This is going to be an action-packed chapter, and be a reminder of how powerful Hero is on her own merit.
The author's notes will be at the bottom, although I don't think I have much to say. Anyways, please enjoy this chapter!
Crossing blades with the first of many soldiers who were advancing towards her, Hero found herself needing to stay on the defense with how fast her robotic opponents were. Using its two sharp-arms as if though it were dual wielding, each calculated jab and slash that the soldier used to attack Hero was barely parried by the young girl's lightning-fast movements by the last split second. With how durable its entire sleek-shiny black metal haul was, the most Hero's blade was able to do when she swung with all her might against various parts of its body was just scratch the top-layer of its laminated armor.
With six more soldiers sprinting toward her with their sharpened arms at the ready, Hero didn't have a lot of time to engage with the singular opponent who she was already busy with. Gritting her teeth as she swung diagonally down to force her opponent to take a step back with one of its lanky-pronged legs, once Hero's blade clashed with its metal arms she made sure that her opponent was haunched down to where her lower blade was. Proving herself superior to the machine, the young girl immediately took the soldier by surprise by dropping her entire body down low down to the ground; a move that the automatron had not calculated for.
Swinging her leg out and spinning to drop kick its metallic front leg out from underneath its top-heavy body, Hero immediately leapt up and shoulder checked the mecha by tackling it while it was unbalanced. Using her momentum to lift her leg high up onto the air, by the time that the soldier tripped backwards and landed down against the grassy plain on its back, Hero dug her metal heel deep onto its glowing-red triangular face; shattering it and causing the soldier to immediately go limp.
Unable to celebrate for long once she pulled her metal boot out of its head, Hero had to backflip several meters away from where all six soldiers attempted to work together to slash their arms where she had been standing over their fallen comrade. "FIRE BOLT!!!" Hero shouted with a daring look in her apricot-colored eyes, as she swung her flaming sword down to cast down a projectile of pure molten magic upon the six soldiers.
Raising their red-translucent shields up in front of them, the only thing the young girl's magic spell was able to do for her was buy her enough time to evade the six soldiers by distancing herself from them. Landing back on her feet, Hero immediately reached up over her shoulder to grapple the bladed arm of the one soldier who had tried sneaking up on her from behind.
"Ngh! Y-You guys are starting to get on my nerves!" Hero grunted, before using her impressive strength to judo flip the five-hundred pound robot over her body, tearing its entire right arm off, before plunging the tip of its severed limb into its red triangular face. Feeling the warm sensation of her own blood trickling down from the fresh cut along her clavicle, where the dead soldier had managed to slash her before she could counter its attack, Hero clenched her jaw tightly while flashing a challenging grin at the six soldiers who were once again advancing toward her.
Empowering her blade with the volatile power of the sun itself, instead of casting it like how she normally would through "Sun Burst", Hero was pushing the boundaries of her mental fortitude as she kept the powerful fire arts magic within her light sword. With the blade of her trusty weapon now as hot as the stars themselves, Hero was fighting with both her own grip of the unstable sword as well as the soldiers.
Groaning and grunting while feeling the bones in her arms violently vibrate from how badly the light sword was shaking, the swings of Hero's enchanted and solar-endowed blade were now dealing enough raw damage to create deep incisions into the robots' armor; leaving behind molten sleek-ebony steel that crippled the soldiers' bodies each time she chopped down with her volatile sword. With the area around her becoming enveloped with the blinding light radiating from her unrelenting blade, by the time that Hero had finished dicing her six opponents into red-hot pieces, she no longer could hold the charge she was endowing her light sword with.
With seconds to spare before the spell blew up in her face, both literally and metaphorically speaking, Hero aimed the tip of her shaking blade at the large army of soldiers who were approaching her with their shields raised; all of them deemed her to be a bigger threat than Goblin Slayer. "S-SUPERNOVA BEAM!!!" Hero shouted with an uncertain and anxious tone behind her mighty roar, and braced herself as the power radiating from her light sword shined brighter than it ever had. Triggering a runaway fusion reaction from how much magic she had been charging up, the luminous explosion from her sword caused her entire body to propel itself backwards away from the burst of gamma rays.
