Ron, Shiro, Lina, and Klee were still catching their breath, their hearts pounding from the earlier fight.
The echo of battle still hung in the air—the sharp slam of claws against bone, the squelch of flesh ripped apart, the brutal thud of a body smashing against the stone wall.
However, Elius wasn't paying attention to any of that.
Without warning, he turned.
"Wha—Elius?" Shiro called out, his voice slightly shaky.
Elius didn't answer.
He walked back toward the twisting corridor behind them—the direction they had come from, where the goblin camp had been spotted earlier.
His pace wasn't rushed, but his presence was heavy, like a current of spiritual force trailing behind him.
The flying swords still hovered behind his back, gleaming faintly in the dim dungeon light.
"Wait, wait, Elius, where are you—" Klee tried to speak, but the words got caught in her throat when she followed his line of sight.
From the mouth of the stone corridor, through the tunnel where the shadows lingered like smoke, they saw them.
Goblins.
Nearly twenty.
They had likely crept closer, curious about the earlier commotion.
Maybe they had heard the death cries of their kin. Maybe they were part of a hunting patrol. Or maybe this was a trap waiting to be sprung.
The four were shocked, they are back!
Either way, they stood there now—short, grotesque bodies trembling with rage.
Their jagged teeth bared. Crude armor stained with blood and muck. Weapons made of broken metal and sharpened bones.
"Why are we back?" Ron asked.
Shiro too, "Leader?"
Lina and Klee just looked at the numbers of goblins with fright.
Elius raised a single hand.
His eyes didn't waver. No fear. No hesitation. Just precision.
SWOOSH!
The five floating swords behind him reacted immediately.
The air cracked with pressure as the swords surged forward like serpents loosed from a cage.
The goblins screeched and charged.
One lunged forward, swinging a spiked club—only for a blade to pierce through its throat mid-leap. It gurgled, dropped its weapon, and collapsed.
The others responded fast.
They weren't fools. They weren't mindless beasts. These goblins adapted.
Two dove sideways, one rolled to the rear, while a third raised its bone axe to deflect the incoming blade.
The sword struck it with such force that it cracked the axe into pieces—but the goblin survived, staggering back with a shriek.
Another goblin, snarling with wide eyes, leapt and grabbed one of the swords mid-air.
"Wha—what?!" Shiro gasped.
The goblin held onto the blade, howling and swinging it downward as if it could somehow control it. Blood trickled down its palms, but it refused to let go.
Then—
CLANG!
A second sword curved from behind and cleaved its arm in two. The goblin fell, shrieking, only for a third sword to impale its chest.
Another goblin had tried to duck behind a rock. Its yellow eyes glinted with hatred as it threw a dagger toward Elius. The blade spun mid-air, closing in fast—
But before it could land, one of the flying swords intercepted it with a ting! and sent it clattering to the ground.
More swords came.
Elius didn't speak.
He didn't move.
He merely directed with flicks of his fingers, slight tilts of his wrist.
And the massacre began.
A goblin tried to run—SHUNK! A blade slammed into its back.
Another jumped atop a fallen corpse and roared—SLASH! Its head flew off before it could finish its cry.
Two of them managed to corner a sword together, grabbing it with their clawed hands, trying to snap it apart between them. But just as they grinned in premature triumph—
WHIRR!
The sword spun violently in place, faster than the eye could follow, grinding their arms into pulp. Blood sprayed in every direction as they screamed and were shredded apart.
Ron's mouth hung open.
He remembered how hard it was to kill just one of them.
That single goblin earlier had nearly dug out his eyes. He had to risk everything. He had to use technique, instinct, his whole velociraptor transformation.
And now…
These things were being butchered like cattle.
Klee trembled beside him.
Lina, whose eyes were usually unreadable, now looked frozen. "He's… not even trying."
Shiro couldn't stop shaking his head. "H-He's just… he's controlling them like... like toys..."
It wasn't flashy.
It wasn't exaggerated.
There were no screams of domination. No boastful declarations.
Just cold, brutal, mechanical slaughter.
Swords moved in silence, like reapers of death. Each swing, each thrust, was efficient. Clinical. Designed for the quickest kill.
It was terrifying.
It wasn't just power they were witnessing—it was mastery.
The last goblin, wounded and crawling, tried to scream something in its guttural tongue. A plea? A curse?
It didn't matter.
STAB!
A sword pinned it into the floor.
Elius finally walked.
