5 Rizz's Trusty Sidekick

The catkin guardian sauntered forward. "I pray to the sage that you've more blades tucked away… I would expect no less from a man menacing each of Trodar's three worlds. That is how you earned such a unique title, yes?" 

Rizz adjusted his flower pot with one hand and scratched his rear with the other. "Now I feel left out. You've figured me out, and I'm left trying to guess what the hell you are."

"I have told you. Many times." The armored lion snorted with fury, letting his fiery mane go wild for a second. "Here, now, I am only Raykahl, Solar Sentinel. Ask me once more and I shall extinguish you from Trodar's records." 

"Ah ha! So you admit. You aren't just a dev, you're an admin, Mr. Raykahl, wherever you come from," Rizz shouted, itching the inside of his nostril. 

Such decorum was interesting, to say the least. It left the slowly approaching Raykahl with a feeling of contempt. 

"... Then you have no more weapons?" Raykahl groaned and growled, clicking his tongue in disappointment. "Oh, ho, ho, ho, no… Do not toy with me, Menace. I have already acknowledged you. It would be a waste for you to fail when already so close…"

"Close to what?" Rizz asked with a chuckle. 

The goblin nonchalantly strolled to the side, keeping his gaze on the supposed world boss while eventually heading toward the barrier's edge. 

"You are close to not disappointing me. A rare feat indeed. Something that should bring you honor, should you triumph." Raykahl clicked his tongue and walked in parallel with the goblin, heading diagonally to slowly cut him off. And the barrier began to move with the Solar Sentinel, recentering around him. 

"This barrier is inescapable," Raykahl remarked. "None have escaped me. Not your kind, hero. Nor have your gods." 

That solemn line was carried across the burning flower field with a strange power. It was stern and pointed but not loud or overbearing. Yet all players in the area heard the lion man clearly. 

The statement didn't carve through the tension like a Thanksgiving turkey. No. Like a guillotine, that remark severed everyone's thoughts and minds from their bodies, if only for a few seconds. 

Rizz, on the other hand, wasn't deterred by that blood-curdling comment. It got the pot goblin to stop in his tracks. 

"... What did you just say?" 

"None may escape me," Raykahl replied. "Each hero I have faced has fallen from history. Every god who dared was granted a similar fate. I do not hold prejudice against one's status, and neither does death."

Further enthralled, the goblin let loose a manic cackle. "Don't say that, kitty litter! Never tell me what I can and can't do. Because the Rizz is undeniable!" 

"Then amuse me further, Menace of Trodar." The flaming guardian ready his lunging stance. "Will you prevail and end me? Or will you die, scrambling to escape my power like the rest?"

Crunch! Whiff.

A heat wave passed over the grass and flowers where Rizz had been standing. Yet the goblin was nowhere nearby. 

"Lesser Teleportation is useless, as is Greater Teleportation and Supreme Teleportation." Raykahl pivoted and lunged in another direction, finding the goblin with no trouble at all. 

Rizz activated his Sudden Death skill that moment, enhancing his body to move anywhere nearby in a straight line, mimicking teleportation. At the same time, two more goblins appeared elsewhere. Two appeared on opposite sides of the catkin guardian, thirty meters on either side of him. The third emerged from Raykahl's shadow once again, forcing the catkin to pick his target. 

"Oh, ho! Then I choose you all." 

One swing of the catkin's greatsword created a seventy-meter heat wave. And the streak of dark red fire reduced all three of the goblins into nothingness. 

"Wrong choice, pussy cat," a familiar voice snickered. It was only five meters away from where Rizz had been standing, now facing Solar Sentinel's back. "Never tell me what I can't do, or I'll rub it in your face!" 

A small stream of blood appeared in mid-air, yet it dribbled down something unseen until it spread out along the outspread fingers of an invisible hand. And while Raykahl was turning to spot the invisible goblin, Rizz pumped mana into the blood on his hands. 

"Let's fight fire with fire!"

Poof. Ka-Kaw! K-Rrrip!

