Chapter 76 - 73 : Fight !

"I will kill you, capture your soul, and torture it for three hundred years. Your screams will be all that you would hear, so much so that you would wish you were at the bottom of the abyss."

After the boss had quelled Griffin's roar, it bawled at the team with pure devastating anger displayed in its eyes.

While the goblin boss, Sygrart, roared at the players, their visions seemed to fluctuate as they saw a little goblin. Unlike the regular goblins, this one looked a bit different, having more similarities with an average human than a regular goblin should. It was as tall as a regular goblin but had pale skin like an Asian human. Nonetheless, it wasn't its looks that kept their eyes fixed at the half-blood but rather the fact that it was crying in the midst of other goblins. Despite being of the average height for a goblin adult, it acted more like a child and slowly squatted down with glistening teardrops streaming down its eyes.

The vision suddenly cut as the players returned to their senses with Sygrart having just completed its 'speech'.

"What the hell was that?" Dream Tiger said with a voice filled with confusion and surprise.

"Focus!" Drunken Hog snapped. Even though it looked like he had also recovered, he was also befuddled at the development that had just occurred. Anyone would be surprised if their scene and location suddenly change without any sign of a spell or a formation whatsoever.

"Petty tricks," Griffin stated while charging towards the boss.

Sygrart, who had most of the visible parts of his body together with a part of his cloak burnt, stared at Griffin with anger. Even though he wasn't the one to injure him with [Kōjin's Arrow], Sygrart was enraged at both Griffin's [Lion Roar] and his audacity at taking it lightly and charging towards it.[1]

A magic array quickly took form in front as Sygrart raised its right hand towards Griffin. A green ray swiftly departed from the array and dashed towards Griffin at a very high speed.

Griffin lifted his shield up in front of his body, effectively sheltering himself and eliminating any possible weak-point but weak points weren't the only thing he had to fear.

*BOOM*

The beam quickly arrived and clashed with the shield that stood in its path, producing a loud boom as a result of the ruthless collision.

Not giving Griffin any time, Sygrart quickly made its move, rapidly appearing before Griffin with a flaming green ball in its hand.

'He's fast!' Griffin stared in shock at Sygrart.

"Don't even think about it!" Drunken Hog and the other long-range players who were on standby, launched their attacks while sealing the boss' possible escape paths.

Dream Tiger's arrows handled the left, Drunken Hog's spell moved from the left, and finally, Kylian had cast a wide-range control-type skill.

Despite witnessing the vigorous attacks of its prideful opponents, Sygrart remained calm. Without showing any time of being flustered, it slammed its palm against the attacks, creating a transparent green barrier between it and the offense.

While it was temporarily occupied by the attack, Griffin managed to space a bit away from Sygrart while Chesces and Sato had closed up the gap, quickly arriving at the scene.

Sato lifted his sword and slashed at the barrier, hacking it to pieces as he wasn't holding back, and also the other attacks had weakened the barrier. Chesces followed up with a horizontal strike at the goblin boss but relying on its high [Agility] stat, Sygrart narrowly dodged the attack by a hair's breadth but Chesces wasn't done.

It was unknown whether he knew that the first attack might not work but Chesces had already slashed out again with his blade after missing the first time.

Realising that it would be stuck in a pinch where it would have to depend on it's somewhat terrible close combat ability, Sygrart took a step back and propelled itself backwards, trying to retreat away from Chesces.

Seeing this, the long-range squad on standby (Fudo, Drunken Hog, Dream Tiger) launched another vollye of attacks this time around giving the goblin boss a run for it's money. Griffin used the volley of attacks as a cover to charge towards the boss.

"[Justice Slash]"

Even though Sygrart had a much higher [Agility] stat, with the continuous bombarding of attacks distracting it, Griffin was able to successfully land a hit on the boss, gaining it's aggro towards himself.

"Arggggh."

As the sword slashed Sygrart, it tried to hold the pain in and extended an arm towards Griffin's face.