His footsteps were slow. Measured.
His eyes scanned the fallen goblins.
One by one, he knelt beside the corpses, checking their bodies.
Sometimes he'd flick the corpses with his finger. Sometimes he'd turn them over. Sometimes he just stared.
Then, without warning—
SHUNK!
He'd stab the sword down again.
They were already dead. But he made sure.
Every time.
Ron watched, his throat dry. "W-What… what's he doing?"
"Searching?" Lina said quietly.
"For what?" Klee whispered, her voice almost inaudible.
They didn't get a reply.
Elius moved from one corpse to the next. Like a machine. His face unreadable. Eyes scanning.
STAB.
Another sword thrust into a fallen body.
He didn't even look toward his team. He didn't explain. Didn't speak.
The smell of blood now saturated the tunnel. It dripped off the swords, pooled on the stone floor, smeared on the walls.
The dead goblins lay in piles—limbs twisted, torsos pierced, faces frozen in terror.
Shiro couldn't stop glancing at the bodies. "He… he's so strong."
Ron didn't reply.
Lina lowered her gaze, unsure what to say.
Klee opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Elius paused.
He stood up from the last goblin and finally exhaled.
His swords returned to his back, floating gently, their surfaces still slick with gore.
He turned to face them. Not a scratch on him. Not even dirt on his boots.
"It's not here," he said.
His voice was calm. Distant.
Like he was simply commenting on the weather.
He didn't offer more.
Didn't explain what "it" was.
Didn't reassure them.
He simply turned, once more, and began walking deeper into the dungeon's shadowed depths.
"Let's go," he said.
And with that, the cold wind of the unknown swept over them again.
The sound of their footsteps echoed endlessly as they pushed deeper into the dungeon's twisting, decaying corridors.
A stench hung heavy in the air—rot, blood, and something darker, something primal.
The light from the dungeon's dim crystal veins barely lit the path ahead, casting flickering shadows across the jagged walls like ghosts dancing on the verge of the void.
Elius led them.
Ron, Shiro, Lina, and Klee followed—at first with hesitation, then with something else.
Terror.
Not of the dungeon.
But of him.
Elius' expression never changed. His posture never faltered. His swords floated silently at his back, gliding with ghostly discipline.
They moved like they were a part of him—extensions of his will. And wherever they passed, death followed.
In the next chamber, more goblins emerged—ten, fifteen, twenty, maybe more.
They came from the shadows, bursting from behind stone barricades and rusted iron gates. Some had spears.
Others had swords.
Some charged on all fours like beasts. Others screamed incantations, their claws glowing with green, corrupted light.
Shiro almost stepped back. "W-We need to run—"
"Stay," Elius muttered, his voice like a cold wind across a battlefield.
SWOOSH!
The blades behind him launched into motion.
The first sword streaked past his shoulder like a comet and impaled a goblin through the heart before it even knew it was seen.
A second sword curved in the air, spinning rapidly like a drill, before it drilled into another goblin's open mouth and exploded out the back of its skull.
The goblins roared in outrage.
They fought back.
One hurled a fireball—it cracked through the air toward Elius.
He didn't even flinch.
A sword intercepted it mid-air, slicing the magic apart as if it were no more than paper.
The goblins tried to swarm him.
They had numbers. They had ferocity. They had coordination.
But they were facing a reaper.
Three goblins closed in from the front, swinging jagged blades toward his chest—
SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!
The flying swords carved a horizontal line through them all—splitting necks, torsos, arms—until three mangled corpses collapsed to the floor in a spray of gore.
One goblin leapt over its dying allies and swung downward with a shriek, aiming straight for Elius' crown.
But a sword spun behind his back like a shield and slammed the attacker away mid-air, sending it tumbling through a broken wall with a wet crunch.
Ron blinked rapidly.
Even with his dinosaur senses, he could barely follow it.
"I… I can't even see them coming," he whispered.
Klee looked like she was about to vomit. Her face had gone pale, and her legs were trembling.
Lina remained frozen. Still. Focused. But her hands were clenched, as if gripping invisible weapons, trying to remind herself she wasn't completely powerless.
Shiro had fallen silent altogether.
Another squad of goblins arrived from the far tunnel.
Some of them had crude armor made of bones.
Their leader wore a necklace made of monster teeth and raised a wooden staff, roaring in their alien tongue.
"Yruk-scha! Ba'dragh! KALTAR'NU!"