Chapter 475 Invasion [41]

"You're quite disrespectful. Laughing at an old goblin, you runt."

Raghul laughed again.

He found the old goblin standing before him to be quite the character.

Most goblins would have been terrified standing in front of him, especially after witnessing what he had done to the clan, yet Flogga was still trying to hold a conversation with him, as though keeping him talking somehow gave them more time.

There was also something else about her too.

The way she spoke. The choice of her words. The confidence behind them.

It wasn't how an ordinary goblin would speak.

"The way you talk is different."

Flogga raised an eyebrow.

"Is it?"

She paused for a moment, understanding what he meant, before continuing.

"Maybe it's because I was once a Chosen myself."

Raghul raised a brow.

That revelation genuinely stunned him for a moment, although he recovered quickly enough that the surprise barely remained on his face.

"You must have lost the title and your memories, then?"

"Precisely."

Raghul studied her for a moment before a faint smirk returned to his face.

"I wouldn't want to be you."

Flogga gasped, deliberately exaggerating her reaction as though she had just been deeply insulted.

"What do you mean you wouldn't want to be me? It's great being me. I've lived a fulfilled life."

"As a prisoner," Raghul said.

He slowly stretched his hand toward the barrier, his fingers spreading as a dark aura began coating them. The energy gathered around his razor-sharp fingertips, crawling across them like black smoke while the air around his hand seemed to grow heavier.

Flogga's gaze immediately followed the movement.

She could tell.

Whatever was coating Raghul's fingers wasn't ordinary mana. There was a strange pressure contained within it, something that made the hairs on her body rise despite the barrier separating them.

"Why waste resources on breaking the barrier when you can use them elsewhere?" She blurted out. At this point, she was just rambling. "I don't know, maybe somewhere outside the clan."

Raghul replied calmly, his dark aura still gathering around his fingers.

"No. I believe my resources are best used here. Killing you and all of the goblins here is the best decision to make."

Flogga struggled to hide the terror those words stirred inside her.

She had been around long enough to understand the difference between someone making a threat and someone calmly stating what they intended to do. Raghul wasn't trying to intimidate her. He had already made up his mind.

Still, she forced herself to respond.

"No. It's a mistake."

Raghul gave her a curious look.

"A mistake?"

Flogga nodded slowly, keeping her expression as composed as she could.

"You would not be able to handle the retaliation. Trust me, youngling. You do not want someone with that kind of power to get angry."

Raghul clicked his teeth in annoyance. For the first time, Raghul's expression lost some of its amusement.

"You speak about him as if he's a god."

"Well... that god of yours isn't here to save you, is he? Old hag."

Before Flogga could respond, Raghul drove his finger into the barrier.

The instant his fingertip made contact, the entire surface shimmered.

The barrier didn't simply crack. Instead, the point where his finger struck began to deform inward, the protective layer bending around the pressure as though it were a sheet of incredibly strong glass being pushed from the outside.

Flogga's expression changed.

She instinctively shuffled backward, putting more distance between herself and the distorted section of the barrier.

Raghul watched the reaction with a faint smile.

If there had been more than two garnets powering this place, breaking through would have been considerably more difficult. The barrier would have had enough magical reinforcement to distribute the pressure across multiple sources, making it far harder for him to overwhelm any single point.

But there was only one garnet.

One was something he could handle with ease.

The dark aura around his finger intensified as he applied more pressure, and the barrier responded with another violent shimmer before Raghul's claws tore into the barrier.

The surface warped violently around his fingers as the dark energy coating his claws dug into the protective layer, forcing it inward before small cracks began spreading from the point of contact.

Thok immediately took a step forward, tightening his grip on his weapon as he prepared himself for what he knew would become a final stand.

Behind him, the other goblins remained frozen.

Their hearts pounded heavily in their chests as they watched the barrier slowly give way, some gripping their weapons with trembling hands while others simply stared, unable to hide the fear written across their faces.

Flogga stepped in front of them.

She didn't do it because she believed she could stop Raghul.

She knew better than that. She did it because someone had to stand between the threat and the goblins behind her, even if that someone was an old goblin with nothing more than a walking stick.

Flogga was terrified too.

She could feel the fear crawling through her body as she watched another section of the barrier buckle beneath Raghul's claws, but she refused to let that fear reach the goblins behind her.

If they saw her panic, what hope would they have?

So she stood there. Waiting.

In her heart, she still held onto the belief that Eli would return in time. He had to.

But as the barrier continued to tear open, that hope became harder and harder to maintain.

Raghul's claws dragged downward.

SKRREEECH!

Another section of the barrier distorted, and a jagged opening began forming beneath his hand.

Flogga's grip tightened around her walking stick.

Death itself did not scare her.

She had lived long enough to understand that death was simply something every creature eventually had to face.

What frightened her was what would happen after she was gone.

The effect her death would have on the clan.

On the goblins who depended on her.

And most of all...On Eli.

She had seen how attached Eli had become to the goblin around him. She knew how much he cared about the clan.

If Raghul killed her, she couldn't imagine what that would do to the young goblin.

That was what truly frightened her. Not dying. But becoming the reason Eli lost himself. Arrogant as that may sound.