Pete lunged forward, stabbing at the brute’s legs, but the hobgoblin moved out of range and pulled a long blade from his belt, grinning in obvious delight as he hunched down and prepared to attack.
“It seems you’ve finally decided to join the—”
The hobgoblin didn’t have time to finish the taunt. Pete ran towards him, shoving aside the blade as Grindle thrust out with his own knife and shoulder-barging the brute. Pete’s smaller bulk wasn’t sufficient to push the enemy back, but his goal wasn’t to knock the enemy down, but to get close enough to thrust the machete up towards Grindle’s throat.
He hit the brute’s chest and immediately shifted the trajectory of his attack, jumping up off the ground and thrusting the machete up towards the elite boss’s throat. Grindle pulled aside, grabbing Pete with one bloody hand as the human’s blade scraped the side of his cheek and drew a fresh line of blood.
Irate and spitting curses, the hobgoblin reached up and grabbed Pete by the arm, jerking him back and attempting to skewer him with his own blade. Filled with renewed strength and leaning on his heightened agility and luck, Pete kicked and bucked in the boss’s grip, avoiding the worst of the brute’s blade but earning a cut in the side as he tried once more to stab the hobgoblin.
Grindle tossed him backward, and Pete immediately swapped the machete for his bow, tried to notch an arrow, and fire all before he hit the ground. He managed the feat only a split second before he tumbled backward, sending a drill arrow towards the enemy’s head. The shot wasn’t fired with much force, but it was so unexpected that Coin Lord Grindle neglected to defend against the shot.
He bellowed in rage, back arched, head looking skyward as the arrow burrowed into his left eye.
>> ACHIEVEMENT: Airborne Shooter!
Congratulations! You just fired an arrow at an elite enemy while being thrown through the air, and you actually hit your target! Well, you hit a target! Who knows what you were actually aiming for; the point is you hit something, and that gives you bragging rights.
ACHIEVEMENT BONUS: Temporary Blood Overdraft buff!
Your Blood Overdraft ability will continue for the next twenty seconds, provided you only attack with your bow and arrow!
>> ARCHERY PROFICIENCY +3
>> CRITICAL STRIKE PROFICIENCY +1
>> BATTLE FORTUNE PROFICIENCY +1
Pete didn’t hesitate. He drew another shaft, selecting a drill arrow and holding until the charged shot triggered. He was technically in stealth, which meant his critical strike chance would be much higher, provided he could fire the shot before he was interrupted by the hulking brute that was now running toward him.
He held the shot, trying to stay calm as Coin Lord Grindle charged at him with a bloody dagger raised and the other arrow jutting from his left eye. The brute was just a few feet away when Pete released the shot, firing a shard of blinding light into the elite boss’s chest and ripping through armor and flesh as the drill arrow burrowed through meat and bone, carving a fist-sized hole through Coin Lord Grindle’s body.
The shot hit with impressive speed and force, but it wasn’t enough to stop the brute’s momentum, and Pete was forced to dive out of the way, earning a cut to the shoulder as Grindle slashed his blade at him. Pete grunted as he hit the ground and rolled into a crouch. In a moment of pure inspiration, not wanting to lose the continuing berserker rage that was filling him with strength and power, he pulled two arrows from his quiver, holding them like daggers at the midpoint and slashing out at Grindle as the boss turned around.
One of the slashes cut into the hobgoblin’s right calf, scoring a deep gash that began to bleed profusely. Unfortunately, the cut was struck so fiercely that the arrow broke in Pete’s hand.
Coin Lord Grindle backhanded Pete, but with his impaired vision, missed the mark and only managed to hit Pete in the shoulder. It still felt like a bag of cement had been thrown against his body, but Pete recovered quickly, ducking inside the hobgoblin’s reach and thrusting up with the left arrow so that it was driven up into the brute’s abdomen.
The arrow stuck in place, and Pete left it, dodging away as Grindle tried to grab him. He pulled another two arrows and moved around behind the brute, slicing once more at the big boss’s legs and trying to replicate his successful fights against other hobgoblins.
>> ACHIEVEMENT: Anything is a dagger!
Congratulations! You just used a pair of arrows to fight an elite boss. Why stick to conventional blades when you can use arrows which are, of course, legendarily renowned for their robust nature and for never, ever snapping in half!
