Shards of stone fell from the statues revealing green living flesh beneath it. Jason was not prepared for these creatures considering he had never made it in this building previously while Hanshi hadn’t made it inside the church. She had no plans of entering either. He should be able to handle himself, or at least come get her if it were needed. She leaned against the church yawning, waiting for Jason to be done. It surprised her when he came crashing through the door and skidded across the ground before starting to roll and coming to a stop. The Orcs stepped out of the church casually pushing through the rubble of the door. Hanshi peaked around the door to see them. Instead of engaging with them she snuck around to the side of the church hiding away from them. “He’s got this,” she said to herself.

Jason pulled himself up to his feet, groaning. “That went according to plan,” he said dusting himself off. He had learned from his weeks battling Hanshi that whatever else he does he needed to make sure that he hung onto his weapons. In the church he had been in a cramped place and while that was a strategic advantage for him considering their relative sizes and the pew positions at first glance, but the reality was that they could cover any openings the other had. That just meant that they were at a stalemate unless you considered that they could not use their weapons. One on one against an Orc, weapon or not, with minimum space to move could only end bad for the non-Orc. This is why Jason retreated out of the church, thus that he was out of the church was his plan. Him being launched through the door by the Orcs was improvisation that his improv partners suggested. It was not according to his plan.

Nonchalantly the male Orc walked towards Jason while the female hung back. Jason readied himself to fight. Two weeks ago he didn’t know how to handle a sword or dagger, let alone the two together. Today, he was far from being a master, but he was confident in his skills. The Orc’s axe was at Jason side burying itself into the ground. The twin head was half his height. It was menacingly large, but that is what allowed just to easily step to the side to dodge it. Despite the muscle of the Orc he was not strong enough to swing the axe fast enough to catch Jason. In the next move Jason’s own sword blade slid across the Orc’s arm, slicing through his flesh. The Orc roared in pain, tensing his arm, swing the flat of his blade at Jason, knocking aside. Jason’s attack had landed and done damage, but the fact that the Orc could still lift his axe made it seem like he didn’t do much of anything.

The female Orc charged at Jason after she saw her partner injured. He didn’t know as all of his attention was on the male who had made another swing at Jason which he ducked under and made another slash at the Orc, this time at his abdomen. The blade went in a centimeter and slid along the Orc’s abdomen, leaving what appeared to be a nasty wound to Jason. However, to the Orc this just a flesh wound. Yes the blade could cut through his skin, but only the top layer so any damage it received from Jason’s sword was minimal. Out of the corner of his eyes he caught the female Orc just in the nick of time to see her thrusting her sword at him. He could feel the edge of the sword jam into his chest with such impact that it once against tossed him several feet back and off his feet.

When he landed on the flat of his back Jason felt his chest measuring the damage that being stabbed through his chest had done. It hadn’t felt like last time when his dagger was used to pierce through his body by a Goblin, but the Orc had hit with such force and he had felt the sword edge so he must have been run through and he was just in shock or something he thought. he could find no evidence penetration. His chest hurt, but there was no wound. As far as he could to he had just taken a blunt force strike to the chest. That couldn’t be right. The sword was definitely sharp enough, tip or no, to cut into the body of any creature he could think of that existed on Earth, let alone himself.

Jason stood back up again. He didn’t know what he was going to do. It seemed like they were at another stalemate. The Orcs could hurt him, but seemingly not badly. He could hurt the Orcs, but similarly, not badly. If they just attacked each other he was sure to lose. Death by a million cuts came to mind. Even a boxer could last so long taking blows to their body before they couldn’t take anymore and it seemed that blows he was taking were much harder and there was no protection from the blunt force. Blunt force could be used crush and smash his bones. He could perhaps get the Orcs to bleed out given enough time, but one mistake or take too long, he’d end up dead, or at least defeated. He would still have a chance to saved by Hanshi again, but he didn’t know if she would face the same problems or be able to easily take these two Orcs. That’s another thing Jason didn’t know. He knew that they could bring something back to life, but not how much time they had before death was irreversible. He could only face the challenge head on and hope he could figure something out before it was too late.

