CHAPTER 9

“Recover your mana. We are going to be fighting the boss now.”

Yimso said as they had a short discussion on the plan they were going to carry out.

*Note: The goblin shaman is referred to as a boss because it is the strongest monster here.

“AAAR…”

Soon, the goblin shaman’s screaming finally ended.

The shaman’s body had turned a shade darker and an almost visible dark aura was leaking out of its body. Especially the staff in his hand which was most probably the cursed item.

The cursed item had completely taken over the shaman by now, making the creature’s base stats shoot up.

They checked the shaman’s status and discovered that it had gotten a big raise in stats.

GOBLIN SHAMAN

TYPE: HUMANOID

LEVEL: 14

RANK: SPECIAL ELITE

HP: 2400/1200

MP: 4600/2200

STATUS: POSSESSED

“So, looks like its stats doubled… but it should not be too difficult.”

Yimso said, sighing in relief.

“Yeah, looks like the cursed item is a low levelled one too.” Puvi agreed and added.

“Thankfully.”

The goblin shaman that had stopped screaming turned and glared at the party.

“Humans, how dare you attack me?” The four of them suddenly heard the goblin shaman’s voice in their heads.

It seemed to have had gained the ability to telepathically communicate after being possessed, making it possible for them to understand.

The four of them did not respond to it though. They got into formation and just looked towards the shaman.

The shaman was immediately enraged after seeing that it was being ignored.

It gave a loud bellow and raised its staff, making several fireballs appear in front of itself.

The fireballs were the size of heads and they were still rapidly growing bigger.

“Ahhh… fuck it.”

Yimso cursed and steadied his shield and yelled at the team.

“Everybody behind me, now!”

The others immediately reacted and got behind him. Tito prepared a healing spell, ready to cast it at a moment’s notice.

*Swoosh*

The shaman swung the cursed staff at them, sending the fireballs that had now grown to the size of wash basins straight at them.

*Boom, Boom, Boom*

Yimso grit his teeth as the fireballs hit his shield one after another.

Most of the fireballs had missed, but there were still many that had hit him. Titus casted healing spells from time to time, trying to relieve some of the burden.

The shield in his hand got hotter and hotter, and started turning red after a while.

The barrage continued for over a minute. When the fireballs stopped, Yimso’s shield had turned red hot and he only had a third of his HP left.

“Fuck! Hot hot, hot, hot!”

Yimso dropped his shield and said, as he furiously shook his hands.

They all then looked towards the goblin shaman who was still in shock

It couldn’t believe that the bunch of vermin he thought would surely die, were barely affected by its attack.

It had put almost half of its mana into the spell, determined to kill them.

“NOOO! That can’t be! You were all supposed to die!” The goblin shaman bellowed madly.

“Heh, we’re not going to die from something like that, creep.”

Yimso mocked at the shaman and turned to the rest of the party.

They all nodded, understanding what he meant.

“Alright!” They shouted and started running towards the shaman.

“AAHH! DIE, YOU VERMINS!”

The goblin shaman started shooting smaller fireballs at them but they were all dodged with relative ease. Seeing that the small attacks were ineffective, the goblin shaman once again lifted its staff to gather mana as it shouted in agitation.

It was starting to cast another party wipe spell.

It was the same spell as before, but the shaman seemed to have input more of its mana into it this time, seeing that the fireballs were growing faster than before. If they were hit by this one, they were sure to die even if they used the same trick as before, not to mention that they were currently too for apart for that.

“DIE!!!”

The shaman bellowed out.

It was just finishing casting the spell when dark purplish chains burst out of its shadow and bound it in place.

Hikivi had just entered the range at which he could use binding chains.

‘Whew, that was close.’

Hikivi thought to himself.

“NOOO!”

The goblin shaman screamed again. Its voice was filled with unwillingness as it looked at the fireballs in the air that were slowly disappearing.

Big spells like these would take a lot of mana and time to form and would dissipate once the supply of mana was cut.

And if the mage casting the spell wasn’t strong enough, depending on the strength of the spell, the user would suffer from severe backlash.

The said backlash might cripple or even directly kill the user if the mage is abruptly stopped so, mages were usually kept protected.

“NOOO…. *puke*”

The shaman shouted and puked out an enormous amount of blood. It had suffered a severe backlash for abruptly stopping a spell normally out of its league.

The goblin shaman looked in horror as two figures rushed to him from two sides. It couldn’t comprehend how such weak creatures could fight so efficiently.

The two figures were Yimso and Puvi. They had just reached the shaman’s position and stabbed their swords into its body.

The shaman puked out some more blood and then collapsed as the chains broke. With three swords pierced into its body and having lost more than half the blood in its body, the goblin couldn’t be any deader.

After all that was over, they all collapsed onto the floor.

“Whew. T-that was…. pretty exciting, r-right?”

Yimso said with his hands trembling.

“Y-yeah, a little too exciting for my taste though.”

Titus agreed. They weren’t originally from this world that was filled with monsters and giant animals… okay we have big animals too.

The world they grew up in was different from this one. They could get used to killing monsters but being in near death situations would certainly leave even adults shaken, let alone the four of them that were still in high school two months ago.

This was the closest that they had actually ever been to actually dying after coming to this world.

If they hadn’t defended properly against the first party wipe spell, or been late to stop the second one, they would have died for sure.

It took them a few minutes to calm down. When they did calm down, they went and collected the monster cores from the goblins and hobgoblins they killed at first. They then went towards the goblin shaman’s corpse.

The staff was still emitting a slight malicious aura. The staff was what gave the goblin shaman so much strength. If given more time, the staff would have completely taken over the goblin shaman.

That is what a cursed item does. They slowly take over the minds of their users, tempting them with the promise of greater power.

Even if the user had knowledge on cursed items, they would usually keep the item as the cursed item could greatly enhance their strength in a short period of time.

The cursed item too would not launch an all out attack to posses the user and only slowly corrupt them.

The user would get greedier and continue using the item, while the curse slowly influences them and finally takes over.

There are people who have been able to actually control these cursed items of course, but that very rarely happens, and the users are usually much more powerful than the cursed item itself.

The goblin shaman must have fallen for the bait, getting possessed in the end.

“So…. this is a cursed item huh?”

Hikivi murmured as he observed the staff that was still being gripped by the shaman.

“It must not be high rank one though. Or the goblin shaman would have been stronger than that.” Titus said besides him.

“Do you think we should sell it? Or should we give it a try as well?”

Puvi asked. He knew that the mages in the party would get a great boost if the succeeded in taming the cursed item, but he also knew that the results would be devastating if they failed.

“Well, we better not risk it but, what do you guys say?” Yimso looked at the two mages as he asked. He too knew of the dangers.

Just then….

*Ding*

[Cursed item detected]

Just then they all surprised as they heard a ding* and the system’s mechanical voice entered their ears. It wasn’t the system giving them a notification that surprised them, but what the notification was about instead.

[Cursed item detected. After analyzing the situation, the system has concluded that the low-levelled curse item can be used as material during the rank upgrade ceremony of the one called ‘Hikivi.]

“!!!”

They all turned to Hikivi when the system announcement ended.

“Oh fuck me, looks like I’m getting an upgrade.” Hikivi laughed joyfully.

END OF CHAPTER 9: KILLING THE GOBLIN SHAMAN, AND GETTING A CURSED ITEM