บท 63: One Human, One Book, One Slap
With malicious grins showing their yellow teeth, the goblins drooled at Edwin, as if he was their favorite food!
To be honest, he was really their favorite food.
Then the ten goblins threw rocks towards the boy. Even if with the protection of the robe, Edwin would still get hurt or bruised because the rocks could be considered as blunt weapons.
He dodged the rocks while deflecting some back to the goblins, but then, they stopped throwing rocks.
Five of the goblins who were carrying spears changed their weapons to swords and charged at Edwin.
With visible surprise, the boy was caught off guard by the neatness of the formation and communication of the goblins. In the stories that he heard, goblins were known to be disorganized and undisciplined, but it wasn't the case for these gremlins.
When one of the goblins got close to him, Edwin took the initiative to attack. The goblin suddenly became frightened and it started slashing the sword to the boy when he wasn't even close yet.
Granted that these goblins were somewhat organized and disciplined, their fighting experience was actually a bit lacking.
Edwin took advantage of the toughness of his robe and used its sleeves to stop the frantic slashes of the goblin, and used his other hand to disarm the goblin and kick him and hastily run towards the unarmed creature.
But as he was about to kill the goblin, the other four creatures attacked simultaneously.
Even though Edwin's robe was tough and unbreakable in front of these wooden weapons, he might still get hurt by getting tackled down to the ground by the goblins.
Due to the small size of the wooden sword of the goblins, for a human like Edwin, he was only taking hold a short sword.
He backed off from the four goblins, but at some point he was stopped by the goblins who were holding spears.
Edwin was starting to get annoyed, but he couldn't do anything about it. He was surrounded from all sides while being forced to focus into defense.
The speed of the sword-wielding goblins varried, one of them outrun the other three and first arrived at the boy and slashed down with its sword.
The boy parried the strikes of the goblin, while forcing it to back off by several steps. Edwin was still more powerful than them individually, as he was about to attack the goblin again, the other ones who were still holding the sword came to the rescue and simultaneously attacked the boy again.
This time, Edwin couldn't back off because he was near the edge of the formation and could only defend and attack against the four goblins.
The boy might be outnumbered, but he was still obviously more powerful than the other four by a large margin, making them retreat one by one.
Suddenly, one of the goblins accidentally tripped to the ground. He ran towards it and was about to kill the stumbled goblin when the other eleven goblins, including the one he disarmed earlier started to throw rocks again.
Edwin was forced to defend himself again by the rain of rocks, while dodging the strikes of the sword-wielding goblins. Due to this, the four sword-wielders and Edwin was in a stalemate.
'I can't keep this on for much longer!' Edwin tried to think of a way to get out, he couldn't even execute Flicker or Burst Steps or even Shadow Steps because he felt the orc wasn't that normal as it seemed to be.
As for dagger flash? Would the wooden sword even be qualified for it?
'Allen was really being easy on me when we fought.' He thought but he suddenly changed his mind, 'No, it's not that I'm weak. It's because I don't have the initiative!'
In an instant, the spear-wielding goblins also attacked the boy. Edwin dodged the spear attacks, but was hit by a rock on the back and an another one to the arm.
At the same time, one of the goblins who was equipped with a sword slashed towards him, Edwin could only block it with his own sword, but he was hit again by the rocks!
Now, the boy lost his concentration and one of the goblins took this opportunity to slash down at Edwin's wrist while the sleeves of the robe wasn't protecting it.
Edwin felt a sharp pain on his wrist, making him hiss as he spotted a wound on it.
Seeing what was happening, Edwin unhesitatingly did a flicker. At the same time, the orc acted too.
When the boy reappeared, the orc was also near his location. The latter then kicked the former and the boy and was knocked away to the ground a few meters away from his initial position.
As he was standing up again, Edwin coughed out blood.
If a portion of the force of the kick wasn't absorbed by the white robe, his spine would have probably get crushed.
As he was about to stand up again, the orc dashed to Edwin. The speed of the orc wasn't as fast as the boy's Burst Steps, but because he was injured, he wasn't able to react on time and was sent flying by an another kick.
This time, he managed to land back down the ground without getting knocked down.
"Ugh." Edwin coughed out more blood from his mouth.
"I can't let this continue or else I'll become meat paste.", Edwin gritted his teeth and tried to resist ejecting out more blood.
Then the boy's eyes slightly widened as he sensed danger. He rolled to the side, avoiding another kick of the orc.
