A Test of Life or Death

Irene debated between fight or flight when she slowly moved around the tree trunk and found one of the goblins facing away from her. It was a brief relief because she knew she didn't have time to sit there and wait for something to happen. 

Her small hand gripped the leatherbound handle of her dagger and she focused after exhaling.

Considering goblins were small but she was even smaller, she decided sneaking up really was her only option. 

With no time to waste, the girl rushed forward with her sword ready and raised. Hope that she remembered how to swing a sword was forgotten. The lessons she learned felt like second nature. 

She supported the blade with both hands so that all her power was going into one slice. It was risky because that sort of maneuver was more difficult to recover from. It also meant she had to be accurate and lethal in one blow. 

Throwing her weight into it, she half tackled, half stabbed the goblin and the dagger pierced the monster's back and lung. It eventually pierced the dirt of the forest floor as well. 

The mud was thick and damp but not muddy. It held onto her sword and, when she saw the goblin starting to stir despite the seemingly decisive blow she had given it, she reached over her shoulder, feeling the feather of one of her arrows.

She used one of the arrows as a spear and stabbed the goblin multiple times until she was certain it was dead. 

Unfortunately, the man it had chased wasn't lucky enough to get away unscathed. She saw him weeping as he scooted backwards until his back was against a tree and Irene was able to see that his foot was mutilated. He would certainly never use it again even if a healer came and used their mana to stop the bleeding. 

Irene couldn't dwell on that. 

There was already shuffling as a smaller goblin moved through the grass and ran towards the girl. 

"Take this!" the man shouted with a hoarse voice, likely from all the screaming he had done that day. 

Even though the silver blade he handed her was dull, it was still a weapon nonetheless. Something was better than nothing.

The man held the sheath and she simply pulled the sword out. 

The grip wasn't meant for her small hand and it was awkward, but she could make do. 

One thing that Arthur had always noticed about his daughter was that her sword instincts were good. When she moved past emotions, she could do anything with a blade. 

At that moment, all she had was instincts and muscle memory she thought she had lost the past decade she had been alive. The body she was in, however, was still well-attuned to the sword.

As the man watched his daughter with his blade still in hand and not looking away for even a moment, he was proud to see her adapt even to that. She seemed to have pushed her fear away even if it was just for a moment. 

He was happy to hug her once everything was said and done and allow her to face her demons then. That was what a father was for, after all. 

The sword was heavier towards the tip than what Irene was used to and she swung the sword on a diagonal slash, knocking the mallet out of the goblin's hand that dared try to get to her first. She stood between the injured man and the goblin and it gave her determination to keep pressing on. 

His life was in her hands, as was hers. She almost felt like a knight. 

There was a rope around the goblin's wrist that tied it to the mallet so, even though Irene's blow was enough to knock it away, it wasn't enough to get rid of the weapon completely. 

The goblin screamed at her and, instead of picking back up the weapon that hung on its wrist, it dove at Irene and entangled one of its hands in her thick, wavy hair. The monster knocked her to the ground. With its fingers knotted in the red strands, it started trying to swing its arm and the mallet almost hit the girl in the face a few times.

She cried out in pain but it didn't stop her from doing what she needed to. She and the goblin were locked together in the most unfortunate of ways so there was only one thing she could do. 

It was an awkward angle to be at the bottom of the pile but she still managed to thrust the sword into the goblin's armpit. 

Unfortunately, it didn't sever immediately and she had to take a few good blows to remove the arm from its owner which meant the hand was further knotted and her vulnerable side was getting beaten by the goblin's one good arm. There would be scratches and bruising later but it was certainly better than dying.

Once the limb was messily cut off, the dark blood of the monster sprayed all over the girl.

She pushed the monster off of her with a yell and was horrified that the arm still followed her. Her scalp felt raw as she tugged on the limb and finally untangled it with a few strands of her hair ripped out.

"Miss!"

The man yelled for Irene and she looked at him with her eyebrows lowered.

Was he in pain? she wondered.

She had just saved his life but what was left of his foot surely needed medical attention. 

It took her a couple of seconds to realize that her gap in knowledge was certainly regarding first aid. It was something she never explored because, in her first life, she never made it that far.

However, it wasn't the pain the man was concerned about. 

A solid arrow flew between Irene and the man, embedding itself deeply in the tree's trunk. The rust on the arrow and lack of precision was a certain sign of goblin weaponry—most of what they had was stolen off of their victims or raided from villages.

Her head turned quickly and she heard a clashing of blades. 

Before she could register what was happening, thin arms enveloped her and she was being carried quickly away from the forest. 

Over her grandmother's shoulder, Irene watched as her father effortlessly took down two goblins, their dark blood spraying all over the forest floor. 

"I-I got a rabbit," she uttered. 

"That you did, my dear," her grandmother, Kara, said. "That you did."

Irene felt her grandmother hand her the dagger once embedded in a goblin and she felt relief falling over her in a warm wave. 

One of the first rules of being a knight was to never lose your weapon.