The chamber was still ringing with the clang of deflected iron and the party's collective, sharp intake of breath. The Goblin Taskmaster, its glowing ultimate attack spent on a fizzled attempt to execute their tank, growled in frustration. Its one-shot kill was on cooldown. It was vulnerable.
Jax was a coiled spring of pure, distilled humiliation. He scrambled to his feet, his massive frame trembling with rage. The red glint of his health bar was an insult. Being saved was an insult. The silent, analytical gaze of the Poet was the greatest insult of all. He gripped his axe, muscles bunching to charge back into the fray, to reclaim his role through brute force.
"No." Zara's voice was like a whip crack. She put a hand out, not touching him but creating an undeniable barrier.
She turned her head, fixing her gaze on Kage. The look was no longer condescending. It was a concession. It was the look of a programmer acknowledging a more elegant algorithm.
"You. What's the plan?"
Jax froze. His head swiveled from Zara to Kage, the silent, unassuming player he'd dismissed as a charity case, a leech. His jaw worked, grinding his teeth with an audible creak. To be sidelined by his own party, to have his authority handed over to him… it was a humiliation worse than death. He didn't agree. He didn't nod. But he didn't charge. His rigid stillness was a surrender.
Kage didn't acknowledge the shift in the social hierarchy. He didn't care about their respect or Jax's hatred. It was all just noise. Zara had asked for an input, and he would provide one.
His voice was as flat and cold as the stone beneath their feet, utterly devoid of triumph.
"Its whip attack has a two-second windup. It uses the heavy swing after the whip lands, but it gives a big DPS window afterwards. It defaults to the whip after a successful hit. The loop is to get hit, and capitalize the big uptime windows." He paused, his eyes scanning the Taskmaster as if it were a page of code. "Mage, stay at maximum range. Save your Frost Bolt to interrupt potential variables. Ranger, your job is uptime on Hunter's Mark. Maintain constant damage, but don't over-commit. Stay mobile."
To Lily, he was equally direct. "Healer, your mana is your most valuable resource. Don't waste it on small top-offs. Save your largest heal for the heavy swing."
Finally, he looked at Jax. There was no pity, no condescension. "You have the biggest health pool and damage output. You are both the sponge and the knife. Understood?"
Before waiting for an answer, he focused his intent.
Title: Weaken Taskmaster
Poem: Weaken
A faint, sickly grey light pulsed over the goblin boss for a second before fading.
[-50 AWN]
[Weaken applied. Target receives 5% more damage.]
Kage gave his own status a clinical glance.
EXP: 515 / 520
Five points. He thought. Doable.
The party moved. Or rather, they were moved.
Kage delivered precise, single-word instructions at the exact millisecond they were needed. He was a living combat log, a human-shaped addon calling out timers before the game engine did.
The Taskmaster recovered its composure and lashed out with its chain whip, a sweeping horizontal attack designed to catch ranged players.
"Whip incoming," Kage said, his voice calm. "Ranger, three steps left."
Finn didn't think. He sidestepped, and the chain hissed through the air where his head had been a moment before. He let loose an arrow that sank into the beast's shoulder.
The Taskmaster roared, its chest puffing out as it began to glow with a faint red light.
"War cry animation. Interrupt."
Zara's hands were already moving. A shard of jagged ice flew across the cavern and slammed into the goblin's open mouth. The war cry, a party-wide debuff, died in its throat with a choked gurgle.
It switched targets, enraged, and lunged at Jax with a swing. The warrior tensed, his instincts screaming at him. He blocked the normal hit, and the boss defaulted to the whip, as if on cue.
"Hold," Kage commanded. "Eat it."
To the healer, he added, "Lily, begin your cast now."
Jax gritted his teeth, a guttural curse dying on his lips. He braced. The whip came from the side, a bone-jarring impact that sent shudders through his entire body and knocked a big chunk off his health. But he was standing. And just as the damage registered, a warm, golden light enveloped him, Lily's Heal landing with perfect timing.
"Heavy swing incoming," Kage stated. "Dodge back. Now."
