Forgotten But Not Lost

8

"We… we just left him behind." Yukari said, her voice trembling with horror and her own exhaustion. Though she wasn't carrying as much weight as the others, they had still been moving nonstop for over twenty minutes, and Yukari was one of the few people who still have the breath needed to speak.

It had been a few minutes since they last saw a goblin and that time had let them believe that they truly were going to get out of this alive. And with that little bit of hope, regret was allowed to sink its fangs into them. The war cries of the goblins were now so distant that they couldn't hear them anymore, which while comforting in and of itself, the shouts of hatred and rage had at least been assurance that Shirou was still alive and fighting for them to scream at.
"Archer will be fine." Rin said forcibly. "He's too stupid to die, even if someone did kill him. So stop wasting your energy worrying and stay focused."
Her words were hollow. While she could give that advance, she wasn't able to go through with it herself. The fact that she had to run while he stood and fought was eating her up.
But what could she do? Mages were by nature individuals who supported from the back. In a fight with a Servant, a Master like her would be…
Rin was already feeling so empty, that she didn't even notice when her thought was snatched away from her. The only thing she could do was to keep moving forward. If they got back to the city there might have been a chance to get Shirou some reinforcements. But by the time they would arrive, he would have been fighting alone of more than half an hour by himself.
"There's no one he is a rookie like the rest of us." Yui said, her fingers clinging onto her staff as she ran. "He just kills and kills and kills without so much as flinching. He… he couldn't possibly be human. Yes, he's some kind of monster or something, isn't he?"
Rin glared at the girl. She had been the first one to throw herself at Shirou in order to save her own skin, but the moment his back was turned, she let her true feeling show. She was terrified of him and thought he was some kind of monster. He had stayed behind and risked his own life to give them a fighting chance, and this is what she thought of him. Shirou might not have been a perfect hero, but he deserved better.
A desolate hill, swords standing like grave markers, a lonely man betrayed by…
The thought was stripped away from her, leaving her feeling even more empty and angry than before. She played with the idea of simply casting a spell of the brunette girl. Knock her unconscious and leave her for whatever goblins might come by. See how she faired without Shirou's protection. The words were even forming on her tongue, when she spotted something in the woods beyond them.
"Marc em parc!" Rin shouted rapidly, bringing her staff around to point out into the brush off to the right of the party. The [Magic Missile] she fired was charged a fair amount more than the average one, Rin taking advantage of her large magic stores to try to deal more damage. There was a satisfying crack as the goblin she had hit was thrown back into a tree, smacking his head hard enough to cause some pretty heavy bleeding. "There are more of them! Richard, Sara, put down Touma and prepare to guard the line! Riku and Itsuki try to strafe around them! Aoi, Yui, Niko, guard our backs! Yukari support where you can!"
Three more goblins came rushing out of the bushes, trying to take advantage of the group before they could get battle ready.
Riku and Itsuki teamed up on one of them, while Sara and Richard were made to handle one each. Richard and Sara were both tired from carrying their own equipment all that way as well as supporting Touma's weight. However, the one Rin was most worried for was Sara. On top of being exhausted like the rest of them, she was also near blind at such close range, and with such a fast opponent.
"Jeeru mea gram fel kanon, [Freezing Blood]!" Rin shouted, focusing on the arms of the goblin Sara was fighting. Water condensed around the thin goblin's arms before freezing into solid blocks, stopping the creature from continuing to swing its sword around. As its joints were suddenly locked into place, it stumbled in surprise, barely managing to maintain its balance. "Sara, quickly, its arms are restrained!" She shouted at the girl, in case she was unable to see it.
Sara didn't say anything in response, just gave a sort of shout of anger and slashed at the goblin with her own sword, getting a grazing hit across its stomach. The goblin gave off a horrible shrieking sound as it was cut as stumbled back.
Sara stood over the goblin, shaking a bit, but finally grabbed her sword with both hands and stabbed downwards. Rin wondered if blindness made doing that particular act better or worse. Either way, Sara shivered at her first kill.
