Chapter 19 | My Tavern-Keeper Boss Is Secretly an Ascended Immortal

Rayne pulled his longsword from the ground and glanced back toward Gerak, withdrawing his gaze after just a single look.

He didn't call out Gerak's name, nor did he rush over to check his pulse. He only gripped his sword so hard that the veins on the back of his hand bulged and the hilt creaked. Turning back to face the Goblin Hero, he resumed his starting stance.

Balen pushed himself up from the stone wall, his thick beard covered in his own blood and stone dust. He froze for a moment when he saw the pool of blood spreading beneath the back of Gerak's head. His hands, still trembling from the shockwave, clenched into tight fists, his nails digging into his palms.

He didn't cry; dwarves didn't cry. He merely bent down, picked up a piece of rubble from the ground, and gripped it tightly in his hand.

“You green-skinned bastard,”

his voice trembled, but not from fear. “Give him back.”

Two meters away, Elliot remained on his knees. The red lines around him continued to burn, and the sixth circle of runes was already complete.

He didn't look back.

He couldn't look back.

But his shoulders trembled, and his eyes were bloodshot. At some point, the lowest layer of the three overlapping voices had acquired a raspy, human quality that did not belong to the arcane.

“With this mortal flesh as a sacrifice, with this soul as an oath...”

Before his words could fade, the Goblin Hero's second punch arrived.

This strike was no longer a downward smash. Charging from the hip, the stone gauntlet scraped against the side of the passage, grinding an entire row of stone bricks into dust, before swinging horizontally like a battering ram.

It swept past Rayne and Balen, aiming straight for Elliot, who knelt a few meters away, surrounded by the burning seventh circle of red lines.

The monster's pupils dilated for a fraction of a second, the flames in its eye sockets flickering. Its wariness had finally transformed into pure, unadulterated killing intent.

Rayne lunged from the side. He had no time to adopt a proper parrying stance; he threw his entire body, sword first, against the Goblin Hero's wrist joint, slashing his blade into the narrow gap in the stone armor where the joint was weakest.

The blade bit two inches into the flesh before being pinched tight by the dense muscle, but the angle of the blow forced the stone fist to deflect by two inches. Just two inches.

The wind of the punch roared past Elliot's left shoulder and slammed into the stone wall a step behind him. Rubble exploded outward, and several fist-sized stone fragments pelted his back. His body swayed, nearly collapsing forward, but he held his ground.

“...With this broken body as an anchor... with these mortal bones as fuel—”

Elliot's chanting grew slower and slower, requiring a deep breath for every single word. Plumes of white vapor rose from his body as his skin withered and aged, and his black hair began to turn white, strand by strand.

At the same time, the seventh red circle rapidly drew a complex circuit of runes.

The Goblin Hero pulled back its right fist and backhanded with its left palm, swatting Rayne like a fly.

The swordsman, along with the longsword still wedged in the joint, was sent flying, crashing hard into a niche in the passage wall.

The skeletal remains inside the niche shattered upon impact. Splinters of bone and stone fragments rained down, burying half of his body. A massive tear ran across his chainmail from his chest to his ribs, and blood seeped from the wound, trickling silently along the cracks in the stone floor.

He struggled to move, attempting to push himself up from the pile of bone fragments, but his arm collapsed halfway and fell limp, moving no more.

Without even glancing at him, the Goblin Hero retracted its left palm and raised its right fist once more, aiming for Elliot yet again.

Balen charged in from the side. He had no shield—his buckler had been blown away long ago, and its remnants were shattered.

He didn't charge like a heavily armored warrior, but rather like a cornered, stout bear. Keeping his low, stocky frame close to the ground, he scrambled over the rubble, throwing himself between Elliot and the Goblin Hero, and violently tore open the clasps of his breastplate.

The breastplate popped open, revealing three crude sticks of dynamite strapped tightly to his chest. They were secured in a cross pattern with hemp rope over his hairy torso, their fuses twisted together from three strands of black powder cord, already half-dampened by sweat.

Dwarves never checked their weapons before a battle—because a dwarf never carried just one weapon, and the last one was always strapped to their own body.

“Come on! Aren't you afraid?!”

Balen tore off the moisture-proof wax seal at the end of the fuse and pulled a flint from his waist. He grinned, revealing a row of blood-stained teeth through his thick beard. “You're scared of that tall, skinny kid, but are you scared of this?!”

The Goblin Hero's third punch was already mid-swing.