Jax, following the command with frustration, backpedaled. The massive club smashed the ground where his feet had been a moment before, the wind of its passage whistling past his helmet.
The Taskmaster struck the ground.
"Four seconds," Kage stated. He raised his hand, a shimmer of light gathering around Jax's weapon.
Title: Strengthen Axe
Poem: Strengthen
[-50 AWN]
[Strengthen applied on [Polished Novice's Iron Axe]. Damage increased by 5%. Durability loss decreased by 5%.]
Jax didn't need to be told twice. He exploded forward, all his pent-up fury and humiliation channeled into his axe. He swung with a vicious ferocity, landing three deep cuts on the Taskmaster's exposed flank while it was locked in its recovery animation.
To the party, the fight had transformed. It was no longer a chaotic mess of panicked dodging and desperate healing. It had a rhythm. A cadence. It was a brutal, violent dance, and Kage was their choreographer.
This feeling… it was familiar. Not the frantic, high-APM spam of a typical raid, but a deeper, slower pulse that resonated with the flow of the fight. He remembered the team drills, the synchronized kiai shouts, the percussive clap of shinai on armor. Master Jin had called it the ki of the group, a shared energy.
"A leader does not shout orders, Klaid," the old man had once said after a chaotic practice match, his voice calm but firm. "He sets the rhythm. If your rhythm is perfect, others will follow your beat without a single word."
Kage pushed the thought away. It was just efficient communication. He was a human DBM addon, calling out timers. The memory was irrelevant.
He himself moved like a ghost on the periphery. He dealt no damage. He took no action, save for the occasional twitch of his hand as he cast a verse. His entire being was focused on a single task: processing data.
He tracked the boss's attack patterns, the party's cooldowns, their mana and health pools, the debuffs, the buffs, the distance between each player. He saw the subtle shift in the Taskmaster's AI as it tried to break the pattern lock, feinting a whip attack to draw out a dodge, only to switch to a quick jab. Kage saw it coming as soon as the animation began.
"Feint. Hold position."
They held. The jab missed.
His mind was a supercomputer running a complex simulation, but one thread of its processing power was dedicated to a single, trivial calculation. Five more experience points.
The Taskmaster's health bar bled away. 50%. 40%. 30%. The party now moved with a trained confidence, anticipating Kage's calls, executing them flawlessly. He had locked the boss into a predictable, resource-draining loop. It could no longer adapt. It could only follow the script Kage had written for it.
In a brief moment of calm as Jax dodged a standard swing and Finn landed another arrow, Kage saw his window. The party had the rhythm. They could handle the next ten seconds without him.
In this moment of absolute, focused combat, with a dungeon boss on its last legs, Kage did the unthinkable.
He turned his back on the fight.
He calmly walked away from the swirling chaos of steel and magic, toward a dark, unremarkable corner of the cavern. The party watched, their focus momentarily breaking. Jax faltered mid-swing. Lily's next heal was a half-second late.
Kage ignored them. He knelt beside a small, pulsating patch of flora, its faint blue glow the only light in the corner.
He began to gather it.
The system notifications were quiet, almost apologetic.
[Harvesting Success! Gloomweed x1 acquired.]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +0.5%]
[EXP Gained: +2]
Three more, Kage thought, his hands already moving to the next plant.
The Taskmaster, sensing the break in pressure, let out a roar and swung its club wildly at Lily.
"Healer, backpedal," Kage said, his voice not even rising. He didn't look up from his task.
Lily yelped and scrambled backward, the club smashing the ground where she'd been standing.
[Harvesting Success! Gloomweed x1 acquired.]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +0.5%]
[EXP Gained: +2]
One more.
[Harvesting Success! Gloomweed x1 acquired.]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +0.5%]
[EXP Gained: +2]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 4!]
[You have unspent attribute points.]
A brilliant column of blue light erupted around Kage's kneeling form. The triumphant, orchestral chime of a level-up echoed through the cavern, a sound so jarringly out of place it was comical.
The entire party stared.
In a single, fluid motion, Kage stood. His two new attribute points flowed instantly into Strength, the change executed a microsecond after the notification appeared.
