My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill-Chapter 341

Too slow. Too close. Too damaged. Too late.

The blade thrust forward.

"EXISTENCE ERASURE!"

A cylinder of flesh, bone, and organs eight inches in diameter running completely through Richard’s torso simply ceased to exist.

Not cut. Not burned. Not destroyed. Not damaged.

Erased. Removed from reality itself. The matter didn’t go anywhere—it simply stopped being, stopped existing, left behind a perfect void with edges so clean they looked polished.

The wound went through Richard’s chest from front to back, visible from both sides, creating a tunnel of non-existence where vital structures should have been. Heart gone. Left lung gone. Part of the spine gone. Major blood vessels gone.

All simply erased.

Richard’s eyes widened—all his glitching versions showing the same expression of shock and horror and disbelief simultaneously.

His temporal echoes collapsed, hundreds of duplicates dissipating in an instant as his concentration failed completely.

His glitching stopped, all the overlapping time-state versions collapsing into a single present-moment Richard.

His Chrono-Break technique failed entirely, temporal energy dissipating like smoke.

His connection to Chronus flickered as the soul-bond struggled to maintain cohesion through catastrophic physical damage.

His legs gave out, and he fell to his knees, Satou standing over him with blade still extended, the weapon dripping with residual void energy.

Richard Clay had been defeated.

Absolutely. Completely. Irreversibly.

Around them, the monastery was in its final moments of structural integrity. The damage from their battle was simply too severe, too comprehensive. Massive sections of ceiling were falling. Walls were buckling and collapsing. The floor was giving way in multiple locations. Fire spread from magical impacts, consuming what the combat hadn’t destroyed. The entire structure was maybe two or three minutes from total collapse.

But Satou’s attention was entirely on Richard, on the dying temporal warrior kneeling before him.

Richard looked down at the impossible wound in his chest, at the void where his vital organs should have been. Looked up at Satou’s face with an expression that mixed shock and fear and, strangely, a kind of resignation.

"I..." His voice was singular now, just one man speaking, no more chorus effect. "I saw this coming... fifteen seconds ago... saw exactly how you’d kill me... but couldn’t stop it..."

Blood trickled from his lips as his remaining intact organs struggled to keep functioning with a third of his torso simply gone.

"Foresight without the power to change the future..." Richard continued, his voice growing weaker, "...is just watching yourself die in slow motion..."

"Chronus..." The name came out barely above a whisper. "Master... I’m sorry... I failed you... again..."

Satou felt it then—the portal beginning to form. Reality tearing open as Chronus prepared to come through, to witness what had happened, to see his champion’s final moments.

But Satou had been waiting for exactly this. Had planned for it. Had prepared for the moment when Chronus’s attention would be focused here.

He grabbed Richard’s head with his free hand, claws digging into the temporal warrior’s skull firmly but not yet lethally.

And activated his devouring ability

"DEVOUR!"

Black void energy erupted from Satou’s hands, wrapping around Richard’s dying body.

Richard’s body dissolved into pure essence—glowing streams of temporal energy flowing into Satou like rivers pouring into an ocean. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Abilities integrated:

[TIME DILATION - MODERATE] - Speed himself up to three times normal velocity.

[TEMPORAL PERCEPTION - WEAK] - See three seconds into the future.

[AGE ACCELERATION - BASIC] - Rapidly age objects on touch.

[CHRONO-SHIELD - WEAK] - Create brief zones where time slows.

[TEMPORAL ECHO - BASIC] - Generate three or four after-images.

And beneath everything—a partial connection to Chronus himself. A tenuous thread linking Satou to the Time Lord across vast distances.

Right now, through that connection, Satou felt:

SHOCK. RAGE. GRIEF.

Chronus is coming.

Maybe sixty seconds until arrival. Need to move NOW.

"Enhanced Perception!"

He found Sylvara and Cassius buried under rubble forty feet away. Both unconscious—his Bloodlust Form release had overwhelmed their exhausted minds.

Satou grabbed both companions, one over each shoulder, and ran.

Through the emergency exit. Over the balcony. Through the gardens.

"True Flight!"

He cleared the north wall just as—

Through the soul-bond: portal opening. Chronus arriving.

Too late.

"Shadow Step!"

Satou disappeared into the city’s dark alleys, putting distance between himself and the monastery with each teleport.

By the time Chronus manifested, Satou was half a mile away and still moving.

Chronus was reviewing reports when the soul-bond shuddered.

His head snapped up. "Richard?"

The bond twisted. Weakened.

"What’s—"

It snapped.

The sensation was indescribable. Like having half his soul ripped away—which was exactly what had just happened.

"RICHARD!" Chronus shot to his feet, temporal energy crackling around him. "No. No, this isn’t—"

He reached through the bond. Nothing.

And with it went half his power. He could feel it draining away, the strength that had made him the Second Seat diminishing in real-time.

"Someone killed him." Chronus’s voice was barely a whisper. "Someone killed my other half."

His hands moved through patterns, tearing reality open. "Temporal Gateway!"

The portal ripped into existence, connecting to where Richard’s signature had last registered.

Chronus stepped through—

Into devastation.

The monastery library was destroyed. Collapsed ceiling. Shattered walls. Fires burning. And no trace of Richard. No body. No blood. Just fading temporal energy.

"He used Chrono-Break." Chronus walked slowly through the ruins, stone aging to powder beneath his feet. "Called on my power through our bond."

He stopped in the center where the fight had ended.

"And now I can’t sense his presence nor can I see his dead body."

Then his mind began working through possibilities of who can do this and why .

Richard had been investigating infiltrators. Spies. He had set a trap for them in this very library while also pushing forward his other plans. Everything had been carefully prepared.

But Chronus felt that something else was wrong. It was as if they had deliberately isolated Richard in an unknown place, somewhere that would prevent Chronus from sensing Richard’s death or the loss of the bond between them. Because the moment Chronus felt their connection disappear, he had instantly teleported to this location.