Ichor Cell-Chapter 58: Goblin Slaying VI

Ichor Cell-Chapter 58: Goblin Slaying VI

Alex considered himself a rather learned individual. Sure, he wasn’t some great inventor or academic, but he was pretty knowledgeable about various bits of trivia due to his origins in the 21st century.
One of those bits of trivia was that trees were surprisingly about 50% water, as opposed to the human body’s 70%. Of course, in terms of absolute numbers, a tree contains much more water than a single human body, due to the size difference.
Now, the reason this was relevant was that he now found himself on the receiving end of several trees’ worth of water compressed into thin, inch-wide beams.
While he’d initially thought that the variant’s roar caused the trees to explode, Alex was mistaken. Instead of a loud splintering, it was a wet, collapsing sound, like a soaked rope being twisted too hard. One moment the trunks stood upright, roots gripping the earth—then the trees in their surroundings shrank in on themselves.
The forest around the clearing suddenly sagged and collapsed as water was violently stripped from everything within reach. Leaves wilted to grey. Roots loosened in the soil. What remained of the trees stood only as dense, brittle husks, violently under their own weight.
Pale lines of water tore free from the imploding trunks—drawn out, compressed, and straightened into lethal lines of pressure before snapping outward.
The first beam caught him across the torso.
There was no explosion. No crushing impact. Just a sudden, violent
absence
.
The water punched through him in a line barely wider than a finger, parting muscle, bone and organ alike. Alex felt his body jerk as the beam exited his back and vanished into the forest beyond, leaving a perfectly smooth tunnel of damage in its wake.
“Urk-” Before he could even react, the air around him screamed as several more beams lashed out at once, crossing the clearing in a violent lattice. One punched through both his knees at once. Another drilled cleanly through his abdomen. A third clipped his shoulder at an angle, ripping through muscle and exiting near his spine.
Alex collapsed—the sudden failure of so many parts of his body at once rendering him incapable of standing.
His breath came out in a wet gurgle as his remaining lung spasmed uselessly. Blood poured out of him faster than he could process. His vision dimmed, though fortunately the shock and adrenaline prevented him from feeling any of his injuries.
He dimly heard the sound of loud impacts behind him, and light bloomed across the clearing; most likely the guild master defending herself from similar attacks. Alex didn’t have much time to consider that, since yet more beams came for his prone form. At least it seemed that the variant’s aim wasn’t the best, since only one of them managed to hit him, piercing straight through his neck and just barely missing his spine.
Fortunately, just as suddenly as it began, the clearing fell silent.
Alex lay where he was, vision dim and unfocused, while his body worked through the extensive damage it had suffered. Each individual channel punching through his body was enough to kill a man, much less when there were so many of them at once.
His chest hitched as one lung finished reforming properly, and he started coughing out the blood that filled it. Bone marrow worked overtime to replace what was lost, his dim vision and light-headedness slowly receding. His legs twitched faintly as bone and muscle realigned, not snapping into place this time, but grinding together with deliberate slowness.
And the hunger was back.
Alex mentally cursed as he felt the consequences of all his injuries finally rear its head. Starting out as a dull ache, it quickly blossomed into that familiar abyss that had opened up inside him.
‘Fuck.’
Alex desperately tried to look around, but the injury to his neck hadn’t finished healing, rendering him immobile for now. He swallowed reflexively, throat dry, but there was nothing within reach to satisfy it. The variant hadn’t bled in a while, and even if it had, he couldn’t move to reach it at the moment.
So, he stayed still and waited.
Across the clearing, something heavy shifted.
“MOVE!” Eve yelled at the Wood rank. “It has magic!”
The guild master cursed as she flew back and summoned barriers all around her. She felt the pulse of mana travel through the clearing at the creature’s roar, and her face paled as she realised what was about to happen.
The warning had come too late.
Eve focused as the first few beams impacted her hastily erected stone and force barriers. The defences held—barely—each impact punching through layers of magic until her armour flared and took the rest. The sheer power behind the attacks still drove her backward through the dead soil, boots carving furrows as she skidded to a halt.
