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Chapter 262: Welcome to Salvation: Dealing With Chaos
🕑 Added 2024-03-28 12:00:08 +0000 UTCEntismo glanced around the ruined town.
Oh, no, this has gone terribly wrong.
That Demon had gone on a horrible killing spree, ending in the deaths of at least a dozen Humans now. It’d run off into the alleyways right afterward, so Entismo couldn’t even find it anymore!
And the Goblins…Ugh, that plan had totally backfired, as well. The moment they realized the Humans in the town wanted to kill them as well as the Demon, they became impossible to control. He’d called for a retreat, a ceasefire, a truce, and just about anything he could think of to suggest “Excuse me, could you please stop killing everyone?” but they refused to listen. They seemed to be operating purely on instinct, doing what Goblins did best and fortifying a position, setting up traps and ambushes, and looting their fallen enemies for their gear.
A Goblin set up a barricade near Entismo, tearing a wall from a collapsed building and using it to wall him off from the open street.
“Protect friend of Great Ones from enemy!” it shouted, pulling back and firing a haphazard shot from its bow that sank straight into a half-geared adventurer’s eye. “Take territory! Take treasure, give to Great Ones!”
Entismo turned around and saw another adventurer charging at the home base the Goblins had cobbled together around him, and then looked to see five of the Goblins all huddled in alleys and buildings at a choke point, hidden from the adventurer’s view.
“L-Look out!” Entismo called to the innocent man, but it was too late. The Goblins sprung their ambush, all firing their bows the moment the adventurer passed them. Arrows stuck into his back, and as he tried to turn around to face his enemies, he stepped in a puddle of lamp oil they’d splattered across the ground, slipping and falling into the liquid. One of the Goblins threw a lit torch at him, and…
Entismo shielded his eyes from the sight, but was unable to prevent himself from hearing the screams of the man burning to death. He remembered seeing that man walking through the guild lobby occasionally, alongside a group of his allies. Where were they? Still asleep in their houses on the other side of town? Killed in their beds by that bloodthirsty Demon?
Entismo heard a laugh from beside him and turned to look, seeing down an alleyway where another man had snuck up behind a pair of Goblins as they set up a tripwire, unaware of their hidden stalker. But the man wasn’t laughing, and neither were the Goblins, so who was?
A red blur tore through the alley, ripping claws into the man’s throat and tearing his head from his body. A torso thumped to the ground, leaving the Demon standing victorious over it.
“Haha!” It barked a laugh, a sinister sound that echoed across the town. “One or two more kills before Level 10!”
The Goblins had already scattered the moment they saw the Demon, aware that it was a threat they wouldn’t be able to handle. But it didn’t chase them, also aware that they were a little more slippery than the easy pickings of the Humans, all unprepared and unaware of who their enemy even was. The Goblins were just protecting themselves, for the most part, attacking and killing any Humans who looked to harm them. But this Demon…it was hunting them.
“P-please!” Entismo shouted from his central protected position in the Goblins' fort. “Don’t fight the Goblins! They’re here to kill the Demon in this town! We need to work together or it’ll kill us all!”
The scattered people didn’t listen, though. They were either fleeing in fear or fighting against the Goblins, and both times would just get picked off by the ever-empowering Demon. Entismo knew the thing’s Level would eventually get high enough that it wouldn’t be able to get stronger so quickly, but for now, this situation was only getting worse and worse by the minute.
“Please, can someone get the mayor?!” Entismo shouted.
No response. In the distance, the Demon punched its fist through a wall and single-handedly snapped the neck of someone standing on the other side of it.
“I-is there anyone here who can beat this monster?!” Entismo called out again, desperate for a response.
Nobody answered him. Behind him, he heard a pair of Goblins push someone into a pit trap they’d made out of a demolished house’s basement. The sound of the person’s body being impaled by wooden stakes that lined the bottom permeating his ears.
More Goblins arrived near Entismo, carrying more broken walls from nearby buildings and more weapons they’d taken from corpses. As they put up the walls to completely box Entismo in and filled the room with bloodied loot, he looked around himself.
“Won’t someone please do something?!”
But everyone was too preoccupied with their own survival to listen to him. It was too chaotic, too full of scrambling people and violent action for a man like Entismo to push his voice to the forefront.
This whole town was going to fall, with him standing in the center, doing nothing the whole time.
N-no. No! I cannot let that happen! he thought, rushing over and grabbing the tools and weapons that the Goblins had thrown in here with him. He started climbing up one of the walls to stand on the top platform of the Goblins’ home base, gazing out across the burning town. If nobody else will take charge, then it only leaves me! I cannot rely on someone else to think of a solution!
He glanced around and found someone, a sword-wielding woman who had clearly just thrown on a chestplate and grabbed her weapon before rushing out into the streets. She stood near the base, looking around wildly.
“You there!” he called down to her, reaching over and grabbing a pair of iron leggings and a helmet and tossing them down to her. “P-Put those on and come stand guard at the southern wall of this building! There’s a D-Demon running around and killing people, taking advantage of our disorganization. We, we must unite!”
She stared at him for a moment, then nodded curtly and reached down to get the armor and pull it on.
A pair of Goblins carefully crept toward her from behind, clearly unsure if she was an enemy, but he shouted to them, “Goblins! Leave her alone; she is an ally. I am working to acquire more, er, allies of the Great Ones! Yes, I am building an army to kill the Demon! From now on, bring any Humans you find to me, instead of killing them!”
“Take slaves for Great Ones!” a nearby Goblin shouted, echoing his orders to its allies.
“E-er…” He almost corrected it, but sighed.
