Soulless Soul

Chapter 34: Slaughter

"Vesper! I’m running out of room!" Sky yelled, his voice strained as his shoulder blades hit the cold, unyielding surface of a massive stone pillar.

The battlefield had shrunk drastically in a matter of seconds. The remaining elite goblins were closing in from multiple angles, their jagged spears lowered and their movements coordinated enough to trap him in a lethal pincer movement. Every available escape route was blocked by a wall of rusted iron, toxic green venom, or impending gunfire.

Hearing his shout, Vesper violently shoved her blade upward with an explosive burst of hidden strength. The desperate, heavy parry deflected the Chieftain’s massive, barbed-wire club high into the air, forcing the behemoth’s arms back and leaving the boss temporarily unbalanced and wide open. She didn’t hesitate to exploit the opening, but she didn’t use it to strike the giant. Instead, she spun beautifully on her heel, her piercing gray eyes locking directly onto Sky’s cornered position through the swirling fog.

"Stand still," she commanded, her voice cutting through the chaotic din of screeching monsters.

"Are you insane? If I stand still, I’m a pincushion!" Sky fired back, his knuckles white as he gripped his sword. The trajectory lines in his vision were crisscrossing directly over his chest, predicting an imminent impalement.

"Stand. Still."

Sky gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached, his deeply hardwired survival instincts screaming at him to break rank, dive to the floor, or run blindly into the brush. But looking across the cavern at her absolute, unyielding conviction, he made a split-second gamble. He forced his heavy boots to stay glued to the moss-covered floor. He couldn’t run, so he braced for the worst, raising his Blood Blade into a tight, high defensive guard to shield his vitals.

Crazy Hope slammed the heavy golden pommel of her sword heavily onto the cobblestones beneath her.

[Active Attribute: HOLY PRAYER]

A massive, intricate circular matrix of glowing golden runes erupted instantly from the ground, expanding outward in a violent wave of light and centering itself directly on Sky’s coordinates.

Sky gasped out loud as a wave of intense, suffocating heat washed over his entire body. It didn’t feel like a soothing, gentle blessing; it felt like being entirely submerged in boiling, consecrated water. The pool of ink-black shadows stretching beneath his feet instantly evaporated, scorched away into nothingness by the sheer purity and density of the radiant light. He felt a sharp, burning agony deep within his chest, an existential wrenching as his soul instinctively recoiled and violently rejected the intrusive holy energy. For a terrifying second, he thought she had targeted him for execution.

But then, the bright blue system alerts began to rapidly override his panic, scrolling across his vision in a frantic blur.

[ARMOR REGENERATING: +1, +2, +3... RECOVERED TO MAX]

[ATTACK SPEED BUFF APPLIED: +30% FOR 5 SECONDS]

[MOVEMENT SPEED BUFF APPLIED: +20% FOR 5 SECONDS]

The agonizing heat subsided just as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind a sensation of pure, unadulterated power. The minor burns and tears on his leather tunic vanished, the fabric reweaving itself seamlessly. His shattered Armor bar snapped back from the brink of failure to a glowing, solid 5/5. More than that, the heavy, sluggish exhaustion that had been dragging down his limbs from the constant dodging was completely replaced by a wild, jittering surge of artificial adrenaline. His heart pounded with a frantic, accelerated rhythm.

The elite goblins that had eagerly rushed into the golden circle to finish him off didn’t fare so well. The holy light didn’t offer them a single drop of restoration—it actively rejected their corrupted nature. The creatures shrieked in a chorus of piercing, grating agonies as their sickly green flesh blistered on contact with the runes. Thick, foul-smelling white smoke rose from their crude iron armor plates. The weight of the divine matrix pressed down on their shoulders, drastically reducing their movement speeds and leaving them stumbling like drunkards in the blinding glare.

"My turn," Sky whispered, a dangerous smile cutting across his face as his eyes flashed with a predatory hunger in the dark.

The three-second countdown of his buffs was already ticking away in his peripheral vision, and he had no intention of wasting a single millisecond. With his movement speed boosted by twenty percent, his first step forward didn’t just break his stance—it launched him like a projectile. The cobblestones beneath his feet blurred into a gray streak.

He didn’t even need to submerge into his soul form to outpace the hobbled elites. Sky swung the Blood Blade in a blistering, horizontal arc. Enhanced by the thirty percent attack speed increase, the weapon was nothing more than a crimson smear in the air. The edge cut through the chest plates of the front two spear-wielders before they could even attempt to lift their weapons to guard.

The system logged the dual kill instantly, feeding the fresh soul energy back into his core. Instead of backing away, Sky utilized the momentum of his accelerated swing to pivot on his heel, driving the point of his blade upward into the jaw of a third elite who was struggling to lift a heavy dagger. The monster dissolved into black pixels before it could even hit the floor.

"Two seconds left," Sky muttered to himself, his senses hyper-attuned to the battlefield.

He could feel the prickling alarm of his [Danger Sense] warning him of a final threat from the outer edge of the matrix. A fourth elite goblin, desperate to escape the agonizing radiance of the holy circle, was scrambling backward while trying to level a rusted blunderbuss at his head. Sky didn’t just walk toward the threat; he leaned into the final lingering burst of his speed buff. He leaped over a discarded wooden spear, closing the distance in a single, gravity-defying bound. As he descended, he gripped the crimson hilt of the Blood Blade with both hands, channeling his stable energy reserves into the strike. The weapon came down in a brutal, vertical cleave that split the firearm in two before slicing cleanly through the creature’s torso.

The fourth elite burst into a cloud of dark smoke, leaving a cluster of glowing blue energy particles drifting through the air. Sky landed softly on his feet, his chest heaving slightly as the artificial adrenaline surge finally faded from his veins, leaving his stats fully topped off and his armor completely intact.

He looked back across the chamber. The pincer movement was entirely dismantled, the flanks were cleared, and only the staggered Goblin Chieftain remained. The giant was just beginning to bring its massive club back down into a combat guard, its glowing red eyes locking onto the two awakened who had completely slaughtered its vanguard.

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