“And may your road be easy and safe.”

Ancient words, an ancient way of parting. But to the elf fighter, they were something pleasant and familiar as she set out on her road.

Home, the humans said, is where the heart is. She thought they were right.

Her heart, the fighter’s heart, was ever in the cherished forest she called home.

“May the sun shine, huh?” she murmured as she trotted away, her long boots almost kicking off the earth.

How ironic.

It wasn’t that there was any malice in the words. That girl like a shimmering starwind had no intent to mock her companion.

And yet. Yet the fighter’s sword hung heavy on her back; she could feel its belt biting into her shoulder.

“I don’t think it’ll be that easy…,” she muttered. For over her path lay a great darkness.

The quest had been a leftover, something none of the other adventurers had taken.

Once he had gotten used to his new custom of waiting silently in the corner of the lobby for the flood of people to subside, it was no strain. Besides, the dregs tended to include plenty of goblin hunts.

Goblins would appear near some village. The villagers would push them back, but they wanted someone to slay the creatures before the local youth antagonized them.

Most of the nests of those goblins were in some small cave in the forest by the village. Occasionally, there would be an addendum stating that a local medicine woman or hunter’s daughter hadn’t come home.

What utterly clichéd quests. That was exactly why only beginners ever took them. And once the season when the Guild got a flood of rookies was over, there were few left who willingly took on goblin hunts.

After all, they weren’t interesting. And the rewards were minimal.

Growing in experience meant that your strength and skills went up in price. From the perspective of combat expenses, experienced adventurers had no reason to take goblin hunts.

But he was different. He, the one who was lying in the underbrush in the encroaching dark, covered in mud, watching the entrance to a cave as he tried to mask his smell.

He was the very definition of a scruffy man.

His grimy leather armor, his cheap metal helmet. A small round shield was tied to his arm, and at his hip, he carried a sword of a strange length.

The crimson sun dropped toward the western horizon, dyeing the night a deep purple. Even so, he could easily see the dark-green form of the goblin silhouetted against the cave entrance. Maybe he spotted the foul red gleam as the creature yawned lazily.

Whatever it was, there was a goblin standing there, which meant he knew this was a goblin den.

He also knew they hadn’t yet noticed him.

What do I do?

He grunted to himself as he felt a bug crawl across his muddy body.

Just because this was an utterly clichéd goblin hunt, there was no reason to stop thinking. He felt like he had seen this cave before. Like he had seen this goblin horde before. But to use the same fighting style, the same strokes of his sword, would not necessarily produce the same results.

That reminds me…

One hand dug in his item pouch, feeling the blinding powder there, and that caused something to bubble up in his mind. The fact that the goblins he hit with it cried showed that they had the ability to shed tears. If they had eyes and noses and the ability to feel pain, those were facts he could make use of.

It might be helpful in smoking them out, too.

He could start a fire and send the smoke into the cave. But would the wind really blow the smoke right in for him? It was worth trying—even if not now. He took down the idea on his mental notepad.

Speaking of starting fires, some fire powder would be nice, too. It might make him too conspicuous, but being able to cave in a hole would be worth a lot.

I’ll have to learn some techniques for dampening the sound.

Consumption was an issue as well. How much powder would he need to bring down a single goblin nest? However much it was, he would not begrudge it, but it would be foolish to use more than was necessary. From the standpoint of efficiency…

Efficiency. Huh.

He got to that point in his train of thought and laughed. Just beneath his helmet, as if he were chewing on the sound.

If he was going to worry about efficiency, then there was no point going goblin hunting. Much better to plow the fields, sweating with hoe in hand, or to apply himself to business.

Those occupations were much safer, more stable, and certainly more respected.

Those who spoke of efficiency in adventuring were usually looking to get rich quick. “When they couldn’t even steal the crown jewel from a dragon’s hoard,” his master had said with a chuckle.

Anyway, this wasn’t even an adventure.

It’s a goblin hunt.

The next moment, his left hand flashed so quickly one could hardly see it move, and the dagger it had been holding went hurtling through the air.

“GORB?!”

The goblin, who had just been grumbling to himself about the injustices of his life, would never grumble about anything again. The dagger pinned his tongue to his jaw.

Then he jumped out from the underbrush, grabbing and catching the goblin’s corpse before it could hit the ground. He dragged the twitching body into the undergrowth and pitched it aside, then once more positioned himself among the bushes.

He pulled out the dagger, wiped the blood on the goblin’s loincloth, then put it back in the scabbard that hung from a gap in his armor.

This is difficult to pull out.

That was fine if he had time, as he had just now, but in the heat of the moment, it would not be easy. There was still room for improvement.

As he pondered this, the corpse dripped—and he let it. Soon a stomach-turning stench of blood reached his nose.

