Chapter 160 - Stage 1
"Ice Jail"
The moment the man in the cloak said those words, the one who wanted to instigate a fight froze completely solid. Without even paying any attention to his victim, the cloaked man began to move away from the scene as he walked through the streets of an unknown kingdom as he tried to find his way back to something.
"I've gotten a lot stronger than the last time we've met face to face. We'll see who's going to be running for their life this time... Yuki," said Scar as he walked away from the scene with a grin on his face. As for the 2 women who were with the instigator, they left the scene as well with disappointment in their eyes. The instigator himself was left stranded on the street as no one was willing to help him. As such, he would have to wait until the ice melted naturally, if that were to even happen in the first place.
...
As for Yuki, he would have to encounter a swarm of goblins which looked to be a whole army on their own. While they didn't carry any weapons, their sheer numbers made up for it. To add on, they were incredibly fast. Yuki was able to perceive their movements as he was a lot stronger than the level requirement asked for. As such, he was able to counter almost all of their attempts to injure him. While Yuki was able to counter most of their moves, some would slip by and land a lucky shot from behind him occasionally. While it was a few at first, they soon began to get annoying.
The landscape of the stage was rather familiar to Yuki as he resembled the forests in which he usually encountered the goblins. There were loads of trees which went on for as long as the eye could see. The air seemed to be heavier than usual and made it a bit difficult for Yuki to breathe. However, it wasn't too much of a hindrance.
Right as one of the goblins charged from behind Yuki in hopes of landing a direct hit, Yuki quickly turned around and grabbed the goblin by the wrist before dragging him off the ground and slamming him back down on the other side.
Seeing this, the goblins began to attack Yuki a lot faster than they did previously. Even though they did this, Yuki could still perceive their movement relatively easily and could counter them as well. Whether it was with his blade, hand or feet, it didn't matter what the army of goblins did. Any attempt was effortlessly blocked by Yuki.
Knowing that all their efforts had achieved nothing. A small swap of goblins surrounded Yuki and began to surround him and leave him with no room to escape. Instead of attacking simultaneously, the goblins attacked right after one of their members attacked. By taking turns, while they did get countered, they made sure to block Yuki off from noticing what they had been planning.
Right after Yuki blocked off what seemed to be the last goblin of the swarm, a goblin charged from above and slammed his foot into Yuki's head. In the mere second in which Yuki noticed this and the time he had before the foot would make contact with his head, Yuki raised his hand above his head as fast as he could and ended up having to absorb the attack with his wrist. He wouldn't have had enough time to raise his hand which was holding on to his blade because the weight of the blade would slow down the movement of his hand and as such, it wouldn't get there in time.
"That was a creative attack. Perhaps I've gotten a bit overconfident," Yuki said as he used the flat side of his blade to whack away the globs at once. Yuki used the flat side of his blade as opposed to the sharp side due to the fact that he wanted to gain more experience and relearn his fighting skill which had rusted in his 1 year break. As such, there was no other place better than the first stage of the dungeon where the monsters are the weakest.
Feeling tired of being weighed down by his blade, Yuki plunged his blade into the. ground before charging towards the army of goblins with his bare hands. Yuki grabbed the heads of two goblins and smacked them together before leaping in the air. Once in the air, Yuki made sure he would land on the body of a goblin and so he did exactly as he planned. Once pinning a goblin to the ground with his feet, Yuki began to have a strength match against one of the bigger goblins which had managed to lock hands with Yuki. Unfortunately for him, Yuki simply overpowered him and basically crushed the goblins fingers including his inner bones.
Due to Yuki being distracted by the large goblin, a large swarm of other goblins began to surround Yuki as they jumped on him and piled up. However, even that wouldn't be enough as they couldn't hold Yuki down. Without expecting too much effort, Yuki managed to push all of the goblins who stacked on top of him off his body.
In excitement, Yuki leaped towards a side of a tree and used to to propel himself into another tree and then another tree. Yuki repeated this process until he had built up his desired amount of momentum. Once he had done so, Yuki created a V-shape with his arm and grabbed onto one of the goblins before slamming it into a tree.
By that time, Yuki had begun to build up a sweat, not because he was having trouble dealing with the goblins but because he went to extra lengths to defeat them. Even using his ability would've been enough to completely annihilate them, however, Yuki chose to limit himself for the cause of relying on skill and different techniques alone. That was the only way he would survive in the upcoming dungeons. Even with this dungeon being easy, Yuki would need to be prepared to use everything in his arsenal to get through the next dungeons on his own.