Chapter 5: The Anomaly Beyond the Stockade

Smoke curled upward, thick with the acrid tang of battle.

A squat goblin, brandishing a club studded with iron spikes, lunged at the flame-haired youth.

Its swing went wide, and with a practiced flick of his blade, Simon severed the creature’s arm, the cut as smooth as glass.

“Yee-haw! Mind the sparks!”

Simon skidded across a patch of conjured ice, his oversized All-Element Gauntlet aimed at the goblin horde.

The fire-elemental gem in its palm unleashed a searing beam of flame.

The goblins, scattered without formation, shrieked in agony as the linear attack charred flesh and bone, their “yigu” cries piercing the chaos.

“Hmph, still comes down to me, doesn’t it?” 

Simon struck a pose, hands on hips, smugness practically radiating off him, his nose tilted skyward.

So absorbed was he in his triumph that he failed to notice the goblin chief’s ambush.

“Whoosh!”

A massive spiked mace, thick as a pillar, loomed before him, too close to dodge.

“Aaah! Help, help! I swear I’ll stop showboating—just don’t kill me!”

But the goblin chief, deaf to human pleas, cared nothing for Simon’s pointed elven ears or his desperate cries. 

‘Goddamn it,’ Simon thought, ‘I should’ve just hidden somewhere safe. I’m no fighter—why’d I even get mixed up in this? What a fool I am.’

With no escape, Simon fumbled with the gauntlet’s gem, conjuring a shaky energy shield.

He prayed his teammates would swoop in to save him.

This pathetic display dragged up memories of his days at Mosod Academy, where practical combat drills always left him floundering.

His assigned teammates back then had scorned his uselessness, abandoning him without a second thought.

‘It’ll probably be the same this time,’ he thought bitterly.

‘After all…’

A sharp “crack” shattered his despair.

The energy shield buckled under the mace’s weight, spiderweb fractures spreading across its surface.

“Snap!”

The shield shattered.

Simon gritted his teeth, raising his gauntleted arm to shield his face, resignation settling over him like a shroud.

“Quit playing dead and get up.” A clear, soft voice cut through the din.

Simon’s eyes snapped open.

Noi stood beside him, calm and unshaken, while the chief’s mace was halted mid-swing, trapped by a stone wall conjured from afar by Xing Chen’s earth-elemental gem.

“Tch… thanks for not giving up on me.”

“Less talk, more running.”

Noi’s words were clipped, efficient.

She sidestepped a whistling club with fluid grace, her black cloak billowing as she drove a razor-sharp dagger into the goblin’s throat.

Blood sprayed, jolting Simon out of his stupor.

His legs steadied, his hands stopped trembling, and he unleashed a surge of wood-elemental energy from his gauntlet, vines snaking out to bind the legs of nearby goblins, clearing a path for Noi’s lethal dance.

Her silhouette wove through the fray, a shadow of death.

Wherever her blade flashed, blood followed, painting the air crimson.

Noi struck with precision, targeting vital points—heart, throat, spine—dispatching one foe before gliding to the next.

The thrill of each kill fueled her, her waning stamina no match for the fire in her veins.

Despite the shadow-spider’s earlier assault thinning their ranks, the goblins remained numerous.

Noi fought to ease the pressure, but Simon, hampered by his clumsy spellcraft and abysmal situational awareness, struggled to break through with his gauntlet’s power alone.

He didn’t even know which way to run.

“Swish!”

A grappling hook shot past Simon’s face.

A red-haired youth in a trench coat, gripping a black blade in reverse, hurtled toward them, propelled by the hook’s retracting cable.

“Hit the dirt!”

“Huh? What—” Simon barely got the words out before Xing Chen’s actions made the command clear.

Mana surged along the blade’s obsidian edge.

Xing Chen’s arm tensed, his body twisting with the momentum of a spinning top.

Goblins in his path were shredded into ribbons of flesh and bone, their screams swallowed by the whirlwind of his frenzied swordplay.

Thanks to the warning, Simon ducked just in time, spared from being carved up by his own ally’s blade.

Xing Chen’s hook-assisted slaughter carved a gruesome corridor of blood and gore, a path for Simon to escape.

“By the goddess Efya, you nearly split my skull in half!”

“You’re fine, aren’t you? Quit whining and follow me.”

Grabbing Simon by the collar, Xing Chen leapt onto a tiled rooftop, setting the still-yelping Simon down with a thud.

“Wow, that was wilder than a theme park drop tower!”

Xing Chen ignored Simon’s quip, his gaze fixed on the horizon.

From this vantage, he sensed a disturbance beyond the stockade—not just any unrest, but something far stranger.

‘The foul stench of an aberration… and the runic power of a holy sword? What’s going on out there?’

“Hey, what’re you spacing out for? We gotta help Noi—she can’t hold out alone forever!”

Simon rubbed his sore shoulder, ready to leap back into the fray to support Noi.

But Xing Chen, unusually, held him back.

“Hold up. Can you pull off something big?”

“Huh? Get serious, man. Just do a few more of those crazy spinning slashes, and we’re golden. Why do I gotta do it?”