Burying her heel deeper-and-deeper into the mud that was beginning to turn into glass beneath her boots, all while trying to control the direction where the cone-shaped dispersal of nuclear energy was going, Hero was straining every bit of her body to maintain her aim; her nose bleeding profusely while tears were leaking out from the corners her squinted eyes. Even though the blast of her newly developed "Supernova Beam" spell was taking a huge toll on her health, the result of it was spectacular to behold.
Penetrating through the soldiers' chakra shields like they weren't even there, the AOE shockwave from her volatile spell alone was enough to destroy the twenty robots who had tried overwhelming her by launching a full circumference assault on her; their wired insides frying and getting ripped apart, while those who were caught in the wide-encompassing beam itself were immediately vaporized them into dust.
Hero's new and extremely-destructive spell itself lasted approximately twelve seconds, and in that short amount of time she had managed to disintegrate the metallic bodies of forty soldiers into smithereens from just the beam alone. Combined with how many kills she had scored with her Supernova Beam's initial shockwave, and all the other automatrons who she destroyed in more direct ways, Hero's kill count from that battle alone had reached seventy-two; once again proving to the world why she was the number one adventurer of all time, and why she went simply by "Hero".
However, unlike the Sun Burst spell, which only left Hero mildly exhausted for a brief moment after casting it, the Supernova Beam had completely drained the young girl of every bit of magicka and stamina inside of her body and mind. Falling backwards and landing on her back, Hero was unable to keep a hold of the light sword's handle. Dropping her smoking-hot weapon to the side of her, Hero began snoring only a few seconds after she had passed out on the glass surface of the area that had been cooled down, after having been turned molten by how much heat her spell had created.
Unlike the lesser monsters and bandits who she was easily able to combat with her wood affinity, and even the flames of her Ameratsu technique, the sleek-metallic bodies of the soldiers nullified almost everything in Kaguya's available arsenal. Their metal hauls were too durable for even her all-killing ash bone projectiles to puncture, and their chakra laminated armor made it so the black flames she had tried casting with her Rinne-Sharingan never were able to combust their hauls.
And of course, the wood tendrils she had tried summoning from the ground were either sliced off before they could wrap themselves around their three-meter tall frames. In the rare instances that her wooden tendrils would land, they simply weren't sharp or powerful enough to do any meaningful damage.
Even the reliable x-ray vision that her byakugan bestowed to her was betraying her senses: with the soldiers themselves either being completely invisible to her byakugan, or giving her completely false readings of their actual locations in general.
Needing to rely solely on Goblin Slayer to fight on their behalf, with the only thing she could contribute to fight being the chakra she was endowing him with, Kaguya couldn't help but get the feeling that whoever designed the automatrons in the first place built them for the sole purpose of combating the Ōtsutsuki clan themselves. Even the foresight usually given to her by her Rinne-Sharingan was being interfered with by some outside force, as each time Kaguya tried to use it within the presence of the soldiers, her mind would become fogged by what could best be described as a storm of static that infiltrated her usually calm and collected mind.
Even with Kaguya only being able to provide him with enhanced physical attributes, Goblin Slayer was no slouch when it came to using his own reflexes and tactics to carry his own against his terrifying metal-opponents. Armed with scrolls and an ebony spear, Goblin Slayer was able to activate a deflection ward just in time to prevent getting shot in the back of the head by one particular soldier, who had tried sniping him with a well-aimed chakra beam out of its red triangular optical. Getting its own attack reflected directly back into its optic, the soldier's triangular face exploded into a rain of glass-like shrapnel; black smoke pouring out of the gaping hole where its red eye once was, as it fell backwards and landed hard against the grass-covered Earth beneath it.
Attempting to activate another scroll to summon a bolt of lightning from his hands, the soldier who Goblin Slayer had aimed the attack at immediately deployed its frontal barrier; creating a red shield that covered its entire front. Wanting to make the most use of his scroll, Goblin Slayer used his enhanced speed to zoom around the defending mecha. Once behind it, where its red barrier shield couldn't protect it, Goblin Slayer rammed his spear directly behind its upper body; the tip of his ebony weapon pierced out of its triangular face; using his spear as a conduit for his lightning spell, and frying the insides of the soldier, just to ensure its death.
