Chapter 13: Perception is Reality?

“Argh!” The Wind Mage goblin screamed as one of its five enemies landed a strike on its back. It could feel the blood gushing out of the wound, feeling more tired after each injury. Waving its spear around haphazardly, it tried to retreat, but the five Talons didn’t give it a break. They rained down more and more attacks, leaving deep gashes and injuries on the goblin.

The goblin kept retreating until it finally became too tired. Even the spear in its grasp felt as heavy as lead. It could barely lift it to fight, let alone swing it. Its raspy breath could be heard from behind its helmet.

“Cowards!” it roared in goblin tongue, but the Talons only looked at it with amusement. This enraged the goblin. If it were to die, it would rather die in a glorious manner.

“For the King!” the goblin roared as it rushed towards the Talons. It spent every ounce of energy left within it to swing the spear, but after being blocked a couple of times, one of the images caught the spear and thrust its sword forward, stabbing the goblin through the chest.

It choked on its blood as it lost all strength in its legs and crumbled. Its eyes were wide open, filled with regret and discontent, but it saw nothing more than darkness and felt nothing but the cold.

Talon walked to the body of the goblin that lay on the ground with glassy eyes.  

‘It could feel everything as if it were real… it even thinks it is dead.’

Talon kicked the goblin, but it gave no reaction. It couldn’t even feel the force of its body being kicked.

Talon almost broke into a dance at this moment. The goblin was perfectly healthy; there wasn’t even a single injury on it, but it thought it had been stabbed through the chest and died. It even choked on its own saliva, thinking it was blood. The more Talon analyzed the situation, the more excited he became about his own potential.

‘What is real and what is false?’

‘If our reality is determined by our senses, does that not mean that we are being limited by our senses? Does that not mean that reality is actually what we think it is… and this bias is given to us by our own senses…’

He gave this a deep thought, considering the ramifications and potential uses of this ability. The more he thought about it, the more he felt like he needed to understand the anatomy of the mind and brain before he could truly grasp what this entailed.

‘I can check the Interdimensional Bazaar to see if there are any books that can help me.’

He stabbed the goblin’s throat, finally killing it. It didn’t even groan; death came silently and painlessly.

Talon looked towards the fight between Master Eobard and the goblin leader again. As he expected, Master Eobard was being pushed back by the goblin leader’s lightning attacks.  

‘It was even launching forked lightning now. If not for Master Eobard’s Grand Shift, he would probably be dead or heavily injured by now,’ he thought, walking towards the duo while considering a way to kill the goblin leader without getting injured.

Spinning a mental cloak, he made himself invisible to the goblin leader and Master Eobard.

Bang! The hammer sent dust up into the air, the attack diverted by Master Eobard at the critical moment. Without the Grand Shift, Master Eobard knew the battle would have ended long ago. Sweat was running down his face, and his back was drenched. If not for the anti-slip grains on his sword handle, his sword might have dropped from all the collisions he had engaged in during the fight.

The goblin leader dashed forward with a short burst, its entire body surging with energy. Master Eobard used Grand Shift on himself, repelling his own body backwards to avoid the dangerous dash. 

The goblin leader thrust its hammer forward, but Master Eobard responded by hitting the head of the hammer upwards, using Grand Shift to redirect all the force of the hammer towards the sky. Using Grand Shift again, he pushed himself forward and hit the goblin leader’s chest with his palm, repulsing the goblin leader away.

Squelch!

A sword exited from the goblin leader’s head, brain matter escaping from the lethal injury. The lightning around its skin flickered several times before finally dousing. The sword was extracted by the attacker from behind the goblin leader. The goblin leader fell, staring at the sky, with a slit on its forehead where blood trickled out.

[Mission Accomplished.]

[Mission:

— Kill at least 30 goblins. (34/30)

— Kill the Goblin leader. (completed)]

[Rewards:

— 4700 Coins

— 1x Fortune Ticket.

— 5 Karma]

[Completion Rate: Excellent]

[Extra Rewards:

— 1000 Coins

— 1x Fortune Ticket

— 5 Karma]

Talon stood behind the goblin leader with a bloodied sword and a smile plastered on his face. At that moment, Master Eobard felt like he was looking at a devil.

“You can create illusions,” he said rather than asked. He had seen Talon fool the senses of the goblin leader earlier, and he even appeared so close to them without them knowing. This made him believe that Talon had powers related to the mind, perhaps overlaying reality with illusions. As an experienced adventurer, he believed this must be true, or close enough to the truth.

Talon didn’t bother to explain his profession. ‘If you mistake my powers, then that is your own problem, not mine.’

The moment the goblins saw that their leader had fallen, they went berserk. Some of them, mostly the Awakened goblins, escaped into the forest around them. The adventurers shouted in victory, chasing down the escaping goblins and killing the berserking ones.

Talon walked back to his cart. Vaila stood beside it with a crossbow in hand. When she saw him approaching, she smiled brightly.

“That was dangerous,” she complained.

He laughed softly and patted her shoulder. “I thought I told you to stay in the cart.”

“The goblins were trying to rob us, so I shot one of them with this,” she lifted the crossbow, but he touched and pushed it down. What if she misfired at him? 

He looked around the cart and saw a dead goblin just a few feet away, a crossbow bolt pierced its chest.

“I guess all those crossbow training weren’t a waste,” he said with swelling pride.

Vaila only rolled her eyes. “You know I’m better than you with a crossbow.”

“Puh, I was always holding back…”

“You can barely hit anything beyond fifty meters.”

Talon choked on his words. “Not true.”

“Very true.”

The two siblings bickered in the middle of a massacre, causing their fellow travelers to look at them incredulously.