However, the orc's club suddenly glew the faintest of light and it smashed it towards the boy.
Even with the protection of the white robes, because the club was a magical blunt weapon, Edwin knew that he would be crushed to death; if not crushed to death, he would be severely crippled afterwards.
At the last second, an idea emerged from the boy's mind.
-bam-
The club collided with something and it made a loud noise.
-boom-
Afterwards, the orc's weapon suddenly exploded creating smoke all over the area and it forced the orc back several tens of meters away from the boy.
Arising from the smoke, Edwin panted and let out an infuriated expression, while his one of his hands was carrying the Mortal Plane's Codex!
The boy stood up on his feet, a bit shakily this time due to his injuries.
At the same time, another sword-wielding goblin was charging towards him and slashed down its sword. Seeing the enemy, Edwin blocked the wooden sword with the book, and the sword broke in half as if it was merely a twig!
The goblin was surprised and was about to run away when Edwin swiped the book's front to the goblin's face.
-whoosh- -pshew-
The goblin's head flew away from it's body and landed somewhere far away from it! What just happened startled all of the other incoming goblins and made them stop on their tracks.
Edwin was also surprised by the result and checked the book. After promptly examining, he saw that there was no single stain of blood on it.
The boy glanced at the codex then towards the remaining goblins, "If a man throws a brick at you, then hit him with a book!"
"Roar!", the orc angrily roared stood up and dashed towards him without considering what just happened. The orc was slightly smarter than the goblins, which was almost impossible considering the common orcs focused on their strength rather than their brains.
However, seeing this, Edwin wasn't flustered anymore and even charged forward to the orc to meet it head-on. As soon as they get a considerable distance to each other, the orc punched out with its giant fist. On the other hand, the boy raised the book.
-bam-
The fist was thoroughly blocked, and the orc even staggered back due to the backlash, but Edwin was still firm on his place.
Blood flowed out of the orc's knuckle causing it to roar in anger even more.
From his observation, the orc in front of him was smarter than the ones on the stories that he heard, but its intelligence was beaten back by its anger! And it didn't care for anything anymore and even charged forward again while punching its other arm out.
-bam-
This time Edwin dodged the orc's attack and the beast only hit the ground, causing a short, weak quake. The boy used this opportunity to get closer to the orc's head and slap the book to the orc's face.
Meanwhile, seeing the boy actually trying to get closer to it, it grinned and sent out his other already bleeding hand to block the boy.
-crack-
Contrary to what the orc was expecting, the result was that its already bleeding arm bled even further and even its shoulder was dislocated!
The orc roared in fury again and punched out with its other fine arm, but Edwin anticipated it and dodged it fairly quickly. The boy then used the arm as a stepping board and tried to slap the orc's head was once again.
-bam- -pshew-
The orc's head flew from its body and landed somewhere in the clear field. Afterwards, the orc's body went it its knees then tumbled to the ground with a loud thud.
Then Edwin turned his head towards the remaining goblins and smiled. The smile along with the fact that there was still blood on his mouth, made him look dashing and dreadful at the same time.
The goblins didn't hesitate to drop all their weapons and equipment to the ground and started running away with all their might, even bumping on each other, but would Edwin let them escape after he was beaten so badly?
The following result was an one-sided massacre. A human, and a book, capable enough to behead the enemies in one slap.
The last thing that the goblins saw was a human carrying a book, before they were slapped to death amidst the snowy terrain.
ความคิดของผู้สร้าง 
Celestially_Mortal
Celestially_Mortal For clarification:
Flicker (big 'f') - name of the skill.
flicker (small 'f') - the process of the mentioned skill.
บท 64: Shadow
Amidst the snow-covered ground and the snowy trees, bodies of the decapitated goblins were lying about, with their green blood staining the ground.
Their heads were some distance away from their bodies, nobody knew what it felt to die by a book, now, they experienced it; nevertheless, they won't be able to tell the tale as their skulls were bashed away like bouncing pebbles getting thrown towards bodies of water.
Edwin pulled out a jar full of pills, after swallowing one pill, he placed it back in the satchel.
A refreshing feeling swept his body, it was cold, yet warm at the same time, like it was the perfect mixture of hotness and coldness.
Meanwhile, the Mortal Plane's Codex on his hand was still devoid of any stains of blood, even after one-shot slapping all of those humanoids to death.
Edwin placed the book back in his robes and checked the corpses of the monsters to see if there were anything valuable on them until he got a tiny orb from the pockets of the pants of the orc.
