The air in the Mythlorien Forest was thick with the scent of churned earth and the metallic stench of monster blood.
Lohan, firmly attached to Lisa’s back like a layer of obsidian and neon blue, kept his sensors active, sensing the position of each of the eight evolved Kobolds surrounding them.
Even without an elite leader to command them, they were still clever enough to flank the white fox at strategic intervals they found in battle.
"They’re getting impatient, Lisa. At three and nine o’clock... imminent charge," Lohan transmitted through the mental link, his voice now deeper and more serious.
Lisa growled, her front paws digging furrows into the damp earth as the white-gold Spiritual Fire began to lick the air around her. "Ready. Let’s test that gift the Elite left us."
Lohan focused on her core.
Digesting the Elite Kobold’s Mana Stone had been exhausting; the minds of creatures after their first evolution were far more complex, and the memories the Mana Stones carried had to be handled with great care by him as he absorbed them.But the reward was a very useful evolution in his attack matrix.
He felt the new energy pulsing through his membrane, a frequency that sought points of rupture in the biological reality of his enemies.
The first Kobold leaped from a fallen branch, wielding a wooden club reinforced with bone. Lisa dodged with a light movement, but instead of counterattacking immediately, she gave Lohan room to act.
The Slime projected a thin, translucent tentacle that whipped through the air, striking the Kobold’s shoulder mid-flight.
At the moment of contact, Lohan used neither brute force nor acid; he injected a pulse of negative mana that manifested as a glowing crimson symbol upon the monster’s scales. It was a mark of vulnerability that seemed to vibrate in resonance with Lohan’s murderous intent.
"Now, little fox! Hit the marked spot!" Lohan commanded.
Lisa spun on her axis and delivered a kick imbued with concentrated flames directly onto the crimson symbol.
The effect was devastating.
When the fox’s claw touched the mark, the air seemed to crackle with a detonation. The damage was as if two identical, overlapping attacks had occurred in the same microsecond. The Kobold’s hardened scales, which should have withstood the impact, simply collapsed under the doubled piercing pressure.
The creature’s shoulder was vaporized, and the monster’s body was hurled against a tree with such violence that the trunk split.
[Experience: +490]
"That’s... ridiculous," Lisa remarked, her surprise evident in her tone. "Its resistance was ignored as if it were paper."
"It’s the Stigma of Rupture, Lisa. It creates a structural weak point. The next physical or magical attack that hits the mark causes double the kinetic piercing damage," Lohan explained, while already preparing his parallel processing to mark the next two advancing targets.
While reading the Elite Kobold’s memory, Lohan could have chosen other skills to steal, but seeing how useful this skill was, he gave up on learning other things and focused on stealing the Kobold’s experience in using it.
Now, even after having learned this skill so recently, Lohan was already able to use and control it with great skill.
The only thing he had to practice was the synergy with Lisa so he could mark enemies without her having to stop attacking in the meantime.
The battle escalated rapidly.
Lisa became a blur of speed, moving at high speed, no longer needing multiple attacks to finish off each Kobold, while Lohan, acting with the precision of a sniper, fired strands of mana that marked the enemies in succession.
Each mark was followed by a lethal strike from Lisa, resulting in explosions of dark blood and mana residue that saturated the clearing.
Amid the carnage, Lisa charged at a Level 12 Kobold attempting to retreat into the shadows.
She caught up to it in an explosive leap, her jaws wrapped in white fire sinking into the back of the monster’s neck.
The moment life drained from the creature, a familiar phenomenon, but now far more intense, occurred.
Lisa’s body came to an abrupt halt.
An intense, pearlescent glow began to emanate from every strand of her white fur, expanding like a sacred mist that illuminated the forest’s twilight.
Lohan felt the temperature around him rise dramatically, but it wasn’t a burning heat; it was a vibration of pure power.
The fox’s physical structure seemed to be being rewritten in real time. Her muscles became more defined, her silhouette grew slightly, and the flames sprouting from her paws became even whiter.
An excited howl echoed directly in Lohan’s mind and that of the remaining Kobolds, paralyzing the monsters with terror.
[Lisa: Level 11 → Level 12]
"Halon... I feel... like the world has slowed down." Lisa transmitted excitedly, her voice now brimming with confidence once more.
Without waiting for a reply, she dashed forward.
If her speed had been impressive before, it was now even faster, leaving trails of intense fire wherever she passed. In less than a minute, three of the four remaining Kobolds were reduced to ashes and bone fragments.
Only one remained.
A Level 12 Kobold desperately trying to climb an oak tree to escape that white war deity.
Lohan, realizing that his own experience bar was flashing at its limit, partially detached himself from Lisa’s back. He kept the Hemolymphatic Tissue active, raising his digestion rate to the maximum, and formed his Obsidian Exoskeleton around himself, with sharp spikes on the front.
"This one’s mine, Lisa!"
Using [Explosive Steps], Lohan launched himself from Lisa’s back like a high-speed projectile.
The crack of the explosion beneath his feet propelled him with a force the Kobold couldn’t anticipate. Lohan slammed into the monster’s chest, pinning it against the tree trunk.
On impact, Lohan activated the [Mark of Rupture] and, simultaneously, fired an [Ice Spike] point-blank at the marked spot.
The combination was fatal.
The ice spike pierced the Kobold from side to side, passing through the tree behind him, while Lohan’s membrane began to penetrate the hole and devour the creature’s flesh with predatory ferocity.
As soon as the last breath of life left the Kobold, a wave of relief and fulfillment washed over Lohan’s core.
The Slime’s body, which had previously been a clear blue sphere, began to pulsate with a deep, rhythmic neon-blue light.
Golden particles from his Sacred Light Core floated within its mass like a starry sky encapsulated in gelatin. He felt its density increase qualitatively, its membrane becoming so stable that friction with the air seemed nonexistent.
[Halon: Level 11 → Level 12]