Turns out, I was surprisingly fast when motivated by imminent death.
The Goblin Chief chased me across the clearing, its heavy footsteps shaking the ground. Each step sounded like thunder, getting closer, always closer.
"SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!" I screamed, zigzagging around a boulder.
To their credit, people tried. Min-soo sent his swords at the Chief's back. They bounced off its armor. Yuna fired Ice Bolt after Ice Bolt, trying to slow it down. The ice shattered against its thick hide.
The Chief didn't care. It wanted me specifically. Probably on principle. I'd attacked it with what amounted to a frozen toothpick, and apparently that was unforgivable.
I vaulted over a fallen log and immediately regretted it when I landed wrong, my ankle screaming in protest. My Physical stat was D+, barely above average. I wasn't built for parkour.
The Chief's club came down where I'd been a second ago, pulverizing the log into splinters.
"Too close!" I gasped, scrambling away. "Way too close!"
**[PATTERN RECOGNITION ACTIVE]**
**[ANALYZING PURSUIT BEHAVIOR...]**
Even while running for my life, my Observer skills were working. Data flooded my vision: the Chief's stride length, attack range, recovery time after each swing.
It was slower than the smaller goblins but had massive reach. Its club swings had a tell—a slight shoulder dip before each strike. And most importantly, it was single-minded. Once it locked onto a target, it didn't switch unless something else posed a bigger threat.
"I need to pose a bigger threat!" I shouted at no one in particular. "Someone please pose a bigger threat than me!"
Min-soo was trying. He'd recalled all his swords and was charging up something, the blades orbiting him faster and faster, glowing with blue energy.
"Ultimate skill!" Yuna shouted. "Everyone get clear!"
I didn't need to be told twice. I threw myself sideways, rolling badly and collecting several bruises for my trouble.
Min-soo thrust his hands forward and all six swords shot out as one, merged into a single massive blade of energy. It screamed through the air, leaving a trail of blue light.
The attack hit the Goblin Chief square in the back.
The impact was tremendous. The Chief stumbled forward, roaring in pain. A massive gash opened across its armor, cutting deep into the shoulder.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF HP: 87%]**
Thirteen percent damage from an ultimate skill. That was... not great. We'd need Min-soo to use that seven more times to kill it, and judging by the way he collapsed to one knee, gasping, that wasn't happening.
But it had worked for one thing: the Chief turned away from me.
It faced Min-soo now, recognition in its eyes. This one was dangerous. This one was the real threat.
"Finally!" I wheezed, bent over with my hands on my knees. "Someone else's turn to be chased!"
The Chief raised its club and charged at Min-soo, who was still recovering from his ultimate skill, completely defenseless.
"MOVE!" Yuna screamed.
Min-soo tried to stand, stumbled. Too slow.
The club came down.
The guy with the teleport skill—no, wait, he was dead. Different guy, different movement skill. He blurred across the distance and tackled Min-soo out of the way.
The club hit the ground where they'd been, and I saw my chance.
One second recovery time. The Chief was stuck.
And I was standing right behind it.
My mana had recovered slightly. Not much—maybe enough for one more pathetic ice bolt. But I'd learned something from the first attempt. I'd felt how the mana moved, how it wanted to be shaped.
I could do better this time.
I reached for my mana core again, pulling the energy up to my hands. This time I didn't fight its formless nature—I guided it, suggested the shape rather than forcing it.
Ice. Cold. Sharp.
The bolt that formed was bigger. Not much—maybe the size of a marker instead of a pencil—but improvement was improvement.
I threw it at the back of the Chief's knee, the joint where the armor didn't quite cover.
This time it did three damage.
Still pathetic, but triple my first attempt!
The Chief howled and spun around, and I realized I'd made a terrible mistake.
"WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS?" I yelled, running again.
But this time, I had a plan. Sort of. The beginnings of a plan. A plan-adjacent idea.
"EVERYONE LISTEN!" I shouted while sprinting. "It focuses on whoever hurt it last! We can rotate aggro!"
"Rotate what?" someone yelled back.
"AGGRO! Aggression! Attention! Take turns attacking it so it keeps switching targets! It needs recovery time after each swing—that's when you attack!"
It was a terrible strategy. It relied on perfect coordination from people who'd never worked together before, who were terrified and exhausted and watching their friends die.
But it was the only strategy we had.
