CHAPTER 73: GOD-GAZE BURST

Both of them were locked in a ferocious exchange. On one side, the sparks of light blazed golden and rapid. On the other, they flashed silver and dark.

Both moved with equal speed, dancing across the room, matching each other foot to foot, strike to strike. None of the onlookers dared to interfere.

Erikta wore a maniacal grin. Every time they clashed, he seemed to drink in the disaster and savor it.

Lucien, though, remained cold—his face obscured by the White Crown. But behind it lay a strained expression and cold white light blazing in his eyes.

Unlike Erikta, who was reveling in the battle, Lucien was spent. His stamina was drained, causing his movements to drag.

He owed the success of every attempt to move to his reinforced bones. Because of the kind of bones he had, whenever he paused for a moment and then surged forward, his movement was always blinding.

This gave him an element of surprise that Erikta found impossible to adapt to.

But it wasn’t as if he had all the time to stand around without the goblin king pursuing him with ferocious speed.

They clashed again. Lucien parried his golden daggers and shoved them aside, just as Erikta had once done to him. He gripped the Kage Fang in reverse and brought it down toward the monster’s head.

However, Erikta disengaged and leaped away, letting Lucien’s sword slice through empty air.

Immediately, he rushed back in, dropping impossibly low and slicing his daggers toward Lucien’s legs.

Lucien leaped and slammed his leg on the ground, but the goblin leader rolled away. The ground cracked slightly, but he had no time to care.

He was already lunging toward the side as Erikta flew toward him.

They clashed again. Lucien blocked both daggers with the Darkness Cutter. The Goblin king grinned and pressed down with brutal force, driving Lucien to one knee. He gritted his teeth beneath the mask and clenched tightly, then swung across the monster’s thigh. However, Erikta shifted his leg back, staggered forward as though he was going to fall, and smashed his head against Lucien’s.

However, he let out a guttural cry instantly and staggered back.

He gritted his teeth and touched his forehead. Green blood was already streaming down his head.

He looked at the blood and gnashed his teeth with fury. Meanwhile, Lucien was grinning widely beneath the mask.

"How does it feel? That’s the head of a fatherless human, you cunt!"

He leaped forward in a cyclonic motion, raining multiple strikes on the goblin leader. Erikta raised his daggers, defiantly deflecting each blade with grit. He pushed back and leaped away from Lucien.

Erikta wiped the green blood from his forehead with the back of his hand, his crimson eyes now burning with primal fury. The grin had vanished from his face, replaced by something far more dangerous—cold, calculated rage.

He snarled, his golden daggers gleaming as he spun them in his grip.

"You think your thick skull makes you superior, human filth? Let me show you what real pain feels like."

Without warning, Erikta’s form blurred, moving faster than before. The golden markings across his body began to pulse with an eerie light, and his speed doubled. Lucien barely had time to raise his blades before the goblin king was upon him.

The strikes came in a relentless barrage. Erikta’s daggers moved like liquid gold, each strike precise and vicious. Lucien felt his arms growing numb from the constant impacts, his stamina draining with every desperate parry.

A dagger slipped past his guard, carving a deep gash across his ribs. Dark blood soaked through his clothing as he stumbled backward.

[You have lost 847 Health points]

"First blood goes to me, fatherless whelp!"

Erikta cackled, licking the crimson from his blade.

Lucien gritted his teeth, feeling the warm wetness spreading across his side. But instead of weakness, it sparked something deeper—a cold, methodical fury that sharpened his focus to a razor’s edge.

’Does this cunt have a short memory?’

[You are using Unique Trait: Ignition]

As he activated the Ignition trait, flames wreathed both his blades. The fire cast dancing shadows across the cavern walls as he lunged forward with renewed vigor.

This time, Lucien fought differently. Where before he had been defensive, now he embraced brutality. When Erikta blocked his overhead strike, Lucien twisted the Kage Fang and raked it across the goblin’s forearm, the flaming blade cauterizing the wound as it cut.

Erikta howled, green blood hissing as it met the magical fire.

[You have dealt 1,247 damage]

[Burn effect applied: Target will lose 12 health points every 3 seconds]

"How does that feel, you motherless bastard?"

Lucien snarled, pressing his advantage.

But Erikta was far from finished. With a guttural roar, he grabbed one of his golden daggers by the blade, letting it slice deep into his palm. His blood dripped onto the weapon, and it began to glow with malevolent energy.

