Elius stopped his swords from spinning.
Ron's large frame shifted into a crouch, long claws clicking against the stone floor. His reptilian eyes locked onto the goblin ahead.
His breathing grew shallow, focused and measured.
His thick tail flicked once behind him as his raptor instincts started to rise.
The others looked at him.
Even the goblin tilted its head, watching him curiously—like a predator recognizing another predator.
Elius said nothing at first.
Then, as Ron's muscles tensed, preparing for a run, Elius finally spoke.
"Don't underestimate it."
Ron didn't glance back.
Elius narrowed his eyes. "Don't underestimate anything in this rift. That dagger's dripping with something. One scratch could be enough."
Still no response.
Ron's legs pushed off—his sprint slow at first, cautious—but it gained speed with every pounding step.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The sound of his dinosaur limbs slamming the ground echoed through the corridor like a war drum.
Elius exhaled. "You idiot… did you even hear me?"
The goblin hissed, its grin widening, showing more of its jagged teeth. Its thin body hunched lower, and it gripped the dagger in reverse grip—its posture tight and full of rage.
Then—
FWOOOSH!
Ron blurred forward, claws extended, tail cutting the air behind him like a blade. His speed was monstrous, his muscles flexing like coiled steel cables.
The goblin screamed something guttural and incomprehensible—a war cry from a nightmare—and lunged forward to meet him.
They clashed.
Screeeech!
Ron slid sideways just before contact, his claws digging into the ground as he curved around the goblin's attack. The dagger swiped through air just inches from his scaled cheek.
And in that exact moment—WHAP!—Ron's massive tail slapped the dagger clean out of the goblin's hand.
It spun through the air and clattered uselessly on the stone floor.
The goblin's red eyes widened.
But it had no time to react.
Ron leaned forward and—CHOMP!—his jaw clamped down on the goblin's upper body, fangs digging deep into its shoulder and neck.
The goblin screamed, not in fear—but in fury. It flailed, clawed, tried to dig into Ron's face with its long, needle-like nails.
Lina gasped.
Shiro stepped forward. "Ron—!"
"Wait," Elius muttered, eyes sharp as knives.
The goblin thrashed, one filthy claw aiming straight for Ron's eye.
Ron released his bite just in time, leaping back with a low growl. Blood—green and oily—dripped from his jaw.
The goblin's left arm now hung loosely, almost torn off, but it was still moving.
Still alive.
Still furious.
It lunged again—straight for Ron's face.
Ron ducked.
His eyes burned with focus now, his breath like smoke from an ancient beast.
The raptor instincts in him weren't panicking—they were calculating.
The goblin scratched across his arm—shallow—but Ron didn't flinch.
Instead, he twisted around, using the momentum to slap the goblin with his tail once more—WHACK!—sending the creature sprawling into a wall.
The others watched in stunned silence.
The goblin crawled up again. Bleeding. Twitching. But alive.
It lunged once more, aiming this time for Ron's throat.
But this time—
CHOMP!
Ron bit down again—harder—deeper—his teeth crunching through muscle and bone. The goblin screamed again, but Ron didn't let go.
Instead—
He shut his eyes.
And locked his jaw.
He lifted the goblin up, head shaking left and right like a hunting beast shaking prey to break its bones.
Blood sprayed the air in wild arcs, splashing across the stone floor and even spattering the edge of Elius's boots.
And then—
SLAM!
Ron threw the goblin sideways into the cave wall with all his strength.
The impact cracked the stone.
The goblin spasmed.
Still alive.
Barely.
But Ron wasn't done.
He lunged again and this time slammed the goblin straight into the floor, leaving a crater of shattered rock. And then again, this time into the wall, then the floor, again and again until—
CRACK!
The sound of the goblin's skull finally giving way echoed like thunder.
Ron growled low in his throat.
Then, slowly, carefully—he opened his blood-stained jaw and let the lifeless body drop.
The goblin's broken form crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Its eyes, once burning with madness and hunger, now stared blankly at the ceiling.
Dead.
The others were silent.
Even Klee, who always had something to say, found herself speechless.
Ron stood there, breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling in primal rhythm. His scaled hands were covered in gore, and his tail twitched slowly as the adrenaline faded.
Elius finally broke the silence.
"Well," he said quietly. "That was amazing."
Honestly, Elius didn't know what he would've done if it were him alone against that goblin.
Sure, his confidence ran deep—he had the skill, the spiritual sense, the sword control—but that thing had given Ron a serious challenge. And Ron wasn't some pushover.
The guy was practically a bipedal dinosaur with scales as tough as iron and a jaw strong enough to break steel. Yet even Ron had been pushed.
Elius clenched his jaw quietly.
If he were thrown into that same fight, but with just a sword in hand—no flying blades, no spiritual tricks, no ranged control—he wasn't certain it would've ended cleanly.
His entire strategy had been to overwhelm that goblin from a distance with the precision of his flying swords.
One strike, one kill.
No risks.
That was how you survived in a rift. But that goblin… that filthy, sharp-toothed, red-eyed creature had proven something today.
It was tough.
Tougher than Elius had anticipated.
Thank the heavens Ron stepped forward when he did.