Rin was moving on to the next one, preparing to once again cast her restraining spell when the girls behind her shouted in panic. She spun around to find another group of three goblins coming towards them with weapons drawn.
Niko did her best to hold her staff up in order to guard attacks, and Aoi had her knife drawn, ready to strike. However, Yui was quickly backing up, too frightened to hold her ground. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, and they could hardly blame her. She was a shit fighter anyways. However, her backing away gave the goblins an open path to the completely immobile forms of Touma and Megumin, one that the goblin's seemed to be eying.
"No." Rin hissed, running back in order to put herself in the spot that Yui had just retreated from, holding her staff up at the ready. Prepared to do whatever she could.
But what could she do? She never learned any close quarters fighting from the Mage's Guild. She might have known something in her pervious life, but all that knowledge was gone now. She knew she had to cast a spell, but her mind racing too fast to find the words and formulas as she saw the goblins coming at them. She would just have to club at them as best she could and hope that it either works out or that one of the others manages to assist her.
Her eyes focused on the one in the front. The one that was going straight at her. It was holding a large straight knife. The edge of which was pointing towards her heart. She could see it. She could see in her minds eye; the knife being driven into her heart. She could practically feel the stab already, her sense the world going to silence.
Then… Rin snapped.
Magical energy flooded her body, causing her to feel giddy as a strange throbbing pain entered into her left arm. Then, formulas rushed into her mind. Thousands of formulas. Formulas that her family had been accruing for multiple generations. So many different forms of magecraft and different spells. All of it just appeared in her mind as if summoned from thin air.
A sort of zen like state took over her as she realized one thing; these goblins were pathetic. With her strength and skill, she could kill them with just her bare hands.
She lifted her left hand with all her fingers extended outwards, pointing towards the charging goblin. She had chosen one of the formulas, a particularly nasty curse that she felt very familiar with. Pale green blue lines appeared around Rin's left arm as she drew on her Od. "[Gandr]!"
The red and black blast had the same kind of size and speed to it as a cannon ball, leaving the goblin no time to dodge. It didn't even scream as the spell hit it head on, knocking it backwards. As the creature hit the ground, blood poured out of its mouth and eyes, its entire body physically paled and began to twitch with the weight of the curse. It wasn't going to die in an instant. This would be painful.
Rin's arm whipped about as she cast the spell again and again. "[Gandr]! [Gandr]! [Gandr]! [Gandr]!" Four more shots, four more downed goblins, each left praying that the end would come sooner as they were left in such a deuterated state of health that death was inevitable.
With the threat eliminated, Rin breathed a sigh of relief. Her magical energy receded and the glow on her left arm disappeared. Almost instantly, that something that was messing with their heads got to work on Rin, destroy the formulas before she could even try to gather up with willpower needed to protect them. Within seconds, all of it was gone, leaving only one hell of a headache in its place. She was angry about it, but too drained from all the running and casting all of those spells to be properly furious at what she had just lost. She could only hope to still remember what happened well enough later that she could be angry then.
"Rin, what was that?" Sara asked her with mouth left ajar.
"Can't talk. Guild secret." Rin lied quickly, catching her breath and holding up her head with one hand. God her head was killing her. "Keep moving. We need to keep moving." She said, gesturing towards Megumin and Touma. "We've getting close to the city. It's just a little farther."
She pointed up through the canopy of the trees and sure enough one could just make out the top of the city walls through the greenery. They were so close.
The bushes behind them began to shake and all of them who had the energy to still jump did so. But it wasn't another goblin ambush. "Onii-chan." Megumin said with all the energy she could muster.
Shirou looked dead on his feet. He was gasping for air, One of his eyes was closed in order to stop the blood that soaked his hair from dripping down into it. Cut littered his clothes. Rin wondered just how much of the blood on his was his own. He seemed to be struggling to keep his grip on his weapons. The black scimitar he had stolen was still there, and he still had his one hand sword, but his machete had been replaced with another one that was just slightly larger, and his old bow and quiver were both missing from when he had thrown them down.
