Lucinda was already home when I got back from the Bureau offices, softly humming to herself in the quiet house before I unlocked the front door and entered. "Did you go see any friends?" Lucinda asks curiously as I entered the house with Poniard.
"A new friend," I reply vaguely and distractedly before quickly changing the subject. "I was recently told about a really dangerous and expensive magic surgery to enhance normal people and Protectors, something about skin grafts and bone reconstruction?"
"That's… been going on for the last six months," she says honestly. "Basically since right before you left the academy. For normal people, its basically getting mid-grade slime skins grafted to their bodies with a few changes to their muscles and nerves. Authentic portal warriors like you who can naturally grow by exposure can have more things done to them, though. It costs like three millions dollars just for the civilian surgery, though, so you've got plenty of time to THINK about it."
I could only nod my head distractedly while sitting on the living room floor with Poniard. That was basically saying I was being offered no less than a million dollars per person. That was some pretty good money, even in the form of a surgery, but the real questions were whether I could pull it off and whether I could bring myself to do it.
After three days of serious consideration and even more serious training with Poniard using the remodeled poniard, the two of us arrived at the portal assignment location in an unmarked white van. The location was an empty lot in the inner city of the neighboring metropolitan area more than a hundred miles away from where I lived. The van, though, was off-road compatible and greatly shortened the trip.
When we pulled up there was a graying archway hovering in the air at the back of the empty lot and it was in this area that the trio of swordsmen were being checked out by the Bureau's people. Two of them looked similar to one another as if they were related with matching brown hair, eyes, and freckles on pale skin. The third guy was at least a head shorter than the other two and while they wore thick longswords at their waists opposite from three-barreled revolvers the middle man wore two different swords across his back and a pair of revolvers at his hips.
Their armor was common skins like cave rats and hobgoblin from the coloring, but the lack of a shine even on the boiled hardened leather areas meant they were also probably treated in some way. The middle guy wore pointy fingered metal gauntlets and a matching carbon steel helmet with a round open face. These were once the armament and auxiliary weapons of an archer.
One of the mismatched swords on his back probably belonged to the first swordsman and god only knew what they intended to keep from me.
All of the inner strapping of my coat was used to cover my torso while the lower triangle of the bone guard poncho was folded up under the large pad under the obscene buckle. The belt, pad, and buckle just looked like a recent addition to the coat's inner defenses. Besides my revolver, saber, and big sword that were plainly visible I still had my throwing knives and an ivory sword hidden in my coat.
Even Poniard's poniard was hidden behind the ruck rack he carried on his body, leaving only a pair of blood stained stone hatchets at his plainly clothed waist for weapons. Even though I was a little worried about Poniard not having any proper armor at hand due to my own costs, I was pretty sure the nicely dressed goblin would look like a gathering of money symbols to my targets. Just my training made Poniard worth at least fifty thousand dollars, at this point.
As I was getting out of the van the driver had stopped me and said, "The director told me about what you had asked. I'm in charge of cleaning, so if you do it right inside just carry on with the assignment. I'll handle the rest."
I could only nod my head at the time and get out of the van. Now as I was approaching my targets and the coated agents checking them out I could feel a cold sweat pricking at my palms and necks. In my head the same words kept playing again and again.
Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.
Was I really going to do this? Could I even pull this off? Even if I might be some unique agility fighter, I am still F rank while they are E! My MP rating basically tells you how fast and flexible I am, theirs makes them stronger and tougher! Even if I drew first, a two-shot minimum leaves me with one chamber and less than three seconds-
"Yo, guys, its Poniard! The goblin poop!" The third guy calls to the other two, cutting off my thoughts while a Bureau agent stops me a short distance away and pretends to scan me. "I'd recognize that goblin anywhere."
This sudden shout-out to the others identifying my goblin at first had me scared as if my cover was blown, but then I could not help but wonder how the hell they would know any of that. "Were you guys in the market for a goblin, recently?" I ask with an awkward smile, feeling out the situation as best as I could while I could still play it safe.
"What? No, nah," the team leader for this assignment says in response to my question, slightly caught off guard. "You and your goblin are a famous meme right now, bro. Everyone is talking about this giant cardboard litter box with this giant but almost perfect swirl inside covered in litter like sprinkles on a fat man's doughnut. Dude, we have to take a picture together."