A creature appeared in front of Rizz a split second before Raykahl's greatsword could hit him. And, just when all the spectators and the flaming catkin could get a good look at the beast, it was cleaved in half by the fiery blade. 

Raykahl sighed in disillusion, "Do you not understand–"

"Oh, I understand, kitty litter. It's your thinking that's pretty shit right now," laughed Rizz, hopping backward while disabling his invisibility spell. 

Ka-kaw! 

Hearing the goblin's unnerved retort and the unusual cries of the slain creature, Raykahl looked down. Yet he found nothing. Where two halves of a chicken should've laid, there were no feathers, blood, or any remnants of an injury. 

Bock, bock. Bock-kaw!

Raykahl pinpointed the fleeing creature the next second. His animalistic sense made it a breeze, though the catkin guardian was left genuinely baffled at the sight. 

"Don't doubt me, or Xdra Krizpee!" Rizz snickered through the flower pot. Backing up further, Rizz took the moment to flick a fat booger at the Lion Man. "Come on, scaredy cat! Are you gonna fight, or did the hungry kitty get distracted?"

The mad lad goblin was laughing like everything was under control. Yet, from everyone else's perspective, Rizz had just lost his sanity. 

"A chicken?! Your familiar is a damn chicken?" the brawler guild master exclaimed in question, unable to do anything else thanks to the cheat-like barrier. 

Raykahl was just as baffled. After hearing the goblin's wild claims to do the impossible, the Solar Sentinel felt thrown for a loop by the white chicken with red, orange, and yellow plumage. Puzzled as to why such a capable hero had the most useless summon Raykahl had ever seen. But even more flabbergasted by how that peculiar fowl had no injuries whatsoever after being cleaved in half. 

"Yoo hoo! Kitty Litter, over here!" 

"Here, kitty, kitty!"

"No, this way!"

"I've brought catnip!"

The next instant, four more pot goblins appeared on all sides of the catkin guardian. Each of them called out and taunted the flaming enemy. 

Raykahl stopped playing around and letting himself get distracted. He stabilized his thoughts. *Watch the bird. Focus on the prey.*

Roooaar! C-crunch!

The ground cracked apart under Raykahl's stomp as a flaming shockwave expanded in all directions. It decimated all of the false goblins, leaving only the true goblin who hadn't moved at all. 

All the while, a torrent of liquid, dark red flames spewed out of Raykahl's mouth to inundate the fleeing chicken. 

Yet, when the aggressive flames subsided, all eyes were back on the unharmed chicken at the barrier's edge. 

"What trickery is this?" Raykahl inquired, readying another lunge with his greatsword. 

"What? Bummed out that you can't have Xdra Krizpee to go?" Rizz laughed, teleporting to the opposite side of the barrier. 

Before the Solar Sentinel could reply, he genuinely froze in place. His bestial eyes stretched to full size when he witnessed what should be impossible. 

The little chicken bocked and clucked, hopping through the barrier's veil of dark red flames, effortlessly. Raykahl scanned the fowl again and again with his perception abilities, yet it only revealed the bird as an Ash Hen.

"Now, Kriz!" Rizz bellowed, tilting the flower pot back to reveal his shit-eating grin. 

Out of impulse, Raykahl hardened his already low, droning voice. "No matter! For you shall perish without a means of defeating me!"

Raykahl crumpled the ground under his feet, propelling himself at the evasive goblin at a speed far greater than before. 

But the Rizz only kept grinning.

Snap! Whiff. Bock-Kaw!

… The world was silent. Only the clucking hen was heard for that moment. 

Everyone else was too confused by what had just happened. Especially by the cleaved-apart hen now flapping its wings in front of the supposed world boss. And how the hen's feathers acted like small reaches of flames, rejoining for the fowl's body to become whole again. 

Slap! Slap!

Raykahl and the others turned to spot Rizz now standing outside of the barrier, having swapped places with his peculiar familiar. 

The goblin had turned around to spank his ass toward the Solar Sentinel, beyond the reach of the entrapping flaming. "I told you, kitty litter. The Rizz is undeniable!"