The claw of the orc chieftain had cut deep, and my left arm was bleeding profusely. He'd obviously hit something important, because I couldn't put any strength into my grip, and my dagger fell from my limp hand. It desperately needed a tourniquet.

  ... Or maybe not. Despite the wound, the bleeding slowed and stopped in mere seconds, before the other orcs had even decided what to do. A benefit of my high Constitution, presumably. Alas, I still couldn't clench my fist. It would take far more than a few seconds before my arm was usable again. Hopefully, Felicity could heal it once we reunited.

  Watching their boss get cut down gave the other orcs reason to pause, but despite my hopes, it wasn't enough to scare them off. Without the chieftain's leadership, the base hostility of monsters towards all human life soon won out over any rational considerations. With a final roar, all eleven orcs charged at me.

  I may have evolved [Dagger Expertise] into [Dagger Mastery], but that was more than made up for by the loss of an arm. Even with both arms, eleven against one would have been far beyond my comfort zone.

  Before the circle of orcs could close in, I charged myself, heading straight for one of them. His howling vocalisations cut out as I approached, his face curling into something resembling a sneer.

  I jumped.

  Putting my faith in my physical Stats, I kicked off from the ground as hard as I could. I didn't quite manage to somersault over the orc, but I still leapt high enough to kick off his shoulders. The orc had obviously been expecting me to fight, and my escape caught him completely by surprise. He desperately fumbled, attempting to grab my ankle, but only succeeded in slapping himself. I was already gone, landing on the ground behind him. Having escaped the encirclement, I ran.

  Stamina was rapidly becoming a major issue. After the first bout of running and my fight with the chieftain, my supplies were dwindling rapidly. Thankfully, I didn't need to run far. I was alone, not with my party, and I was considerably faster than the orcs. After pulling far enough ahead to get myself out of their line of sight, I leant on [Expert Stealth], curving between the trees, then picking one to hide behind.

  The heavy pounding of orcish footsteps passed by seconds later.

  I blinked at the second notification, being pretty sure that I hadn't done anything to kill more orcs. It took a moment to remember that the party link worked both ways.

  Having had the notification that the chieftain was dead, Daniel must have decided to stand and fight. Three dead at once was probably Ryan opening hostilities with an [Earthquake].

  Nice, but even if they wiped out the entire village, it wouldn't be enough for me to get another level.

  Could they fight them all? Sixteen orcs and the chieftain were accounted for on my side, but that still left them with a couple of dozen pursuers, at least. I wasn't certain they'd win. They may well have been forced by Felicity running out of Stamina.

  How was my own looking?

  Not great. Even my Mana had lost a chunk, with the number of times I'd used [Stab] in my fight against the chieftain.

  If I ran to catch up with them, would I be in any state to help by the time I arrived? And if I didn't rush, would I be in time to help at all?

  With my dodgy arm, would I be able to offer much aid even if I did arrive in time? Even if Felicity healed it, I'd abandoned one of my daggers back in the village.

  Whatever the outcome, I couldn't wait here for my Stamina to recover. I set off back toward my party, at a speed slow enough to let my Stamina gradually regenerate. It would take longer to catch up, but I'd be in better condition once I arrived, whether that was to fight, or to find them all dead and need to start running again.

  Thankfully, from the constant stream of kill notifications, they seemed to be doing just fine. I needed to remember that the party did exist before meeting me, and had managed to last this long. Perhaps I'd encouraged some amount of recklessness, but they weren't stupid.

  ... Uhh. The heck? Six at once?

  I really wanted to speed up and find out what was happening, but managed to keep enough self control to remember that there was no point in turning up if I was useless when I got there.

  At least the kill notifications proved that all five of them were still alive, else my share of the experience would have increased.

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  How much further had they run before stopping? I'd already passed the point at which we'd split up. Thankfully, even without tracking Skills, the footprints of a couple of dozen orcs were obvious.

  That made seventeen... There couldn't be many left.

  Finally, the howls of the orcs became audible. Despite myself, I sped up. I'd recovered enough Stamina in my slow jog, and they'd killed enough of the orcs, that I had enough to see the battle through.

  As long as the other eleven didn't follow me, anyway.

  I saw the orcs first. All were focused in one direction, and obviously I didn't let the opportunity pass me by. Only having one functional arm took a bite out of my stabbing speed, but the howling and clangs of claws against metal did wonders for covering up the sounds of dagger meeting spine.

  Through the crowd of orcs, I saw Stacy, fighting hand-to-hand. I didn't see any others. Had she beaten back half a village on her own?

  The orcs were grasping for her, trying to tear off pieces of her armour, but she wasn't having any of it. Punches rained down on any arm that reached for her, and I spotted several orcs with additional unofficial elbows. Claws raked across the metal, with no apparent effect.

  Her helmet paused for a moment, facing in my direction. She'd spotted me, but as usual, said nothing. Aside from the slight hesitation, she didn't react at all, which was fine by me; I didn't want the orcs to know I was there.

  An arrow whistled over Stacy's shoulder, striking an orc in the forehead.

  With the thinning crowd, I spotted Lee over by a tree, leaning against it. His leather greaves were torn, blood running down one leg, but he was still standing, even if he didn't seem to be putting any weight on it. He was obviously using the tree for support as he drew another arrow.

  It took me a moment longer to spot Daniel, because he wasn't standing. He was slumped against the same tree, blood pouring from his face.

