20

O(I)O(I)

A lot of nobles were sitting around the huge dining table in the king's dining hall thinking the same thing: has the king lost his mind. It wasn't that he made an duplicitous, irrational choices that would cause peasants to revolt against him; quite the opposite. What he did was give the peasants half of their pantry, moreover leaving only a few slices of thin meats and bread left.

One of the nobles sitting at a table on the far right from the end of the king's chair, Hou, stood up and spoke up about this.

"Why are we eating this pet food?" He roared "we provide a tranquil life for the civilians in this monster laden existence. We are the ones who keep this village safe from monsters—we deserve everything this town has to offer."

The king ignored him. His reasons for this ostensible change was less interesting than his knife cutting through his ham meat with a knife from a small store.

He took a bite. He tasted dry meat with minced garlic garnishing it. It was perfect. It was when he attempted to have another bite that he heard the sound of a horn.

Most of the nobles panicked, nervously rubbing their fingers together, some quivering in their knees while others like Hou murmured on ways they could escape.

Not Lumina's uncle Darilyly...

He ran up to the nearest butler in the room and handed him his only half-finished plate.

"If I make it back, don't forget to heat up this meal."

And then—he dashed through the door of the dining room, rendezvousing to the watchtower.

O(I)O(I)

He joined the soldiers in the watchtower. He couldn't remember their names but he knew which one to address when dire circumstances occurred; the one not two feet apart from his fellow knight on the left.

"What is with the loud noise? I believe every king has told you interrupting their dinner is reasonable for execution."

The knight extended his hand to the horizon. Wisps of smoke dispersed to the sky and not because a horde of goblins were marching with dozens of torches clenched in their claws. It was the purple miasma simmering under a brown oak log they would use to bludgeon down the door.

He noticed in the interior of the kingdom dozens of knights clamored together jejune equipped with white metal swords. Some of them were animated to fight—the others looked dejected.

"I commend you for taking the initiative to prepare your troops for war, commander." Darilyly at first sounded sincere, polite. Those accolades were replaced with the voice of a man about to roar his remonstrance. "But you acted too fast! Those men are unprepared and will soon die!

"I don't blame you. My brother should have built a moot around this kingdom with a bridge. Goblins are so small they can't march through the water and would lose their weapons attempting to swim. As it stands, call all your soldiers back. We will follow my new stratagem."

O(I)O(I)

A baker with a gaunt body and circle beard facial hair was rolling dough on a slab counter when a myriad of feet stampeded down the street; his feathered demi-human sneaking up to him.

She lingered behind him, memories of his abuse filing her brittle mind. In a flash, she flitted across the room with a lopping left foot, thrust a fifty-centimeter copper blade in his back!

There was no hole punctured in his back nor did he reach.

O(I)O(I)

Two bull-horned thin demi-humans, one female and the adjacent twin male both hazel skinned with black eyes and both having big arms, they choked their male and female owners; male gripping the males neck and female gripping gripping the wife. Squeezing with all their might didn't trigger a reaction.

O(I)O(I)

A lizard tailed demi-human grabbed the ankles from the basement trapdoor. He pulled his human master halfway down the trapdoor; a feather demi-human climbing up from the toilet chute.

The lizard tailed demi-human than repeatedly slammed the door down hoping to fracture a hone or hear a bloody cry but nothing happened, not deterring him from suppressed anger catharizing out.

"Stop! You're wasting your repressed rage on that dummy."

The lizard was perplexed. He opened the door and looked at the fake masters' face. All he saw was no visible mouth and sunken gumball eyes.

Although up close it looked so fake, it's arms and skin felt real.

"I...I...I don't understand."

"Some human caught wind of the coup Horsewhip told us about making our efforts barely a scathe on the masters whom think of us as slaves."

The lizard demi-human shook his head before kicking the dummy down the cellular door.

"Does that mean we are trapped-trapped to die together after living as slaves?"

The feathered demi-human wanted to assure him they were safe but didn't know what to think of this. If this predicament was the weather it would be cold winds before the maelstrom.

O(I)O(I)

Horses were rollicking through the city looking for a viable way of getting out. A few goblins got a good chuckle flexing their sinews and making scary faces.

Things didn't stay cheery for long. Once they made their way around to a path going upwards in the street they were met with boulders the size of cows tumbling down the street towards them.

One of the goblins pried out his hefted club and swung it into the boulder; shattering it.

Another goblin with a grimoire left the pages open, incanted a spell while the pages glowed green. A green sphere materialized and with a point of his green finger, hurled right into the boulder. It burned into charred flints scattered all over the ground.

Another boulder rolled towards a goblin bowman. It was intuitive enough to know no plain arrow nocked could demolish that rolling rock so it opened its small goblin arms and tried stopping it by pushing against it. It took some travail, the pain of pushing tore through its gaudy yellow and black garbs, but the goblin stopped it and then gently pushed it away.

"Is there any Thief Class kin around?" The sorcerer goblin screeched gutturally.

The loud patter of footsteps darted towards his fellow goblin.

