Goblin King: My Innate Skill Is OP-Chapter 286: Predation

They were hunting...

Hunting Narg.

Their mouths expanded unnaturally, cheeks ballooning outward as if air were being force-fed into them, and I felt it immediately, a violent buildup of compressed energy vibrating in the space above us.

No time.

I activated [Warp] and appeared beside Narg in an instant.

I couldn’t stop three of them from attacking simultaneously, not while Narg was still stabilizing Deathroot, and there was no room for hesitation.

The priority was simple: get him out.

For a split second, the thought of tanking the attack with [Mana Shield] crossed my mind.

But even before the idea fully formed, I dismissed it.

It wouldn’t hold.

The pressure alone, the density of that gathered energy, told me everything I needed to know.

Trying to block it head-on would be reckless at best and suicidal at worst.

So instead, I placed both hands firmly on Narg’s shoulders and chained the skills without pause.

[Swap].

[Warp].

The world twisted violently.

A heartbeat later, we reappeared several dozen meters away, the forest rearranging itself around us just as—

BOOM!

The explosion detonated where we had been standing moments earlier. The shockwave rippled through the trees, snapping branches and tearing leaves free as a thunderous roar tore through the forest.

I exhaled sharply, turning my gaze back toward the source of the blast.

If we had been even a second slower...

Yeah.

That wouldn’t have ended well.

But before I could even let out a full breath of relief, I felt it, like something slipping out of me

A sudden hollowing sensation brushed against my awareness, sharp enough that my grip loosened on instinct.

I released Narg at once and took a step back, my jaw tightening as realization hit.

Right.

How could I forget the nature of this skill?

At its worst, if mishandled or left unchecked, it could leech even stats.

That realization sparked another thought.

Why were those monkey-like creatures after Jael in the first place?

Was it because they sensed his power and deemed it a threat that needed to be erased before it grew too large?

Or was there something else — territory, instinct, some hostility tied to corruption like Deathroot?

I didn’t know.

But nothing was stopping me from finding out.

Narg was still locked in an internal battle, wrestling with the power I had given him, unconscious to the outside world.

Leaving him alone for a short while wasn’t ideal but dragging him into combat was far worse.

So, I turned away from him and broke into a sprint toward the attackers, activating [Stealth] as my presence dissolved into the forest.

*

The monkey-like creatures dropped from the canopy almost in unison, landing lightly on the scorched earth and staring into the settling smoke, waiting to see the result of their attack.

What they saw instead froze them in place.

Their target wasn’t there.

Lying in the crater, half-embedded in broken soil and splintered roots, was their own leader.

"Alpha..."

"Alpha Gorvak." 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

The words slipped out of them in disbelief, their voices strained and unsure.

They had attacked together. Gorvak had launched the strike alongside them.

So why was he on the ground instead of the goblin they had come to kill?

Gorvak let out a low grunt and pushed himself upright. His muscles, which had been tightly contracted as if bracing against an unseen force, slowly relaxed, rolling beneath his fur as he straightened.

The air around him vibrated faintly with restrained fury.

His expression twisted into something ugly, and the sight alone made the three instinctively step back, terror flickering through their eyes.

They didn’t understand what had happened, and that uncertainty frightened them more than any enemy could.

Gorvak’s gaze snapped to one of them.

Then he moved.

A single punch tore through the air and slammed into the creature’s face before it could even react, the impact launching him sideways like a ragdoll and smashing him into a tree trunk with a sickening crack.

"What are you standing around for?" Gorvak snarled, turning on the remaining two. "Find the..."

His words cut off abruptly as his eyes snapped open.

*

As soon as I slipped back into the area, I saw it.

The leader, the one I had swapped places with earlier when I pulled Narg out, was still alive.

That alone told me everything I needed to know about how dangerous it was.

So I adjusted my priority immediately.

Take it out first.

Still cloaked in [Stealth], I surged forward, my body blurring as I closed the distance in a heartbeat.

Gravefang was already in my hand, its weight familiar, comforting.

I fed void energy into the blade as I moved, letting it coil along the edge until the metal hummed with quiet annihilation.

One strike.

That was all I intended.

But just as the blade was about to connect—

The monkey’s eyes snapped wide.

Not in panic.

In awareness.

With speed that shouldn’t have been possible for something that size, its body twisted sharply to the side. No wasted motion. No hesitation. It moved like it had seen the attack before it happened.

My blade sliced through empty air.

Void energy tore loose from the swing, ripping forward in a violent arc that shredded bark, split stone, and punched clean through anything unlucky enough to be in its path.

I skidded to a halt, heart slamming against my ribs.

I missed.

No...worse.

It dodged.

"How...?" I muttered under my breath, shock crawling up my spine.

But I didn’t linger too much in shock.

Whatever had just happened with the alpha could wait.

I moved again, this time without overthinking it, my focus snapping to the one that seemed had taken a punch to the face and hadn’t fully recovered its balance.

I blitzed forward, and it barely had time to register my presence before Gravefang, still humming with void energy, swept cleanly through its neck.

There was no resistance, no dramatic struggle.

The head separated from the body in a smooth, decisive arc, and the excess void didn’t stop there, it tore onward, cleaving through trees, bark, and stone in a straight, merciless line.

The body collapsed a heartbeat later.

I exhaled slowly and turned toward the remaining three, letting the silence stretch just long enough to settle my breathing.

My gaze stayed on the alpha.

He was the threat. That much was clear.

I pivoted fully to face him, and he didn’t rush me.

He didn’t bark an order or leap into an attack like the others might have. Instead, he watched — cautious, calculating, weighing me the same way I was weighing him.

His eyes held a strange mix of emotions: curiosity, guarded wariness, and a simmering rage that hadn’t yet boiled over.

Looking at them properly now, I couldn’t help but...