The world was a symphony of red. Red stun icons blazed over the heads of his party members. The red antechamber light bled into the throne room, painting the stone in bloody hues. And before him, the Goblin War Chief, its skin flushed a furious, enraged red, lumbered to its feet, its health bar a defiant crimson sliver.
10%.
Kage stood alone. His party was a gallery of frozen statues, victims of the final desperation AoE. The system had deemed the attack unavoidable, a checkmate designed to wipe parties who failed to burn the boss down before the enrage timer hit its final tantrum.
But the system, for all its power, accounted for rules. And Kage's class was built on finding the exceptions. The [Unflinching Verse] passive had been his key. He had simply opened a composition window to flag his character as 'casting,' making him immune to the stun.
A pure, beautiful exploit.
The War Chief let out a guttural roar, a sound of concentrated murder. It fixed its burning eyes on the lone figure who remained standing.
"Just you, little gnat? I will break you myself! Your skull will adorn my throne!"
Kage's mind was a silent, frozen lake. The chaos of the battle, the shouted commands, the panic—it all faded away. There was only the opponent, the objective, and the space between. This was familiar territory. The thrumming pressure of a kendo final, the world narrowing to the opponent's eyes, the tip of their shinai, the subtle shift of their weight.
His [Rhythmic Flow] counter glowed with nine brilliant stacks.
[+18% Action Speed]
[+18 Base Physical Damage]
His Awen was a puddle. He would have to make do.
The Chief charged, a locomotive of muscle and fury, its club swinging in a wide, horizontal arc meant to cleave him in two.
He flowed.
A single, precise step back, his body turning with the momentum of the swing. The head of the club missed his chest by a hair's breadth. The air displaced by its passage whispered against his avatar's cheek. As the boss overswung, creating a momentary opening, Kage's iron sword flashed out.
It was a surgeon's cut. A quick, upward slash against the unarmored sinew of the Chief's elbow.
[-42 HP]
Managable damage, considering the boss's high armor. The boss roared, more in frustration than pain, and brought its club back around in a clumsy, furious backswing.
Kage was already moving, gliding under the arc of the weapon. His blade darted out again, a silver needle stabbing into the unprotected flesh behind the Chief's knee.
[-41 HP]
He was a ghost. A phantom of pure efficiency, his movements dictated by a lifetime of discipline. The +18% action speed from his stacks were an augmentation of his very soul, allowing the game's avatar to catch up to the speed of his thoughts. Marginally.
He wasn't thinking in numbers anymore. The constant stream of damage calculations and aggro timers had faded to a background hum. His mind was quiet. He saw the shift of the Chief's massive shoulders and knew the direction of the swing before the arm even moved. He felt the tremor in the floor and knew a stomp was coming. Master Jin's first, most fundamental lesson echoed in the silent space of his mind:
"Do not watch the blade, Klaid. The blade is a liar. Watch the man. The steel only goes where the spirit directs it."
Parry. Slide. Thrust.
[-41 HP]
An overhead smash sent tremors through the stone floor. Kage was already outside its impact zone, his sword tracing another shallow line across the monster's thick thigh.
[-43 HP]
It was a dance. A deadly, intricate ballet. The lumbering rage of the War Chief was the percussion, and Kage's footwork was the melody. He was bleeding it with a thousand perfect cuts. To his stunned party members, if they could perceive it, it would look like a blur of silver and shadow, relentlessly chipping away at an unbreakable wall.
To Argent, watching from the antechamber, it was simply impossible. He was seeing a low-level player with a trash-tier sword and no discernible skills go toe-to-toe with an enraged raid boss. And the man was dictating the pace of the fight.
Seconds stretched into an eternity. Kage's Awen pool slowly refilled. Nine seconds of perfect uptime. Forty-five Awen. Another second. Fifty. Enough for one. Just one.
The Chief, bellowing in absolute frustration, its health now below 5%, abandoned all pretense of technique. It reared back, pouring every ounce of its remaining strength into a single, titanic overhead smash. A move with no feint, no subtlety. Pure, unadulterated force. A move designed to pulverize whatever it hit, parry or no parry.
This was the opening. The final beat.
Kage stepped into the attack, a deliberate, grounding motion, his feet finding perfect purchase on the stone. As the colossal club descended like a meteorite, his sword rose in a precise, flowing deflection to meet it. His mind was already composing, matching the cadence of his own upward block and the boss's downward swing.
(Raise Sword)"Weak-"(Meet Impact)"-en."
The single, focused concept formed in perfect time with his movement. At the exact millisecond his blade made contact with the descending club, angling it perfectly, the verse completed in his mind.
CLANG!
The sound was shockingly pure. A perfect parry. The force of the blow, immense as it was, flowed harmlessly around his blade.
Simultaneously, the verse landed. A shimmer of sickly green pulsed over the Chief's arms, locking them for a fraction of a second at the point of impact. A status icon appeared.
[Target Attribute Weakened! (STR -10%)]
And in that same instant, a cascade of notifications flooded Kage's vision.