The orb was half as big as a circle that one could make by pushing the ends of the index finger and thumb to each other. He could feel some sort of energy flowing inside the orb, however, he felt that it was dangerous, but in the end, he still kept it inside his satchel.
"I really need a new weapon, or else if I meet another group of these monsters and probably much more powerful, I won't survive.", after which, Edwin left the area, fearing that other lifeforms had sensed the battle earlier.
...
A few days later...
After accidentally encountering another group of goblins, Edwin was forced to fight again, but just like what happened to the first group, it was a one-sided fight.
After raiding their bodies, the boy got a dagger in a good condition, "A good quality dagger, but it's not even enchanted, hais."
Normal weapons, such as what Edwin got, wasn't graded and was of worse quality than a Minor Inferior weapon.
Nevertheless, he still equipped it because he had no choice, or else once he encounter a much more powerful enemy, the book won't probably even get to protect him. Actually, he felt if the consciousness codex reached its limit, it won't let the book be used as a weapon for who knew how long.
Because Edwin always see groups of goblin on the way for these past days, he concluded that he was nearing to their lair. The boy frowned as he thought, 'Should I continue this way or take an another path?'
The route that Edwin planned was the fastest way to enter the inner region of the forest, but if he suddenly detoured, it might take more days to enter the said region. After considering the pros and the cons, he still took a detour, because there might be a powerful entity residing at the goblin lair which could9 sense him from afar.
Another few days had passed and Edwin has arrived beside a river. He took out a map and muttered, "There's no river going out of the forest. There's also nothing recorded in the outer region, that means I'm already in the inner region."
Edwin looked at the position of the sun on the horizon, the sun can't really be seen, but its shining figure could be behind the clouds, "I need to find an another shelter."
Based from the position of the sun, only a few hours were left until it would set.
He kept the map and was about to continue travelling the when the sky instanly darkened and everything else was blanketed by the darkness.
"Huh?!" He hastily looked upwards and around him, now, it was already nighttime, there were stars shining brightly on the sky with the moon, there was no sign of the sun.
The boy widened his eyes and backed off one step, "What happened? Wasn't it still daytime a few seconds ago?!"
He thought of the possibilities of what could have happened, 'Is this an illusion? Did I get hypnotized? Did I touch something?' He scratched his eyes, looked around his body, but saw that there was nothing wrong.
"Why's the river's color black?", Edwin approached and took a closer peek on the river.
As he got closer, he knew his eyes weren't being deceived from afar, because the river was now pure black in color!
He sniffed the air near the river to see if the smell changed, but there was no difference in its smell.
His back started sweating all of a sudden, "Who?" Turning around, he spotted a black silhouette far away from him.
The silhouette seemed like a shadow of a human, but Edwin felt that it was much different than it seemed!
He blinked one time, and the distance between him and the silhouette shortened, he blinked an another time and the distance shortened yet again!
The boy was alarmed and threatened at the same time!
As the shadow slowly came upon him, he backed off, but it was as if the distance didn't even change! He looked behind him at the river while still walking back, but he wasn't even approaching river even if his legs were moving! The river was so near, yet so far!
He looked at the ground below him and saw that he was indeed changing his position, but still, he couldn't move towards the river. He looked towards the black silhouette, which was even nearer this time! It was as if that the whole world was coming towards the silhouette.
In an instant, without Edwin blinking, the silhouette appeared right in front of him. At the same time, he stopped moving, or rather, he couldn't move anymore!
He was horrified down to his bones. He still bravely looked towards the silhouette. Even though the silhouette was all black, it's eyes were even darker and blacker than the whole body, like the darkest of the darkness.
When their eyes met, Edwin felt like he has been seen through by the silhouette, which added to his fear.
The silhouette stretched out its hand and touched Edwin's glabella, and it pierced its finger through it, then everything changed. The silhouette suddenly disappeared and the scenery before him changed into a bedroom.
There was a little boy and a man sitting on top of a bed beside each other. When Edwin saw the man, he was surprised and blurted out, "Father?!"
However, his father, and the little boy, which was his past self didn't hear him. He approached the both of them and tried touching them, but his hands only went through them. In the end, he gave up trying to get their attention and just looked at the both of them.
"Happy birthday father, here, I made note for you. I hope you'll like it!", Little Edwin eagerly gave a letter to his father, even getting a little itchy; the latter examined it and coughed a few times before smiling, "Thanks, it made me feel much better."
