Chapter 51: Outbreak
2014-11-28
Author: Floating Tower
After the initial chaos, the ordinary goblins gradually regained their composure. They picked up some stones from the ground and threw them at Soren. While these stones were not very lethal, being hit by a dozen stones at once from all directions still hurt. With Soren’s extraordinary agility of 20 points, he still found it hard to evade them; the space was just too small, and he ended up getting hit here and there. Although the damage was only 1 point, it added up and was quite painful!
——Burning Hands!
With his spell recognition ability, Soren rolled away at once, remembering quite a bit of the Drow’s ground-cutting sword technique, and instantly severed the legs of three nearby goblins. This move was humorously referred to as the “Ground Rolling Sword” since it didn’t look great and wasn’t learned by many, but close combat experts almost all learned it, for it was a lifesaving skill in a melee. The Earth Hall Sword users, who evolved from Rangers, Warriors, and Ronin, were indeed top-notch experts in a brawl.
This set of combat skills required high levels of coordination, agility, flexibility, speed, and internal organs!
The Drow’s dual-dagger Ranger specialized in the lower three routes. Soren had seen experts sever multiple enemies’ thighs in an instant without even brushing their clothes, leaving behind a scene of severed limbs and broken arms. True masters of killing didn’t fly around because there was no place to leverage strength or release force; before hitting the ground, they were easy targets.
What they used the most was merely diving and jumping.
Even if they could jump five or six meters or even over ten, they wouldn’t expose themselves to a powerless floating state.
The flames on Soren were extinguished as he rolled.
However, as the goblin spellcaster moved, the flames of Burning Hands adhered to him. This was one of the most troublesome first-level spells; getting hit by it was like having a parasite. Soren gritted his teeth and grabbed a goblin’s corpse, hurling it at the spellcaster. Weighing about 50 pounds, it was within his explosive power range, and the goblin’s body struck the spellcaster, interrupting its spell. With goblins jumping, moving, and rolling from all directions, Soren inadvertently got hit by a sword again.
Soren twisted his waist and sprang up, grabbing a goblin’s ankle in one movement. The goblin shrieked in fear as he swung it around, forcing surrounding enemies to retreat. Then, he crouched, exerted force, and leaped five meters away, breaking out of the goblins’ encirclement. In chaotic battles, one must not be surrounded by enemies; otherwise, no amount of evasion or reflexes can help since there wouldn’t be enough space to move, and in the end, one would have to absorb attacks head-on.
Soren once again drew his crossbow and shot an arrow at the goblin spellcaster.
As he slightly increased the distance, some goblins drew short bows to shoot. Yet their poor archery skills couldn’t hit Soren, who was moving at high speed; instead, they struck their own kind behind him.
Clang!
Soren spun around and successfully blocked an arrow with his curved blade; feeling unexpectedly dexterous, he managed to deflect three arrows consecutively with the blade.
“Die!”
Soren charged toward the distant goblin spellcaster. Spellcasters were weak in melee combat and had a physique far inferior to that of warriors, so he was confident he could dismember the goblin spellcaster with a single blow.
——Frost Palm!
The goblin spellcaster suddenly struck out with a palm, a pale blue light appearing in its palm. As Soren charged towards him, he was instantly engulfed in a wave of cold, frost covering everything from his curved blade to his arm and even reaching his brow, a thin layer of frost causing a chilling sensation to seep into his body, stiffening his movements.
——Shadow Assassination!
Soren gritted his teeth and braved the first ring spell “Frost Palm,” charging directly in front of the goblin spellcaster, swinging his curved blade down instantly. An invisible shadow energy converged, and the goblin spellcaster’s head was immediately severed.
The thin layer of frost on him shattered and quickly melted away.
These frost formations created by magical energy wouldn’t last long; they often dissipated after a while.
Spellcasters were always this dangerous!
Fortunately, the goblin spellcaster was already dead. Soren didn’t bother to look back, kicking off and pouncing towards a distant goblin archer.
Once the leader died,
goblins were likely to collapse in a short time; if they felt they couldn’t defeat the enemy, they would start to flee. Soren had invested so much effort and didn’t wish for the enemy to escape; he had to take out as many as possible before their morale collapsed. Because once the goblins started to flee, in this complex forest environment, it would be nearly impossible for Soren to catch them, resulting in hundreds of points of lost killing experience.
