The Dark Blue Goblin Boss encased himself in his crystal armor. It did not form all at once. Blue crystal spread from his wound first, knitting over the torn flesh before racing across his ribs, shoulder, and forearm in jagged layers.
Plate after plate locked into place with harsh clicking cracks. Thick ridges jutted outward along his fra, broadening his silhouette and making him look heavier, uglier, and far more dangerous than before. Blue light ran through the seams. Loose shards across the chamber trembled in answer.
Stopping the transformation was nearly impossible, or at least Martin’s party had no clear way to prevent it.
They didn’t try to force a new answer.
Instead, they moved the instant phase two settled in. Martin held the center alone while Kill Clause and NukEncore fanned out behind him with practiced precision, already angling toward the section they had chosen earlier.
A second later, fire slamd into blue crystal. Sparks burst wide as the first pillar shuddered under the hit.
That was how they would make room.
Chaosgraphy broke off to the right and threw herself into the cluster of armored goblins. They would have been a problem for most players, but not for her.
Steel clashed. Blood sprayed. She slipped through them with that sa effortless rhythm of hers, turning and weaving before their counterattacks could pin her down.
She could have finished the first one. She did not.
Instead, she slashed just deep enough to keep it bleeding, then drove a kick into its chest and sent it stumbling back. Another goblin got the sa treatnt. Then another.
In seconds, she had turned that side of the battlefield into her own chain of wounded stepping stones.
As long as monsters bled, Chaosgraphy could keep moving.
A heartbeat later, flas reached her side and slamd into the pillar closest to the goblin boss. The gaps she had studied during their prep runs opened exactly where she needed them.
Now all she needed was montum from Martin.
Standing alone in front of the boss, Martin watched him shape a sword needle out of his own crystal.
That’s right. Make your own weapon.
The first ti, the bastard had ripped it straight from the throne behind him. Martin still rembered the sound of crystal tearing free and how easily it had co loose.
That throne had stood close to the mountain vein, soaked in mana, and its edges had already been split in a way that made it easy for the boss to tear that section free. It had practically been waiting to beco a weapon.
This ti was different.
Now the goblin had no throne to rip from. No ready-made slab dense with stored mana. He had to shape the weapon out of his own crystal and his own reserves.
Even from here, Martin could tell the difference. The shape was the sa.
The weight was not.
That was why Martin had taunted him away from the throne in the first place.
"Co at , goblin," Martin taunted.
[You have used fortify.]
The monster thrust at Martin and struck the center of his shield.
The second thrust ca faster. The third hit harder. Each impact rang through Martin’s arm and shoulder, stacking weight on top of weight until his grip started to buzz.
By the ti the boss pulled back again, Martin could barely feel his left hand. Numbness had already crawled into his forearm.
He was weakening.
Still, he held.
Not yet. I can still hold a little longer. Just a little longer.
"Taunt," Martin said, his smile widening.
"YOU PESKY HUMAN!"
The boss’s expression twisted. He drove his weapon at Martin three more tis, each strike hamring the shield and forcing more strain through Martin’s arm.
Then the boss drew his dominant arm back. His sword needle began to spin in his hand like a drill, building a new force ant to pierce even the densest mana crystal.
"DIE, HUMAN!" the boss roared, throwing his full weight behind his first offensive skill as he drove it straight at Martin.
A terrifying blue-cold streak split the air.
Then blood fountained and splashed across the goblin’s face and armor. The boss sneered, his eyes lit with triumph. His weapon had buried itself so deep into the human’s shoulder that there was no way Martin would be able to raise that shield again.
He would bleed out.
He would surely die.
Then the boss saw Martin’s face, and sothing seized in his throat.
Martin’s lips curled into a wide, cruel smile. It was the natural smile of soone who had once thrived on other people’s misery, the look of a man who had stomped others down before. As a forr delinquent, Martin knew that expression well because he had worn it himself.
The reason he was smiling now was simple.
Everything had gone exactly the way he wanted.
"Can’t run away, can you?" he asked, his voice dripping with contempt.
