Fighting Goblins

Whatever creature that was pushing his hands, it was strong. Really strong. Alex felt the grasp around his fist intensify as he held the ore in his right palm. The pull was getting heavier by the second, and all Alex could do was try to get away from it.

Tina ran towards him and grabbed his waist, pulling with all the force she could muster.

"Common!" She shouted, but her strength was not enough.

"The pickaxe, fast!" Alex shouted, fixing one foot on the wall and the other on the ground, trying to pull his arm more forcefully. When Tina released his weight, he felt his arm entering the whole a little deeper, and something bit him. Two fangs entered his hand, and pain irradiated through his arm.

"Shit," he muttered with his teeth clenching. He decided to try a new strategy. He moved the hand inside the hole upward and downward as quickly as possible. Alex felt the creature losing its grip. "Smash the crack! Go!" He shouted, and she did as he commanded, no questions asked.

The crack widened some, and Alex continued his frantic motion, hitting both his hands and the creature on the ceiling and floor of the small hole. Until it released it, and Alex pulled his arm. He fell to the ground with the movement and looked at his arm.

Inside his fist was a beautiful yellow ore with almost zero crust. It was a sight to behold. When he turned his hand, he saw the pale skin marred with blood and two big wounds.

"One day of work in less than one hour," he said between gasps, tucking the ore inside his pocket and slowly getting up. "In my account, it was worth it."

"I'm impressed the goblin didn't take your arm off." She said, also trying to recover her breath. "What a day, huh?"

"It is gone, right?" He asked, cleaning his hand on his clothes. The wound was deep, but it was not bleeding as much as he thought it would. Alex removed one sleeve of his shirt and tied it around his hand. Tina looked at Alex with a shocked expression,

"Why did you just destroy your only good shirt?" 'Is this my good shirt? God… I'll have to work hard to get things right.'

"Better than bleeding to death," he replied, picking up his pickaxe and walking in another direction, avoiding getting close to the damn hole. He inspected one of the walls, close to the one Tina was mining earlier.

"What are you doing?" Tina asked with both hands on her waists.

"Mining. We need money, right?" He asked, shrugging and resuming the smashing on the wall.

"That's a change." She replied, walking towards him, "I welcome the change if that means you'll work harder to improve our miserable lives, but right now? Let's get out of here and talk with Val'Tar. She will ask for someone in the adventurer's guild, and they will be happy with their reward."

"What's the reward?" Alex asked, stopping hitting the wall.

"For one goblin? That's forty coins if I recall correctly."

"Ten days of working."

"Not exactly… There are probably at least three there," Tina replied and took his arm, "let's get out. The last team, which was in a goblin breach, appeared torn apart until the adventurers came. One of the girls… I don't like to think about what happened to her."

Alex thought for a second about their situation; he wanted to ask more questions about the creatures, but that would be too much on the noise. She already suspected the way he was acting. Giving her a new motive would not be wise. He just needed a way to discover more, and she seemed well-versed in dungeons and monsters.

"And if we try to kill at least one of them. The one who is on the wall?"

"You are completely crazy, Valther… Look, I know what happened in the alley before was terrible. You're probably still processing the situation but talking about a lost fight from the start."

"We could try," he replied, already walking towards the wall and peering at it. Tina didn't know, but he wasn't as weak as she thought. He had this endowment with him, which upgraded his physical attack. If a goblin were like the books he had read, one would not be a problem, and the bite wasn't as terrible as it could be. It was more like he had been attacked by a feral cat than an absolute monster.

"We could leave and leave this to the professionals," Tina said, grabbing her things.

Before Alex could reply , he heard a noise from the wall, as if something was crawling on the walls. He got closer but kept his distance from it, just in case.

A couple of seconds later, the wall blew up. A loud sound came from it as the blast threw Alex into the opposite wall. His vision got blurred, and his head bled. Something hit him just in the middle of the eyes. Tina lay beside him, awake and in a similar shape.

Alex looked to the hole where he fought the biting goblin and saw it had increased its size tremendously. A blue liquid around the cracks illuminated the room. It was like one of the blue ores had exploded, and inside it existed a strange liquid.

As he slowly got up and helped Tina do so, he started listening to the mad soundings from the wall. It was like a mix of laughter and shrieking in a high-pitched voice. He grabbed his pickaxe in a tight grip and waited. 

Two seconds later, the first creature emerged on the wall. It was less than one meter and was completely green. The top of its head was full of white horns, almost forming a strange mohawk. The creature wore tattered clothes and walked on all fours, and its movement showed that the monster was fast. The monster's big nose, mouth, and bulging red eyes only increased its terrible appearance.

It left the hole swiftly, and Alex realized he couldn't run right there. He traded a glance with Tina and saw she felt the same, gripping her pickaxe. 'Good, she is a fighter.' He thought while waiting for the beast to attack. It didn't waste too much time. Direct from the wall, it jumped towards Tina, almost too fast to catch up.

The girl dodged at the last second, falling from the ground while the beast hit the wall. Alex descended his pickaxe towards the monster. The creature sidestepped as the tool fixed itself on the floor. The goblin jumped to Tina again, aiming for her neck with fangs and claws extended. Alex released the pickaxe on the ground and pulled Tina with force. The goblin found only void.

'Too fast! I need to hit before it lands, just like in baseball.' The good thing for Alex was that he was damn good at baseball and even better at hitting people with bats.

He heard the sound of another beast crawling inside the walls. No time to lose. He positioned himself with two hands on the pickaxe and gestured for Tina to move back. 

"Come, little bastard!" He hissed, and the monster jumped. 'One,' Alex counted on his mind. 'Two… BANG!' The pickaxe entered the monster's skull with a plop sound to it, and just like that, the beast was immediately dead. 

Alex dropped the pickaxe blade to the ground, still holding the hilt with one hand, and released the beast with his foot. He looked over at Tina and saw she was impressed. But he had no time to brag about impressing her.

The second goblin jumped from the wall, and Alex didn't take his position, failing to hit it but dodging the monster's advance. It hit the ground close to Tina, and she tried to crash it under her pickaxe. Once again, the beast escaped, locking eyes with Alex, but when he hit it, it couldn't dodge. The tool deepened itself in the back of the monster, making it trash and squeak on the ground.

Alex couldn't deny he was feeling something different inside his veins. His most recent attack was way faster than the first one. Looking at the ground, he could see the red mist forming around his body; it was nearly invisible, and he doubted if Tina could even see it.

When the third monster rose from the hole and jumped towards them, Alex didn't even sweat. His pickaxe hit the beast mid-air with force, this time not fixing itself in the beast's body. The strike was so powerful that the monster was thrown directly into the wall close to the corridor they used to access the dungeon.

Alex glanced at the entrance and saw Val'Tar gasping.

"What happened here?" She asked, "Did you kill them all?" She pressed further, but her gaze locked with the far wall. From the hole, another goblin was preparing itself to jump. Alex assumed his position to strike the beast. The goblin had a blue ore inside his mouth. A suicide attack? No way! Alex was preparing to dodge the beast and run away from the explosion, but the goblin aimed at the door instead of jumping on them.

The giant one written 'DO NOT OPEN.'