Chapter 31: Goblinia
I spent the rest of that day and a good part of the next training alone, working my mana.
Over and over, I slid it from one limb to another, from a hand to a leg, from my heart to my fingertips, until the movement became almost natural. My body was learning. And the system kept pace.
[ Mana Control — Lv. 1 -> Lv. 3 ]
It was no longer that sluggish, reluctant thread of the first day. The mana answered faster, cleaner, went where I wanted it with less and less effort. I was only just beginning to grasp what it made possible.
But I’d learn nothing more on my own. I needed new teachers.
After a few minutes searching, I came across a group of goblins.
This time, I wasn’t going to just watch. I went straight at them.
There were five of them, crouched around a dying fire. One spotted me and yipped something — "Grekh! A... kzzt... human!" — and all at once the five were on their feet, daggers and clubs brandished, shrieking in their twisted tongue that my Blessing only half translated.
I drew a single saber. My other hand, I left free.
The first one rushed me. Its mana surged back into its legs just before it bent its knees — and I followed. My own mana shifted into my thighs, and I let myself pour down under its dagger at the last instant, the blade hissing over my skull.
Too high. It opened my shoulder on the way past.
I rolled, got up, let the blood run. Didn’t matter. The feeling was there. I just had to wait longer, drop lower.
The second was already coming, club raised. I waited. I waited until everything in me screamed it was too late — and I slid. Under the blow, clean, out the other side, my saber opening its belly as I passed.
[ New skill acquired ]
[ Slide — Lv. 1 ] - A low, fluid movement that pours beneath an attack, carried by a burst of mana into the legs at the instant of the dodge.
"Ha—" The laugh came out of me on its own, between two breaths.
No time to enjoy it. The third was charging, and it broke its stride mid-run — that jagged, unpredictable trajectory, the mana feinting a direction. I knew that one. The wolf had suffered it right in front of me.
I bore down on it and played the same game. I loaded my left leg, plainly, obviously — and at the last instant I dumped everything into the right. My body launched sideways in one piece.
The goblin struck where I’d been. My saber found the back of its neck.
[ New skill acquired ]
[ Broken Step — Lv. 1 ] - A movement feint where the mana lies about the true direction of the plant, breaking the opponent’s read.
Three down. Two backing away now, less sure of themselves, yipping to each other — "Skrii... it... not normal, not normal!" — waving their daggers.
One of them plunged its hand toward the ground. I saw the motion being born, the mana rushing into its arm, and I knew what was coming: the dust, the fog.
I threw myself onto the same patch of earth and struck at the same time as it did, palm to ground, pushing my mana into the earth on contact.
Our two clouds burst against each other. Its missed me; mine caught it full in the face. It reeled back, squealing, blind, rubbing its eyes.
[ New skill acquired ]
[ Disrupting Throw — Lv. 1 ] - Hurls a mana-charged material in a blinding cloud, far denser than a simple throw.
"Good student," I breathed, and I bore down on the last one still standing.
It charged me, dagger forward. I blocked with my saber, held high, plainly displayed — and I felt its whole gaze latch onto that blade. So I pushed my mana into my eyes, into my skull, and I searched. The gap. The place its turned head didn’t cover.
It appeared to me like a patch of shadow, at the edge of its field of vision. My free hand brought my second blade up from below, into that blind spot, and ran it through its throat before it ever saw it coming.
[ New skill acquired ]
[ Blind-Spot Blade — Lv. 1 ] - Guides a strike into the opponent’s blind spot, located by a brief concentration of mana behind the eyes.
The blinded one was still rubbing its eyes, staggering. I caught it with a pommel-strike to the temple, and it crumpled, stunned.
The last one on its feet.
I wanted that one. For the final lesson. The filthiest of them all.
It made a desperate rush, dagger forward. I parried with a backhand, rolled its blade to the ground with a flat of my saber, and I caught it bodily, pulling it against me like an embrace.
"Bon appétit," I murmured into its ear.
And I gathered all my mana at once — torn from my legs, my arms, my torso, flung in one piece into my jaws. I bit into its throat and tore it out clean.
[ New skill acquired ]
[ Bite of Despair — Lv. 1 ] - Concentrates the body’s entire mana into the jaws in an instant. A last-resort trump, devastating, that leaves nothing behind.
Silence settled over the camp.
I got up, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, the taste of blood on my lips. Around me, five goblins on the ground. And five more lines in my system.
"Ahahah..." I spat out a laugh, disbelieving, still winded. "You’re hell of a set of teachers, every last one of you."
I sat down against a tree to catch my breath, and I called up my status.
[ STATUS ]
Name: Kuro Shiragi | Race: Human | Class: Hero of the Infinite | Level: 50
[ Stats ]
Strength 126 | Vitality 49 | Agility 159 | Mana 150 | Intelligence 50 | Perception 92
Free points: 18
[ Skills ]
[ Divine Blessing — Lv. 2 ] | [ Infinite Evolution — Lv. MAX ] | [ Eye of Infinity — Lv. 4 ] | [ Dance of the Tidal Widow — Lv. 1 ] | [ Dash — Lv. 3 ] | [ Apotheosis ] (Unique) | [ Infinite Arsenal — Lv. 1 ]
+ [ Mana Control — Lv. 3 ] | [ Instinctive Climbing — Lv. 1 ] | [ Slide — Lv. 1 ] | [ Broken Step — Lv. 1 ] | [ Disrupting Throw — Lv. 1 ] | [ Blind-Spot Blade — Lv. 1 ] | [ Bite of Despair — Lv. 1 ]
A whole list of new lines. Goblin skills, raw, rudimentary. But it was raw material. And raw material, I’d learned to turn into gold.
