[NR] Looking A Little Blue - Chapter 558 (Patreon)

Jason and Lily remain on guard outside after the wave finishes. This leaves Rosha free to assist Courtney in the building. After all, next to Courtney she is the one with the most knowledge on how to provide first aid. Even though it wasn’t likely that Rosha would end up adventuring on her own, Peter made sure to provide quite comprehensive instructions on how to handle when things go wrong. Sure, Jason does have a bit of first aid training both in and out of game, it was mostly self taught or involved modern conveniences.

Not that there is much to do. The damage isn’t something even minor magical medicines can handle. However, she can provide Courtney the support she needs to get her own magic into play. Because that is the trick. While first aid and traditional medicine still very much have a purpose in a world with healing magic, magic has a much easier time with replacement. So once Rosha is able to fix Courtney up enough, the rest of the critical damage is taken care of with a few spells. This leaves her low on Mana and weakened, but Courtney will at least be able to join in the last wave.

And speaking of the last wave, the two can barely get out of the building before they show up. Good news? All eight of the monsters in the wave are high goblins. Bad news? Three of them are blue. Now most adventuring groups would recognize those three as a completely different variant, the rarely seen and lamely named, blue goblins.

An easy mistake to make as in a normal goblin society, they would actually look even more pitiful than the normal goblins. This is because normal goblins really dislike those different from them and so the blue goblins will be small and weak from a lack of nourishment and abuse. The three however prove that they are in fact a variant of high goblin.

Of course, since their presence was the bad news, they obviously have more up their sleeves than being a recolor. A difference that Courtney knows. “The blue ones are Phrenic monsters! Rosha, priority targets, use your special arrows! Jason, prepare your mental defenses!”

Phrenic, a monster dependent upon psionic powers. Back in NeoRealm proper, they have a hard time surviving because the System doesn’t really support mental powers. For instance, mind reading powers are blocked by default. Probably because the System doesn’t want to reveal how much it can read from the players. In particular, most of the blue goblins’ early Talents tend to be focused towards the mental side of things instead of the body.

Which is why only moments after Jason has firmed up his mental focus, a trio of mental attacks crash over him. One clearly a charm, the insidious whispers proclaiming that a specific one of the blue goblins is actually a dear friend of his. The other two however are almost worse.

Both attempt to debuff him. One a greasy tentacle attempting to squash his willpower. The other a simple fist that tries to grab his spine at the base of the brain and delay any signals going either way.

It forced Jason to let the last one affect him, if only slightly as the other two are simply too synergistic. Block the charm and the mental debuff might end up allowing the charm to work, anyway. If you instead block the debuff, well, if you get charmed, it doesn’t really matter. Not that the last one was any less insidious. It simply wasn’t part of the combo attack.

Not to say it wasn’t part of the monsters’ plan. Forcing someone to choose the lesser of evils means they still had to choose an evil. In this case, Jason managed to fight off some of the effect and so didn’t act like a robot being controlled through a very laggy connection. Instead, it was simply like he had just woken up and isn’t firing on all cylinders. Then five wooden spears thunk against his chest.

While his leather chest piece isn’t able to provide any to Jason’s defense stat, the effects change what could have been quite deadly into something that is simply quite painful. The second effect causes the five impact sites to all harden, distributing the direct force, while the first effect spreads the remaining momentum of the spears across the entire chest piece. Of course, the armor doesn’t manage this without suffering harm.

Around each impact, you can clearly see how far the hardness extended as the edges were marked with clear signs of stress and even some tears. On top of that, not all of the chest piece is equally sturdy and some of the smaller straps burst apart as the force is transmitted through the entire thing. The chest piece is still ready for more, but it would finally be able to reveal just how much its third effect of enhanced self repair can go.

Moments crawl by as the highgobs charge at Jason. He had noticed a key detail that he could act on and now he just had to wait for his body to get the message. Though while waiting, he tips backwards, the last effect of his moccasins allowing him to shift the dirt beneath him, the command coming directly from his Energy instead of through his nerves. This is enough for the follow up spears to mostly miss him and the one going for a headshot being shifted out of the way as his helmet prevents what the System counted as an assassination.

And speaking of his helmet, his body finally starts moving. Not that Jason can tell. The feeling of it moving being just as delayed as his original order. Though he can see his own hand reaching up and grabbing the goggles attached to the helmet. Jason avoids using them for the most part as they mess up his peripheral vision. Right now, though?

Well, the three blue goblins are staring at him pretty intensely as all three of their powers scrape against his mental shield.