Chapter 89: Goblin attack (03)

"Good girl! Hahaha!" Ethan roared with laughter as Alice’s flames engulfed hundreds of goblins at once.

The beauty sighed sweetly, her cheeks flushed from the effort as she kept the sea of flames burning.

Maintaining the technique in constant use cost far more when burning enemies than when practiced on empty ground, and her mana reserves were draining at an alarming rate.

Ethan noticed this and didn’t hesitate.

There was just over a minute left before the Burning Blood enhancement wore off, and if Alice’s flames ceased before dealing with the remaining hobgoblins, things would get complicated.

With a cold stare, he channeled all his strength into his sword, driving it against the hobgoblin’s club.

The creature was strong, but weaker than the previous one.

Ethan easily let his blade slide along the club, pushing it aside and forcing the creature to open its guard.

The greenskin roared, realizing what Ethan was doing, and freeing one hand to throw a punch.

A crash echoed, and Ethan’s head snapped back, vision spinning for a brief moment, the metallic taste of blood spreading across his tongue.

The hobgoblin wasted no time, snatching its weapon back and swinging it toward Ethan’s face.

[You used the blood reserves from the Blood Emperor’s ring to recover.]

Ethan’s eyes flashed with murderous intent. He ducked, his golden hair rippling as the club whizzed past his ear with a sharp whistle of displaced air.

When he rose, he was already thrusting upward.

The blade found the hobgoblin’s jugular, drawing a wet, guttural grunt from the creature’s throat, hot blood spilling over Ethan’s fingers.

Without hesitation, he drove his boot into its chest and kicked it backward, watching the heavy body crash to the ground with a thud.

’Hm... this one only gave me twenty-five percent XP.’ Ethan frowned slightly, though he couldn’t complain.

He was already at level 36, after all. And that was nothing compared to Alice, whose XP had been rising nonstop, already pushing her to level forty-five.

As he absorbed the hobgoblin’s blood, his reserves climbed to forty, granting another point of agility.

The other fights were coming to an end around him.

With a swift cut, Doran severed one of his opponent’s arms, then immediately thrust forward and pierced its heart.

Evelyn, meanwhile, had already turned her hobgoblin into mincemeat.

Her axe carved through the creature’s leg, dropping it to its knees, before she slowly raised the weapon above her head with a predatory calm.

The poor hobgoblin was so battered it looked moments away from begging for death.

A cruel smile curled Evelyn’s lips as she brought the axe down. The creature’s skull caved with a horrifying crunch, its head sinking between its own shoulders.

A few dozen goblins had still managed to slip through the gates before Alice sealed them with her flames, but the guards eliminated them quickly.

"Alice, rest a bit! Don’t burn through all your mana, we’ll handle the rest!" Ethan shouted toward her.

Drenched in sweat from the effort, she stopped channeling mana and collapsed onto the wooden floor, gasping with exhaustion.

It had been difficult, but at least she had been useful.

When the sea of flames subsided, more than a hundred and ten charred goblin corpses were revealed.

The smell of burnt flesh was nauseating, but Ethan endured it, eyes fixed on the more than four hundred goblins still waiting beyond the dying flames, their hungry stares locked onto the walls.

Even with their leaders dead, the goblins didn’t cower.

They leaped over the still-burning ground and the charred corpses of their own comrades without hesitation.

Ethan, Evelyn, and Doran fell back behind the shield wall the fifty soldiers had formed, taking positions on the flanks.

They didn’t stop fighting. Moving fast along the edges to cut down as many creatures as possible, trying to lighten the guards’ load.

Even after all the damage Alice had caused, it wasn’t an easy fight.

Four hundred goblins advancing with murderous intent were a formidable force, and it didn’t take long for an enemy blade to find a guard’s throat.

"Damn it!" Doran roared, cutting the goblin down with a single blow and throwing the wounded guard backward.

But it was already too late.

The guard’s throat had been sliced. His eyes rolled back as warm blood pooled thickly at his comrades’ feet.

A second guard fell shortly after, and a third soon followed, the red blood mingling with dark green in the churned mud below.

Ethan didn’t stop slashing for even a single second, his aura reserves dropping rapidly to just twenty percent as he used the aura slash repeatedly, mowing down dozens of goblins in the blink of an eye.

"Bastards..." He gritted his teeth, watching the count of guards fall again.

In just ten minutes of fighting, they had whittled the goblins down to fewer than a hundred, but the casualties kept mounting.

Reaching out, Ethan pulled all the blood around him inward, absorbing five attribute points at once and pushing his reserves past seven hundred and sixty.

[You have absorbed the blood of 487 inferior beasts.

You absorb a small fraction of the target’s talent and attributes.

+1 Vitality point

+1 Strength point

+3 Agility points

Blood Reserve: 762/1000]

[Congratulations, your talent has increased! Rank D -> Rank C

All your attributes increase by 10%.]

An intense wave of freshness surged through Ethan’s entire body.

His tense muscles relaxed all at once, his mind sharpened, and even his complexion shifted, his already enormous charm attribute climbing to four hundred and ninety-five.

He didn’t have time to savor it as he charged back into the goblins and cut without pause.

Only when the number of creatures fell below fifty did they finally break apart, fleeing in disarray in every direction.

Some guards moved to pursue, but Doran stopped them immediately with a sharp shout, ordering them back to their positions.

In front of Goldenveil, a massive pile of corpses had formed, dark green and red blood merging into large, slick pools across the ground.

Evelyn, standing beside Ethan, had taken a wound to the shoulder.

Her right arm hung slightly limp at her side as she fought the pain, struggling to keep her axe steady.

Ethan moved toward her, but before he could even reach for the superior healing potion in his system inventory, Alice had already descended from the tower.

She sprinted across the blood-soaked ground toward Evelyn and urgently poured every last trace of her remaining mana into the warrior’s injured shoulder.