There was not one single thing for which to be grateful to goblins, but at least they were useful for covering one’s smell. And having a companion served to distract him while he waited for the blood to collect.

Not long after, a goblin carrying a spear came trotting out of the cave. He shook the spear, incensed to see that the one who was supposed to be standing guard was nowhere to be found.

That layabout was slacking off, no question! And here he was being so diligent! What a bastard.

Well, no use letting a prick like that get the better of him. He could play hooky just as well as the other guy.

And he would have done exactly that, if a rusty blade hadn’t buried itself in his bony chest.

“GOORGBGROG…?!”

The new guard looked disbelievingly at the blade, then fell over backward.

“That makes two.”

He didn’t mind using up swords when they were old red, rusted things he’d liberated from goblin hips.

He took the second limp goblin corpse back to the bushes with him as well. That should buy him some time. After all, there was no such thing as a diligent goblin.

“Hmm.”

He took a quick glance at the pile of refuse by the cave entrance. Based on nests he had been in before and how many goblins he had found there, he thought there were about ten of them here, give or take.

He didn’t see any outlandish decorations. No spell casters in this horde, he suspected.

He should, however, work on the assumption that their leader might be a hobgoblin.

He thought for a moment, then went back to the bodies in the bushes and pulled out the rusty sword, which was still sticking out of the second corpse. He drove it into the pile of refuse up to the hilt.

“Good.”

He took a torch out of his pouch and lit it. His left arm bore his shield, while he drew the sword at his hip with his right.

He was ready. There was only one thing to do.

“I’m going to kill all the goblins,” he murmured just before he stepped into the cave. Around his neck hung a brand-new rank tag.

But with very few exceptions, virtually nobody called him by the name engraved on that metal plate. Instead they called him…

…Goblin Slayer.

He took the mossy, moldy air into his lungs one breath at a time.

Even under his helmet and balaclava, he could smell the filth.

He was well used to the stench of goblin holes by now.

He held the torch in his left hand, letting its light shine into the dark ahead of him, against which he squinted; his right hand gripped his sword.

If the goblins are going to attack…

They would attack the light source. They knew that adventurers carried lights—and that was as far as their thinking went. So he held up his torch with his shield at the ready. That would draw the attacks to that side.

Or it should.

But would it really?

Each time a bat fluttered through the musty air or a rat skittered across the shit-strewn ground, he wondered afresh.

With each step he took, he asked himself if he wasn’t making some stupendous mistake.

That in itself was nothing different from five years before.

He had never once known what was really right. But when he was wrong, his master would throw stones at him and that would teach him he had been mistaken.

He’d felt pain. Therefore he’d learned. Now it would be different. His master was not there—only the goblins. And whether he halted in confusion or forged ahead, they would certainly come.

So forge ahead he did.

Waiting and doing nothing were not the same thing. He’d grasped long ago that he couldn’t just crouch there, hoping that things would take a fortunate turn. They wouldn’t.

Against goblins, in particular, it was a mistake he had no intention of making again.

Given the alternative, it was better to push forward and stumble as he did so—even if the stumble was fatal.

“…Hmm.”

I could lay down a rope.

His mind went to the possibility of goblins patrolling (which for goblin purposes meant slacking off) outside. Even if none came bursting through the walls, he wouldn’t want to be caught in a pincer movement.

Goblin Slayer dug through his item pouch and clicked his tongue when he realized he didn’t have a single coil of rope. He wanted to set a booby trap, but he was the boob for not even bringing the right supplies. He could see why the item shop sold that thing they called the Adventurer’s Toolkit. It was amazing what you could do with some rope and a few nails.

In that case…

Goblin Slayer reached into the pouch again, taking out a bandage meant for stanching blood, along with two daggers. He almost let his torch drop, thought for a moment, then wedged it in a crevice in the wall and crouched down.

He wished he had listened to his older sister when she had told him how to set a trap or two. But while he hadn’t specifically paid attention to her, he’d nonetheless picked something up, and it helped him now.

There were knowledge and skills in the world that he’d not dreamed of, which might help him in ways he couldn’t imagine. There wasn’t one thing that was not worth learning—or so he suspected.

“…That should be about right,” he said to himself as he observed his trap, which was not very pretty but functional. Then he stood up and returned his eyes to the darkness.

“GROOROGB!!”

After that, everything happened very fast.

An arrow flew out of the darkness, just missing his torch and pinging against the wall. He crouched low and raced into the cave, letting the arrows pass overhead. He gave a single sidelong swipe of his sword at a low level, like he was mowing grass.

“GOORRGB?!”

A goblin went somersaulting backward. Goblin Slayer pinned the creature underfoot and shifted his left side forward.

“GORRB?!!”

“Three…!”

Deflecting an incoming arrow with his shield, he drew his sword and transferred the momentum directly into a throw.

