Kael cursed under his breath.
That hand, that hand, hadn’t just tossed a corpse. It had done it the way soone flicked away trash.
Thick fingers like stone pillars, knuckles the size of Kael’s head, nails black and blunt like chipped obsidian.
If that thing decided to grab you instead of throw you, there wouldn’t even be ti to scream. It would close once, and your ribs would fold like wet paper.
And they were calling it a hobgoblin.
Kael’s eyes drifted to the tal gate again, then to the board, then back to the stain on the floor where the last guy had landed in pieces.
The stink in the hall was starting to settle, blood that had already cooled, sweat that hadn’t, and the faint tallic tang of fear, the kind that made people breathe through their mouths without realizing it.
"Who’s going next?" the guard next to the gate asked.
His tone wasn’t mocking. It was irritated, like he was asking who wanted to mop up next. Like he’d already accepted that the answer would be "no one," and he wanted soone else to say it first so he didn’t have to keep standing here.
No one moved.
A couple of adventurers shifted their weight, weapons scraping softly against armor. One guy kept flexing his fingers on his spear shaft like he could warm courage into his grip. Another stared at the gate without blinking, jaw clenched so hard his cheek twitched.
The guard next to Kael leaned slightly toward him, lowering his voice like advice would land better if it was quiet.
"See, this isn’t sothing that anyone with a proper head over their shoulders would attempt. Go back to where you co from and if you really want to climb, train so more. You look like you have a strong body, but trust muscles won’t help you much when you’re facing bigger muscles..." the guard next to Kael advised.
It was the kind of warning that ca from experience. Not so "be careful out there" bullshit.
This was a man who’d seen bodies co out of that door and had decided he didn’t want to see another one if it could be avoided. Kael almost respected it.
Almost.
Because the problem wasn’t the logic. The logic was sound. The problem was Kael had already lived a year of "train so more." He’d lived it until his hands were stone and his bones felt like they’d been replaced with iron rods. He’d lived it until the word rest started sounding like an insult.
And he didn’t co all this way to get told to wait.
"Thanks for the worry, but, I can’t stay here forever." Kael said as he took a step forward.
The floor felt colder near the gate, like the stone itself rembered how many people had died here and decided to keep the chill out of spite.
His boots scraped once, loud in the silence, and that single sound was enough to drag attention to him like a hook.
"Oh, soone’s going in," a few adventurers said.
Their voices carried that half-laugh people used when soone else volunteered to be the sacrifice. A nervous relief disguised as amusent. Better him than them.
"Man, how do you get courage to go in after seeing what just happened. This guy must have a few screws loose..."
Kael didn’t even glance back. If he turned his head, he might be tempted to say sothing. If he said sothing, they’d respond. If they responded, it beca noise. And Kael wasn’t here to make friends or debate survival.
He kept walking.
The closer he got, the more the gate stopped looking like a door and started looking like a mouth. Thick tal slabs. Deep seams. Old dents. Scratches that didn’t look like blades had made them, more like claws. The air leaking from the crack at the bottom was warr, stale heat mixed with sothing damp and sour, like a beast breathing in a closed room.
The guard at the gate watched him approach with a look that said you’re either insane or new, and Kael hated how often those two overlapped.
"Solo?" the man said.
"Yeah,"
The man studied him for a second longer than necessary. No emblem. No group behind him. No one whispering plans at his shoulder. Just a tall bastard in a helt who walked like he’d already decided he was going in.
"Got any family? Friends?" the guard next to the gate added.
Kael’s eyes flicked toward the man, then toward the hall behind. He could feel the crowd’s attention like heat on the back of his neck. People liked this part. The human part. The part where you hesitated and admitted you were scared.
He wasn’t giving them that.
"Nothing like that, why? Want to write a will or sothing?"
A couple of the adventurers snorted. A couple looked away like that hit too close to sothing they didn’t want to rember.
"Would be advisable. This isn’t sothing easy..."
Kael’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. The guard was trying. He really was. And Kael almost wanted to tell him he’d appreciate it more if the advice ca with a beer.
Instead, he just exhaled once, slow, and rolled his shoulders like he was about to lift sothing heavy.
"Just open the door, I’ll take my chances."
The guard held his gaze for a second, searching for doubt. He didn’t find any. Or maybe he found it and realized it didn’t matter.
"Good luck then," the man said and the door opened to Kael.
The gate didn’t swing wide. It parted just enough to allow him through, like the room beyond didn’t want to share its air with the hallway. The warmth inside licked at Kael’s face the mont he crossed the threshold, pressing against his skin through the helt’s slit like a damp breath.
Kael walked inside the door and a notification appeared in front of him.
[You have entered the Second Floor’s Boss Lair. Mutated Hobgoblin]
[Survive for 5 minutes to access the second floor. Or slay the Hobgoblin]
[Your tir starts now.]
A tir blinked into existence at the edge of his vision, clean, indifferent numbers counting down a span of ti that would decide whether he moved forward or beca another stain. Kael registered it, filed it away, and imdiately stopped caring.
Because the real problem wasn’t the tir.
It was the air.
