Chapter 34: The Exhaustion Protocol

  The Eastern Woods were not like the peaceful, sun-dappled forests of the starting zone. Here, the trees were gnarled and ancient, their roots twisting out of the earth like calcified veins. The canopy was so thick it blotted out the moonlight, leaving the forest floor in a state of perpetual, suffocating twilight. The air smelled of wet rot, pine resin, and the distinct, musky odor of unwashed bodies.

  Yuta and Aiko crouched in the dense underbrush on a ridge overlooking the hollow where the lumber mill used to operate. Now, it was a ruin of splintered wood and overturned wagons. In the center of the clearing, a massive bonfire roared, casting long, dancing shadows against the trees.

  Around the fire, the "Green Menace" was celebrating.

  Thirteen goblins.

  They were not the comical, small creatures of children’s fairy tales. In Elixir Online, goblins were lean, wiry bundles of fast-twitch muscle and malicious intent. Their skin was a mottled, sickly green, scarred from constant infighting. They wore scavenged armor—pieces of leather aprons from the mill workers, rusted iron pot lids used as bucklers, and jagged shards of saw blades tied to wooden clubs. They moved with a jerky, twitchy energy, constantly shoving and snapping at each other.

  "Thirteen," Aiko whispered, her voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire. She gripped the hilt of her starter dagger so tightly her virtual knuckles were white. "They look... fast. And angry."

  "Anger is a high-energy state," Yuta noted, his eyes scanning the camp, tagging each enemy with a mental marker. "It burns stamina. We want them angry."

  He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out the two vials of Sun-Drenched Stamina Draught. The golden liquid inside swirled lazily, glowing with a soft, internal light that seemed out of place in the dark woods.

  "Drink," Yuta commanded softly.

  They uncorked the vials in unison. The taste was sharp and sweet, like biting into a ripe orange while standing in a summer breeze.

  [System Alert: Consumed 'Sun-Drenched Stamina Draught (High-Grade)']

  [Effect Applied: Solar Warmth. Stamina Regeneration increased by 10%. Fatigue accumulation paused for 5 minutes.]

  A warm, tingling sensation spread through Yuta’s limbs. The heaviness of his armor vanished. His breath came easier. He felt as if he could run a marathon without breaking a sweat.

  "Phase One," Yuta said, turning to Aiko. "Take the high ground."

  Aiko nodded. She reached into her satchel and scooped out a handful of the translucent blue Free-Fall Balm. She swallowed it quickly, suppressing a grimace at the texture.

  Almost instantly, the heavy gravity of the game released its hold on her. She took a deep breath, bent her knees, and launched herself upward. It wasn't a jump; it was an ascent. She soared twenty feet into the air, silent as smoke, and grabbed onto the thick branch of an overarching oak tree. She pulled herself up with effortless grace, crouching on the limb like a gargoyle.

  She looked down at Yuta and gave a thumbs-up.

  Yuta stood up. He didn't draw his weapon. Instead, he adjusted the fitting of his Zephyr-Circuit Cuirass. The aerodynamic fur along his arms and legs bristled slightly in the wind. He stepped out of the bushes and walked calmly down the slope, entering the firelight.

  He stopped ten meters from the nearest goblin.

  "Hey!" Yuta shouted, his voice flat and unimpressed.

  The camp froze. The goblin nearest to him, a scout sharpening a bone spear, looked up. It blinked, its yellow eyes widening in disbelief that a lone, under-leveled human would walk into their territory.

  Then, it let out a screech. A high-pitched, piercing shriek that shattered the silence of the woods.

  The other twelve goblins snapped to attention. They grabbed their clubs, their rusted blades, and their jagged spears. They turned as one, a singular organism of violence.

  "Now, Aiko!" Yuta yelled.

  From the darkness of the canopy above, Aiko dropped her payload. She didn't have bombs or magic spells. She had rocks—heavy, jagged river stones she had collected on the way.