The blade went shooting through the dark, and at about the same time it was lodging itself in a goblin’s throat, Goblin Slayer was busy tearing out the windpipe of the creature under his foot with the toe of his boot.

The monster gagged and thrashed like he was drowning, but Goblin Slayer prevailed over him through sheer size and weight, crushing him down.

“Four…!”

Only once he heard the crack of the goblin’s spine did he let up. He crouched over the corpse, keeping his shield at the ready as he thought about what to do next…

“…”

There’s…nothing.

Goblin Slayer let out a breath. Then he stood up and inspected the corpses. There was nothing he could use. Maybe the arrows. They would be better for throwing than shooting.

He kicked the archer’s corpse aside, over to the wall, and went to the other goblin. He gave the corpse a kick to liberate the sword from its neck; he inspected the blade and judged that it was still usable. This one had arrows, too, but he decided to leave them where they lay. Instead, he helped himself to the dagger at the monster’s belt. Most likely, this goblin had done the same thing to someone else; Goblin Slayer had no qualms about doing it to him.

That made four altogether. If the horde was about ten monsters, he’d slain roughly half of them.

Hrm.

But something…something felt wrong. He could tell.

Maybe they were keeping wolves or those—what were they called again?

Maybe it wasn’t just a hobgoblin. Maybe there was a shaman here, and he’d simply missed the signs.

Or a goblin lord?

He searched his pitiful memory but couldn’t discern the source of the sense of uneasiness.

I was told to hone my intuition, but this?

This was just second-guessing everything. Or no…

“…I need to calm down.”

He deliberately said that out loud, and doing so made him realize how terribly dry his throat was. He licked his lips, fished his canteen out of his item pouch, and took one sip, then two, through the visor of his helmet.

It’s cold.

He didn’t have a name for the taste of it, not really. But the water, which he’d mixed with grape wine, flowed down his throat and into his stomach.

What mattered was the amount of water left in his canteen. Any sense of enemies nearby. And his own condition.

He wasn’t tired. He wasn’t enervated. He faced at least six more foes. There might be a hob among them. He had enough water to get home again.

Or enough to give the goblins a good drink.

He tossed aside the second or really the fourth goblin corpse and proceeded into the cave. Assuming his passive perception hadn’t missed any hidden passages, then it appeared to be a single tunnel. That would suggest the sleeping quarters were at the far end.

His torch was plainly visible, and he for one knew that the goblins who had gone outside would not be coming back.

What would he do in those circumstances?

…I’d set an ambush.

It wouldn’t be so hard. Goblin Slayer came to a halt, the flame of his torch wavering. He reached into his pouch and found what he needed. Then he pushed off the ground, racing ahead.

In front of him, he could see the cave entrance, yawning like a pair of jaws.

He headed straight for it…

“GOROOGBBGR?!?!!!?!?”

“GRO??!! GOGRGB??!!!”

He flung the projectile with crushing force, sending up a cloud of dust on impact and causing the goblins to gibber and yell.

The eggshell he’d flung produced a cloud of crimson powder that enveloped them.

So what if they could see in the dark? There was no way this wouldn’t work.

“GROGGRGGN?!!”

“Hff…!”

A shape flung itself at him, screeching and crying; Goblin Slayer held his breath and struck out with his sword.

“GBBOGB?!!?!”

This makes five!

He cleaved the creature from waist to shoulder, leaving gravity to take care of the body; meanwhile, he spun and started running—making sure to show his back to the goblins, of course, and heading toward the entrance.

“GGOROGGB!!”

“GRGB! GGBGROGB!!”

“GROBBGR!!”

From behind, he heard the pounding of feet and a great deal of mockery (he assumed).

It’s fine.

This, too, he had experienced many times. He knew how it felt.

All Goblin Slayer could do was race forward as fast as he could. Then he slackened his pace. The footsteps got closer.

“GROORGB!!”

“Six!”

When the jabbering voice was as close as he thought it could get, he twisted his torso and lashed out with his left arm.

“GBBBGROGGB?!!?!”

The goblin took the torch full in the face and tumbled backward with a muffled scream. It wasn’t just the burn; Goblin Slayer had felt the creature’s nose break under his fist. This one wouldn’t be getting back up. Next.

The others pressed in, surging past their stupid fellow, who had let go of his broken club as he rushed forward. What would happen to the next one?

“…Hrm!”

Following the thought that flashed through his mind, Goblin Slayer took a great jump.

“GORROGB?!”

“GROGB?! GRRGGRGB?!”

Two goblins who had been vying to be in front abruptly crashed to the cave floor.

They were goblins. No doubt it had never occurred to them that there might be a rope across the tunnel at foot level.

Fools.

Goblin Slayer grunted his brief assessment.

