Ichor Cell-Chapter 57: Goblin Slaying V
Alex rushed into the forest as the last of the goblins above ground were slaughtered with extreme prejudice. The gold rank, Remus, sprinted alongside him while guild master Eve flew above them, a small tornado of air whirling around her.
As soon as he stepped into the treeline, Alex had to throw himself to the ground to avoid a tree trunk that whistled over his head and into the clearing beyond. Breaking out in cold sweat, he laid eyes on the variant, now charging towards them like a furious wall.
Gritting his teeth, Alex sent mana into his legs and broke into a sprint to meet its charge. He zoomed past a surprised Remus and was in front of the beast in an instant, its gaze snapping to his form.
It tried to crush him with a fist, but he dodged out of the way as roots erupted from the ground and wrapped around the massive limb.
“I got it!” The guild master yelled from where she floated in the air.
Alex shivered at the sight of the wood magic, his mind flashing back to a certain spider, but quickly refocused.
‘Alright, let’s see if the rest of your body is as hard as your head.’
He grinned as he raked his magically enhanced claws across the thing’s elbow joint.
His smile widened when blood spurted out of the shredded tissue.
The variant roared in pain, its muscles bulging as it strained against the roots. With a loud crack, it heaved and tore them out of the ground in an explosion of dirt. Alex barely had time to react before it whipped the improvised weapon at him faster than he could blink.
Pain exploded across his arms as the wooden whips flayed his flesh and sent him flying backwards. Fortunately, he landed in a bush, though he didn’t feel particularly grateful in the moment.
Opening his eyes, Alex blinked through the tears and saw flesh slowly crawling over his bones. He sucked air through his nose as the agony radiating from his arms slowly receded.
‘Fuck me, that hurts.’
He swore to himself.
Out of commission for now, he turned his attention back to the fight, which was unfolding like something straight out of a fantasy movie.
The twelve-foot-tall fur, bone and scale covered variant was swinging around its wooden flails as the gold rank adventurer weaved around the blows and retaliated with devastating blasts of magic. It seemed like the man hadn’t been trying earlier; the tiny sparks of lightning from before were nothing compared to the arm-thick beams of pure devastation that erupted from his blade now.
As Alex watched, the scorched and bleeding variant faked the man out with a feint, and just when it looked like it was about to crush him in one blow, he brought up his free hand and unleashed a concentrated blast of wind into the incoming attack, diverting it harmlessly to the side. The man then put his hand behind his sword and unleashed a second blast of wind, sending the blade rocketing forwards and burying it half a foot into the beast’s thigh.
‘Damn, I guess that’s what training for years gets you versus having power undeservedly dumped into your lap.’
Alex was impressed.
The goblin roared in challenge, swinging another blow at Remus’ head, when a fifteen-foot-long lance of glowing metal plummeted from the night sky and pierced right through the attacking limb, pinning it to the ground.
“Holy!” Alex jumped out of the bush, his arms mostly healed. Searching for the origin of the attack, he saw the guild master floating in the air above them, her cold gaze locked onto the injured monster.
Alex gulped.
‘I forgot about her.’
He looked back to the thrashing goblin.
‘It seems so did that thing.’
The variant finally ripped the spear out of its limb, but before it could turn it against them, the spell disintegrated into tiny glowing shards.
Remus didn’t wait for it to recover. He darted forward, blade trailing a spiralling torrent of wind, and swung at an exposed joint. The cut bit deep—deeper than before—sending a spray of dark blood across the forest floor.
Instead of collapsing, the variant used the opportunity to grip the blade, its beady eyes locking onto the spellblade.
“Oh shi-!” The man barely had time to let go of the weapon before a thunderous kick connected with his chest. A flash of protective light lit up at the point of impact, but the blow still sent him streaking through the air, snapping several trees with his body.
The beast immediately looked up, finally realising that the biggest threat to its existence was the guild master floating through the air above them. The woman’s expression didn’t change, though Alex noticed that her tornado carried her just a little bit higher.
Deciding that his injuries had healed enough, Alex got back into the fight.
Stolen novel; please .
“Hey, look at me!” He yelled, launching himself at the beast.
With a growl of annoyance, the monster switched its attention to him and swung its fist. The blow was so fast that the air in front of it was actually compressed into layers, which turned out to be a good thing as it pushed Alex out of the way of the lethal blow.
Before he could take advantage of the opening, the monster completed its rotation and hit him with a bone-shattering backhand, sending him skipping along the ground before a tree abruptly arrested his momentum.
Alex coughed out a mouthful of blood as he felt his spine bend unnaturally around the rough bark, but fortunately nothing snapped. That couldn’t be said about the rest of him. He groaned as he felt the bones in his side snap into place, tears springing once again to his eyes.
‘Man, fuck this shit. This fight is way above my paygrade.’
As if to prove his point, the variant—now free of distractions—had started fighting the guild master. In a bid to reach the woman floating in the sky, it had grabbed and uprooted an entire twenty-foot-tall tree, before chucking the thing into the sky.