And as its chakra shield disappeared into a cloud of shattered red-translucent particles, the deactivated soldier fell forward and landed face down into the ground. Putting his boot down near that he had stabbed and electrocuted the mecha in the back of its face, Goblin Slayer gritted his teeth and let out a grunt as he pulled his sleek-black spear out of the soldier's body. With Kaguya unable to provide him with any additional spatial awareness of his surroundings, Goblin Slayer's alertness is what saved him from getting impaled through his back by the one stealthy soldier, who tried ambushing himself from behind.
Jumping forward and plunging his ebony spear into the ground, Goblin Slayer used his core strength to spin sideways and back around to where the soldier was, who was then attempting to deliver another follow up attack. Being slightly faster than how lightning fast the mecha was moving, Goblin Slayer narrowly avoided getting his legs chopped off by the soldier's two-meter long bladed-arms as he shattered the robot's triangular red-face with a well-placed double kick.
Leaping backwards while launching the destroyed robot forty meters away, Goblin Slayer performed the same kind of reverse spins that he had seen Hero do time-and-time again. Implementing her technique, Goblin Slayer was able to control where his airbourne body was descending; giving him the opportunity to grab a hold of his spear while still in mid-air, and used his momentum to pull his ebony weapon out of the Earth so he could destroy yet another soldier who had tried predicting where he was going to land.
It was then that three more soldiers came heading toward him from the front; enacting a full-frontal style of assault, with the front keeping its shield up while the mechas on the side raised their arms up to form lances. With no way of taking the three sleek automatrons on head on, Goblin Slayer proceeded to use his spear as a makeshift pole-vault; his added reflexes and physical endowment made it so that he was able to leap over the heads of the three-meter tall robots.
Once he was directly above the middle automatron, Goblin Slayer stomped down the top of the middle soldier, the one who had created a translucent red-shield to cover its front. Keeping his boots firmly planted on its falling body, Goblin Slayer tucked his spear underneath his armpit as he spun around to knock down his other two opponents. With all three of them on the ground, Goblin Slayer stabbed the soldier he was standing on top of through the back of its head. And with the two other soldiers getting back up on their pronged feet, Goblin Slayer quickly pulled out his spear before ramming it straight through one of the robot's triangular faces; destroying it and knocking its deactivated body down.
Unfortunately, having to choose between one of the two automatrons meant that Goblin Slayer had to present his back to one of them. So after he finished pulling the spear out of the shattered crystal-surface of his most recent kill's face, he didn't have enough time to defend himself when the soldier from behind swung its sharp arm down. Tearing open his iron armor from the back to all the way up the front, the saving grace of being able to roll with the mecha's blade meant that the damage Goblin Slayer sustained to his chest was only surface level cutting; his ribs and layer of muscle and fat kept safe from his opponent's bladed arm.
However, that's as far as his good luck got him. The soldier, a robot model who showed itself capable of strategizing and possessing combat prowess, used its other blade-like arm to disarm Goblin Slayer. Tossing the ebony spear far out of his reach, the soldier proceeded to use its lightning fast reflexes to plunge its other arm deep into Goblin Slayer's shoulder; having barely missed its intended target. Having been trying to aim specifically for Kaguya, the soldier's triangular face glowed menacingly as it locked its optical camera directly into the frightened goddess's byakugan eyes.
Grunting in pain while knowing that the other soldiers were coming to overwhelm him with their remaining numbers, Goblin Slayer reached up and began wrestling the bladed-arm out of his bleeding shoulder from the automatron, as it pulled its long metal arm out. Wanting to not worry about the human who Kaguya was using to protect herself, the soldier used its other sharp arm to penetrate straight through Goblin Slayer's chainmail and iron armor like paper, and plunged its tip straight into his abdomen.
Completely unphased when Goblin Slayer coughed up blood onto its camera, the soldier raised the arm that it had skewered through the young man so it could steady its aim with its other sharp limb. Seeing the blade arm that was meant to be used against her, Kaguya was able to hop out of the way just in time to avoid being split in half by the vindictive robot; causing the soldier to unintentionally leave a deep gash Goblin Slayer's already wounded shoulder, and denting his iron shoulder pad in the process.
Ignoring the critically injured adventurer who was trying to pull himself off of its arm, the soldier chose to instead focus on where Kaguya was trying to flee from it and its brethren. No longer considering either Hero nor Goblin Slayer to be active threats to their objective, the soldier pulled the upper half of its bladed arm out of Goblin Slayer's body; shoulder bashing the dazed young man down to the ground, before proceeding to chase after Kaguya while leaving him behind to die.
