Chapter 487: Dogpile

Intelligent opponents were always more challenging to handle than mindless ones. However, that also meant he had more opportunities to improve. By being smarter, he was forced to use some more creative options.

Now that their dogpiling strategy was no longer working, they were keeping their distance. Instead, they were throwing long-range attacks at him. These attacks were much weaker than their normal ones, and only the disruptive bolts of mana from a couple of them caused him any real trouble.

It became apparent that they weren’t going to throw themselves at him any time soon, and so he was already preparing himself to do it for them.

However, he suddenly felt a pulse of mana, and a wave of black light headed right for his face. The origin of this attack was from the big ass goblin monster still sitting on its stone throne. Its little horns were glowing with the same black energy.

Julius didn’t really have time to examine these horns and had to deal with the black mass approaching. He manipulated one of his barriers to block the mass, but to his surprise, the black mass split apart. These parts were like water splashing against a glass pane, and they went around the barrier, coalescing back together once they were on the other side.

Julius was fascinated immediately. This mass didn’t seem to lose any of its potency, nor any of its force when doing this. He was curious about how this attack worked and even considered letting it hit him. He held back, though, something he had been getting much better at over time.

Instead, he stepped to the side at the last moment and let this mass fly past him. Still, he wasn’t shocked when he saw the mass freeze in the air and reverse back at him. His eyes were still on the monster boss, and he flicked his hand backwards using some of his aura to eviscerate this mass of black energy.

To his interest, his aura came across some resistance. While it was able to tear it apart, it took considerable effort on his end to wipe out every trace of it. The technique was surprisingly resilient and didn’t rely on willpower to keep it together. It relied on complexity and structure to do that.

Julius grinned at the boss monster, who was now sitting straighter in their throne. Seeing him deal with the attack so easily must have finally drawn the monster’s attention. The big goblin rose to his feet, grabbed a stone staff on the side of his throne, and pointed it at Julius.

The other goblins who had seen this all quickly ran out of the way for some reason. They looked truly terrified, and Julius soon found out why. He was barely able to detect the mana workings of the skill, and in less than a second, a dense beam of black energy came roaring at him.

This black beam was different from before. It was much more powerful and had a lot more mana, but there was this sickly property to it that caught his eye. It reminded him of the Corruption Concept he had come across previously, but only slightly different. It focused a lot more on eating away mana structures rather than flesh and aura.

Julius swiftly placed three of his barriers in front of him. The black beam slammed into the barrier with a mighty thud, and while they held up against the immense force of the beam, the attack still had a lot of power behind it.

His barriers showed signs of strain as the black beam corroded their integrity. Not only that, but the beam split into multiple sections, much like the previous attack. Each of these sections went in various directions, attacking Julius from all sides.

Julius took control of his other barriers and whirled them around himself. It took some effort to track the trajectories of all these attacks, but he managed to do so. After he dealt with the barrage, he created several spikes around him, formed out of the slowly deteriorating barriers.

Then, with a wave of his hand, these spikes let out a shrieking whistle as they tore across the distance. He saw the monster’s eyes widen barely as these spikes appeared before it with incredible speed.

However, it reacted in time, creating several barriers of its own in its path. These barriers reassembled the black beams of mana and ate away at his constructs the moment they made contact.

Unfortunately, Julius’s constructs were enhanced with his aura, which gave them a little extra boost and increased their durability. The first two spikes were stopped by the barriers, getting dissolved by whatever energy this creature possessed. But the other two spikes shattered these barriers and exploded in the monster’s face.

An explosion of dust billowed outward, and when it settled, Julius spotted the monster wincing as it rubbed its face. The spikes had done a lot less damage than he expected. But to be fair, there was an alarmingly large quantity of mana being channeled through this monster’s body.

The goblin boss looked behind him at the location where his throne used to sit. Its face underwent several changes as it observed the now broken pieces of stone. Then turned back to Julius with an alarming amount of anger rippling through its gray face.

“My bad. I was aiming at you, not your throne,” Julius yelled out, hoping to appease this monster. He honestly didn’t mean to destroy something that was clearly special to the beast.

All he got in return was an ear-shattering roar from the massive creature.

“What do you want me to say? You are the one who attacked me first, don’t try to play the victim now,” Julius shouted back.

He couldn’t believe the audacity of the creature. It was its own fault at the end of the day. It probably shouldn’t have attacked Julius while still so close to it, and definitely shouldn’t get mad when something happened to it. That was unreasonable.

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Of course, Julius didn’t know if the monster could understand what he was saying, but he wanted to think that the monster understood his tone because the beast suddenly ripped the greatsword from its back, and even more mana was channeled into its body.

The monster moved way faster than a beast that size should be able to. It was even faster than the smaller goblins, and Julius suddenly found himself face to face with a nine-foot angry monster swinging a gigantic sword at him. That put a smile on his face.

He tried to siphon as much kinetic energy as possible, but there was only so much he could do. Logic told him to step to the side, but his heart told him otherwise. He wanted to see just how he compared to such a beast and whether he could hold up against it. From his estimation, the beast had more strength than most of the Tier 4s he had faced.

He let the claw constructs over his fingers melt down and form into a staff on his own. He had come to enjoy using a staff more than a sword at times. It required less finesse, and despite his passable skill with a blade, he wasn’t at the same level as some of these other geniuses.