'I have no chance of winning this thing. I… I must escape.'
Goro made up his mind to run away from the battlefield. He knew that his reputation would be sullied if he ran away from an Adept ranker while being an Expert himself. However, a sullied reputation was a preferred choice for him over a mysterious death.
Goro took out an unknown scroll from his storage and started to imbue it with his magic. This was one of the trump cards he had hidden in case of such emergencies.
Eren's space-element attainments had shot up to incredible levels after digesting the body parts of Krista, Lambert, and Rupen. He immediately understood that the spatial fabric around Goro was being altered after the use of the scroll.
"You are not going anywhere."
Sedating Gaze!
Blink!
Invi Blaze!
Eren set his mana circuits into hyperdrive before using his Ability. Goro was subjected to a slow passage of time all of a sudden and his activation of the space-element scroll was halted. The butcher appeared right in front of the necromancer before destroying the scroll in his hand. Invi Blaze remained on Anduril rather than being released through the blade. As a result, he gave his slash an extra edge and managed to chop Goro's hand off, severing it from his wrist.
Goro was simply too stunned to do anything. When Eren's Ability wore off, he had already managed to take the cut hand away from him before he could do anything in retaliation.
"Aaaaaaargh!"
Goro cried in pain as his eyes turned red all of a sudden. The necromancer's cry reverberated in the undead he had summoned all around him. They too became agitated and angry at their opponents. They started attacking their opponents at the cost of destroying themselves in the process.
Goro tried many times to get away from Eren after that. But the butcher managed to hold him off using his summons and his diverse attacks. Since the cat was out of the bag, he started using Sedating Gaze more and more frequently.
Eren and Goro both got tired eventually because of their continuous duel. The battle slowly turned into a test of endurance.
The butcher had many wounds on his body that had been inflicted on him because of Goro's versatile use of the chained sword. His skin had started to look pale and devoid of life. His wounds had started to rot and there was a formation of pus in them.
Eren had begun to look like an undead while fighting Goro. The latter had started to retaliate harder against the butcher after his exit strategy was taken away from him. Plus, he had come to realize that nobody was coming to save him. Thus, the necromancer fought for his life with his survival instincts taking over him.
As a result, Eren faced even harsher retaliation from his opponent than before. The only reason he was not overwhelmed by Goro's undead was that he stayed in the air most of the time. His woodland served as a punching bag for Goro's stronger summons so that the undead could be attacked by Eren's other summons.
Eren also kept on using potion bombs with a limited detonation range on Goro. He called these potion bombs T-RDX or tactical RDX. They allowed him to launch an aerial attack on Goro while he was in the vicinity. The dropped payloads would destroy his woodland creatures along with hurting Goro as well. But that was something he couldn't avoid.
"Aaaaargh!"
The most terrible thing about the T-RDX was the fact that they contained shrapnel. This shrapnel was obtained from scrapped Adept-ranked artifacts that couldn't survive Alephee's upgrading process.
Eren used these scrapped weapons as raw materials for his tactical bombs. They had a smaller blast radius and caused minimal damage to the surroundings. Despite this, the shrapnels built into them made sure that these T-bombs could be used to injure their targets well.
Goro was bloody and bruised all over. His skin was now studded with shrapnels that had managed to breach his defenses and hurt him.
The imperfect runes over these shrapnels started creating anomalies in the necromancer's mana circuits. The feeling was different from the foreign mana invasion. It was close to mana deviation that one had to face when they messed up casting a spell.
These anomalies made it difficult for Goro to maintain his active spells. Plus, Eren didn't give him any breathing room for him to get rid of any of his immediate problems.
"You fucking bastard… fight me fairly if you dare."
Goro spat in anger and contempt while looking hatefully at Eren. He hated Eren for using T-RDX on him the most. The latter chuckled before responding.
"That's rich coming from you, my man. Where was your fairness when you decided to attack me in groups?"
Goro was tongue-tied for a moment when Eren asked him. He tried to open his mouth to reply. However, Eren beat him to it.
"It's fine though. No need to explain. I have come to accept that most of my enemies turn hypocrites when their time is near. You are not the first and you won't be the last.
As for daring to attack you fairly. I think it's pretty obvious that I don't dare to fight with you fairly. You must have studied my profile before coming here. I'm surprised you expect something like that from me."
Eren dropped another T-RDX on Goro while flying over him as soon as he finished speaking. The latter had figured out the wretched terrorist would pull off something like this on him. He used a newly resurrected flank of the undead as a shield to protect him from shrapnel.
The flesh and bones of the mob summons, however, were no longer strong enough to stop shrapnel. As a result, the necromancer's injured body was again riddled with more of the scrapped junk.
This series of shrapnels finally broke the camel's back. Goro's summons and his active spells were severely impaired by the anomalies injected into his mana circuits. As a result, the spells were disbursed all at once while Goro suffered from mana deviation.
The butcher smirked when his diligent work finally allowed him a window of opportunity. He saw his chance and took it.
