My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill-Chapter 338

But Satou had been practicing these abilities far longer than Richard had been using Chrono-Break. And unlike Richard’s technique which burned life force borrowed from Chronus, Satou’s nightmare domain was sustainable, drawing power from the fear and terror it generated.

The nightmare realm won.

Suddenly Richard found himself fighting in a space where normal rules didn’t apply, where his three centuries of combat experience became partially obsolete because the environment itself was hostile and intelligent and working to kill him.

His ten-second foresight showed him futures, but they were nightmare futures—twisted, impossible, contradictory. He saw himself dying a thousand different ways simultaneously. Saw Satou attacking from directions that didn’t exist in normal three-dimensional space. Saw his own fears made manifest and given killing intent and physical form.

"No... this isn’t real... it can’t be real..." All Richard’s voices were showing strain now, the fear bleeding through despite three centuries of mental conditioning.

"In my domain," Satou’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, coming from multiple directions at once with slight delays that created an echo effect, "I decide what’s real. I decide what’s possible. I decide who lives and who dies."

"COMBAT TRANSCENDENCE—ANALYSIS MODE!"

Every aspect of Richard’s fighting style, every pattern in his movement, every tell in his technique, every weakness in his defenses—all of it analyzed with superhuman precision and perfect understanding. Three centuries of accumulated skill reduced to data points, to probabilities, to exploitable patterns.

Satou could see it now—see exactly how Richard moved when he was about to fire age acceleration, see the muscle tension that preceded temporal echo creation, see the slight shift in stance that marked chrono-shield activation.

Perfect understanding of his opponent’s capabilities.

"LIGHTNING MANIPULATION—STORM WEAVE!"

Electrical arcs erupted throughout the nightmare domain, jumping between shadow constructs like living serpents made of electricity. The lightning wasn’t normal electrical discharge—it was enhanced with shadow properties, creating black lightning that moved through darkness as easily as through conductive material, that could appear from any shadow in the entire domain.

The black lightning jumped, crackled, creating a storm that filled the entire space with lethal electrical discharge that could appear anywhere at any time with no warning.

Richard had to dodge constantly, his foresight showing him where the lightning would strike but giving him very little room to maneuver safely.

"AGE ACCELERATION WAVE!" Richard countered desperately, firing massive temporal energy in all directions, trying to decay everything around him, trying to age the nightmare domain itself out of existence.

"CRYSTAL MANIPULATION—RESONANT BARRIER!"

Satou created structures from crystallized shadow-essence, constructs that resisted temporal aging better than normal matter because they weren’t entirely physical. The crystals formed barriers, shields, walls that blocked Richard’s age acceleration while allowing Satou’s attacks through.

"FIRE MANIPULATION! EARTH MANIPULATION! MAGMA MANIPULATION! METAL MANIPULATION!"

Elements bent to Satou’s will in rapid succession, each one deployed tactically, each one creating new hazards Richard had to navigate.

Fire walls erupted from the floor, forcing Richard to dodge or be burned. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Stone barriers rose up, blocking escape routes and forcing Richard into kill zones.

Magma pools formed suddenly beneath Richard’s feet, areas of floor melting into liquid rock that would incinerate anything that fell in.

Metal extracted from the walls reformed into projectiles that launched at Richard from unexpected angles.

Richard aged them all desperately, decaying fire into ash, turning stone to sand, cooling magma to rock, rusting metal to powder.

But for every hazard he destroyed, three more appeared. For every attack he countered, five more came from different directions.

Satou was using dozens of abilities simultaneously, creating an overwhelming assault that even ten seconds of foresight couldn’t fully prepare for because there were simply too many threats happening at once.

"VOID STEP—DIMENSIONAL SHIFT!"

Satou didn’t just Shadow Step through normal darkness anymore. He began teleporting through void-space itself, appearing in locations that didn’t exist in normal three-dimensional reality. Positions that foresight couldn’t predict because they were geometrically impossible, because they required moving through dimensions that didn’t interact with normal time.

He attacked from those impossible positions—blade strikes that came from angles that made Richard’s brain hurt trying to process them, that seemed to violate the basic laws of physics and spatial geometry.

"PHASE STEP—INTANGIBLE STATE!"

Satou became partially intangible, his body existing halfway between physical and spiritual states. Richard’s age acceleration beams passed through him harmlessly when he was phased, hitting nothing solid, affecting nothing physical.

But Satou could still attack while phased, his shadow blade maintaining cohesion even when his body was partially non-corporeal.

"LIFE DRAIN—ESSENCE SIPHON!"

Whenever Satou got close enough to make physical contact—which was happening more and more frequently as Richard’s ability to maintain distance eroded—he activated the ability to drain vitality directly. Not healing himself so much as weakening Richard, pulling energy and life force away to fuel his own techniques.

Richard felt himself getting tired faster, felt his stamina depleting more rapidly than combat exertion alone would explain, felt his reserves draining in ways that frightened him.

"BERSERKER HOWL—RESONANT FREQUENCY!"

Satou unleashed another sound-based attack, this one specifically tuned to disrupt Richard’s concentration and enhance Satou’s own capabilities. The howl wasn’t just noise—it was weaponized sound, operating on frequencies that resonated with bone structure, that disrupted neural firing, that made it physically harder to think clearly.

The sound enhanced all of Satou’s physical capabilities even further while simultaneously degrading Richard’s, creating a widening power differential with every second the battle continued.

Richard was taking damage now. Not just from the occasional glancing blow but from sustained assault. His temporal echoes were being destroyed faster than he could generate new ones. His age acceleration was becoming less effective as Satou deployed counters specifically designed to resist it. His foresight was being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of threats happening simultaneously.

Small wounds were accumulating. A cut here from a shadow tendril that got through his guard. A burn there from black lightning that he’d dodged but not fast enough. Bruises from attacks that didn’t land cleanly but still made contact. Each one minor individually but adding up to significant cumulative damage.