Chapter 15: Forty Hobgoblin’s
The Iron Hearth War Room had the energy of a place where people had recently stopped crying and were now trying to look like they hadn’t been. Teenagers who’d logged in for a casual Tuesday were sitting with their new ears and tails and the dawning understanding that nobody was coming to fix this, and the sound of it was a low, collective misery that filled the hall like background music nobody had asked for.
Liam was doing maths.
"Basalt searing needs a Level 3 Hearth," he said, to Elizabeth, to the room, to nobody in particular. "Without it, the Golem Heart-Shard is just an expensive paperweight. No buff means we melt when the volcanic zones open" he was checking his inventory against the guildhall’s listed equipment, cross-referencing numbers with the patience of a man who found this genuinely interesting. "The maths is the only thing in this game that isn’t lying to us."
"You say that like it’s comforting," Elizabeth said, her tail doing the low, steady lash that meant she was paying attention even when she looked like she wasn’t.
The War Room doors opened, and the elite of Iron Hearth filed in, a hundred players in formation, and out of all of them, Liam was one of maybe three men, a silver-haired tower in a sea of armoured women who had collectively decided to be professional about the situation and were mostly succeeding.
Mostly.
A Cheetah-kin near the left flank, long-legged and amber-eyed, clocked Liam from across the room, and her nose did something involuntary. She covered it with a sneer and looked at Elizabeth instead. "Warrior class," she said, making it sound like an accusation. "Bold choice for someone who looks like she picked her outfit before her build. Most girls like you go support so they don’t have to see the blood."
Her name tag read Noir, and her tail had curled very tightly around her own thigh, which was an interesting thing for it to be doing.
Elizabeth’s hand found Liam’s arm, fingers closing around his bicep without her appearing to decide to do it. "I picked Warrior because I’m not afraid of the mess," she said, her voice level. "And Liam doesn’t lift for me we lift together."
Liam looked down at her hand on his arm, looked at Noir, and filed both pieces of information under things that weren’t the maths problem he was working on.
"Enough," Berry said from the front of the room, and the hall went quiet the way rooms go quiet when the person talking is large enough to make quiet feel like the smart option. Her gilded chestplate was doing its best. Her tail flicked once. "Goblin Ridge instance is open and anyone who wants to stay here and eat paste can stay here and eat paste. Everyone else, move out."
[Raid Instance: Goblin Ridge (Level 10-15)]
[Current Party: 100 Players]
The hall dissolved into a jagged, sun-scorched ravine that smelled like rot and sulphur and several hundred goblins who had not recently considered personal hygiene. The bottleneck was famous for being a meat grinder, a shaman at the back channelling the ravine’s volcanic heat into drain spells while the goblin hordes handled attrition. Most guilds lost thirty per cent of their roster here, just getting to the boss room.
Liam stepped ten paces ahead of the formation before the shield wall had even formed.
"What is he doing?" a mage at the back said, in the voice of someone watching a car decide to drive off a bridge.
"Watch," Elizabeth said.
Twelve goblins came over the rocks first, daggers coated in something that had probably been a health hazard before the death game made everything a health hazard. They saw a lone man in a singlet with silver hair and made the last bad decision of their short goblin lives and to them, he was an easy meal. The first goblin lunged. Liam shifted, his sword moving like a natural extension of his arm. Liam shifted his weight, brought his shoulder through the lead goblin’s chest with the full momentum of someone who had just decided to start, and the sound it made was not a sound goblins were supposed to make.
[Skill Activated: Bull Rush]
[Kill Count: 3]
His blade came through in a flat arc before the body had finished falling, clean through the two behind it, and the ridge went quiet for exactly one second before the next wave registered what had just happened and began reconsidering its life choices, which it did not have time to finish reconsidering.
[Kill Count: 30]
[EXP Gained: 12,000]
Noir had stopped casting buffs and she was supposed to be casting buffs. Her Cheetah instincts had apparently decided that watching Liam work was a higher priority than the job she was there to do, and her tail was doing something complicated against the rock wall behind her.
Level 12 elites in scrap metal armour. "Shields up! Hold the line!" Johan the male rabbit-kin shouted, he was third in command .
Forty Hobgoblin Vanguards were the next big problem on the menu. These were Level 12 elites decked out in scrap metal armor that looked like it had been scavenged from a very angry junkyard.
The thing is, Liam wasn’t actually in the formation. He was just hanging out about ten paces in front of everyone, casually dragging the tip of his blade through the dirt like he was bored and sketching a stick figure. He just watched the wall of scrap metal sprint toward him with the kind of lazy, focused calm you usually only see in people calculating exactly how much they can eat at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
[Legendary Skill: Absorption — 900/1000]
The lead Elite’s spiked mace came in fast. Liam pivoted, let the wind of it ruffle his hair, released his sword with one hand and drove his Basalt Gauntlet directly into the Hobgoblin’s chest.
[Absorption Activated]
[10% Strength Siphoned from Target]
Then he became a problem. He hit the elite formation with the siphoned momentum behind him, drove through the cluster, twisted on his heel, and spun.
[Skill Activated: Spin to Win]
The blade became a horizontal disc at knee height, a blur that went through the front line of forty Hobgoblin Vanguards with the clean efficiency of a man who had decided that individual targets were a waste of everyone’s time. Limbs. Scrap metal. Green mist. The ridge went quiet again.
[Kill Count: 251]
[Total Kills: 610]
[Level Up: 14 to 15]
[System: Stat Cap Increase Unlocked]
Liam slowed out of the spin, steam coming off his shoulders. He wiped a drop of green blood off his cheek and looked back at the Iron Hearth formation, which was standing in complete silence with a hundred pairs of eyes on him. Berry’s tail was doing something it hadn’t been doing before, Noir had forgotten she was supposed to look unimpressed.
"Ridge is clear for the next hundred metres," Liam said "move up. I’m getting hungry, and we still have a Shaman to butcher."
Elizabeth fell into step beside him as the formation started moving, her face flushed from the heat and possibly from other things that were not the heat.
"You know Noir has been staring at your back for the last ten minutes," she said, voice low.
Liam didn’t look. "If she spends more time staring and less time buffing, I’m looting her boots next."
[BobaLady]: HE SAID WHAT
[Draco]: LOOTING HER BOOTS???
[SimpKing99]: THE CHEF IS BUILT DIFFERENT, AND I MEAN THAT IN EVERY WAY.
[FootLover]: CAN I HAVE THEM?
Ahead of them, past the cleared ridge and the scattered remains of sixty Hobgoblin Vanguards, something very large and very angry was beginning to move in the dark at the back of the ravine.
Liam just wiped a drop of green blood off his cheek. "The Ridge is clear for the next hundred meters. Move up, I’m getting hungry, and we still have a Shaman to butcher."
Liam felt it before he saw it.
Oh, he thought, pupils, sharpening. That’s interesting.
[Tool Tip]:
[Bull Rush]: Used to liquefy a lead goblin’s ribcage. Speed and mass combined for 100% lethality.
[Spin to Win]: A 360-degree horizontal cleave. Cleared the front line and converted 40 Hobgoblins into 400 global kills.
[Clinical Detachment]: Passive. Liam ignores the "Translucent Dress" debuff on party members to focus entirely on loot efficiency.