Chapter 20 - Ritual

Inventory wasn't as mortal as Auto Aim, but it could be pretty nasty. When Zack stored some chunks of concrete, he easily made them fall on goblins in the distance and killed them instantly. That skill could also be used to snipe monsters. Thanks to that, Zack's life was a lot easier during the rest of the day. Still, the goblin king didn't show himself…

"Maybe it isn't here…" Zack furrowed his eyebrows.

The first weapon that Zack wanted looked more and more distant from him. Maybe he should just buy one anyway.

While Zack was thinking about that, something changed among the goblins. All of a sudden, they stopped coming at him to attack. That was quite weird, given how brain-dead they could be when they saw an enemy. In the end, they all ran to the city's central part of the city…

As Zack observed the goblins clustering together, he couldn't help but feel a sense of confusion. It seemed logical that they would band together to increase their chances of fighting him. Still, there was something about their behavior that struck him as odd. It was a level of coordination and strategy that seemed beyond the capabilities of creatures like goblins.

Goblins were known for their savage and chaotic nature, driven by instinct rather than intellect. They were creatures of impulse, acting on primal urges rather than calculated plans. The idea that they would organize themselves in such a manner all of a sudden seemed almost absurd, yet there they were, huddling together like a pack of wolves.

Zack frowned, his mind racing as he tried to make sense of the situation. He had encountered goblins many times before but had never seen them behave like this. It was as if they were working together with a common purpose, a level of cooperation that was unheard of among their kind.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Zack thought. "If push comes to the shove, I can always snipe them with my skills, but I feel like there is more to this."

Zack hurried to deal with more enemies before they could arrive in the central area of their camp. Since they exposed their backs, he had an easy time killing them. Still, he soon was forced to stop when he realized what was going ahead: The goblins were killing each other.

"What the fuck…" Zack said, and then his mouth was hanging open.

Of all the things that Zack waited to see, that was the last of them. He had never heard of monsters of the same species fighting each other. It felt like they didn't want to give Zack all the experience that they had, and that was the worst crime that they could do against him, so he decided to go all out.

Zack used Inventory and made all the corpses in the area rain down on the monsters. As, the corpses increased, the rain increased as well, and and the experience started to come to him insanely fast. 

When he couldn't use Inventory Anymore, Zack used Auto Aim. He targeted the goblins right in the middle of that clustering, and thanks to that, the axes that he threw passed through the heads of several of them instantly.

When that was done, Zack used Speed Hack and spun violently as he arrived in the enemy's area, cutting them down faster than they could react.

Finally, when that was done, Zack used Instantaneous Movement and beheaded the monsters like he was a machine. His shadow barely had the chance to appear where he landed… thanks to that, hundreds of those monsters were killed in a few seconds.

Zack felt the thrill of battle as he took down the goblins one by one, his weapon slicing through their ranks with deadly precision. He enjoyed the challenge, the rush of adrenaline as he faced off against his targets, but his enjoyment was short-lived.

Suddenly, a powerful shout echoed through the air, causing Zack to freeze in his tracks. The atmosphere shifted, the once chaotic battlefield now filled with a tense, palpable energy. Zack's instincts screamed at him to be on high alert, and he scanned the area for the source of the disturbance.

And then he saw it, a goblin standing at the center of their ranks, its form pulsating with an eerie glow. It was larger and more imposing than the others, its eyes gleaming with an intelligence that Zack had never seen in a goblin before. It was as if one of the creatures had become something more, a leader, the goblin king.

The Goblin King's skin was a sickly shade of green, mottled with scars and patches of rough, scaly hide. Its eyes burned with fierce intelligence, gleaming with a predatory light as it surveyed the area with a mix of cunning and malice. A crown of muddy gold adorned its head, a crude symbol of its authority over the goblin horde.

In its hand, the Goblin King wielded a massive sword, its blade forged from dark, jagged metal that seemed to drink in the light around it. The sword was as long as a man's arm and twice as thick, with wicked serrated edges that glinted menacingly in the dim light. Runes of ancient power were etched into the blade, pulsing with an otherworldly energy that seemed to hum with malevolence.

"So, all that was a ritual to make one of them become the goblin king, huh?" Zack thought. "Curious."