ACHIEVEMENT BONUS: For the next 10 seconds, any arrow which breaks as a result of being used as a dagger has a chance of being returned unbroken to your quiver.
With each attack supercharged by the Blood Overdraft ability, the arrows being so much lighter than the machete, Pete was forced into a different style of fighting he hadn’t really employed yet. While his additional Strength still showed through, it was Pete’s heightened Agility that really made the difference, allowing him to move more swiftly and strike again and again while ducking and dodging out of the way of the hobgoblin’s attacks.
Time was still slowed, which meant that Coin Lord Grindle seemed to be striking clumsily. Each blade thrust or fist punch was still delivered with lethal intensity, but Pete found that he could anticipate where the attacks were headed and avoid the worst damage with relative ease.
He fell into a rhythm of thrusting and slashing, ducking out of the way, then driving back in again to attack once more. When an arrow shaft broke or the head stuck into the hobgoblin’s body, he left it in place and pulled a new arrow from his quiver—a task which was made much easier by the fact that he didn’t need to physically pull out each arrow but could summon it at will, as though pulling the item from his inventory.
>> DODGE PROFICIENCY +3
>> IMPROVISED DAGGERS +1
Despite the fact that he had fallen into a smooth rhythm and was apparently doing decent damage to the hobgoblin, Coin Lord Grindle was still standing, still swinging with his fists and cutting with his dagger. Pete needed to put him down, but he wasn’t sure exactly how to do that while forced to use the arrows as improvised daggers. On top of that, his Blood Overdraft ability was seconds from ending, and that would leave him facing Grindle in real time and with the drain that always followed the end of the ability.
Seeing that there was no way he was going to be able to kill the hobgoblin in the next three seconds, Pete turned and ran, sprinting to try and get as far from the boss as possible so that he’d have time to recover once the Blood Overdraft debuff kicked in. He looked around the darkness, spotting Sam off to one side, holding the limp body of Coop in her arms while Wolfy savaged a nearby Noob Rider, tearing into the goblin’s flesh as its bike screeched.
Pete also caught sight of Craig, firing his gun at one of the Elite Noob Riders that had apparently survived and was crawling its way toward the trio of goblins. The Elite Rider’s lower half had been sheared off by bullet fire from one of Coin Lord Grindle’s gatling guns, so it was dragging itself with bladed arms toward Craig.
The little goblin didn’t balk from the fight, firing again and again as Torgo occasionally popped out from behind him to send gouts of flames toward the enemy. Grizzle was there too, holding her holy book as a shield and lending her defense to the effort.
There was no time to consider any of this as Blood Overdraft suddenly dropped, Pete’s speed immediately slowed, and he felt the brutal withdrawal of strength and vitality leave his body. The effect was so devastating that he almost fell to the ground but managed to keep running, heading for a metal object up ahead that he tried to use as cover.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It was only as he slumped to a heap behind the copper-colored object that he realized what it was. It was lying on its side and had clearly laid here since it first fell off Sam’s truck. The grinning face of Tongsly Belch stared down at him from the top of the robotic form, and he suddenly recognized the decoy that the Goblin Burrowers had made for him and his crew.
Pete grinned as he crouched behind the metallic object. This was what they were here for. It was the whole purpose of the fight, but somehow Pete had completely forgotten about the decoy, the storm, and everything else other than the need to kill Coin Lord Grindle.
“Oh, you’ve done it now, you pathetic worm!” Grindle spat, forsaking all pretense of his dullard hobgoblin persona. “First you squish like a jelly, and then you somehow come back to life and stick me with your little arrows! That won’t do! That won’t do at all!”
Pete looked out from the space beneath the decoy and the road, seeing Coin Lord Grindle stomp forward. The huge hobgoblin had arrow shafts jutting from his legs and belly, as well as wounds on his arms and the drill arrow still sticking out of his eye as he scanned the area looking for Pete.
The various injuries didn’t seem to bother the brute, however, and as he caught sight of Pete hiding behind the decoy, Coin Lord Grindle began to laugh.
“You can’t hide from me, you human worm! The System wants you dead, and I’m going to crush you like a bug!”
