My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill-Chapter 335

CLANG!

The weapons met—void essence against three-hundred-year-old enchanted metal that had been personally blessed by Chronus, that had been forged in temporal fires, that had survived centuries of combat against legendary opponents.

The temporal sword shattered.

Not cracked. Not chipped. Not weakened.

Shattered. Completely. Catastrophically. Irreparably.

Fragments of blessed, enchanted, temporally-enhanced metal scattered across the floor like crystalline rain, each piece still glowing faintly with residual magic. The weapon that had served Chronus for three centuries, that had been crafted by master smiths and enhanced by a demon lord’s personal power, destroyed in a single clash against void energy that didn’t just cut but erased.

Richard stared at the broken hilt in his hand, at the jagged metal stub that was all that remained of his prized weapon. Disbelief was evident across all his glitching faces, all his overlapping versions showing the same expression of shock and horror.

"My sword..." The voices were quieter now, less confident. "You destroyed... my SWORD!"

"Everything ends," Satou said, his voice cutting through the darkness like a blade, cold and certain and utterly without mercy. "Your sword. Your technique. Your centuries of accumulated power. Your pride. Your life. All of it ends tonight. All of it ends right here, in this library, by my hand."

He pressed forward without giving Richard time to process the loss, activating abilities in rapid succession, each one called out clearly, each one deployed with perfect timing and tactical precision.

"ENHANCED STRENGTH—MAXIMUM OUTPUT!"

His next strike carried enough force to shatter stone, to crack steel, to pulverize bone. Richard dodged—his foresight still showing him attacks five seconds early—but the blade’s passage through where he’d been standing obliterated the floor, creating a crater two feet wide and six inches deep. Stone didn’t just crack—it exploded into powder, the sheer kinetic force of the swing transferring into the ground with catastrophic results.

"PERFECT COUNTER!"

Richard fired age acceleration beams in desperation, trying to create distance, trying to buy time to think.

Satou’s blade moved with impossible precision, intercepting the temporal energy and somehow—impossibly—redirecting it. Not blocking. Not absorbing. Redirecting, sending Richard’s own attack back at him with perfect accuracy.

Richard had to dodge his own technique, had to watch his age acceleration beam miss him by inches and age the wall behind him to dust, three centuries of weathering happening in three seconds.

"How are you countering temporal magic?!" Richard’s voices demanded, genuine confusion mixing with growing fear. "That’s not possible! You can’t redirect time itself!"

"SERPENTINE GRACE!"

Satou didn’t answer with words. Instead his movements became impossibly fluid, his body bending and twisting in ways that completely defied normal skeletal structure and muscle flexibility. He attacked from angles that looked physically impossible—his torso rotating a full 180 degrees while his legs stayed planted, his arm extending and curving around Richard’s guard like a serpent striking.

Richard’s foresight showed him the attacks, but the attack angles were so bizarre, so contrary to how humanoid bodies were supposed to move, that dodging became exponentially harder. His brain couldn’t properly process movement patterns that shouldn’t be anatomically possible.

"PACK TACTICS—COORDINATED ASSAULT!"

Even fighting alone, Satou was using coordination techniques meant for group combat. His attacks came in patterns that suggested multiple fighters working together—a high strike that would draw attention upward followed immediately by a low strike that assumed someone else was attacking from above, feints that created openings for allies that didn’t exist, positioning that accounted for teammates that weren’t there.

Richard’s foresight showed him these patterns five seconds in advance, but the patterns didn’t make sense for a solo fighter. His brain kept trying to identify where the other attackers were, kept seeing openings that suggested Satou had allies, kept getting confused by tactics that required coordination he shouldn’t have.

"You’re... fighting like there are multiple people..." Richard’s voices said, strain evident now. "But you’re alone... how..."

"FERAL COMBAT STYLE!"

Satou’s movements became even more unpredictable. Not refined. Not polished. Pure instinct, operating below conscious thought, making decisions too fast for foresight to properly track because there was no conscious intent to read—just reaction chains happening at the level of raw reflex.

He moved like a beast, like a predator, all efficiency and killing intent with no wasted motion, no telegraphing, no conscious thought between stimulus and response.

And that was the key insight Satou had realized.

Richard’s foresight worked by reading intent—seeing what Satou was planning to do, what decisions he was committing to, what conscious choices he was making.

But feral combat style bypassed consciousness entirely. It was pure reflex, pure instinct, pure adaptation to immediate circumstance with no planning layer for foresight to scan.

Richard’s five-second foresight started showing him... nothing. Blank spots. Gaps where Satou’s future actions should be but weren’t because they didn’t exist yet even as possibilities, because they would be decided by instinct in the moment rather than conscious planning.

"This is... impossible..." Richard gasped, and now all his voices showed genuine fear. "My foresight... it’s not working... I can’t see..."

"SOUL STRIKE!"

The invisible attack bypassed all of Richard’s temporal shields and defensive magic because it wasn’t attacking his body in physical space. It was attacking his essence directly, targeting the fundamental soul that gave him life and consciousness, striking at something that existed outside the normal flow of time and therefore outside the predictive capability of temporal foresight.

Richard screamed—all his voices crying out in perfect unison, creating a sound of pure existential agony. Soul damage was different from physical pain, was worse than any bodily injury, resonated through every aspect of his being in ways that three centuries of experience couldn’t prepare him for.

His glitching form destabilized noticeably, the overlapping versions struggling to maintain cohesion, flickering more rapidly, showing signs that the Chrono-Break technique was being stressed beyond its designed tolerances.

"SHADOW BIND—CONSTRICTION!"

More tendrils grabbed his limbs while he was distracted by soul pain. These didn’t just restrain—they squeezed, applying crushing pressure designed to break bones and rupture organs.