  Thud. Thud. Crack.

  A stone the size of a melon slammed into the back of a goblin shaman's head, sending him sprawling into the dirt. Another rock crashed into the bonfire, sending a shower of sparks and burning embers exploding into the faces of the warriors.

  "Down here, you little green freaks!" Aiko screamed from the branches, waving her arms. "Come and get me!"

  The goblins roared in collective fury. They looked up, saw the girl in the tree, and then looked down at the human standing in the open. Their AI processed the threat levels. The girl was out of reach. The boy was right there.

  Thirteen goblins screamed a war cry and charged.

  Yuta didn't panic. He watched them come. He calculated their speed—roughly fifteen miles per hour in a sprint. He calculated the distance. He waited until he could smell their rancid breath.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Then, he turned and ran.

  But he didn't run like a normal player. He engaged the Zephyr-Circuit passive. As he hit the slope leading back into the dense forest, he dropped into a slide. The aerodynamic fur reduced his friction coefficient to near zero. He didn't stumble over roots; he flowed over them. He leaned into the turns, his boots skimming the mud like ice skates.

  Behind him, the goblin pack hit the slope. They didn't slide. They scrambled. They clawed at the dirt, their legs pumping furiously as they tried to catch the prey that was gliding just out of reach.

  "Keep them moving!" Yuta radioed to Aiko via the party chat. "Do not let them stop to breathe!"

  High above, Aiko was leaping from branch to branch, the Free-Fall Balm allowing her to float over gaps that would have been impossible to cross. She kept pace with the stampede below, raining down stones and insults whenever the goblins slowed down, resetting their aggression timers and forcing them to sprint harder.

  The chase tore through the woods. Yuta was a ghost, a blur of blue and silver weaving through the trees. The goblins were a chaotic avalanche of noise and wasted energy. They tripped over vines. They collided with each other. They screamed in frustration as their prey effortlessly drifted around a massive boulder while they had to scramble over it.

  One minute passed.

  Yuta checked his HUD. His stamina bar was still at 98%. The Sun-Drenched Draught was keeping him topped off.

  Behind him, the goblin screams were changing. They were no longer sharp war cries. They were becoming ragged. Breathless.

  Two minutes passed.

  The pack was stringing out. The smaller, faster scouts were still close, but the heavier warriors with the clubs were falling behind, their chests heaving.

  Three minutes.

  Yuta saw a clearing ahead—a flat expanse of mud near the riverbank. This was the kill zone.

  He burst into the clearing and stopped abruptly. He turned around, drawing his Venom-Groove Dirk from his belt. The dark, curved metal of the D-rank blade caught the faint ambient light, a single drop of synthesized toxin beading at the tip.

  The first goblin, a scout with a jagged bone knife, burst out of the bushes. It saw Yuta standing perfectly still. It tried to screech in triumph, but all that came out was a wheezing, wet cough. Its legs were trembling violently. It stumbled forward, raising its knife, but the movement was agonizingly sluggish, as if it were submerged in deep water.

  [Enemy Status: Fatigued]

  [Movement Speed: -80%]

  [Attack Speed: -50%]

  [Defense: -30%]

  The goblin’s stamina bar was entirely grayed out. Zero. It had sprinted at maximum capacity for three minutes straight without a single pause. Its AI was now forcefully paralyzing its motor functions to simulate extreme physiological exhaustion.

  Yuta didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, effortlessly side-stepping the slow, clumsy slash of the goblin's knife. He didn't need the venom coating his blade to slowly drain the creature's health; the sheer sharpness of the steel was enough against an unresisting target. He drove the dirk cleanly into the gap of its leather armor, severing a vital artery.

  [-45 HP]

  [Critical Hit!]

  The goblin collapsed face-first into the mud, too exhausted to even register the fatal blow.

  "Aiko, drop!" Yuta commanded through the party chat.