Goblins were idiots, but they were not fools. Yet even people sometimes did foolish things.

With almost compassionate businesslikeness, he brought his sword down and severed the monsters’ spinal columns.

“That makes—”

Seven, eight.

“—nine.”

“GROORGB?!!”

Throwing even as he rose, he finished off a goblin who sought to attack him while he was busy with the monster’s companions. This latest creature let the club drop from his hand as he drowned in blood-flecked foam.

But his death was drowned out by a great thud of heavy footsteps and a terrible roar.

“GRRROORGB…!”

“…A hob.”

Hob was an old word meaning “big.” Was it that mage who had whispered as much or maybe the proctor? A massive creature, irritated that the trash had caused it such trouble, loomed in the tunnel.

Of course, it was “massive” only for a goblin. And Goblin Slayer was just as annoyed by the trash as this monster was.

The hob’s golden eyes gleamed with what might have been anger or perhaps hatred; Goblin Slayer stared right back, and then he leaped into action.

Which is to say, he turned and ran once more.

“GROORG!!!!”

The hobgoblin charged, bellowing and swinging his club. Goblin Slayer could feel the creature’s relentless footsteps in his viscera, and meanwhile, he heard a thick snap.

“GRORG! GRROROGB!!”

Jeering laughter. The hob must have kicked through his trap.

It was the best I could hope for with a jerry-rigged solution.

He burst out of the cave and found himself surrounded by shockingly cold night air. Trying not to exhale lest his breath fog, Goblin Slayer dodged to one side of the cave entrance.

“GROOROGBB!!”

The hobgoblin came flying out after him. Goblin Slayer reached toward the pile of refuse. He found a hilt.

“GOOROGBB!!”

“This makes ten.”

His hands were moving before the hobgoblin’s huge body could turn.

The sword he flung found its mark, piercing the creature through the back of the skull. The rust and blood mingled with brains, a cloud of red exploding into the night.

The hobgoblin pitched forward without so much as a cry. Goblin Slayer let out his breath when he saw the creature was dead. The breath fogged like smoke, and he found himself watching it drift upward.

Above him were the moons, red and green, shining in the sky.

Full moons.

That was the only thought he had when he saw both of them full and shining overhead. There was no need to think anything more about them.

The goblins were dead.

This night was nothing less and nothing more.

This is a problem.

Goblin Slayer grunted softly and looked hard at the cave entrance. More precisely, he looked at the pile of firewood in front of it.

It was a very strange sight, with the moons shining down on it. That didn’t bother Goblin Slayer, however. It was too late to worry about such things; had he taken any notice of it, he would not have judged it to be a problem.

The bigger issue for him was the crushing fatigue that pressed on every part of his body. He felt like there were lead weights tied to his shoulders. His armor seemed twice as heavy as usual.

This wasn’t specifically the result of his goblin hunt—although the impact of that couldn’t be zero. It was from gathering the wood.

One way or another, I have to pass the night.

So long as there was any possibility that a stray goblin might come trotting back to the nest, he had to stand guard. Which made him think he might as well take the opportunity to try putting his smoke-out plan into practice.

Luckily for him, he had a perfectly good empty goblin nest right there. It would be better than having to try it while in actual combat, and attempting it on the farm would only upset everyone.

Such had been his thought process, but now…

“…Will this even be enough?”

He realized he had no idea how much wood he would need. There was no point in the tactic if it burned down the whole forest. But if it hardly burned it all, that, too, would be futile.

He had decided to begin by gathering wood scraps, which doubled as a chance to make sure he hadn’t missed any goblins in the surrounding forest. Confronted with the results of his efforts, however, he found he had no confidence that they were good enough.

Well, just staring at the firewood won’t get me anywhere.

The moons were working their way across the great sphere of the heavens. He couldn’t just stand there staring stupidly until dawn.

Goblin Slayer produced a flint from his item pouch and struck it, sending sparks flying. By now, of course—unlike the first time he’d done it—he was no longer foolish enough to try to set the firewood alight directly. Instead, he let the sparks land on some pine cones he’d found, getting a starter fire going that glowed in the darkness. Then he lit a branch from the starter fire and stuck it into the dry grass beneath the firewood.

The flames caught even as he watched; they moved from the smaller logs to the bigger, from the lower to the higher. Who was it who had taught him that fire moved that way?

That’ll do for a start.

At least he hadn’t forgotten. Confirming that he still had the skills he had practiced brought him great satisfaction.

Bathed in firelight, he rifled through his item pouch once more. If he was going to stand guard all night, he ought to drink a stamina potion.

But…

“Hrm…”

He didn’t know.

He’d grabbed several potion bottles from his pouch, letting his fingers do the searching, but in the dark, he couldn’t tell them apart.

He sighed and pulled the bottles out, studying them by the light of the fire to see what color they were.