The Wood rank was not so lucky.
The pressure beams crossed the clearing in a dense lattice, each one lethal on its own. She saw them punch cleanly through the Wood rank’s body, one after another, leaving narrow tunnels of damage that leaked blood far faster than any normal body could compensate for.
She watched in horror as the man collapsed to the ground, blood pouring out of him from a dozen new openings.
For several long seconds, his body continued to move—twitching, collapsing, trying to hold together despite the sheer number of fatal injuries stacked on top of each other. Eve had seen people with reinforced bodies, with enchanted gear, with blessings and augments. Hells, she had fought Trolls, beings famous for their incredible regeneration.
None of them would have lasted that long.
Whatever the man’s magic was, it had carried him through far more punishment than anyone at his level of power had any business surviving. Enough that, under different circumstances, he might even have made it.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, the violation.
She shook her head regretfully when the final beam pierced straight through his neck, a trickle of blood pouring out of the wound instead of gushing like it should. When he stopped moving, she didn’t need to check further.
That was that.
She swallowed the flicker of regret and forced her focus back where it belonged.
Remus still hadn’t rejoined the fight. The last time she had seen him, he had been caught by that kick and sent flying into the trees. If he was still down, then he was either badly injured or completely out of the fight.
Which meant that, for the moment at least, she was the only one left standing.
‘Again.’
She sighed internally.
The variant shifted its weight again across the clearing, heavy feet crunching through dried soil and brittle wood. It wasn’t attacking yet. Its posture was guarded, shoulders rising and falling as it drew in slow, deliberate breaths. It seemed the earlier spell had taken a noticeable toll; the beast wasn’t pushing the advantage it had created.
It was recovering.
Eve didn’t intend to let it finish doing so.
She stepped forward and attacked, mana surging through her as stone tore free from the ground at her command. She didn’t waste time shaping anything elaborate. Dense, compact masses slammed into the variant’s side and chest in quick succession, aimed to disrupt its balance rather than pulverise it outright. The first blow forced it back a step. The second widened cracks in its plating and drove a grunt from its throat.
The creature responded sluggishly, movements heavy and slightly out of sync, as if its body hadn’t quite caught up with its intentions yet. Eve followed up immediately, chaining her attacks together and driving it backward through the clearing. Each impact kicked up clouds of dry dust and splintered fragments from the dead forest floor.
For a few seconds, it worked.
Then the variant changed.
The shift was abrupt enough that Eve felt it more than she saw it. One moment its movements were laboured; the next, it crossed the distance between them far faster than it should have been able to manage in its condition. Its strike slammed into her barrier with enough force to make her armour flare as the layered defences absorbed the blow.
She adjusted her approach immediately, wind flaring around her as she floated up and away from the monster, studying it with caution.
That wasn’t simple recovery.
The variant moved again, faster still, its joints snapping into alignment mid-motion with unnatural precision. Eve caught the subtle detail beneath its hide this time: faint ripples moving through muscle and sinew, fluid shifting under controlled pressure rather than spilling outward.
Water.
The guild master rose higher, keeping distance between herself and the variant as she adjusted to its new speed. Wind curled around her in tight, controlled currents, holding her aloft while letting her shift position with minimal effort. She tested it with probing attacks—compressed stone fired in short bursts, narrow enough to force it to react without committing too much mana.
The creature answered by jumping after her.
Each leap carried it far higher than before. Massive hands clawed at empty air as she shifted away at the last moment, a flick of wind pulling her just out of reach. When it landed, the impact cracked the dry ground and sent brittle debris skittering outward.
Eve countered immediately. A horizontal blade of force slammed into its side mid-landing, forcing it to stumble and releasing a spray of blood. She followed with a descending strike of compacted stone that hit its shoulder hard enough to drive it down to one knee. The variant roared and answered by tearing a tree free from the ground and hurling it upwards like a spear.
