Forgotten But Not Lost

7

The moment the crossbow bolt had entered Shirou's peripheral vision, he had analyzed it, determined the exact path it would take, and began to fling himself in order to intercept the attack using his leather bracer, pumped up with [Steel Guard], in order to block it. If he had his sword out, then he could have deflected the attack midflight, but that was still in its sheath and would have taken a fraction of a second too long to draw.

The bolt had been fired from a heavy crossbow, and would have gone straight through Shirou's arm, if not for the reinforcements. Another reason for he to thank his lucky stars that he had stolen the [Steel Guard] technique and was such a natural with it. There was a strange sense of déjà vu as the metal tip of the bolt pieced his arm as he shielded the visibly surprised twin-tailed girl.
The ironic thing was, from what he could tell by the weapon's history, the goblin hadn't even been aiming for Rin. He had been aiming for Niko who had been standing a few feet next to her, but his shot was off. It also told him the exact position from which it was fired. Shirou might not have been able to see the goblin through the distance and the thick tree branches it was hiding it, but that wouldn't stop him, and unlike the goblin, he didn't miss.
Now they were moving through the forest as fast as they could with one party member in far too much pain to be walking as he still felt like his entire side was being burned off, and a second party member too exhausted to walk for herself.
Sara and Richard had to work together to support Touma's weight as they hobbled along, and Shirou had left Megumin in Aoi's hands. The rest of the formation used as they moved was to have the Priests on either side to block as best they could with there staves, while Rin supported them with magic, Aoi remaining in position near the center so that she could support either side when need be, Itsuki and Riku taking the rearguard, and Shirou in the vanguard, cutting upon a path and supporting the other sides with arrows whenever an attacker got too close.
They had purposely remained fairly close to the city in case of an emergency. It would have usually been about a ten-minute sprint. But weighed down was they were, it would be a half an hour of hell, with the little devils nipping at their heels. And based on the sound of there shrill war cries, there were a lot of them.
As they moved and saw more and more lesser goblins and even raider-class goblins rather than the mud goblin variety, Rin's mind slowly started to process what was going on. Everyone in town knew that a full moon meant new rookies and that rookies started off hunting in that forest after that first week of training. Was it too much of a stretch to believe that the goblins all knew the exact same thing? That they would decide to just nip the problem in the bud before it could even begin and set up a hunting party of their own? She should have seen it sooner, and now they were all in great danger.
Though it seemed that even this situation wasn't enough to convince Shirou to take things seriously. She had wondered before when during their first fight he had only shot two arrows. The two had been rapidly shot, both fired at moving targets and each had been a hit, which was fairly impressive, but for some reason she had figured that he had purposely missed performing a killing blow. And while he now each time he fired an arrow it was going right between the target's eyes, he wasn't taking the melee fight seriously. He had yet to draw the sword that the Commander had given him, using only the worn-down old machete instead, as if the goblins weren't good enough to warrant the scratches they would put on the higher quality blade.
Though even with this he was still slaughtering every goblin that chose to get in their way, usually with no more that three moves and without breaking stride.
It drove home the fact that the fight between him and Bri had been a fight between two Masters, only seeming relatively mundane due to lack of perspective to give it the proper scope. What was happening now was what it looked like when a Master decided to come down and show the Rookies how it's done. It was like a full-grown adult kicking around a bunch of children. Fitting, consider the average goblin was around three and half feet tall. Within five minutes of their scrambled run, Shirou had killed more than fifty goblins himself. Though with how much he had to move about in order to protect everyone without spending all of his arrows, the question of stamina came up. How long could Shirou realistically keep up this kind of thing?
They were almost half way back to the city walls and starting to get hopeful that they would reach some kind of invisible line after which the goblins would be unwilling to follow out of fear of provoking the entire human army, when they stumbled into a clearing and were greeted by a rather intimidating welcoming party.
Standing in the center of the clearing was a rather large goblin. Large by the standards of goblins that it. While most goblins ranged from three to four feet in height, this guy was closer to Rin's height, of five foot three inches, making him a giant among his kind. His skin was a black rather than the dark greens and dirt browns of the other goblins.
It was fully decked out in black iron platemail with odd objects welded all over the armor. Small shiny rocks, coins, and animal teeth. Things that by themselves might have seemed sort of pretty but had been grafted onto the armor without any sense of artistic understanding, in an almost random fashion, looking more stupid that regal. Finally, he was armed with a shield and a large black scimitar.
