Return of the Woodcutter

Sheyla was confused. There was a weird transparent creature on the chandelier with her. No matter, she drew her long dagger and prepared to counterattack. 

However, the creature was faster than her. It slashed the chandelier's rope before escaping. 

She quickly did the same, jumping to the side. A pile of hob corpses cushioned her fall. 

Aito's Gift, Instinct, warned him of a fast-approaching danger from above. He looked up, only to see the chandelier rapidly falling towards him. 

With no time to think, he oriented the Filona-club upward. The chandelier crashed against the headless statue, shattering into multiple pieces, breaking and decelerating its fall for a moment.

Pieces of stone dropped on the hobs attacking Aito, crushing them. He cursed internally, deployed his shield, and lifted it atop his head, overloading Durability. 

The chandelier tumbled down, continuing its original course, impacting Aito and everything in his surroundings.

Aito greeted his teeth, as he felt the pressure of gravity coupled with the chandelier's weight crushing him. 

"Aito!" Sheyla shouted, rushing towards him, wall-running to avoid the hobs and slicing any enemy that she encountered. "Are you okay? Aito!" 

However, his shield held firm and strong, resisting the impact. His legs, back, and arm muscles contracted as he pushed the heavy chandelier aside, crushing hobs' corpses into bloody paste.

"I'm as resilient as a cockroach, remember? Anyway, what happened up there?" he said, summoning still illusions of him to distract hobgoblins. "Also, take this. You'll need it more than I do." 

He threw his repeater, as well as his remaining magazines, before hacking some more hobgoblins—defenseless illusions didn't last long against a horde. 

Sheyla grabbed the items, pushed a sigh of relief as she recharged her repeater, "An almost invisible creature cut the rope. Be careful, it looks dangerous and might still be lurking around." 

"Ho, so the ninja finally showed itself." 

Holding both short crossbows in hands, Sheyla seemed more… more like a hunter. At that moment, Aito could swear he saw a slight smirk on her face, accompanied by a mad glare. 

As per usual, hobs didn't care much about what happened and continued to rush madly towards him. 

Two bolts flew past Aito, two more followed. In barely a second, four hobgoblins joined the piles of corpses. 

Silently, with cold eyes, she dealt out death to her enemies. 

With two repeaters in hand, Sheyla was doing a splendid job. It became easier to deal with the horde. Moreover, it allowed Aito to keep an eye out from time to time for the sneaky bastard hiding in the crowd. 

'Where is it?' 

It was certainly somewhere around here. He knew he had attracted it thanks to the horn. 

But dealing with hobs while searching for it at the same time proved to be difficult. 

Behind him, Sheyla launched bolts after bolts. The close distance was such that she never missed a shot. Killing hobs four by four, she lifted a heavyweight off Aito's shoulders. 

Aito had to cover her around every thirty seconds so she could change magazines and, a few times, recover her mana. Using the repeater had its own downside, after all. 

It required mana to use. It was a negligible amount, of course, but in such a lengthy battle, it was normal to run out of mana somewhere along the line. 

At some point during the fight, Aito saw a blurry, transparent figure nimbly jumping from one shoulder to another to hide again amidst the crowd of hobs. 

'Is this thing observing me?' He thought, hacking away two hobs. If that thing was supposed to be stealthy, it wouldn't jump on other hobs' shoulders for no reason. Either it was hindered by them or needed height to assess something. 

Suddenly, a dagger seemed to materialize out of thin air and flew in Aito's direction. Busy with all the commotions already happening around him, Aito didn't see it coming.

No matter, the dagger rebounded on his breastplate despite the fact the armor piece was uncoated by Durability. 

Aito had chosen to use Durability only on his ax blade to lessen the aura toll and to conserve energy. Hobgoblins' weapons couldn't get through his armor anyway—though it would certainly leave marks and weaken it to a certain extent.

Such stealthy attacks happened again and again, as if the sneaky bastard was testing his defenses, searching for a small crack to exploit. 

It appeared that it supplied itself with daggers of its fallen comrades. Easy since there were many of them lying around. Aito had practically built up a small line of defense out of their corpses. 

At some point, the hob ninja hurled a dagger precisely at the gap between Aito's throat and his weaved mail vest, the area where protection was thin. 

As Aito moved around a lot, it missed by a few centimeters, putting a dent in his helmet. 

'This is getting dangerous.' 

As if the hob ninja heard him, the sneaky flying daggers stopped coming, giving Aito a small respite. 

However, something else took its place. 

The ninja finally lived up to its name. Still transparent, it zipped towards Aito, used a quick acrobatic to avoid an ax swing, and plunged its dagger into Aito's throat. 

Too fast and with poor visibility on his enemy, Aito felt a pointy tip trying to pierce his mail covering that sensitive area. Fortunately, the armor held. He tried to grab his enemy but failed, only touching air. 

'This little shit is just as nimble as Jack, if not more!' 

Such events occurred again and again, with him being unable to do anything. He was already quite busy with hobs, but also wasn't fast enough to intercept his assailant. 

He knew the ninja was hiding somewhere nearby in the crowd and thought about using a boom ball. Sure, it wouldn't be able to escape the explosion, but Aito might get caught up in it. 

Also, he didn't want to damage the cloak the ninja held too badly, since he planned on using it later. A boom ball would turn it into rags... probably.