Roman and Rena approached the Stone and Bone Castle walking apart from each other, a deliberate gap between them that neither made any move to close. Repeatedly, they would exchange brief sideways glances, only to withdraw their eyes at every instance like the other person wasn't worth the sustained attention.
The goblins hadn't noticed them yet, and that was purely down to the cover of darkness. A daytime approach would have been a different story entirely, they would have been spotted from the moment they stepped into range, and the stone volleys would have started before they even got close.
At least they had learned one advantage of hunting after dark.
But the window didn't last.
As they drew close enough, one of the Blue Goblins perched on the tower snapped its head in Roman's direction and let out a sharp shriek that cut straight through the night air.
Rena turned to him with a flat glare.
"I knew you were going to ruin this," she said. "Of course the monster couldn't be more thrilled to spot a weakling first. Why wouldn't it? Easy target."
A fast rush of irritation surged through Roman's chest, but he kept it contained.
"Let's see who the weakling is," he said evenly.
"Oh?" Her eyes narrowed. "Is that a challenge?"
"Not even close," Roman replied. "I'll do my thing, get what I came for, and get out. That's all."
"Good. Because we are not together," Rena said, a sharp smile crossing her face as the goblins above broke into a frenzy and the first stones began to rain down. She was already moving, charging straight toward one of the towers at the far end of the wall without another word.
The stones came fast and heavy. Fist-sized, jagged, launched with enough force to drop a rookie Entrant with a single clean hit. The shapes, the angles, the relentless speed of them, all of it was enough to make very clear that getting struck even once would not be a small thing.
Roman made a quick decision. He was not going in the same direction as Rena.
He had already clocked that she was faster than him, not that he needed to measure it precisely to know. So he sprinted hard toward the far edge of the outer wall, far enough that the goblins on the towers would lose track of him in the dark and assume he had retreated.
The moment he reached the wall and pressed himself against it, he gave himself a few seconds to breathe.
That run alone, through a downpour of stones that could have caved his skull in, had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit. But he also knew that this was still the easiest part of what was ahead.
He began to climb.
The stone surface was rough and uneven, which worked in his favour. It was not fast, and it was not clean, but with patience and careful footing, Roman hauled himself up and over the top, then descended carefully on the other side into the castle grounds.
He had barely steadied himself before the trouble found him.
A cluster of goblins had already spotted him, their red eyes locking onto him before he even registered they were there.
GHAAAK!
GHAAAK!
Roman went still, scanning the space around him rapidly. He was in an enclosed section of the compound with only one exit path, and that path was already blocked by more than a dozen goblins closing in with the unhurried confidence of creatures that had already decided how this was going to end.
'Shit.'
[Monster Name: Blue Goblin Grunt.]
[Rank: Ordinary.]
[Level: 2.]
[Traits: None.]
[Life: 98%.]
That was the stat on the majority of them, and there were far more than a dozen.
Trying to take them all head-on was a gamble. Goblins were not smart individually, but in numbers they had the instinct to swarm, and being overwhelmed in an enclosed space was not a situation Roman could afford.
But standing still was not an option either.
Rena was nowhere in sight. And as much as a part of him acknowledged that this would have been a reasonable moment to have backup, he shut that thought down before it fully formed.
'Forget it. I can handle this.'
He raised his hand and activated [Fireball].
FWOOSH!
BAAM!
The nearest Goblin took the hit directly to the face, and the impact was not subtle. What was left of it crumpled to the ground without so much as a sound.
[You have killed a Level 2 Ordinary Monster, Blue Goblin Grunt. +30 EXP gained.]
[No drops delivered.]
The moment the others watched one of their own drop, the decision was made for all of them simultaneously. They surged forward in a mass of blue skin, bared teeth and wild aggression, some clutching stones, others simply throwing their bodies forward with the raw intent of tearing him apart.
GRAAAK!
GRAAAK!
GRAAAK!
