Unconquered Tower

THIRTY-TWO

The village wasn’t rubble. But it wasn’t far from it either. Roan whistled in awe as they group broke free of the trees and could view the ruins of Village 3. The walls were blasted inward, the gate gone. Fires had ravaged the interior from where Roan could see, burning away everything that he could see from here.

Including the quest board.

“Not getting paid for that ogre,” Roan thought, having to be happy with the mere four hundred credits earned from last night. The mana core shard and dragon core he’d consumed had given him massive gains, but it wasn’t to his bank account.

“My god. Are they still alive?” someone whispered.

“Yeah, they’re still alive. The far wall, there’s a spotter up there. And Taoya is behind us,” Roan said casually. He was still struggling to come to terms with his increased senses that he could hear the big man trying to quietly walk behind them.

“Roan? That you?” Following right behind his own question, Taoya stepped out of the tree line and sighed in relief. Roan couldn’t help but wince when he saw the state of the giant.

He was covered in enough bandages to look like a veritable mummy. They were stained through and he walked with a limp. The crude arm bracers he’d taken to wearing were nowhere to be seen and he had a massive tear in the center of his clothes as if someone had tried to split him in half.

“That bad?” Roan asked as the crowd he had started to break away, jogging toward the village while they could. They were all on the clock after all.

“Could have used you. Lost a lot of fighters last night," Taoya said with a wince as he hobbled closer.

“Why haven’t you taken a healing potion?”

“Did. Took too many of them and started to have a bit of a reaction. Moira thinks it’s cause we haven’t properly tempered our bodies and are ingesting too much mana infused foods and elixirs.”

“A cooldown that relies on how much you’ve already tempered yourself?” Roan asked skeptically.

“Cooldown? No, it’s fucking poison. Like alcohol, or caffeine, or even too much water. Body can’t handle it.” Roan kept his shock at Taoya’s sharp words to himself. He’d never seen the giant even closely this upset so far.

“So. Where the fuck were you?”

“Finished cleaning all the corruption up at the battle site. Didn’t want that to start something and catch us in the back. Using my bloodline that much exhausted me, so I stayed at the caves,” Roan said.

“Let him calm down and heal up before telling him about taking the purified dragon core and upgrading my body temper.”

“Harris is dead. Pair of hobs got him.” The anger made sense suddenly.

“Moira?”

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“Banged up but she’ll be fine. Darren and Tyler are fine as well. Harris bought time for Moira and the others to escape. Fucker managed to take one of the hobs with him.” Taoya sniffed and wiped at his face, turning suddenly to look at the trees.

“He was a good guy.” Roan didn’t know what else to say. How did you comfort someone whose friend had just been chopped to pieces?

“Darren and Tyler lured them into the village and poisoned them. They didn’t stay though, once the poison was in them they ran. Darren fired the bolt that set off the explosives, killed the hobs who were running and most of the shamans and everything else.”

“What caught you?” Roan asked. Taoya had left after the explosion.

“Last of the Moira’s group were being harassed as they ran. I got in between them and fought a pair of hobs. One of them apparently had already fought Harris and was wounded. Didn’t know it was Harris’ killer until afterwards.”

“You get them?”

“No. Hurt them both, but couldn’t finish them. Not after this,” Taoya turned around and pulled at his robes to reveal his chest. An ugly rope of scar tissue covered it. Roan knew intimately how that felt.

“Moira save you?”

“Yeah. She’s the one that drove them off and pulled me out of the forest.”

The two of them stood there in silence for a few seconds, neither having anything to say. It was the first time that Taoya hadn’t been able to outmuscle his way to a victory. Between the exhaustion of fighting the corrupted dragon, a pair of the hobs were too strong for him.

“Can I handle one of them now? With the upgrades and weapon?” The questions nagged him, rattling around in his brain demanding an answer. He thought he could, but he wanted to see the actual results of his growth first.

“I brought these guys back to load up on whatever they thought they’d need if we landed without access to the market. Are we pulling out?” Roan wanted to stay another night and go explore where that other explosion had come from.

“We’re talking about it. Come on, Darren and the others have a council going with whoever is left alive.” Taoya turned and started limping his way back toward the ruins of the village.

Roan kept his horror in check as they looked over the dead and broken bodies that lay everywhere. Goblinoids with blackened faces, bulging eyes, skin sloughing off into the ruined cobblestone streets. Ogres were scattered here and there, their massive bodies breaking down swiftly, but their remains still occupied plenty of space. Here and there were defensive mobs, dead with their crossbows and swords by them.

More rare were the climbers. Those who had stayed had been the best pure fighters left aside from Taoya and Roan. Every one of them who had fallen had taken plenty with them. Goblins or ogres laying at their feet, collapsed under the weight of the dying horde.

“Up here. The temporal chambers were untouched. Think they’re protected,” Taoya spoke in short bursts, wincing as he did so.

“We need to get you in one of them and healed up,” Roan said.

“Yeah. Me and rest of the wounded are going in. We needed more bodies to watch just in case. You saw that big ass explosion earlier?”

“Yeah, I saw it. Was hoping you’d be ready to go explore to see what it was.”

“Not yet. Honestly we might be pulling out.”

“I think it’s a mistake to pull out before the sun goes down. We can get lots of use out of the houses,” Roan argued.

“Didn’t say we couldn’t. But it’s a couple hours to the caves and people are tired and hurt. It's been a marathon of training and fighting.”

“It’s not going to get easier.”

“They know that too. But a new level could open up saferooms again or something that allows a modicum of relief.” Roan couldn’t argue against that. If it wasn’t for his newfound strength he’d be in the same boat.

“Here,” Taoya said, stopping in front of the restaurant. The outside eating area had been demolished, all the tables and chairs nothing more than scrap metal. Roan could hear voices of people talking, soft and tired voices.

“Come on. We need to get through this and then the funeral pyres,” Taoya said, leading the way into the restaurant.