This one?

Probably. Worst-case scenario, if he was wrong, it wouldn’t kill him. Just cost him.

With that thought, he popped the stopper and slugged the liquid down past his visor in a single gulp.

No sooner had he done so than he frowned, thinking that it would have been better to test it with a sip first. Not because of the bitter taste that filled his mouth, which told him that he’d guessed correctly; it was because of his frustration with his own stupidity.

He felt warmth spread throughout his body, down his stiff fingers. He adjusted his helmet.

Before him was a fire that seemed to burn the very night. The entrance to a cave. And white smoke billowing into the air.

“Now, then…”

How should I send smoke into the cave?

This he really didn’t know.

He crossed his arms and grunted. Cover the fire, perhaps, to direct the smoke?

Or would the wind work? Maybe he could make a fan of some sort—a piece of wood, perhaps. Would that make the smoke go where he wanted?

Even if it did go into the cave, would it reach the far end? Would it penetrate the depths of the goblin hideout?

For that matter, smoke rises. Wasn’t he trying to achieve the opposite?

If I had a wind herder, maybe, or…

The wind herders guided ships using magic. If he went down to the port, he might find one or two he could hire for gold.

Then again, the most famous wizards were said to be able to control walls, fire, wind, and smoke all by themselves.

A wizard who could do such things wouldn’t need to resort to smoking the enemy out.

Such a person would have some far more subtle plan, no doubt something that would never occur to Goblin Slayer.

“……”

He stood in front of the fire for a very long time, contemplating, then finally sighed and sat down. What he’d learned was that he had exhausted himself hauling firewood just to build an oversized bonfire for no purpose.

No. It did have a purpose.

He knew now that this method would not work. That was valuable.

Maybe that was just him thinking out of a desire not to go away empty-handed, or maybe it was a simple fact. Whichever was the case, he turned his mind to pondering his fire, its outcome, and how he might improve on it.

Naturally, had he heard goblins moving about, he would have reacted immediately. Goblins weren’t smart enough to mask their footsteps.

However…

“Do you have any idea just how fishy you look?”

He did not possess the skill to respond to a blade that was pressed to his neck without so much as a sound.

No matter how you sliced it, there was something fishy about this guy. He was in a clearing in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night, crouched in front of the cave, building a fire. A warrior in filthy armor.

The tip-off had been the stench of death that wafted on the breeze through the forest.

Beneath the twin moons, she’d kicked powerfully to start herself running, borrowing the strength of the great earth.

Even a rootless elf separated from her forest could expect a helping hand from the trees, grass, and flowers. As the underbrush parted before her of its own accord, she moved like a colorful wind, her hair billowing behind her.

Neither did the creatures that lived in the night wood stand in her way. It was like she was running through a deserted field.

I smell Chaos, she thought.

It was not the sort of smell one detected with the five senses alone—but neither was it simply a metaphor.

The smell is rising.

The aroma of blood and guts. The sense of slaughter. The smell of flame.

Deep in the woods, in a relatively open spot, she saw him, the scene spreading before her where a nest had been hacked out of the earth. There he was—and damned if he wasn’t surrounded by goblin corpses.

The elf fighter approached the man covered in blood and filth from behind and put her sword to his neck.

“Do you have any idea just how fishy you look?” she asked.

“…”

His response was silence.

The man sitting in front of the bonfire didn’t move a muscle—but there was no sign of hostility. He didn’t make to stand up, and neither did he reach for the battered old sword at his hip. When she got a good look at the sword, however…

It looks like the kind of weapon a goblin would use, she thought.

“No… The smoke,” he mumbled.

“What?” Elf Fighter said. She blinked, her long ears bobbing up and down.

The man’s voice was muffled, quiet; what he said almost didn’t sound like words. The murmur was so indistinct that even the elf doubted her ears for a moment, but then he went on to add, “The goblin hunt is over.”

His terse pronouncement did not sound like an answer to her question.

Elf Fighter pondered his meaning and intentions for a moment longer, but then he spoke again.

“I wanted to get the smoke to go in there.” He accompanied this declaration with a quiet grunt. “I was trying to decide how to do it.”

Elf Fighter let out a deep sigh. “What is your story, kid?” she asked, a question inspired when she realized that the voice from the mysterious suit of armor sitting in front of her was far younger than she had expected.

It was the first time he’d ever seen an elf up close. The nearest he had come before was a half-elf girl he’d happened to run into on an adventure. He’d caught glimpses of full-blooded elves at the Adventurers Guild, but he hadn’t had anything to do with them. They’d never approached him and vice versa.

He saw now why his foul-mouthed master had spent equal time berating the elves’ objectionable personalities and praising their beauty.

But that’s all this is.

When he was younger, this encounter would have set his heart racing and left him overjoyed.