Surrounding him were two other goblins, each with bows trained on the Trainees, and a total of six armored Hobgoblins, a mammoth sized subspecies of goblins that were each just over six feet tall. Each of these were holding great swords of the same variety as the human Warriors used.
The black goblin stepped forward and started to spit out what seemed to the humans to be random nonsense words, but what must have been some kind of goblin speak. Was it monologue to a group of people that couldn't even understand it? That seemed kind of… weird.
But as it was speaking, Shirou himself spoke up, whispering to the group, or more particularly, to Rin. "Rin, I'll open up the way, protect the others while I take care of this." He said as he calmly started to walk forward with his hands at his sides. The black goblin didn't seem to care and just kept talking, but the archer's trained their arrows on Shirou as he separated himself from the group.
"Archer, what do you think you're…" Rin started, but before she could finish, Shirou started his attack.
Shirou whipped out his blow, notched an arrow and fired it straight for the black goblin before any of them knew what was going on. The goblin was surprised, but not to surprised to raise his shield to protect himself. Fat lot of good that did him.
The arrow slammed into the shield and blew straight through it, before sinking into the center of the goblin's chest and coming out the other side. Both the humans and goblins stared in shock at the hole in the goblin leader's chest as it slowly fell to the ground.
"Holy hell." Itsuki mumbled. "I really should have just been an Hunter."
The goblins screamed, and the two archers fired their arrows. Shirou slapped the first arrow out of the air with his bow before catching the other one. Catching it… as in with his bear hand! Notching the stolen arrow, he fired it back where it came from, before reaching up and drawing the last arrow out of his quiver, firing it straight for the remaining archer. Both bowmen dropped dead with arrows straight through their skulls, and as they did, Shirou discarded his bow and his empty quiver to draw his machete.
The Hobgoblin had taken a moment, looking between each other, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do now that their boss was dead, but a final consensus was made, and they rushed towards Shirou with swords drawn, letting loose a furious war cry.
Shirou was not impressed. Though he had a nagging feeling he had experienced such war cries before, just at a totally different level.
As they reached him, he rushed the Hobgoblin on the far right, diving in underneath its sword swing and slashing at its forward leg, cutting around the metal plates that guarded the monster's legs while keeping it between him and its fellows. The Hobgoblin didn't even give a cry of pain before it tried to make a swing at Shirou, but before his elbow could reach, Shirou ducked the blow and positioned his machete to strike, pushing its point upwards from the gape underneath the Hobgoblin's chest plate and straight up into its heart. Blood gushed from the wound as the heart burst and the monster gave a few spluttered gasps as its blood lost its flow of oxygen and died.
Releasing his hold on his machete, Shirou grabbed the fallen Hobgoblin's great sword with both hands, taking a wide step out from behind the Hobgoblin while swinging the sword with all his strength. The blade took another Hobgoblin in the face, cleaving its head right off its shoulders and causing a spray of blood to fly up into the air for a moment before the body collapsed to the ground in a bloody mess.
Rin watched with the others as Shirou took the creatures apart, until she noticed that some of the Hobgoblins had decided to go after them instead of Shirou. It would be up to her to help guide the others into taking out these two Hob… *Thud*… Alright one Hobgoblin. Shirou had retrieved his machete and thrown it into the second Hobgoblin's back.
Though even if it was only one Hobgoblin, her frontline fighters were all injured or too tired for the run to actually be of use, Yukari looked like she was about to pee herself and the Priests were both tired for healing all of Touma's injured, the run, and looked like they were about to pee themselves.
Well, if Shirou could handle a Hobgoblin or two by himself, then so could she. She was a genius after all. "Jeeru mea gram fel kanon, [Freezing Blood]!" Rin shouted, quickly casting her ice trap spell. The water in the air quickly gathered around the Hobgoblin's leg before freezing into a sold mass.
The creature stumbled and fell to the ground as its leg was ingolfed in an unexpected icy cast, but it wasn't going to stop it for long. The Hobgoblin was already working at smashing the ice, punching at it with its free hand and chipping away piece. But it had only been meant to hold him still for a moment anyways.
Megumin hadn't been the only one to learn a hardly practical finishing move. "Jess… yeen… sark… fram… dart… [Lightning]!" A pale flash came down from the clear sky, striking the Hobgoblin.