She had questions, but not enough time. "Don't stand still. Keep moving." Rin said to everyone, no longer shouting her instructions like she had before. Riku and Itsuki sheathed their weapons and took their turn lifting up Touma, while Sara picked up Megumin. They all started moving again, back towards the city walls. "You alright?" Rin asked him, keeping it short to save air.
She had put too much energy into those spells she used. They were far more expensive than the ones she had used before. It was almost as if she hadn't been receiving any help from the elementals at all while casting them… Had she? She already couldn't remember, but that in itself told her that it had been magic from her pervious world.
"I'll live." Shirou mumbled as he continued on, his single open eye looking around the surroundings. "So many damn crossbows…" He gave a grunt of pain as he fingered a spot on his side, one of many on his body. "Led them down a different path… circled back around. Luckily goblins are short… not too hard to out run."
"You need healing?" Niko asked, looking to the blood covered Hunter with a puzzled expression.
Shirou shook his head. "Save your strength. I'll make it."
Three more minutes. That's all it took to get back to the city gate. Nothing attack them, but the tension of it all was enough to drive them crazy. Especially when the wind picked up in the trees momentarily sounded like the shrill cries of goblins. As they approached the city gates and the guards spotted them, some of the party began to weep while others fell down to their knees.
"What the hell happened to you guys?" On of the guards said in shock as he looked them over.
"Goblins. Lots of them." Rin managed to spit out. "I don't know if any of them are still following us."
The guard looked the party over, his eyes focusing on Shirou the hardest. "Alright, get inside. I'll contact the guard captain and see about locking down the gate until we get an idea of what is going on out there."
The party breathed a sigh of relief until the sound of a heavy thud reached their ears.
"Archer!" Rin shouted, seeing Shirou collapsed unceremoniously to the ground.
Shirou was slow to return to consciousness. His body didn't hurt, but he felt tired and there was a fog over his mind. "Ah, so you have finally awakened my friend." An extremely kind voice said.
Shirou turned his head to see a Priest standing there with a gentle smile. He was tall, with a shaved head and large ears. He wore robs, but of a different style than the ones normally worn by Priests, closer to that of a Buddhist monk, though Shirou couldn't remember what that was. He was holding a metal staff like any other Priest, though its top was in the shape of a bladed ring, rather than the solid mass or point that some of the other Priests had. The moment that he saw the man, a word came to his lips. "Ojizō-sama?"
The man started to chuckle. "You aren't the first to have called me that. Some have even managed to remember what the name meant long enough to tell me about it. Ojizō-sama was apparently a god in our previous world who took care of the souls of children who dead before their parents. He sounds like a good person, so I do not mind the comparison. However, I am no God. My name is Tsuga, and it is my pleasure to inform you Shirou-kun, that you are not dead. That hazy feeling you are experiencing right now is just because of how much blood you had lost. You appeared to have run quite a distance after being hit by multiple crossbow shots, though the wounds were rather shallow."
"Oh. That's good then. Did everyone else make it?" Shirou asked the man.
"Yes, your party is very much alright. They just need some food and rest to recover from their exhaustion. Kuro-kun went with your party to treat them to lunch after he fetched me to help you." Tsuga said.
"Kuro-senpai?" Shirou said, recognizing the name.
"Yes. I am the Priest who serves in the same party as Kuro-kun; Team Typhon Rocks. They are all interesting characters, but good people." Tsuga laugh and took out a stack of clothes. "He has also left some clothes here for you to ware until you can clean up your old set."
"Looks like I owe him again. Maybe I could cook him something. Do you know what kind of food he likes?" Shirou asked the man.
"I've never known Kuro to be very particular when it comes to food. However, it is the thought that counts. I'm sure he would be happy to receive anything." Tsuga said. "You know it was talking about you all of last week. Said he found an odd rookie how was unlike all the others. While at the time I took that with a grain of salt, I am starting to believe it. There really is something different about you."
"Just your imagination." Shirou chuckled and then took a deep breath to replace the oxygen. His blood really had been thinned down.