Having seen Xing Chen’s skill—and his apparent knack for not staying dead—Simon wasn’t buying that Xing Chen couldn’t handle a pack of low-tier demonkin.

“What, I can’t slack off a bit? You trying to work me to death?” Xing Chen teased, a playful glint in his eye.

Reviving came at a cost, and with the anomaly outside the stockade, Xing Chen needed to conserve his strength.

‘Why are aberrations here? And what’s an imperial hero doing in a backwater southern town?’

A lumber mill, nobles, shadow-spider venom, a hero, aberrations, and that mysterious white-haired girl…

Xing Chen’s mind raced.

This goblin stockade was no simple battlefield—it was a tangle of enigmas.

“Fine, fine. Lemme check if I brought it.”

Simon sighed, reluctantly reaching into his suspiciously capacious pants, rummaging for something extraordinary.

Xing Chen kicked a few goblins off the roof, stealing a glance at Noi.

She was kiting the horde through the village’s structures, exploiting the chief’s bulk and its hesitation to harm its minions, buying Simon time to dig through his… inventory.

“You go help Noi,” Simon said.

“I’m fine here. She’s fighting like a beast, but a girl like her? One scar, and she’ll regret it forever.”

Xing Chen chuckled.

Dragging Simon off the battlefield had been a test—of Noi’s limits and potential.

As one of the Four Guardian Beasts, Xing Chen could faintly glimpse the threads of others’ fates, their complexity, their ties to his own.

But Noi… her destiny was a cipher.

At times, it seemed intricately bound to his; at others, utterly disconnected, shifting like quicksilver.

“No rush,” Xing Chen said.

“She’s not reckless. Most fighters lose their wits in a brawl, relying on muscle memory to survive. But Noi? She thinks fast, observes keenly. Her footwork’s clumsy, sure, but she always positions herself smartly, never letting the goblins box her in.”

And, by his reckoning, Noi had no formal combat training.

Her attacks were raw, unpolished, yet her intent was razor-sharp, always aiming for vital points.

Only her inexperience kept her from one-shot kills.

Simon, still rummaging, glanced at Noi with envy.

“She’s a real combat prodigy, huh? Way better than a loser like me, who just freezes up when surrounded.”

Xing Chen clarified, “More like a ‘killing’ prodigy. A methodical butcher, restrained and rational—that’s scarier than any berserker. Without guidance, she could grow into a world-class threat.”

“Damn, that’s intense. You’re right, though. Once we clear this place, we gotta talk some sense into her.”

Simon’s hand froze mid-rummage, then yanked out a bulky device.

“Ta-da! Found it—the Overlimit Amplifier!”

Xing Chen swatted away a poisoned arrow from a nearby watchtower.

“What’s it do?”

“Uh, it pushes magical gear into overdrive, like, two hundred percent output.”

Simon caressed his gauntlet wistfully.

“Man, I just dropped a fortune on this baby, and now I gotta burn it out. Oh well. Buy me some time—I’ll have it ready soon!”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Xing Chen fired his grappling hook and swung toward Noi.

Wind swirled, and a snow-haired girl dodged a flurry of attacks with ethereal grace, her arm hooking around a goblin’s neck in a single fluid motion.

A sharp iron spear thrust from the shadows of a thatched hut.

Without missing a beat, she yanked the goblin into its path, using it as a living shield.

The smaller goblins, agile and cunning, fanned out to encircle her.

But this played right into her hands.

Her grappling hook shot upward, its claw ripping a wooden beam from a rickety tower.

The structure collapsed, crushing a swath of goblins and tearing a gap in their formation.

“Guli guli!” the goblins shrieked in their guttural tongue.

A harsh, grating cry rang out, and the goblins scrambled for cover.

Noi glanced skyward—an arrow storm blotted out the stars.

“Xi xi xi,” the goblins snickered, certain they’d finally pinned the troublesome human.

But Noi had other plans.

She lobbed a handful of blast-bombs into the air.

Triggered by mana, they detonated, their shockwaves shattering the arrow volley and cloaking the battlefield in smoke.

The archer goblins on the watchtower squawked in frustration.

A white shadow burst through the haze—Noi, her dagger plunging into an archer’s heart, her blood-red eyes glinting with lethal focus.

The watchtowers were linked by narrow walkways, a tactical advantage for shifting troops—until an enemy breached them.

For the archers, Noi’s arrival spelled doom.

But they wouldn’t go quietly.

The surviving bowmen rallied at the walkway’s far end, poisoned arrows nocked and ready.

Noi appeared on the walkway.

The arrows flew—only to be caught in a vibrant banner she’d unfurled, rendering their attack useless.

The archers froze, stunned by her ingenuity.

Noi pressed her advantage, closing the distance in a heartbeat and cutting them down with ruthless efficiency.

She discarded the venom-soaked banner, wiping sweat from her brow.

Panting, she tore a fresh flag from the watchtower’s wall, wrapping it around herself to restrain the distracting bounce of her chest—a minor annoiance she’d endured long enough.

“Roar!” The chief’s bellow shook the earth.

Enraged at the loss of its archers, it ripped a watchtower from the ground and hurled it at her.

Noi’s eyes widened, caught off guard by the sheer audacity of the act.