The [Lightning] spell, as impressive as it was, wasn't as powerful as real lightning, and even real lightning wasn't a sure kill. However, with so much of the Hobgoblin's body in contact with the ground and covered in metal, it would do a hell of a lot of damage, flashing through all of his muscles and skin in its search for the ground.
[Lightning]'s main disadvantage as a spell was that it targeted a position, rather than an individual. So if the enemy was moving, fat chance your going to hit it, not with its longer cast time. However, once the target is immobilized, it was a great finishing move. Just one that needed to be cast in a clearing, since being underground, in buildings, or even under trees made it useless.
After the spell was cast, Rin kept her eyes on the Hobgoblin, looking for any sign that it was going to get back up, but when it didn't move, she relaxed her shoulders and let out a breath.
"Well, that wasn't so hard." She said to herself.
"We spent too much time." Shirou said. He had killed the remaining two Hobgoblins and was returning to the group, holding the black scimitar of the goblin leader, all covered in blood.
Actually, everything about Shirou was currently all covered in blood. It seemed as though the Hobgoblins had a lot of it. It soaked his entire left side from when he had driving his machete into the first Hobgoblins heart and bits of it had been sprayed all over his body as he had killed the other three at melee range. However, he didn't seem to care about the blood in the slightest. Which Rin thought was weird, then she realized that she didn't care about it all that much either, beyond her analysis of Shirou's mental stability.
Perhaps another effect of whatever it was that brought them there. No point in kidnapping people to serve as soldiers if they all puck their guts out on the battlefield. No, that wasn't right, because the rest of the party still seemed squeamish in the presence of blood and death. Maybe it was just the adrenaline caused by being chased by an army of monsters that wanted to kill them.
…Oh, right. The monsters. Though they had killed this small 'elite' party, the horde was still behind them, and they had just had to slow down to deal with this somehow different goblin and his party. Rin had no idea what the black goblin was all about, but since he was already died it didn't really seem to matter much now.
Shirou retrieved his machete from the back of the Hobgoblin he had thrown it into, holding it in his left hand as he tested the balance between the two weapons. "We aren't going to be able to keep out running them. All of you keep going. I'll stay here and drive them off."
The party was shocked and started to try to argue Shirou out of it. All of them save for Rin.
Something about what he said seemed strange to her. He hadn't said that he would buy them time. He said that he would drive them off. As in continuing to kill them until they thought better of continuing their charge.
'Of course, I could buy you all the time in the world… but…'
"Archer's right." Rin said, silencing the group. "While our group can't outrun the horde while carrying our injured, Archer by himself has a better chance of doing as such. If we stay here, all we will do is drag him down."
Shirou looked at her with a puzzled expression. "I thought you of all people would call me an idiot."
"You are an idiot. You just also happen to be right." Rin said looking him in the eyes. "Don't you dare die on me. As some as it starts looking like you are in trouble, I want you to get out. Understood?"
"I won't die if I don't have to." Shirou said with a nod. "Now go, you're wasting time."
"Everyone let's move!" Rin shouted at them all. Some of them hesitated at first, but they didn't want to be left behind or face the army that they could hear approaching.
Once they were all in the woods again and moving back towards the city, Shirou smiled. He would not die there. They needed him too much for him to allow himself to die. He turned back to where they had come, with the sounds of hundreds of goblins coming closer. It was time for him to stop holding back.
His right hand was already drenched in blood, some of it even his own. So he didn't even need to cut himself to draw the circle on his blades. "O Light, may Lumiaris's divine protection be upon you." He said, smiling to himself as the goblins broke through the trees and came straight for him. He then shouted the final word, a word that felt like it had great meaning to him that he couldn't remember. "[SABER]!"
Light erupted from the blades, blinding the goblins as the divine power sharpened the blades to a razors edge.
And as the light died down, the massacre began.
This chapter is a bit shorter, and the next one probably will be too. Just felt like ending it here for some reason. Probably because this chapter is Shirou kicking ass, while next is Rin momentarily stumbling upon her magecraft in order to save their asses.
If you want to know how many Goblins could realistically be thrown at them, a Goblin woman is supposed to be able to have three batches of kids a year, with each litter being four or five individuals... So a lot! The Goblins are considered the weakest race but still survive based upon pure numbers advantage.
Shirou could kill a hundred of them every single day without putting so much as a dent in their population.