I fell into a deep sleep without much effort, after all the training we did, I’m surprised that I was able to stay awake as long as I did. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke, I felt like I’d just gotten some of the best sleep of my life. The others were still asleep so I did a bit of fishing in the lake using the simple nets the goblins had provided the day before. By the time the rest of the party woke up, I had seven fish all cooking on the fires we had made the day before.

It was weird to think of things in days here, I hadn’t seen the sun since waking up in that cave. I wondered if anyone back home had noticed I was missing. I lived alone in a studio apartment and didn’t even have a pet. I didn’t really have any friends that would notice, we’d mostly gone our separate ways after highschool. On top of that, I had just used all my vacation time since it was about to expire, so not even my coworkers would notice.

“God that smells wonderful,” Samuel said drowsily, startling me from my train of thought. “How long have you been up?”

“Around an hour. Hard to tell though since I never wore a watch.” I shook my naked wrist at him for emphasis.

“Yeah well I’m not sure if that would have helped, I was out and about when I got sucked over here. Nothing I had in my pockets transferred with me when I crossed over, not even my pocket change.”

“I wonder why, it’s not like whatever transferred us here only works on organic matter, because if that was the case some of our clothes probably wouldn’t have made it. Although if that is the case, that means that something intelligent must have made the transfer process, something that could differentiate between what we were wearing and what was just on our persons.”

We sat there and discussed this train of thought for a while, and were eventually joined my our barely awake party. The fish was soon devoured and we sat around the fires waiting for our food to settle so that we wouldn’t cramp up on the way to the fight. It wouldn’t help defeating the boss if we couldn’t even make it back to his chamber.

The walk itself wasn’t as long as we had originally thought and we spent most of the time talking about where we came from and who we were before winding up here. Sarah had apparently come from a family of somewhat successful athletes who were just good enough to get on their college teams, but not enough so to make it past that. She ran track in high school and dabbled in fencing, before deciding it wasn’t her thing.

Samuel came from a pretty relaxed household and grew up with a couple of medieval enthusiasts, which explained why his family had the odd skills they did. He told us all about how every Saturday one of his parents had sat him and his siblings down and taught them about some huge discovery that was made during the period, from a breakthrough in metalworking, to the invention of the printing press.

I told them how I had played a fair bit of video games and tabletop games growing up and continued to do so once I graduated. I told them how I had worked in tech support for a couple game companies, answering tickets and handling in game disputes. I confessed what I’d been thinking about when Samuel had startled me. This put a damper on the mood as we started thinking about how things were going back home and whether or not we would ever make it back.

Kevin looked really depressed when I brought it up and when we finally got him to talk to us, he told us how he spent most of his time as a loner, playing RPGs and RTS’s in order to cope with the issues at home. His father had apparently left before he could even develop memories of him, and his mother spent most of her time bouncing between two jobs and drug abuse. After telling us all of this, he softly said that he didn’t know if anyone would ever notice him missing, and even if they did he didn’t know if they would care.

That shut us down for a couple minutes, before Samuel stopped him and made it clear that as long as we were in this world, Kevin would at least have one person that he could rely on. Sarah and I agreed, and Kevin seemed to perk up a bit as we finished our walk. We were a party after all and who knew how many reliable allies we would find. It made it all the more important to keep the ones we had close.

When we finally reached the chamber, the barrier was still up. From what Garathial told us, the barrier was one way and when we entered the chamber, we wouldn’t be able to leave unless we won. We all pulled our equipment from our inventories and went over some of our basic plans again. The one we ended up settling on was myself and Kevin giving ranged support until my mana pool was drained then, me using my access to Sarah’s pool for healing us.

“Would it be easier for you two to stay out here while we do this,” Kevin asked our goblin companions. “Or do you think that it will be just as hard for you to resist the core’s influence?”

They thought about it for a moment then replied, “It may be easier, we may as well try it.”

I took a moment to double check my status screen and make sure that there weren’t any unspent points that I had forgotten about:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Vincent Level: 4

HP: 15/15 Mana: 50/50 Stamina: 25/25 XP: 0/100

Soul Link: Sarah

Main Stats:

Strength 1

Constitution 2

Intelligence 2

Wisdom 0

Dexterity 0

Charisma 0

Luck 0

0 Attribute points remaining

Sub Stats:

Mana Regen: .5

Health Regen: .5

Stamina Regen: 1

Spell Power: 1

Spell Control: 2

Skills:

Passive:

Quick Learner: Lvl 1

Soul Bond: Lvl 2

Single Handed Sword Mastery Lvl 1

Shield Mastery Lvl 1

Fire Affinity Lvl 2

Active:

Taunt: Lvl 1

Spells:

Cure Wounds: Lvl 2

Fireball: Lvl 2

After verifying that everything was in order, I nodded to the others, then after taking a deep breath, walked through the barrier. The sensation that I got was like walking through a wall of some semi-liquid substance that made my skin tingle. When I exited the other side I was still completely dry and none of the substance remained on me. I shuddered as I tried to shake the sensation from my mind.

Remembering what I was doing I snapped my attention to where I had last seen the chieftain. He was still there, holding his battle axe, as though he had been waiting for us to return. As I looked closer I noticed that his eyes were glazed over, and that his face was a blank mask. Well, good thing we had left the other two outside, it looked like we were going to be fighting against the core and its puppet.

I looked behind be briefly to make sure that the others had made it through, and then gestured for Kevin to take his first shot. As he started to draw back his first arrow and take aim, I gathered up the energy for a fireball and held it. I waited and threw my fireball in synch with his arrow, while the arrow missed by a couple inches, the chieftain was bathed in flame as my spell collided into his chest.