They were closing fast.
Roman waited until they were nearly on him, then swept both arms in a wide arc and activated [Anti Balance].
WHOOOOSH!
A controlled burst of compressed air detonated outward from his position, and every single goblin in the cluster was lifted and flung in different directions simultaneously. They went crashing into walls and the hard ground of the compound, some landing in ways that ended things for them immediately.
[You have killed a Level 2 Ordinary Monster, Blue Goblin Grunt.]
[You have killed a Level 2 Ordinary Monster, Blue Goblin Grunt.]
[You have killed a Level 2 Ordinary Monster, Blue Goblin Grunt.]
[You have...]
The notifications stacked rapidly, but what Roman was focused on was his EXP bar.
[Level: 2 {930/1250}.]
Grunts at this level were never going to deliver a drop, so there was no point holding out for one. The only goal here was to clear the path and keep moving.
He finished the remainder with [Fireball], picking off the ones that had survived the impact of [Anti Balance], and once the last one was down, he stepped forward and emerged into the wide open compound of Stone and Bone Castle.
The first thing he did was locate Rena.
He didn't have to look hard.
At the far end of the compound, she was already in the middle of something, and the word rampaging did not feel like an exaggeration.
******
"Ready for a dance?"
Rena cast a cool glare across the circle of Blue Goblin Grunts surrounding her, and rather than the nerves that a sensible person might have felt, what settled on her face was a slow, quiet smile. The kind that came not from amusement, but from appetite.
This was no pressure for someone like her. The Assassin Profession was not something she had stumbled into. It was something she had chased since she was old enough to understand what it meant, and she had spent years sharpening herself into exactly this.
She was going to enjoy every second of it.
[Phantom Shift Activated.]
She moved.
Or more precisely, she ceased to be visible.
One moment she was standing in the centre of the ring, and in the next she was simply gone, leaving the goblins frozen in place, heads swivelling in every direction with a panic they had no framework to process.
Then one of them dropped. No warning. No sound. Just there, and then not.
Seconds later, another.
Then another.
Then another.
Each one fell without ever seeing what had ended it, the only evidence of Rena's presence being the soft sound of movement that arrived a fraction too late to mean anything.
The last surviving Grunt finally broke, spinning on its heels and bolting with a strangled cry.
"RAAAAK!"
It didn't get far.
Rena reappeared behind it in one fluid motion, and the matter was settled before the goblin had covered three steps. She straightened up, drew her blade clean, and watched the BSP interface update in her peripheral vision.
[You have leveled up! Level 2 » Level 3.]
[Level: 3 {1275/2000}.]
She clicked her tongue softly.
"Way to go," she murmured to herself.
The first tower was cleared. She turned her attention to the second, where a fresh cluster of goblins was already beginning its descent toward her in a state of agitated frenzy.
Her eyes moved across the compound briefly, and she caught sight of the commotion on the other side of the wall. It didn't take long to identify the source.
Their eyes met across the distance, and what passed between them in that single shared glance was not acknowledgement or camaraderie. It was a wordless, mutual declaration of something far more competitive than either of them would have said out loud.
Rena turned back to her targets and felt the fire in her chest climb a degree higher.
"If that low standard boy gets more kills than me tonight," she muttered under her breath, already moving, "I will never forgive myself."
******
On his end of the compound, Roman was blasting through his own share of the chaos, and the thought forming at the back of his mind was sharpening into something close to a goal.
"I have to prove her wrong. I have to show her that I am not what she thinks I am."
He stepped forward, eyes fixed ahead, the castle's interior looming deeper in the dark beyond the compound.
"And the only way I can do that..."
He tightened his fist.
"...is to reach the Goblin King before she does."
.
.
.
[A/N: We reach 10 Chapters! Honestly, I'm gonna need your opinions about the story so far, and what I should consider or do before we go further in this journey. Let's try to support with our power stones as well to keep the author fired up. Thanks!]