"I'll coordinate!" Yuna shouted. She'd positioned herself on a boulder, high enough to see the whole battlefield. "Archers, on my mark! Warriors, wait for the recovery window! Mages, prepare follow-up attacks!"
She was a natural leader, I realized. Better than Min-soo, who was still recovering his mana.
The Chief chased me toward the tree line. I could hear its breathing now, feel the heat of it. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. I couldn't keep this up much longer.
"ARCHERS!" Yuna commanded.
Three arrows flew from different directions, all hitting the Chief's exposed leg. Twelve damage total—I could see the HP bar now, some benefit of having Identified it earlier.
The Chief stopped chasing me and turned toward the archers.
"WARRIORS! RECOVERY WINDOW!"
The Chief was switching targets, that brief moment of repositioning. Two Warriors charged in, one with a sword, one with an axe. They struck at its legs, hamstringing tactics.
Eight more damage. Not much, but it was working.
The Chief swung at the Warriors. They dodged—barely. The club hit the ground.
"MAGES!"
Yuna and two other mages fired simultaneously. Ice Bolt, Fire Bolt, and something that looked like a wind blade. The attacks hit the Chief's face while it was stuck.
Twenty damage total. We were doing this. Slowly, painfully, but we were doing this.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF HP: 64%]**
I collapsed against a tree, gasping for air. My job as mobile target was done. Now I could focus on what I did best: watching.
I activated Pattern Recognition on the entire battle, taking in everything at once. The data was overwhelming—dozens of people, all their individual attack patterns, the Chief's reactions to each type of damage.
But patterns emerged.
The Chief took extra damage from attacks to its joints. The armor was weaker there. And it had a blind spot—its left side, where its shoulder had been wounded by Min-soo's ultimate. It was favoring that side, protecting it.
"LEFT SIDE!" I shouted. "It can't defend its left properly! Concentrate attacks there!"
The group adjusted. Archers aimed for the left shoulder. Warriors circled to attack from the left. Mages targeted the left side of its face.
The Chief's HP started dropping faster.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF HP: 51%]**
Halfway down. We might actually survive this.
Then the Chief did something unexpected.
It stopped attacking.
Just... stopped.
It stood in the center of the clearing, club planted on the ground, and let out a long, low growl.
"Why is it stopping?" someone asked nervously.
"Phase transition," I said, dread creeping up my spine. "Bosses change tactics at certain HP thresholds. This is bad."
**[WARNING: GOBLIN CHIEF ENTERING BERSERKER STATE]**
"Oh, that's very bad," I corrected.
The Chief's skin started turning red. Its muscles bulged. Steam rose from its body. Its eyes went from intelligent calculation to pure animal rage.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF - BERSERKER MODE ACTIVE]**
**[ATTACK SPEED: INCREASED]**
**[DAMAGE: INCREASED]**
**[DEFENSE: DECREASED]**
"It's faster and stronger but has less defense!" I shouted. "Glass cannon mode! Hit it hard and don't get hit!"
The Chief moved, and it was terrifyingly fast now. It covered the distance to the nearest Warrior in a blink and swung.
The Warrior tried to dodge. Not fast enough. The club caught him in the ribs and he flew fifteen feet, slamming into a tree. His HP bar went critical, then empty.
**[PARTICIPANT DOWN: 243/247 REMAINING]**
"SCATTER!" Yuna commanded. "Don't group up! Make it choose targets!"
People spread out. The Chief, in its berserker state, didn't calculate anymore. It just attacked whatever was closest.
It charged a mage. She screamed and ran. It caught her in three steps and swung. Another death.
**[PARTICIPANT DOWN: 242/247 REMAINING]**
This was worse than before. We couldn't rotate aggro if it was fast enough to kill before we could react.
I needed to do something. But what? Another ice bolt would just make it chase me again, and in berserker mode, it would actually catch me.
Think. Observe. Analyze.
I looked at its HP bar: 51%. Still in the green. Its defense was down—that was exploitable. But its speed was too high.
Wait.
Speed high. Defense low. Berserker state.
I'd seen this pattern before. Every game, every boss with a berserker mode. They sacrificed everything for aggression. That meant...
"It can't dodge anymore!" I shouted. "Berserker mode means it won't try to avoid attacks! All ranged damage—fire everything! Don't hold back!"
If it wasn't going to defend, we had to hit it with everything before it killed us all.