"Pain is just fuel!"

He screamed, swinging the blood-soaked dagger in a wild arc.

The blade connected with Lucien’s shoulder, and he felt something wrong immediately—not just the physical wound, but a creeping weakness that spread through his veins like poison.

[You have lost 623 Health points]

Lucien staggered but didn’t fall. His vision blurred momentarily, but his resolve only hardened. He could feel his strength ebbing, but there was still fight left in him.

The two combatants circled each other, both bloodied and breathing hard. The watching goblins had gone silent, sensing that this battle was reaching its climax.

Erikta’s golden markings were now pulsing erratically, his body trembling from exertion and blood loss. Lucien’s flames flickered weakly around his blades, his movements becoming more labored with each passing second.

"Still standing, human?"

Erikta raising his daggers for what both knew would be the final exchange.

"Still breathing, goblin scum,"

Lucien replied, adjusting his grip on both swords despite the pain shooting through his wounded shoulder.

They rushed at each other simultaneously, their remaining strength poured into one last, decisive clash. The cavern filled with the sound of ringing steel and the primal screams of two warriors pushing themselves beyond their limits.

Sparks flew as blade met blade, each fighter giving everything they had left. Blood—both red and green—splattered across the stone floor as they traded devastating blows with reckless abandon.

In that moment, there was nothing else in the world except the dance of death between human and goblin, each determined to be the one left standing when the dust settled.

Lucien exhaled heavily.

’Let’s end this...’

Once again, both of them rushed at each other but as their blades were about to collide, something shifted in Lucien’s eyes behind the White Crown.

The air around also shifted, become somewhat cold that even the Goblin King hesitated for a bit.

[COMBAT ADAPTATION: God-Gaze Burst - ACTIVATED]

The world... stopped.

Not literally, but Lucien’s perception exploded beyond human limitations. Time dilated into crystalline clarity as his vision accelerated a thousandfold. Erikta’s charging form, which had been a blur of golden death, now moved like he was swimming through thick honey.

Every muscle fiber in the goblin king’s body became visible to Lucien’s enhanced sight. He could see the micro-expressions of strain on Erikta’s face, the slight tremor in his left wrist from blood loss, the way his right foot would plant just a fraction too heavily on the stone.

And then—there they were.

Weak points, glowing with faint blue light across Erikta’s form like a constellation of vulnerabilities. Three points along his spine where the golden markings had thinned. A spot just beneath his ribcage where his breathing had created a gap in his defenses. The junction where his neck met his skull, pulsing with that telltale blue glow.

Six seconds. That’s all he had.

Lucien’s body moved with inhuman precision, every motion calculated to the microsecond. He twisted his torso, letting Erikta’s right dagger pass harmlessly by his cheek—so close he could feel the displaced air. At the same time, he brought the Kage Fang up in a perfect arc, the flaming blade singing through the air toward the first weak point.

Contact.

The blade sliced clean through the junction of Erikta’s shoulder and neck. In normal time, this would have been a fatal blow, but in Hypervisual Mode, Lucien could see the wound forming in slow motion, blood beginning its lazy arc through the air.

He didn’t stop there.

Pivoting on his heel with mechanical precision, Lucien drove the Darkness Cutter straight into the glowing weak point beneath Erikta’s ribs. The blade punched through flesh and struck something vital—he could see the organ rupturing in crystalline detail.

Three seconds left.

One final strike. Lucien reversed his grip on the Kage Fang and, with surgical accuracy, plunged it into the base of Erikta’s skull where the blue glow pulsed brightest.

[You have struck 3 critical weak points]

[Reverberation Effect Applied - Delayed Pain Activation: 2 seconds]

[God-Gaze Burst - DEACTIVATED]

Time snapped back to normal speed with brutal suddenness.

For a heartbeat, both fighters stood frozen in their final positions. Erikta’s daggers hung motionless in the air, inches from Lucien’s chest. Lucien’s blades were buried deep in the goblin king’s body, steam rising from the superheated metal.

Erikta blinked once, confusion flickering across his crimson eyes.

"How did you—"

Then the Reverberation hit.

All three strikes delivered their delayed agony simultaneously, like lightning striking the same spot three times. Erikta’s eyes went wide with shock as pain beyond comprehension crashed through his nervous system. The delayed damage was amplified, each wound screaming with accumulated force.

[You have dealt...]

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[Reverberation Damage: 45,847 total damage]