Chapter XXXII: Demonic Beastmen IV

Demonic Wildlands Near the Great Plateau

Month of the Garuda 37, 172 ,328 DE

Vorn looks behind us, to the east. "They're a lot closer than I thought."

"We've been walking fast. The Gnolls have been running." Rapidly spitting out my words, I rush to the fallen scouts and examine their corpses.

Prying open their eyelids reveals normal blackish-brown eyes. They have little more than the barest his of the stench of Chaos on their bodies, and their smells normal.

"They haven't been corrupted yet." My words are meant for Vorn, who moved up behind me in near silence.

"If they aren't corrupted, whey would they be part of this attack?" Vorn probably does not expect an answer to his soft-voiced question.

"They're only males. The females are unlikely to let them eat the corrupted Blood Fruit, but when they go raiding or to war, the females will press them into service."

:I look toward the west, where I hear the sounds of a large number of beings moving through the forest with no regard for the amount of noise they make. I draw my knives. "Time to kill Gnolls."

Slipping into the underbrush, I circle silently to the south of the Gnolls and wait.

The main body of the war band consists of females. On average, they stand two-hundred-twenty to two-hundred-sixty centimeters in height. Despite their barrel chests, they have overall gangly builds, with bandy arms and legs. Their clothing comprises some armor pieces, leather harnesses, and mostly crude jewelry. Like the males we killed, their skin and fur are mostly shades of grey, but a few of them have brown to yellowish fur. The lambent red glow in their eyes reveals their corruption.

Old Man Jones has a lot of books about the life of countless universes. According to Old Man Jones' books, Beastmen were first made by the Dragons, but because they are half human, they, now, spawn naturally in many of those countless universes. None of the books explains why they spawn naturally, but there are dozens of possible reasons in a few of the books. Grey is the base skin and fur color for all Beastmen. A small minority of Beastmen shows the coloring of the animal or Beast species used in the creation of the original, ancestral Beastmen. A bare handful are born as Albinos, and those Beastmen have extremely high aptitudes for the use of Power. Most become Casters of some sort. Far fewer are born with jet black skin and fur. Black Beastmen are the inherent rulers of their species. Born with racial knowledge and memories from other Beastmen, they grow in strength and Coalesce at a pace that far exceeds their brethren.

Luckily, I do not see and Black or Albino Gnolls. They would be a problem.

"Yaaaaaa! Yaaaaaa! Ya-Ya-Ya-Ya!" When they reach the corpses of their scouts, the howls of the leading Gnolls fill the air. Many Gnolls can speak the Beast Language and human languages, but they almost always use their own barking tongue to communicate amongst themselves.

Hearing the leading Gnolls, the attentions of the Gnoll warriors on the south flank of their war band turns in that direction for a moment. A moment is all I need. I slip in among the Gnolls before any of them notice my presence. Driving both knives into the belly of a Gnoll with no armor on its lower abdomen, I slice it open from ribs to ribs.

"YAAAAAAAA!" As The Gnoll's entrails fall from the slit in its belly, its agonized scream echoes in the forest.

Disgusted by the polychromatic sheen covering the Gnoll's entrails, I kick it away. It plows into two more Gnolls behind itself, knocking them to the ground. Jumping on the Gnoll pile to avoid the spears of the Gnolls behind me, I bury my knives in the eye sockets of the two knocked down Gnolls.

"RAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!"

Vorn leaps into the middle of a pack of Gnolls, laying about with sword and axe. Despite their height, Gnolls have slender builds compared with Vorn, to say nothing about Vorn in his Bear Transformation. With each attack, Vorn sends the broken corpse of a Gnoll flying.

Each of these Gnolls have four to fives times the speed and ten times the strength of a common human, which does not Cultivate or Coalesce. They would sit solidly in the lower level of Foundation Building Cultivators if placed among humans. They are still not strong enough to provide a good measure of Vorn's actual strength in his Bear Transformation.

I am not weak, but I would need to shift to my real form to match Vorn's Bear Transformation strength. I rely more on speed and attacking the fatal points of my victims. I move to cover Vorn's back. He makes a useful substitute for a steamer tank to plow through the middle of the Gnolls. As I follow behind him, I dodge the spears, swords, and axes of the Gnolls while I sink my knives into unarmored bellies, throats, and thighs. Even if I do not immediately kill my targets, I take them out of the fight.

While we fight, a hint of the strange snake-like scent reaches my nose. From the strength of the scent, the source should be close, but I do not see anything.

"Do you smell that?"

I glance over my shoulder at Vorn. "Yeah. But I can't find the source."

A Gnoll standing over two-hundred-sixty centimeters leads a band of five other Gnolls around the outside of the war band. Probably thinking me to be much weaker than Vorn, it comes after me from behind. I may not be a small man, but the Gnoll still stand an average of more than thirty centimeters taller. Even with the generally gangly builds, only three of them can attack me at once.