Writhing in pain while looking down to see all the blood that was pouring out of his lower abdomen, Goblin Slayer could feel his body quickly going into shock. Fighting to stay conscious as he laid flat down on the grassy field, Goblin Slayer ignored the excruciating agony he felt radiating from his injuries as he attempted to search his leather pouches for any healing potions that he had sealed away into scrolls. It didn't take the light headed young man long to remember where the healing items were stored.
'The backpack… They're in the side pouch,' Goblin Slayer thought to himself, as he let out a painful groan while sitting up slowly to search for where Hero had gone; remembering that he had given her the backpack while he was still training with Kaguya. Beginning to develop tunnel vision as the slow beating of his heart pounded in his eardrums, Goblin Slayer knew that his injuries were far worse than he initially thought it to be, making it that much more stressful for him once he found a large patch in the field where all the grass had been disintegrated, and where the ground had been turned into glass with Hero's sleeping body in the center of it.
'She's… Far,' Goblin Slayer thought to himself with despair in his weakening heart, before finally falling down on his back; momentarily losing consciousness as the back of his head rested against the tall blades of grass below him. Awakening moments later to the sight of the cloudy sky above, Goblin Slayer's entire body had grown cold, and the feeling in his hands and feet had gone numb.
Even though his mind was slowly getting conjuring pleasant thoughts in his head to distract him in his dying moments, such as how Cow Girl was doing, and how the rest of his friends and party members were doing for that matter as well, the fire light inside of Goblin Slayer was the only thing keeping him succumbing to his fatal injuries that would have spelled the end of anyone else in his position. Despite his heart having stopped beating, and his body not having enough blood left to pour out of his wounds, seemingly nothing was stopping Goblin Slayer as he rolled his cold-as-clay body over.
Getting up on his trembling arms and knees, Goblin Slayer's right eye was radiating with the same level of red-energy that the soldiers who were chasing Kaguya up the observatory tower had in their face panels. "A… Autumn," Goblin Slayer uttered out, before spitting out another wad of blood that coated his chin and the grass beneath him in a dark-crimson color. Against all odds and even fate itself, Goblin Slayer proceeded to crawl as fast as his weakened body could carry him, clutching his gloved fingers into the dirt each time he got closer and closer to where his leather backpack was.
By all accounts, Goblin Slayer should have been dead by the time he reached the glassed-over surface of where Hero was still laying stomach up with the leather backpack underneath her. Once he got to where she was laying down, it was then that Goblin Slayer noticed the deep gash on Hero's shoulder; a usually unsuspecting injury that had been glossed over by her earlier.
Gazing down at all the blood was coating her pale shoulder, and that was staining his backpack as it began to pool up in the glass beneath her, it was then that Goblin Slayer realized that Hero hasn't passed out from mere exhaustion alone, but her unconscious state was from the significant amount of blood loss that she had experienced, after her subclavicular artery had been severed.
Looking down at her pale skin, which had lost its usual complexion, Goblin Slayer's focus shifted from saving himself to saving Hero's life. 'The cemetery, the forest, againnnn…' Goblin Slayer's incoherent thoughts sung inside of his head, as he tore open the side of the leather pouch. 'The cemetery IS realityyyyy— Dewyyyy fields, againnnn! A secret, a mossi warriorrrrr,' his dying brain continued to think for him, as he unsealed the handfuls of scroll in hands; most of them having been torn during the battle, and were producing shattered glasses of healing potions that fell down on the glass-coated ground beneath them.
'Breeeeevd, shimmering, claiming flowerrrssss blooooom… Breved, not the bugggggssss,' Goblin Slayer's brain continued to convey to him in maddened thoughts, while he suddenly found himself thinking back to all the cruel words that the old Rhea who rescued him said to him. 'Six… Niiinnnneeee… Threee…. Thrreeee rottinggggg corpsssssses that sleeeeep foreverrrrr underrrrrrneath the treeeeeessss,' Goblin Slayer thought hauntingly, while collecting the remaining healing liquid from the ground in the only remaining intact glass vial that he had on him.