  With some of the pressure off her, Stacy switched to offence, punching an orc in the face, hard. One of his tusks snapped, flying off into a tree as the orc slowly keeled over.

  I stabbed one more just as another of Lee's arrows hit the last.

  "Fuck," said Lee, with feeling. Then he slowly slid down the tree, moving from vertical to horizontal while still leaning against it, his boots sliding over the ground.

  Stacy looked down, taking in the corpses at her feet, then she wordlessly stomped on head after head, popping them like melons.

  "O... kay..." I muttered, giving her a wide berth and rushing to Lee and Daniel.

  Daniel hadn't reacted, and his eyes were closed. Presumably unconscious.

  "Where are the others?" I asked. "How are you two? We need Felicity's healing!"

  "Ha," said Lee without turning to look at me. "We've had Felicity's healing. She's out of Mana, as is Ryan. Daniel told them to run while us three covered them."

  I glanced again at Daniel, who didn't look like he'd been telling anyone anything for a while. His wound must have happened afterwards.

  "At least we destroyed the village? Mostly?" I hazarded.

  "Mostly?"

  "There are at least eleven still alive."

  "Then I pray to any god that will listen that they don't find us, because I am not moving for a very long time."

  "Speaking of, I should check on Daniel," I said, stooping to examine his wound.

  That reminder was enough to get Lee to turn his head, even if he didn't manage anything beyond that. It got Stacy to pause in her desecration of the corpses, too.

  "Oh..." I said, not needing to wipe much blood away to see the full extent of the damage. Not only was he missing a good portion of his teeth, but he was missing his right eye. It looked like an orc had punched him in the mouth, then torn his claws upward. Daniel's cheek, eyelid and socket were torn, and the eyeball was simply missing. A quick glance around didn't reveal it, but I had no desire to go digging under the orc corpses, especially after the mess Stacy had made.

  Thankfully, Daniel was still breathing steadily, and the blood wasn't still flowing. He wasn't in immediate danger, but even if the wound wasn't fatal, it looked debilitating. Aside from the impact to his eyesight, even eating would be difficult.

  "Does anyone have healing potions?" I asked.

  "Of course not. We have Felicity."

  "Pity they're so damn expensive... Oh well. Let's just hope she recovers some mana before he wakes up, because that is not going to be pleasant."

  That much communication apparently having exhausted him, Lee closed his eyes, joining Daniel in the land of dreams.

  "At least you still seem energetic," I said to Stacy.

  She nodded, once, then fell over.

  It was a good fall, too. No sissy bending of the knees, lowering herself gently. She simply swung from vertical to horizontal without a single bend in her body. Armour met soil with a surprisingly loud clang.

  I winced, wondering what that had done to the squidgy flesh inside.

  "Okay, just me then," I said to no-one, correcting myself.

  I was going to be in real trouble if the other eleven orcs showed up now: not only would I need to fight them alone, but I'd need to do so while defending three unconscious party members. Thankfully, they didn't. Instead, it was Ryan and Felicity that returned.

  "Lee!" exclaimed Felicity, spotting him lying against the tree. "Daniel!" she added, spotting the more seriously injured party member. "Heal! Drat, I've only recovered enough Mana for one cast!"

  She didn't spare a word for Stacy, I noted, although I suspected that was simply because she couldn't imagine her getting injured, rather than a lack of care.

  "Darn," said Ryan. "When the notifications stopped, we figured you'd won, but that looks nasty."

  "Indeed," I agreed. "My arm and Lee's leg can wait."

  "Your arm? What happened... Oh, shit!"

  I glanced at my arm, realising that between panic and adrenaline, I hadn't actually inspected the wound properly. "Wow, no wonder my hand isn't working properly..."

  The wound was deep.

  "Well, this has been a complete cluster-fuck," opined Ryan. "We need to get the hell out of this forest. Taking out one village should be enough to delay the orcs."

  "I agree," said Felicity, from where she was still inspecting Daniel's face. The single cast of [Heal] hadn't done much to close the gash, but it had at least cleaned it up. It no longer looked so awful, but he still had a hole in his cheek and a missing eye. "Robin, you're the strongest of us. You carry Stacy. I'll carry Daniel, Ryan, you carry Lee. Be careful of his leg. There was a village at the edge of the forest. Let's head there."

  "Who made you the leader?" muttered Ryan, but he did as he was told, slinging Lee over a shoulder. "You know there's no way we can move quickly like this, right?"

  "I know, but better slowly than not at all. Let's just get to safety first, then I can wait for my Mana to recover. Or maybe we can find a better healer."

  "Fat chance of that," muttered Ryan.

  We trudged toward the edge of the forest, thankfully unchallenged by further orcs. Of course, that just raised the question of where the other eleven had gone.

  Best case, they were lost, or had returned to their village, but I couldn't imagine them getting lost given the navigational capabilities they'd shown thus far, and why would they return to a village with their leader dead and more than two-thirds of the population wiped out? While I didn't know anything about orc sociology, were they human, I'd had guessed they'd move to one of the other villages, not only reinforcing it, but also spreading news of the attack, and maybe even our abilities. What would the other chieftains do in response? Merge their forces for their own protection?

  We'd likely find one or both of the other villages better prepared for our assault. In the worst case, if they took the threat seriously enough to merge, or if eleven new underlings tipped the balance of power enough for one village to dominate the other, we could have hastened the birth of an orc king rather than slowed it.

  On the whole, I felt this mission had not gone as well as it could have done.

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