Good enough. As long as they don’t needlessly kill people, I can clear up miscommunications later. I have to focus on more important things for now. Safety in numbers; I have to get everyone together!
He saw another man with his back against the wall, holding a kitchen knife close to his chest as he breathed heavily, looking back and forth between the two entrances to the alley he hid in.
“You there!” Entismo called to him. “I have a…W-What weapons do you have practice with?”
The man looked up at Entismo, standing tall atop the building. “Um, I’m trained with a spear!”
Entismo reached into the weapon pile and drew out a spear with a glowing, red-hot head, throwing it down to the ground before the man.
“Everyone!” he shouted as loud as he could, projecting as confident a tone as he could muster. “The Goblins are our allies! I have weapons and armor, as well as a safe, guarded place to hide! Come here and protect this town from the Demon!”
The Goblins let out a rallying cry, and surprisingly, a few Humans did as well. Entismo took a deep breath. He caused these problems, he caused these people to get hurt. He had to fix this. No matter how little practice he had, now was his time to be a leader.
**********
Aliss returned to the orphanage to see it in flames.
She dropped the pot of stew she’d gone to Boy’s house to help make for the kids, the lid clattering to the ground and meaty liquid spilling out onto the cobblestone street, and sprinted inside.
“Is anyone in here?!” she shouted, running into the smoky hallway.
A head poked out from under the dinner table, where a few children were hiding. “M-miss Aliss, there was—”
“Come outside!” she said, urgently running to the hallway that connected to everyone’s personal rooms and shouting as she threw open each of the doors. “Everyone! Run outside as fast as you can!”
A stampede of little footsteps followed as kids went running out of the building. What had happened here? Aliss had heard the sounds of fighting on the other side of town while she was at Boy’s, but assumed it was just some brawl between a few adventurers. Had a stray Firebolt hit the building, or something?
She ran outside once she was sure she’d gotten everyone out; thankfully she hadn’t found any dead bodies in her search through the rooms. Plenty of the kids were coughing up smoke, but it seemed like the fire was recent enough that the smoke inhalation hadn’t killed anyone yet.
Once she did a head count of the kids, though, she realized something.
“Two are missing,” she said, throwing her head back to the burning building. “Where are they?”
“Th-they ran out already!” a young girl said, grabbing onto Aliss’s hand. “Andren and Pip, they said they were gonna go find you when the invasion happened!”
Aliss blinked. “Invasion?”
Then she looked around, allowing her focus to move away from the burning orphanage and onto the surrounding buildings. The orphanage hadn’t caught an unlucky stray Firebolt, it had actually been one of the lucky ones. Around her, buildings were destroyed and torn down, almost methodically. It wasn’t like a high-Level Classer had thrown someone through a building, it was like some ragtag construction team had run up and stolen all the walls from these places, leaving them to collapse.
“They went to the big tower,” the same child said, pointing behind Aliss.
“What do you mean the big tow…” Aliss was about to ask what the kid meant—there was no big tower in Salvation—but then she saw it. In the distance, partially hidden in the nighttime sky, there was a ten-story tower built up, wobbling and shaking as people climbed up and ran around, walls collapsed and were replaced, beams and reinforcements were being nailed on and ripped off. Standing atop it was some silhouetted person, seemingly a leader, shouting commands to anyone nearby as they rushed around like ants on a hill to complete a million tasks a second.
“W-when did that get there?” she asked.
“When the monsters invaded. Goblins were attacking people!”
“Monsters? Goblins?” Aliss turned around and held her hands out, ready to face any threats that came near the kids.
“I don’t think they’re attacking people anymore. They just started building a big tower.”
“What? So they…” Aliss shook her head, trying to think. “Two of the kids went over there? And they haven’t come back?”
“No, miss Aliss. It was a few minutes ago.”
She took a breath. “Okay. Come with me. I’m gonna get those kids, and then we’ll all leave town together. I don’t care if the Goblins aren’t attacking anyone right now; they’re still extremely dangerous.”
The fact that no adventurers or law enforcement had gone to kill those things yet had her at a loss, though. Sure, Goblins were dangerous—especially when they’d already built and presumably trapped to the hells and back an entire tower that they were hiding out in, but surely an entire town’s worth of forces could take them out? Unless there was something else everyone was dealing with that she didn’t know about, it shouldn’t have been this much of a problem. She’d have to be careful around these things, clearly.
Aliss turned around and did one last headcount of the kids. Everyone was accounted for besides the two they were going to find. And there was nothing else in the orphanage that she’d need to…
Her eyes widened. The Demon!
“Stay here!” she shouted, sprinting back into the burning building. She ran over and threw open the hatch to the basement, holding her breath to avoid breathing in the copious amounts of smoke filling the room. She screamed down. “Xhag’duul! Come up here!”
A second passed. Nothing.
“Demon!” she screamed. “You are free to leave the basement! Come to me right now!”
No response. Could he not hear her?
After a second steeling her resolve, she jumped down into the basement, finding it somewhat free of the smoke and heat rising through the rest of the orphanage. She took a deep breath and stepped toward his room, then realized something strange. The door was open. And the hatch wasn’t hidden away behind the boxes she normally had covering it, either. Had he…?
She stepped into the room and found it deserted. Exactly as she’d left it, minus one extremely important Demon.
Panic spread through Aliss’s veins. The first being to be summoned in the past several hundred years. An extremely powerful species of Demon that was only held in check by the commands she’d set up to restrict him. The only chance she’d ever had to contribute something significant to the world of magic.
He’d escaped into a burning city full of bloodthirsty Goblins and defenseless Humans.