She looked like she had emerged wholesale from one of the ballads the bards plucked out. Yet now he found himself thinking only, Is this what an elf is? Nothing more.

“Who are you anyway, kid? You an adventurer?” the elf asked him.

“…”

The two of them sat before the campfire—which the elf fighter had obliged him to make much smaller than it had been.

Goblin Slayer thought about the question for a moment, then took up the chain around his neck.

It was all questions he didn’t know the answers to.

Why was the woman who had put a sword to his throat now sitting across from him? Why was she simply talking to him?

And who was he? An adventurer? That couldn’t be. But then what should he say?

With no hope of finding an answer, at last he simply had to rely on his rank tag.

That was the path of least resistance. If his master had seen him, he would have poured out abuse on Goblin Slayer.

The elf fighter studied the small metal tag, then breathed out. “Hoh. I assumed you were a Porcelain…but I see you’ve moved up in the world. Color me surprised.”

“It seems that I have,” Goblin Slayer said. It was the honest truth.

He himself had no real sense of having been promoted. The fighter, however, had a different reaction.

“Oh, what?” she said, blinking, as if a bit exasperated. “There are plenty of folks out there who never get promoted.” Then she laughed.

Why had she laughed? Goblin Slayer couldn’t really say.

“The Guild has recognized your talents, hasn’t it? They just say so. Regardless of what you personally feel about it.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s how it works. Here, look at mine.”

With that, she too pulled a rank tag out of her collar. He saw the gleam of precious metal; it glinted copper in the red light of the fire.

“I forgot to mention: I’ve been acknowledged as an adventurer, too,” the elf fighter added.

“I see.”

“Not gonna apologize for earlier, though. You need to spare a thought for how you look to other people.”

“…I see.”

Earlier must have meant when she had pressed a sword to his neck.

It didn’t particularly bother him. He simply recognized that he had been careless. If she’d been a goblin, he would be dead now.

The fire crackled, sending sparks dancing into the air. The sound caused him to give a shake of his head.

This won’t do.

He reached unsteadily into his item pouch and took out a potion bottle, clicked his tongue, then stared once more into the flames.

Why hadn’t he been able to sort the potions out from one another earlier? He was frustrated by his own ineptitude.

“You said you were trying a smoke attack, right, kid?” the elf fighter asked, just as he was downing the potion through his visor.

Unsure what she meant, Goblin Slayer merely gazed back at her. Between the visor of his helmet and the curtain of the night, there was no way he could make out her expression, not even with the help of the firelight.

“It takes a lot of work and isn’t very practical, but I think you figured that out,” she said. “That tactic is for use in battle.”

“…Battle.”

“It’s not something one adventurer on his own can do—and any adventurer who could would have other, quicker ways of getting what he wanted.”

Yes. Goblin Slayer had come to the same conclusion. He had to build the fire, light the fire, then—although he still had no idea how this might be done—get the wind to carry the smoke into the cave.

And he would have to do this in front of every enemy hideout he came across.

He would have to make a constant ally of luck, or it would never work.

Now that I think about it…

That knight errant, along with his cleric friend, had nearly lost their lives in a goblin hunt.

Hadn’t that story involved smoking the creatures out or some similar tactic?

Whatever it was, it’s irrelevant to me as someone working alone.

“Starvation tactics are the same way. They don’t guarantee to give you an advantage,” the elf said as Goblin Slayer was drowning in the sea of his own thoughts.

Did she notice his gaze flick up toward her from under his helmet? Whether she did or not, she added, “For one thing, the fire can spread. What would you do if you burned down this entire forest?”

“…If I were to do it,” he replied quietly, “then I should avoid such an outcome.”

“It’s not as simple as that, but well, yeah.”

Until she said it, he hadn’t even thought about the possibility.

“How do I…?” he began and then frowned at the words that come out of his mouth despite himself. He had no reluctance to ask. But this was someone critiquing him. Someone he had only just met.

He needed to take his silly pride and stick a dagger in it.

“How do I do it?” he finally asked.

“Hmm…” She blinked as if she’d been caught in a lie and then didn’t laugh but looked very serious.

Maybe she hadn’t expected him to ask. Still, she folded her arms thoughtfully and peered up at the twin moons peeking through the trees.

After a long moment, she said, almost in a whisper, “Maybe if you simply put the fire out. If the fire sprites go dancing up into the air, the water and wind sprites will chase them away and rain will come.”

“You’re talking about the skill of the Rainmaker wizards?”

“Oh yeah. You humans have guys like that, too, huh?”

“I have a memory of them.”

When he was small, one had come to his village. He’d gone to see the wizard with his sister, and they’d sang and danced around a bonfire.

Is that what that technique was for?