The chieftain was still for a moment before jerking into motion, almost as though the core had just realized that it had visitors. Sarah and Samuel got in front of us and we started to push towards him, Kevin and I launching as many attacks as we could. The chief came forward to meet us, swinging his axe as he got within range. Samuel was forced to block it and was rocked from the force of the impact.

He only had a couple seconds to steady his footing, before he once again had to block the axe, this time, coming from above. Sarah used this distraction to circle around the chief and take a few swings at his back. She managed to open a couple shallow cuts, but it seemed as though his bare skin was tougher than it looked. He had burn marks on his chest from where I had hit him with my fireballs, but who knew how deep those burns were given how little Sarah’s blade was doing.

I couldn’t let any doubt in, if we failed here it would mean death. Steeling my resolve, I started to empty my mana pool as fast as my spell casting would allow me. I had to dance around the chief as my allies rotated around him, trying to keep up their flank. I noticed at some point that Kevin was hesitating to fire his bow, and given his accuracy with the first couple shots, I couldn’t say I blamed him.

When I inevitably ran out of mana, I pulled my hammer from my inventory and joined the fray. The chieftain whirled around frantically, blocking our strikes where he could and lashing out at us when he couldn’t. We managed to stay unscathed for the first few minutes of the fight, weaving in and out of his range as the core tried to keep up with us. It was clear from how jerky his motions were that the core wasn’t used to having to control him.

Kevin decided to finally take another shot and somehow managed to land it directly in one of the cuts we’d inflicted. The chief’s body whipped around and made to go after him, turning its back, and more importantly the arrow, facing me. I cocked back my hammer and with all of my strength swung as hard as I could. A solid hit.

For the first time the Chieftains body made a noise, howling in pain as the arrow was driven in a couple inches, the rest snapping off. A foot caught me in the center of my chest and sent me flying across the chamber. When I landed, the air was knocked out of me, and I spent the next thirty second or so wheezing as I tried to catch my breath. When I was finally able to stand up, I found the others in deep shit.

The chieftain was moving faster now, and my allies had been put on the defensive. His axe now had greenish glow to it and I could hear the air whistling from the speed of his swings. As I readied myself to rejoin the fight I saw it, his eyes were no longer glazed over. Shit!

Kevin barely had time to fire more arrows, the chieftain making him run most of the time while still managing to keep the others off him. This really wasn’t good. Kevin ran past me and I held up my shield ready to meet the chieftain.

He never struck me though, because as he was winding up his swing, Samuel had the brilliant idea of screaming at him, “Oi, mold breath!”

He must have triggered taunt, because in one fluid motion the chief used his swing to turn his full body, his axe colliding with Sam’s shield. The force of the blow knocked Sam onto his ass, leaving him vulnerable. If Sarah hadn’t darted in and blocked the following blows Sam would have been dead for sure.

I saw arrows fly past me, Kevin doing what he could to try and help. The arrows flew wide and Sarah had to take her attention away from the chief in order to dodge a couple of them, and some of them almost hit Samuel as he tried to get off the ground. The words were on their way out of my mouth to yell at him to stop shooting, when the worst case scenario happened. One of Kevin’s arrows flew low and to the right, catching Sarah in her leg.

Her knee gave way as she dropped to the ground, almost knocking Sam back over. He barely avoided her and did all he could to get between her and the chief. I heard the sound of wood clattering against stone and assumed that Kevin had dropped his bow. Fucking great. I swung wildly at the chief, trying to do as much damage as possible. If we didn’t end this fast we were dead.

Of all the ways to fucking die, I never thought this would be one. Split in two by a goblin chieftain after learning magic and accidently binding souls with someone in another world. Worst of all, this was all happening on my vacation from my shitty call center job. I wasn’t even scared, I was fucking livid.

Fuck whatever had brought me here, from my perfectly miserable life, let me meet what I thought to be some decent people that I would have probably been friends with if we met back home, then try and kill me in a boss fight I was being forced into. I would be fucking damned if I was going to just lie down and take it.

I gathered all of Sarah’s mana through the link and combined it with what I had regenerated over the course of the fight. I pushed it all into the head of my hammer and imagined it all discharging into the chieftain as I swung it into him. I then imagined that the hammer was from one of the old Norse gods. What was his name, Thor? I swung with all my might and hit the chieftain in his spine.

Unique Skill: Holy Strike of Retribution Lvl 1 Received

All of the mana left me, carrying with it my anger. There was a resounding crack as the hammer impacted, and every ounce of energy left me. My field of vision started to narrow as I fell sideways, no longer able to even stand. Kevin must have caught me and started dragging me away, because the entire fight started slowly getting more distant.

I was laid on the ground and Kevin grabbed pulled one of the spare goblin swords from his inventory. He gently took my shield off of my arm and ran to help Samuel. I didn’t see much after that, my vision grew darker and darker, and eventually I passed out.

I woke up in the center of the Goblin camp a familiar splitting headache causing me to scream out. There was a rush of footsteps and both Tamani and Grathial were kneeling over me.

“I was hoping that you would not have awoken yet. Whatever you did in that fight left a lot of damage inside of you that I haven’t had time to heal, not with that boy’s arm the way it is.”

I couldn’t even process the implications of what Tamani said, the knife like pain too much for thoughts to make it through. The pain felt like it was going to split me in two. I laid there for only a few more moments before the sweet embrace of darkness rescued me.