Jack is surrounded by roughly four goblins. They are short humanoid creatures with green skin, pointy ears, and crude makeshift weapons.
He takes a few hits, a stab against his leg, and a spear slices his arm while he attacks.
'These wounds don't hurt as much as they should. My body seems quite tough, hopefully compared to my strength.' Jack thinks to himself.
Similar situations are happening everywhere around him. Baldric doesn't appear injured, his heavy armour and shield protecting him well, but the others seem to be in worse shape.
Dianne is hurt, javelin to the leg, which is bleeding a lot. She is also fervently trying to cast defensive barriers over and over again, while slowly retreating backwards.
Garrick manages to kill one of the goblins attacking Dianne, but he doesn't dare show himself too much, or he quickly becomes a target.
Felix is nowhere to be seen.
'I don't want Dianne or Garrick to be killed, and Baldric seems to be preoccupied with taking the brunt of attacks from all these goblins. If he were to move, they would spread out and attack everyone else.' Jack quickly assesses the battle.
'I don't know how much mana Dianne has, or how long she can keep casting, but she is already wounded and another attack could be devastating.' Jack continues his train of thought.
'Fuck it, why hide my strength? If I turn out to be as strong as I am hoping, then I would have to reveal it sometime in the future anyway.' Jack makes a decision.
He blocks a few attacks from the nearby goblins before making a mighty shove with his shield, pushing all nearby goblins away. He then pulls his arm back before throwing his warhammer straight towards one of the goblins with a bow.
The goblin sees this and lifts its skinny arms to try and defend, but the arms completely shatter as the hammer hits it. The warhammer then continues straight through its arms and destroys the goblin, before slowing down and hitting the ground. The goblin dies instantly.
Jack then proceeds to grab the weapon of the nearest goblin, a crude shortsword, which he uses to slash another goblin's throat, before slamming his shield down on the disarmed goblin, crushing its skull and spraying blood everywhere.
'Time seems to move in slow motion whenever I am in a fight. I can make smart decisions and act upon them quickly, almost like I am just controlling a suit instead of it being my own body.' Jack thinks during the fight.
With three goblins down, he is now much less surrounded and looks over to Baldric, who seems to be quite preoccupied but still notices Jack's miracle performance.
Jack simply continues, rushing forward with the speed of lightning to grab his warhammer again, only to charge back at another goblin, pushing it towards Baldric, who takes the opening and slashes it to death
They look at each other, both covered in blood, and exchange a knowing look.
From the outside, it looks like two battle-hardened veterans acknowledging each other's prowess in a fight.
Without saying a word, Jack starts running back towards the rest of the group while Baldric finishes the last goblins.
Jack sees Dianne struggle to perform any more defensive barriers and quickly tries to move towards the goblins with bows.
Garrick has been keeping the goblins away, but their ranged attacks put a lot of pressure on Dianne, and she seems to be on the verge of exhaustion.
When Jack appears next to the goblins, he uses most of his power to perform an overhead swing and slam the warhammer down against the first goblin in sight. The attack completely demolishes the goblin, which dies instantly in an almost comical explosion of blood and gore.
Jack notices Felix sneaking up on the goblins. Even while injured, Felix appears very stealthy. His wound makes him hesitant to attack, especially because he only wants to use one arm to attack.
'My perception is incredibly high, Felix is hidden very well and hasn't even been part of the fight after getting injured, no wonder the other goblins didn't detect him.' Jack thinks to himself.
As Jack distracts the goblins, they focus on him with their attacks instead of Dianne, allowing her to retreat to Garrick.
Jack is instead attacked, but he simply blocks the projectiles with his shield and sidesteps to mitigate the damage they cause.
As he distracts and attacks the goblins, he pays close attention to Felix, which seem intent on actually performing an attack on one of the goblins.
So when Jack goes in to smother yet another goblin, Felix makes his appearance and backstabs the other one simultaneously.
After the goblins fall, Jack takes another look around the battlefield.
Baldric is doing great with cleaning up the rest of the goblins around him, and he slashes the last one before turning around to check on the rest of them. He appears unhurt.
Felix and Dianne both sort of limp towards Garrick. Both Baldric and Jack also come over to check on everyone.
"Felix, I thought you left us... Sorry for doubting you." Garrick says when he sees Felix again.
Felix does not respond, only checking his shoulder and reaching for the bag with medicinal salves and bandages.
"I-I'm sorry I wasn't more useful." Dianne says in a shaken voice. Her face is pale, likely the result of blood loss.
"You weren't bad, you covered for me and held the brunt of the attacks against us!" Garrick says encouragingly to Dianne.
"You even defended yourself long enough for Jack to save us." Garrick continues while looking at Jack.
Garrick is about to comment on Jack's insane fighting prowess, but before he can say anything, Baldric takes over the conversation.
"Alright, everyone, that fight was horrible, and I hope you never make that mistake again. The very fact that we survived is what counts here, but don't think that the chances were with us. If I weren't with you, you all would have died." Baldric says in a stern voice while mostly looking at Garrick, Felix and Dianne.
