Still Easy

Name: Goblin Elite (Nightmare)

Rank: C

Level: 8

HP: 7800/7800

Attack: 520

Defense: 320

Speed: 145

Su Mu raised an eyebrow slightly.

The first wave alone had ten C-rank elites.

In a hard dungeon, that lineup would have been close to the strength of a final boss fight.

If the gap between normal and hard dungeons was a river, then the one between hard and nightmare was an impassable chasm.

An ordinary student would have been drawn into a bitter struggle in the first wave, even with an A-rank or S-rank creature card.

A siege by ten C-rank elites was enough to tear apart any ill-prepared defense.

But Little Drill Wind had already moved.

A gray shadow slipped into the pack of monsters like a phantom.

His first slash swept across the throat of the goblin elite at the front.

The blade cut through its iron armor like paper, sending gray-green blood spraying. Its massive body toppled backward before it could even react.

His second slash struck the head of a goblin beside him in a backhand blow, the short blade piercing one temple and emerging from the other.

On the third slash, he dropped low and slid along the ground, sweeping his blade across the ankles of two monsters.

Not a single monster could keep up with his speed.

Su Mu watched quietly from above.

These nightmare elites were indeed a great deal stronger than the ordinary monsters in the hard dungeon.

They had plenty of health, high defense, and powerful attacks. If Little Drill Wind had fought them head-on in a battle of attrition, it would never have been this easy.

But the problem was, they couldn't touch Little Drill Wind at all.

Little Drill Wind's fighting style had never been about confronting his enemies head-on.

He was a yaoguai.

An old yaoguai who had lived for centuries in the world of Journey to the West.

Yaoguai had never fought by the rules.

He constantly shifted position, darting and weaving through the terrain of Lion Camel Ridge. Every slash landed on a monster's most vulnerable spots... throats, eye sockets, napes, the backs of knees, wrists.

Those goblin elites had brute strength to spare, but they couldn't even touch the hem of his clothes.

In Little Drill Wind's eyes, their weapon swings were as slow as if they had been slowed down tenfold.

The first wave took twenty seconds.

Ten corpses lay on the ground, their gray-green blood seeping into the rocky soil of Lion Camel Ridge.

Su Mu didn't let his guard down.

He knew the second wave of the nightmare dungeon would be stronger.

Sure enough, the rift tore open again.

This time, ten more heavily built goblins crawled out.

They were generally over two meters tall, and several stood close to 2.2 meters.

Their iron armor was noticeably more refined. It was no longer rusty scrap metal, but black scale armor etched with crude patterns.

Their weapons were fiercer, too. Three of them carried enormous two-handed battleaxes, each blade half as wide as a door.

Su Mu glanced at the panel.

Level 9.

Their health exceeded ten thousand, their attack was close to seven hundred, their defense was above three hundred and fifty, and they were considerably faster than the first wave.

"Level nine," Su Mu murmured.

An ordinary student would have needed at least a week to reach level 9. During that week, they would also have had to constantly farm low-level nests in the wild for experience, materials, and cards.

Yet the second wave of the nightmare dungeon dared to throw level 9 monsters straight at him.

"This is insane," Su Mu remarked, though he wasn't worried.

Little Drill Wind didn't even change his strategy.

He charged straight at the oncoming goblin elites, leaving an afterimage in the gray mist.

His short blade turned, and its light burst through the pack of monsters like a bolt of silk.

Su Mu noticed a subtle change in Little Drill Wind's blade work compared to the first wave.

He no longer aimed to kill in a single blow, instead prioritizing cuts to the parts that most affected the monsters' movement.

One slash severed a knee, another sliced a tendon in a foot, and another sheared off the fingers gripping a weapon. The goblins had lost their ability to fight before they even fell.

This was the most efficient way to fight.

During the first wave, Little Drill Wind had gauged the strength of the monsters' armor.

By the second wave, he had adjusted the angles and force of his attacks, finishing the fight with less effort.

This ability to evolve in real time during battle left Su Mu inwardly astonished.

The level nine melee monsters were wiped out.

It had taken even less time than the first wave.

The third wave followed immediately.

This wave was the first to feature a mixed lineup.

Ten melee goblin warriors were paired with five ranged throwers. The throwers hid in the rear, swinging stones bigger than human heads in their hands and hurling them at Little Drill Wind with a whistle.

Su Mu saw several moments when the stones nearly hit.

The throwers' aim was more than a whole tier above those in the hard dungeon, and they timed their throws to match the melee monsters' attacks. There was clearly a tactical division of roles.

But that was all.

Little Drill Wind was too fast. In his eyes, the thrown stones were no different from falling leaves.

Several times, he even stepped on incoming stones to change direction, running the throwers in circles.

The third wave was still easy.

Watching Little Drill Wind weave freely through the pack of monsters, Su Mu suddenly had a thought.

He had originally expected Little Drill Wind to sustain at least some injuries by the third wave.

Even if it was just a scratch.

After all, this was a nightmare dungeon. The monsters' levels, attributes, and coordination far surpassed those in the hard dungeon.

For a level 5 A-rank card facing enemies that outnumbered him several times over, getting injured would have been normal.

But he hadn't been.

From the first wave until now, Little Drill Wind didn't have so much as a cut on him. The goblins' weapons hadn't even managed to touch him properly.

His fighting skills were nothing like what a creature card in this world should have possessed.

The textbooks said that, beyond its attribute panel, a creature card's fighting ability depended even more on its "combat intelligence." F-rank creature cards had the poorest combat intelligence. They could only perform the simplest straight-line attacks and would fall into confusion when faced with complex situations.

E-rank and D-rank cards were a little better, capable of executing basic tactical maneuvers.

C-rank and B-rank creature cards could already make judgments and adjustments based on the situation on the battlefield.

Creature cards of A-rank and above possessed extremely high combat intelligence, allowing them to independently analyze an enemy's weaknesses and devise corresponding strategies.

But Little Drill Wind's performance clearly exceeded that framework.

What he displayed was not merely precise judgment of the battlefield, but a combat instinct engraved into his bones. His grasp of timing, use of space, and anticipation of enemy movements could only have been honed through countless life-and-death struggles.

That instinct hadn't appeared out of nowhere.

It came from the rules of the Journey to the West world, from the muscle memory of centuries of yaoguai cultivation carried by the name "Little Drill Wind."

Su Mu wondered to himself: If my Journey to the West theme continues to improve, and Little Drill Wind's concept anchoring becomes more and more complete, will he truly gain the consciousness and memories of a living being?

The thought excited him somewhat, but now wasn't the time to dwell on it.

The fourth wave had arrived.