Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

Ronny became a lightning blur because of the spell combo he had decided to use. In the next moment, he was standing behind his hobgoblin opponent. The latter had a bunch of illuminated cuts on his body that became visible after some time.

"Rararararara."

The hobgoblin apparition made a series of weird sounds after it was inflicted with wounds on its body. It turned back to tackle its attacker. But by then, only Ronny's afterimage had remained there.

But the hobgoblin wasn't to be underestimated. As soon as he realized his opponent was too fast for him to handle, he released a domain attack to counter the speed. A bunch of thick, strong green vines sprouted from the ground and covered the area around the goblin.

He was just about to press on when the vines obstructed his progress. They started grabbing at his feet, climbing upwards to prevent him from moving completely.

Ronny had to divert his attention to the vines that were gripping him. He cut the vines with his daggers that had Blitz Bolt running through them. But there seemed to be no end to the production of the vines. As soon as he cut one, two more would pop up. So he ended the time-element spell and concentrated on the Blitz Bolt and Blitz Steps.

As Ronny was busy dealing with the vines, the hobgoblin approached him from his left side and attacked his axe. The axe's swing was so forceful that it generated a gust of wind, letting Ronny know the incoming danger just a brief moment before it happened.

Ronny understood the lightning element spells wouldn't be much effective against his opponent. So he shifted to fire-element spells.

'Fire snake.

Breath of fire.'

Ronny cast two of his fire-element spells at the same time while changing his position a bit to tackle the incoming attack. A complete dodge wasn't possible. So he chose to deflect the attack by diverting its force to the side. The stacked fire snake spell countered the vines that looked like green pythons themselves.

The breath of fire was a diversion. Ronny directed that attack on the hobgoblin's face while diverting the axe's force to his side using both his daggers in a defensive X formation. Sparks flew when the weapons came in contact with each other.

The hobgoblin couldn't redirect the force of his weapon because his face was blasted off with the burst of fire originating from Ronny's breath. Now that the axe's attack was diverted to the side, Ronny withdrew his right dagger from the defensive formation, spun around while swinging the hand for extra momentum, and tried lodging the weapon right below the hobgoblin's rib cage that was an inch taller than him.

But the hobgoblin seemed ready for Ronny's surprise attack. That is because the domain attack of vines came to his rescue and wrapped his torso up, preventing him from facing a serious injury to his vital place.

'The fuck kinda realism is this? And the most wretched kind of elemental matchup right off the bat at that.'

Ronny cursed the difficulty level of the first floor. He created a distance from his opponent using Blitz Bolt and observed his surroundings. I wanted to see how his teammates were doing since he was struggling so much.

Lady Zee had retrieved a spear from her storage space and was handling her opponent pretty well. She was a black-fire element user. With her element, she had created a trail of black flames around her battlefield with her weapon attacks. But it didn't look like she'd be able to wrap her battle anytime soon.

Jules had incorporated ice-elemental attacks with her illusion spells. She would create ice statues of herself that created the illusion of her being everywhere at once. She also mixed illusions with her rapier attacks, trying to catch her opponent by surprise. And so far it was working. But she was still miles away from getting rid of her opponent for good.

Renar, Belar, and Viper had stuck together like they had been told. In response, their opponent formed a united front against them. Ronny could use them as meat shields to gain some time for a heavy counterattack against his opponent. But he couldn't underestimate the force of the five monsters they were battling with just because they were in F-Rank. In the worst case, they could come in between him and his opponent, wasting his counterattack opportunity.

'Damn it. It seems I'll have to take care of this thing on my own.'

Ronny wanted to draw his go-to weapons Diceros Left and Right. But he was trying to maintain his identity. Although lightning element spells were not common, they were not eye-catching either. Weapons like Diceros Left and Right, however, were easily identifiable. Especially when he knew the exploration team contained people from LA.

Ronny gripped his daggers hard as he made his way through a series of vines heading for him. He cut through his obstructions and headed straight for his opponent once again.

"Rararararara."

The hobgoblin drummed his chest with both his hands before wielding his heavy weapon on his shoulder as he saw Ronny approaching him. He raised his left hand in the lightning-fire element user's direction and another couple of branches of vines shot towards Ronny from almost all directions.

'Sedated Perception.

Stunning Speed.

Blitz Bolt.'

Despite the vine attack, only Ronny's afterimage was caught as he made it past the hurdles. Just when he was a few meters away from the pumped-up hobgoblin, he executed his AoE while still maintaining his earlier combo.

Ronny didn't want to use AoEs this early in the game. Because he had guessed that the hobgoblin he was fighting right now might not be the only opponent he had to fight. But conserving his mana was also not a wise choice in his case after he saw the tenacity of the monster he was dealing with.

Lightning tongues were let loose right in the middle of the vine domain as they produced a distinct chirping sound. The effect this time was much more impactful than Eren's F-Rank spell execution as the AoE had been upped in the next rank.

'Blitz Storm.'

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AN: I've skipped on describing the goblins since most of us are aware of their appearance. We can skip the descriptions for common monsters and maintain an image catalogue on Discord and Insta to speed up the readability. Unique monsters would be excluded from this treatment.. Let me know if you want monsters in the VEH-verse described with brief descriptions anyway.