Leya’s sword carved through the air in a vicious horizontal slash that caught the goblin across its extended arm.
The blade didn’t just cut, it froze. Ice crystals spread from the wound like a plague of cold, racing up the creature’s arm and across its torso.
The goblin’s movents beca sluggish and jerky as the supernatural frost invaded its nervous system, turning its own body into a prison of ice.
But Leya’s mont of vengeance left her vulnerable. The second knife-wielder, demonstrating cunning that belied its primitive appearance, rushed forward and slamd into her back with its full body weight.
The impact sent her stumbling directly into the path of the shield-bearer’s massive shield.
The reinforced wooden shield caught her square in the chest with bone-crushing force, lifting her completely off her feet and hurling her backward through the air.
Leya’s body struck a tree with a sickening thud that sent bark fragnts raining down around her.
She crumpled to the ground in a heap, her weapons flying from her hands to land several ters away. Stars exploded across her vision as she struggled to draw breath into her traumatized lungs.
anwhile, Mitch found himself in his own desperate struggle.
The two shield-bearing goblins had trapped him in a deadly pincer, their massive forms creating walls of wood and steel that seed to close in from both sides.
A knife-wielding goblin had attempted to join the fray, but Mitch’s quick thinking and quicker reflexes had eliminated that threat with a perfectly placed mana ball that reduced the creature to bloody remains.
The remaining shield-bearers pressed their advantage, forcing Mitch into a purely defensive stance.
Their synchronized attacks ca in waves, overhead strikes, shield bashes, and horizontal sweeps that left no room for counterattack.
Mitch’s sword work beca a desperate dance of parries and blocks, each successful defense barely saving him from certain death. Sweat poured down his face as his arms began to ache from the constant impacts.
The goblins’ ugly faces split into confident grins, their yellowed teeth gleaming with anticipation.
They could sense victory within their grasp, could almost taste the human blood they would soon spill. Their attacks beca more aggressive, more reckless, as bloodlust began to override tactical thinking.
That overconfidence would prove to be their downfall.
Mitch’s sword began to change. Space mana wrapped around the blade like liquid darkness given form.
The weapon grew heavier in his hands, but not with physical weight, it carried the weight of finality, of endings made manifest. The very air around the sword seed to bend and warp, as if reality itself was being cut by the blade’s re presence.
With a sound like thunder mixed with the whisper of death itself, Mitch struck.
The shadow-wreathed blade moved with impossible speed and power. It carved through the first goblin’s shield as if the reinforced wood and tal were nothing more than an illusion.
The sword continued its arc, slicing through the creature’s crude weapon, then through armor, flesh, and bone with equal ease.
The goblin was bisected so cleanly that for a mont it remained standing, its brain unable to process what had happened. Then the two halves of its body fell away from each other, internal organs spilling onto the forest floor in steaming piles.
The surviving shield-bearer’s eyes went wide with terror and rage. It had watched its companion cut in half like a practice dummy, and primitive fury overrode its survival instincts.
With a deafening roar, the goblin lowered its head and charged like a maddened bull, intending to crush Mitch beneath its bulk and drive him into the ground.
But Mitch was ready. His free hand moved in a complex pattern, and blue light coalesced between his fingers.
A shimring barrier of pure magical energy materialized just as the goblin’s charge reached its peak.
The creature struck the mana shield with trendous force, but instead of crushing his target, he found himself rebounding like a stone skipping off water.
Mitch had deliberately chosen to cast his shield spell rather than rely on his magical bracer, despite the bracer’s superior protection and lack of mana cost.
He was conserving his most powerful tools for truly life-threatening situations, and while this battle was dangerous, it wasn’t yet desperate enough to warrant using his best equipnt.
The goblin’s montum was completely disrupted, leaving it stumbling and off-balance, exactly what Mitch had been waiting for.
His shadow-wreathed sword thrust forward, the point finding the gap between the creature’s helt and neck guard.
The blade punched through skull and brain matter as easily as piercing soft earth, and currents of wind magic spiraled out from the weapon’s edge, turning the goblin’s head into an explosion of gore and bone fragnts.
As the last shield-bearer collapsed, Mitch spun to assess Leya’s situation. His heart clenched with fear as he saw her prone form beside a tree, three goblins closing in for the kill. Her sword and shield lay tantalizingly close but still too far for her to reach in ti.
Without hesitation, Mitch channeled the last of his magical reserves into two perfectly aid mana balls.
The spheres of crackling energy streaked across the battlefield like blue cots, each finding its mark among the knife-wielding goblins.
The explosions painted the nearby trees with goblin remains, leaving only the massive shield-bearer bearing down on the helpless Leya.
Mitch’s legs pumped with desperate strength as he sprinted across the terrain. But even as he ran, he could see he wouldn’t make it in ti. The goblin’s massive sword was already rising, its crude edge gleaming with deadly intent.
Leya’s eyes t the goblin’s cruel gaze as death approached.
She could see her reflection in the creature’s yellowed eyes, could sll its fetid breath as it prepared to deliver the killing blow.
Her weapons lay just out of reach, and her battered body refused to respond quickly enough to save her life.
The goblin’s sword descended like a falling star, aid directly at her heart.
But Leya refused to die. She hurled one final spell, a concentrated sphere of pure fla that materialized directly between Leya and her attacker.
The fireball detonated with trendous force, a miniature sun blooming to life in the forest clearing.
The explosion hurled both combatants in opposite directions. Leya’s clothes and exposed skin bore angry red burn marks from the magical fire, and the scent of singed hair filled her nostrils.
But she was alive, and that was all that mattered. The goblin had suffered similar burns, its crude armor blackened and smoking, but it too had survived the blast.
However, the explosion had bought Mitch the precious seconds he needed.
As the disoriented goblin struggled to regain its footing, Mitch’s sword, still emanating wind currents from its edge, pierced through the creature’s eye socket and deep into its brain.
The goblin’s body convulsed once, then went completely still as life fled from its primitive form.
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