Strength: 10 -> 12
The pathetic, rusted sword in his hand pixelated and vanished. In its place, the solid gleam of a newly forged blade appeared in his grip. On his hands, his tattered cloth wraps dissolved, replaced by thick, brown leather.
[Novice's Iron Sword Equipped.]
[Novice's Hardened Leather Gloves Equipped.]
He had been waiting for this exact moment. He hadn't just leveled up. He had transformed.
His entire character model looked different. Taller. More solid. More competent.
Finn could only gape, his arrow forgotten on the string. His voice came out as a bewildered whisper that was audible to the entire party.
"Did… did he just stop mid-boss fight… to level up by picking flowers?"
The Goblin Taskmaster let out a furious, guttural scream. Its AI, primitive as it was, seemed to register the ultimate insult. It ignored the heavily armored warrior, the mages, the ranger. Its red, hate-filled eyes locked onto the single greatest source of disrespect in the room: the Poet who had just ignored it to death.
It charged, club raised high, a freight train of fury aimed squarely at Kage.
The party gasped. He was a Poet. He had no defensive skills, no armor to speak of. It was a suicide charge.
But Kage met the charge head-on.
His new iron sword flashed out. His stance was perfect, a low, centered posture. He didn't try a fancy, full-body parry. It was a simple, economical deflection, using the flat of his blade to redirect the club's momentum.
CLANG.
[Perfect Parry!]
The sound was a crisp, solid ring of steel on steel. The impact, which should have sent him flying across the room, was met and held. He slid back a single foot, his boots grinding against the stone. He held his ground.
Then, flowing from the parry with the practiced grace of a thousand drills, he countered. His sword lashed out, a simple, straight thrust aimed at the gap in the Taskmaster's arm guard.
The damage number that floated up was not the pathetic number from before.
[-38 HP]
It wasn't jaw-dropping, but it was real. It was meaningful. It was damage.
The party's collective jaw dropped. This was not the same person from thirty seconds ago. The strategist, the debuffer, the living radar addon, was now a viable DPS.
"Jax, try to hold the aggro," Kage's voice cut through the awe. It was the same flat tone, but now it was coming from a man holding a sword that dripped with the boss's blood. He cast a verse on his own weapon, a shimmer of light wrapping around the blade.
Title: Strengthen Sword
Poem: Strengthen
[-50 AWN]
[Strengthen applied on [Novice's Iron Sword]. Damage increased by 5%. Durability loss decreased by 5%.]
Kage rejoined the fight as a completely different entity. He still called out instructions, his mind tracking the battle's complex choreography. But now, he was also part of the dance.
His Agility was still a joke, his attack speed a crawl. But the spirit of the Prodigy moved through the broken vessel of the Poet. Every swing was a study in lethal efficiency, his movements a slow but undeniable dance of a master swordsman.
He was playing chess on three different boards at once: managing the party's cooldowns, predicting the boss's AI, and now, executing his own combat rotation.
The Goblin Taskmaster was doomed. Caught between Jax, who was now being managed like a priceless asset, a barrage of spells and arrows, and a new, shockingly competent swordsman who seemed to know its every move before it made it, the creature's health bar melted.
With a final, desperate roar, it swung its club one last time. Kage and Jax sidestepped in unison, and Jax's axe swung down, cleaving deep into the monster's neck.
The Goblin Taskmaster shuddered, froze, and then dissolved into a shower of golden light.
[You have defeated the Goblin Taskmaster!]
[EXP Gained: 514]
Silence descended upon the chamber, broken only by the heavy breathing of the party. They stood amidst the glittering motes of light, catching their breath. They looked from the dissipating corpse to the loot that had appeared in its place, and then, as one, their eyes turned to Kage.
He wasn't celebrating. He wasn't even looking at them.
[Novice's Iron Sword]
Durability: 38 / 40
Good.
The entire power dynamic of the group had been irrevocably shattered and remade. Jax was no longer the leader. Zara was no longer the undisputed strategist.
Kage was the unspoken conductor, a quiet, terrifyingly efficient force who had just proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that in his hands, even picking flowers was a deadly combat tactic.