Chapter 113: Chapter 113: Bloody Night
Kicking the goblin’s corpse aside, Charles took a deep breath, steadying his racing heart after the kill. He turned and shrugged slightly at the three girls. "I gave him a chance. He didn’t take it."
Nidalee’s expression darkened, but she said nothing further: "Should we interrogate this one, then?"
She still clutched another goblin, now unconscious, its eyes rolled back in terror.
"No. Kill it." Charles shook his head. "I’ve learned enough. It’s useless now. Better to eliminate loose ends."
Not a shred of mercy remained for these brigands. As a player, he knew better than anyone the unspeakable horrors adventurers suffered at their hands.
Especially now—with a dark elf necromancer from the Underdark among them. Their atrocities had even stirred the typically reclusive druids to action. The scale of their crimes defied imagination.
Sword in hand, his gaze hardened. "Patience. We wait until the goblins in the southern dorms fall asleep. Then we clear the venue before guiding Zenith."
Nidalee stared, stunned. She glanced at the other two girls, but neither opposed the "clear the venue" directive.
For a moment, her heart quivered—then her fists clenched tight.
...
Bugbears, true to their race name, are the most formidable among goblinoid kin. Their bodies are covered in coarse brown fur, their arms so long they hang past their knees—giving them not the look of the feeble, but rather of some great, brutish ape.
Savage by nature, belligerent and crude, they possess monstrous strength yet move with unsettling lightness. Thus, wherever hobgoblins muster their legions, bugbears lurk as their enforcers—thugs clad in fur and malice.
But tonight, these brutes would find no chance to prove their might.
The dormitory door creaked open. A lean figure slipped inside, silent as a shadow. The room was packed with over a dozen slumbering bugbears—castle space was limited, crumbling in places, forcing them to cram into whatever intact chambers remained.
The intruder moved to the nearest bugbear. Leaning over, they pressed a hand over the creature’s muzzle—then drove a longsword straight through its heart.
The bugbear’s eyes snapped open. It tried to roar, but the assassin slammed a knee onto its throat, stifling all sound. Death’s chill seized it; limbs spasmed. Then—stillness.
One down.
The shadow in the room was, of course, Charles. After extracting every scrap of intel from their captives, his team had waited in the hobgoblins’ quarters until the last torch guttered out. Only then did they move, ghostlike, to begin the culling.
His pulse hammered after the first kill—yet days of bloodshed had hardened him. Without pause, he pinned the next bugbear, repeating the thrust. A struggle. A second corpse. Then a third. A fourth...
Blood seeped through straw bedding, pooling across the floor. Outside, clouds swallowed the moon. In under twenty minutes, a dozen more lives ended by his hand.
"Done."
Charles rose on unsteady legs, hands slick with gore. Sweat beaded his brow; his thighs trembled with adrenaline. Fear had gripped him—not just of waking the pack, but of the raw, intimate brutality of blade meeting flesh.
"Phew..."
He wiped his forehead with a wrist and stepped outside. Ruth, Sephera, and Nidalee stood waiting, their own sectors cleared.
Nidalee’s face was ashen. Though she hadn’t wielded a blade, the weight of slaughter pressed on her. The two witches, however, showed no strain. Seeing Charles’ pallor, they flanked him, gripping his arms.
"Are you alright?"
He forced a smile. "I need a moment. Nidalee—you too?"
She nodded stiffly. "Ten minutes. Then we press onward."
With those words, she turned and swiftly departed northward, as if fleeing this Acheron-like hellscape. Meanwhile, Charles - following the goblin’s directions - led the two witches to the storage room’s northern gates, hoping to find something useful.
Inside the storage room, aged barrels lined both eastern and western walls. The first eastern barrel contained salted meat, while the others held slightly rotting grain emitting a faintly sweet scent. The western barrels appeared to contain liquor, though of similarly poor quality.
Charles approached the salted meat barrel, rummaged through it, then sniffed the contents before making a slightly disgusted face: "Well then, I shouldn’t have expected anything better from goblins."
Replacing the meat, he casually sat on a nearby barrel. The two witches wordlessly flanked him. His gaze flickered to the door behind them, pausing in thought before turning to Ruth: "Could you kill a grick in a single strike?"
The monster lurked in the dark corridor beyond that door. Even if they tracked its trail, failing to kill it instantly would alert the priest in the temple beyond.
Ruth’s expression turned troubled: "A grick... I could kill it, but instantly? That... would be difficult to achieve."
The creature measured three to four meters long with incredibly tough hide. While Ruth possessed the strength to defeat it, demanding a one-strike kill was indeed asking too much.
Charles sighed lightly: "Very well. It seems we can’t take the shortcut. We’ll have to go through the dining hall then."
After a pause, he added: "Also... keep an eye on Nidalee."
Sephera’s expression shifted slightly, seeming puzzled. Ruth raised an eyebrow, her purple-red eyes glinting with murderous intent: "I’ve had the same feeling. Master’s safety comes first. Should we... strike first when the battle ends?"