The guild master was not impressed. She swerved her tornado out of the way, but she didn’t expect the goblin to immediately launch itself after the tree, using it to conceal her vision. She desperately tried to veer out of the way, but the monster had somehow predicted her path of retreat, and she couldn’t avoid its grasping claws.
The two of them collided in midair and quickly plummeted to the ground below, vanishing into the trees.
“No fuckin way. No, no, no, no.” With his heart in his throat, Alex ran in the direction they’d disappeared in.
‘If it manages to kill the guild master…’
Alex almost decided to turn back and escape when the sound of fighting reached his ears.
Before he could change his mind, he sprinted toward the sound, branches whipping at his face. The noises ahead grew louder—explosive bursts of air, shattering stone, the guttural snarls of the variant.
He burst through a thicket and stumbled to a halt.
The forest around the landing site was gone. Not cut—
obliterated
. Trunks lay split cleanly into pieces, uprooted, or simply reduced to smoking fragments. A shallow crater sprawled across the center, and above it raged a furious battle.
The guild master’s armour glowed in places—pale golden lines pulsing along etched runes, flickering where the last defensive impact had nearly overloaded them. Chunks of her cloak were missing, her hair was torn loose and was flapping in the wind as she zipped around the impromptu clearing.
Alex stared, dumbstruck, as the woman blurred across the shattered clearing, each gesture unleashing another blast of devastation. A ring of compressed air hammered into the variant’s sternum, lifting the monster off its feet. Before it could touch the ground, a twisting spear of stone erupted beside it and slammed into its ribs, sending it skidding sideways through the remains of a tree stump.
The variant recovered instantly.
It tore itself upright and hurled a boulder-sized chunk of earth the guild master’s own spell had kicked up. She sliced it apart mid-air with a razor-thin wind blade, then had to abruptly limbo as the monster’s claws passed in front of her face, tearing through the air above her instead.
The splinters showered Alex from fifty feet away.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
He had never felt so irrelevant in his life.
The two of them weren’t just strong—they were on a level that made everything happening earlier look like warm-up drills. Every clash sent debris flying. Every impact forced the air to bend.
Alex flexed his fingers uselessly. He wasn’t built for this scale of battle. No matter how much he wanted to help, there was nothing he could-
His eyes dropped to a dark puddle near the crater’s edge.
The variant’s blood. Thick. Metallic. Reeking like something sour rotting in a furnace.
He grimaced.
‘Well, there might be something I can do.’
He crouched and scooped up a handful of the foul liquid, swallowing it before he could think too hard. It tasted like fermented engine oil mixed with iron shavings; absolutely vile, but the effect was immediate.
His mana pathways lit up—a hot, prickling, unpleasant sensation. Strength flooded his limbs. His muscles bulged, filling him with power. His vision steadied, the world snapping into clearer focus.
Not a massive upgrade. He was still far behind those two, but hopefully that would change.
A crash drew his attention back to the clearing. The guild master hit the ground hard, a defensive rune flashing bright gold as the impact cratered the soil beneath her. The variant loomed over her, claws tearing grooves through the earth as it prepared to strike again.
Alex sprinted.
Mana surged through his legs as he dashed across the clearing and slammed into the creature’s side. It barely budged—but ‘barely’ wasn’t ‘not at all’, and that was enough for the guild master to roll free and snap a pillar of magical stone straight into its ribs.
The beast roared and swiped at Alex.
He ducked under the blow and sank his teeth into an exposed wound. Another surge of mana hit him, even stronger than the last. He felt his legs tighten, his balance sharpen.
The variant flailed, trying to swat him away. A wave of its arm sent him tumbling, but he rolled back to his feet before he fully stopped sliding, back scratched up from the forest floor.
The guild master dropped both hands to the ground.
A shockwave burst outward, turning the soil into a thousand flying shards that hammered into the variant’s legs and abdomen. The monster roared, raising an arm to shield its eyes.
Alex darted in again, springing off its calf like a ramp and sinking his fangs into a ragged tear along its shoulder. More blood flooded his mouth—just as vile as before, but potent.
He ripped away another chunk of flesh.
The monster bucked violently—Alex flew off its back, but the guild master was already streaking past him in a spiral of wind, her arm sweeping horizontally. A blade of compressed air carved a trench across the variant’s chest. The creature staggered.
Alex grinned despite the throbbing pain everywhere. “Come on! Look at me again!”
It did.
The variant turned toward him, hatred in its small, narrow eyes. Its chest rose and fell rapidly, wounds leaking thick, dark blood. The creature’s fur was matted, bone plating cracked, scales burned away in several places, but its eyes were still bright.
Alex took a step back—not in fear, but to draw it further into the guild master’s line of fire.
“That’s right,” he muttered. “Let’s dance—”
The variant inhaled. Blue-white veins of mana ignited beneath its skin, pulsing like molten cracks in stone. The air around its jaws warped, distorting as if pulled inward.
Alex froze. “Oh… shit.”
The guild master’s panicked voice rang out behind him. “MOVE! It has magic!”
The variant roared, and the trees exploded.
Chapter 57: Goblin Slaying V
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