022 Super Duo - Part 2 - Mark’s POV

  The Hobwitch cackled again, a shrill, jagged sound that scraped against my nerves. Her hunched form swayed behind the mass of goblins, her gnarled fingers twitching as she clutched a bundle of crude vials, each filled with something unpleasant.

  I narrowed my eyes. How do we kill a Hobwitch?

  Think.

  What did I know?

  Hobwitches weren’t just stronger goblins—they were smarter, crueler. Unlike their mindless grunts, they actually knew how to fight. And worse, they used tricks. Alchemy, hexes, cheap-shot magic.

  I scanned the battlefield, forcing my breath to steady.

  The goblins weren’t the real problem. We could cut through them. The problem was her. As long as she stood, she’d keep throwing spells, tossing poison, and screwing us over.

  “Any bright ideas?” Mirai asked, her back pressed against mine.

  I twirled my butterfly knife between my fingers, the bde catching the dim torchlight. “Yeah. We kill the boss.”

  “Oh, brilliant, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Hold your appuse,” I said dryly. “I need an opening.”

  Mirai exhaled sharply, rolling her shoulders. “Fine. What do you need?”

  I gnced at her, then at the club she gripped tightly. “A distraction.”

  Her lips curled into a smirk. “Say no more.”

  She lunged forward.

  The Hobwitch cackled again, her beady eyes tracking me too well. I clenched my jaw.

  She could see me.

  Not fully—but enough. Enough to make my usual tactics useless. My ESP, Nth Person, worked as a form of psychic invisibility. If my opponent couldn’t register me, I could move however I wanted. But this damn goblin hag had some kind of resistance. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was a passive ESP of her own. Either way, she knew I was here.

  So how could I kill something that could track me?

  I rolled my knife between my fingers, watching as Mirai tore through the goblins like a force of nature. She kicked, punched, swung her club—breaking bones, caving in skulls, ughing all the while. The Hobwitch kept hurling vials at her, but Mirai’s luck let her swat them aside just in time. When she couldn’t parry, she’d throw a goblin into the projectile’s path, sabotaging the attack entirely.

  Fine. If I can’t be unseen… I’ll make her blind instead.

  I exhaled and tapped into the Second Perspective.

  It wasn’t something I could use reliably. Not yet. But when my luck was high, when the pressure was real, I could slip into it for a few seconds.

  A feeling washed over me—a shift, like stepping into someone else’s skin. Suddenly, I wasn’t just me anymore. I could feel what the Hobwitch was feeling. The anticipation of her next move, the nervous twitch of her fingers before she grabbed another vial. I wasn’t reading her mind—just feeling her.

  And that was enough.

  I sharpened the focus. Pushed harder. What if I could make her ESP turn against her?

  What if I could make her stop perceiving anything at all?

  Sensory Bckout.

  I felt something click. The Hobwitch stiffened. Her smug grin twitched into confusion.

  She couldn’t see me.

  No—she couldn’t see anything.

  Her breath hitched, her fingers flexing wildly as she groped at the air. She staggered, her goblin minions noticing her hesitation.

  It worked. It actually worked.

  “More,” I muttered more to myself than anyone else. “I could do more.”

  Mirai’s voice cut through the chaos.

  “What’s taking you so long?! I don’t have infinite luck!”

  I gritted my teeth. She wasn’t wrong. My focus was stretched thin, and my body was running on fumes. But this wasn’t just about speed—it was about precision.

  “Sorry about that,” I muttered. “This takes a lot of my concentration…”

  I inhaled deeply and summoned every bit of mental training drilled into me by Mom. The patience. The control. The ability to shut out everything except my target.

  I raised my hands, forming a rectangle with my fingers as if framing the Hobwitch into a picture… or, in this case, a portrait.

  I locked her in.

  “Gotcha.”

  Then I pushed.

  Nth Person activated, pulling me into Second Perspective. The world twisted slightly, my consciousness shifting until I wasn’t just observing the Hobwitch—I was inside her perspective.

  I could feel her instincts screaming, her subconscious trying to fight back. But I had a foothold.

  I clenched my fists.

  Her body stopped moving.

  No more vial-throwing. No more cackling. No more twitching fingers.

  She was trapped in her own mind—her motor functions completely shut down.

  A deep breath. Hold it. Maintain it. Don’t let go.

  “MIRAI! GO FOR THE HOBWITCH!”

  “Huh?”

  Mirai barely had time to process what I said, but her body moved before her brain caught up.

  She reacted.

  With the opening I created, she decimated the goblins blocking her way. Her club swung like a sledgehammer, splintering bones, crushing skulls, sending bodies flying. The luck on her side ensured her swings hit harder, nded cleaner, and avoided getting tangled in the mess.

  The goblins that weren’t immediately smashed into paste turned their attention to me.

  Some of them broke through my psychic invisibility. Their beady eyes locked onto me, their instincts overpowering my suppression.

  Shit.

  I couldn’t drop my hold on the Hobwitch—not yet.

  Mirai reached her target.

  Her club cracked through the Hobwitch’s skull in one brutal swing.

  That was my cue.

  I let go of Second Perspective just as the goblins lunged at me.

  Everything snapped back into pce. My awareness, my movement, my control.

  I flicked my butterfly knife open and sughtered the goblins in front of me. Ssh. Stab. Dodge. Pivot. I felt every movement in my bones, cutting them down with efficiency.