When dealing with outsiders, she remained the same witch who overflowed with killing intent at the slightest provocation.
Sephera shared similar thoughts, though her bloodlust wasn’t as strong, which was why she hadn’t voiced her suggestion immediately.
Ironically, at this moment, the most merciful one was Charles: "No need, Sephera. Just keep watch over her. Unless it’s an irreconcilable conflict, there’s no need for confrontation."
Sephera nodded in understanding. With this consensus reached, the three left the storage room to find the druid.
At that moment, Nidalee was crouched in the clearing outside the northern room, resting while gazing at the night sky. Charles approached directly: "We’ll go around through the dining hall. That grick’s too troublesome to deal with. To avoid alerting those inside, we shouldn’t provoke it."
Her complexion had improved considerably, so she nodded lightly: "Alright."
Rising, she gripped her throwing spear and glanced at the night: "It’s getting late. We should act quickly!"
With that, she led the way toward the castle’s southeastern dining hall.
Pushing open the door revealed an enormous rectangular room spanning about a hundred square meters. This banquet hall had once hosted the castle master’s guests, but now served as the goblins’ mess hall.
The room’s ceiling reached nearly seven meters high, though the once-suspended chandeliers had all shattered and fallen. Two large wooden tables with benches stood at the center, covered in dirty plates, half-full stew pots, moldy bread, and gnawed bones.
Ignoring the goblins’ unsanitary habits, the four proceeded directly to the room’s far end. Only after confirming no sounds came from beyond did they slowly push it open.
Beyond lay a north-south corridor. The eastern side had three closed wooden doors and a staircase leading upstairs. The western side held just one door, leading to the hobgoblin priests’ quarters.
Ruth and Nidalee tiptoed to listen at the middle eastern door and the western door respectively before returning. Ruth spoke first: "No sounds from the sacrificial chamber. Even priests should be asleep by now, following hobgoblin routines."
"No sounds from the necromancer’s workshop either," Nidalee added quietly. "Which should we strike first? Both doors seem locked from inside. You’d think they’d worry about being trapped during a fire..."
She couldn’t help complaining - soldier barracks typically maintained unobstructed exits for emergencies. This was precisely how Charles’ team had infiltrated several rooms to stab the goblins through their hearts.
But the priests’ prayer chamber prized tranquility, and the experimenting necromancer despised interruptions - hence their locked doors.
Charles felt stymied: "Nidalee, can you pick locks?"
Nidalee remained expressionless: "Of course not. I’m no wanderer."
Even most wanderers would find interior-locked doors problematic.
"Don’t you know ’Knock’?" the druid countered. Charles shook his head: "No. I don’t learn such utility spells."
Ah, this was when he envied proper mages. Had they had an actual mage here with a spellbook containing the lock-opening "Knock" spell, a few incantations could’ve silently opened the door.
Alas, he wasn’t one. As a spellcaster who relied on memory rather than spellbooks, he couldn’t waste limited mental capacity on utility spells like Knock.
"Then we’ll have to kick it down," he concluded. "But given how thin these walls are, no matter which door we break, the other room—and Zenith upstairs—will hear."
"So we split up and strike both at once?" Ruth murmured. "Cut them all down before they can react?"
Nidalee shot her a startled glance. She hadn’t expected this seemingly slight assassin to propose such a reckless plan.
Sephera sighed. "Do you really think that’s possible? The rest of us aren’t like you—we can’t instantly assassinate enemies. We should focus on eliminating one threat first—"
"It’s possible," Charles cut in. "In fact, that’s exactly what I was about to suggest."
The two girls stared at him in disbelief. Ruth, however, puffed out her modest chest with pride—her thinking aligned perfectly with her Master’s at that moment.
"Are you serious?" Nidalee blurted. "You want to divide our forces in this state? We have no idea how strong that priest and his acolytes are, nor how many undead that necromancer has stashed in his laboratory—"
"They won’t be that tough," Charles said dismissively. "If they’re working under Zenith, how strong could they really be?"
Nidalee looked at him as if he were an idiot. "What are you talking about? This is Zenith—a warlord who’s terrorized the Rubble District for over a decade."
"His ambition and influence have only grown. Why else would he dare meddle with necromancy? Mr. Charles, even if we’ve lucked out killing most of his lackeys, he himself remains a formidable warrior. We cannot afford carelessness. The strongest can still trip in the gutter, no?"
She spoke with forced patience, assuming the young spellcaster had grown arrogant after slaughtering weak goblins.
Turning, she appealed to Sephera: "Surely you agree, Miss Sephera?"
"I follow Mr. Charles’ lead," Sephera said without hesitation, switching sides effortlessly. "Hesitation will only give our enemies time to prepare. If they regroup, we’ll be at a greater disadvantage."
Nidalee: "..."
She shot the girl a resentful glare. Weren’t you just disagreeing a second ago? Now you won’t even voice dissent?
Though she’d known this man was the squad’s de facto leader, she hadn’t expected his authority to be quite so... absolute.
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