I smiled.
"Right. Let’s see what happens when we marry them off."
I started with the movement skills.
Slide. Broken Step. Fuse.
[ Skill Fusion ]
[ Slide ] + [ Broken Step ] -> [ Gliding Step — Lv. 1 ]
I felt the two melt into a single thing — no longer "slide" then "feint," but one movement where the low dodge and the false direction became one and the same.
Gliding Step. Instinctive Climbing. Fuse.
[ Skill Fusion ]
[ Gliding Step ] + [ Instinctive Climbing ] -> [ Instinctive Mobility — Lv. 1 ]
This time, the change was physical. Immediate.
I stood up — and nearly stumbled, my body answering too fast. I took a step to the side to test it: my foot found a root, pushed off it, rebounded, and I ended up two meters away without having decided how. My senses, my reflexes, the way my mana ran through my legs — all of it had sharpened a notch, without my having to think about it.
I started running between the trees, just to feel it. I slid under a low branch, bounced off a trunk, changed direction mid-stride without losing a breath of speed. My body chained it all together on its own, fluid, as if it had known this forest forever.
A threshold. A real threshold had just been crossed in the very way I moved.
"It’s incredible, what a few simple goblins can give me," I murmured, a little dazed, breathless and smiling.
More excited still, I moved on to the combat skills.
Disrupting Throw. Blind-Spot Blade. Fuse.
[ Skill Fusion ]
[ Disrupting Throw ] + [ Blind-Spot Blade ] -> [ Style of the Deceiving Blade — Lv. 1 ]
Style of the Deceiving Blade. Bite of Despair. Fuse.
[ Skill Fusion ]
[ Style of the Deceiving Blade ] + [ Bite of Despair ] -> [ Art of the Opportunist — Lv. 1 ]
This was where my skill, Infinite Evolution, shone brightest.
Simple goblin techniques, melted together, made a whole — something far stronger than the sum of its parts. And yet the fused skill only started back at level one, only counted the basics of the two.
But between the two, there was earth and sky.
Because after the fusion, it was no longer a sequence of moves to chain. It had become instinctive. A single whole where each skill filled the other’s gaps, where they reinforced one another, instead of following one another clumsily.
But I didn’t stop there. Not satisfied yet.
"I know there’s one last step left." I stared at the two remaining lines. "Tell me it works, please, system."
Art of the Opportunist. Instinctive Mobility. Fuse.
[ Skill Fusion ]
[ Art of the Opportunist ] + [ Instinctive Mobility ] -> [ Goblinia — Unique Skill ]
[ Goblinia — Unique Skill ] - The forgotten combat style of a goblin god from another age. An art of cunning and movement in which the body feints without cease, mana circulates from limb to limb at an instinctive speed, and the slightest feature of the environment becomes a trap or a foothold. Grants its bearer innate knowledge and mastery of the style.
My body caught fire all at once.
A brutal heat, head to foot, as my mind soaked up knowledge that wasn’t mine. It was the skill itself that gave it to me — the gestures, the reflexes, the knowledge of an entire style, poured into my flesh in one go like filling an empty vessel. Movements I’d never learned, and that already ran in my veins as if they’d always been there.
I couldn’t stop myself from bursting out laughing.
"Ahahahaha! So that’s the true strength of my class! Ahahahahahahaha!"
I had to try it. Right now.
Not far off, the goblin I’d knocked out with a pommel-strike was only just beginning to stir, to come back to its senses. Perfect.
I drew both my sabers, and I let it get to its feet.
Then I let the skill take me.
It wasn’t me who moved. It was Goblinia. My body launched forward in a way I’d never commanded — low, oblique, a step that lied about my direction before I’d even touched the ground. The goblin raised its dagger toward where it thought I was, and I was already gone.
My mana ran through my limbs at a speed that would have seemed impossible the day before. It left one leg to gorge the other, rose into my eyes for the space of a beat to whisper me an angle, dropped back down at once. I wasn’t thinking about it. It happened on its own.
My free hand slapped a patch of earth in passing — the mana poured into it, and a cloud burst into the goblin’s eyes. It reeled back, squealing. My foot found a stone, used it as a plant to relaunch me sideways, and I surged up behind it, in the exact angle its gaze couldn’t reach.
The whole setting had become a weapon. The earth, the stone, the roots, the trunks — the style used everything, turned every element into a trap or a springboard.
It wasn’t beautiful. It was twisted, vicious, unpredictable. An art of cunning and movement, where the fight was played as much as it was fought.
The style of a goblin god from another age, erased, forgotten by all — and living again, there, in my arms.
I finished with a clean backhand. The goblin’s head rolled into the moss.
I stood there, both sabers steaming, breathless, giddy to the point of dizziness.
"Perfect," I breathed.
Then I raised my eyes toward the depths of the forest, and I set my blades spinning.
"Let’s go slaughter every last one of these goblins."