  Aiko plummeted from the dark canopy, her starter dagger drawn. She landed with surprising precision directly behind the second goblin that staggered blindly into the clearing. Before the heavy creature could turn its thick neck, she drove her blade deep between its shoulder blades.

  The rest of the pack stumbled into the kill zone one by one. They were a pathetic, broken sight. Thirteen terrifying predators reduced to panting, trembling wrecks. They leaned on their heavy wooden clubs, gasping for air, their lungs burning. They watched with wide, fearful yellow eyes as the two "prey" moved among them with the pristine, untouched energy of fresh athletes.

  It wasn't a battle. It was a systematic execution protocol.

  Yuta moved with efficient, brutal precision. The Venom-Groove Dirk flashed in the dim light—a precise slash to a hamstring, a clean puncture to a lung. Move to the next target. The venom was secondary; the blade's edge did the heavy lifting. Aiko was a whirlwind of motion, using the lingering effects of her low-gravity balm to effortlessly jump over sluggish swings and strike from above.

  "Eleven," Yuta counted aloud, pulling his dirk from the chest of a heavy warrior who had simply fallen to his knees in the mud, unable to lift his rusted shield.

  "Twelve!" Aiko shouted, kicking a breathless goblin scout into the shallow river water.

  The last goblin, the shaman, tried to raise his staff to cast a rudimentary spark spell. But without stamina, he couldn't channel the environmental Aether. A faint wisp of smoke fizzled and died at the tip of his wooden staff. He looked at Yuta, dropping the staff entirely in surrender.

  Yuta ended the calculation with a single, horizontal slash of his dirk.

  Silence returned to the Eastern Woods.

  Yuta stood in the center of the muddy clearing, his chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm. He flicked the digital blood off the dark steel of his dirk before sheathing it smoothly at his hip.

  [Quest Complete: The Green Menace]

  [Reward: 500 EXP, 5 Silver Coins]

  [Bonus Experience (Solo/Duo Party Multiplier): +350 EXP]

  A cascade of golden light erupted around Yuta, washing away the gloom of the forest.

  [Level Up!]

  [You are now Level 5.]

  He looked over at Aiko. She was enveloped in an identical pillar of golden light.

  "Level 8!" Aiko cheered, doing a small, triumphant spin in the mud, completely ignoring the goblin corpses around her. "Yes! I actually have a real health bar now! Yuta, that was insane! They couldn't even fight back! We just made them run themselves into the ground!"

  "We exploited a biological imperative," Yuta corrected calmly, walking over to the fallen shaman to begin the looting sequence. "They were bound by the rigid limitations of their programmed physiology. We temporarily removed ours. It was a simple equation."

  He collected a few rusted coins and a pouch of glowing green dust from the shaman's robes. The experience yield was mathematically satisfying, but as he checked his status screen, he noted the widening gap between his current progression and the required threshold. Level 5 was an improvement, but it was still lightyears away from the statistics needed to survive an Elite encounter.

  "The efficiency of this method is undeniable," Yuta muttered, closing his interface. He looked up at his partner. "However, a single node is insufficient. We require more data. More clustered targets."

  Aiko was busy picking up rusted iron swords from the mud, her inventory filling with heavy, low-value loot. She paused, looking at him.

  "Do you possess any other pending tasks of similar density in your quest log?" Yuta asked, his tone shifting back to the focused demands of an project manager.

  Aiko opened her interface, scrolling past the completed marker for 'The Green Menace'. Her finger traced down a long list of ignored assignments.

  "Actually... yes," Aiko said, a new notification catching her eye. "I picked this one up from the Miller's wife two days ago. It’s a little further south, near the old aqueducts."

  "Define the parameters," Yuta instructed, his mind already preparing the next tactical layout.

  "It's called 'The Chitin Swarm'," Aiko read, wrinkling her nose. "And if we're going there... we're going to need a lot more stamina potions."