Its gaze lingered on the dynamite strapped to Balen's chest for a split second. While it feared the aura of death, it felt an equally instinctive wariness toward the pungent, chemical odor of sulfur and saltpeter radiating from the small dwarf.

The stone fist paused in midair, hesitating to strike.

Balen gave it no time to hesitate. He struck the flint against the fuse, sending sparks onto the three black powder cords. The fuses hissed to life, releasing a plume of acrid white smoke.

Then, he spun around and lunged at the Goblin Hero with all his might.

He wanted to throw himself as close to the green-skinned bastard as possible before the explosives detonated.

“Taste dwarven technology, you bastard!”

The dwarf's roar and the hissing of the burning fuse blended together, echoing through the passage.

Boom.

Balen's body erupted into a brilliant fireball directly in front of the monster. The simultaneous detonation of the three sticks of dynamite vaporized him in an instant. The shockwave, laden with fire and shredded flesh, blasted outward in all directions, warping the air in the passage with intense heat.

Cracks splintered across the Goblin Hero's stone gauntlet, and fragments peeled away to reveal the rough, dark green skin beneath. The force of the blast threw its entire right arm backward, and its massive body stumbled back half a step. It was only half a step, but it was the first time the monster had been pushed back since it appeared.

As the fire crackled and thick smoke billowed through the passage, Balen was gone. Only his footprints in the rubble and the shattered stone that had slipped from his palm remained.

“A descendant of sinners stands before you, begging for your mercy.”

Elliot's voice trembled slightly. As he uttered the final syllable, the seven runic rings around him finally took shape and began to slowly rotate, forming a magic circle.

An ancient, desiccating odor began to spread. Wherever the aura touched, everything withered. The stone walls grew brittle and cracked, and the moss clinging to them curled up and dried out. Even the water droplets on the walls shrank, turning into dry, powdery mineral films.

A piercing shriek echoed from the magic circle. Then, countless pitch-black, gaseous wraiths surged from the array, roaring as they lunged at the Goblin Hero, Zhalge.

Not just from the array, but even more wraiths drifted from the stone walls and from further down the passage, as if answering a call, scrambling to tear into Zhalge's body.

Judging by their shapes, these wraiths included humans, elves, dwarves... all kinds of demi-humans, and even more bizarre, twisted monsters.

Regardless of what they had been in life, they now shared a single purpose: to tear away the life of this green-skinned monster.

“No!”

The Goblin Hero, Zhalge, finally spoke.

The voice was hoarse and grating, like a rusted iron door being forced open. The syllables were garbled, yet they carried unmistakable terror.

It swung its cracked stone gauntlet, striking futilely at the incoming wraiths. But the wraiths had no physical form; its fist passed through them as if they were smoke. Yet, the moment its fist crossed through them, the wraiths' shrieks pierced its eardrums and burrowed into its skull.

It stumbled backward. One step, two steps, three steps.

The wraiths wrapped around its arms, climbed onto its shoulders, and clung to the back of its neck, suppressing the pale blue flames flickering in its eye sockets until they threatened to go out.

Elliot knelt on the ground, a faint, fleeting smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

The seven runic rings around him began to shatter one by one. With each broken ring, his face grew paler.

He coughed, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth and dripping down his chin onto the front of his robe. The arms supporting his weight began to tremble. His staff was long gone, rolled away to some unknown corner. He could only claw at the ground with his fingers, struggling to keep from collapsing.

“...Three lives to force you back half a step. Heh... you bastard.”

His voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible. The grayish-white in his pupils slowly receded, revealing the brown eyes beneath, completely consumed by exhaustion. Then, he slumped forward, his forehead striking the cold stone floor, and went completely still.

Only the echoes of the wraiths' shrieks and the Goblin Hero's raspy screams remained in the passage, along with the faint, flickering glow of phosphorescent fire on the stone walls.

From the shadows deep within, Lu Mao had witnessed the entire tragic scene.

“System, scan that magic circle for me.”

[Scanning...]

[Detected remnants of a dissipated summoning circle. Magic Circle Type: Necromancy - Ancient Wraith Soul Reaver]

[Magic Circle Rank: Seventh-Circle]

[Summoned Entities: Gaseous wraiths. The exact quantity depends on the caster's resentment and the ambient malice of the environment. Duration: Until the wraiths' lingering attachments are exhausted or the caster dies. The caster has lost all vital signs. Estimated remaining duration of the wraiths is 1 minute and 12 seconds.]

