Return of the Woodcutter

"I'm warning you, don't do anything stupid," Aito said. 

The other challengers who were observing the conversation from the side all gritted their teeth, appearing ready to fight despite their awful state. 

"Juliette, Xu Chi, Ursula, everyone! Let's show this creature what we challengers are made of! Once we obtain its ring, we will be able to use it to control the goblins and reign on the fourth floo—" 

In a rush and tired of this nonsense, Aito dashed towards the blonde man, coated his gauntlets with Durability, grabbed the sword with one hand, and punched him in the solar plexus with the other, putting half of his strength behind the blow. 

Lucas lost consciousness instantly and dropped to the ground. 

"Lucas!!!" Juliette said, running to her teammate. After a quick examination, she realized he was still alive. 

Meanwhile, Aito drew his ax and threatened Xu Chi with it. Too fast to follow, the Asian man had no choice but to endure. 

Seeing this, Juliette turned towards him and used her aura to manifest a floating stone in her hand. 

"I'm not your enemy. Think carefully, I could have killed you all in the nest if that was my goal." Aito said, facing a dazed crowd. He opened his visor to reveal his face and deactivated Fearless Aura, "I am the black challenger. Do you know what that means? It means that if I really wanted to, I could kill you all right now." 

He hated to use that title. However, he felt that in his current situation, he had no choice. Well, he could butcher them all and call it a day, but then all his efforts to bring them here alive would be wasted. 

It wasn't heroism that motivated him, it was just the feeling to have worked for nothing. 

When the challengers heard about his title, they appeared to calm down a bit. After all, if what he said was true, killing the golden goblin didn't seem like a lie anymore. 

"The black challenger? You mean THE black challenger? I heard he alone killed hundreds of sect members and caused a bloodbath in the Square a few days ago!" 

"Hundreds? I thought it was a thousand!"

"Wait… I recognize his face. He is indeed the black challenger. Isn't he also the one people call masochist because he likes to be beaten by wooden dullahans every day?"

Aito's brow twitched when he heard "masochist," wondering who the fuck started that rumor—not that it was a baseless one. 

"Now that you know who I am, choose. Follow my orders until we reach a safe place or…," he said with a serious tone, "die here by my hands." 

The challengers gulped. They knew rumors were usually exaggerated, however, it was an undeniable fact that the black challenger had faced numerous enemies in the Square. 

They had seen the sect members prepare their traps and some of them that had been captured recently also saw the many corpses.

Apart from Lucas's teammates, the rest nodded in agreement. However, he soon resolved that issue with a single sentence. 

"Meilin is alive." 

Well, at least the last time he had seen her, she was alive. 

Their faces brightened at those words. They truly cared for each other, despite having such an idiot as Lucas as a teammate. 

Having resolved their misunderstandings, the challengers started to crawl their way up the exit with the bags—as per Aito's orders. 

The first that exited threw a rope to help the others crawl up. 

Lucas who was still unconscious wouldn't budge even when his teammates tried to slap him awake. 

Aito told them to go ahead, that he would take care of the man. Of course, they didn't trust him entirely. Juliette stayed behind to "monitor" him. 

Just after Xu Chi and Ursula were through, Aito attached Lucas to the rope, then pulled to signal the package was ready. 

Once Lucas was sent to the surface, it was Juliette's turn to ascend. 

A worrisome sound that resembled flushing toilets resounded in the tunnels. Aito's eyes widened. All this useless talking had made him forget about his own apparent successful trap. 

"Crawl in there if you don't want to drown," Aito exclaimed. As Juliette stood still, wondering what was happening, he pushed her inside the hole. "Now!" 

Understanding that something was wrong, Juliette crawled up as fast as she could, followed by Aito. 

Inside the tunnel, the water flushed everything in its path. The goblins had dug with much enthusiasm, bringing down the whole underground water source in the tunnels. The water pressure was such that it poured like it would with a broken dam. 