This was also the reason goblins in the wilderness could never be entirely wiped out; once they couldn’t beat the enemy, they ran faster than hyenas!
Either surround them or use ranged attacks; otherwise, you’d have to chase them one by one. The key was they even understood how to split up and run.
The death of their leader caused a moment of panic among the goblins.
Some timid ones planned to escape, while others swayed, as there was only one enemy who seemed injured.
Many goblin warriors surrounded him.
In their eyes, their numbers far exceeded those of the enemy; at least, until their casualties exceeded half, they wouldn’t easily run away.
The battle had lasted several minutes.
Soren had exhausted a considerable amount of stamina with continuous bursts, and his movements were slower than at the beginning. Although he dodged most attacks, he was still wounded, though not mortally so. Getting injured in the wild was hard to avoid, especially when facing numerous enemies; his leather armor blocked some arrows, but most of his wounds were just cuts, and he also bore bruises from stones thrown at him. Arrows hardly hit Soren; instead, the stones struck him many times, and he didn’t need to worry about hitting his own kind; the goblins were throwing them everywhere.
As they hit Soren, they struck nearby goblins as well, causing them to yell!
The truly significant damage was from the first ring spells “Burning Hands” and “Frost Palm,” with the former inflicting 8 points of burn damage and the latter causing 6 points of cold damage. Had his profession level not increased to level 5, these two hits could have drastically lowered his combat effectiveness.
However, with the worsening injuries and exhaustion, Soren was feeling slightly overwhelmed!
He was not a warrior.
If a level 5 warrior were here, clad in chain mail, they could easily butcher through the enemies.
If equipped with a shield, the battle would be even simpler.
The only worry would be whether their stamina kept up; if they moved too slowly, they would be “kited” by the goblins and unable to explosively surge toward the goblin spellcaster.
Armor severely affected movement speed and reaction speed!
“Level up Rogue Profession!”
Facing the remaining twenty-some goblins, Soren made a decisive choice to upgrade.
A line of data appeared before his eyes:
“Rogue Profession elevated to level 6.”
“Gained (24 * 0.5) skill points, health increased by (11 * 0.5).”
“Gained 1 point of free attributes.”
“Gained 1 specialty point, additionally acquired 1 weapon point.”
………………
There was no time to allocate other attributes; Soren directly added the 1 point of free attribute to constitution, instantly raising his constitution from 19 points to 20 points of extraordinary constitution.
A surge of vitality erupted from within Soren!
His body, which had been somewhat fatigued, instantly recovered, and the extraordinary constitution of 20 points even made his wounds feel slightly itchy; even the stones thrown by the goblins were no longer painful.
Extraordinary Domain!
The toughness brought by 20 points of constitution was instantly different, and his stamina was restored to peak condition.
Soren, who originally slowed down considerably, now burst forth with explosive power, his curved blade slicing through in a flash, cleaving a goblin in half, then taking a deep breath to leap and dive, spinning and slashing upon landing, instantly killing two goblin archers. Even the hardwood short bows were broken when deflecting his attack.
——“Whirling Dance!”
Although he hadn’t mastered the combat specialty, Soren relied on his abundant stamina and extraordinary agility to execute the moves of a Wandering Swordsman, spinning 360 degrees in place, his curved blade carving an arc that slashed three goblins from shoulder to waist, and then in a moment of drawing back the blade, stabbed down to pin one attempting to roll and sneak attack into the ground.
The morale of the goblins finally collapsed.
Ordinary goblins began to drop their weapons and flee; even the goblin warriors appeared hesitant and frightened, as the enemy seemed suddenly much stronger.
Soren didn’t linger at all, where his curved blade passed, remnants of limbs and arms followed!
As the group of goblins dove into the woods, he swiftly slew the remaining warriors and began to clean up the other goblins.
Unfortunately.
He was only one person, and still around ten goblins got away.
They scampered into the grass and bushes, quickly disappearing from sight, making it very troublesome to pursue them!
Clang.
Soren sheathed his blade, exhaling a deep breath, then began to bandage his wounds.
The arrow wound was somewhat better since the leather armor had protected him, but the spots on his legs where the goblins had scratched required some basic bandaging.
A line of data appeared before his eyes:
“Battle Ended!”
“After a difficult battle, your skills have improved.”
“Dodge +1, Evade +2, Parry +1, Listen +1.”
………………
