By the time the third bell rung screams could already be heard coming from outside the town's walls. Within minutes it turned into an apparent panic.

Sizarbob turned around and saw his goblins, marching through the wheat field, carrying their banners proudly, displaying them for all to see.

“Forward!” Sizarbob commanded, stood up in the middle of the orange field and charged towards the gates. His goblins responded with encouraging cries of war, that Yuusha was now able to distinguish from shrieks of pain, and quickened their pace. Yuusha also followed, but still stayed crouched and a fair distance away from such an obvious target as Sizarbob.

When Yuusha looked toward the wooden gates, he saw them open – some people were running inside the town from the surrounding area. They’ll make it inside with time to spare, he thought moving forward with some relief that, at the very least, the civilians won’t be butchered under the walls of their own city. Though it won’t matter that much in the end – there won’t be a prolonged siege. There won’t be any siege. Those defenses are at best suited to guard against a pack of wolves. Any half-decent thief or assassin would find a way over that wall. And as for the hobgoblins… Yuusha recalled Sizarbob’s previous encounters with wooden structures and wondered how thick a stone wall would have to be to stop him.

An arrow whizzed through the air in the direction of the assailants but landed in the ground long before reaching any of them. Yuusha ducked back and sneaked a peek at the walls. He saw a couple of figures with bows on each of the two wooden towers over the open gates. They were obviously aiming at the only clearly visible target – the huge hobgoblin, but even if it seemed that for now, the archers were of range, Yuusha still had no interest in getting caught in the crossfire and stayed further back.

“Archers!” Sizarbob shouted without stopping for a second, simply sprinting ahead, leaving the other goblins further and further behind. Damn, he’s fast for someone his size! Yuusha thought. Had they spotted us a couple of minutes later he probably would’ve even reached the gates before all the townies got inside!

Yuusha heard rustling and straining sound from bowstrings being pulled. Arrows flew out of the wheat as the goblins responded to the enemy archers in kind. However, goblin arrows also failed to reach their target - about a dozen arrows were fired and every single one of those landed right back into the wheat field.

Dear God, where are you aiming!? Yuusha wanted to kill the little green rats after one of their arrows arrow flew by his ear.

Though the would-be defenders of Foric fared no better – Sizarbob did not have a single scratch on him, despite being a target equivalent of an upright bull, charging straight at the archers in a straight line. Oh, right, Sizarbob did say most of their fighters were already killed, Yuusha remembered and saw Sizarbob already run out of the field, only a couple hundred meters from the gate and closing in fast.

A goddamn locomotive! Yuusha thought in admiration, stopped for a moment and simply watched Sizarbob charge into the wooden gates, shoulder-first and bust right through them. All that’s missing is a hobgoblin-shaped hole in the gate, Yuusha thought as tree trunks and pieces flew from the devastated gates.

The human archers screamed, haphazardly firing their last arrow shots at Sizarbob with shaking hands, who ran to the base of the nearest tower. At this point they wouldn’t have hit him even if he stood still, Yuusha thought with a tint of melancholy watching Sizarbob's handiwork - one of the towers shook, creaked, tilted and fell into the other platform with the screaming archers still on both of them.

Yuusha understood that those archers were long beyond his help, so he didn’t even bother rushing to the gates. Every single goblin that isn’t carrying three times his own weight will outrun me anyway, so why embarrass myself by arriving dying and gasping for breath before I even had to lift a finger?

When Yuusha did arrive at the gates the goblins were already done scavenging the corpses of the four archers for anything useful, which, it seemed, wasn’t much at all, so a good portion of the goblins ran through the nearby houses, looking for more loot.

The bows the archers had weren’t any fancy longbows, in fact, it was astonishing that they survived the collapse of the towers. Nevertheless, they were still too big for the goblins’ child-sized bodies to be used properly.

And, as it turned out, the defenders had no armor, to begin with. Instead, they had loose, worn-out tunics in various autumn colors. Not even a single pair of shoes among them? Yuusha was surprised, expecting the fantasy setting staple - knee-high leather boots, completely forgetting how hot it would be in those in the middle of a hot summer day, and that an average fantasy world farmer usually didn’t have access to a pair of fancy breathing sneakers.

Yuusha was almost done with his brief inspection when he caught a glimpse of one of the defenders' open, lifeless, fear-struck eyes, Yuusha instantly looked away and made sure not to look at their faces again. Shame, disgust. It was hard to tell which he felt more. It was Yuusha’s second time ever seeing human bodies, and the last time not a single body had an attached head, which, as it turns out, had its advantages.

Wide, deep cuts, Yuusha looked at their wounds. Two cut in the chest. The heart is there right? So, two - straight through the heart, one… beheaded, the other- Yuusha gulped- cut in half. He’s efficient, so at least they didn’t suffer, Yuusha tried to comfort himself. They didn’t suffer.

The green goblins continued running back and forth from house to house – one goblin ran out of a house, another two ran in, one jumped out of the window of a second floor, for some reason. It's like kids having a party, Yuusha compared. None of them have blood on their blades, so at least this area was already evacuated. But even though the goblins seemed to have fun, all of them stayed in the area at the gates and none ran further into the town, as if waiting for something.

“My lord,” Sizarbob walked up to Yuusha, “I ask if you willing to do goblins great honor.”

Sizarbob took out the smallest blade he had, a dagger in his hands, but a full-blown sword for Yuusha, and extended it to the hero.

Oh no! Yuusha already knew what the hobgoblin was going to ask. No fucking way!

“Goblins collect heads for Shaman. It will be great honor if you cut one for us!”

No! No-no-no-no, FUCK NO! Yuusha stormed straight past Sizarbob without thinking and went down the main road, further into the city, past the goblin looters. Every fiber of Yuusha's being rejected even the notion of doing… that. Something like that, the mere thought sent shivers down Yuusha's spine.

See!? What were you trying to do? Yuusha vented his frustration in silence. Buy some time for the others to escape? Or did you actually believe that you would stop the goblins? Doesn’t matter whether you’re brave or stupid if in the end your head is thrown into a wagon! Was it that hard to run away!? Dumb fucks!!

Yuusha kept walking down a main road without looking, not a single goblin or human in sight, though, boiling with anger and frustration, he probably wouldn’t have noticed even he walked right past them.

Yuusha came to his senses when he reached the fifteen-meter wide river that split the Foric town in half. He stood no more than fifty meters away from an arched wooden bridge, the only way, it seemed, to cross the river. On the other side of the bridge stood a single person – a teenage girl with straight, blonde hair in two bunches, wearing a deep blue dress, and holding a silver staff.