My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill-Chapter 340

Richard could warp reality around Satou. But Reality Anchor stabilized him.

Every advantage Richard gained, Satou had a counter for. Every technique Richard deployed, Satou had a defense against. Every winning strategy Richard’s fifteen-second foresight showed him, Satou had already prepared for.

And then Satou went on offense.

"BLOOD FRENZY—MAXIMUM ESCALATION!"

The longer the fight went on, the more damage Satou took and regenerated from, the stronger this ability made him. Power building through sustained combat, through the cycle of damage and recovery, through the pure joy of battle against a worthy opponent.

Satou’s speed increased. His strength intensified. His reflexes sharpened. Every exchange made him slightly faster, slightly stronger, slightly more dangerous.

And Richard couldn’t do the same because Chrono-Break was a fixed technique—it gave him exactly ten-times speed and fifteen-second foresight and nothing more. It didn’t scale. Didn’t improve. Didn’t adapt.

Which meant that slowly, inevitably, Satou was catching up.

Ten-times speed became easier to track as Satou’s own speed increased.

Fifteen-second foresight became less useful as Satou began making decisions faster than Richard could process the information.

Hundreds of temporal echoes became manageable targets as Satou’s perception sharpened to the point where he could track all of them simultaneously.

The tide was turning again.

"Impossible..." Richard’s hundreds of voices spoke in discordant chorus, strain and exhaustion bleeding through. "I have demon lord power... I have perfect foresight... I have overwhelming speed... you shouldn’t be able to..."

"TERROR AURA—MAXIMUM OUTPUT!"

The oppressive presence that had been constant throughout the fight suddenly intensified to a level that crossed from uncomfortable into genuinely debilitating.

"DRACONIC PRESENCE—ALPHA DOMINANCE!"

The overwhelming authority of true dragons layered on top of terror aura, creating a combined effect that spoke to something primal in Richard’s three-hundred-year-old psyche.

Even with demon lord power flowing through him, even with perfect foresight showing him everything, even with speed that let him move at ten-times normal—

Richard felt fear. Not the abstract concern of a warrior facing a strong opponent. But genuine, gut-level, survival-instinct fear of the kind he hadn’t experienced since he was young and weak and mortal.

His hands trembled slightly. His breathing became uneven. His perfect foresight started showing him futures where he died, where Satou won, where his three hundred years of existence ended in this library.

And unlike typical fears that could be overcome with willpower and experience, these visions came from foresight—came from seeing actual possible futures, from knowing that these deaths were real possibilities rather than just paranoid imaginings.

"No... I won’t... I refuse..." Richard’s voices were breaking, the chorus losing synchronization, some versions speaking faster than others, the unity that had made the effect eerie now making it pitiful as fear broke down his coordination.

Satou saw the psychological breakdown happening and pressed it ruthlessly.

"TERROR MANIFESTATION—PERFECT EMBODIMENT!"

The nightmare domain responded to Richard’s fears, pulling them from his mind and giving them semi-real form. Shadow constructs shaped like Chronus appeared, all of them turning away in disgust. Phantom demon lords materialized, pointing and laughing at Richard’s failure. Manifestations of death and obsolescence and meaninglessness surrounded him.

"FEAR INCARNATE!"

Satou’s own form shifted, becoming less like a dragoblin and more like a concept given flesh—the physical embodiment of death itself, of the final ending that Richard had been fleeing for three hundred years.

"PSYCHIC ANNIHILATION—LEGENDARY TIER!"

The mental attack hit Richard’s psyche like a sledgehammer, like a bomb detonating inside his mind. Not subtle. Not gradual. Just overwhelming force applied directly to his consciousness, designed to break mental defenses through sheer power rather than cleverness.

Richard screamed—all his hundreds of temporal echo voices screaming in perfect unison, creating a sound that was horrifying in its unanimity.

His Chrono-Break technique began failing. The glitching effect that had made him exist in multiple time states simultaneously destabilized completely, the overlapping versions flickering rapidly, struggling to maintain cohesion.

His fifteen-second foresight collapsed to ten seconds. Then eight. Then five. Then three. Then zero as his damaged psyche couldn’t maintain the concentration required for temporal perception.

Suddenly Richard was blind to the future for the first time since activating the technique. Fighting in the present moment, with no foresight, no precognition, no advance warning.

And he was completely, utterly unprepared for it.

Satou struck with clinical precision, deploying his ultimate combination attack.

"SHADOW STEP! VOID STEP! SHADOW ABSOLUTE MOVEMENT!"

Three different teleportation abilities activated simultaneously, creating a movement that was geometrically impossible, appearing in a location that didn’t exist in normal three-dimensional space by moving through shadow, through void, and through impossible positions all at once.

He appeared directly in front of Richard—inside his guard, past his defenses, too close for the temporal warrior to react in time even with ten-times normal speed.

"SHADOW BLADE—VOID FANG ENHANCEMENT—ABSOLUTE SEVERANCE—MAXIMUM OUTPUT!"

The blade was enhanced with every cutting technique Satou possessed, every ability that could make it more lethal, every power that increased its killing potential.

Void Fang made it erase matter.

Absolute Severance let it cut through concepts and connections, not just physical objects.

Maximum Output meant every bit of power Satou could channel was being directed into this single strike.

"COMBAT TRANSCENDENCE—OPTIMAL STRIKE CALCULATION!"

The perfect killing blow calculated with inhuman precision. Not aimed at the heart where temporal defenses might still protect. Not aimed at the head where Richard might dodge at the last instant.

Aimed at the solar plexus, slightly right of center, the strike calculated to pierce through Richard’s torso at an angle that would destroy maximum vital structures while leaving him conscious for the few seconds Satou would need.

"PERFECT COUNTER—DEFENSIVE READY STATE!"

Prepared for any final desperate technique Richard might try, any last-second attack, any suicidal counter-strike.

Richard saw death coming. His temporal perception was gone but he didn’t need foresight to know what was about to happen. The blade was already in motion, already committed, already close enough that dodging was impossible even with ten-times normal speed because the distance was measured in inches rather than feet.

He tried to activate time dilation one final time, tried to dodge, tried to counter-attack, tried anything—