The hallway was scorched on every side.
Gareth walked slowly between the bodies scattered across the floor — kobolds with the same burns along their edges, the same pattern of efficient, methodical elimination. Corvus moved in silence on his shoulder, green eyes sweeping every corner.
There were too many.
Not the same density as the sector he had cleared. This was a different order of magnitude entirely — the bodies piled over each other in some spots, as if they had come in waves and fallen in waves.
"It seems whoever entered before you outclasses you by a wide margin." Corvus said it without any particular inflection — more objective observation than commentary.
"Or they just got lucky."
Corvus didn't respond.
Gareth kept walking.
And then the bodies moved.
A simultaneous shudder that ran down the hallway from end to end, as if something had pulsed from a central point and the impulse had reached every corpse at the exact same moment. Limbs tensed. Claws scraped against stone. Yellow eyes opened.
In under three seconds Gareth and Corvus were surrounded.
Gareth looked at them.
'It was only a matter of time. This is a Stronghold — the only way to shut it down is by eliminating the boss.'
Dozens of pairs of yellow eyes converging on a single point.
"Quick, hide!"
"You don't have to tell me twice." Corvus lifted off his shoulder without argument and disappeared into a crack in the wall before the first kobolds finished pulling themselves upright.
Gareth drew the Claws of Marveth.
The kobolds prepared to charge — that specific instant before movement where everything tenses at once.
'One of my favorite perception buffs unlocked in a situation just like this. Except with much stronger enemies.'
'Which means this version will come with a significantly weaker boost.'
An internal pause.
'How unfortunate.'
The first wave charged.
Gareth exhaled.
He smiled.
"But it's still a buff after all."
The first came from above — it had scaled the wall and launched diagonally aiming for his shoulders. Gareth turned ninety degrees and let it pass, using its own momentum against it to redirect it into the two coming from the front. All three collided at the same point and went down in a heap.
He didn't wait for them to recover.
Two steps right, left blade in a downward arc — the fourth coming from the flank never finished raising its claws. The fifth tried to bite his forearm from below and Gareth raised his arm letting it pass, closing the motion with his right blade in one continuous line.
[5 Kobolds eliminated]
[EXP gained: +75]
[Total EXP: 760/800]
Three more from behind — coordinated, staggered, the first as a decoy and the other two targeting the flanks. Gareth read the pattern on the first step and changed his response — instead of dodging the decoy he used it as leverage, grabbed the extended arm, spun using his own weight and threw the kobold into the one on the right flank. The one on the left adjusted its trajectory too late.
The blade was already there.
[3 Kobolds eliminated]
[EXP gained: +45]
[Total EXP: 805/800]
[LEVEL UP!]
[Level 16 → Level 17]
[Stats updated]
[Strength: 53 → 60]
[Agility: 59 → 67]
[Endurance: 43 → 49]
[Perception: 69 → 78]
[Dexterity: 55 → 62]
[Buff Master bonus applied: +15% to all stats]
He didn't stop.
The kobolds kept coming — not in groups now but in a mass, without coordination, pure numerical pressure. Gareth moved to the center of the hallway where there was enough space to work in every direction at once.
Two from the left — he deflected them with the back of his blades in circular motions that sent them into the wall. Three from the right — he dropped under the claws and countered upward in the same motion. One from the front running in a straight line with everything it had — Gareth sidestepped by a centimeter and used the momentum to spin it into the two coming behind it.
The number didn't matter.
What mattered was the space between them and the time between each movement and Gareth knew both better than anything else.
Then something changed.
Not in the kobolds — in him.
[BUFF UNLOCKED]
[Predator's Instinct: +8% perception — 18:40 remaining]
The world slowed down.
Not dramatically — less pronounced than the first time with Valdris but unmistakable. As if someone had dropped the playback speed just enough for every movement around him to have one extra beat of anticipation before it happened.
Gareth saw the next claw before the arm finished extending. Saw the angle of the next jump before the feet left the ground. Saw the gap between the two at the back before they knew it was there.
And he moved through all of it with the precision of someone who isn't reacting — who is executing something already calculated.
Right blade to the first one's vital point without looking. Immediate spin — left blade to the second in the same arc. Three steps forward, jump over the fourth, landing behind the fifth and sixth, both blades at once.
The kobolds at the back stepped away.
The ones at the front hesitated.
Gareth looked at them.
'They're recognizing that something changed.'
'Good.'
He charged.
What followed had no exact name in any language Gareth knew. It was combat but with the fluidity of something that has no pause between one movement and the next — every dodge becoming the setup for the next attack, every attack creating the angle for the next dodge, one continuous line that cut through the hallway from end to end leaving kobolds on the ground without a single one having managed to touch him.
When it was over Gareth was standing in the center of the hallway.
The Claws of Marveth were dripping.
He inhaled.
Exhaled.
"God, that feels good." He murmured toward no one. "This is what living feels like."
He looked at the blades in his hands. Looked at the bodies around him.
"Here I can truly be a Buff Master."
A short laugh. Genuine. The same one as in Malgrath's temple but without the pain underneath.
Corvus emerged from the crack in the wall and settled on a nearby rock with the expression of something that has witnessed something it hadn't expected to witness.