It stank. Not like old blood. Not like rot. Like cooked at and damp fur and sothing acrid, like a fire had been smothered with wet cloth. The floor under his boots wasn’t polished stone like the hall outside. It was scarred, deep gouges, fractured lines, impact pits where sothing heavy had landed again and again.
And then,
Movent.
Kael had thought the creature would be deeper in. Hiding. Waiting. Making drama out of an entrance.
No.
The bastard was right there.
Right by the doorway like it had learned the simplest rule of killing: don’t give prey ti to think.
A club ca down.
Not a weapon, an event. A tree trunk with knots and tal bands, thicker than Kael’s torso, swinging with the kind of lazy certainty that said this has crushed people before and it will crush people again. The air scread around it. Wind pressure slapped Kael’s face even through the helt.
For a split second, Kael’s body did what it always did when death got too close.
Everything narrowed.
Sound dulled.
The world sharpened into details: the grain of the club’s wood, the dried dark patches on it that were definitely not sap, the angle of the swing, the footwork, or lack of it, behind the creature’s motion.
His heartrate began going up.
Not panic. Not the sloppy fear that made you freeze.
It was the Nine Yang heart kicking awake, like a furnace door being thrown open. Heat surged through his chest, not burning him, but flooding him with that familiar push, move, move, move.
This was sothing that his master said that would always help him, his heart was the source of his Nine Yang Destruction body. It was powerful, very much so that it would kill any other human being. And it served a great purpose.
Alleviate fear, and reinforce courage and also power up the body.
Kael didn’t have ti to admire the philosophy of it. A tree-sized club didn’t care about courage.
Without hesitation, Kael sidestepped.
A clean shift of weight, heel sliding, hip turning, the way his master had drilled into him until Kael stopped thinking about "dodging" and started thinking about "not being there."
The blow landed right where he was.
Stone exploded upward in a shockwave. Dust and grit slapped his legs. The impact bood through his bones and rattled his teeth. If he’d been a heartbeat slower, he wouldn’t be standing now, he’d be flattened into the crater like paste.
Kael’s foot planted.
He stomped his left foot forward, twisted his core, and sent a punch forward.
The sa punch he trained in with his master, thousands of tis a day, the sa punch that ruptured rocks and broke boulders. The sa punch that he stuck under the raging currents of that unforgiving river.
His shoulder aligned. His spine stacked. His breath compressed into his abdon, then drove outward like a piston. Not wild force, controlled, hateful precision.
That punch connected to the abdon of the hobgoblin.
A tiny fist compared to the massive sized creature.
Up close, Kael finally saw it.
Not just big, mutated wrong. Shoulders too wide. Arms too long. Skin thick and mottled, stretched over slabs of muscle and swollen fat. A face like a goblin’s nightmare: tusk-like teeth, a flattened nose, eyes too small for the head, and a grin that looked more like a wound than an expression.
Its belly was soft-looking, almost comical beneath the armor of its upper body.
Kael’s knuckles sank in just a fraction.
It almost felt like Kael connected with nothing when the fist landed on the fattened belly of the Hobgoblin.
Almost.
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then the creature reacted.
And imdiately after the punch lander, sothing that Kael never expected happened.
The creature’s eyes bulged out first, his face warped and inflated, and suddenly a powerful burst of raging flas shot right out the backside of the creature, leaving a gigantic hole in place of a stomach, where not even the spine of the creature remained.
The sound wasn’t a scream.
It was pressure releasing. Like a furnace door exploding open. Like air igniting. Like at turning into ash mid-breath. The flas weren’t pretty, no elegant fireball, no controlled burn. It was violent, dirty fire, tearing out of the creature’s body with chunks of blackened tissue and fragnts of bone blasting outward in the sa burst.
The hobgoblin’s club slipped from its hands.
Its knees buckled.
It tried to inhale, but there was nothing inside it left to support the attempt. Just a cavern of heat and ruin. The sll hit Kael a half-second later, burnt fat, cooked organs, and the sickly sweetness of sothing that should never be cooked.
Kael’s fist remained in position for a mont, not because he was frozen, but because his body was following through exactly the way it had been trained: strike, sink, end.
He pulled his hand back slowly, almost expecting the world to disagree with what just happened.
The creature toppled.
Dead before it hit the floor.
A new set of notifications slamd into his vision like a verdict.
[Congratulations You have defeated Mutated Hobgoblin]
[You have achieved a new record ti in the second floor!]
[ 4 Seconds.]
[You can now access the second floor]
Kael stared at the "4 Seconds" for a beat.
Not because he was proud.
Because he was trying to process the absurdity of it.
A year ago, he would’ve died here. Not "might." Not "probably." He would’ve walked in, panicked, and been turned into a sar. Now the fight was over before his body even fully cooled down from the first adrenaline surge.
He exhaled.
The air tasted like smoke and dust.
Behind the gate, he could already imagine the reaction, the silence, then the shuffle, then the sudden fear of the people who’d laughed at him a minute ago. Kael didn’t turn around to enjoy it. Enjoynt was complacency, and complacency was how the tower took you back.
He flexed his fingers once, feeling the rings’ weight still anchored to his wrists like a reminder.
Then he looked forward.
Four seconds bought him an opening.
Now he just had to survive what ca after.
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