53.

The Sorcerer was wearing a cloak of human skins stitched together with black thread. Its hobgoblin protectors were all armored head to foot in the burnished bronze armor with spears and short swords. Not a single thing moved as the two sides stared at each other.

That weight that had been pushing down on Santi dissipated in the face of his rage as he stared at that human cloak. The goblin sorcerer was a stand-in for everything wrong with the world. It stood there wearing the skins of his people, bathing in the power of his world.

Santi lunged, morph blade transforming into a ten foot long rigid thread. Metal pierced eye and the hob screamed, breaking the silence of the room as the rest of the guard charged him. The morph blade lacked the mass needed to transform itself into something wider at that distance Santi was using it currently. So he simply imagined the conical point flattening and twisted his wrist.

A kill notification dinged as the hob died as his head was cut in half. The closest hob had already halved the distance, sprinting at full speed to try to kill him as fast as possible. Santi recalled the morph, the thread condensing down quickly. One of the hobs was faster than the others, using its spear to knock the thin weapon and try to pin it to a wall.

He willed the weapon to loop around the haft of the spear and form an edge. The hob tried to lock it down, pulling with all its strength as Santi tugged with his own strength. The thick wood was sheared in half, the hob left holding a truncated spear. The thread melded into itself and raced toward his hand as Santi was forced to twist to avoid the leading hob's thrust.

The narrow hallway prevented the hobs from overwhelming him while at the same time made it more difficult to dodge the spear thrusts as the elite guards pushed themselves to their absolute limits to try to land a blow.

The morph blade finished condensing, becoming a short sword. The hob thrust again, aiming at his face as Santi suddenly charged as he was armed again. Using the flat of the blade to push the spear tip away from his face, he had to marvel for a moment.

These were nearly peak Initiate level hobgoblins in full armor. And they were like children before him. They were slow and clumsy, each stab and thrust coming as if they were under water. The recent levels and gains just put him so much further ahead than them. They could likely nearly match him in some of his physical stats, but mentally, he was far beyond them.

His perception allowed him to see every miniscule shift of weight, the positioning of their hands, the dilation in their eyes. He could smell the fear on them as well as the blood and decay that dominated the space.

The higher intelligence allowed him to process it all. To understand all the information that was being absorbed every second. He knew how to move, how to take advantage of the slight off center thrust the hob had just done. How it was off balance and wouldn’t recover in time.

That was the major advantage that sentients had over monsters in the lower levels. Most of them only had a handful of stats that they had when they were spawned. They could grow and evolve and become a true threat, but for now they were little more than sacks of experience for Santi to collect.

He closed the distance in an eyeblink and cut the goblin horizontally across its neck. The sharp morph blade relieved the hob of its head. Santi pressed the torso, wedging his free hand under the breastplate and keeping it from falling. A spear dug into the bronze and scraped to the side as Santi used the dead goblin as a shield.

He slashed through the helm of the next closest hobgoblin, kicking it still screaming into the pile behind it. Even through the breastplate Santi heard bones breaking as the hob was propelled into its fellows. It tangled two more and all three fell into a pile of limbs and spears.

Santi hurled the corpse behind the tangled pile and hit another hob and sent that one crashing to the ground. The last two hobs were to far away to do anything as the morph blade transformed into a spear and Santi ended the puddle of three hobgoblins. The one he had slashed across the face was already nearly dead and offered no resistance.

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The other two tried to fight, losing fingers and taking long defensive wounds on their arms as they tried to stop the inevitable death. The rage in him was swelling and he could taste blood in his mouth as he yearned to keep spilling blood. He wanted to see those that had killed his friends to die, to beg, to scream, to plead for mercy. The only mercy he would give them was the comfort of the grave.

The next hobgoblin had managed to crawl out from the headless corpse and stumble out of the hallway to meet with the last two survivors and form an arc of spear points. Santi didn’t care. He flew at them as he used Gust to push the one on the left back a few steps.

The spell wasn’t strong enough to throw people, at least not yet, but it could stagger the slight monster. It was all the gap that Santi needed. He duck and spun under the center hobgoblins spear and lashed out as his spear turned into a glaive. Rising up the glaive entered at the hobgoblins hip and sliced through bronze like butter and sent it spilling apart in two pieces.

A spike formed at the back of the glaive’s shaft and Santi thrust, the thick spike punching through armor and killing the hob that had been pushed back by his Gust. The last hobgoblin didn’t hesitate, throwing itself at Santi in a flurry of blows that exceeded everything else that Santi had faced so far.

It wasn’t enough.

The last hob hit the ground without an arm and a weeping throat while Santi was locking eyes with the sorcerer and the glowing pod behind him. It had increased the speed of its pulses. They came every six seconds now.

Then five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

The pod was flashing so fast that it was almost a steady light. The black webbing that covered every inch of the building writhed as power surged around Santi. The dead hobs were covered, the sticky black webbing grabbing on and pulling all of the pieces away too fast for Santi to do anything. Even the blood was taken, leaving nothing of the brief battle behind but the scuffed dirt on the concrete.

The sorcerer moved forward, red vines snaking out of its cloak to fall in long tendrils around it as it marched forward with a wild smile. There was something off about the goblin, its crazed smile and the blood staining its teeth. A whisper brushed his mind, warning Santi that something was wrong. The rage and battlelust drowned it out.

Santi cut the distance immediately, sprinting with all of his strength at the sorcerer, ready to see its blood paint the ground. It never slowed as the two magic users got ready to crash into each other. Only at the last moment did Santi manage to prevent himself from running into the sorcerer, turning at the last second to swipe at the goblin with a dagger.

The cloak of skin parted again and yellow pus exploded out in a water wave and Santi spluttered as it spattered on him. Santi spluttered and repressed his gag instincts as he made distance from the sorcerer who was cackling as the red tendril snapped out and whipped across Santi’s exposed forearm.

Pain blossomed and he could feel a momentary weakness as the muscle spasmed. His arm felt like he had just done a hard workout and had noodle arms as he left the gym. Logic was attempting to ram itself into his mind, screaming warnings while jumping up and down and using a bonfire. The pain and rage blinded him though.

The dagger switched into a long spear to give him range and Santi proceeded to jab repeatedly at the little goblin. It danced back, moving with speed it hadn’t possessed moments earlier while Santi was still trying to recover from his own weakness.

“You stupid fuck, will you pay attention for once in your useless life!” Santi screamed out randomly. It was like taking a breath of fresh air after being underwater. The sorcerer paused and then shrugged and smiled, as if to say he had been caught.

“You tricky fuck,” Santi snarled as he backpedaled away from the sorcerer. This nest was built on sacrifice and taking power from others. His slaughter of the elite guards and their subsequent consumption by the nest had probably strengthened the sorcerer. Those tendrils were definitely some type of life drain or steal and Santi had wallowed right into it.

“Wish I had a bow right now. You wouldn’t be smiling with a few arrows in your face, would you?” Santi asked, giving his own bloody grin at the goblin.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye and at the pulsing pod. There was something going on with that pod that he wasn’t comfortable with. Where had the mass of the dead hobs gone? Of all the dead that had been taken for the last few days? Some surely had been repurposed, but that pod was giving him the same feeling that the cauldron had right before the Acolyte hag had stepped out.

“You’re not the protector of this nest, whatever is in the pod is. You’re just trying to stop me from reaching it. Okay, well that’s good to know. Cut you up into little pieces and then burn this bitch down. Easy. Okay, let’s get to it.”