Chapter 135: The Goblin King's Ice Skating Spectacular

“Damn it! Damn it all! You pack of barbarians with absolutely no appreciation for the arts!”

Girousse’s shriek, sharp with frantic desperation, echoed through the cavern.

His pride, his very soul, was his mental power. It was the brush with which he painted his masterpieces of inspiration, the scepter with which he conquered the dull and mundane. In the theater of his mind, he had broken powerful trolls, toyed with necromancers who specialized in the soul, and bent the wills of even the most iron-clad elven knights. To him, they were all just raw material for his craft.

Yet, against these three women, his grand mental assaults were like priceless canvases tossed into the ocean.

No, that wasn’t right. It was worse. It felt as if his painstaking, world-class magnum opus had been unceremoniously used to prop up a wobbly table leg, and the philistines had the gall to complain that the paint fumes were too strong.

The sheer frustration of having his power so utterly nullified was a pressure building behind his eyes that threatened to crack his very skull.

“Why?! Why does my art have no effect on you?!” Girousse the Artist screamed, dodging another of Selene’s unrefined, brutally heavy slashes.

“You wanna know?”

Selene’s greatsword missed its mark, but her wrist twisted with fluid grace. Her massive shield, a veritable mountain of steel, generated a gale that tore through the stagnant cavern air as it slammed directly toward Girousse’s side. A smirk of undisguised mockery played at the corners of her lips.

“Beg me. If you beg nicely, I might just take pity and tell you.”

As the shield’s shadow loomed, Girousse let out a strange cry of terror. He contorted his body like a pretzel, rolling backward in a panicked scramble to barely evade the blow.

Before he could even catch his breath, a bone-chilling cold seized him, crawling up from the shiny, pointed leather shoes he wore with such pride.

“Frost Bind!” Su Wan’s cold, crisp voice rang out.

A thick layer of frost spread wildly from Girousse’s feet, freezing his expensive custom shoes solid to the cavern floor.

“Is this paltry trick all you have?!” Girousse roared, his immense mental power erupting from within. While it couldn’t directly harm the three women, shattering a thin layer of physical restraint was child’s play.

The ice shattered instantly, taking half of his expensive leather sole with it.

However, that pause—less than a single second—was all Xia Lian needed.

An arrow tipped with a viscous paralyzing poison silently cut through the air, striking Girousse squarely in the right buttock.

The goblin king let out an inhuman screech.

An unbearable, maddening itch exploded from his tailbone, spreading like wildfire through his entire body. Half of his form began to twitch uncontrollably, and a primal urge to claw his own skin off threatened to overwhelm him.

“You despicable ambushers!” he roared in fury, but the intense itch twisted his movements into a bizarre, comical dance.

“Where are you looking?!”

Selene’s voice boomed from directly above him.

Girousse looked up in horror, his entire field of vision consumed by a massive, rapidly enlarging shield.

“Shield! Face! Smash!”

CRACK!

The sound was as crisp and resounding as a perfectly timed slap. The immovable shield slammed solidly into Girousse’s greasy, green face.

He was sent spinning in place twice before landing squarely back on his crooked throne of gold coins and jewels.

Clatter—!

The already unstable throne collapsed with a deafening roar, sending countless gold coins and glittering gems scattering across the floor.

Girousse lay face-up in the pile of shimmering wealth, his skin miraculously unbroken. Instead, a perfectly centered, clearly defined shield imprint now marked the middle of his face. His nose was bent sharply to one side, and his carefully groomed hair stuck up in a pathetic clump, like a wilted green onion.

Selene let out a sharp whistle, triumphantly hoisting her shield. “Now that was a perfect hit! Precision stamping, perfectly symmetrical—this is what you call real art!”

“Well done, Selene!” A rare look of satisfaction appeared on Su Wan’s usually stoic face; she felt that even the foul air in the cavern had suddenly become much fresher.

Xia Lian materialized from the shadows, her small face a mask of pure, gratifying vindication as she stared at Girousse’s miserable state.

“I… I will kill you all!” Girousse howled, struggling to his feet from the pile of money. His once-neat tailcoat was now dirty and torn. Paired with his shield-printed face, he looked less like a king and more like a clown whose makeup had been ruined by a seltzer bottle.

He was completely unhinged.

“Since mental power is useless, then have a taste of this!”

He pulled a short, crude wand of yellowed bone, studded with gaudy, low-grade gems, from his bosom.

“Rain of Filth!”

He held the wand high and chanted a short, wicked incantation. At the top of the cavern, a foul-smelling, dark green cloud rapidly condensed, and corrosive acid rain began to pour down.