"Poniard is probably more famous than I am," I say a little awkwardly, letting out the goblin's leash by an extra couple of feet. "You can take a picture with him, but I don't even use my face for my marketplace accounts so… yeah."
Going through his armor in search of a way to get to his phone, the team leader walks over and holds his hand out toward Poniard as if he expect the goblin to sniff it like a dog. When Poniard simply blinked his big round eyes at him, the team leader awkwardly squatted down around and beside the goblin and held his phone up to take a picture. The empty property lot suddenly felt much less tense and heavy.
After the team leader was done taking a selfie with my goblin, the other two came over to take a picture as the three of them. I started to worry that Poniard might not like being so close to so many people considering that all he knew was fighting. However, even when the two brothers picked up the goblin to sit on their arms between the two of them my Poniard was barely even worried about his balance while staring at the shiny black device similar to his tablet.
Back on the ground, Poniard simply walked closer to me which displayed the fact that he was not comfortable around these people. "Now that that's out of the way," I say quickly while lightly shortening the leash, almost as if that might reassure the goblin. "Shall we begin? I was looking forward to testing this E grade against some F's."
"Leader leads the way," one of the brothers says to the shorter fellow with a mock bow and gesture toward the portal.
"We're playing Protect The President this time around, everyone," the team leader informs the group while leading the way to the portal. "Even though the little guy is going to be fighting, be ready-" entering the portal cuts him off briefly. "-to move in at the slightest reason. This goblin is now an international meme and treasure, if anything AT ALL happens to him you'll have me to deal with."
"Hold on, guys, his shoe is untied," I say quickly, crouching down and turning Poniard around before the other can see me actually untying his shoe. Now, in my mind, a single pair of words was playing again and again in the same swift rhythm as my heartbeat. 'fuck-me, fuck-me, fuck-me'.
Breathing slowly and deeply while the others walk on ahead toward a handful of watermelon sized slimes and some mountain goblins, I stand up and in the same motion draw my revolver while pulling back the hammer. The environment was a brown, gray, and black speckled granite rock tunnel about ten feet high and a couple more feet across. The three swordsmen had just drawn only their swords in preparation for an easy fight.
*BANG* *BANG*
The brother swordsman on the left was shoved forward by one set of bullets in his upper back and then a second set that grazed around and through the back of his head.
*BANG* *BANG*
The other swordsman on the left was caught in the side just as they were whirling around to see who was firing. As his body was sideways and smaller, only two bullets in the first shot punched through the front and back sides of his ribs and armor. In the second shot, though, I aimed to compensate for the push of the first shot and once again put at least one bullet in the target's head.
Wielding two swords, it was not until the team leader turned completely around and realized the situation that he even thought to empty his hands and reach for his gun.
*BANG* *BANG*
Before his swords even touched the ground, the first shot aimed low into the loosely woven leather padded gut of his armor forced him back a step. The second shot rode the recoil of the first and emptied the chamber into the middle of the man's chest. The first shot was enough to make them take a step back but the second set of bullets higher up knocked him flat on his back.
With the armor on top of a proto-suit as well as an E grade fighter's body, the gut shot probably sat superficially and on his abdomen after rattling his insides through absorbent muscle tissue. The shot to his chest, though, had disconnected his sternum from its two anchoring ribs with a certainty- if not breaking the breast bone apart. The team leader was possibly dying but still alive and kicking to crawl backward away from me.
His arms were still mobile, but just twitching his shoulders was enough to physically crush his heart with agony. "Poniard," I say while taking my time in undoing the clip on the goblin's braided steel cable dog collar before pointing. "Kill."
The goblin followed my finger toward the crawling team leader and just stared for a moment before ignoring the hatchets at his hips and reaching behind his head for the poniard. Poniard briefly sprinted across the distance and the team leader for this assignment started screaming and flailing.
Wary of human enemies even when wounded, Poniard reflexively dashed left and right with two quick shuffled that moved him as far as my body length twice in the same second. When no distance attacks- which I had probably left an impression on him with- were found to be incoming, the goblin leaped across the distance and raised the poniard high overhead. Landing on the down man's chest, Poniard savagely plunged fifteen inches of slender tapering blade almost perfectly straight down into the woven padded armor of the man's chest.