The goblin’s sword-needle was buried deep in Martin’s shoulder, and for one tiny beat, neither of them moved.
Martin’s blood ran hot over the boss’s hand and crystal armor. The goblin’s grin held for a second longer, certain he had won, but then Martin smiled back, and the triumph on the monster’s face faltered.
The boss tried to pull free.
Martin’s numb left hand shot up and locked over the weapon’s handle.
Now the goblin understood.
He had driven in too deep. To wrench the blade out, he needed space. To let go of it ant surrendering his weapon. And in the heartbeat between those two bad choices, Martin had already started his counter.
[Robert’s Crystal Warhamr (Orange)]
[Type: One-handed Warhamr]
[Requirent: Lv. 1]
[Damage: 28-74]
[Strength: 75]
[Agility: -20]
[Durability: 360/360]
[A devastating crystal-forged warhamr created by Robert. Its broad flat face is built to crush and fracture armor with overwhelming force, while its crystal spike is ant to exploit those breaks and drive deep for devastating damage. Heavy, brutal, and far beyond the standard of a normal level one weapon, it rewards strength, timing, and fully committed swings.]
[Passive Skill: Crushing Swing (Orange)]
[The more complete the swing, the greater the damage.]
[Low Swing: 25% Damage]
[Half Swing: 50% Damage]
[Full Swing: 120% Damage]
[Passive Skill: Crystal Mana Infusion (Orange)]
[The user may pour as much mana as desired into the weapon during an attack.]
[Mana infused into the flat face increases Armor Penetration.]
[Mana infused into the crystal spike increases Damage.]
Here I go!
Martin shifted his grip on the warhamr. His numb left hand clamped down on the boss’s weapon, stealing another sliver of ti even if he could not fully stop the goblin from pulling free.
Dense blue crystal veins word across the handle and climbed toward the hamr’s flat face.
At the sa ti, Martin drove his heel down on the crystal shards he had scattered earlier. They cracked apart beneath his boot, and the trapped mana burst upward through the link he had prepared for exactly this mont.
More power rushed straight into the hamrhead.
Taking a step forward, Martin drew the weapon back and committed to a half swing, dragging the heavy head through the arc with everything he had. His wounded shoulder scread around the blade buried inside it. His boots ground against the crystal floor as he forced his balance to hold.
Then he smashed the flat face into the boss’s side.
The hit sounded nothing like flesh. It burst out in a crushing, ugly crack, like a sledgehamr smashing into ice-covered stone.
"RAAAAGH! MY ARMOR!" the boss roared, fury bursting out of him as the fractured plates shifted and splintered.
The crystal armor buckled. The boss’s torso jerked sideways under the impact, his breath blasting out of him as deep fractures ripped across the plates. Light dulled inside them. Splinters spat outward. Several loosened sections shifted out of alignnt all at once, grinding against the intact armor around them.
Martin switched his grip and struck again, this ti with the spike end. It drove straight into the damaged veins, punched through the fractured section, and ripped the opening even wider.
The boss’s skin was finally exposed.
Purple, bruised, and vulnerable, blood welled out at once.
A perfect target for his teammate.
[Emperoar: TAKE THE LEAD, CHAOS!]
Chaosgraphy had already been moving.
She dashed to the nearest bleeding goblin, then to the next, skipping across the right side of the battlefield through the chain she had built for herself. White hair flashed through the blue-lit gloom as she closed in on the weakened pillar.
Before the boss could fully turn his intact armor toward her, Chaosgraphy planted herself against the cracked blue crystal pillar and drove all her montum into it.
The pillar groaned.
Then it tipped.
The Dark Blue Goblin Boss barely got halfway around before the whole thing crashed into him. The broken pillar ca down with a screaming crack, and blue crystal thundered through the chamber as it smashed him sideways and slamd him into the floor beneath a rain of jagged shards.
The whole room seed to ring.
His HP dropped.
The impact stunned him.
Martin saw a white dash cut through the wreckage, so fast it almost looked unreal in the blue-lit ruin.
Then blood blossod across Chaosgraphy’s hair like crimson flowers opening over fresh snow.
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