When the woman saw Goblin Slayer’s helmet nod up and down, she sighed again. “You’d also benefit from having an item that can pour water on the fire, more than you get from some rain. Like a bottomless pitcher of water…”

“I don’t know what that thing—whatever you called it—is, but I have items.”

“Well… I guess that’s worth something,” the elf fighter said, and then her expression relaxed ever so slightly, and she twitched her long ears. She stood up, the metal fastenings of the sword and scabbard on her back clinking softly. “I’ve stayed too long. I have to go. Sorry to impose on you, kid.”

“No…”

What did he mean by no? No what? He spoke that one word, then added quietly, “You were a help.”

“One thing, then.”

He was surprised when the elf leaned forward. There was a breath of wind, carrying the scent of the forest—though it soon mingled with the smoke and the sparks and vanished.

“Is there a town near here?” she asked.

“Such as it is, yes,” he muttered and took a suitable branch from among the remains of the fire.

He scratched out a crude map in the dirt. He’d tried to be delicate about it, as best he could. But that didn’t make it any prettier. He’d never had to draw a map that went beyond simply readable.

“All right.” The elf fighter looked at the map (if it could be called that), then with those two short words, she turned around. “I’m not interested in intruding on your adventure any further, kid—and I don’t plan to help you again, either.”

“I see.”

“Right, then.”

From her mouth, even that simple farewell sounded like a line from a song—and with it, she vanished among the trees. To Goblin Slayer, it looked as if she had literally disappeared. She left nothing behind. He didn’t even hear a tremble from the leaves and grass. There was only her voice, still in his ears.

“Adventure…”

Hardly.

With that thought, he resumed gazing at his fire and at the nest beyond.

This was a goblin hunt.

Kinda butted in there without quite meaning to.

She had to admit to herself, that was unusual for her. She couldn’t resist a scornful smile at herself as she ran through the woods.

Even lecturing him was more than had really been called for. She’d intended to stop there. But once he’d asked a question, she felt obliged to answer.

Who knew he was the kind of kid who would ask?

He was a spent, exhausted child. She remembered someone like that—though it had been decades or maybe even centuries before.

Not the point, either.

It was none of his business. And he was none of hers. There was only one thing she needed to worry about: what lay at the end of the path that had been so politely carved out for her. A great darkness loomed there, one that couldn’t be hidden even against the night. It might try to conceal itself, but she could smell a beast like that.

“OWWWWWLLLLL……”

The misshapen thing had been drawn by the smell of blood and gore. The hunched form was like a terrible, fearsome bear—but the eyes, gleaming in the blackness as they searched for prey, sat in the face of an owl.

A beast of Chaos.

Whether it was the descendant of some chimera or whatever mattered nothing to her. Before her stood an unnatural monster born of Chaos.

In her mind, at that moment, that was everything.

“BBBEEEEEAAAR!!”

With a great thud, the creature planted two feet on the ground and rose to stand, easily towering over her at twice her height.

Not that I care.

If strength and power were the only things that determined victory, the Four-Cornered World would belong to the trolls and the ogres.

She gave a great sweep of her arms and slid toward the creature, rolling herself up like a cat.

A great paw swiped just over her ponytailed head, almost like it was reaching down to pet her. The paw was accompanied by a gust of fetid air, an animalistic reek. She took in a breath of it and focused her qi into her lungs.

“Shaaa!”

At that moment, silver light spilled from behind her. It was a sword, slicing through the night, and without warning, it had appeared in her right hand.

Not that the owlbear probably knew anything about it. Its head went flying through the air, staring up at the twin moons before crashing to earth, bouncing, and vanishing into the undergrowth. A moment later, the torso, now somewhat shorter, gushed blood in a great dark spray.

With the blood pouring down all around her…Elf Fighter laughed. She laughed out loud.

This thing hadn’t been drawn here by the stink of goblin guts. If so, it would have attacked the little devils long ago. And if it wasn’t the goblins, then there was someone or something above both them and the owlbear.

She’d gotten close enough now to be sure that something was there.

“Heh! Heh…”

The stench of the creature’s cruor was as delicious to her as half-carbonized, smoked meat that had been left in the embers of a campfire.

She had all but forgotten about the boy covered in goblin blood.

“”

Guild Girl hummed a little tune.

Employees of the Adventurers Guild were public servants, meaning the work they did was, well, bureaucratic.

Still, there was no law saying you couldn’t bring pleasure and even joy to such work. And that day, this particular receptionist at the Adventurers Guild was in exceptionally high spirits.

She would occasionally glance at something sitting at her place at the counter with its impeccably stacked papers: a palm-sized statue of a dragon curled around a mountain. It was situated inside a small green bowl, almost like a diorama.

It was just a little decoration—it wouldn’t get in the way of her work, and it didn’t distract or annoy the adventurers or quest givers.

