A bad feeling arose in my heart as if my perception was warning me of something, I hurriedly circulated and spread my weapon energy to form a protective film all over my inner body.

Thump!

A lightning like zap of energy hit me in the back before I could realize it was launched, however, thanks to my inner protection only a hideous scar was inflicted on my skin while my body was mostly undamaged. Even though a big hole was opened in the leather armor I wore…

I quickly looked behind, only to find a goblin-like monster in dark robe materializing out of nowhere, he was holding a staff with an ominous big piece of black crystal embedded on it….

It was a goblin shaman!

I may have been surprised about seeing actual goblins, but I still remembered their info from the encyclopedia, goblins were inherently more of an agile assassin like monsters, and possibly warrior or berserker like monsters if they managed to evolve into hobgoblins, so they were inherently incapable of practicing elements…

However, there was an exception to this rule, goblin shamans, a truly rare variant of the green race, they would be born with the special gifts of being able to wield elements within monster cores to behave as pseudo 2nd rank elemental master, and possibly reaching 3rd rank masters upon their maturity.

Judging from the earlier attack, this goblin shaman was capable of wielding 2nd peak stage powers, thus causing me to suffer slightly from the attack even after applying my energy protection and having a considerably high constitution.

As for how he materialized out of nowhere it was probably to the unique ability of the elements he was wielding, blocking my not so high perception and managing to ambush me.

Nonetheless, since he already showed himself, he should probably forget about being able to hide again!

Attaching a small amount of mental energy on his body to act as pinpoint was my way of solving the low perception problem temporarily, before quickly checking the stats of the shaman while he was grinning from succeeding in his ambush, he probably knew that the only one with power similar to his level was me, so with me showing such an injury, he probably thought he would handle us with ease now.

[ Activating 'Eye of knowledge'.... ]

[ 'Goblin Shaman' Lv40

Strength: 6.8

Constitution: 9.29

Agility: 7.46

Intelligence: 0.9

Shadow???? Element: 9.9 (pseudo)

Special skills:

'Elemental Manipulation' Lv.3

'Shadow Stealth' Lv.9 ]

Shadow Element! The third revered element after lightning and light! This easily explained why he had such an ability as 'Shadow Stealth' which was probably an elemental trait of sorts…

But! Why was a lv40 monster acting as the second boss of a lv20 gate? Was this possibly a change that's similar to the 'Error 404' problem? Was it due to the crystals' power? Or did his level forcibly go up when his 'Elemental Manipulation' was taken into effect adding as much as 9.9 stat points?

Obviously asking this monster who already lost his intelligence thanks to corruption wouldn't be the answer, the most important thing to do right now was to take down this variant.

I looked at the trio who already fainted from elemental suppression, caused by an almost 3rd rank all-out elemental attacks, this wasn't something a barely Initial layer 2nd stage masters would be able to hold out against, even if they were geniuses, even I may have already died if not for the almost 3rd tier weapon energy holding out the impact…..

Taking into mind that ending this battle in more than ten hits would probably harm the trio, and maybe even me if I'm careless, I already stored the spear and took out [ Lightning Cloud ], it was time to end this exhausting dungeon!