Fortunately, the hole Aito and Zeut had dug was angled towards the surface. A quarter way through the hole, Aito could see the water filling the dead-end he had been standing in a few seconds ago. 

And so did Juliette. 

The blonde woman was particularly respected in her team for one thing. She was one of the rare challengers with an affinity towards earth. 

Elementalists could wield different elements according to their elemental affinity, the most common one being fire. Although fire was a great element suited for destruction it usually fared poorly for defense. 

On the other hand, earth elementalists were great for defense thanks to their Earth Wall skill they learned at level 1. 

Juliette had already mastered it a few days ago and was able to use it at will, contrary to the skill Rock Bullet she was still learning thanks to a memory bead she had acquired recently. Turns out, it was the perfect moment for her to show off her skills and satisfy her needs for TP. 

At that very moment, a notification window appeared in front of Aito. 

__

[Congratulations! You have achieved a feat never before seen!] 

Achievement: No matter the method, kill more than a thousand living beings in less than one day. 

Rewards: 

-Unique Passive skill: One Against Many (Upon entering a conflict alone and when outnumbered by at least a hundred enemies, your inner slayer emerges, slightly boosting your overall stats—Destiny stat not included. Your stats are moderately boosted if outnumbered by at least five hundred opponents and increase by one whole level if outnumbered by at least a thousand opponents. There are no negative impacts to the boost. The boost would wear off either when you escape your opponents, or the conflict is considered resolved.) 

-2000 Glory Points 

-20000 Tutorial Points 

Bonus Reward: 

-Title: Goblin Slayer (Your title Goblin Leader has been removed and replaced by Goblin Slayer due to drowning your own subordinates) 

-System Update: Goblin's Knowledge

__

'Guess that confirms I was successful.'

Aito's attention was diverted by the stream of info in front of him. The rewards then triggered momentary nausea as soon as they transferred into his mind. 

When he came back to himself, Aito barely had enough time to see a stone heading his way. 

—Active Skill: Stone Bullet—

Since he hadn't previously closed his visor, the projectile hit him in between the eyes. Still feeling lightheaded, the impact was enough to make him lose his grip. 

"Too bad we couldn't get the ring," Juliette said, gathering her aura. 

As Aito fell towards the flooded tunnel, an earth wall closed the hole, leaving him in complete darkness, denying him any chance to escape. 

Or so Juliette thought. 

***

Cold water washed away Aito's nausea. The surging current had subsided, and the magic torch that had fallen with him was extinguished and nowhere to be seen, leaving him in complete darkness. Aito was enraged.

'WHY!!?? JUST WHY!?' 

Since he hadn't been able to take a deep breath before plunging to his doom, he barely had air in his lungs. 

In a span of merely a few seconds, many thoughts crossed his mind. 

Hadn't he saved them despite the difficulty? Yes, he had been rough. He could have handled things better, but the results were there. The challengers were free. So why did she do it? 

Was it because of how he had treated Lucas? Despite hurting him, he had spared his life even though he could have taken it easily. Plus, if he hadn't done it, Lucas would have incited them to attack him and he'd have had no choice but to defend himself, probably killing all of them in the process. 

Also, hadn't he brought them the good news about their teammate? It wasn't certain if Meilin was still alive, but at least there was a high probability she was. 

'BITCH!' he thought as his skin started to glow red because of anger.

Then one sentence Juliette had uttered echoed in his mind, "Too bad we couldn't get the ring."

At that moment, he understood his downfall had been caused not by vengeance nor jealously or anything of the sort, but by pure greed. 

'YOU FUCKING BITCH!'

Once he was dead, the despicable woman was probably planning on taking or sharing all HIS loot with the others. 

—Gift: Fury—

Suddenly, a surge of torrential power burst out, invading his entire body. Tapping into this source of strength, he forced himself to chase the growing panic, and also, ironically, calm himself. 

After all, acting out of pure anger in his current situation wouldn't do him any good and only waste the laughable amount of oxygen he had left. 

'I'll kill you.'

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