"I… I have to protect everyone… From the goblinsssss, from the humansssss, from the monstersssss, from everyone… Everyone," Goblin Slayer muttered under his breath in a slurred pattern of speech, as he poured the elixir inside of Hero's parted lips; watching with his glowing red eye as her fatal injury was magically mended as a gentle glowing light of restoration magic made the wound vanish before his very eyes. 'I have to pluck the sprouts that are getting in the way… Even myself,' Goblin Slayer thought to himself in a suprisngly coherent way, while slowly realizing what he had just thought to himself.
"M… Myself…?" Goblin Slayer repeated to himself in a calm and collected voice, as he looked down and stared at all the blood that was stained to his black-leather glove. Focusing on the crimson stains that had become prominent from all the blood that had stained his glove, Goblin Slayer felt a strange sense of calm-melancholy washing over him, as the haunting memories of his sister's vile demise played back inside of his damaged mind. It was painful for Goblin Slayer to be reminded of his cruel past, and yet part of him had always thought of his traumatic experience as the one thing that had strengthened his resolve throughout the years of hardship and pain.
But in that moment, Goblin Slayer didn't feel empowered at all from the pain he remembered enduring in the past. 'The pain… The pain was never fueling my motivation… It never once ignited my determination… All of this time… It's been burning me alive from the inside out; asphyxiating, and blistering my soul with despair,' Goblin Slayer thought to himself with a cathartic realization washing over him, as he took what felt to be his last breath. Unhinged and finding it hard to hold himself up any longer, Goblin Slayer's confused and overwhelmed mind was finally granted peace the moment he collapsed under his weight.
Before Goblin Slayer's face made contact with the body of the young girl beneath him, he was out. No longer needing to feel sorrow from just how broken he was on the inside, slowly but surely, he was fading away into an endless abyss of misery and darkness. Goblin Slayer's psyche, despite it being fragmented into an agonizing existence, still refused to be taken by the cold and unforgiving void, even when death seemed so welcoming and kind to his everlong plight of suffering.
Unveiling his glowing red-eye once again to the twisted and cruel fates who he defied, and as a sudden jolt of electricity jump-started his heart, Goblin Slayer took in a deep breath of air of life in his burning lungs. Pushing himself up on one knee with rejuvenated strength that was coursing through the inside of his body, Goblin Slayer looked down while reaching with one hand to inspect the area where his abdomen wound had been. 'It's… Gone? But, how? It was just there a moment ago-,' cutting his own thought process off, Goblin Slayer's scarlet eyes caught the sight of Hero stirring awake; appearing still pale, and out of it as her eyelids fluttered open.
"E… Eren…?" Hero spoke aloud with a discombobulated look on her apricot-eyes; her befuddled behavior immediately tipping Goblin Slayer off that she was still suffering the after effects of having just almost bled out. "R… Rabbit… W… Where's… Where's… R… Rabbit… Goddess…?" Hero stumbled out, while appearing to be bordering the line of unconsciousness, as not even Goblin Slayer knew where exactly she was looking at specifically through her glazy stare.
Reaching down to grab a hold of her cold hand to comfort and reassure her, Goblin Slayer smiled at her while gently squeezing her numb fingers. "… Just lay down for now; leave the rest to me. I'll go get her right now," Goblin Slayer said in a soothing voice, before softly laying her arm back down on top of her body. Still sitting up on one knee, Goblin Slayer made sure to quickly unfasten the leather belts that were keeping his set of heavily compromised iron armor secured around his mysteriously healed torso; a strange turn of events that he decided to ponder about later, when he had the time to do so.
Taking off his split-open chainmail shirt, along with the rest of his upper-body armor that had gotten damaged during the fray, to the point that its jagged edges were digging into his skin, Goblin Slayer finally removed what remained of his medium-length shirt to cover Hero's cold body. "All you need to do is stay alive, and keep warm for me… Can you do that?" Goblin Slayer asked in a comforting tone, while reaching past Hero's covered body to pick up where she had dropped her weapon.
Wishing that she was more coherent so she could truly appreciate Goblin Slayer's kind gesture, all Hero could focus in her hazy state of mind was on his rippling pectoral muscles, toned six-pack muscles, and his large-bulky arms that were all a part of his amazing physique. If Hero had the blood to spare, her face would have been crimson-red from just how stunned she was at his masculinity and handsome face. "…Uh huhhhhhh," was all Hero was able to utter out in a slurred voice, which was good enough of an answer to satisfy Goblin Slayer's worries.
