章 37: 37 - When Did He Get Here?

Noah's fear of the Boss materialized when a warrior went to attack him and the moment the warrior's sword was about to hit the monster, for a split second the Boss goblin became invisible and dodged the warrior's attack before appearing again and attacking back. Seeing that in addition to the small goblin assassins the Boss was also able to remain invisible, Noah began to worry that perhaps it really would be impossible to leave this Fortress without anyone dying.

Taking advantage of the fact that no new goblin assassins appeared, Noah opened his hand a little and threw a fireball at the Boss. Because the Boss was very focused on the Blessed one in front of him, Noah's fireball hit the monster's face perfectly, but unlike what happened with the other goblins, the boss didn't scream in agony like his smaller brethren, no, his skin turned out to be so thick that in a few seconds the flame quickly went out.

This was due to two things: the flame could not consume anything due to the Boss's great resistance and Noah could not concentrate on reinforcing the flame because of the possibility of little assassins suddenly appearing. Therefore, the flames could not last long at all.

The area where the flame landed was slightly burnt; it was possible to see some of the skin on the boss's face had become more fragile. But that alone was not enough to influence hardly anything in the battle, because even if the monsters' head was now slightly more fragile, it wasn't like he would suddenly stop guarding it, it being his head and all. If anything, he'd be more cautious because of it.

While Noah conjured up another fireball to throw at the Boss, out of the corner of his eye he saw a small black figure heading towards one of the party's wizards. Without thinking twice, Noah pointed his hand and changed his fireball target from the Boss to the little assassin and began running towards him.

This time, Noah realized in advance that he didn't need to knock the wizard down to prevent him from being stabbed, since the goblin assassin had already been startled by Noah's flame flying towards him and retreated to dodge it, as he saw how dangerous it was. Unfortunately, this also proved two conclusions Noah had made. First, that there were definitely other goblin assassins just waiting to attack, and second, that these goblins were actually more agile and intelligent than most other goblins.

After forcing the goblin to dodge his attack, Noah realized that the warriors were shouting something. When he turned to see what it was, Noah noticed that the Boss had once again turned invisible.

'Shit... Where is he going to appear...?' Noah thought as he looked from side to side searching for any sign the Boss might leave that would give away his position. But as an experienced assassin, obviously the Boss wouldn't make such a naive mistake.

"Arrrrgh!!!" Noah heard a scream coming from next to him.

When he turned around, Noah saw the Boss standing next to the team's healer. He was a very quiet 25 year old man, quiet to the point that this scream was the first time Noah heard the man's voice in this dungeon, Noah didn't care that whoever was in danger now was someone he had no contact with; the important thing was that they were in a Fortress, and one less human life was a greater chance that he himself would die. Even if he would get more money in the case of someone dying, that didn't stop Noah from running towards the Boss to save the man.

The Boss looked to the side and noticed that a human was coming towards him with a short knife in his hand. Seeing this, the Boss with one hand pointed one of his daggers at Noah while with the other he blocked a stab that an archer tried to give him. Sadly, the stab had so little technique that the Boss didn't even have to focus on it to be able to defend himself.

Normally it would have been a problem for Noah that the Boss used both hands individually to fight. It was good for him that he had the archer's support keeping one of the hands busy; if not, Noah wouldn't have probably been able to fight the Boss at all without being stabbed a few times. But as that was not the case, Noah took the chance to test something new.

Even while running towards the boss, Noah could already feel some differences about himself. First of all, the time it took him to run at the Boss at full speed was much faster than the time he would have spent previously.

When the dagger and sword clashed, Noah was so excited that he felt his blood boil. Noah felt that the Boss's strength was actually greater than the strength he could naturally withstand himself. If Noah had clashed with the Boss using the thin body he had before leveling up, the chance was that he would have to retreat at least half a step after this exchange, but now that he had managed to level up, even without depending on a Blessing focused on strength, Noah managed to resist the Boss's attack.

The Boss looked at Noah for a split second and was surprised. Because of this human's clothing, he assumed that the human was focused on agility, especially since the human also used a small blade. But he didn't expect the strength of the human in front of him to be only slightly less than the humans who fought holding swords.

Unfortunately, even though Noah managed to withstand the Boss's attack, he saw small splinters of iron coming out of his own knife. The difference between a normal human combat knife and a blessed weapon was very big, but the advantage of using a small blade like the knife that Noah used was that he was given freedom to be able to do something else with his own other hand.

The Boss was retracting his arm after the confrontation with Noah, getting ready to attack again, when he saw the human's other hand was coming towards him with something glowing. When he saw that what was shining was that strange flame that he had been hit with before, the Boss worried. In desperation he tried to raise his hands to protect his face, but the goblin realized it wouldn't be fast enough. Before the fireball could hit his face, the monster was once again invisible and the fireball passed through where it should have connected.

At that moment Noah began to worry even more, since he had at first believed that this ability was just some kind of invisibility, but when he saw the fireball pass through where the Boss was just half a second ago, Noah surmised that this ability also left the boss intangible. Fortunately, the more powerful a skill was, the more it cost to use it, so if the Boss had already used the ability twice, maybe he didn't have that many times available to use.

The whole group was on alert. The warriors who didn't make it in time to defend the Healer were frustrated but didn't let it affect their focus to find out where the Boss was hiding.

Jasper was on full alert at the time; he realized that the Boss's skill was far more problematic than he imagined, just as Noah had. If it were simply a basic invisibility skill, the group could corner the Boss and attack him; even if he was invisible, the attacks would still hit. But as the Boss had intangibility as well, even if he was closed in somewhere, he would just activate the ability and back out of combat.

While everyone was looking for where the big goblin was, the group paid no attention to the little goblins around them. As they searched back and forth for something to indicate where the Boss could be hiding, three loud screams were heard while metal crashing into metal sounded simultaneously.

Abigail looked back to see what was going on, fearing that the Boss might have appeared near her, but when she saw that there were actually four goblin assassins that had appeared, she didn't know if she should be happy that the Boss wasn't there or worried that he could appear behind her at any moment.

From what she saw, three assassins managed to attack three separate wizards while another of the goblins was apparently just holding on to the Blessed One she had misjudged earlier to prevent him from being able to protect the others.

'Shit, they are smart. They already realized that he is the one who is protecting the backline,' Abigail thought as she pulled her bowstring and aimed the arrow at a goblin who was attacking the already wounded healer.

Unfortunately for her, when she was aiming for the little goblin assassin, the other Blessed immediately turned to her with a startled look.

It took half a second for her to understand why they were looking at her, but when she saw that their gaze was not really looking at her, but rather looking at something behind her, Abigail gulped and accepted that she would probably die now. Behind her back had appeared the Boss and from the distance she had between herself and the rest of the party no other Blessed would be able to protect her in time.

But to Abigail's great surprise, she suddenly felt the temperature on her back rise in an instant before small embers floated over her shoulder then disappeared as a loud crashing noise of metal came from behind her.

When she turned around, Abigail did not believe that the Blessed One she had despised before, who was at least 4 meters away previously in front of her fighting a small assassin goblin suddenly appeared behind her back using his own knife to hold back the daggers of the Boss.

'When did he get here...?'

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