She split the trunk in midair and dashed aside as fragments whistled past her. Another rock followed, then another—aimed not where she was, but where she was moving. Eve adjusted, wind thickening around her legs as she arrested her momentum and changed direction sharply, feeling the strain creep into her mana channels.
Pushing through the burn, Eve stayed mobile, striking when she saw openings—joints, damaged plating, points where earlier blows had already weakened its structure. The variant tried to anticipate her movements, leaping, throwing, forcing her to spend mana on evasion instead of offence. It was crude, but effective, steadily pushing her lower as the cost of sustained flight mounted.
A chunk of stone clipped her barrier and detonated against it, the impact rattling her armour and forcing her to burn off the force with a sharp corrective pulse. She retaliated with a vertical pillar that erupted beneath the variant’s feet, launching it sideways and tearing up the ground in the process. It rolled, recovered faster than it should have, and immediately jumped again.
Eve ground her teeth.
This was why she hated fighting alone. It was adapting. Forcing the fight onto terms that favoured its reinforced body rather than her control of space.
Eventually, it succeeded.
A chunk of ground torn free moments earlier struck her, not hard enough to break through her barrier outright, but positioned just right to collapse the wind currents keeping her aloft. Eve felt the sudden loss of lift and dropped, boots hitting the unstable soil hard enough to send cracks racing outward.
She didn’t have time to fully recover her footing before a titanic, magically empowered fist crashed into her side, the reactive enchantments on her armour flaring briefly before being overwhelmed by the force of the blow.
Crunch.
Eve had to bite back a cry of pain as she felt her arm shatter and was sent flying into a nearby tree. Fortunately, her defences hadn’t shattered completely; the ensuing impact against the flora did not kill her.
Pushing through the pain, she rolled over, ready to defend against the variant’s onslaught. The creature loomed over her, massive frame blotting out the pale light of the moon, internal pressure rippling visibly beneath its hide as it raised its arms. Eve snapped up layered defences on instinct, stone, roots and force interlocking as she braced for the inevitable follow-up.
Instead, a roar tore through the clearing that made her scalp tingle.
It sounded like screaming metal forced through a living throat, a banshee’s wail warped and dragged out until it set her teeth on edge and made her skin crawl. Eve felt it more than she heard it, the noise digging into her head and refusing to let go.
Something hit the variant from the side.
Hard.
The impact staggered the creature mid-swing, its raised arms faltering as it lurched sideways with a bellow of surprise and pain. Eve reacted immediately, thrusting her hand forward and ripping a pillar of stone out of the ground around her. The blast launched it away in a spray of dry earth and shattered roots, along with whatever had struck it.
She disengaged at once, putting distance between herself and the chaos as she reassessed the field.
A humanoid shape clung to the variant’s back, fingers dug deep into cracked plating, legs locked around its torso. Scraps of cloth covered its completely pale skin, which stretched tight over a frame corded with muscle and covered in thick, pitch-black veins that pulsed faintly beneath the surface.
The thing had its mouth buried deep in a wound at the goblin’s shoulder, teeth sunk into exposed flesh as it drank. It didn’t let go even as the variant roared and clawed at it, the wounds it received healing shut in the next moment.
Healing with a speed she found familiar.
Eve’s gaze snapped, unbidden, to where the Wood rank’s body should have been.
The ground there was empty.
Her eyes returned to the thing clinging to the variant as a cold understanding settled in.
“…You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
The creature threw its head back and roared again, that same wet, horrifying sound ripping out of its throat as it drove its teeth deeper into the variant’s flesh. The goblin bellowed in fury and pain, its attention completely pulled away from its previous opponent as it tried to tear the new attacker off its back.
The guild master hovered at a cautious distance, fists clenched, eyes narrowed as she reassessed the battlefield for what felt like the fourth time since the fight had started.
It seemed like the wood rank wasn’t finished after all.
And he had more secrets than he chose to let on.

.
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Chapter 58: Goblin Slaying VI