The goblin thief had a long blue ponytail resembling a mare's, a short black shirt with small bulges near his hands, a beld around his waist connected to two horse straps around his ankles, plastic tubes coiled around his knees, and brown shoulder guards protecting his feet. In the straps were knives instead of buckles.

He kneeled before him. The sage goblin started to boss him around.

"I need you to clamber as nimbly as you can up this hill and assassinate any human attempting to get the drop on us. My barrier can only protect us from a transient onslaught."

The goblin leaped cautiously on the first brick before leaping again-again-again-finally getting to gaze at the horizontal glass that was a window.

He had to look through the first house he came across starting on the ceiling, his instincts guiding him away from any corner blind spots.

He grabbed the frame of the window once his feet were implanted, probed. Fingernails first, he finally peeked down.

A metal tipped javelin thrown towards him. He was lucky to somersault back-first away instead of the spear throttling into his head. He didn't take his chances with the other buildings.

His class came a skill that allowed him to observe the area and see any living thing through solid wall or in Layman's term indoor.

Once he had a perfect mental image of the location of every humans' position, he lopped his feet and fell from roof to roof getting back to his kin, arrows, fireballs, and knives launched straight at him.

He was skewered in his left ankle by a stray knife and skin-crackled in the back by a fireball. He saw his goblin kin nonchalant with his suffering and just watching as he hit the ground before crawling to the goblin with the grimoire. He stood stolidly staring down at the wounded thief with a repulsed frown.

Queer, he squatted so he could hear the intel he needed before pushing him away to recede into a hole to die.

"There are five soldiers in the tallest building, mages triangulated around that building in pairs, and archers behind the wall. Humans may be useless but when they get a trap-they get a trap."

He crawled away. While he was doing that, the goblin with the grimoire called for a goblin with innate knowledge in battle strategies.

Suddenly, the skewered hole in the goblins' side was splashed on by a green watery, slimy substance. It felt mixture of both hot and cold inset through his hole. But when the flabbergast subsided, he looked at the one who splashed him with it, his former leader.

There he stood in perfect view, bright but no fire in view, wearing all white with a bandolier of vials and medical equipment.

Out of all the classes he could've been he chose a doctor.

Suddenly, loud screeching noises echoed in the sky as long-tailed bird monsters—transformed harpy's—throttled their way towards the buildings, and smashed them with their strong rams.

Only one of the five soldiers fell from the watchtower and instead of hurtling to the ground—he was snatched by one of the bird monsters. Although his head was veered around by the constricting coil of her tail, he got an upclose look of the monster.

She was fairly big with her tail the size of three men and tall from her navel to her head. Her skin was ghostly white, bright green eyes with rings inside, fringe blond hair almost covering her eyes, and a bunch of disk-shaped gold glistening bones protruding from her elbows.

Looking at her sparkling body was the last moment of his life before he was crushed by her tight tail, sharp inset blades serrating his flesh.

The four men below raised their weapons.

A scrawny silhouette in the sky dived down and kicked them.

"I am a harpy, hear me bellow!" she exclaimed. In the moonlight the knights could see the winged girl who was no older than the forty year old's daughters. Face tinted red and huffing, she roared "Leave now before my sisters kill you all!"

The men were too engrossed to listen to her—dumbfounded with what she yelled—but it didn't matter since a spiky goblin with burning red skin and bulky arms rolled through the concrete tower.

The men plummeted towards the ground; arms flailing as they cried on the way down. The man closest to the ground met his end as his face smashed against the jagged side of a lodestone. His blood from his cracked skull was a signal to the harpy.

Friend or enemies...harpy's needed humans as much as humans needed livestock. Although she couldn't muster the strength to carry one of the soldiers, she latched her claws on his left arm, gripped tightly, flapped her wings as she and the soldier slowly descended.

Her face perspirated with a faucet of sweat before she dropped the soldier on the ground clear of the rubble adjacent to it. Two more soldiers joined the face smashed one on the sprawl.

She needed time to rest—her arms jolted when a heavy serpentine tail shook the ground. She recognized the face of this creature. It was her own sister gazing at her with a look of disappointment.

"Xylie, you have just done a taboo exertion. If your lucky, you can just be exiled—keep your head intact."

Xylie flitted from her sister to the soldier facing the other way. He looked like a bone from finished meals. She kicked him, he moaned inciting no reaction from her.

She looked away from him back to her sister.

"Harpy's do not pursue war; cause senseless death. We-"

""We kidnap men to fight one-on-one to the death until only one remains then mate with them. If we like it they live—if we don't they die. The question is...what is the point of this heritable reproduction if we can't lead our brood against the humans, build a better nest for us harpy's?"

The younger sister didn't have an answer to that question, but there was one thing she did know:

"You don't look anything like a harpy."

To add salt to the wound, she sniffed her sister. She then made a face bloating her cheeks like she was going to throw up from smelling her.

Those sisters had a lot of conflict to quarrel over.

O(I)O(I)

Meanwhile, Saitama was still in the winterlands doing jumping jacks until he started to sweat...

He was already going from 10,000 to 11,000 barely feeling any warmer.

"How do the people in this world hike through here?"