The thin and almost perpetually tapering blade of the remodeled poniard slid easily through the simply crafted and treated leather under the falling weight and strength of the goblin. From the sudden gurgling roar and frothing of blood at the man's mouth, I could see that the guard-deep dagger had hit something vital in the body as well. Only now did the goblin reach for its hatchets, looking fairly similar to me while fighting the ogre as he began raising and felling the flint weapons.
By now, the few goblins and the lowest-level ball slimes they were leaving behind were encroaching on Poniard and the bodies. The loud sounds of gunshots and the deaths of the invaders had confused them into cautiously slowing down, but now they were eyeing Poniard in a bad way. These gray tainted goblins were troll related, Poniard was descended from an ogre and of a higher grade.
These two species of goblins were natural enemies to one another as much as they were the enemies of most everything in the world.
With the new upper E bullets I brought along, a set of three armor piercing 10mm bullets was a waste as the first shot ripped right through the goblin's body. As a low F portal, the goblins here only had one or two hides for clothing apiece and their weapons were an oblong granite hammer or club, a slate hatchet, and a slate knife. Even though I only shot the two with hides covering their upper bodies, the number six in my head almost hurt my heart.
Recalled to the current situation by my two gunshots that made the remaining goblin and its hatchet retreat behind the four watermelon sized slimes, Poniard looks up and seems to lick its lips at the sight of these slimes. Raising the bloodied hatchets out of the neck and chest of the team leader, Poniard leaps to begin soundly thrashing the slimes.
The remaining goblin seemed to be enraged by this, gesturing the slimes were of importance, but it stopped moving forward when I leveled my gun at them again. Even though the hatchets were just flint and were already on the worn side when I got them, a single strike from Poniard was enough to leave a deep gash in the slimes from which about ten percent of their mass will initially leak out of. Two or three smashing chops later, the remaining fluids were mashed out.
Satisfied with the deflated slime bodies around him and ignoring the lower grade acid eating at its slightly expensive clothing, Poniard hisses at the remaining goblin before looking to me. "Go on, kill," I reaffirm for the goblin who actually seems to nod once before turning around to fetch his poniard.
Armed with the D grade poniard in his right hand and an E grade flint hatchet in his left, Poniard basically walks out of his ruined clothes to reveal a somewhat rounded body. However, the roundness actually emphasized things like his pecs and biceps and upper legs to a small extent. His belly, though, was rounded slightly forward and had a happy bounce to it.
Poniard had, at some point, began maturing as a goblin and might very well have grown an inch without me realizing it. His MP level was only a little higher than one-ten, now, but two day's worth of workouts in one as well as twice the kennel diet was definitely good for the goblin. Even in comparison to a goblin of the troll variety, my goblin who was younger looked like a winner.
Poniard pressed the enemy goblin dauntlessly, probably confident in both its own abilities as well as my own capacity for pointing shiny metal objects. When they were in range of each other and the enemy goblin started circling for time, Poniard simply took quick shuffle back and out that was only half the strength of his previous 'dodges'. Then, catching the other goblin by surprise, Poniard lunges the full distance right up to his enemy with a poised, twisting thrust of his poniard.
It was a particular technique we had been working on over the past few days, in case of a bad circumstance while fighting the rest of the team. However, the move that had once struggled to solidly pierce a sandbag with full depth was buried to the hilt upward under the enemy goblin's sternum. The core would probably not be damaged but such a weapon and blow, but it was definitely touched.
Pushing the enemy goblin away with superior strength despite the mountain goblin being an inch or two taller, the enemy goblin weakly falls back and the exposed inches of poniard sticking out of his back. Gripping the enlarged and extended hilt of the poniard as if he were going to remove it while kneeling on the enemy goblin's shoulders, my goblin starts to slide the dagger out before mercilessly cold-clocking the enemy in the side of its head with and inward slapping chop of his hatchet.
I knew there might be a different in stats because of the difference in grades, but I started to question whether it would even be worth it to bring a goblin from this dungeon back with me. F grade would definitely bring the value down.
*