[Gained Rhythmic Flow (Stack 10/10)]
[You have achieved PERFECT CADENCE!]
A soft, silvery aura, like moonlight on water, bloomed around Kage. But the change was deeper than a simple visual effect. The world's entire interface shattered and reformed around him.
The health and Awen bars at the edge of his vision dissolved, their data now felt intuitively, a constant stream in his senses. The Goblin War Chief no longer had a health bar; Kage could see the creature's life force as a fraying, crimson thread. The present sounds harmonized into a single, percussive rhythm that he could feel in his bones.
The world had become a symphony. And he was its conductor.
[Perfect Cadence Active: +20% Action Speed, +20 Base Physical Damage, Awen Cost for Verses -20%]
The Chief, recovering from the parry, shook its massive head. The tiny window of vulnerability closed. But for Kage, now wreathed in the silvery aura of Perfect Cadence, the entire battlefield had changed. The fight resumed, but the tempo was now entirely his.
His passive Awen regeneration continued its slow trickle—five points a second. He didn't have enough for a verse yet, so he pressed his advantage. For the next eight seconds, he was a relentless phantom. His Novice's Iron Sword, empowered by his stacks, became a fluid extension of his will, chipping away at the Chief's remaining health.
[-45 HP]
[-43 HP]
[-46 HP]
The dance continued, a masterclass in uptime. Finally, his Awen pool crested forty points. The stun on his party had two seconds left. It was time.
His Operator mind cycled through his available keywords, his Awen now just enough for a single, cost-reduced verse.
The word he landed on was [Target], a keyword he had previously dismissed as a simple targeting function, useless in a one-word poem. But the system rewarded novel applications. What if Target wasn't just a command to select an enemy, but a command to create a target?
A marker for a fatal blow.
He poured his intent into this interpretation.
Title: A Final Mark
Poem: Target
[-40 AWN]
A faint, ethereal red 'X' materialized over the War Chief's unarmored throat, a weak point visible only to him.
[Poet's Lexicon: Keyword [Target] Resonance increased. (1%->3%)]
He closed the distance.
His body, empowered by Perfect Cadence, moved with a speed that defied the game's low-level physics. One, two, three quick slashes across the Chief's chest, a classic kendo feint to draw its guard up. As the boss reacted, Kage was already sidestepping, his final motion a single, precise, upward thrust aimed directly at the ethereal 'X'.
The tip of his sword bit deep into the boss's throat.
[Critical Hit!]
[Target Bonus: 50% Multiplier!]
[-105 HP]
The War Chief froze. Its eyes widened in disbelief, the furious red light within them flickering. A final, gurgling sound escaped its throat as it stared down at the unassuming player who had dismantled its dominance.
"My… strength…" it rasped, a final, defiant gasp. "Will… not… be… chained…"
Then, with the agonizing slowness of a falling mountain, it collapsed.
The massive body dissolved into a shower of golden light particles just as the twenty-second stun wore off his party.
Zara, Jax, Lily, and Finn regained control of their bodies, blinking, their minds still catching up. The last thing they saw was the red shockwave. Now, there was only silence, the lingering scent of hot metal, and Kage, standing alone over the fading motes of the defeated boss. He was breathing heavily, the silvery aura of Perfect Cadence dissolving like mist.
Jax lowered his axe, his jaw slack. "He... he killed it. Alone."
Lily's eyes were like stars as she stared at the silvery silhouette. "S-So cool…"
Zara simply stared, her analytical mind in overdrive, trying and failing to build a model that could explain what she was seeing.
The data didn't make sense. It was a performance of unheard-of precision, a level of mechanical skill that shouldn't exist outside of the few, very top players. And she was sure she could recognize all of them.
Then, a triumphant orchestral chime echoed through the vast throne room. A wave of golden light washed over Kage.
[You have defeated Goblin War Chief Skarlag!]
[EXP Gained: 1200]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 5!]
[New Core Ability Unlocked: Verse-Crafting (Form II: Rhyming Couplet)]
[You have 2 unspent attribute points.]
Kage's mind, still coming down from the hyper-focused state of combat, dismissed the notifications for later. Rewards first.
[Party Notification: 30 Silver has been looted. Each member receives 6 Silver.]
[Loot Acquired]
[War Chief's Spiked Greaves (Uncommon)]
[Goblin-Stitched Quiver (Uncommon)]
[Apprentice's Curious Belt (Uncommon)]
[Grom's Unyielding Signet (Rare)]
The party approached the pile, the usual excitement of a boss kill replaced by a kind of reverent silence. Finn picked up the quiver, his hands trembling slightly. "Guys..."
Zara, the pragmatist, spoke. "Okay," she said, her voice strained. "Let's be logical. Jax gets the boots, Finn the quiver. Lily and I will roll for the belt." She paused, then picked up the ornate ring that pulsed with a faint inner light. "And this... this is not up for debate."
Jax picked it up, looked at its stats, and wordlessly handed it to Kage, his usual arrogant facade gone. "This... this is yours. No arguments."
Zara nodded, her expression grim with respect. "He's right. You earned the entire drop."
Kage took the ring.