Overwhelming Firepower

Deep, deep underground, in a place where the only light you'll find is that from a torch. This is the place were Goblins are born.

Unlike most races, Goblins do not have any female counterparts, so to breed, they need females of other races.

They not only take the females, but the weapons and armor as well. Every sword a goblin wields was torn from a corpse. Every scrap of armor is a stolen legacy. Every child born is not a blessing, but a curse dragged screaming into the dark.

In this place, each Goblin works for food. They hunt, they steal, they eat. The Goblins even fight with each other to take what the other has. The entirety of Goblin culture revolves around taking what they want.

In this den, some Goblins become greater than what they were. Some gain the ability to manipulate mana. Others grew in size to crush whatever it was in their way.

Some stole more than just weapons and armor; they stole ideals, honor, skills, and everything that person was to become more than what they were.

There were also some that became great at manipulating other goblins into doing their bidding.

Then there was that one Goblin that rose above all of that. One Goblin that was absolute, the one that had the ability to do all. This was the Goblin King.

***

Now, this Goblin King wanted to steal more; he wanted to steal entire kingdoms and empires and make them his own.

Who knew that just after it left the darkness to steal the light of others, it would meet this army of humans and would face a human child.

Using a weapon he had never seen before, the human child had wounded him, made him bleed for the first time since his birth.

The Goblin King's roar split the sky, a sound of wounded pride that shook the battlefield.

Never before had his flesh been broken. Never before had prey drawn his blood.

To the goblins, their king was invincible. To the humans who had seen him, he was terror made flesh.

The Goblin King's jagged blade carved into the frozen ground, gouging trenches with each step as he bore down on Lucen.

His golden eyes blazed, not with rage alone, but with a promise: no human would leave this place alive.

Lucen, smoke curling from the barrels of his peacemakers, only steadied his breath. He was now fully focused on the Goblin King's every movement. He wanted to see what other movesets this new monster had to show him.

The Goblin King lifted his jagged blade, frost and stone crumbling from the ground where it dragged. Each step was a quake, each breath a furnace of hate.

Lucen's eyes narrowed. The Goblin King's stance had shifted, lower, heavier. The blade came down, not in a single cleave, but in a storm.

The Goblin King added mana to its attacks, extending the reach of its jagged blade. The speed at which each attack came was so fast that it was like a blur.

Lucen parried each attack with his peacemakers. Pushing the blade with them or shooting at the blade to redirect an attack.

Sparks scattered with every clash, the jagged blade grinding against steel and gunfire alike.

Each swing that Lucen blocked shook Lucen's arms to the bone, but his stance never faltered. Gun Kata would not let his stance break ever.

Lucen tracked every blur of motion, every overextension, the heat of mana burning the air with each arc.

Lucen's marksmanship and battle instinct were telling him that at this moment, he could only wait to see if an opening would present itself.

It was then that the Goblin King made a feint. The Goblin King's sword twisted, its mana edge stretching longer than Lucen's eyes first caught. Lucen leaned back, his head almost hitting the ground, the blade missing him by less than a breath.

Lucen fired upward as he bent away, the bullet imbued with the element of thunder ricocheting off the sword itself and sparking toward the King's jaw.

The Goblin King snarled, jerking his head aside at the last instant. He could not gather enough mana to make his body like iron since he focused his mana on attacking.

The bullet nicked the Goblin King, making it bleed again with a bit of static. It was a shallow wound, but a wound all the same.

In Lucen's eyes, he was imagining seeing the Goblin King's health bar going down bit by bit. On the other hand, the Goblin King became even more furious.

The Goblin King's roar boomed, shaking snow from the cliffs. The mana in its body flowed even faster than before. The wounds it received disappeared as if it was never there.

The Goblin King's muscular body then started growing. Its face, which could have passed as a slightly attractive human with green skin, was changing. It was growing tusks, and its muscular body seemed to have doubled its muscle mass.

That wasn't the end of the transformation. Its bones seemed to be coming out of its body, making something like bone spikes sticking out of its body. As it was doing its transformation, Lucen used his gun creation skill to create the best gun he could think of at the moment with his knowledge.

He created a Maxim gun, which was a recoil-operated machine gun. The first fully automatic machine gun, created in his past life.

Since it was taking some time for the Goblin King to transform, it also gave Lucen time to create the Maxim gun, which required a bit of time to create using the gun creation skill.

