Chapter 150: Trolls Eye, Best Allies (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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[The chapter is edited by my Editor: Alan_Loo/AlanL]
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The darkness of the Forbidden Forest's Underworld looked quite different in Quinn's night vision. Everything was coloured in shades of grey, the objects lacked details… yet his eyes were highly susceptible to movements. His other senses worked harder to compensate for the fact that his vision was incomplete.
From his peripheral vision, Quinn noticed a mid-size acromantula crawl out of the bushes between the blackened trees, making soft clicking sounds from the faint rustle of leaves.
'Another attack?' he wondered, ice crackling with a faint mist below his palm.
He raised his arm up, a jagged ice spike floating along with it. The acromantula didn't seem to feel any fear in the face of the ice. Seeing the lack of reaction, Quinn's eye twitched, and he sighed. He raised his arm straight above his head and shot the ice spike straight up into the air with loaded force.
Instantly, a screeching scream sounded as a small-sized acromantula fell down just ahead of his feet. A thick rope of spider web attached from its spinneret was hanging above.
'If force isn't working, they're using brains, huh. I can respect that.'
The mid-size acromantula that was working as a distraction saw another spike manifest into existence, and this time it felt fear. The spider leaped into the bushes and scurried away before Quinn could send a spike its way.
He knelt on the floor, and with a pair of protective gloves adorning his hands, Quinn extracted some venom from the pincers and the already produced web-silk from its spinneret. He didn't doubt obtaining one of the more unusual materials on the market.
”If this keeps going, I will soon have a hefty stock of this stuff.”
It had been a couple of weeks since he had started to explore the forest, and in all of his visits, Quinn had met acromantulas every single time. Argog didn't have control over his children, at least not much as he liked to think. The flesh-eating magical spiders were hungry for human flesh, and Quinn's regular visits were simply too much of a temptation.
After collecting the venom and silk, Quinn walked ahead; deeper into the forest. Within a minute of walking, treading between the trees, vines, and knee-length bushes, Quinn finally arrived at another region of the woods. His enlarged, dilated pupils and modified eyes reverted to their original state as he saw a stream of light illuminate a circular clearing.
He knelt down just away from the edge and peered into the only area he had reached, which had natural sunlight hitting the ground. He looked at the reason behind the reason.
Within the clearing were broken stumps, uprooted trees, grassless ground, skid marks ravaging the land, and within all of it, he saw the residents of the great clearing. Among all of that, ferocious roars and grunts resounded as Quinn watched forest trolls, pale-green skin, and straggly hair, armed with clubs crafted from uprooted trees.
The twelve-foot-tall, muscular monstrosities savagely fought each other. They bashed their clubs against each other, earnestly trying to defeat their opponent. One of the trolls finally seemed to gain an advantage as he struck the other trolls' clubs aside and raised his own club above his head before bringing down the sturdy clubs straight down on the head of the other troll.
A loud crack filled with an area with a painful roar, causing Quinn to flinch. But the sound was just the start, as a wave of more deafening roars pervaded the area. A horde of trolls sitting around the clearing, some of the tree logs, others on the ground, cheered at the fight's brutal conclusion.
'Damn, do they do this every day?'
Two times, he had watched the same scene two times. He had seen the forest trolls duking it out, and both times he had left after observing them, not daring to enter the light.
'One troll took a barrage of spells from the twelve-year-old me,' thought Quinn, 'I can incapacitate them quicker now, but a dozen of them? That doesn't...'
The danger was just too great. With no free water source near Quinn, he didn't have a magic that could use to wipe the trolls in one fell swoop.
'Fire could work, but the collateral damage would be too great.'
The area and power of magic weren't a problem. He could use some other elements with a lot of ”firepower,” but the problem was control. He was good with the other elements, but the level of control that Quinn needed to eliminate the trolls without the risk of setting the forest on fire wasn't a level that he currently had.
'Fortunately, I have something I can use,' he smiled and his body covered in black camouflage turned invisible. He stood up walked forward into the clearing.
The reason he had returned two times was because of scouting. He had found the density of trolls inside the darkness was much denser than outside. If he wanted to get past this part of the forest, he had to go through the clearing. Even with his invisibility magic, the terrain of the forest was rough enough for Quinn to hide all the noise. The grassless ground was his safest choice.
Step-by-step, he moved towards smack dab in the middle of the clearing.
'This reminds me of the chessboard,' he thought, smiling, 'The risks are around the same, aren't they?'