Baldric then takes a long look at Jack, fully serious. Jack takes notice of it and becomes very aware of Baldric's gaze.
'He definitely knows that I don't belong here now. He saw my strength, and now he won't trust me again.' Jack thinks to himself while staring back at Baldric.
"Well, we survived this time. I think we should patch up our wounds and then check if that was all the goblins in the camp." Garrick says, seemingly not discouraged by Baldric's harsh words before.
The group slowly gathers their things, starts patching up their wounds, applying bandages and using healing salves or potions.
Jack notices his wounds from the goblins have already healed, and the slashes he received are gone without even as much as a scar.
'My body really is on par with my strength.' He thinks to himself, not really bothering to hide his unhurt arms.
The group enters a sort of awkward silence where everyone is curious about what just happened and why Jack is so strong, but every time someone starts mentioning it, Baldric interrupts with something to say.
After a little while, they all start moving slowly towards the camp. This time, Jack and Baldric travel at the front, a few meters in front of everyone else.
Baldric takes this opportunity to talk to Jack.
"I know you're not a recruit, so why hide your strength?". Baldric asks outright.
Jacks starts thinking, quickly spinning thousands of stories through his mind and trying to compute what the best possible answer would be. His mind moving faster than ever before. After what felt like a couple minutes, but in reality it was just a second or two, he answers.
"I didn't want to draw unnecessary attention." Jack says shortly. He then looks Baldric directly in his eyes, hoping to sound persuasive.
"Do you mind keeping this between us, or at least the details?" Jack says, hoping Baldric doesn't want to tell everyone immediately when they get back.
Jack sees Baldric thinking. It looks like he wants to ask a question, but then he sort of stops himself and prepares to say something. Hesitantly, he stops himself again, before nodding and answering very shortly.
"Sure." He simply says with a short nod.
Jack is surprised by this, he noticed all the different expressions Baldric gave, almost like he could see him think and create ideas in his head, even before the answer.
In most cases Jack would expect this to be a lie, but his instincts tells him Baldric seems honest. There was something in his voice, he sounded respectful and decisive instead of hesitant. Like he finally made up his mind about something.
'When I mentioned I wanted all my attributes to be as good as possible, what exactly did the old bearded guy think I meant?' Jack starts questioning his abilities.
'It seems like I am way better at figuring out people's intentions, communicating and also apparently being persuasive. I would have never thought that he would be so decisive in keeping my secret.' Jack continues.
He looks at Baldric, scanning him and really trying to find something to explain his behaviour. Some type of twitchy move, nervousness, shaking, clutching or scratching something. Nothing stands out, nothing seems out of place in Baldric's behaviour.
'I guess I will have to keep investigating this, can't do much persuading now, but once I get back to town, I need to do some experimenting.' Jack thinks.
Jack and Baldric go through some bushes, avoiding the venomous spikes hidden in holes, before entering a small campsite.
There are a couple of small huts made out of branches, sticks and clay. They appear very simple, just enough to hide from the natural elements without anything extra.
The camp is circular with a campfire in the middle. Various miscellaneous things laid out around like extra weapons, some knvies for meat and traps which aren't done yet.
The group approaches slowly and starts checking things, listening for any noise and watching for any changes.
After going through the huts and checking for hidden traps, they gather in the middle to discuss.
"I think that was all of them." Garrick says while looking around.
Dianne sits down on a small log around the campfire. Her skin is pale, and the wound on her leg makes her a bit slower than usual. She looks towards Garrick and nods.
"I-I hope that was all of them. I am exhausted, and I-I think I used too much mana in too short a time." Dianne says while sighing.
"But you are alive, and that wound will heal. Just give it some time." Garrick says encouragingly.
Felix doesn't say anything, but instead checks out the surrounding traps and especially the ones not yet finished.
Baldric steps in to make some decisions and begins talking.
"We destroy these huts, try to disarm most of the traps and then burn everything in a controlled fire. Don't touch anything directly. Use your weapons or at least gloves. Do not eat anything." He says while looking sternly around.
Everyone begins tearing the place down while Felix spends most of his time disarming traps, even extracting some of them, which makes Baldric raise an eyebrow.
The group makes a unified effort, and soon most of the tools and things left behind are gathered in a pile in the middle. They use the existing campfire to gather the flames and start a bonfire in the middle of the camp.
As it burns, Jack thinks back to the battle, his brain being able to recall every memory with almost perfect detail.
'I just slaughtered a couple of goblins, bashing them into mush with both my warhammer and shield.' Jack thinks back to the fight.
'How am I not disturbed by this?' He looks around the rest of the group.
Felix has a bandage around his shoulder, Dianne looks pale and halts when walking due to her leg wound, while Baldric is covered in dried blood.
Garrick seems fine, but his morale seems a bit lower than before.
Jack inspects himself once again, no wounds, no bandages, nothing on his arms or legs indicating he took damage. If it weren't for his shield having several dents and marks from the arrows, and his entire upper body being covered in dried blood, then it would be hard to even suspect he was in a fight.