"Really?" The little kid's eyes shone, "Then I'll make more of them so you won't get sick anymore!" Little Edwin excitedly looked to his father.
"No, no, this is enough, it's enough.", Edwin's father said.
"Oh? If you say so father!" Although his notion was rejected, Little Edwin wasn't discouraged one bit.
Edwin smiled at the sight, it felt good to see his father again, even though he can't be seen. But under his smile was the bitter taste of reluctance as a child and longing as a young man, because, this was the last time he saw him alive.
Suddenly, everything fast forwarded in a flash, and it was already nighttime.
"No... no... I don't want to see this, get me out of here!", Edwin's countenance changed for the opposite and he shouted, he knew what's the next thing that would happen with his intuition.
He tried to exit the room, but couldn't do so; he tried to turn the doorknob, but his hands just went through; he tried to phase through the wall and door or anything, but couldn't; he tried to jump out of the window, but was suddenly pulled back by a force; he tried to close his eyes and cover them with his hands, but he still could see through them!
The boy tried everything, until another kid wearing a black mask quietly entered the room through the door. Edwin tried to turn around, but he couldn't move again and was fixed in his position.
He struggled and tried to move, but it was all for a naught, by the time he stopped struggling, his father's neck was already slashed opened and everything that happened has followed.
However, Edwin didn't pay attention to what happened afterwards, he suddenly felt that he could move again, but his knees only collapsed to the ground as he cried out, "I'll kill you!!!"
Adding another frantic shout, he declared, "I will kill whoever your family is! I'll kill them all!"
The masked kid exited the room, while Edwin immediately behind him, until the former entered an alleyway, as the latter was about to follow, he sensed somebody gazing from behind him.
Edwin turned around and saw a man looking at him.
"You are not from this time." Without any emotions, Mr. Sanchez looked at Edwin and muttered to himself, "Good thing I lend the kid a mask."
Edwin was surprised that somebody could see him and asked to him, "Who are you?"
However, Mr. Sanchez coldly replied, "Return." A simple word, yet, Edwin felt that it filled with a lot of power.
The boy felt that his existence fluctuated and he immediately run inside the alley.
"Return!", Mr. Sanchez said again.
This time, Edwin couldn't feel his legs and anymore and he was slowly fading away.
"NO! I need to see who killed my father!", Edwin desperately crawled towards the corner of the alleyway.
"Return!"
This time, Edwin felt that he became much more weaker, and couldn't even lift up his hands anymore.
"No! Please no!"
This time, Mr. Sanchez's eyes changed color as he said, "There are only two kinds of beings who know how to check back in time, and I am not going to let you last longer here even if you are the good one!"
The tavern owner clapped once with his hands and the boy heard a muffled explosion.
Everything went dark for Edwin, but not for long, because he returned to the scene where the silhouette was piercing his forehead.
The silhouette pulled back it's hand in a flash, and its figure slightly became faded and smoke arose from its body. It was obvious that he was injured somehow!
Then the silhouette's arm turned into the figure of a sword and stabbed it towards the boy's heart.
Edwin wasn't able to move when the sword already pierced his heart. With wide horrified eyes, he looked one more time towards the black figure until he felt his consciousness fading at a fast speed.
***
Meanwhile at Eastern Horizon City...
James was sleeping soundly while his hand was over the counter. However, his eyes opened wide from his sleep and he fell from his chair while coughing violently many times.
"James!", Anna noticed what happened and ran over to the kid.
Then suddenly, James started to cough out blood and his face turned pale.
"Alchemist Morgan!", when Anna saw what was happening, she called out for Allen, but the latter was already one step ahead and examined James.
Allen carried the kid and sat him on the chair. James already stopped coughing, but his face was still pale.
Allen took out a pill from his pockets and let James eat it, easing the kid's pale face back to normal.
"Kid, go home and rest.", Allen said. "Anna, can you escort him back to his house?"
"Okay." Anna agreed.
James didn't reply and just immediately left the shop along with Anna and went back home without saying anything.
...
As it was still early, his mother and father was nowhere to be seen inside the house, because they were working. James left Anna outside and rushed to his bedroom then locked its door.
He thoroughly pulled out the large drawer from the shelf and placed it on the ground.
Meanwhile, there was an another drawer on the wall!
He pulled out the drawer too, and there was a corpse of a baby inside it.
The kid slowly became calm as he saw the corpse, however, he began crying afterwards, "W-what am I?" The tone of his voice was the combination of fear and regret.
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