ABH - CH 43 - A Star Hidden By The Sky

A/N: It was written i stg but I was soooooo sleepy

Chapter Forty-Three

A Star Hidden By The Sky

Rise of Winter, Week 5, Day 6

She didn’t stalk forward; she didn’t dive in headfirst. No, Freddie watched from the edge of the torch glow, looking for what gave the Starlight Goblin its name. 

Starlight. There are no stars in Gargantua. Freddie mused. Besides that, how does a dungeon know what starlight looks like?

The black goblin, with its streaks of silver skin, was wearing armor to match—though it was still crumbling. The leather was cracked and chipping away, and the metal buckles were tarnished. Its sharp nails pointed at Freddie, and she noticed the creature didn’t wear shoes. Beneath its feet, the goblin’s shadow coalesced into a fog blocking out where its skin met dirt. 

Freddie didn’t move as the two Yellow Goblins screeched and pointed their wands at her, she didn’t flinch when they aggressively stomped their feet and banged their chest. No. Because Freddie had already dominated the Yellow Goblins. Again and again, they had hidden in the dark, their shields up and protecting them from Freddie’s fist. That wouldn’t happen again. 

Flexing her arms, she followed the sparks in her vision—the ones [Fist of the Flame Monk] used to guide her movements. It wanted her to slide her feet apart, to maintain her balance. She could feel the whispered movements in her mind taking shape. 

Let it not be said that Freddie was rebellious even against her own authority. 

Sliding her feet apart, Freddie bent her knees slightly and brought her fists up before her. She watched through the flames as the Starlight Goblin growled at its underlings and two white globes encircled it. One globe surrounded the black goblin and the Yellow Goblin, while the other overlapped the first globe but only encased the Starlight Goblin and the second Yellow Goblin. 

She took a centering breath, waiting for an attack, for a charge, for a spell to be cast. 

Freddie didn’t have to wait long. 

The Starlight Goblin thrust its palm out toward Freddie, sending a rushing wave of mana out before her. Her mess of hair was blown by the force of it, but Freddie was unmoved. A grin spread across her face. 

“Is that all you’ve got, you grimey—” Freddie cut herself off, twisting at the waist and reaching out to grab the tendril that was rushing toward her, its sharpened tip scraping the back of her hand as she wrapped her palm around it. 

With a hiss, the tendril sank back into the darkness. Freddie was about to step back, toward the three goblins and the nearby torchlight, when a second tendril appeared. 

[Quick Fight] didn’t activate, didn’t tell Freddie she should bend backwards to dodge. 

She did it anyway, watching as the tendril cut through the air she had once found herself standing in. As it passed above her head, she stretched her arms out behind her back and braced herself. Kicking off the ground, she dodged a third attack. As her palms rotated, Freddie bent her back to land still facing the trio of goblins. 

She rushed them, activating [Running] as she charged. [Fist of the Flame Monk] had two sets of sparks now. One was to the right, fist-level and a guiding motion, and the other began lower and shot upwards. 

A kick. 

Freddie lifted her leg, shifting her [Imbue Flame] and fire to engulf her heel as she brought her foot down over the overlapped shields. As cracks spread across the top of the outer globe, Freddie twisted on her planted leg and snapped her airborne foot back down. 

Now was not the time to conserve her energy. If she needed to, she could gulp down one of the potions at her waist. No. Now was the time to go all out. 

As she landed, she followed up with a flat, fire-engulfed palm brought down at the edge of the circular cracks her kick had caused. She poured her flames down over the globe upon contact, letting the white hot fire sink down like liquid. 

The Yellow Goblin nearest to her shrieked and dropped the shield that surrounded it. Between one breath and the next, the white light was back and healthier than ever. 

Freddie pulled her hand back to hit it again, but the Starlight Goblin was pointed at her. Unmoving, unblinking, just the jagged nail the color of night angled right at Freddie’s face. 

Behind her, Freddie wondered where Ogon was. 

But she couldn’t turn away, not yet, not while the enemy stood tall behind protective barriers and could attack at will. 

So she landed another punch. It had worked all the times before. 

After a crack formed in the new shield, Freddie felt a pang in her hip. Glancing down, one of the inky black tendrils had reappeared, slinking out of the shadow of her coat and was stabbing her. 

Taking a rough breath, Freddie ripped off the outer layer of her outfit and stomped on it. She was reluctant to use fire on her own outfit, but the force of her heel caused the tendril to collapse in on itself. Freddie placed her hand on her hip and pulled it away when she felt hot liquid. Looking at her fingers, she saw the smudged crimson and gold of her blood. 

It was, in retrospect, not the brightest idea. Freddie tightened her fists, reignited her flames even as the three goblins chittered and screeched and shrieked. 

[Regenerate]

As her flesh began knitting itself back together, Freddie spared Ogon a glance. He was darting around half a dozen tendrils of shadow himself—but whenever they touched him, they simply vanished. His fire, or his light, too strong for the elemental Skill to break through to Ogon’s core. 

An elementalist was never going to break through the power of a trueborn Spirit, no matter how young said spirit was. 

A grin slid across Freddie’s face, the orange of her eyes wild in the face of her flames. She turned back to the goblins. 

“Face me like a Gladiator, you cowards,” she growled. 

