So these guys are the lightweights around here, but with twenty and me in magical fur armor, I wasn’t sure I could take them. My memory dream showed that a lucky throw could kill me. What it meant was that I would leave and let them get on with their hunt. Knowing what they were called and how much HP they had given me more info to work with. This trip was a success, so it was time to bug out.

I used every bit of my sneaking to get out of that spot. The hunt took them a little ways away from me, and with me cutting back towards the drop-off side, I figured that I would be good. I managed to get maybe about 15 yards from the hunting group when I heard the unnt turn and run towards me.

Now I might not be scared too much of one gremlin; I was, however, horrified of a hurt unnt. Every time I hunted unnt I set an ambush or used a trap because of the horns and size. So with it running at me, the time for stealth was over, and I went to a full sprint. I wasn’t outpacing the unnt, but I was outpacing the gremlins, so I had that going for me.

After about four seconds, the unnt ran right past me. About three seconds after that, I felt a sharp pain in my leg, and I went down with an arrow-sized spear sticking out of my calf. I pulled the arrow thing out as it wasn’t far in and started to hobble away as fast as I could. The blasted hunting party had started to gain and then circle around me. I guessed that I was a better target than the unnt and perhaps as much or more usable meat if I was something that they ate.

There would be no way that I could outrun these guys now that I was hurt. So I quickly backed up to the edge of the drop-off. I wanted to make it so I didn’t have to turn much. Either I won this fight, or it was over for me. This reminded me if I did get out of this, I’m going to have to take the time to ask Sam if I respawn or if this is one of those one-and-done types of new lives.

I dropped my pack off of my back and saw that Blink was gone. Not sure when she vanished, but at least she could get out of this mess with her vanishing act. I pulled around my staff and settled into a fighting stance. The undergrowth where I was would make using my staff hard, but it would also limit the use of the spears for anything other than stabbing. This should make them close in on me, and I was hoping that it would give me a reach advantage.

As soon as the first one was inside range, I jabbed right at him. I knew it wouldn’t usually be a powerful attack, but I wanted to end this fast, so I powered up my fire strike to go with it. As soon as I did, the end of the staff slammed into the gremlin, and he went flying back a few feet.

I stepped forward, flowing into my next strike. I whipped the back end of staff down and around and caught the next one in the head. I added fire to this one as well because I wanted to make sure that I was putting them down as fast as I could. If I could do enough damage fast enough, then I might be able to scare them away, which was what I needed to do. If I had to fight to the end, I wasn’t sure I could beat all these guys even if they were only 15 to 20 pounds apiece.

It was on then. I started to wade into them as they came. I made sure to stay no more than about five feet from the edge as I was fighting. After the first seven were down with single strikes. I was done with most of my mana. I was adding three fire damage per, which took six mana. The eight in the staff brought my mana to 48, and so I had enough that I could make eight attacks, but I wanted to save one if the hunt master showed up. That meant that each of my first 7 strikes did at least 5 damage which was a good thing to know. These other gremlins weren’t as strong as the hunt leader.

I would have thought that if you lost seven of your hunting party, you would give up and go home, but I was working from earth human perspective, not gremlins. So they kept at it, and I started to take two or three goes to drop a single gremlin. This meant that they were now able to get close enough to mess me up too.

As I took a step back so that I would be close to the cliff, I felt another stab into my leg. This one didn’t drop me likely because I was standing and not running, but it came from behind and to my left. So I turned to see a pair of gremlins smiling and jabbing their little spears at me. So rather than a classical controlled strike, I let go of my staff with my right hand and turned my whole body towards the left. I hit the close one and bowled him into the next one, and both of them off the cliff. I then got hit in the back again, but this time it was in my armor. I felt like I took no damage off of that one.

I quickly looked up to see that the green health bar was moving down a bit with each jab I took. I had dropped 9 of them, but I was down to about 2/3s my total health, and I wasn’t liking that. I kept my spin going and saw that brat that had hit me. He was right in the open, close to where I had killed the first one. His neck was open, and blood was pouring out of it. Blink was jumping off of the body and heading back into the brush.

Then there was the pause. People talk about the calm before the storm because that is a natural thing. The ocean calms down, and the waves are gentle. The breeze is slight, and the world is quiet. The same thing happens in fights where one side wants to rush the other. It’s a gathering of thought and getting timing down. Not that I understood that was what was happening. I only thought, hey, cool, they stopped.

The hunt leader was in the front of the charge. If they weren’t green and with claws, it would almost have been cute or funny, but it was kind of scary to see nine little green guys with little spears come at me. I knew that this would hurt in ways that I never would want. Those spears only reached so far up, and so my legs were going to get most of it since my tunic wasn’t in their attack path.

I’m not sure of what all happened in the fight after that. I know that Blink came in again on a flank, and I’m sure that she saved me more than once. I had been able to get my last magical attack in on the hunt leader, but then I was a pin cushion. After that, they were on top of me. Not just all around, no, those suckers could jump and hold on. I had about 4 spears in my right leg and at least one in my left when I went down. I know I jabbed one of the spears deeper into my leg as I snapped it off. I also knew that I ended up crashing at least two of the gremlins when I went over like Jack’s giant. It was then all teeth and claws from them and teeth and hands from me.

I threw a few of them over the cliff and used one to bash another one to death as I was on my knees. One even shoved their arm in my mouth as I was yelling. I bit that one and almost choked on the little green arm before it got yanked out. I also know that the one that tried to bite my neck got killed with Blink hitting it from above. It was a nasty fight. While I won it, I felt like I lost, but that was better than them. They weren’t feeling anymore about anything.

My mana bar was low, like empty low, and my health wasn’t that great, being that I had all sorts of little debuff symbols showing up and less than a third of my health bar left. My stamina was bottomed out and didn’t look like it was going up at all. I likely had a debuff that was making it, so I could not recover.