The hobgoblin stomped toward Pete, raising one hand and pulling back the golden face of one of the gaudy rings. Beneath the face of the ring was a button of some sort, which Grindle tried to press but missed given his altered sight. Cursing, the brute tried again, this time successfully depressing the button.
In response, the Fleshcycle began to shift and shudder. Speakers appeared on the sides of the vehicle, each with distorted human faces stretched wide and horns jutting out from their mouths. The human speakers appeared all up and down the length of the Fleshcycle as Grindle chuckled to himself.
Hunched down beside the decoy, Pete noticed a small button at the center point of the machine’s torso. Words were written on a small plaque beneath the button, scrawled in a spidery script which Pete could just understand.
A gift for Vault Breaker from Machinesmith Gurdin. Press when the baddy bad comes to make protections. Don’t be a dick!
Pete had no idea what the machinesmith might have done to the drone, but he was well and truly out of options, and any amount of help would be something. It seemed as though all of his efforts thus far had done little to deter the elite boss, and something Grindle had said sat in Pete’s mind like a splinter.
‘The System wants you dead,’ that’s what the hobgoblin had said, and it didn’t seem like Grindle was speaking casually there. It very much seemed as though he had been given instructions specifically to make sure that Pete didn’t survive the encounter. There was no time to consider that fact, however, as the air was suddenly cut through with a piercing screech so loud and disturbing that Pete’s guts immediately twisted in knots and bile rose in his throat as he clamped both hands against his ears.
The sound was an indescribable chorus of agony and torture as a hundred human souls screeched and cried out at the height of their greatest possible torment. Pete could feel the agonized screams in his body, rattling against his bones. It felt like there were insects crawling on the inside of his brain, trying to scratch their way out of his skull.
Tears falling from his eyes, vision blurred, he peered beneath the decoy and saw Coin Lord Grindle approach, dagger in one hand, grin splitting his gruesome face. Pete tried to shake free from the harrowing screams, but they had effectively stunned him, locking him in place with his hands clamped over his ears, body reacting with visceral revulsion as the cascading voices of torment continued to blare at extreme volume from the Fleshcycle.
He had to do something, had to move or use an ability or…
Unable to pull the hands from his ears, Pete stared down at the brass button sitting above the plaque and the words written by Machinesmith Gurdin. He slammed his forehead down against the button, triggering whatever strange mechanism had been built into the robotic form and rolling away as the screeching continued to scrape the reason from his mind.
Pete was only vaguely aware of the Tongsly Belch decoy righting itself and standing on metallic feet. He thought he could hear machine gears whirring and steam hissing above the din of the horrifying human screeches but couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t until the decoy leveled its two arms, revealing gun barrels nestled within each hand, and started firing a rapid burst of projectiles directly at Coin Lord Grindle that Pete began to see the full value of the robot.
A barrage of bullet fire tore into Grindle’s body, ripping through leather and exposed flesh and dinting metal armor as the hail of bullets rose above the deafening noise of the Fleshcycle’s screaming. The hobgoblin boss raised his hands to defend his face, but the fingers of each hand were promptly ripped to shreds, rings and fingers flying up into the air as he turned around and presented his back to the devastating gunfire.
“DON’T BE A DICK!”
The decoy blared the words in a robotic voice that was now audible as the screeching from the Fleshcycle suddenly stopped.
“DON’T BE A DICK!”
The decoy repeated the words as it emptied the last of its ammo reserves into the hobgoblin leader, shredding the brute’s back with Belch Bucks that glowed red with heat. When the robotic form finally stopped firing, Pete was left with ringing in his ears and the intense feeling that he was just about to vomit. He pushed back against the urge, getting groggily to his feet and circling around the decoy.
The guns that had fired on Grindle were lowered and had returned to their usual form as robotic-looking hands, and the decoy now stood inert. Tongsly Belch’s grinning goblin face was still visible in the dim illumination of those few lights that were still functioning on the Fleshcycle and several surviving Noob Rider bikes. It gave the goblin’s smile a sinister edge that was more than a little chilling, especially considering the damage it had just done to an elite-level boss.