"Good… I'll be back to get you; I'll give your sword back once this is over," Goblin Slayer with his smile fading away, as he became more concentrated on rescuing Kaguya from the remaining soldiers who already all had a head start on climbing the tall observatory tower. Before rushing off toward the sleek-ebony structure, Goblin Slayer carefully removed the leather backpack from Hero, taking only what he needed from it, before leaving the remainder of its contents to the resting adventurer to have access to if she needed anything in his absence.
Rushing through the five-meter tall double doors of the observatory tower, the first thing Goblin Slayer noticed when storming through the bottom floor was just how different the inside of the massive structure looked. Compared to the black-sleek metal exterior of the observatory tower, the interior of the tower was elegant in its victorian-styled design. The curved and purple-steel walls along the sides of the spiraling steps had intricate carving along its surface, with murals depicting various constellations sewed together along the large tapestry that Goblin Slayer was passing by.
Having no time to marvel at the elaborate mosaic artwork of each thin-gothic styled glass window, nor having the luxury of admiring the beautifully sculpted busts that resides on top of all the purple-steel pedestals that he was running by, Goblin Slayer had his attention focused on all possible signs of there being an ambush awaiting for him, as he ascended up the many flights of stairs. Approaching the higher-floors of the observation tower, Goblin Slayer readied the one scroll that he had been saving; a powerful and experimental scroll that contained an entire storm inside of it. The spell that he was planning on using had been developed by Arc Mage, and was dubbed by her as "God's Thumb".
Waiting for the right time to use it, Goblin Slayer was carefully listening in to the sound of heavy footsteps approaching him from around the top corner of the massive column that the spiral staircase had been built around. Remembering what the familiar humming noise of the robots' barrier-shields sounded like when they were deployed, Goblin Slayer knew better than to waste Arc Mage's most volatile scroll by blindly firing it directly at the group of soldiers who were waiting to ambush him.
So, instead Goblin Slayer chose to fire the powerful bolt of lightning against the wall above him, after calculating the best angle for the spell to hit, so that it could ricochet off the purple-steel surface. Narrowly missing the window below where his destructive spell bounced off the wall, Goblin Slayer took cover behind the massive central column and listened as the sounds of the soldiers' triangular face-panels all shattered quickly one-by-one.
Smelling the stretch of melted copper from the burnt insides of the ten soldiers who had been anticipating for another intruder to interrupt their hunt, Goblin Slayer made sure to endow himself with a magic-resistance and iron-hide spell from the scrolls he had taken with him, before leaving his cover to continue ascending up the steps where all the melted husks of the soldiers laid in molten puddles of ebony-steel.
Shirtless and without a helmet to protect his dome, the adventurer couldn't help but to feel like a berserking-barbarian as he fought each and every remaining soldier who turned their attention from where Kaguya was hiding on him, so they could prevent him from further interfering in their objective. Even though his iron-hide spell and magic-resistance buff were proving themselves to be a life-saver, the soldiers were extremely agile and knew how to parry Hero's light sword, which made the grueling task of combating each of them at the same time no easy task for Goblin Slayer.
Racking up enough fresh wounds where his iron-hide was able to prevent his skin from being pierced by the soldiers' bladed arms, by the time that Goblin Slayer had plunged the blade of Hero's light sword into the face of the final soldier who was amongst the one-hundred who spawned over fifteen minutes ago, the young man's upper body was extremely sore and beginning to bruise from where he had been struck several times over.
Having reached the observation deck on the top floor of the tower, Goblin Slayer exhaustingly pulled Hero's iconic weapon out of the robotic corpse of his final opponent; nearly dropping it onto the painted mural on the floor that looked to be a beautiful woman surrounded in divine light and symbols.
Stumbling backwards and shortly falling down on his ass, Goblin Slayer was covered in a thick-layer of glistening sweat as he gasped out for breath. Attempting to catch his breath while removing the damaged iron-plating around his dark-gray trousers, Goblin Slayer's red burning eye had subsided. With his two scarlet eyes that were hard for him to keep open from how exhausted he was, Goblin Slayer gazed tiredly at all the brass-pipes and glowing-cyan lights that were mounted along the walls, and above where all the advanced steampunk-esque contraptions around the cylinder-shaped room were.
