Back inside the Fuinjutsu Battle Formation, Seimei and his team rested and waited for the power of the formation to deplete.
Soon, six minutes had passed in the blink of an eye.
The barrier of the formation began to glow with a faint light and flickered for a few seconds before ultimately crumbling with a soft sound.
Next, the formation began to lose its power. The restriction on the Earth Release was lifted. The battle formation's suppressive effect on the fire element in the surrounding air began to weaken before it was completely gone.
Since the barrier is no longer blocking sound and smell, the sizzling and crackling sound of the corpse and debris burning, along with the nauseating smell of blood and charred corpses, spread everywhere.
The foul stench and the sound of burning corpses suddenly hit the remaining goblins, including the A-rank goblin lord, like waves.
They understood that their kins had been slaughtered.
Rage bubbled inside the goblin lord's chest as it waited for the culprits of the massacre to unveil themselves.
It seemed that the world had finally heard the goblin lord's request as dense, concentrated grey, icy mist began to disperse soon.
When the mist was finally dispersed, what entered the goblins' and the goblin lord's sight was a horrifying scene.
Hundreds of their kin were ruthlessly slaughtered.
Heads chopped. Bodies smashed into meatpaste. More than half of their settlement was destroyed and burned.
And the ones responsible for the tragedy were standing before their eyes.
They were standing tall and proud. Their gaze was filled with indifference when these human boys looked at them.
It was as if they were looking at dead bodies.
The goblin lord couldn't stand it.
It was the leader of the goblins. Hundreds of goblins and hobgoblins followed its commands. Those hundreds of goblins were his power, his kin, his extension, his property.
The goblin lord had carefully cultivated them to create a sizable force that helped it dominate a good patch of land in the peripheral region of the Deepwood Forest.
To grow their numbers, the goblin lord had destroyed multiple villages. Recently, it even targeted passing caravans. It did all this to plunder more resources and human women.
It had used human women as breeding tools to add more goblins to its ranks.
These humans casually destroyed years of hard work. It had always seen humans as weak creatures. No, not even creatures, but foods and resources to quickly raise more goblins.
Although goblins could also breed with other animals and chakra beast races to give birth to more goblins, humans had always been their most desired breeding tools for numerous reasons.
And now, this pathetic race of foods and breeding tools dared to destroy its years of accumulation?
Unforgivable.
Absolutely unforgivable.
Rage that bubbled inside its chest almost drove it to insanity.
Nothing could soothe its anger now other than the lives of these little humans in front of it. The goblin lord planned to capture them, torture them, eat their flesh, and drink their blood.
Its eyes were bloodshot in rage.
Finally, it broke the silence and snarled.
"Kiiiiieeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!"
The goblin lord's maddened screech echoed in the woods as it gave its remaining subordinates the order to attack the humans in front of it.
Since the cover of the mist had been lifted, the humans were surely out of tricks now.
In the open battlefield, how could these weak humans even resist goblins, a race gifted with the blessing of chakra and Earth Release innate skills?
The Goblin Lord: The advantage is mine!!!!
The goblin lord was already daydreaming about killing Seimei and his friends even before the fight started.
However, it had no idea that the three humans in front of it weren't helpless villagers or weak samurai or ninjas.
No.
They were insanely talented ninjas who possessed powers most humans in the Shinobi continent could only dream of.
-----------------
Meanwhile, as the mist was dispersing, Seimei carefully looked at the A-rank goblin lord and recalled its information.
Goblin was a peculiar race of chakra beasts.
From D to B rank, it never saw a qualitative increase in battle power. If Seimei had to explain it in gaming terms, the goblins just got some stat increase and gained one or two Earth-type innate skills.
And weirdly, even though goblins had the innate power to travel underground for a short distance using Earth Release chakra, they rarely used it.
Even when they reached B-rank and transformed into a hobgoblin, they still preferred to reinforce their bodies with chakra, use defensive innate skills, and fight with a weapon.
