Free Web NovelChapter 150: Group
The full moon rose in all its beauty between the heavy clouds in the Klento sky, illuminating the camp courtyard completely.
Below Gorak, a sturdy shadow was cast, and he said to Victor:
"You are very agile. You managed to dodge my first blow."
"And you are very strong."
"DHAHA! Of course, I’m a Gorak!"
Victor then adjusted the grip of the sword in his hands, feeling the heat flow through his muscles, a sign of the adrenaline flowing like a river through his veins.
Against Gorak, brute force would do absolutely nothing; Victor would have to use his mind against him.
Soon, Gorak advanced again, this time with more speed, swinging the hammer from side to side in a devastating arc.
Victor jumped back, feeling the air cut by the force of the hammer, and saw the sparks fly again as the hammer struck the stone floor.
Victor used Gorak’s natural imbalance with this weapon to attack him. He lunged at the giant, his sword gleaming in the moonlight, and struck a blow across part of Gorak’s chest, aiming for a point where his armor met his shoulders.
The blade easily met resistance, but managed to penetrate a little, causing Gorak to roar in pain and rage. He turned his body, trying to strike Victor with the hammer, but the warrior had already moved away, moving with agility.
Victor moved his sword so that it was close to his arm, like a professional assassin.
"You’re an annoying insect!" Gorak declared, his eyes blazing with fury. "I’ll crush you like one!"
Victor had to keep his distance most of the time and keep attacking the weak points in the armor. This was the only way to defeat Gorak, who had overwhelming strength and agility, and the weight of his armor and hammer limited his speed.
The two warriors continued to face off, and the sound of metal against metal and crashing continued to echo through the courtyard.
Victor took every opportunity to strike, aiming for the gaps in Gorak’s armor. He knew he couldn’t keep up this pace for long, not without risking more, but he also knew that if Gorak caught him, he would probably end up dead.
Fortunately, Victor was lucky and saw his big chance when Gorak raised his hammer for a devastating blow, briefly exposing his unprotected side. Victor lunged forward and struck with all his might, aiming between two iron plates on his opponent’s right side. The blade sliced through flesh and bone with a terrible sound.
Gorak screamed and dropped the hammer, which fell to the ground with a thud. He staggered backwards, clutching at the wound, but blood began to ooze from between his fingers.
Victor wasted no time seeing Gorak lose the only weapon he had. In one swift motion, he pirouetted and delivered a powerful blow to Gorak’s chest, sending him flying into the iron fence that surrounded the courtyard. The impact was so strong that the iron bars bent, and Gorak was trapped, unable to move with the thud.
Victor approached slowly, his sword still raised. He looked into Gorak’s eyes and saw the pain and anger mingled in a last flash of defiance.
"You fought well, but this is the end of you," Victor said.
Victor then climbed on top of Gorak, who even tried to catch him with his hand, but Victor slapped his hand away. With a final downward thrust, Victor plunged his sword through Gorak’s heart. The giant let out a last gasp and his head fell forward, life draining from his eyes.
Victor took a deep breath, feeling the weariness slowly catch up with his body. As he climbed down from Gorak’s body, he heard a voice from inside the warehouse.
*Clap, clap, clap*
Slow, lonely clapping accompanied the familiar voice for Victor.
"Victor Shieldman, putting on a show as usual," the bald man with the scars on his face said as he stepped out of the darkness of the warehouse.
But this time, he wasn’t alone. Besides Fletcher Worten, there were three other renegade hunters. One of them was the magical archer from before, Alaria; the other was the hunter with the long hair in a ponytail; and there was also the assassin who had tried to take Victor by surprise the other time.
Of course, Victor remembered exactly what each of them was capable of, and that’s why he had to be careful, because even though they weren’t that problematic apart, together they could be quite different.
"You... killed Gorak," Alaria said, looking at the sturdy body lying next to Victor.
"What do you think I should have done differently? Roasted marshmallows for him to eat that winter night?"
"You..." Alaria was about to attack Victor, but her boss stopped her.