As Pete stumbled forward, his head still ringing from the blast of hellish screams delivered by the Fleshcycle, he kept clear of the area directly in front of the decoy. As he moved closer to Coin Lord Grindle, Pete could see scorch marks and gouges in the road leading up to the hobgoblin. There were some Belch Bucks still embedded in the asphalt, glowing deep orange as steam hissed up from the impact points.
When he approached Coin Lord Grindle’s body, Pete saw similar embedded coins running up and down the brute’s back, blood pouring from the wounds. The hobgoblin was hunched down on his knees, knuckles resting on the ground as he sucked in ragged breaths.
Pete walked around to the side of the boss and saw the full extent of his injuries. Blood was pooling beneath the figure, spreading out across the ground as he stared down at the road, an arrow still jutting from one eye, his face torn and bloodied. Pete noted that almost all of the fingers had been shot off Coin Lord Grindle’s hands and large sections of his arms and torso had been ripped apart and were only hanging together by a thread of skin or sinew.
The hobgoblin boss was half-dead, and the fact that he was still breathing was something of a miracle. Pete couldn’t believe the devastation the decoy’s guns had done, and he made a point to remember to thank the Burrowers the next time he encountered them. It turned out that besting their champion and sparing the goblin clan’s lives had been the best decision Pete had ever made.
As he walked around in front of the hobgoblin, Grindle raised his head. Blood poured down from savage wounds that marred his face. He stared hatefully at Pete through one bloody eye, words gurgling from his mouth as spittle frothed and blood pumped out of a hundred different wounds across his body.
“You…cheated,” he mused a moment before his one good eye rolled up, and he promptly slumped to the ground face first.
Pete stood staring for a moment, his mind still reeling as it slowly came to terms with the fact that the elite boss was dead. Part of him expected the brute to stand up suddenly and announce "phase two" of the boss fight or something equally as troubling, but the dead boss just lay still as blood continued to flow from his broken body.
>> ELITE BOSS DEFEATED: Coin Lord Grindle!
Congratulations! You just killed an elite novice-level boss by using the most precious weapon of all…FRIENDSHIP! Yuck! Your bond with the Burrower clan proved to be the deciding factor in your victory. They might be small, half-blind, and possess all the social grace of a pig anus, but you can’t deny that the little bastards know how to cobble together a death machine!
KILL REWARD: 1000 Belch Bucks
>> ELITE BOSS LOOT BOX: Blue Level
BOSS REWARD: 20 Attribute Points
>> CRITICAL STRIKE DAMAGE PROFICIENCY + 1
>> DUAL WIELDING PROFICIENCY + 1
Pete stood with his chest heaving as one by one, the items that had been stolen from him were returned. A boss loot box appeared hovering above the dead hobgoblin, but Pete left it where it was, turning to see Sam moving closer.
His heart skipped a beat as he saw Coop lying in her hand, but as she moved closer he saw that the little ferret was alive. Coop looked dazed and still shaky, but she was breathing. Craig and his goblin companions had also survived the encounter. They wandered over with Wolf between them and Sam. As the goblins approached, they looked down at Coin Lord Grindle’s corpse, frowning in disbelief at the dead body.
“You did it,” Craig said.
Pete motioned back to the decoy. “I had help, but yeah. He’s dead and we get to keep going.”
“For a while at least,” Coop hissed.
Pete grinned. He reached down and patted Coop gently on the back of the head. She looked up, smiling.
“Alright, settle down, boy,” she said. “We all had a close call, but there’s no need to get all mushy.”
“Just glad you made it, that’s all,” he said.
“Of course I made it. I’m the tank, remember.”
A disgusting sound emanated from the rear of the dead boss, accompanied by a profound stench. Sam backed away, waving a hand in front of her face.
“Jesus! This guy is just the gift that keeps on giving.”
Pete pulled out his Loot Lure and snagged the loot box, then backed away as the hobgoblin’s body continued to rumble and wheeze. The group moved to a safe distance, watching as the corpse finally settled. Pete looked around the area and found that all of the other enemies had either fled or been killed.
“Guess we should start looting then.”
Sam nodded. “Agreed. Then we need to set that decoy up and get that storm away from the arena.”
Pete held up the loot box with a smile. “Let’s start with this.” He frowned as he considered the box.
“Shit! I need a blue-level key to open the damned thing!”