The Orcs were equally baffled by the fact that Jason was still alive. The male turned the female towards him and the female hefted the sword up so that the end of the blade was at eye level. They both felt the edge with their thumb. Both of their thumbs were easily slit cleanly and both appeared to satisfied with the problem wasn’t with the sword, but with something about Jason. They turned their head towards him, and began looking him up and down. Jason shrugged. The male Orc went to speak, but then stopped. He let out a loud belly laugh that rang throughout the cave. The female Orc followed suit, bursting out in laughter along with her partner. Jason couldn’t help himself and joined in the joviality. The Orcs both stopped short and stared at Jason.

“Human is interesting. Can’t be cut. Will be fun to smash,” the male Orc said.

“Can smash?” the female Orc asked.

Progressively, Jason had the feeling that he would grow ever more likely to die by snu-snu and it had been growing since the first day he had arrived in this world. He put the thought away and prepared to re-engage with the Orcs. This time, Jason charged at them, rather than waiting for them. The male Orc once again swung at him with his axe. Jason stopped on a dime millimeters outside of the arch of the axe swing and let it pass. And then he thrust into the side of the Orc as hard as he could. As he did so the female or caught what he was doing and attempted to move and cut him down, but the male Orc’s axe hit her cutting deep into her arm. Meanwhile, Jason’s sword pierced through the liver of the male Orc. Both Orcs roared in pain and anger.

As he witnessed this Jason had a thought. His sword couldn’t cut deep enough into them, but their weapons seemed to be able to. He drew back his blade and attacked the female Orc’s sword arm in just the right place to cause her hand to lose its grip on the Orc sword. It fell to the ground. The male Orc made a back hand swing of the axe towards Jason. He ducked under it and grabbed the Orc Sword. It was a hefty weapon that needed all of his strength to properly wield. He looked to the Orcs and smiled before once more charging at them. Another axe swing came. He had been dodging each of them all this time, but now he put all his weight behind his blade and blocked the attack. The weapons clashed against each other taking the male Orc by surprise. This left him once again open to be attacked. Soon he found himself the sword of his partner plunged into his chest, through his heart, and out his back. Jason was victorious against this monster, but there was still one left.

The Orc male fell over backwards, collapsing to the ground. Jason pulled the sword from the carcass of the Orc and held it over his shoulder. His eyes fell on the female Orc, locking eyes with her. The wound inflicted by her comrade’s axe gushed blood. As she found herself being stared at she cowered back away from Jason. The once overwhelmingly powerful Orc woman fell back trying to move away from her stalker who had once been her prey. He crept forward towards the prone Orc, a smile spreading across his face as the distance between the two of them closed. They were soon with distance that the next move could end the fight.

“Please, no smash,” she whimpered, begging Jason to spare her. Her facial features looked distorted and melted. Jason said nothing. The Orc Sword raised off his shoulder and he held it straight up, pointed at the heavens. He looked at it ponderously then looked back to the Orc. Her eyes filled with hope that he might spare her. “I…,” he began, but was cut off by a lunge from her. Hid instincts had been honed. His body swung the blade without him commanding it to. It struck her head, chopping through her skull cleanly, and killing her. However, she had launched herself meaning that even though he had been killed her body was still barreling towards him. Her corpse landed on top him her breast coming to rest directly on his face. Trying to ignore it, he awkwardly pushed her body off of himself, stood, dusted himself off, and walked to the manor.

Inside he found the last Goblin or at least he thought she was a Goblin. For a Goblin she looked pretty, one might even say beautiful. She heard him come up, but she knew that all of her subjects were now dead. She could do nothing to stop him. Jason respected that and had the goal not been to kill every enemy in the mine he’d let her live, but he did agree to Hanshi to do this. He approached her. She watched him maintaining her dignity to the very end. He slit her neck never breaking eye contact with her. She bled out. Jason made sure that she did not collapse to the floor.

“Dungeon Cleared,” a synthetic voice rang out.

Jason went over to the chest that he had found last time. He opened it and took the contents of it which was some sort of chain necklace with a crystal embedded into it. It looked monetarily valuable, but as equipment it didn’t seem like anything impressive. He put it away and went about collecting everything he could find and collect from the manor before exiting. As he left the building, he got an idea. He tried to scan the manor and amazingly it worked. Jason grinned. He had a new plan. He was going to take all the building in the Goblin village. If nothing else he could sell off the materials they were made of, but he could also just sell them wholesale as well, or use one of them for his own home. He could decide later so he went around and collected absolutely everything that the ARMS unit would allow him.