"No, not yet." Fletcher smiled out of the corner of his mouth. "Victor Shieldman, you’ve always been like that. Before I let you go, I want you to answer me something. My name is Fletcher Worten, do you remember me?"
Victor knew that if he had done something really terrible that Fletcher didn’t deserve, he would probably remember, because he remembered the faces and names of all the people he had been really mean to. Still, Victor couldn’t ignore the possibility that he was actually forgetting that he had done something terrible to someone, so he put his sword down and asked:
"No, I don’t remember. However, you seem to want revenge for something I supposedly did. So tell me how you know me."
Fletcher was a little disappointed by Victor’s question and shook his head negatively.
"I’ll give you a hint: Thirty years ago, in the city of Lamía..."
"Lamía...?" Victor asked as if to confirm.
In fact, about thirty years ago, Victor was in Lamía, an enormous city between Klento and the capital of the Kingdom of Athina.
At that time, Victor Shieldman was no longer working as an active hunter, but killing monsters was a very lucrative business, and so he lied to himself that this was for him to maintain a group that was not very different from the others and did not even escape the classic composition of five people.
One of these five people was Franky Kreburag, a not very nice-looking Iizardman who was traveling with the dream of becoming the best craftsman in the world.
There was also a dwarf among them, an interesting fellow named Baerren Flintfinger. Although he was a dwarf, a race known for its blacksmithing skills, Baerren was a wizard whose favorite spell in the Grimoire was nothing less than <Fireball>, a true pyrotechnician.
Among the bizarre male trio of Baerren, Victor, and Franky, the dose of normality came from the women in the group.
One of them was Therella Jademail, a woman with purple hair and eyes that always seemed lost in the world of the moon. She was the group’s assassin, the one who walked through the valley of shadows, and the one who taught Victor everything he knew about the art of stealth.
But Therella wasn’t the only woman. There was also the woman Victor loved, Aluella, a powerful archer.
"Was it in a tavern that we met? My party and I spent many mornings in taverns, hoping to recover from being too hungover to do anything useful."
"No!" replied Fletcher, with frustration in his voice. "It wasn’t in a tavern. Another hint: it was in a forest near Lamía."
Victor tried to remember a significant incident in a forest in Lamia.
"A forest... in Lamia," Victor repeated, his eyes fixed on Fletcher’s, searching for some trace of recognition. "That must have been a long time ago."
"Yes, as I said, thirty years ago," Fletcher insisted, his frustration evident. "You must remember. It’s not something you forget easily."
Victor shook his head, forcing the memory to materialize. He knew there was only one time he had hunted in one of Lamía’s rotten forests, for he and his group hunted only in the city’s vast sewers every day.
"Was it in Shadewood Forest?" Victor finally murmured, the memory still fresh in his mind. "If I’m not mistaken, there was a mission to rescue a group of missing novice hunters. That was a nightmare." freewebnoveℓ.com
Fletcher nodded vigorously. "Exactly! And do you remember what happened?"
Victor closed his eyes for a moment, letting the memory wash over him. He could almost hear the rustling of the leaves on the heavy bushes and the smell of decay in the air, present in every corner of that forest.
Lamía was a region of rotten land, totally infertile, precisely because of the unhealthy sewage that had long been dumped into the region’s great lake, contaminating the water table and making everything worse.
"I remember that I didn’t want to accept the mission, but one of my companions, Aluella, insisted a lot, and with a soft heart, I accepted. The others didn’t complain out loud, but I could see from their faces as we left the city gates that no one was happy."
"Not in the least. Lamia is terrible," the assassin next to Fletcher said, adjusting the cloth that covered the front of her mouth. "Sorry boss, I know it’s your hometown." She apologized to Fletcher.
The scarred man shook his head in denial. "No, you’re right. Come on, Victor Shieldman, tell us what you remember."
"Hours passed in the forest, night had fallen, and we still had found no sign of the group we were looking for. We were about to give up when suddenly, in the middle of the darkness, we came upon a group."
"My group." Fletcher said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Victor.
"The group that was missing..." Victor replied, not really remembering the presence of someone like Fletcher.
