The Brutality of Calculation

The sickly vibration in the mana field intensified until it was a constant, throbbing pressure behind my eyes. The forest had fallen utterly silent around us. We had arrived.

Sylv moved with a predator's grace, signaling for us to halt at the edge of a ridge overlooking a large clearing. Below, nestled in a hollow, was the encampment. It was not the crude collection of tents and bonfires I had anticipated. It was a military camp.

Crude but effective palisades of sharpened logs encircled the clearing. Watchtowers, manned by goblin archers, stood at regular intervals. The sheer number of goblins was a significant deviation from the Guild's report, at least three times the estimated threat. But they were not the most alarming variable.

Moving among them were larger, more robust creatures. Some were hulking, green-skinned humanoids with brutish features and heavy, primitive axes—orcs, as Bane had identified them from their tracks. Others were a different strain of goblin, larger and darker-skinned, their movements conveying a level of discipline and strength far beyond their smaller kin. They were not just coexisting; they were organized. Orcs drilled smaller goblins in crude combat formations. Larger goblins oversaw the sharpening of weapons and the distribution of rations.

"This isn't a nest," Rovy whispered, her voice tight with a tension that had replaced her usual cheerfulness. "This is an army."

"We need to go," Bane stated, his voice a low rumble. "Report this now. This is beyond our contract."

A logical conclusion. The mission parameters had changed. The risk was no longer proportional to the reward. But as they prepared to pull back, my own analytical processes registered an anomaly. A focal point. At the center of the camp, near a large, command-style tent, stood a single, unmoving figure. It was cloaked and hooded, its form obscured, but the mana around it was a vortex, a dense, suffocating knot of the same sickly energy that was causing the pressure in my skull. That was the source. The leader.

I needed more data.

I extended my nascent mana sense, not with force, but with a delicate, probing touch. I attempted to analyze the entity's signature, to quantify its power, to understand its nature. For a fraction of a second, I connected. I felt a consciousness that was not goblin, not orc. It was cold, patient, and utterly alien. A mind of pure, calculating malice.

It was an oversight in my calculations. A fatal one.

The moment my sense touched its own, it was like a physical blow. The entity's awareness snapped towards me, not with a slow turn, but with the instantaneous, violent reaction of a triggered trap. The throbbing ache behind my eyes exploded into a spike of pure, white-hot agony. My vision blurred, the world dissolving into a smear of green and brown.

A piercing shriek, not from a goblin, but from the very air itself, tore through the forest's quiet. The psychic backlash of the entity's counter-probe.

Commotion. The encampment erupted.

"Dammit! We're spotted!" Sylv hissed, a flicker of genuine panic in her voice as she shoved me back from the ridge.

But it was not a disorganized swarm that met us. It was a planned, coordinated assault. Goblins surged from hidden positions in the trees around us. They had known we were here. They had been waiting. We had not discovered their camp; we had walked into their kill box.

The battle deteriorated into a descent into tactical inefficiency. The sheer number of enemies was overwhelming. Sylv was a blur of motion, her bow singing. Each arrow found its mark, a goblin falling with a choked cry. But for every one that fell, three more seemed to take its place. The relentless tide of bodies was a wave crashing against her finite supply of ammunition. I watched as she loosed her last arrow, felling a charging goblin, before being forced to use her bow as a crude club.

"Hold them, Bane!" Rovy yelled, her daggers a flashing, desperate blur of steel. She moved with a dancer's deadly grace, but the enemy was a wall of flesh and crude iron. A goblin's spear grazed her arm, drawing a thin line of red. Her movements became a fraction slower, a fraction less precise.

Bane was a bulwark, a fortress of steel and resolve. His shield absorbed blow after blow, the wood groaning in protest. But then, two of the larger orcs entered the fray, their heavy axes swinging in brutal, synchronized arcs. They did not attack wildly. They attacked the shield. The first blow splintered the wood. The second shattered it, the metal boss flying free with a sharp clang. The impact sent Bane stumbling back, his primary defense gone, his body now critically vulnerable.

I attempted to apply my understanding of mana. My fingers twitched. I tried to draw the ambient energy, to compress it, to shape it into something that could neutralize a threat. A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer, like heat haze, appeared around my hand. I focused, pushing the raw energy outwards, aiming for the nearest goblin. A small, barely audible pop. The goblin flinched, a thin, smoking line appearing on its crude leather armor, and then continued its charge, undeterred.

My projectile, a nascent burst of raw energy, was insufficient. My theoretical understanding was proving useless against practical, hostile application. The entity's presence, that constant, oppressive pressure, seemed to interfere with my own weak attempts, disrupting the flow, causing my own mana to feel sluggish and unresponsive.

The encirclement tightened. The sounds of combat—clashing steel, guttural roars, desperate shouts—became a cacophony. We were being systematically dismantled.

Rovy, fighting with a ferocious desperation, drove one of her daggers deep into the torso of an orc. The blade lodged, caught between thick ribs and dense muscle. She tugged, her eyes wide with panic, but it would not come free. She was disarmed of her primary weapon, left with only one.

"Retreat! Retreat!" she screamed, her voice raw, laced with an emotion I categorized as desperation—a high-frequency vocalization signaling imminent system failure.

We fell back, a disorganized, desperate scramble. Bane, despite his wounds, used his own body as a shield, absorbing a crushing blow from an orc's club to give Rovy and Sylv a chance to pull back. I heard the sickening crack of bone.

We pushed through the dense undergrowth, each step a struggle against the pain and the encroaching enemy. Dispersed, severely wounded, yet we managed to break free from the immediate encirclement. We ran, the sounds of the pursuing creatures gradually fading behind us.

Their pursuit, I noted, lacked the expected intensity. It was almost... performative.

As we put more distance between us and the encampment, the sounds diminished further, almost too quickly. My analytical processes, despite the physical agony and the adrenaline-induced chaos, began to process this new anomaly. Our escape, while arduous and painful, felt… permitted.

I risked a glance back. Through the thinning trees, I could just make out the silhouettes of the larger orcs and the cloaked figure. They stood at the edge of their territory, not pursuing, merely observing.

A plan. A manipulation.

They had allowed us to escape. Intentionally.

And we were carrying information. Critical information. An assumption about an alliance, about an organized army, about an imminent, large-scale assault on Raven.

We were not survivors. We were couriers. Pawns in a game being played by a far more intelligent hand. This... was intriguing. The game had only just begun.