The design of all the massive computer systems, glass chambers filled with blue lightning and strange looking quartz crystals looked alien to Goblin Slayer, as nothing in that room looked even remotely like anything he had ever even read about in fiction novels. Connected to all the encased electronic-devices, various monitors, cooling systems, hydroelectric servo-motors that were connected to the telescope, and the processing complex towers was a singular module camera that was mounted at the very top of the half-dome shaped roof.
And even though every technological miracle around him enraptured Goblin Slayer's sense of wonderment and awe, the young and tired man still had his mind focused on why he had fought through the last remaining soldiers in the first place. "K… Kaguya? Kaguya, where are you…? Oh," Goblin Slayer spoke out quietly with a wave of relief washing over him, the moment he spotted the white horned rabbit cautiously crawling out one of the many copper vents that were connected to the bottoms of the computer systems surrounding them.
Noticing the state he was in, along with having been certain that he had died earlier, Kaguya was genuinely surprised at the sight of seeing her champion standing before her. "Goblin Slayer! A-Are you… Are you hurt?" Kaguya asked with a shaken, yet concerned voice, as she hopped over to where the young adventurer was still seated on his bottom.
Watching as the rabbit hopped over to him and onto his lap, Goblin Slayer smiled gently at her as he calmly brushed his fingers along the topside of her head, before petting her white-fuzzy back. "I'm fine… I think? I just… I just think that it would probably be best if we were to set up camp here… That battle was… Taxing, to say the least," Goblin Slayer mused modestly, while staring down with his lowered gaze to see Kaguya carefully inspecting the area in his abdomen that she remembered him getting stabbed through, before climbing up his bare chest with her soft paws to look where his shoulder had been broken earlier.
"I… I believe that would be for the best, wouldn't it?" Kaguya asked rhetorically, while completely agreeing with Goblin Slayer's proposed plan to bunker down, as neither he nor Hero were currently in any shape to confront the Ancient Wyvern. "Hero… My eyes… Those machines, even with them deactivated… Ah, it must be this tower itself, it's… It's preventing me from using my byakugan to locate where Hero is… Tell me, is she okay?" Kaguya asked softly after having just spoken her thought process to Goblin Slayer, while still sounding worried over the young girl who reminded her so much of her long-passed best friend, Aino.
Nodding while carefully picking Kaguya up, Goblin Slayer placed the white horned rabbit down on the colorful mosaic-style marble floor beside his thigh, before picking himself up and stumbling up to his feet. "She's… She's fine. I'm going to have to bring her inside though. Once we're on the bottom floor, I'm going to need you to start locking this place from the bottom-up," Goblin Slayer instructed with an authoritative, yet still kind, tone in his voice. "I… I don't want any more surprises for the remainder of the night," Goblin Slayer spoke, as he hobbled with one leg past the metal bodies of the soldiers, and toward the top of the spiral steps.
And there we go! Goblin Slayer and Hero both survived an assault of one-hundred automatrons who were designed solely to kill shinobi who relied on jutsu; specifically, members of the Ōtsutsuki clan.
I was inspired to write the "New Frontier" as having once been extremely technologically advanced, with its ancient ruins still possessing danger and mysteries that not even Kaguya or Hero would be familiar with. I got the inspiration for this new island from Sonic Frontiers as well as the Legend of Heroes series.
In order to show how dangerous the "Soldiers" were, as well as to show the difference in combat level comparing Goblin Slayer to Hero (Hero is canonically the most powerful adventurer in the series, so it wouldn't make sense for her to be outshined by him just yet), I had Goblin Slayer sustain way more damage than Hero. However, I also wanted to present the idea of Hero still being naive, as she didn't think much about getting her calival injured.
Also, it wouldn't be a very exciting fight if Goblin Slayer beat everyone flawlessly, and it also presents a challenge to Kaguya, as she hadn't truly felt fear in this fic yet, until the moment she had to flee from the soldiers, just like how she had to run away from Tenji's army.
The next chapter is going to have them taking a gander at the observatory tower from the inside, while otherwise just chatting and resting until the morning. Might have them just do some more bonding, or have Kaguya try to make another move on Goblin Slayer.
Oh speaking of Goblin Slayer, I'm exploring more into his unhinged psyche, and decided to take my experience writing Tokyo Ghoul fanfic to make him have moments of insanity, which are rare but still juicy.
Anyways, until then, have a good one.