basic Zombie, meaning that it doesn’t have any conscious thoughts and acts purely on instinct. Zombies possess the trait Horde Mind. Name - Level 3 Race Basic Zombie (Human) HP 140/140 Description: Zombies are undead beings that can turn other creatures into zombies upon their death. This one is a Basic Zombie, meaning that it doesn’t have any conscious thoughts and acts purely on instinct. Zombies possess the trait Horde Mind.

Knowing that his abyssal tendrils spell will wear off soon and seeing that the zombies have nearly passed the tendrils anyways Eric decides to continue slowing them.

“Abyssal Tendrils”

The spell creates another area where tendrils emerge in front of the zombies just as the other tendrils start disappearing.

“Shadow Ball”

Without waiting Erik cast his attack spell at the strongest zombie, figuring that either way he will need two hits to kill a zombie he might as well kill the stronger one. ‘More experience too…’

“Shadow Ball”

With the second cast, the strongest zombie dies without anything else happening.

Looking around after the swashbuckler and the big man killed their boar they moved to the last boar and killed it all together, which the boar had no chance of surviving. While they are injured they seem ready to fight the two remaining zombies, because Eric doesn’t have the mana needed to cast another spell.

Not that he would have needed to worry, the three fighters fight together as if they have done it many times already over the last few days, which is likely to be the case. The spellcaster also seems to manage to cast another spell.

“Space Hold”

‘A Spatial mage or something?’ From the name it sounds powerful, but in the end, all it does is causing a zombie to be “held” in space unmoving for a moment. It doesn’t do much but the swashbuckler uses this moment to step into the zombie’s guard and stab it through the heart, killing it instantly. The other two also manage to kill the last zombie easily.

After all the enemies are dead everyone looks around trying to see if there is an enemy not yet defeated. Seeing that there isn’t anything other than us in the area all eyes turn to Eric. Looking at him as if he were the new kid at school, and nobody was sure to make friends with him or to ignore him.

Eric's Status Screen

Status Screen

Name Eric King Level 4 Age 19 Strength 13(0) Gender Male Constitution 12(0) Race Human Dexterity 14(0) Class Warlock Agility 14(0) Profession - Intelligence 29(2) HP 114/114 Wisdom 22(2) Mana 296/296 Charisma 11(0)