Chapter 24 - Crumple

Elias's staring at the goblin champion with a small smirk on his face, knowing that his plan already starts to works. He knows that he can't become stronger than the goblin champion in a short time, but it doesn't mean he has no chance of victory.

The doors are always open for everyone who don't simply give up when paths become rocky.

Someone once said, this world is full of wonder, and danger always lurks in each corner, but when you know what those dangers are, you can make it as your advantage. Elias also knows this and immediately choose to borrow a danger in this world after hearing his enemy is much stronger than him.

If he can't become as strong as his enemy, he'll make his enemy as weak as himself.

At the afternoon earlier, Elias goes to the forest to slay some Tenebrous Worms, not only to farm some points and runes but also to collect its poison — a neural poison — which known as the most potent neural poison in the colorless level.

Usually, people have difficulties to find it because those worms always live in the ground except when they search for foods, but with T'lear around he can collect those poisonous worms without any hardship.

Their poison won't kill the goblin champion, but it'll hamper his reflex and perception. He won't feel anything wrong because the poison was painless and won't cause any discomfort for whoever who ingested it.

It is a perfect poison which can easily found in this area, to make his standing equal as his enemy.

Nevertheless, Elias still needs to inject the poison into the goblin champion's body. This is the hard part, but luckily, he successfully wounded the goblin champion earlier even though it only a small scratch and contaminated his enemy blood with poison.

He understands that his plan is risky and fallible, but he also knows that he can escape anytime, which make him calmly choose to engage this fight.

While Elias still inside his thought, he notices that the goblin champion starts to rush towards him again while swinging his axes, trying to tear his neck from his body. However, the goblin champion dilatory movements become visible to Elias's eyes which make it easier to evade.

As the time passed, Elias starts to dodge his enemy assail flawlessly and simultaneously swing his sword towards his enemy, injecting more poison to his foe's bloodstream while cloaking his actions as an act of desperations.

The goblin champion can evade any attack targeted to his vital organ, but he forgot to avoid harmless attacks that only scratch his skin. His actions are usually sufficient at ordinary fights because he only needs to focus on things that can endanger his life, after all, focusing on all unnecessary strikes will drain his concentration quickly. Besides that, he can't feel any uncomfortable feeling from his wound which usually appears from any toxic substance, so he didn't think it too much about these wounds.

The goblin champion become restless after seeing his opponent become faster over time, he doesn't understand what just happened, he knows that he was faster and stronger than his enemy which proven earlier, but now, none of his axes can even touch his foe's clothes anymore. It's implausible someone can become stronger at this rate in this world.

Contrary to the goblin champion expression of unrest — not yet comprehend this absurd situation — Elias feels calm the whole time, as though all of this was within his expectations. He prioritized to avoid his enemy assails before doing any counter-attack, which makes his wound become less and less, he didn't even need to consume another recovery rune now.

He's like a seagull flying between squalls while waiting his chance to get fishes.

Each of his successful attacks was decelerating the goblin champion motion, which gives him more time to breathe — this situation is very advantageous to him. If this goes on, his victory would be guaranteed.

At this point, even the goblin champion can see this fact too and realize something was wrong even though he can't pinpoint what it is. He's jumping backward and then roars, giving commands to his minion to rush towards Elias.

KROAAAAA!

The surrounding goblins show some hesitation when receiving this command. One of them tried to run but immediately slashed vertically by the goblin champion. After looking at the goblin champion ruthlessness, they understand that they don't have any choice other than attack Elias now.

Kiaaak! Kiaaak!

Those goblins rush towards Elias while screaming, try to keep their bravery intact.

The goblin champion protrudes his hand towards one of his minions with commanding stance. That minion immediately understands what he means and give an oval rune with blue color. Elias feels very familiar with what in the goblin champion's hand as he also used to consume it in his past life — the detoxify rune.

"It seems he already realizes something went wrong," Elias mumbles after observing this situation.

The goblin champion still not sure whether he got poisoned or not, but as soon as he finishes detoxifying himself, his reflex will recover and put Elias in disadvantage position again. After he finishes consuming that rune, he'll pursue Elias again, and this time — he'll become more cautious with Elias's sword.

Elias tries to assess the situation and then sigh, "Well, time to take a step back then."

Elias immediately turns around and run from this place. The goblin who seen this act feel strange but still feel overjoyed. At first, they think some of them will die before they can even injure Elias, but seeing their opponent choose to flee is an unexpected surprise.

KROAAAAA!

Another roar from the goblin champion, wake them from their dismay, they immediately rush towards Elias whom still running in front of them. Not long after, they find out that they already get out from the forest and arrive on precipice terrains.

They see a deep ravine in front of them, separating two cliffs which only connected by one arch.

Cold winds are blowing strong coming from below which make them lose focus for a moment, but the moonlight makes it easier to locate where Elias go. They find Elias's running on a natural bridge that connecting two cliffs — at this moment, they assume that Elias wants to escape to another side of the plateau, another forest terrains where there is no goblin around.

If Elias successfully goes inside that lush forest, there no way they can trace him anymore.

They don't know what their leader would do after knowing that they let Elias escape in the front of their nose, but what certain is he'll become furious, and some of their lives will be gone to appease his anger.

After realizing the dreadful consequence that awaits them, they also follow Elias to cross that natural bridge — want to catch him before it's too late. Although the bridge looks thin, they know that it's actually pretty solid. A giant monster often crosses this bridge but didn't even cause any damage to it. Therefore, they don't have any worry to cross it with a large number.

In the middle of the bridge, those goblins see Elias doing something odd. Elias stabs his sword towards the ground repetitively as though he wants to destroy the bridge. Those goblins let out a snicker while looking at Elias foolish act, even though this bridge didn't form from rocks, it still solid, there is no way a mere stab of a sword can destroy this bridge.

However, concurrent with those goblins snicker, Elias mouth also curled upwards.

Soon, those goblins' snicker changes into bewildered expression and then change again into fearful one. The arch where they stand on — collapse.

"Ah, I love those worms," Elias mumbles while seeing those goblins fall into their demise.