"You should probably stay home tomorrow. You won't be able to leave the city anyways. The city gate has been shut due to a rather large goblin raiding party." Tsuga said with a shrug. "From what we can gather from people who can understand pieces of their language, they seem to be shouting something about avenging a Prince. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
"Um…" Shirou didn't know what to say. His eyes just went to the black scimitar that he had stolen off of the dead 'Prince''s body.
Tsuga just laughed. "Don't worry. The goblins will eventually remember that they don't have any proper way of attacking a fortified area, after a few hundred of them are killed. I doubt there will be a single casualty on our side. After that they will return to the Ruin City and leave us in peace again. While they are honor bound to attack because the Prince died, they have over a hundred Princes. Goblin society as a whole will hardly care if one or two of them dies. Just go home and get your rest. You will have to be back on your feet once the gates are opened again."
Rin had been thinking ever since they had gotten back to safety. Thinking was the only thing she could do that would stop her from making a spectacle of herself. The sun was going down and she was still sitting on her bed, thinking.
After she looked around, there were so many hints that something was up that it was maddening.
Besides their party, the barracks provided for the Reserve Soldiers was empty. It could have been that the group that had appeared four weeks before them had simply done well for themselves and had decided to splurge the money needed to move out of the admittedly crummy barracks. Or it could have meant that every last one of them was already dead.
She asked the manager of the barracks and it turned out to be the latter option. As well as the group from the month before that. Entire party wipes. No survives. Each party disappearing within days of starting their new job. Since a normal party would be made up of two or three front liners, a mage with no spells, a Hunter who can't shoot an arrow, and a Priest, even a small group of three or four goblins might be enough to kill them.
No one would even investigate if they died.
On the goblins side of things, a normal set of rookies that lived long enough to move on from hunting goblins would have often been hunting goblins for the first month or two. Two months of having to kill around a goblin a day for each person just to make ends meet. So with on average twelve people killing on average one goblin a day for lets say forty days, that's just shy of five hundred goblins killed by each new set of rookies, and to prevent this, all the goblins have to do is turn the tables and hunt the rookies before they can get experienced.
They would know exactly where new rookies tend to hunt, and when they appear. They would round up a large number of goblins and search the woods for them. It would be easy to get the numbers required. They have a city with a population of nearly a million goblins nearby. And if the presence of so many higher-class goblins means anything, they were probably making a sport out of it. Like the old English nobles who hunted wild boar.
She had underestimated the goblins because people referred to them as simple monsters. They were not monsters. They might not have had human levels of intelligence and would throw themselves at the city wall for hours without realizing that they aren't going to get anywhere without siege weapons, but they were physically capable of using tools and mentally capable enough to create a language.
This wasn't man verses monster, this was a war between two peoples. A war that shouldn't have had anything to do with Rin and the others, but that they were now invested in for the same reason any commoner becomes invested in a war. For survivals sake.
That said, Rin wouldn't feel pity for them. They wanted the humans dead just as much as the humans wanted them dead. They were the ones that declared war when they first sided with the No Life King in his attempt to commit genocide on all humanity, the elves, the dwarves, the centaurs and various other races. If they were brought to extinction, then the war like goblin people would have earned their fate if you asked her.
Rin would not stop. After all, they still needed the money.
Which brought her to her next big headache. The fact that they hadn't earned a single copper that entire day, and that the next day they wouldn't be able to leave the city.
Not only that, they had been forced to leave Touma's sword behind in their mad dash for safety. The boy's armor was also mangled beyond use and would need to be completely replaced. Shirou used up all of his arrows and had to leave his bow behind, and then there were the provisions that they had hidden in the woods before they had started their serious hunting.
It hadn't been anything important. Just small items for maintaining their equipment, some tarps for if it rained, and the lunches that they had packed for that day. But if it wasn't still there when they got back, then it would all have to be replaced, costing them money they didn't have to spend.
