The arrow hit clean.

Right between the eyes of the leading goblin on the right side. Its head snapped back and it dropped without a sound, legs folding underneath it.

The ones behind it stumbled over the body and broke their momentum for half a second.

Thud!!

Kkrrccckkk!!

Noah was already nocking the next arrow.

He picked his targets methodically. Not the ones Damien was already cutting through. The ones coming from the sides. The ones angling around the edges of the fight, trying to find the gaps. He tracked their movement, adjusted, and released.

Second arrow, third arrow and then Fourth.

Each one wrapped in that thin layer of blue mana light, each one finding a target.

Without changing its trajectory nor wavering in air.

He wasn’t thinking about it consciously anymore. His eyes found the threat, his hands responded, the mana followed. It was starting to feel like one connected motion rather than three separate ones.

’Kill as many as possible. As fast as possible.’ His thought was clear. It was to kill his enemies. Nothing else.

Across the room, Damien was a different thing entirely.

He moved through the goblins the way water moves through a narrow gap. Fast and inevitable.

His sword caught the crystal glow, the golden light along the blade pulsing with each strike. Bodies dropped behind him in a trail.

His sword was covered with layer of hot light element that shown with golden color.

Usually light element were white color. But Damien have special kind of light element which have soft Devine powers in it. Which gave it golden color.

One goblin lunged at his back.

"Not on my watch." Naoh said.

His arrow passed through the air two meters to Damien’s left and took it in the throat before it reached him.

Damien didn’t even turn around. He kept moving forward. He decided to believe in Noah.

Then he stopped and planted his feet.

His golden blade sword’s arm pulled back and swept in a wide circular motion, a full rotation of the wrist and shoulder combined.

The golden light along the blade stretched as it moved, and when the arc completed it left the sword entirely.

A ring of gold light shot outward from the point of the slash, flat and spinning, cutting through the cluster of goblins directly in front of him at chest height.

Four went down at once.

The ones on the edges of the ring stumbled back, disoriented, giving Damien the space to step forward and finish them individually.

Noah watched it for exactly one second with his mouth slightly open.

’That’s a sword art. An actual one. And he just used it like it was nothing. Crazy!’

He filed that away and went back to shooting.

---

The numbers thinned quickly after that.

Between Damien’s blade work and Noah’s arrows covering the angles, the goblins that had poured across the room in a screaming mass were reduced to scattered individuals within a few minutes. The last few broke off their charges and tried to retreat toward the walls.

Damien dealt with those without being asked.

After a while silence settled.

Noah lowered his bow and looked at the room.

Bodies across the stone floor. The smell of blood and something older underneath it.

The crystal light on the walls continued its pale steady glow, indifferent to what had just happened beneath it.

Thirty-something goblins. Done, he started to feel almost relaxed.

Then the two hobgoblins which were watching from behind finally decided to moved.

---

They had been standing at the back of the room the entire time.

Watching and waiting for right time. Their smaller kin dying in front of them hadn’t moved them an inch. They had simply observed, clubs in hand, yellow eyes tracking the fight with something that wasn’t quite intelligence but was closer to it than anything else in the room had shown.

Now they roared.

ROOOOARRRRR!!!

The sound hit the walls and came back doubled, deep and rough, filling the chamber completely.

Then they split apart.

The taller one, the six and a half foot one with the heavy club, turned its eyes directly onto Damien and charged. The other, shorter and thicker with the crude armor, turned toward Noah.

Noah pushed his bow into his storage ring.

His hand found his sword hilt and the blade came out. He dropped into his stance without thinking about it. The dewdrop stance. Sword pulled back along his side, tip angled diagonally toward the ground, hilt gripped in both hands. Low weight distribution. Built for the first strike being the deciding one.

He let his mana flow into the blade.

Ice followed the current. Not a thick coating. A thin precise layer that crept from hilt to tip and settled there, cold fog trailing from the edge in a faint white wisp. At the very tip of the sword a small shape formed, dense and pointed, like a single frozen drop pulled long.

The hobgoblin crossed the room fast.

Faster than the regular goblins. Its legs were longer and its stride was heavier and the weight behind each step was visible in how the ground seemed to absorb it. The club was raised above its shoulder.

It came down hard.

Noah moved. He mover forward and to the side, cutting the angle, letting the club pass close enough that the displaced air hit his face. His sword came up and met the creature’s forearm on the recovery.

Cling.

The impact ran up his arms instantly. His back teeth pressed together from the force of it. The hobgoblin was physically stronger than him. Not by a small margin.

’Damn! This monster is strong!’

But where his blade touched the crude armor strap on its forearm, ice spread.

Fast and branching, crawling across the surface in thin white lines, covering the leather and the skin beneath it within two seconds.

The hobgoblin felt it. It pulled back with a sharp grunt, shaking the arm, looking at the frost spreading across it with something between confusion and anger.

Noah used the moment.

He stepped in and drove the tip of the sword toward the joint between the creature’s shoulder and neck where the armor didn’t cover. The frozen dewdrop at the tip hit exposed skin.

The cold detonated outward from the point of contact.

Not an explosion. More like a sudden deep freeze, a concentrated burst that spread three inches in every direction from where the tip had made contact, locking the muscle and the surface tissue in the same instant.

The hobgoblin recoiled hard, slamming backward a step, one arm dropping.

"Grrrckkkkch!"

Noah reset his stance.

His head was aching slightly. Using the ice while maintaining the blade coating and directing the burst at the end was more mental load than simple mana circulation. He could feel the strain sitting behind his eyes like pressure.

’The strain...its manageable.’ He thought.

The hobgoblin shook itself and refocused. Its eyes found him again, angrier now, and it came back in with the club swinging in a wide horizontal arc.

Noah ducked under it and let the swing carry the creature’s weight forward. He dragged his blade across the back of its knee as he came up behind it.

Ice followed the cut. The joint stiffened.

The hobgoblin stumbled.

Noah moved around to its side and drove the sword in again, targeting the gap between two straps of its chest armor. The tip connected and the cold burst fired again.

The creature went to one knee.

Noah stepped back, reset, breathed once, and drove the blade through the gap at the base of its neck.

Slash!

Blood spilled from the cut part of its neck.

It went still. Then fell on ground.

He stood over it with cold fog still trailing from the sword edge and his breath coming a little harder than he wanted it to.

’Stronger than expected,’ he thought. ’Physically, much stronger. If I tried to match it directly it would have broken my guard in two exchanges.’

He had worked around it. Used the ice where it could do the most damage, targeted the joints and the gaps, kept moving instead of holding ground.

It had worked.

He looked across the room.

Damien was already standing over the second hobgoblin.

His was already dead. Noah had no idea when it had ended. Damien was calm, rolling his shoulder once like he was working out a mild stiffness, golden light fading from his blade.

He looked over at Noah.

"You good?" he asked.

Noah exhaled. "Yeah."

Damien looked at the frost still clinging to the hobgoblin at Noah’s feet. The ice spreading from the wounds. The frozen patches across its armor.

"Ice," he said, with mild interest.

"Yup, ice," Noah confirmed.

Damien nodded once, like that settled something he had been quietly curious about. Then he turned and looked at the far door at the other end of the room.

Still closed. Still waiting.

"Ready?" he asked.