"That was incredible." A pause. "You never stop surprising me." Another pause. "If I had hands I would genuinely applaud right now."
Gareth looked at him.
"You are one of the strongest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing."
'One of the strongest?'
"What do you mean one of the strongest?" Gareth looked at him. "Aren't I the strongest?"
"As I said." Corvus didn't change his tone. "One of the strongest."
Gareth held his gaze for a moment longer.
"I see." A pause. "That's fair. You're only just getting to know me after all." The Claws disappeared back into the system and he wiped his hands on the side of his uniform. "Just wait until you've seen everything I'm capable of."
"I can't wait."
"Aghhhhh!"
The scream came without warning.
"RAWWWWW!"
A human sound — sharp, carrying the specific register of real fear — followed immediately by a roar that made the ground vibrate under his feet and an impact against stone that echoed through the entire hallway.
Gareth and Corvus looked at each other.
"You heard that too, right?" Corvus said.
"Let's go!"
He ran toward the source. Corvus followed through the air.
"What are you going to do? Are you going to help him? He sounds like he's in serious trouble."
"We'll see." Gareth didn't slow down. "Right now I only know one thing — the boss is still alive and I need that buff no matter what."
"That's apparently all that matters to you."
Gareth didn't respond.
***
The chamber at the end of the secondary hallway was larger than all the previous ones.
And in the center of it was the boss.
[Kobold Mastodon — Level 18 — MINOR BOSS]
Four meters of muscle and black bone armor. A sword the size of a young tree in its right hand, held with a ease that defied any reasonable physical law. And that stance — completely offensive, not a single defensive point in its posture, as if the concept of defending itself had never once crossed whatever it had in place of a mind.
In front of it, using whatever space remained between each attack to stay alive, was the boy.
Gareth recognized him in under a second.
'Is that actually him...?'
The same one as always. The one who was always trying to provoke him. The one who had thrown his bag into the fountain that same afternoon.
Now he had his orb raised with both hands launching fire spells that hit the Mastodon's armor and dissipated without leaving a mark, screaming with that specific voice of someone who has gone from terror to panic and from panic to something that no longer has a name.
"Help! Someone! Please I don't want to die!"
The Mastodon raised its sword for the finishing blow.
The orb hit the floor.
No mana. No spells. Nothing between him and a massive sword descending straight toward him.
Gareth was already running.
He arrived at the exact instant the sword came down — he put the Claws of Marveth between the blade and the boy, felt the impact travel up his arms with a force that had no human scale, and held.
The Mastodon stepped back half a step.
The boy stared up at him from the floor with his eyes wide open.
"W— what...?"
"What the hell are you waiting for!" Gareth didn't look at him. His eyes were fixed on the Mastodon already repositioning its sword. "Get out of here right now!"
The boy grabbed the orb off the floor and ran without looking back.
Gareth stepped aside letting the sword slam into the spot where he had been standing a moment before. The stone beneath the impact cracked in every direction.
'Level 18. Black bone armor that doesn't yield to conventional damage. Completely offensive combat style — no deliberate defense, relies on nothing ever landing.'
'In the game I'd needed armor penetration buffs for this.'
'I don't have them.'
The Mastodon charged.
It was different from everything before.
There were no patterns to read — or if there were they were buried under so much aggression they were invisible. The Mastodon didn't think in terms of angles or flanks or tactical coordination. It thought in terms of constant pressure — keep the attack going at all times, give no space to breathe, make dodging the only permanently available option.
And it worked.
Gareth dodged the first horizontal arc by dropping to the floor. The second vertical arc by rolling left. A shoulder check he didn't anticipate sent him two meters back and he barely had time to reposition before the sword came again.
He countered three times. All three times the Claws bounced off the armor without leaving a mark.
'Can't penetrate it. Can't stop it — only dodge.'
The Mastodon had him backed against the far wall and it knew it. It slowed the pace of its attacks slightly — not from exhaustion but with the specific intelligence of something that knows it has the target cornered and can take its time finishing the job.
Gareth moved right looking for space.
The Mastodon cut the angle.
Left.
Cut again.
'It's reading the movements. Learns fast for its level.'
Then the Mastodon did something Gareth didn't expect.
It stopped.
Just for an instant — the exact moment when Gareth shifted his weight forward preparing the next dodge and left his center of gravity committed to one side.
The Mastodon's free hand moved toward its armor.
It drew an axe.
Small compared to the sword. The size of a human head. It held it for a second looking at exactly the point where Gareth was exposed.
And threw it.
Predator's Instinct processed the trajectory the instant the axe left its hand — Gareth snapped his head back and the blade passed centimeters from his face, close enough that he felt the cut air graze his forehead.
Too close.
But that instant — the fraction of a second his eyes followed the axe — was enough.
The Mastodon was already moving.
Four meters of mass and momentum concentrated into a single point of impact — sword raised, angle calculated, no room to dodge this time.
Mourgare didn't think. He ran straight at it too — and at the exact right moment dropped to the floor and slid between its legs.
He came up standing directly behind the Kobold Mastodon.
"That was a dirty move." He said it without raising his voice. "But I can't expect anything more from a simple monster."
The Mastodon turned to face him completely.
"However..." He fixed his gaze on it — an expression that was genuinely unsettling. "Now this just got personal."