Chapter 22 | My Tavern-Keeper Boss Is Secretly an Ascended Immortal

After the six-member party redistributed their resources and arranged their tactics, the entire corridor began to vibrate violently.

Lu Mao saw that hill-like figure once again. Knowing his own strength was limited, he retreated deep into the corridor to avoid getting in their way.

Although Rayne and the others had been forewarned, their faces still paled when they actually saw the massive creature that was nearly as tall as the corridor.

Balen was the first to speak. He connected the last section of the fuse and looked up at the silhouette squeezing out of the darkness at the end of the corridor, his bushy beard twitching.

“Dammit.”

The dwarf wedged the tripwire of the explosives into a crack between the stone bricks, picked up his spare buckler, and spat on the ground. “Even if I jumped, I wouldn't be able to hit its knees.”

Just as Balen finished speaking, the tremors deep in the corridor suddenly intensified. The Goblin Hero, Zhalge, whose massive body was nearly flush with the corridor walls, squeezed completely out of the darkness, scraping off large chunks of loose rock from the stone walls on both sides.

The pale blue flames in its eye sockets steadily illuminated the path ahead, casting light on the six tiny figures.

It seemed puzzled as to why these humans hadn't retreated in fear upon seeing it.

“Elliot—do it!”

Rayne roared.

Elliot pulled a scroll marked with a Fifth-Circle rune from his sleeve. Pressing his thumb against the wax seal, he began chanting the activation incantation the moment he broke it.

The wax seal shattered, and a gust of grayish-white frost erupted from the scroll, condensing into a skeletal hand larger than a carriage in front of him. With its five fingers splayed, the skeletal hand, carrying the chilling aura of the necromantic school, clawed directly toward the Goblin Hero.

Zhalge's attention was drawn to this suddenly appearing skeletal hand.

With a low growl, it swung its stone fist and smashed the skeletal hand, which shattered instantly. However, the shattered bone fragments did not dissipate; instead, like living things, they crawled up its arm, wrapping around its wrist and elbow joint.

Zhalge shook its arm twice but couldn't shake them off, so it instinctively took a giant step forward to break free from the entanglement.

With this very step, its right foot tripped the wire Balen had set up.

Boom!

The dynamite buried at the narrowest part of the corridor exploded beneath its foot. Fire erupted from the cracks in the stone bricks, collapsing the entire ground under its feet into a deep pit.

Zhalge's right foot and lower leg plunged into the pit. Its massive body lost its balance and tilted forward, and its left foot instinctively stepped forward to find a foothold—

Another crisp snap of a breaking tripwire rang out as the second explosive detonated the instant its left foot planted firmly.

Both of its legs were now trapped in the blasted pits, and dark green blood welled up from the cracks in the rubble.

It pressed its hands against the ground, trying to push itself up, but with its legs wedged in the pits, it couldn't move at all for the moment.

“Misha!”

Lu Mao shouted.

Misha raised her staff, aiming the tip at Zhalge's giant face as it looked down at its legs. A blinding white light condensed at the tip of her staff for less than half a second before exploding.

The intense light erupted less than five paces from Zhalge's eyes. Seared by the unbearable pain, it threw its head back, closed its eyes, and let out a muffled roar of agony from its throat.

It instinctively used one hand to cover its eyes while flailing the other hand forward wildly, but grabbed nothing—it had been temporarily blinded the moment the flash spell exploded.

“Gerak!”

Balen unclipped the hand axe and his last remaining stick of dynamite from his waist, tossing them to the side, while already bracing his buckler. Dropping into a horse stance, he angled the shield above his knees, turning himself into a slanted springboard.

The beastkin caught the flying hand axe and dynamite, testing the feel of his right hand. After redistributing their items, Misha had specifically used her newly recovered mana to cast a healing spell on him.

The wound on his right leg, where a chunk of flesh had been torn away, had already grown back complete muscle and skin.

Although a faint scar remained, his joints could now exert force normally.

Gripping the axe handle tightly with his right hand, he flexed his fingers to confirm his grip strength was fully restored. Then, he took five steps back, took a deep breath, and dashed toward Balen's shield.

The moment his right foot stepped onto the shield, Balen pushed upward with all his might. The shield and the dwarf's legs exerted force simultaneously, launching Gerak into the air.

Gerak soared like a cannonball, flipping over Zhalge's wildly flailing arms in mid-air and landing precisely on its face, which was still smoking from the flash spell.

Gripping the rough, calloused skin around Zhalge's eye socket with his left hand to steady himself, Gerak raised the hand axe with his right and chopped down with all his might, aiming straight for its tightly closed left eye.

With a single strike, the eyeball ruptured, splattering dark green fluid all over his face.

Zhalge opened its mouth and let out a deafening shriek of agony—

At that exact moment, as Gerak pulled his axe free, his left hand snatched the stick of dynamite from his waist. He bit off the moisture-proof wax seal at the end of the fuse and shoved the dynamite deep into Zhalge's throat before its mouth could close.

Using the momentum to leap backward, he did a mid-air flip and roared toward Elliot:

“Ignite!”

Elliot had already raised his right hand. The moment the words left Gerak's mouth, a tiny bead of orange-red fire condensing at his fingertips shot forward.

The fire bead traced an extremely thin arc, passing precisely through Zhalge's wide-open mouth to ignite the stick of dynamite wedged deep in its throat.

With a loud boom, fire erupted from inside Zhalge's throat. Its scream of agony was blasted into a muffled, gurgling sound, its entire jaw scorched black and cracked open, and dark green blood mixed with black smoke poured from the corners of its mouth.

Its massive body convulsed violently and began to sway.

Meanwhile, Rayne was already in position.

The moment Gerak jumped, Rayne had squeezed through the narrow gap between Zhalge and the stone wall, circling behind it.

Holding his longsword horizontally before him, the blade was fully charged with golden light—Dawnbreak!

Leaping from a protruding stone ledge, he gripped his sword with both hands and traced an extremely fine golden arc in mid-air.

The blade slashed into the back of Zhalge's neck, and the golden light of Dawnbreak surged down its spine, sandwiching the creature in a pincer attack with the fire exploding in its throat.

Blood erupted from the gash on its nape, spraying a dark green mist across the ceiling of the corridor. The immense impact of the slash surged through the blade into its spine, causing Zhalge's massive body to pitch forward and crash heavily to the ground.

After the strike, Rayne drove his sword into the ground and dropped to one knee, barely keeping himself from collapsing.

The giant face—its jaw blown to pieces and its eyes slashed blind—slammed down heavily less than two paces from Elliot's feet.

The stone floor cracked with a web of fissures. A flying pebble bounced off the hem of Elliot's robe twice before rolling into a corner.

Elliot looked down at the hideous face still oozing blood. After a moment of silence, he pulled a Sixth-Circle scroll from his sleeve, breaking the wax seal as he spoke in a flat tone: