Chapter 99: Decisive Strike

Inside the portal, Jackson continued fighting for his life.

His situation was growing increasingly desperate. Every exchange pushed him closer to his limits, and the cracks spreading across his twin daggers served as a constant reminder that he couldn’t keep this up forever. His opponent’s physical strength was overwhelming, its mastery over mana made every attack dangerous, and the dense white mist continued disrupting his senses.

Even if he managed to survive for a little longer, what then?

The goblin shaman showed no signs of exhaustion. Meanwhile, Jackson’s concentration was gradually wearing thin. One mistake, one poorly timed dodge, and the creature’s enormous staff would crush him before he could react.

Simply extending the battle wouldn’t help him win.

He needed something capable of changing the balance, something that could compensate for the enormous difference in their strength.

As Jackson narrowly evaded another sweeping attack, his thoughts turned toward the Golden Brush.

The mysterious artifact had already helped him overcome countless seemingly impossible situations. Its ability to alter status windows had allowed him to weaken the goblin shaman’s Explosive Strength talent, buying him precious time. But that alone wasn’t enough.

There was another ability he had discovered.

The Golden Brush could copy entries from other people’s status windows and add them to his own.

And if he could obtain the goblin shaman’s talent, he might finally possess the means to end this battle.

However, activating the Golden Brush required spiritual force. Jackson couldn’t afford to waste what little he had left on a reckless attempt, especially while fighting an opponent capable of killing him in a single blow.

He needed to recover first.

For now, he concentrated entirely on survival.

Jackson stopped making unnecessary movements. Rather than attempting to counter every attack, he focused on evading the most dangerous strikes while using his twin daggers to deflect those he couldn’t avoid. He kept his movements tight, conserved his strength, and forced himself to remain calm despite the suffocating pressure.

The goblin shaman, seemingly convinced that victory was already within its grasp, continued pressing its advantage.

Its enormous staff swept through the fog, smashing into trees and tearing apart the earth whenever Jackson narrowly escaped. Each time the creature attacked, it seemed certain that its next strike would finally end the human’s resistance.

But Jackson refused to give up.

He gritted his teeth and waited.

Slowly, his depleted spiritual force began to recover.

The process felt agonizingly slow. Every passing second seemed to stretch into an eternity, especially when the goblin shaman’s attacks continued forcing him to move. Still, Jackson held on, carefully tracking his opponent while waiting for the moment when he would have enough spiritual force to act.

Finally, he felt the familiar sensation of his spiritual force reaching the level he needed.

Jackson’s eyes flashed with determination.

Now!

He immediately summoned the Golden Brush and focused on the goblin shaman’s status window.

Without wasting another second, he copied the entry for Explosive Strength and added it to his own status window.

The familiar sensation of the artifact activating passed through his mind.

He had acquired the goblin shaman’s talent.

For a brief moment, Jackson felt a surge of excitement.

Then he forced himself to calm down.

Obtaining the talent didn’t mean he could suddenly overpower his opponent. His physical attributes remained far below those of the goblin shaman, and the thick mist continued interfering with his senses. Even with Explosive Strength, he couldn’t afford to trade blows recklessly.

The talent’s true value lay elsewhere.

It gave him the means to deliver a devastating attack, provided he could create the right opportunity.

The goblin shaman’s modified talent reduced the force of every third successive attack. By copying the original ability, Jackson had gained access to the same underlying mechanism, allowing him to unleash an attack whose power could multiply several times over.

But there was a catch.

He had to land that decisive strike.

If his third attack missed, he would waste his best opportunity and have to find another opening while facing the same overwhelming opponent. He couldn’t afford to squander it.

Jackson studied the goblin shaman’s movements, carefully observing the rhythm of its attacks and the way it shifted its weight before swinging its staff.

He didn’t need to overpower the creature throughout the entire battle.

He only needed to land one decisive blow.

Suddenly, two sharp whistles cut through the mist.

The twin knives shot forward, their blades glinting faintly as they tore through the air toward the goblin shaman.

The creature reacted immediately.

With a contemptuous movement, it twisted its enormous body aside, allowing the knives to pass harmlessly by.

Jackson had already anticipated this.

He retreated just enough to avoid the staff sweeping toward him, then redirected the twin knives. They curved through the fog, circling around the goblin shaman before attacking from another angle.

Once again, the creature reacted with frightening speed.

It shifted its body and knocked the knives aside, leaving them unable to inflict any meaningful damage.

To an outside observer, Jackson’s attacks might have appeared increasingly desperate. His knives couldn’t pierce the creature’s defenses, and each failed attempt seemed to accomplish little more than delaying the inevitable.

But Jackson wasn’t trying to injure it yet.

He was positioning it.

The repeated attacks forced the goblin shaman to adjust its stance, gradually turning its body until it faced Jackson directly. Its attention remained fixed on the human who dared to resist it, while its massive frame settled into a position that left it ready to launch another devastating assault.

Jackson’s eyes sharpened.

This is it...

He had found the opening he needed.

The twin knives shot forward for the third time.

Their blades flashed through the dense fog, one slightly ahead of the other, following a trajectory that brought them directly toward the goblin shaman.

The creature’s crimson eyes narrowed.

It had already dealt with the knives twice. As far as it was concerned, these fragile weapons posed little threat to its nearly impenetrable physique.

It prepared to repel them once more.

But something changed.

As Jackson guided the knives through the air, a strange sensation stirred within his mind. Under the relentless pressure of the battle, he had been pushing his Meteor Climbing Stance to its limits, repeatedly stretching his control over the spiritual strands connecting him to the weapons.

Now, as the twin knives approached their target, he suddenly felt something new.

A faint connection.

A third strand of spiritual force began to take shape.

Jackson’s eyes widened slightly.

He had only reached the Initiate Stage of Meteor Climbing Stance, which allowed him to control two knives through his spiritual strands. Yet at this critical moment, his understanding of the technique seemed to deepen. The invisible threads of spiritual force that connected him to the weapons grew clearer in his perception, and he caught the faint outline of a third strand.

He didn’t have time to examine the sensation.

He acted on instinct.

Jackson surged his spiritual force forward, directing the newly formed strand toward the goblin shaman.

The invisible connection wrapped around the creature’s movement for a fleeting instant.

The goblin shaman’s body suddenly stiffened.

Its forward motion halted for a fraction of a second, as though an invisible hand had seized it in place.

That brief interruption was all Jackson needed.

The twin knives accelerated.

Their blades, already moving at considerable speed, suddenly seemed to triple their velocity as Explosive Strength activated. The two weapons tore through the fog like streaks of silver light, leaving almost no time for the goblin shaman to react.

For the first time since the battle began, genuine surprise appeared in the creature’s crimson eyes.

It tried to move.

It was too late.

The twin knives struck.

One blade pierced straight through the goblin shaman’s eye, followed almost simultaneously by the second. Both weapons tore through its skull with terrifying force, bursting out from the other side of its head.

A violent shockwave erupted from the impact.

The dense white mist scattered in every direction, exposing the shattered ground and broken trees surrounding the battlefield. For an instant, the entire clearing became visible beneath the sudden burst of force.

Then everything fell silent.

The goblin shaman’s enormous body remained motionless for a brief moment before its strength finally gave way.

Jackson stood several meters away, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. His face was pale, his clothes were stained with dirt, and his arms trembled from the strain of the battle.

He barely had the energy to move.

Nevertheless, his eyes remained fixed on the fallen creature.

The goblin shaman was dead.

Jackson stared at the result of his attack, hardly daring to believe that he had actually succeeded.

He had done it.

After being pushed to the brink of death, after enduring an opponent whose attributes had seemed utterly insurmountable, he had finally found a way to win.

Not through a miraculous breakthrough in cultivation. Not through some sudden surge of overwhelming power.

He had won by identifying a weakness, acquiring the right ability, and creating the precise opening needed to exploit it.

Every part of his counterattack had mattered. The time spent recovering his spiritual force, the copied talent, the repeated knife attacks, and the sudden emergence of the third spiritual strand had all converged into a single decisive moment.

One mistake would have ruined everything.

But he had succeeded.

Jackson slowly lowered his gaze toward his twin knives before looking back at the fallen goblin shaman.

A bitter smile appeared on his exhausted face.

"That was way too close."

For the first time since the battle began, he could finally breathe without wondering whether the next second would be his last.