"ALL RANGED ATTACKERS!" Yuna understood immediately. "FULL ASSAULT! MELEE, FALL BACK!"
Everyone who could attack from a distance fired. Arrows, magic, thrown weapons, even rocks. A barrage of everything we had.
The Chief didn't dodge. Didn't block. Just charged forward through the attacks, taking damage, not caring.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF HP: 45%... 38%... 31%...]**
But it was reaching people. Each swing killed or critically wounded someone. We were trading lives for damage.
**[PARTICIPANT DOWN: 241/247 REMAINING]**
**[PARTICIPANT DOWN: 240/247 REMAINING]**
I couldn't just watch. I had to help.
I reached for my mana again, but it was nearly depleted. Two ice bolts had drained me more than I'd expected. I could maybe form one more, possibly two if I pushed it.
But ice bolts weren't working. They did minimal damage. I needed something better.
I looked at Yuna, currently charging up another Ice Bolt. I'd observed her cast it dozens of times now. I understood the basic structure.
What if I changed it? Modified it?
**[OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING: ACTIVE]**
**[ATTEMPTING SKILL MODIFICATION...]**
**[WARNING: UNTESTED - HIGH FAILURE RISK]**
I pulled mana from my core, shaped it toward ice, but instead of a bolt—a projectile—I tried to make it a field. An area. Ice spreading across the ground.
The mana resisted harder than before. This wasn't a shape I'd observed. This was my own interpretation.
Pain lanced through my head. My Mental stat was A-, high enough to attempt this, but it hurt.
I forced the mana down, into the ground where the Chief was about to step.
Ice erupted from the earth in a small patch, maybe three feet across. Crude, uneven, but slippery.
The Chief stepped on it.
For something moving that fast, the loss of traction was catastrophic.
It slipped.
Its feet went out from under it.
Ten feet tall, hundreds of pounds of muscle and rage, all of it falling.
The Chief hit the ground like a meteor, the impact creating a small crater.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF: STUNNED - 3 SECONDS]**
"NOW!" I screamed with the last of my breath. "EVERYTHING! NOW!"
Everyone who could attack did. Min-soo, recovered enough to fight, sent his swords into its exposed throat. Yuna fired her strongest Ice Bolt at point-blank range into its face. Warriors rushed in and stabbed at joints and gaps in armor. Archers put arrows into its eyes.
Three seconds of complete, undefended assault.
**[GOBLIN CHIEF HP: 31%... 18%... 7%... 0%]**
**[BOSS DEFEATED]**
**[TUTORIAL COMPLETE]**
The Chief's body dissolved into particles of light, leaving behind a pile of loot that I was too exhausted to care about.
**[CONGRATULATIONS]**
**[SURVIVORS: 240/247]**
**[CALCULATING REWARDS...]**
**[LEVEL UP!]**
**[LEVEL UP!]**
The rush of energy hit me all at once. Two levels from a boss kill. I went from level 2 to level 4, my body strengthening, my mana pool expanding.
Around me, people were crying, celebrating, collapsing. We'd lost seven people. Seven people who'd been alive an hour ago.
But two hundred and forty of us had survived something designed to kill most of us.
I pulled up my notifications, my hands shaking.
**[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: SKILL MODIFICATION]**
**[DESCRIPTION: OBSERVED SKILLS CAN BE MODIFIED AND ADAPTED. CREATIVITY INCREASES EFFECTIVENESS.]**
I'd created a new skill by accident. By experimenting.
Observer wasn't just about copying. It was about understanding deeply enough to innovate.
I started laughing. Couldn't help it. Exhausted, mana-drained, bruised, and absolutely delirious.
"We did it," I said to no one. "We actually did it."
Yuna walked over and sat down beside me, equally exhausted.
"That ice patch," she said. "That wasn't Ice Bolt."
"No," I admitted. "That was me being desperate and hoping I didn't explode."
"It was brilliant."
"It was stupid. I could have died."
"But you didn't." She smiled, tired but genuine. "You saved a lot of lives today, Observer."
**[TUTORIAL GATE CLEARED]**
**[PREPARING TRANSPORT TO SAFE ZONE...]**
**[DEPARTURE IN: 01:00]**
One minute until we left this nightmare.
I closed my eyes and let myself breathe.
I'd survived.
And somehow, I'd proven that Observer wasn't the worst class after all.