The snake-like smell lingers around the big Gnoll, but it is not the source. When I saw the big Gnoll start maneuvering toward me, I never noticed anything around it. There were just a few other Gnolls around its size: band mothers or pack mothers, alpha Gnolls, so to speak. Just what is the source of the smell?

The big Gnoll attacks me with a pair of hatchets big enough to be battle axes for the average human. Flipping my knives to reverse grips, I step to the right and dodge the spear thrust from the Gnoll on that side. With my knives blades pressed tightly against my forearms, I stop the hatchets with forearm blocks.

As the big Gnoll snarls, I bare my teeth and kick it in its knee.

Crunch.

My kick destroys the big Gnolls knee. Gnolls, like most Beastmen, have the reverse jointed knees common to the majority of animals and Beasts. If they do not have experience fighting humans, they do not think about how humans can kick.

Slipping under another thrust from the Gnoll to my right, I stab it in both legs, tearing open the major arteries. Blood fountains from the wounds. Dropping its spear, the Gnoll tries to grab me, but I spring backward.

A spear thrust from my left side opens a shallow wound along my ribs, but I trap the spear's shaft between my arm and ribs. Flipping my other knife back to a normal grip, I chop off the Gnoll's fingers. As it releases its grip on it spear, I step in and slash its throat.

With the big Gnoll down, the rest of its band fall one after the next, but Vorn and I are still surrounded and outnumbered. We keep killing Gnoll after Gnoll, but for every Gnoll we kill another shows up from between the trees. We take minor wound after minor wound. With only the two of us, the Gnolls are unlikely to give up or run. I do not know if we can finish all of them off before blood loss becomes a problem.

As we continue to kill, I continually scan the Gnolls and the surrounding forest for any sign of the source of the snake-like scent.

"Trouble. Archers to the northeast."

Fifty meters to the northeast, about twenty archers stand in a group with a couple pack mothers in front of them. I scan the Gnolls surrounding us. "Those are scouts, males. As long as the warriors are this tight around us, they won't dare to shoot. Push toward them. Stay in the thick of the warriors."

Vorn changes his path, pushing forward faster. I kill or cripple the Gnolls that push in from behind, but too many keep jumping in. Every one I kill has three ready to take its place.

"Duck!"

Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish.

As I spin around toward the sound, an arrow punches through my shoulder, and several others barely miss me. More bury themselves in the three Gnolls closest to me.

"You said they wouldn't shoot!" With anger flooding into his scent, Vorn, still holds up the corpse of a Gnoll for a shield.

Around us, the Gnoll warriors pull back five or six meters. The display malicious, gleeful expressions, as they leave us at the center of an open circle. Lowering their spears, they hem us in with a hedgerow of sharp steel.

Next to the Gnoll archers, a mottled brown and yellow Gnoll growls something I cannot hear, and the archers shoot again. Sheathing my knives, I drag the corpse of a Gnoll in front of me to block the arrows.

With their heads buried in corpses or the ground, a few dozen arrows stick up around me. Pulling one out, I look at the head. As I expected, multiple back-curving barbs stick out of it. After throwing the arrow at the circle of Gnolls, I drive the arrow in my shoulder through and out my back.

"Gaaarrrr!" I cannot keep from yelling in pain and rage. I block more arrows with the Gnoll corpse and snap off the arrow shaft in my shoulder. Reaching around to pull the rest of the arrow out. Thick streams of blood flow down my chest and back.

Vorn glares at the surrounding Gnolls. "Are you ready to break out?"

I pick up a Gnoll spear. "Head straight for the archers!"

Springing toward the Gnoll, I hurl the spear. The Gnoll in the front line ducks, and the spear punches through the head of the Gnoll behind it.

Vorn uses his Gnoll corpse like a flail, slamming the Gnoll I missed into the ground. Three of the Gnolls, near that one, stab at Vorn, two targeting his torso and one targeting his legs. He blocks the spear aimed at his legs and grabs another before it punches into his gut. The last one leaves a shallow cut on his bicep as he leans to the side. Stepping in as the Gnolls withdraw their spears, Vorn chops off the hand of one Gnoll and forces his way through their spear wall.

As I follow Vorn back into the middle of the Gnolls, I gut or slit the throats of a few more of them.

"Yaaaaaa! Ya-Ya-Ya-Ya! Yaaaaaa!"

Backing away from us, the Gnolls turn their attention to a group of seven Gnolls that joined the mottled Gnoll by the archers when I was not paying attention. Armored in good quality plate and chain, each of them stand a full three meters tall, and has a polychromatic glow in their eyes.

Vorn's bear-like muzzle opens in what should be a grin. "This just got interesting."

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