Interestingly, they could reinforce their weapons with Earth Release chakra flow, making them a force to be reckoned with in close combat.
Of course, they still used brute force and had no skills.
Seimei could only say that their intelligence was lacking.
But all of it changed when they reached the A-rank and evolved into a goblin lord.
Once they reach the A-rank, their intelligence increases drastically, and they get access to a wide variety of Earth element innate skills. And they can use them quite skillfully, too.
To understand the contrast, Seimei decided to test the goblin lord for one minute before finishing it off.
Just as he was thinking about it, Seimei saw the goblin lord shout in rage, causing all the remaining goblins to charge toward his team.
Seimei wasted no time and said to his teammates, "As we have agreed, you guys deal with the mob. I will play with the goblin lord for a minute or so before finishing it off."
With that, Seimei unsheathed his ninjato, reinforced his body with chakra, and dashed forward.
He quickly dodged multiple goblins and charged toward the goblin lord.
However, the goblin lord used its innate skill, Drifting Earth, to retreat one hundred meters within the blink of an eye and let out a few strange screeching sounds.
And right after that, Seimei saw three B-rank hobgoblins charging at him. Two were coming from his front and one from his back.
Their heavy swords gleamed with chilling brown light, which was clearly a result of channeling Earth Release chakra through the blades.
All three blades were approaching him at the same time.
Seeing this, Seimei smirked but didn't do anything.
The moment the blades were about to hit Seimei's body, he turned into a log of human-sized wood with a puff of smoke.
Substitution Jutsu
Poof~
Three heavy blades were simultaneously slammed into the wooden log, crushing it into splinters.
Crack! Boom!!
But Seimei was nowhere to be seen.
And before the broken log of wood and wooden splinters could all fall on the ground, the hobgoblin that charged at Seimei from behind suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest.
Squelch!!
Blood came out of its mouth as it looked down at his chest in a daze. A bloodied blade came out of its left chest. And before long, the blade was retracted, leaving behind a punctured wound that was spilling blood like a fountain.
Its heart had been pierced, and its vitality was depleting at an alarming pace. Clearly, it would die in a few seconds.
The other two hobgoblins were bewildered at the sudden turn of events.
As the nearly dead hobgoblin's body fell to the ground, the other two finally saw the figure of Seimei standing behind the cover of their kin.
Seeing Seimei, they were about to raise their swords to hit him when they saw a sudden flash of cold steel.
Before they could react, the blade of Seimei's ninjato sliced through their necks. Sending their chopped heads flying into the air.
Thud!! Thud!!
A second later, the two hobgoblins' headless bodies also fell to the ground.
At that moment, Seimei heard the sound of several sharp, medium-sized, and heavy projectiles whizzing toward him.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Seimei, however, wasn't alarmed.
With his Tenseigan, Seimei already saw the goblin lord activating its innate skill, which caused five, half a meter long, drill-like projectiles to emerge from the ground and rush toward him.
These projectiles were also spinning with a high rotational force, making them even more powerful and deadly.
Seimei dodged four of them without breaking a sweat before activating Chidori Katana and slashing his blade, covered in several bolts of lightning arcs, toward the last drill-like projectile.
Boooom!! Crackle!!
Arcs of purple lightning flashed the moment the blade and the drill-like projectile met in the air. High-voltage lightning arcs tore through the internal structure of the drill-like projectile made of hardened earth and smashed it into smithereens.
Then, Seimei looked toward the goblin lord and watched it calculate its next move while suppressing its bubbling rage.
Seeing this, Seimei's lips curled up.
"Interesting!"
Seimei just felt that he was missing a monocle like the one in the possession of a certain Angel of Time from a really buggy and cheat-like pathway.
"Very interesting!"
-------------------------------------------------------
A/N: If you like my story and want to read ahead, you can check out my P@treon page and read 17+ Advanced chapters!
patreon.com/Seigan
You can also help me by sharing the story around. Thank you for reading!