Godless and Faithless Chapter 7

Axel woke suddenly, jolting up in the bed. The last thing he remembered was a great deal of pain after he sealed the Miasma away. Rayner must have carried him here.

A woman sitting by his bed left calling for a man named John. When John came, he explained what happened while Axel was sleeping.

“He did what?”

“He left to fight the dragons, rescue the maiden and free our people of this scourge,” John explained for the third time.

Axel sighed, it sounded like something Rayner would do. Stupid hero. Not like he had much of choice. If he refused, Axel would still be asleep, or dead.

He thanked the man and went to get his things. Maybe he could catch up with Rayner if he hurried.

He could hear a commotion coming from outside, people were screaming. John was out the door first.

Outside villagers ran around in chaos. John stopped one of the villagers. “What is going on?”

“Attack. Goblins, wolves, kobolds, worms, drill birds. Everything.”

Before John could ask him any more questions, the villager ran off.

“What’s a drill bird?” Axel asked.

“It’s a monster bird with a sharp beak that spins as it dives toward a victim. That’s not the problem. The problem is why are they all attacking.”

“It could be the Inimi. They work with goblins.”

A woman with a spear hurried to them. “They are not working together. They are attacking together.”

“The difference being?” John asked.

“They attack each other instead of cooperating.”

If a luck stat existed, he would have to find it and check to see if it was zero. He wouldn’t be able to go to Rayner. “Looks like we are in for a siege. The village is walled right?”

“Yes,” the spearwoman said. “The walls weren’t built for this.”

“We will make it work. Who’s in charge?”

“Me.”

“Do you know what to do?”

“No. I would accept help.”

“You got it.”

Axel wished he had Rayner’s booming voice; with it he, John and the woman with the spear named Mary would not have had to run around the village trying to create order. Another man named Walker joined them later, to tell them bad news. “The worms are filling the trench. Soon the other monsters will be able to attack all around the wall.”

“Can’t the worms just tunnel into the village.”

“Our local God’s blessing prevents that. It’s why the village was built here long ago.”

“Any other benefits?”

“The well water is always clean.”

The small gods of Alta didn’t follow a theme. No god ruled over a single emotion or idea. Rather, they granted and represented a hodgepodge of abilities and ideals.

It was a form of direct worship; villagers wanted clean water, they thanked the god for the clean water and lack of sickness as a result, and continued to get filtered water. He had not seen a single bible since coming to this world.

“How many men and women in the village militia?”

“20. The population of the village is 300 men, women and children,” Mary said. “Should we recruit more?”

“For now, no. They will be of more use supporting the fighters. Only in the stories do people who have never fought before perform well against monsters.” Axel felt strange, and he couldn’t figure out why.

Walker left to gather the militia to the walls, John checked if all those who could not fight were taken care of, leaving him with Mary.

“What skills does your militia have available?”

“We volunteered based on willingness to fight, not by skills. Some have none. I have a skill that increases the durability of my spear. The others have a skill to handle waste without getting dirty, a skill to feel when someone is sneaking up behind them…” She went on to describe useless but interesting skills.

Skills were the bread and butter of combat in games, and this remained true in this fantasy world Yazid sent them to. Everyone had skills, naturally. The difference is the use of mana that activated it.

The magical energy, mana, enabled a supernatural quality to skills. Firing an arrow was a skill but only with mana did it become something more. With mana the arrow did not only rely on the physical power or talent of the user. In a way, even floor sweeping could be a special skill with mana applied to it.

He remembered what he had told Evans. He said that not all skills needed an obvious combat use. “Tell me the skills of the villagers as well.”

Standing on a guard tower at the gates, he saw the varied horde of monsters gathering around the village. He was not afraid of the sight. It was just a mob. A mob was as dangerous to itself as it was to others. This was how they would defeat them.

But the first part of his plan was to wait. They had walls, so they would take advantage of that. Using the skills of the villagers they would make sure the walls held.

A villager had a skill that stopped wood from splintering; he used his skill on the parts of the wall in disrepair. A boy who could harden mud helped him. A woman timed her skill so when the monsters pushed against the wall it became elastic then pushed back at them.

Those without skills poured hot water on monsters trying to climb up the walls. Some hurled rocks at the flying enemies. Meanwhile, children helped dig traps near the weakest parts of the wall, giving them another line of defense to fall back on.

Despite their efforts, monsters made it into the village by flying creatures like the drill bird, and ones that had great jumping ability like the spring spider.

Axel jumped from the guard tower, quickly engaging the spring spider. The end of its limbs looked like springs and he could hear a coiling sound as it prepared to attack him. Its many eyes didn’t allow it to see behind it as Walker speared it in the back.

Even wounded it jumped away and into two women carrying buckets of water to the gates. They screamed, grossed out by the black hairy spider. Axel didn’t blame them; he wouldn’t want to touch the creature either.

The women may have been frightened of it, but not so much to miss an opportunity to kill the enemy. They took out their knives and stabbed it in the eyes.

Walker gave the women a nod of acknowledgment. “That will teach it to mess with our village girls.”

“Walker, I thought you were at the other side of the village?”

“I wanted you to know that the goblins are using ladders.”

“Where the hell did they get those?”

“Goblins are more than capable of building tools.”

“Right, still you could have just sent a runner.”

“Some of them are moving to this side, so I thought you would need the help.”

“Thanks, but we have to trust the others will hold out without further aid. For now, we need to make a sweep of the village to make sure none got inside by other means. Monsters have skills too.”

“I saw none on my way here, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.”

With that, the two looked for invading enemies.

“Over there, the rabbit.” Walker brought his attention to a cute little rabbit eating from a dropped basket of food.

The rabbit turned toward them.