The portal opened, and I jumped through.
“I-intruders!” There was a bang as a single man sitting around a small smokeless fire fell back.
The other four men had been sleeping, and he must have been the guard. Naturally, after fleeing like that, he never would have imagined me returning only a few hours later with a sword in my hand. I slammed my foot down on the head of the first man under my feet. He hadn’t even had a chance to get up before he passed out.
At that point, Shao slid through the portal behind me like the shadow knight she is, moving towards her enemies and attacking. A man’s throat was cut just as he began to sit up. She didn’t hesitate to toss her other knife at a third man, hitting him directly in the eye. Like that, 3 men were incapacitated, and the fight was even.
The man who had been on watch had managed to stand at this point and pull out his sword. I recognized that he was the one whose penis had touched me. He was the one who had assaulted Raissa directly. The other, who appeared to be the leader who had initially called for my death, had also managed to roll out of his bedding before either Shao or I could reach him.
I cast a fire spell, intending to just blind them for a second as I raced towards them. Regrettably, the men were well trained and quickly covered their eyes while keeping their defensive posture. They also seemed to work together to protect themselves, keeping their back facing each other and the wall limiting the space they needed to defend.
I swung my swords several times, attempting to defeat the leader while Shao attacked the other man. Now that they were fully awake, I realized that they were not particularly weak at all. In fact, these were knights, a job considered to be a second-tier fighting position. Their battle prowess was likely comparable to Lydia’s, even if they lacked her species-specific speed advantages.
A moment later, a third man, the one who she had stabbed in the eye, had managed to get the knife out and do a quick heal on his face. Although it looked awful, He was able to join the fray too, only temporarily stunned. With the one-eyed man defending against Shao, the third man was able to use magic, sending a dozen wind blades our direction. Compared to Celeste, these were child’s play, but it was only an aside to the Knight’s already existing combat skill.
“You must be the lord we’re here to assassinate!” The leader said, a mocking expression on his face.
“What of it?” I growled back, attacking him several more times with my moderate swordsmanship.
“Was that woman one of yours? She won’t admit it, but I fucked her good before you got there! She made such cute noises!”
“Don’t listen to him! He’s just trying to cause you to slip!” Shao shot back.
“Once I kill you, I’m going to fuck this pretty little thing too! I heard you have other girls too. I saw them when you entered the town. Pretty little things way better than you deserve. Where are they? Back in that little crap heap miner’s town? Hehe, once you die, even if you free them, Lord Reign will just enslave them. He promised them to the entire Knight’s corpse. Don’t worry, we’ll treat them all well and good. They’ll forget all about your tiny dick!”
With two on one, Shao was at a disadvantage. With me fighting the leader, I had underestimated my own capacity as I was a one-on-one fighter. Had we not had the surprise on them, I realized that it was likely that Shao and I would have already been defeated. Suddenly, I was no longer worrying about whether I had it in me to kill them, and I was starting to fear that they might kill me!