Rena felt like tearing Roman's lips apart after he threw that statement at her, and the fact that she had used those exact same words to mock him earlier made it sting even more.
Roman just kept smiling, and somewhere in the back of his mind he was already questioning why he had chosen to wait for her to show up instead of walking straight into the castle the moment he arrived.
'A real shot at the Goblin King alone would have been far more valuable than a comeback moment,' he thought.
But since they had both arrived at the entrance at the same time, there was nothing to do about it now. They walked in together, not as a team, but as two separate people who happened to want the same thing at the same moment.
At the entrance of the castle stood a single guard that made every goblin they had fought on the towers look small by comparison. A towering Blue Goblin draped in crude stone armour, its body wide and dense with muscle, gripping a bone spear with both hands as it stood before the massive stone gate with the stillness of something that had been standing there a very long time and had never once been moved.
The moment it spotted them approaching, that stillness broke.
It roared and charged, fast and deliberate, its heavy footsteps sending a faint tremor through the ground with every stride.
Roman and Rena exchanged a brief glance. The silent question of who was taking this one passed between them in less than a second, and the answer was that neither of them was willing to step aside.
They both moved forward at the same time.
[Monster Name: Blue Goblin Guardian.]
[Rank: Level 20 Ordinary.]
[Traits: Aggressive Speed Boost, Brutal Spear Strike.]
[Life: 99%.]
Roman hadn't expected anything less, but a Level 20 alone wasn't enough to rattle him. He had already put down a handful of Level 12 Raiders without much trouble, and with Rena alongside him, even if they weren't coordinating, the load was effectively split.
His goal was simple. Land the killing blow and take all the EXP.
That was the rule. Two Entrants could work together to bring down an Ordinary Monster, but the one who delivered the final hit claimed everything. No sharing. The higher-rank monsters were different, distributing EXP based on damage contribution, but for Ordinary and Extraordinary ranks, it was winner takes all.
Roman intended to win.
When the Guardian closed the distance and swung its spear, the strike came toward Roman's side. He had read the movement before it fully committed, and the moment the spear came around, he activated [Anti Balance].
The burst of pressurised air sent both the Guardian and its spear lurching backwards in a single violent motion. The spear tumbled away across the ground, and in the same breath Rena was already behind the Guardian, having slipped through the opening with [Phantom Shift], dagger raised and ready.
Roman registered what was happening and his body reacted before his mind caught up.
[Fireball Activated.]
He drove the strike straight into the Guardian's face with everything he had.
For a moment he thought it was over.
[Life: 99% » 12%.]
It wasn't.
The Guardian staggered but didn't fall, and that one moment of hesitation was all Rena needed. She pressed her dagger cleanly into the base of its skull, and the massive goblin dropped to the stone ground without another sound.
Roman's expression darkened before the body had even finished falling.
Rena straightened up and looked at him with a smile that she clearly had no intention of hiding.
"Heads up, Mage. Better luck next time."
She stepped over the Guardian's fading corpse and walked through the gate into the castle without looking back.
Roman stood there for a moment, watching the body dissolve, quietly furious.
He let it go. There were more Guardians inside, and he was going to make sure the next one was his.
...
When the great stone door groaned open and they stepped inside, what met them was a world entirely its own.
The interior of Stone and Bone Castle was vast and suffocating all at once, its walls constructed from slabs of rough grey stone mortared together with crushed bone and packed earth that had hardened over years into something almost seamless.
The ceiling arched high overhead, supported by thick columns carved from what appeared to be enormous femur bones, each one smoothed and stacked and fitted together with a crude but deliberate craftsmanship that was unsettling to look at too long. Torches mounted along the walls burned with that same sickly green flame from the battlements outside, casting long shifting shadows across the floor and filling the air with a faint, acrid smoke.
The hallway stretching ahead of them was lined on both sides with alcoves carved directly into the bone-reinforced walls, and in several of them, smaller goblin skulls had been arranged in careful formations like offerings or trophies. The floor beneath their feet was uneven stone etched with crude markings that followed no pattern a human mind could easily decipher.
And threading through all of it, underneath the smoke and the cold stone air, was the smell. Thick, rotten, ancient, the smell of a place that had housed something living for a very long time and never once been cleaned.
Roman and Rena stepped further in, and before either of them had fully taken in the space, movement registered from two directions simultaneously.
From the left, two goblins with white markings on their foreheads and necklaces of stone beads hanging at their chests. From the right, the unmistakable silhouette of another Guardian.
Roman identified the marked ones immediately from his academy studies.
Goblin Shamans.
[Monster Name: Blue Goblin Shaman.]
[Rank: Level 15 Ordinary.]
[Traits: Curse of Weak, Sleeper.]
[Life: 98%.]
The Curse of Weak was not something to take lightly. A successful cast would halve an Entrant's Attributes for a set duration, and there was no way to reverse it mid-fight once it landed. The only real counter was to not let them cast it at all.
Roman knew the range. Five metres. The moment either Shaman closed that gap, the spell would follow immediately.
He wasn't going to give them the chance.
Rena peeled off toward the Guardian without a word, and Roman stayed with the Shamans.
He raised his hand.
[Ice Shot Activated.]
He didn't lock onto a single target. He sent both shots outward in a spread, one striking the raised hand of the nearer Shaman mid-cast and snapping its concentration clean, the other driving straight into the forehead of the second one, dropping it instantly.
The surviving Shaman stumbled back several steps, cradling its injured hand, eyes wide. It tried to channel the spell with its other hand, backing away as it did.
Roman didn't let it finish the motion.
[Ice Shot Activated.]
Two more shots to the forehead, and the Shaman crumpled to the stone floor without a sound.
[You have killed a Level 15 Ordinary Monster, Blue Goblin Shaman. +110 EXP.]
[You have killed a Level 15 Ordinary Monster, Blue Goblin Shaman. +110 EXP.]
[No drops delivered.]
[You have leveled up! Level 3 » Level 4.]
[Level 4. {2070/3500 EXP}.]
Roman exhaled and let the smile come. He had already leveled once after clearing the Raiders, and the EXP from those kills had carried him most of the way to the next threshold. The two Shamans had pushed him over it cleanly.
He rolled his shoulders and turned to check on the other side of the room.
Rena was closer than he expected.
They both turned toward each other at exactly the same moment and collided before either of them had time to react, the impact sudden and close, her hand landing against his chest and her other catching his arm, his hands closing around both of hers by reflex.
Neither of them moved.
They stood there in the dim green torchlight of the castle hallway, faces closer than either of them had intended, the silence between them doing something that neither of them seemed to know how to name. For a few seconds, something in both of them forgot entirely where they were.
Then it broke.
"Get your hands off me!"
Rena pulled back sharply, her expression snapping back into something between irritation and disgust.
Roman released her and stepped back.
"Yeah, noted," he muttered, turning away.
He was done with the whole concept of girls entirely. Whatever that moment had been, it was already buried.
They cleared the rest of the first room in silence and pressed deeper into the castle, where the Goblin King and his remaining Guardians were definitely waiting.
And between the two of them, the unspoken competition was very much still alive.