He then imbued each bullet with the fire element, which was going to explode upon contact. Lucen had used up a lot of his mana for this, but it was the best damage dealer he could do at the moment.

Between him and the Goblin King, Lucen was the first one to finish his preparations. "Sorry, I'm not one of those guys who would wait for your transformation sequence to finish."

Lucen started shooting at the Goblin King with the Maxim Gun. The Maxim roared to life, its barrel shuddering as it spat fire.

A stream of bullets, each glowing with runic flame, ripped across the battlefield like a blazing river. The snow hissed and turned to steam, goblins on the periphery incinerated in the storm meant only for their king.

Each impact erupted like a cannon shell, hammering against the Goblin King's mutating flesh. Chunks of frost, stone, and even bone spikes flew in every direction as the tyrant staggered under the ceaseless barrage.

Smoke was coming from the area where the Goblin King was standing, as well as from the barrel of the Maxim Gun.

The Goblin King raised his jagged sword, bone and mana armor fusing together in a grotesque shield. Still, the Maxim Gun's fury was relentless.

Bruises blackened across his monstrous body, and for the first time, the king's golden eyes flickered, not with rage, but with a bit of fear.

On the other hand, Lucen was having fun firing the Maxim Gun. It felt like he was playing an FPS game.

"Now this is what a DPS looks like, you f*cking monster! If you got a third phase, better show it now!"

The Maxim Gun bellowed, its voice a grinding thunder. Lucen's aim kept the storm focused, the majority of rounds hammering into the Goblin King with merciless precision.

Fire blossomed across his flesh with each impact, a storm of miniature explosions that forced the monster backward step by step.

Still, not every shot found its mark. A handful ripped into the frozen earth, erupting geysers of steam as snow vaporized in violent bursts.

Stray rounds gouged trenches through the battlefield, splintering boulders and showering the field with shards of stone and ice.

The watching soldiers could only stare, feeling the heat wash across them even from a distance. The sight before them was something they could barely comprehend.

The Thunderspears were already something hard to understand; now Lucen showed them the Maxim Gun, which was something else entirely.

It was less a duel now, and more as if the battlefield itself was being erased by sheer firepower.

Robert, who was watching the fight from a distance, wanted to rush and ask Lucen a lot of questions about the Maxim Gun. He also wanted to see the Goblin King up close, but even he understood that intervening now was not something Lucen would want.

***

The Goblin King was swallowed in the chaos. Fire washed over him, explosions masking his form in a boiling shroud of dust and steam.

For an instant, even Lucen's sharp eyes couldn't see past the storm he had created, only the outline of something massive thrashing within.

He tightened his grip on the Maxim. He was not going to use all his mana on creating more bullets, as he needed some leeway just in case.

The Maxim's roar slowed, then sputtered to silence, its barrel glowing a dull red. Lucen's ears rang in the sudden quiet, broken only by the hiss of steam and the crackle of fires chewing through the snow. His gaze locked on the churning smoke where the Goblin King had stood.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing. Then, from within the smoke movement. A hulking silhouette staggered forward, bone spikes cracked and blackened, green flesh blistered where the explosions had struck.

Chunks of molten armor slid from his body like slag, hissing as they hit the ground. Blood dripped, steaming as it struck the ice. But his golden eyes still burned through the haze, brighter than ever.

The Goblin King straightened, each breath a guttural growl, and slammed his jagged sword into the ground.

The impact scattered the smoke in a wave, revealing the monster in full, wounded, furious, and far more terrifying than before.

The Goblin King's body bulged again, the blackened flesh splitting to reveal something worse beneath. Bone and mana knitted into a grotesque armor. The Goblin King lifted his head, golden eyes locking onto Lucen with murderous clarity.

'Damn, I guess it's time for the final phase.' Lucen thought to himself as he started thinking of what to do next.

He was already breathing harder than before, and he was also sweating profusely, not just from the heat generated by the Maxim Gun.

His mana was already quite low, and his vision was tunneling from exhaustion as well as mana fatigue.

He needed to drink a mana potion, but he could not let go of the Maxim gun, or it would disappear. Not to mention, he feared that the second he took out the mana potion to drink, the Goblin King would make a move.

The Goblin King then moved, the air split as the Goblin King vanished from sight, moving faster than Lucen's eyes could track.