The pain was unbelievable. Even having experienced it once before Ronan wasn't able to completely ignore the suffering he was feeling. He was, however, able to put it aside so that he could focus on fighting the corruption that was burning away the edges of his soul.

He knew that without the benefit of his heritage and his soul cultivation being beyond the first threshold he wouldn't be able to fight off the shaman's spell. It made him wonder how people without his cultivation could bring it down. Then again, anyone who made it this far in the harder difficulty tutorial would be a powerful challenger with their own advantages—a high rarity class, overpowered personal trait, or exceptional skill from the myriad skills tome.

Ronan was starting to acquire a number of them, but he knew there were people with better luck or hard-earned natural skills that could outclass him in certain areas and would likely be favoured by the system. In this instance, his own natural talent—being a stubborn son of a bitch—was perfectly suited for the task at hand.

He fought against the encroaching corruption. His soul flexed and condensed, the burning smoke's progression slowing. It wasn't stopped, and he felt every mote of his soul that was burnt away, but he knew he would push it out soon.

The time he spent inside his soul seemed like an eternity, fighting back the smoke. Embodying his soul was a strange sensation. He still felt distinctly himself, but in a vastly different way to how he felt himself while simply being in his body. He could feel every part of his soul as though it were the centre of his being.

The more he fought, the more used to manipulating his soul he grew, and thus the pace he was able to push the corruption back sped up. Eventually he had reduced the encroaching voodoo to just a single point. The final piece of the spell was the most stubborn, refusing to be destroyed even when he threw the entire weight of his soul against it.

While battling it, he suddenly felt something shift across his soul. The entire fabric of his soul flexed and grew tighter. The mote which had been resisting his assault until that point suddenly gave in and exploded as his soul pushed against it.

With the spell purged, his soul stretched outwards. Despite having been torn and scratched by the voodoo, it was stronger and larger than it had been before.

When he came out of his soul, returning to the world around him, Ronan saw a notification in the corner of his vision. He wanted to see what it said but there was no time to check.

His body wasn't injured beyond what it had suffered before the spell, but he noticed portions of skin on his chest and probably his face too were blackened. The corruption didn't only damage the soul.

In front of him, Ragar'vath was recovering from the spear strike to its chest. The shaman had healed part of the hole in its flesh, but was still bleeding profusely from the impact point on its chest as well as the previous wound in its throat. Ronan was honestly shocked the boss was still standing, but it only made the battle that much more exciting.

The feeling when he won would be even sweeter, too.

It saw Ronan standing up and roared. It tried to intimidate him, but the damage to its throat and its sorry state meant that all it managed to do was irritate his ears. Ronan stood up and did a double take at the boss.

It was clutching its bone staff in tendrils made from red and purple tendrils of voodoo. While he was impressed with the locomotive ability of the shaman's magic, he wasn't about to stop and stare.

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Pulling a hammer from his inventory, he prepared for the final clash between himself and the boss. Ragar'vath stepped towards him, eyes burning with hatred. Ronan didn't hate the goblin chief, but he would kill it nonetheless.

Even though it could replicate limbs, the tendrils of magic didn't give the boss the same level of control over its staff as its actual arms would have. Ronan, on the other hand, was filled with confidence and had two working hands wrapped around the handle of his hammer.

He stepped into the boss' range and swung without hesitation. Even if the goblin tried to block the blow, he felt strong enough to blast its defences apart.

Being a crafty opponent, Ragar'vath knew it couldn't take Ronan's blow head on and instead twisted its body to the side while thrusting its staff at his left knee. The hammer crashed into the edge of its shoulder; a glancing blow.

The force of his hammer blow still knocked the shaman backwards, but its staff caught his knee and made his leg buckle. As he fell to one knee, the shaman raised the staff and thrust it right back at his chest. The magical limbs allowed it to manipulate the staff far quicker than its flesh-and-blood arms.

The position made it extremely awkward for Ronan to swing his hammer back, but he opted to instead raise the handle to block the staff. The wood groaned and then snapped under the force of the shaman's blow, the weak weapon unable to handle the force.

However, it did slow the strike down enough for Ronan to dodge out of the way. He stood up as the shaman stumbled into the missed blow. While the shaman tried to pull its weapon back, Ronan delivered a sweeping kick that took out the boss' footing.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Ronan put that old adage to great use as he caused the eleven-foot-tall goblin chief to trip up and stumbled forwards. The shaman slammed its staff into the ground using the magical limbs, just about keeping itself upright.

Ronan was already on the move, though, and pulled a sword from his inventory while already swinging his hand forwards. The fluid motion, combined with the activation of his skills, sliced straight through the shaman's thick skin and bit into the meat of its thigh.

The first cut only carried the sword halfway through its leg, stopping at the bone. Surging strikes activated, and the second sword swing cleaved through the rock-hard femur, sending the blade slicing out the back of the goblin chief's leg and severing it clean through.

A tendril of dark purple shot out from the shaman's stump, keeping it balanced, but it couldn't spare any focus or energy to heal the fresh wound. Blood poured out, staining the ground red.

Ronan knew he had the shaman on the ropes. All it needed was one final blow. He heard it shrieking and muttering in the goblins' incomprehensible language. Before the shaman could finish whatever evil voodoo it was attempting, Ronan stepped inside its guard and thrust the sword at its heart.

The shaman tried to dodge but it was too unstable in its footing; slow attrition had created the perfect opportunity for Ronan. The tip of the blade glowed blue with mana and pierced through the goblin chief's tough hide with ease, striking at the heart within. When the blade struck the vital organ, it almost burst from the sheer force of Ronan's combined skills and strength.

For half a second, the shaman's body continued to writhe. It struggled against the inevitable. He heard a chime as it fell limp, kicking the body off the blood-stained sword held in his hands. It hadn't broken through the final two strikes of the battle and Ronan didn't want to toss the blade aside like trash after it had fought alongside him, even though it was only a goblin drop.

Before opening the notification he paused for a moment to catch his breath. It didn't settle in right away that he'd won. Not only the battle against Ragar'vath the Soulstealer, but the entire harder difficulty tutorial.

Or so he hoped…

The boss usually signified the end of the tutorial and this one had already gone onto a fifth stage compared to the usual four. If there were more enemies for him to fight, Ronan would be shocked at the steep difficulty curve.

With his heart still racing and the adrenaline still making him wired, Ronan finally pulled up the notifications to see what his rewards were for defeating the boss of the harder difficulty tutorial and the tutorial itself. He had an idea of what to expect, but perhaps there was an even greater surprise waiting in the wings.

You have killed [Ragar'vath the Soulstealer - BOSS][Goblin Chief Shaman Lv.60]!

…

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