"[Entangling Vines]"

At the last minute, the team's druid, Kylian, successfully interrupted the attack and Sato rushed in to dish out a variety of hacks and slashes on the boss' body.

And so the battle went on. While the close combatants tried to engage in close combat with the boss, the long-range squad would interrupt it at specific moments or force Sygrart to make an error in an attack, creating an opportunity for the damage dealers to shine best.

[Sygrart (470/700)]

Of Sygrart's HP, 100 points were depleted after [Kōjin's Arrow] had struck it

"Let's go guys. We can do this." Chesces cheered on his teammates.

"How dare you vermins!" Sygrart roared.

Suddenly, the aura around him[2] intensified as Sygrart's muscles shriveled a bit. The floor beneath him sunk a bit as cracks began to form in a web-like fashion.

"Is that its berserk mode?" Fudo frowned on seeing this.

"No. It shouldn't be." Drunken Hog said with an iffy tone. "The berserk mode or rather [Enraged] state begins once a monster's HP reaches the 15% mark at the very least. So I'm guessing this is a skill or a talent."

In Infinite Realm, the berserk mode of a monster is known as its [Enraged ] state. This special state was made to replicate the exact same in most living creatures, were they go beyond their limit, breaking the natural bar set by their body, in hope of living or escaping a deadly predicament. Similar to how a rabbit becomes aggressive when cornered, the monsters would burst out with greater strength when cornered. Of course this ability isn't common to all monsters. During this state, a monster's regular attributes and strength increases by at least 10%.

Even though the [Enraged] state isn't common to all monsters, to those who possess this special ability, it generally activates once their HP is at least below the 15% mark. In the case of Sygrart, he's HP hadn't even gone below the 50% mark, much less the 15% mark.

"I think I saw this earlier. It was under the talent section of his HP." Dream Tiger commented on their conversation.

"He?"

"Well it is a living being right? Even more so, it's an intelligent one." dream Tiger smirked.

Even though they were talking, their hands were still busy either firing arrows or casting spells.

"So this should be that talent I saw right?" Chesces grimaced.

[[ Limit Breaker (Advanced Talent) : Active Talent :

Breakthrough the body's natural limits at a cost, temporary increasing basic attributes by 5% as long as talent is still active. Duration is dependent on the individual. ]]

Talents are somewhat similar to skills but they are mostly passive though some active ones could be found. What makes talents especially different from skills is that unlike a skill that could just be learnt, a talent has to be developed and acknowledged by the System. Take for example, if a player wants to get the [[ Limit Breaker]] talent, which is an active talent, he/she has to find a way to be able to temporary increase their fighting prowess and attributes without an potion, pellet, drug, skill or equipment whatsoever. They have to perform this act a couple of times after which the Heaven System, which governs the game, would officially grant the ability to them as talent. Hard right? That's what makes talents especially rare. But there are other ways of gaining a talent which you would discover later.

Talents, like equipment, are classified into types and also have ranks(the same goes for skills). The type of talents and skills are as follows:

Basic

Advanced

Peak

Divine; of which Divine is the strongest while Basic are the weakest and also the most common.

The talent [Limit Breaker] is an advanced talent, a very rare one at that. As an advanced talent, it didn't lack in strength or ability. At the cost of the destruction of one's body, the user's strength is increased and this is dependent on the level to which the talent has been practiced(Infinite Facts). As a talent, it isn't easily gotten as luck is a very important factor for it. If trained to the highest level, it is believed that the side effects could be eliminated and one's strength and attributes would be raised by more than two folds.

"So what? Even if you have an Advanced talent, you will still die." Chesces declared confidently. 'It's about time we handle the snoopers. She should be here already.'

AN :

You might have noticed me addressing Sygrart as 'It' rather than 'He'. This isn't due to racial hate or species hate but rather it serves to easily enable you the readers to understand who I'm addressing. You can easily notice this in the tagged paragraph.

[2] So I decided to use 'He' rather than 'It'…I'm really a confused human being…