-GRRRAH!
The massive, flaming goblin let out a deafening roar and immediately dashed at me, crushing the stone beneath its feet like a literal flaming hulk.
I didn’t think. I spun on my heel and ran.
And the moment I turned, my Precognition showed me a massive, roaring fireball hurtling straight for my spine.
I immediately cut the mana feed to everything before slamming it all on Temporal Step the exact same microsecond, snapping the Exit Point meters ahead and-
-Kzzzt!
I popped into existence further down the tunnel and immediately dumped 58MP into Ice Reinforcement and 2MP into Precognition.
Neither the frost on my arms nor the cognition even registered the microsecond drop in power, seamlessly carrying over just as the fireball violently detonated against the stone where I had been running a split-second ago.
I didn’t wait for another fireball and dashed with all my might.
But that chaotic chase rapidly pushed my failing body to the absolute brink.
The uncomfortable prickling happening inside and outside of my skin began to violently intensify with every single step.
But the fiery behemoth behind me didn’t let up. And it wasn’t just throwing massive fireballs at me anymore.
It reached down, grabbed the normal goblins by their necks, set them ablaze with its bare hands, before hurling them down the tunnel at me like screaming, flaming projectiles.
The frenzied monsters didn’t even care that they were burning alive. They crashed near or ahead of me, scrambled to their feet, and lunged at me with wide, crazed eyes, desperately trying to grab my clothes and bite my flesh like rabid zombies.
I violently ducked under a flying, burning goblin and sidestepped another, feeling the blistering heat scorch my cheek as the monster smashed against the cavern wall.
"Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this limit before?!" I cursed aloud, my lungs burning from the suffocating heat of the chase.
-Ding!
{Two reasons.
1. I am under no obligation to coddle your hand every step of the way.
2. Infinity is a first for me as well. There is much I do not understand about it. What you are feeling right now usually happens when a practitioner receives a buff from another person or via a potion that far outclasses their tier.}
I barely twisted out of the way of another flaming zombie and practically threw myself to the side to dodge the fireball.
{To give you an analogy, the water dripping onto the stone bored the hole faster than predicted.}
I let out a ragged, desperate groan.
In the few minutes of the chaotic sprint, the prickling had mutated into sheer, blinding pain.
It felt as though thousands of aggressive centipedes were crawling over every single inch of my body, violently biting down on my flesh.
The agonizing pain wasn’t just on my skin. The phantom bugs chewed directly into my brain, gnawed at the back of my eyes, and scraped against the inside of my mouth.
My body was quite literally tearing itself apart from the inside out.
I pushed my failing legs harder and ducked under another flaming zombie before the narrow corridor finally opened up, and I caught sight of a massive, moss-lit chamber branching off to the left.
And a desperate, highly reckless idea instantly formed in my pain-riddled brain.
I threw myself around the sharp corner before sliding to a halt in the center of the dark room, immediately spinning around on my heels to face the entrance.
The fiery behemoth was significantly faster than the normal goblins. The hulking beast barreled straight into the chamber like a runaway freight train, completely leaving its mindless, burning minions trailing behind in the corridor.
And the exact microsecond its massive foot hit the chamber floor, I cut all my active magic, keeping only a 5Mp cognition boost of Ice Reinforcement and materialized two Fragmentation Ice Pebbles over both my hands.
Leveling my finger guns, I let the explosive Gatling rip.
-Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta!
The rounds broke the sound barrier before slamming directly into the beast’s broad chest with-
-Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!...
They detonated like high-yield grenades, filling the chamber with blinding flashes of shattered ice and a massive concussive shockwave, tearing out of the monster a deafening roar of pain while stumbling it back a half-step, but the damage was entirely superficial.
Its roaring aura of fire and thick muscles tanked the icy shrapnel.
But I didn’t care. I just needed it distracted for a single second.
I dumped 45MP straight into the stone archway of the entrance, erupting out thick, pitch-black roots from the floor and ceiling.
They rapidly wove together into a massive, impenetrable wall of hardened wood, perfectly sealing the archway shut right as the horde of normal goblins reached the doorway.
A sickening chorus of heavy thuds echoed into the chamber as the frenzied green tsunami crashed blindly into the outside of the barricade.
Dropping the massive 45MP output, I immediately locked a steady 10MP feed into the roots, keeping them passively hardening while also instantly repairing any damage the mindless horde inflicted from the outside.
I had successfully locked the horde out, guaranteeing myself a completely uninterrupted one-on-one. But I had also locked myself in an oven.
Still, I kept my trembling hands rigidly leveled at its chest, refusing to let up on the mental trigger.
The supersonic Fragmentation Ice Pebbles continuously detonated against the monster.
The sheer heat radiating from the beast instantly flash-vaporized the icy shrapnel into steam, but the raw concussive blasts still violently slammed straight into its thick muscle.
The continuous barrage of kinetic shockwaves and superheated steam rapidly turned the sealed chamber into a suffocating blur of white heat.
Every breath of the superheated air burned my throat, but it was nothing compared to the absolute agony tearing through my veins.
My physical flesh was hitting its absolute breaking point, warring alongside the blistering heat of the monster standing in front of me.
[Alright, you oversized matchstick...] I gritted my teeth, forcing a sharp, arrogant smirk onto my face despite it all. [Let’s end this!]