IBMATG 5

Chapter 5

3.5 million diamonds, in real money, was worth 17.5 billion won.

And I had bought it for less than 1.75 million won.

“Alright.”

{Hidden Quest ‘The Corrupted Goblin Shaman’ has begun.}

As the system message popped up, I was instantly transported into a new world.

Pop.

The scenery wasn’t all that different from where I’d been before—except that far in the distance, atop a hill, there was a blazing fortress surrounded by wooden palisades.

“Shall we begin?”

The moment I took my first step, a goblin rushed toward me.

I mustn’t kill this one.
If I did, the workload would just increase.

“Help! Help!”

It spoke human words in broken pronunciation.
No—it was speaking Korean.

Maybe the system matched the quest NPCs’ speech to the participant’s mother tongue. Either way, the goblin spoke words I could clearly understand.

“There! Our home! Demon! Everyone die!”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

No need to listen to the whole story.
I already knew the quest details.

In short: the goblin shaman in that burning fortress had summoned a demon, and it was slaughtering all the goblins inside.

This guy was one of the few who escaped.

“Where’s your camp? Hurry and lead the way.”

“Ah, okay!”

Following the goblin a short distance, we came upon a camp of survivors driven out of the fortress.

An Awakener could choose to help them fight, or slaughter them all and loot their belongings before clearing the quest solo.

Obviously, it was better to help them.
That way, there’d be less to do.

“Kieeek! Kiik!”
“Kkueek!”

They began squawking at each other in their own tongue.

Probably saying something like, “Who’s this guy? Will he help us? Can we trust a human?”

No one could really interpret their exact words anyway.

“If you’re done talking, let’s go. We need to get your home back.”

“Human! Really? You help us?”

“Yeah. I mean it. Now move.”

The goblin who spoke Korean relayed my words to the others. And then—

“Kiieeeeeek!”

With enraged cries, they all grabbed their weapons and rose to their feet.

Dozens of green-skinned dwarfs charged up the hill together.
I followed close behind.

Rumble!

Right at the entrance of the burning fortress, goblin-like monsters appeared to block our way.

Demon Goblins.

They had horns on their heads and crimson skin.

Just as demons summoned by humans resembled humans, the goblins’ summoned demons resembled goblins.

Fwoosh!

Instead of spears or blades, they hurled fireballs from their hands.

Of course, their attacks were laughably weak against me.

“Dark Dragon Arts.”

Boom!

I advanced, ducking under attacks with simple head movements and smashing their skulls with straight punches.

Even if they were summoned as demons, at the end of the day, they were still just goblins.

To someone like me, who had grown more than tenfold stronger, they were nothing but insects.

“Out of the way.”

Bang! Bam!

No matter how many Demon Goblins swarmed, they didn’t slow me down.

They were even weaker than the giant centipede I’d hunted earlier.
Other than casting magic and coming in numbers, they posed no real threat.

In fact, their intelligence was even lower than regular goblins. They charged without tactics, squandering the advantage of numbers.

After cutting down about a hundred of them—

{Assimilation Rate with Azidahaka has increased. +0.02%}
{Skill Proficiency of <Basic Martial Arts> has increased. 3/100}

Both assimilation rate and skill proficiency went up.

“Martial Arts proficiency rises fast enough… but why is the assimilation rate so slow?”

Probably because Azidahaka was a legendary guardian spirit, the assimilation rate crawled at a miserable pace.

“I killed so many, and it only went up 0.01% each time…”

Sure, the enemies were low rank, but still—it was too slow.

Assimilation was essential to empowering Authority.
To fully unleash my guardian’s power, I had to raise it.

“I need to find a way. First, I need to fix my weakness with mana consumption.”

And that meant I absolutely had to clear this quest.

“Haa…”

After cutting through waves of enemies, I finally stopped before the chamber where the final boss would appear.

I’d burned through my mana while fighting with Dark Dragon Arts, so I needed to recover.

Click. Gulp, gulp.

I pulled a mana potion from my bag and drank.

It was a large 500ml canned drink, tasting like sports soda.

“Phew… damn, this stuff…”

Ten thousand won each. Pricey, but not unreasonably so.

Still, relying on them was unsustainable—
They were bulky, and you couldn’t carry many.

“…And they fill you up way too fast.”

That made it impossible to drink more than a few.

Potions were just for emergencies, not a real recovery method.

“Alright, let’s do this.”

I stepped into the boss chamber.

A foul stench fills the air.

A grotesque voice echoed, and then the final enemy revealed itself.

The demon summoned by the goblin shaman.

A hulking three-meter beast covered in black fur, with goat hooves, massive muscles, and curled ram horns.

It stood upright, its goat head glaring down at me.

Nothing like the goblins I’d been fighting until now.

{A Minion of Baphomet has appeared.}

The instant it appeared, I swallowed hard and clenched my fists.

This was on a whole other level.

“There’s a reason the quest trigger is so strict.”

A hidden quest in a mere goblin dungeon.
But the truth was—it was a high-difficulty quest, designed only for those who had reached a certain level of growth.

“Gotta be careful.”

Even with a legendary guardian, I was here earlier than most would dare.

But if I wanted to make money fast and patch my weaknesses, I had to clear it.