If he hadn't… well, they might've never known what they were really dealing with.
They might have walked into that camp earlier with a spring in their step, confident they could beat twenty of those things.
And it would've been a slaughter.
"RONNNNNNNN!!!"
Suddenly, Klee tackled Ron from behind, her arms wrapping around his scaled back. "That was AMAZING! You totally went dino-mode! You were like—chomp!—bam!—smash! I thought you were gonna eat its brains out!"
Ron stumbled forward from the sudden hug. "K-Klee?! I—I wasn't gonna eat its brains—"
"I KNOW!" she squealed. "But you could have!"
Shiro chimed in, clapping like a giddy child. "Dude, seriously, that tail swipe—perfection! I thought you were all brute force but no—you were tactical! The tail swipe? The eye dodge? The jaw lock?! We need to put this in a training video!"
Lina was wide-eyed. She usually didn't speak much, but now she walked forward slowly, gazing at Ron like she was seeing him for the first time. "You weren't even using your full transformation, right? That was just… half?"
Ron scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "Uh… yeah. I didn't want to go full form inside the tunnel. I might collapse the ceiling…"
"You're telling me you had more?!" Klee screamed, then spun around and hugged him again. "Our Dino Tank is evolving!"
Elius quietly watched the celebration with a flicker of amusement in his eyes. For all the chaos and noise, he didn't interrupt.
"Good job," he finally said, his voice soft and casual, but there was something in the way he said it—a quiet respect. Ron froze for a second. Then smiled.
But the mood didn't last.
As the excitement began to die down, Ron suddenly asked, "Wait… what would've happened if we actually attacked the goblin camp earlier?"
The question landed like a boulder.
Klee stopped bouncing.
Shiro blinked.
Lina turned her head.
The silence was heavy. Even Ron, who had just earned everyone's praise, looked a little pale now.
Elius didn't say anything at first. He simply raised an eyebrow and gestured to the corpse on the ground.
"That…" he said, "was just one."
One goblin.
One enemy.
One monster that nearly pushed Ron to use his true strength.
And they were ready to barge into a camp of twenty of them?
The implications sank deep into everyone.
Shiro swallowed hard. "Damn… we would've… died."
Lina nodded slowly, her voice low. "No amount of stealth or numbers would've helped. We didn't know what we were dealing with."
Klee looked pale. "I—I thought we were just being cautious earlier. But now I feel like we almost ran into a meat grinder."
Elius smirked. "Well, if you did, I would've just flown all of you above them with my flying swords. Then rained death from above."
There was a pause.
The four of them turned toward Elius at once, their mouths hanging open.
"Right…" Shiro said, blinking. "You could do that."
"Of course," Elius said coolly, "why do you think I wanted to avoid the fight in the first place? That would've been my last resort. Not the plan."
They were speechless.
That was Elius for you. Casual. Sharp. Always thinking five steps ahead.
But if it weren't for Elius clone, he wouldn't know these things.
Soo, he stepped forward now, approaching the goblin's broken corpse. Its chest had caved in, its skull cracked, but… there was still something wrong.
He paused.
Wait.
It was still breathing.
Faint, almost invisible, but there. The chest rose and fell with shallow, ragged breaths. Barely alive. A survivor to the very end.
Without hesitation, Elius's fingers twitched—and the nearest floating sword shot downward like a thunderbolt.
SHUNK!
The steel pierced straight through the goblin's skull, pinning it into the ground.
And then—
Ding!
A sound.
A sound he hadn't heard in a long time.
A screen appeared before his eyes, ethereal and blue. It hovered in the air, glowing faintly, only visible to him.
[Fragment of Martial Skill found!]
Martial Skill: Unknown.
Type: Unknown.
Owned: 1/5.
Effect: Fragment only.
Collect remaining pieces to unlock full skill.
Elius froze.
Everything around him paused. The voices of the others faded, the sounds of the cave vanished.
It was as if time stopped.
He was back.
Back in that game.
His previous life. The cultivation game. The infinite dungeons. The raids into forgotten realms. The thrill of exploration, of finding long-lost treasures buried in alternate dimensions.
Yes. He remembered now.
Fragments. Pieces of martial knowledge hidden across dungeon zones.
Each kill, each successful exploration, had the potential to grant these.
Sometimes, they were ancient techniques.
Sometimes forbidden knowledge.
Sometimes secrets tied to cultivation breakthroughs.
He could almost hear the old background music from the game ringing in his ears.
This wasn't just a monster.
This goblin—this zone—was hiding something greater.
That meant…
There were more fragments.
More pieces scattered across the dungeon.
Treasure.
Power.
Potential.
His eyes sharpened.
The goblin camp. The deeper tunnels. The bosses. The elites.
Each might hold another piece.
This wasn't just a dimensional rift.
It was a treasure trove.
He turned away from the corpse, letting the sword dissolve into light. The others were still talking behind him—half panicking, half strategizing.
"Let's go back," Elius said suddenly.
The others turned to him. "What?"
"Why?" Klee asked, frowning. "We just got here. Shouldn't we go deeper—?"
"No," Elius said, brushing past them. "I can't let them live…"