Chapter 30: Still Bitches At The End

Adam slowly lowered his leg, the echo of the kick still hummed through his bones.

His killing intent hadn’t faded, it poured out of him like a violent storm, thick enough to warp the air.

Goblins twitched under the weight of it but quickly shook it off, hissing with drooling poison.

Far behind the battlefield, Scarlet watched from where he’d set her down, out of danger and his way.

He couldn’t spare a thought for her now.

His eyes drifted instead to the bodies on the ground; six of them.

They were humans first, and martial artists second, who had fought and lost their life’s in the most brutal way possible.

Adam stepped toward the nearest corpse, the one killed moments ago.

He crouched low, his jaw tightening.

A massive chunk of flesh was missing from the apprentice’s neck.

The death grimace frozen on the young man’s face made Adam’s stomach twist.

Memories surged, ones he didn’t want.

Ones he’d buried.

Ones filled with his own past helplessness and despair.

He swallowed hard.

Reaching out, Adam gently placed his hand over the corpse’s eyes and slid the lids shut.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered.

“You can rest in peace.”

He rose to his full height and looked at the other five bodies scattered nearby, each grotesque, each robbed of dignity.

“All of you can, because I will be offering these vermins as offerings for your passing.”

The goblins snarled at his declaration, but Adam barely heard them.

He settled into a stance, the common dirty bronze-grade knife angled forward, steady and lethal in his grip.

His killing intent surged again, rolling off him in waves.

The goblins didn’t care.

Level 2 mutants or not, these were still unranked mob units, their tiny brains could only process one thing: kill what stands before you.

Fangs bared as poison dripped and muscles tensed.

Adam exhaled.

He activated Rapid E as pressure exploded outward, warping the air.

Before the shock settled, he layered Poison F on top of it.

His star power didn’t stack; he felt it reallocate, split and fuse; like one power thinning to make room for the other.

His total star power settled at 14+.

But it was still more than enough.

These things weren’t a threat, they were an inconvenience.

A minor delay on his path.

He tightened his grip.

Across from him, fifteen goblins lowered their bodies, claws digging into the dirt, muscles coiling.

For one heartbeat, everything stopped.

Then,

The world snapped forward.

Adam and the goblins collided in an eruption of motion and brutality.

The ground cracked under the impact as green blood showered the air.

The killing had begun.

****

The martial artists who’d been losing just moments ago could only stare, with disbelief..

Calling this a battle was an insult.

This was a slaughter.

Adam had already ripped through three goblins, the fools who’d dared rush him alone, leaving twelve mutants circling him.

Each of these creatures was strong, their raw power rivaling that of an unranked Level 1 elite.

But to Adam?

They were all his bitches in the end.

One goblin lunged, claws outstretched.

Adam moved faster.

The creature’s forearm hit the dirt an instant later, severed clean at the elbow.

Before the goblin could even scream, Adam buried his knife into its abdomen again and again, dozens of rapid, precise thrusts that turned its gut into shredded pulp.

It wasn’t dead yet, but as Adam intended to finish the job, another goblin’s claw came for his skull.

To Adam, the attack drifted in like it was underwater.

He crouched, letting the claws whistle harmlessly above him.

Spinning from that low position, he carved a horizontal slash across the lunging goblin’s torso.

Yet he didn’t stop.

Rising quickly, Adam drove his blade through the underside of the goblin’s jaw. The steel punched through the floor of the goblin’s mouth before he ripped it back, finishing the job by severing the head entirely.

The head flew, and the body collapsed.

Eleven left.

The goblin he’d stabbed multiple times earlier fell to one knee, body spasming violently.

Poison F ravaged it from the inside, flooding every wound with agony.

It wasn’t dead yet, but every breath it took was suffering.

Adam didn’t hesitate.

He plunged his bronze knife straight into its skull.

Ten.

Two more goblins roared and charged.

Then stopped.

Because Adam vanished.

He wasn’t gone, he’d simply moved so fast he left the spot before their brains registered the motion.

Air rippled as he reappeared between the two goblins, his body suspended briefly above the ground from the momentum of the push-off, before he executed a tight, perfect 360-degree spin.

He landed several paces away, sliding across the dirt, spinning twice more before settling into a low stance.

Behind him, the goblins still stood upright for a heartbeat, then deep, crisscrossing lacerations bloomed across their bodies, so precise they looked carved by a master sculptor.

Poison surged through their exposed flesh.

Both goblins retched green blood, bodies convulsing before collapsing into stillness.

The remaining eight goblins froze.

They stared at Adam the way prey might stare at a butcher; no, not a butcher.

A grim reaper draped in their kin’s blood.

His killing intent, already thickened by the blood of their slain kin, rolled off him in a crushing, suffocating wave.

The air itself seemed to vibrate with it.

The goblins, once filled with feral vigor, now trembled where they stood.

It wasn’t just fear of death.

It was the terror of realizing the thing killing them didn’t tire at all.

Normally, if an enemy had a higher star power, numbers could drag them down.

No normal martial artist could fight forever, fatigue, talent drain or physical strain, eventually, something would give.

But Adam wasn’t “normal.”

Awakened special talents drained stamina heavily, he’d learned that the hard way with [Connect] when using it for the first time.

But Equipped special talents?

They were different.

When Adam used Rapid E or Poison F, he felt nothing, no drain, no burn, no fatigue.

From activation to deactivation, the talents functioned as though they were powered by an endless reservoir.

Another hidden perk of [Equip].

And honestly? If [Equip] was all he had, it wouldn’t have been impressive.

Unlimited stamina with a weapon that couldn’t pierce your enemy meant nothing, slashing at a mountain nonstop wouldn’t make it crumble.

Especially if the mountain struck back.

But [Equip] paired with [Connect], that was different.

[Equip] let him burn talents endlessly.

[Connect] let him equip those talents.

Now the “mountains” he faced weren’t mountains at all.

They were pebbles.

And Adam wasn’t here to crush pebbles.

He was here to annihilate them.

The goblins flinched as Adam finally moved, their was no warning, no breath, no shift in posture.

One instant he was standing among their fallen; the next he was a blur of motion charging straight at them.

The demoralized eight didn’t even have time to scream.

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