  By the time I exhaled, it was over.

  The Hobwitch was dead. The goblins were scattered.

  Mirai and I stood in the carnage, catching our breath.

  This seriously sucked big time.

  Mirai groaned, rolling her shoulders as she looked around at the mess we had made.

  “This test feels way tougher than it should be,” she compined. “Like, come on. A Hobwitch? Seriously?”

  I wiped my butterfly knife on the ragged cloak of a dead goblin, flicked it closed, and stuffed it back into my pocket. “Yeah, I have a feeling it’s because we’re cheating.”

  She gave me a side gnce. “What do you mean cheating?”

  I gestured vaguely at the cave around us, now littered with goblin corpses and bits of shattered vials. “Think about it. This was supposed to be a solo test, but we’re running it as a duo. While everyone else is probably struggling through this on their own, we’ve been covering each other’s backs the whole time. If the dungeon is reacting dynamically to us, it might be cranking up the difficulty.”

  “That’s so unfair,” Mirai frowned. “Wait… this is totally your fault then.”

  I gave her a dry look. “You’re literally using plot armor and probability manipution to survive. And this is what you think is unfair? And F-Y-I… it is not my fault you are so gullible.”

  She crossed her arms and pouted. “That’s different. That’s just, you know, natural advantage. And I am not gullible.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

  Despite the compining, I could tell she was still riding the adrenaline rush. Her stance was loose but ready, like she was expecting another wave of enemies any second.

  I gnced down the single path leading forward. “No point standing around. If this dungeon is scaling up to match us, then the best thing we can do is get out of here before it throws something even worse our way.”

  Mirai sighed dramatically. “Fine, fine. Lead the way, whitey.”

  I rolled my eyes and started walking, my senses on high alert. This was far from over.

  The fresh air hit me like a sp to the face as Mirai and I stepped out of the dungeon. The cool night breeze carried the scent of damp earth and grass, a stark contrast to the blood and burnt chemicals we had been breathing inside. My shoulders finally loosened, though exhaustion clung to my limbs like dead weight.

  Waiting for us, leaning casually against a boulder, was none other than Master Reina.

  “Lookie, lookie. Who do we have here?” she drawled, spinning a combat baton between her fingers.

  Mirai wiped the sweat off her forehead. “The others… aren’t here yet…” she panted, catching her breath. Her expression brightened. “Did we get first pce?”

  That would make sense, right? We had pushed through nonstop, barely pausing, and I hadn’t sensed anyone ahead of us.

  Master Reina smiled. That was the first red fg.

  And then—

  WHACK!

  A sharp pain thudded against my skull as her hand came down in a karate chop. Mirai yelped beside me, holding her own head after receiving the same treatment.

  “Nope!” Master Reina said cheerfully. “The two of you were dead st!”

  I blinked. “…Huh?”

  Mirai looked just as dumbfounded. “What? But that doesn’t make sense! We fought so hard—”

  “And the others?” I cut in, rubbing my sore head. “Where are they?”

  Master Reina pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “Sent ‘em home already, of course.”

  Mirai’s jaw dropped. “Then why are we still here?!”

  Master Reina grinned, cracking her knuckles. “Because I have something special pnned for you two.”

  My body tensed. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “How about a punishment?”

  Mirai recoiled. “Punishment?! Why are we even being punished?!”

  I’d like to argue too, but I remembered something important—this woman was probably just as insane as Mom.

  Master Reina folded her arms. “Oh? You don’t want a reward? Of course, I will give to you guys the reward if only youa ccept the punishment!”

  Mirai and I exchanged wary gnces.

  “A… reward?” I asked slowly.

  “Yep! After all, the two of you beat a Hobwitch by yourselves! Meanwhile, everyone else needed my help to deal with theirs. That’s a pretty big achievement, kiddos.”

  That caught me off guard.

  Wait. Hold on. Did that mean—

  “Wait, there was more than one Hobwitch?!” Mirai excimed.

  Master Reina winked. “Dungeons shift and bance themselves, y’know. It’s not like I threw every group against a Hobwitch, but~”—she shrugged—“some of ‘em got lucky.”

  Mirai groaned. “Unbelievable…”

  It all made sense now. The dungeon had been scaling up against us, treating us as one unit instead of two separate students. It wasn’t just that we had been fighting together—it was that the dungeon knew we were pushing beyond what a solo student should be capable of. And because of that, we got the worst possible outcome.

  Which meant…

  “This was a test within a test,” I muttered under my breath.

  Master Reina’s smile widened. “Maybe.”

  I sighed. “So, what’s this ‘reward’?”

  She cracked her knuckles. “Give me a hundred ps around the training field.”

  Mirai made a strangled noise. “A hundred?!”

  “Hey, you wanted first pce, right?” Master Reina smirked. “You two got something better—personalized training. Now, hop to it! Your cssmates might be sleeping, but you two? You get to build character! This is a punishment and a reward in one! That’s like a buy-one-take-one deal!”

  No! That wasn’t how buy-one-take-one worked!

  Mirai groaned dramatically, throwing her head back. I just sighed in resignation.

  I really hoped Mom had written something about this in my journal… but clearly, she hadn’t and didn’t. Life wasn’t so easy I could have cheat sheets just about everything.