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

Kelvin swayed backward, the poison blade missing by a hair’s breadth, and used the infiltrator’s forward momentum against him. Kelvin’s short sword swept low, aiming not to kill but to disable.

The blade caught the infiltrator’s lead leg just above the ankle—a precise cut that severed the tendon.

The infiltrator’s leg collapsed. He went down hard, training keeping him rolling to avoid follow-up strikes, but the damage was done. He couldn’t run on that leg.

Meanwhile, the other two infiltrators were fighting their own desperate battles.

The second infiltrator had produced a second crossbow and was fighting two-weapon style, firing bolts at point-blank range while defending with a short blade. He’d killed four defenders already—two with crossbow bolts, two with his blade—but he was being pushed back by sheer numbers.

An orc warrior with a battle axe charged in with a overhead strike designed to cleave the infiltrator in half.

The infiltrator rolled aside, letting the axe bite deep into the wooden floor, then fired a crossbow bolt into the orc’s neck at point-blank range. The orc went down gurgling.

But while he was focused on that kill, three serpentfolk warriors struck from different angles with coordinated spear thrusts. Training to fight as pack hunters showed as their spears came from three directions simultaneously.

The infiltrator managed to deflect two thrusts with his blade, but the third took him in the side, punching through leather armor and into his ribs. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

He screamed and triggered his crossbow reflexively, the bolt taking one of the serpentfolk in the face.

But the spear was still in his side. He grabbed it with his free hand, trying to pull it out, and a goblin archer put an arrow through his wrist, pinning his hand to the spear shaft.

More defenders swarmed him. He managed to kill two more—one with his remaining crossbow, one with a desperate blade thrust—before a serpentfolk tail-whip caught him across the back of the knees and dropped him.

He reached for his suicide poison capsule with his free hand.

Kelvin, having disabled the lead infiltrator, saw the motion and recognized it instantly.

"Stop him!" Kelvin roared.

A defender kicked the infiltrator’s hand away from his belt just as his fingers touched the poison capsule. The capsule rolled away across the floor.

But the infiltrator still had his blade. He drove it toward his own throat in a suicide thrust that would prevent interrogation even without poison.

Three defenders grabbed his arm simultaneously, stopping the blade two inches from his neck. They wrenched the weapon away and pinned him to the floor with their combined weight.

The second infiltrator thrashed violently, trying to break free, but six defenders were too much. They held him down while a seventh tied his hands behind his back with cord strong enough to restrain even enhanced strength.

"Alive!" Kelvin commanded. "Keep him alive!"

The third infiltrator had chosen a different strategy than his companions. Where they fought, he ran.

He’d seen the trap spring, assessed the tactical situation in half a second, and made the cold professional calculation: the mission was blown, his teammates were probably dead or captured, staying to fight would only add his corpse to theirs.

He sprinted toward the western wall of the warehouse and threw a small alchemical explosive at it. The blast created a hole in the wooden wall large enough to dive through.

He went through at a dead run, emerging into the night outside the warehouse.

Defenders on the rooftops of adjacent buildings immediately opened fire with arrows. Three arrows hissed through the darkness where he’d been, but professional movement training kept him unpredictable. He jinked left, rolled right, came up running.

Another arrow grazed his shoulder. Pain flared but didn’t slow him.

He had one advantage: he knew the escape routes they’d planned during infiltration. If he could reach the northwestern gap in Third Line before defenders surrounded him—

A corruption barrier erupted directly in his path. Not a wall, but a web of shadow energy that would slow him down for the crucial seconds defenders needed to catch him.

He didn’t slow. He threw another alchemical explosive—his last one—directly at the barrier.

The chemical reaction ate through the corruption magic just like the acid had earlier, opening a gap.

He sprinted through—

—and found Vex’ahlia waiting on the other side.

The demon commander had been positioned outside the warehouse specifically to intercept anyone who escaped the initial trap. Her purple-tinted skin made her nearly invisible in the darkness, her black eyes reflecting no light.

She moved with speed that spoke to years of combat experience.

Her blade, coated in paralytic venom, flickered out in three rapid strikes that the infiltrator barely parried with his own weapon. But parrying put him on the defensive, slowed his escape.

More defenders were converging from all sides.

The infiltrator made a desperate choice. He couldn’t win this fight. Couldn’t escape. But he could deny the settlement intelligence.

His hand moved to his suicide poison capsule.\

Vex’ahlia saw the motion and her blade lashed out, aiming to sever his hand before he could swallow the poison.

But the infiltrator had expected that. The poison capsule was a feint. His real move was a throwing knife that came from his other hand in a deceptive strike at Vex’ahlia’s throat.

The demon commander twisted aside, the knife missing by inches, and in that half-second of distraction the infiltrator actually grabbed his poison capsule and bit down.

Fast-acting poison flooded his system. His eyes rolled back. His body convulsed once, twice, then went still.

Dead in seconds.

Vex’ahlia stood over the corpse with cold professionalism. "Dedicated. I respect that."

She reached down and retrieved the infiltrator’s equipment, finding a small crystal in his pack that had already shattered—the signal to Elric that the mission had failed.

"One escaped the warehouse but committed suicide before capture," Vex’ahlia reported through the network. "Two captured alive inside. Mission failure signaled to Elric."

Back inside the warehouse, Kelvin surveyed the results of the brief, brutal engagement.