SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 54: Outnumbered

Hiroshi moved.

He crossed the room fast and grabbed the Kobold off Baros and threw it sideways into the wall. It hit and bounced off and landed on its feet like the impact meant nothing. That told him something immediately. These things were tough.

Baros was trying to get up. There was blood on his side already. He got one knee under him and then another Kobold hit him from the right and he went down again and this time he didn’t try to get back up.

Hiroshi stepped over him and put himself between the body and the room.

Four of them in front of him. Maybe two more circling on the edges of his vision. The woman guard was engaging on his left, blade out, moving well despite the cut on her arm from earlier. She took one down with a clean strike and turned immediately to the next one.

Hiroshi read the room in a single sweep.

Fighter instinct kicked in without him deciding it. The way it always did when the situation reached a certain threshold. Suddenly he knew where each of them was without having to look directly. Knew which ones were about to move and roughly where they were going to move to. It wasn’t sight exactly. More like pressure. Like the air in the room had weight and the kobolds were displacing it and he could feel the displacement.

The nearest one came straight at him.

He stepped left and let it pass and brought the sword down across its back as it went by. It made a sound and hit the ground but kept moving.

Two more came together.

He read the angle and stepped between them instead of back. Inside their reach where their claws couldn’t get full extension. He hit one with his elbow and drove the sword into the other at close range and turned his body to use the momentum of the turn to throw the first one off balance. Both went down. One stayed down. One didn’t.

He was breathing hard already. The tunnels and the running and the fight before this one were all sitting in his legs and his arms and he could feel the accumulated weight of the last several hours pressing down on him.

Then something started in his chest.

Slow at first. Like warmth. Like a fire being fed from somewhere deep and working its way outward. His arms felt it first. Then his shoulders.

Adaptive Evolution. Strength multiplier coming online.

His next strike hit a Kobold that was mid lunge and the force of it sent the thing across the room and into the far wall hard enough to crack stone. He looked at his own arm for half a second. That was not a normal strike.

Then the pain arrived.

It started in his muscles and moved inward. Like his own body was resisting what was happening to it. Like the bones and the tissue were being asked to carry something they weren’t built for yet and they were expressing their objection loudly and all at once. His jaw clamped shut. His vision blurred at the edges for a moment.

Pain suppression responded. Wrapping around the worst of it. Dulling the sharp edges down to something manageable. Not gone. But pushed back enough that he could function. Enough that he could keep moving.

He kept moving.

A Kobold came at his legs and he read it before it arrived and jumped over it cleanly, sword coming down as he cleared it. He landed and turned and the next one was already there and he caught its arm on the blade and redirected it and drove it into the ground with his free hand.

The strength multiplier was still building. Gradual. Each exchange hitting harder than the last. The pain building with it in equal measure. The suppression working constantly underneath everything else to keep him functional.

He looked for the woman guard.

She was still on her feet but barely. Two Kobolds were pressing her hard and she was giving ground. Her sword arm was slowing. The earlier cut had taken more out of her than she had let on. She blocked one strike and took a glancing hit across her shoulder from the second and staggered.

Hiroshi moved toward her.

He hit the Kobold pressing her from the left with enough force that it left the ground entirely. The strength multiplier was at a level now that made every contact feel catastrophic for whatever was on the receiving end. His body was screaming underneath the suppression. He could feel his own heartbeat in his arms. A deep thudding pain that the skill was managing but not eliminating.

He put himself beside the woman guard and they held the line together for a moment.

Four Kobolds still standing. Regrouping at the far end of the room.

Then he saw Baros.

He was still on the ground where he had fallen. Not moving. The two Kobolds that had flanked him initially were crouched near him and they weren’t attacking anymore. They didn’t need to. Whatever they had done in those first seconds had been enough.

Hiroshi looked at him for one moment.

Then the four regrouped Kobolds came again all at once.

He stepped forward to meet them. The woman guard tried to move with him and her leg buckled and she went down to one knee. He heard the sound she made when she hit the ground. She wasn’t getting back up from that.

Three of the four hit him at the same time.

He handled two of them. The strength multiplier was high enough now that the impacts he was delivering were decisive but the pain underneath the suppression had reached a level that was affecting his movement without him fully realizing it. His reactions were a fraction slower. His footwork was off by just enough.

The third one got through.

It hit him across the chest with both claws and the force of it wasn’t large but his footing was already compromised and he went backward. He hit the stone table in the center of the room with the small of his back and the impact knocked the breath out of him completely.

He slid down against it and hit the ground.

The strength multiplier peaked and then the pain suppression strained against it and for a moment everything went white at the edges. Not unconscious but close to it. He could see the ceiling above him. The hanging bodies. The reddish light sitting low and steady like it had been doing this for years and would keep doing it long after tonight.

The Kobolds were moving toward him.

His sword was still in his hand. He couldn’t feel his arm properly. The suppression was at its limit and the pain underneath it was enormous and structural and everywhere.

He tried to get up.

His body answered slowly. Too slowly.

The Kobolds reached him.

And the last thing he saw clearly before the darkness came up to meet him was the reddish glow of the ritual room burning steady and indifferent above his head.