[Cost: Magicules of a level 14 or higher necromancer, or the caster's life force and soul essence.]

“You said they were destined for greatness. They're all dead now, so what kind of greatness is left? Becoming skeleton heroes?”

Looking at the corpses strewn across the battlefield, Lu Mao couldn't help but complain.

Seeing people who were just alive die right before his eyes left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He was still just a high school student, after all, and he couldn't bear to witness such tragic deaths.

[Host, let me explain this to you in the most straightforward, direct, and unambiguous way possible.]

[First, the System does not make mistakes. However, variables from other worlds have interfered with the normal progression of this world's timeline. The current timeline has deviated from its original path.]

[Second, there is still a surviving member of this party. The cleric Misha is unconscious, with weak vital signs.]

Hearing that someone was still alive, Lu Mao's gaze snapped toward the pile of rubble.

Misha lay collapsed in the rubble, her white robe torn in several places by sharp stones, the blood on her temple already congealed into a dark red scab. Her chest still rose and fell with incredibly weak breaths. Her staff had rolled to a spot two steps away from her hand, its crystal completely dark.

The Goblin Hero's agonizing screams continued to echo through the passage. The wraiths clung to its body, wrapping tighter and tighter. It flailed its arms, stumbling backward deeper into the passage. Not a single inch of its flesh was left intact; many areas had been chewed away to expose white bone.

Eventually, reaching a breaking point, Zhalge could no longer withstand the relentless biting of the countless wraiths and collapsed heavily to the ground.

Lu Mao slipped out from the crevice in the rocks. Keeping low, he sprinted across the rubble toward Misha. He crouched beside her and checked her breathing—there was a breath, very faint, but she was still alive.

He glanced at the staff lying nearby, then at the wound on her temple, before slipping his arms under her shoulders to drag her out of the rubble.

The girl was incredibly light. Even through her torn white robe, he could feel the prominent outline of her shoulder blades.

Her head rested limply against his shoulder, her flaxen hair brushing against his neck, carrying the scent of blood and a faint, lingering warmth of holy light.

“Hang in there. The old boss has incredible powers, so he should be able to save you.

“Even though I'll have to find a way to load a save and go to another timeline soon, I'll save whoever I can.

“Your captain and the others sacrificed themselves, so you have to live on in this timeline.”

Lu Mao didn't know why he was talking to an unconscious person.

Nor did he know if this even counted as completing his quest.

He hoisted Misha onto his shoulder, adjusted his balance, and took his first step toward the mountain-like corpse.

Two steps, three steps...

Even though he knew there was no longer any threat, the sound of flesh tearing from bone and the bloodcurdling shrieks as he passed that "mountain of flesh" still sent shivers down his spine.

“Where am I... Captain and the others...”

Perhaps because the shrieks of the wraiths were too agonizing, the unconscious Misha groggily woke up.

“Now isn't the time to talk—let me get you to safety first.”

Lu Mao didn't know how to explain things, so he shifted her weight higher on his shoulder and quickened his pace.

Misha's head rested behind his shoulder, the blood scab on her temple rubbing against a tear in his cloak. Her eyes were half-open, her lips twitching as if she wanted to ask something.

But she was far too weak—so weak that she didn't even have the strength to ask.

As they walked, Lu Mao suddenly noticed the shadow beneath his feet expanding.

It was as if something was blocking the light from the glowing moss in the passage.

A wave of heat, mixed with the stench of charred flesh and the lingering aura of the wraiths, pressed down from behind. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end—his Faint Awareness passive screamed a frantic warning in his mind, but it was already too late.

The Goblin Hero had somehow stood back up.

Its arm, chewed to the bone by the wraiths, was slamming down toward him like a collapsing wall.

It was still alive, having survived the biting of the wraiths. The sound of its flesh reconstructing was just as sharp and grating as the previous tearing sounds.

Lu Mao wanted to dodge. But the moment his foot moved half an inch, he realized—he was still carrying Misha. If he dodged this blow, the fist would land directly on her.

He didn't have to make a choice. Misha made it for him.

“Holy Rebound.”

Her voice was extremely soft, almost swallowed by the wind of the descending palm.

A gentle but irresistible force launched Lu Mao sideways.

His feet left the ground, and he flipped in midair before his back crashed against the passage wall. The weight on his shoulder vanished in that instant—Misha had not flown with him.

Using the rebound force to push herself in the opposite direction, she landed on one knee in the rubble. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest; her staff was out of reach, and her magicules were completely depleted.