Then she pounced, no longer was she following the guiding marks of [Fist of the Flame Monk] or the precognition that [Quick Fight] could give. They were useless here, before an enemy that had made Freddie bleed. They were Skills meant for precision, meant for style. That wasn’t what Freddie wanted. 

Freddie wanted to make them suffer—just as they had torn into her, she wanted to tear into them. 

As the rims of her vision went red, Freddie became fire incarnate. Focusing on the Yellow Goblin to the right of the Starlight Goblin, Freddie figured it couldn’t create endless shields. Soon enough, the creature would be forced to drop it permanently. 

So, even as the goblin repaired its shield, Freddie flooded it with fire. And, after several seconds, the shield broke once again. This time, Freddie was ready for it. She stepped within range of the Yellow Goblin. 

The creature swiped out at her, its nails not sharp enough to break skin, and Freddie caught its wrist and gave a twist. Flipping the Yellow Goblin around and pressing its arm into its back, Freddie laughed. 

“You lot are always so weak once I get within your guard,” she whispered, as if telling the Yellow Goblin a secret. “Did you know? It’s easy once you’re trapped against a wall. To simply snap you out of existence.”

Freddie shoved the Yellow Goblin forward—not toward a wall, but toward the other shield holding the rest of the monsters. 

And then she gripped the back of the goblin's neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, until a pop and snap resounded. The two goblins within the shield didn’t flinch, though. Freddie had hoped watching one of their guard die would rattle the Starlight Goblin. She should have known better. 

These things weren’t people. 

They were constructs of mana and magic. Of corruption purged from Gargantua itself. They only had one purpose. 

To destroy. 

Freddie let the Yellow Goblin’s body fall, and took a ragged breath. Perhaps, were she truly a child, Freddie would have regretted the brutality with which she acted. 

Perhaps, if Freddie were the Fredericka of before, she wouldn’t be capable of such brutality at all. 

But Freddie was also Kalina. She was also a Gladiator. She was a fighter, trained not in the safety of a gym but in the dirt pits of the Games. It was life and death, always, for Kalina. And so, Freddie simply grinned. And she started again. 

Stepping over the Yellow Coblin’s corpse, she approached the second Yellow Goblin. It was looking frantically between the fire spirit behind Freddie and the monster attacking its shield. Fire. Fire. More fire. Freddie was melting the mana shield away. And the Yellow Goblin could do nothing but scream and watch. 

Freddie didn’t spare the Starlight Goblin a thought, not while she couldn’t get to it. Not while it stood, protected like a princess. There was no point in worrying about it. Ogon was keeping the tendrils at bay, and none had sprouted in the wrinkles of her clothes again. The Skill used either had a cooldown or it had specific conditions to be met. 

Either way, Freddie didn’t have the bandwidth to give it more than a cursory thought. 

Her fist landed on the shield for a fifth time, and the mana construct shattered. 

Stepping into the guard of the Yellow Goblin, Freddie reached for its throat. As her fingers stretched, as her arm flexed, as her foot landed with her step—she froze. 

And then she turned her gaze to the Starlight Goblin, which had a grotesque mimicry of a grin on its face. 

Freddie wasn’t just frozen. 

She wasn’t willingly stopping herself. 

And it wasn’t from fear, because she was certain this goblin would crumble before her if it had been a one-on-one. 

No. 

Freddie had fallen into the Starlight Goblin’s trap. Around her, darkness reigned. It grasped at the shadows in her elbows, wrapping around her forearms. It tore into her already aching knees from the wrinkles in her pants. It stabbed her stomach, sinking into her flesh like a knife through butter. Because this darkness was mana manifested. 

It was not a blade that could be repelled; it was not a Strength that could be overwhelmed. 

It was a gap in Freddie’s defenses. 

And so, even trapped as she was, Freddie laughed. 

Behind her she could hear Ogon shouting. 

“Captain Lady!” He shrieked, and Freddie could hear the way his voice was modulating with his sharp movements. 

He was trying to get to her. To burn his way to her. To protect her. 

Freddie knew it without even looking. She could feel it in her bones. 

But that didn’t matter. It neither fueled her frenzy nor did it cause her crazed need to attack to falter. 

All that mattered was that Freddie was up against a monster that could match her. 

Maybe not in brute strength, but in magic? Oh, how this beast was shining in the dark.

Freddie flexed her hand, feeling the pinprick of the sharpened shadows cutting into her skin. She was mere inches from the frozen Yellow Goblin, which had yet to realize that its better had saved it. And so, Freddie opened her mouth, and within it were razors of shadow. 

“Let’s see who is faster,” she mouthed. “You or my Skill.”

[Regenerate]

And then Freddie let the knives of darkness reach into her; she let them cut her to bits. They didn’t get very deep before [Regenerate] started fighting back. 

So, Freddie snapped her hands out, grimacing at the severing of her skin from her muscles—and then immediately after, to the rebuilding of her flesh. She gripped the sides of the Yellow Goblin's head tightly, digging her fingers into its skull. And then she dragged it down onto her quickly approaching knee. 

As a crack resounded, she did it again. And again. Until the goblin was unflinching. Until the corpse was just that: a corpse. 

That was when Freddie turned to the Starlight Goblin. It hadn’t moved from its spot the entire time. Freddie would make it move. 

She would chase it around this hall until it was panting from exhaustion. Until it had used up every drop of mana. Until Freddie had gained a thousand Skill Levels. Until she killed it just like she killed the rest of the goblins on the first floor.