“Leave this to me!” Su Wan’s voice was steady as she tapped her staff on the ground. “Ice Canopy!”

A massive, translucent dome of ice formed in an instant, shielding them completely and blocking the vile acid rain.

Sizzle, sizzle—

The acid rain struck the ice screen, erupting in bursts of white smoke with an ear-piercing corrosive hiss, but it couldn’t penetrate the barrier in the slightest.

“It’s not over yet!” Girousse, looking like a madman, waved his wand again. “Animate Dead!”

The animal skeletons scattered at his feet suddenly lit up, green soul-fire igniting in their eye sockets. They climbed shakily to their feet, forming a small legion of skeletal minions that roared and charged at the three women.

Selene’s spirits soared. Instead of retreating, she advanced. “These brittle bone piles aren’t even enough to get stuck in my teeth!”

She transformed into a human tank, charging headlong into the skeletal horde. With wide sweeps of her shield and brutal slashes of her sword, she tore through them. The fragile skeletons shattered in droves before her onslaught.

Girousse watched, trembling with rage, as his spells were neutralized one by one.

His mental power was useless.

The offensive magic he had struggled to learn was effortlessly countered.

His undead minions were nothing more than cheap toys in front of that monstrous female knight.

He possessed such powerful strength, yet he couldn’t find a single avenue to unleash it. The frustration was suffocating. He felt less like he was fighting three adventurers and more like he was facing a professional demolition team that had been working together for a hundred years.

Every one of his flaws was infinitely magnified by them.

Every one of his attacks was neutralized by them in the most efficient way possible.

He was being played like a fiddle.

“Damn it! Damn it all!”

Thwip!

Another of Xia Lian’s cold arrows struck Girousse’s other buttock, completing a perfect, painful symmetry. The sharp sting made him grimace.

He glanced into the distance. His three most capable subordinates were being pinned down by the enemy, completely unable to come to his aid. And that Pink-Haired Priest was the most ridiculous of all. She was single-handedly suppressing the powerful Plague Messenger, Noth, while still having the energy to occasionally strafe his army of monsters.

With every strafing run, a wave of holy fire would reduce dozens, sometimes hundreds, of undead to ash. This was invariably followed by a flash of golden light enveloping Selene and Su Wan, signaling that they had leveled up.

The situation was spiraling completely out of his control.

“No! This can’t go on!”

Girousse’s eyes darted around, and a sinister thought began to form in his mind. ‘Since these three vermin aren’t affected by my mental control, I’ll go control those elves! As long as I can control enough of them and make them kill each other, I can instantly turn the tide of this battle!’

With this new plan in mind, he feinted an attack and then turned to charge toward the flank of the elven army.

“Trying to run? Too late!” Su Wan sneered, having already anticipated his move.

“Absolute Zero!”

A terrifying, freezing aura, far more intense than any of her previous attacks, erupted from Su Wan’s staff. The very moisture in the air condensed in an instant. On the ground, a patch of ice as smooth as a mirror materialized out of thin air, completely transforming the path ahead of Girousse into a slick, unforgiving ice rink.

Girousse, mid-charge, suddenly felt the ground vanish from under his feet.

He lost his balance instantly.

“Waaah—!”

He screamed in terror, his arms flailing wildly like windmills. He couldn’t control his body at all, sliding, spinning, and drifting helplessly across the impromptu rink.

Selene and Xia Lian’s voices rang out in perfect unison.

Selene leaped high into the air, gripping her greatsword with both hands, but turning it to use the wide, flat side of the blade. A flash of power coated the steel as she aimed for Girousse’s buttocks while he was spinning wildly on the ice, and brought it down hard!

At the same moment, Xia Lian drew her shortbow, four arrows nocked steadily on the string. The bow was pulled back like a full moon. There was no poison on these arrows; their target was one thing and one thing only—the cuffs of Girousse’s tattered clothes.

WHAP!

A loud, meaty slap echoed through the cavern.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Four muffled impacts followed in quick succession.

Girousse was slapped flat onto the ice by the force of the sword, the impact sending him sliding forward several meters. And the fabric of his clothes—at his wrists and ankles—was now firmly pinned to the ice by four perfectly placed arrows.

He was splayed out in a perfect, humiliating star, pinned to the ice like a bizarre, green-skinned specimen.

[Ding! The combo skill ‘Performance Art: Gymnastics on Ice’ by teammates Selene, Su Wan, and Xia Lian has dealt 1% physical DMG and 10000% mental insult to the key plot character Girousse! Elation Coins +5555!]

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]