”Roar!”
His smile broke when he heard a roar from behind. Quinn turned to see a forest troll, larger than other of his kin, entering the clearing. His club seemed grander than others, ornated with various leathers and spiked with carved bones all around its surface.
The new forest troll had spotted Quinn.
'How in hell?!' he thought, but the answer struck him like a bolt of lightning as he saw the troll's eyes. The green troll's eyes were an off-white color, a shade barely different from the white of the eyes. Quinn knew in his heart that it wasn't just abnormal eye color but something magical.
”Trolls, like hags, possess rudimentary magic that in rare cases manifests in additional physical features.”
A tidbit of information about trolls popped up in his mind. It had been so rare, that that information had been stuck in the corner of a page. It seemed it was something that was so rarely seen that it was barely notable enough to get printed in... ”one freaking book!”
'He can see me. Something in his eyes can see me. What is it? Magic sight? Heat vision? Or something entirely different?'
He tried to think of the reason, but almost as soon as the thought entered, it was forcibly squashed as right now Quinn's priorities were different. He had to get out of here as quickly as possible.
His magic-aided mind worked overtime, and while he thought, the regular forest trolls stood up in confusion. They couldn't see Quinn, but their leader alerted them that there was an intruder here —and not just any intruder— they had a human among them.
Trolls, just like their neighbours, acromantulas, also loved human flesh, and they liked to eat the meat raw.
Quinn finally thought of a solution, spurring a line in his mind. It was one line that he recalled from the original works.
'Anyone can speak, troll. All you have to do is point and grunt.'
So that's what he was going to do.
'If this doesn't work. I am going to go on a rampage and run in the chaos.'
The magic started to leak out of Quinn; invisible streams of magic rose up, populating the area around him. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The image, sound, scent, and feel were unmistakable in his mind. Quinn already had everything, and the magic was within him.
'Let's go.'
The forest trolls had all armed themselves with their clubs and bones. The white-eye leader pointed at the spot Quinn was standing, telling his kind who couldn't see Quinn's position.
But before they could take a step closer, abruptly, a dominant roar shook the area. They saw a fifteen feet tall figure come running out of the woods. It was the same size as their leader, but it looked much wilder and more muscular than their leader. Instead of a club, it had a dull, rusted sword in his hand, which he dragged across the ground, gashing the earth as he stomped forward.
All trolls stepped back with their weapons clutched in their hands. They were scared of the newcomer's roar and size. The weapon, too, intimidated them. The dumb trolls had enough intelligence to gauge this one's intentions before charging in... the thought of the so-called invisible human.
The leader troll, unlike his lesser kind, could see what was going on. He could see that the new troll was just some magic done by the human, as he was standing behind the ”new troll.” It grunted to tell them the truth, but the new troll roared louder and raised his sword towards him, challenging him to a fight.
The forest trolls grunted in joy, excited to see a fight. They were confused about who to follow, and a ”war” would solve that problem. They sat down, slamming their clubs against the floor repeatedly as in the tradition of forest trolls.
Quinn behind the ”new troll” smiled. His plan was working.
'Illusions sure are handy,' he thought. 'thankfully, these guys are dumb, so dumb.'
He had copied the leader troll, altering some features, making his creation more intimidating. The sword interacting with the ground leaving gashes? That was simply earth magic emulating metal being dragged across the soil. The roars were sound magic, like the ones during his Tri-wizard performance, something he had mastered. He roared and grunted, challenging the big-bad troll to a brawl.
'If I win, I can walk out of here without arising suspicion,' he thought and looked at the leader, who looked pissed. He had walked to the middle, with his bone-spike club ready for attack.
'Oh, you big dummy, you're unlucky,' sighed Quinn with a smile, 'You might be big and a little special, but in the end, you're still a troll. The current me can wipe the floor of the twelve-year-old me... I could probably make him cry if I wanted, though that son of a bitch would probably try to pull something off...' Quinn shook his head to stop himself from thinking off-topic, 'So you're going down. Hard.'
Quinn decided to take on the role of the aggressive alpha troll and decided to make the first move. His illusion troll raised his blunt sword and ran forward to strike. On the other hand, he prepared a flesh-shredding curse in his hand, ready to shoot it when the metal made contact.
With his special sight, the leader troll knew that the troll in front of him was a fake, so his troll-brain decided to take the attack head-on; no defense was needed.
'Idiot.'