• “Alone? You seem weaker than the others who came before.”

“…What?”

Its reaction was strange.

• “This isn’t fun. To think the human who came to kill me after so long would be this weak.”

It spoke as if it had experienced this scenario countless times already.

“Wait… so this isn’t just some scripted event?”

The goblins had begged me for help like it was the first time.
Just like NPCs in a game always repeated the same lines, no matter how many times players cleared the mission.

But this demon… it seemed to remember the cycles.
As if it perceived the flow of time itself.

• “Come then. Entertain me as best you can.”

Thoom! Thoom!

The Minion of Baphomet summoned a massive greataxe and charged.

Even with my enhanced perception from Dark Dragon Arts, its movements didn’t seem slow at all.

Whoosh!

“Ugh!”

It swung for my head.
I dropped flat to the ground to dodge, then darted between its legs.

“Your thigh’s gonna hurt!”

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

I pummeled its inner thigh with a rapid four-hit combo.

It didn’t have human weak points like groins, but crippling the legs would sap its strength.

• “Hooh! Faster than I thought!”

It laughed it off like nothing.

But if its legs gave out, all its attacks would falter—

• “Still, tell me… You come to fight me, yet wield the power of darkness? Where’s that confidence from?”

“…What? …Ah.”

I realized my mistake too late.

All monsters carried some trace of darkness.
But demons and undead bore the deepest.

And my guardian Azidahaka… was darkness-aligned too.

Since I was using Dark Dragon Arts, my punches were imbued with darkness.

The demon’s legs, momentarily crippled, instantly regenerated.

“So my basic attacks are counted as darkness too?”

Normally, stat-boosting traits had no elemental alignment.

But Dark Dragon Arts wasn’t just a stat boost—it consumed mana like an active skill.
So it worked differently.

I hadn’t understood its mechanics properly.
With so little info on legendary guardians, I hadn’t considered this.

“That means… I can’t actually hurt it.”

Crash!

• “Kehahahaha!”

The demon gleefully smashed everything around with its axe.

I kept dodging, mind racing.

“Should I just quit and come back later?”

Maybe get a holy-attribute weapon and retry.

For me, quitting wasn’t a big deal.
Other people struggled like hell to even start this quest, but I only needed to pay the 1.75 million won entry fee again.

‘Abandon quest…’

{Do you wish to abandon the quest?}

If I accepted, I’d be thrown outside immediately.

“Money’s no big deal. I can always make more.”

Whoosh! Swish!

The axe came flying again. I barely dodged, and my body countered instinctively with a punch to its gut.

Boom!

• “Hmph! Your attacks don’t work! Wounds heal at once, no matter what!”

“…Wait.”

A sudden thought hit me.

“Not that they don’t work… They just heal immediately?”

Physical damage landed.
Then the darkness attribute triggered regeneration.

Which meant—the wounds did exist before healing.

<Authority: Infernal Blaze>

Black hellfire surging from Azidahaka’s body.

(Phase 1) Wraps your knuckles in black flame. On contact, enemies are inflicted with continuous Fire and Darkness damage.

Mana Cost: 100

This also dealt dual damage types.
And unlike a punch, it inflicted continuous damage.

Mana cost was the problem…

“But maybe… just maybe…”

An idea sparked in my mind.

If it didn’t work, I’d quit immediately anyway.
It was a gamble with no real loss.

“Infernal Blaze.”

Fwoosh.

Dark flames wrapped around my right-hand knuckle.

• “Hah! Another trick? Come then, hit me with it!”

The demon spread its chest in provocation.

• “I sense strong malice from that fire! Such magic only empowers me!”

It was likely a trap. If I rushed in recklessly, I’d be slaughtered in an instant.

So instead—I slipped the knuckle weapon off my hand.
And hurled it.

“Haaaah!”

Whizz!

The burning knuckle flew straight into the demon’s chest.

A “Fire Knuckleball,” if I had to name it.

• “Hmm? What’s this…?”

The knuckle clanged off its chest and fell to the ground.

But the black flames stuck, burning on its body.

• “Hmph! A petty flame—”

Whooom!

Sticky, unyielding fire erupted.

• “Wh-what…?!”

The demon’s smugness vanished, replaced with panic.

• “You! How did you…?!”

“It worked…”

The dual Fire-and-Darkness continuous damage burned away faster than it could heal.

The thrown weapon ensured the flames clung to it.
Everything lined up.

But then—

• “Those flames… how could you wield his fire?!”

“…Huh?”

This wasn’t just ordinary damage.

• “Graaahhhhhh!”

The black fire devoured the demon entirely.
No regeneration. No resistance.

As if a higher being’s flame was swallowing a lesser.

“What… the hell…?”

When the flames died down, only a massive orb remained—its core.

Even I was stunned.
I’d only planned to burn away the flesh to expose the core, so I could stab it at the right timing.

“Human! I brought… this…!”

The goblin from earlier came running with a dagger, panting.

But it was already over.

He and I just stared blankly at the core left behind.

{You have devoured the Lesser Demon, Minion of Baphomet.}
{Error detected!}
{Fatal anomaly in Hidden Quest <The Corrupted Goblin Shaman>.}
{New activations of this quest are unavailable until the error is fixed.}