There had been a bounty of thirty silver for the Goblin Prince, but without his body they couldn't collect it. The fact that the bounty was only for thirty silver showing how much of a joke people treated the goblins as. The joke didn't seem funny when they were using horde tactics and you were in the open field instead of safe inside of fortress walls.
The door to the room opened and Shirou walked in. He looked at Rin, surprised to see her before something clicked into place. "I guess we are going to be rooming together then." He said simply.
"Obviously. How would it look if I said that some of the girls are just going to have to suck it up and deal with rooming with a guy and then refused to do it myself?" Rin said, her tone harsh enough to make Shirou wince. She got up from her bed and walked over to him, looking him up and down. "Are you going to be alright?"
"Yeah. I just need to take it easy for a little while my body replaced the blood I lost." Shirou said nervously.
"I'm glad." Rin said, giving Shirou a gentle and truly disarming smile. It was so disarming, that he had no time to react before her fist buried itself right in the center of his stomach. Shirou choked and fell down to his knees, clutching at his stomach. This hit had been far stronger than he had expected for someone of Rin's stature.
Rin flipped her hair back and glared down at Shirou as he finished collapsing to the ground. "Remember that the next time you decide not to tell anyone that you are bleeding to death, you jerk!" She shouted down at him before turning around and going back to bed, ignoring his pained whimpers as he tried to regain the ability to breath.
Lumiaris was not happy. Someone had managed to invoke one of his blessings without 'his blessing', effectively trespassing on his domain. Worse, it was a cheap copy of a power he had created. It was not something that had ever happened before, and it had caught the Light God's attention and sparked his anger.
However, when he went to try to investigate what had happened, he found his way bared by a giant white wolf. "Eldritch, what is the meaning of this?" Lumiaris demanded of the White Goddess.
"I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about, Lumiaris. Perhaps you should try speaking and explaining what it is that you are after rather than just shouting at people. It tends to help with communication." Eldritch lifted her chin at such an angle as to make it look like she was smirking at him.
"Do not play me for a fool Eldritch! One of your Hunters invoked one of my blessings, intruding upon my domain! I demand…!"
"There you go again, barking your demands like the obnoxious pup that you are." Eldritch's words weren't shouted so much as they were thrown at Lumiaris with the weight of her power behind him. "An intrusion on your domain, is it? Perhaps I should start punishing your subjects who dare to intrude upon my domain. Who kill in my forests and scavenge them without my blessings." Lumiaris reeled back at the threat. "Do not mistake the fact that I have never bothered to interfered with you before as to meaning that you are able to do whatever you want, Lumiaris. Unless you wish for the wilds themselves to become your enemy, leave my pack alone."
The power radiating from her was pure and wild. A power that existed outside of such young and childish ideals like good or evil. A power that was born alongside those life and death themselves. Lumiaris was a powerful god, made as such by the will of the humans who followed his ideals, but Eldritch, she was a force of the world, an idea of nature that would never change and far predated the Light God's own existence. Even with his power, Lumiaris was unsure of how conflict would go between himself as the Elder Goddess, but he was sure that it wasn't worth trying. Not over such a relatively small matter.
"Very well. So long as this is an isolated case, I will not pursue this any further. But if you are behind this, Eldritch. Then there will be bad blood between us two." Lumiaris said.
"There you go again, barking like a little puppy." Eldritch said, her playful tone returning. "As the humans say it, don't let the door hit you on the way out." Lumiaris glared but disappeared from view in a flash of light. "What a steer you are making, my little Hunter. You've already got Lumiaris's nickers in a twist." Eldritch said smiling to herself. "You should be glad that I like troublesome little puppies like you."
You know, that part with Rin doesn't seem as long on paper as it did in my head. Oh well.
I assume you can all see the reason why everyone is going to eventually leave Rin and Shirou party, right? Yep, that's right! They are all going to get angry about how everyone makes fun of them for depending on mommy and daddy to take care of them, with Shirou taking on side hunting jobs with the Typhoon Rocks team too make the actual money while the rest of them aren't allowed to hunt in the grown up places, and have to have mommy and daddy around to save them in case they get a booboo.
Team Kindergarten.