The Cursed Extra

Chapter 160: [3.33] Pain Is Just Information

"You can hurt after you survive. You can’t survive if you stop to hurt."

***

He couldn’t spare the breath to answer Petra.

His chest burned with each inhale. Something felt wrong on his right side. Cracked ribs, probably. Maybe worse.

He pushed the pain aside and focused on the hobgoblins.

They’d repositioned while he was recovering. One on each side of the narrow passage now. They’d used his momentary weakness to set up the perfect kill zone.

The injured one feinted left while its partner attacked from the right. A simple maneuver. The kind of thing Rhys had drilled against since he was old enough to hold a spear. He read the move and shifted to counter. Angled his weapon to block the real attack.

But the feint turned into a real attack at the last second.

The axe handle slammed into his ribs with the force of a battering ram.

He heard something crack inside his chest.

The pain was immediate and sharp. Like breathing broken glass. Each inhale brought a fresh wave of agony that threatened to drive him to his knees.

He ignored it.

Pain was information. Nothing more. His father had taught him that during the long nights on the village wall. You acknowledge it. Catalog it. Then push it aside and keep fighting.

You could hurt after you survived. You couldn’t survive if you stopped to hurt.

Rhys spun the spear in his hands. Used the butt end to slam into the wounded hobgoblin’s knee. A joint strike. Targeting one of the few weak points on the creature’s body.

The creature grunted and stumbled. Its leg buckled for just a moment.

Rhys reversed his grip and drove the spearpoint toward its throat.

The other hobgoblin’s axe came whistling toward his head, and he had to abandon the attack to duck away. The blade passed so close to his scalp that he felt individual hairs part in its wake.

Another inch and he’d have lost half his skull.

The wounded hobgoblin recovered faster than he’d expected. Its massive fist caught him in the shoulder and sent him spinning. His back hit the tunnel wall hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe at all. His diaphragm refused to cooperate.

The spear nearly slipped from his numb fingers. But he clung to it through sheer stubbornness.

Losing the spear meant death. It was as simple as that.

They pressed their attack. Both creatures moved in perfect synchronization. High and low. Left and right. A constant barrage of steel that left him no room to breathe. No time to think.

He was operating on pure instinct now. His body moved in patterns drilled into him by countless hours on the village wall. There was no planning involved. No strategy. Just reflex and desperation and the absolute refusal to die in this dark hole.

Block. Parry. Deflect. Step back. Reset. Do it again.

His father’s spear sang as it met their axes. The ash wood held up better than it had any right to. Centuries of use had hardened the grain. His father’s care had kept it oiled and sealed against damage.

The leather wrapping on the grip had grown slick with sweat and blood. His own blood. From cuts he didn’t remember receiving.

He could feel his strength fading. Feel his reactions growing just a little slower with each exchange.

The hobgoblins weren’t even breathing hard.

Rhys caught the injured one’s axe on his spear shaft and twisted. Used leverage to force the creature’s guard wide. A textbook disarm setup. The kind of move that worked perfectly in training and almost never worked in real combat.

But the creature was off balance from its wounded shoulder. Its reactions just a fraction slower than its partner’s.

He drove his knee into its wounded shoulder. Felt the wet heat of fresh blood as the injury reopened. The hobgoblin snarled and grabbed his leg. Its claws dug through his pants to scrape against bone.

Pain shot up his thigh. White-hot and immediate.

But he was already moving.

He slammed the spear butt into its temple. It released him with a grunt of pain. The blow didn’t knock it out. Nothing short of taking its head off would do that. But it stunned the creature long enough for him to stumble backward.

His leg nearly gave out where the claws had raked him. Blood ran down into his boot and made the leather squelch with each step.

The second hobgoblin saw his weakness and lunged forward. Its axe swept in a wide arc that would have taken his head clean off.

Rhys dropped to the ground. His injured leg screamed in protest as he went flat against the stone floor. He felt the blade pass overhead with enough force to chip stone from the tunnel wall. Fragments rained down on his back like hail.

He rolled away and came up in a crouch. The spear held defensively across his body.

His chest burned with each breath. He could taste blood in the back of his throat. His leg was going numb below the knee. Might have been blood loss. Might have been the claws doing something worse than simple cutting.

How long had he been fighting? Minutes? Hours?

The torch had burned down to almost nothing. Dancing shadows made it hard to track his opponents’ movements.

The hobgoblins circled him like wolves. Their yellow eyes reflected the dying firelight. They moved with the patience of predators who knew their prey was cornered.

They weren’t in any hurry now. They could see he was tiring. See the way his hands shook as he gripped the spear.

They were just waiting for him to make a mistake.

Rhys had made plenty of mistakes tonight.

Coming down here. Thinking three academy students could handle a goblin nest. Not running the moment he saw the shaman.

Each mistake had led to the next. A chain of bad decisions that ended here. In this tunnel. With two monsters circling him and his friends dying behind a wall of stone.

If he survived this, he was going to have a long talk with whoever had assigned this mission.

Behind the stone barrier, Petra was chanting something under her breath. Not a spell, but what sounded like a prayer. Her voice was barely a whisper, but in the confined space it carried clearly. The words were from the old temple liturgy. The kind of thing farmers said over failing crops and soldiers said before a battle they didn’t expect to win.

"Gods of fire and earth, if you’re listening... we could really use some help down here."

Rhys didn’t pray.

He’d stopped believing the gods cared about people like him a long time ago.

But he didn’t interrupt her either.

Whatever got her through the next few minutes was fine with him.

He just hoped those minutes wouldn’t be their last.