She repositioned it ever so slightly, and when she had gotten it right where she wanted it, she gave a single nod.

“Ooh, look who’s in the blush of love!”

“Eep!”

Guild Girl was so startled by the ambush from behind that her finely formed butt came floating up out of her seat.

It was her good luck that it was afternoon, and there weren’t too many visitors at the Guild. The only people who looked her way were a young warrior and a silver-haired girl who seemed to be conferring about their next adventure.

Guild Girl quickly composed herself and gave a little cough. Nothing to see here, she seemed to say.

Yes, it was perfect. Virtually the ideal way to react.

“You’re walking on air because your little favorite is about to come back. It couldn’t be more obvious!” Guild Girl’s colleague teased.

“I—I am not!” Guild Girl said, her voice scratching. “Not at all!”

She glowered at her colleague, who smirked mischievously—or rather, like a cat. She decided that when she made tea later, she wouldn’t serve any snacks with it.

Then again, she’s right! He should be back any day now!

And yes, she did want him to come back. But that was no reason to tease her about it.

Guild Girl’s colleague dismissed her full-throated attempt to express her feelings, instead looking down at the small object on the counter. “So what’s this thing?”

“It’s an incense burner,” Guild Girl said with a sniff, as pointedly as she could. “I just got it recently—they say it comes from a faraway land.”

“Kind of a weird design for an incense burner. More like a pipe-weed ashtray.”

Guild Girl gave her friend another triumphant snort and puffed out her pretty chest. Never missing an opportunity to strike back when one presented itself was an ironclad rule of achieving victory. She took out the incense she had brought as well as some embers she’d gotten from the kitchen before she sat down.

“You put the incense in a little spot on the dragon’s back—it’s hidden by the wings, you see—and then…”

“Whoa, hang on—should you be doing that?” Her colleague looked conflicted as to whether it was appropriate to be burning incense during work hours. The smoke was naturally a problem, and the smell was a concern as well. Padfoots and myrmidons disliked fragrant herbs.

For that matter, humans were really the only ones who were into this sort of thing at all. Rheas and dwarves dabbled in them, but humans tended to take their pleasures a bit too far.

For Guild Girl at that moment, however, her colleague’s discomfort was just part of the enjoyment. You just watch, she thought—a bit of a villainous line—and lit the incense. Whereupon…

“Wow!”

…the smoke came drifting down out of the dragon’s mouth, almost like falling water. The smoke the dragon spat formed a whirling pool in the deep bowl of the burner, and the mountain was shrouded in the sea of smoke. Now it looked like a peak occupied by a Fire Drake.

“That’s elaborate…”

Even Guild Girl’s colleague couldn’t help being impressed by this. She stared intently at the incense burner.

It was not, of course, Guild Girl who had invented this device, but she figured she could still be allowed a triumphant chuckle.

“This way, the smoke and the smell don’t travel beyond the burner. I can enjoy them all to myself without bothering anyone else.”

“The minute our senior leaves for the capital again, you pull this thing out…”

“It’s not like she was here to check on us. Besides, this isn’t distracting me from doing my work,” Guild Girl informed her snippy colleague with a look of blissful innocence. “Speaking of which, I happen to be working now, and I have plenty more work to do later—whereas you appear to be standing and chatting. Are you sure that’s what you should be doing?”

“The Supreme God grants us the right to remain silent.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me.”

“A cleric should naturally be quick of tongue.”

They shared a giggle, and then Guild Girl’s colleague went back to her own seat.

To be completely truthful, thought Guild Girl, I have to admit…

She wasn’t that far off the mark. Guild Girl still wasn’t used to how she could send off an adventurer only to have them never come back.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really. Not the Adventurers Guild’s. Not the adventurers’. Not even the gods’. In the strictest of terms, it wasn’t even the fault of the monsters whom the adventurers encountered on their quests.

Fate and Chance: Everything flowed from the pips of their dice, which even the gods could not change. All any of them could do was wait to see how those dice came out, almost like a prayer. Even if they weren’t the ones rolling.

No…

As a Guild employee, she should do everything within her power. She could pass along quests, mediate, speak with both quest givers and adventurers, and make sure all the paperwork was done just so. She had to have faith that any of those many things might spread like a ripple, creating some good outcome somewhere down the line.

If she had to choose a metaphor, she might compare it to how a cup of wine offered to a customer by a barmaid could change that person’s life.

It could lead them to Valhalla or to hell.

Hence, she needed to do her work with utmost sincerity and devotion—and yet…

That’s the ideal, at least.

But it wasn’t reality.

Yet just because it wasn’t realistic was no reason not to aim for it.

And yet still, she thought…

It was him, taciturn and cold, taking goblin hunt after goblin hunt and going out.

It’s not like I have a crush on him or anything.

No, and yet…and yet she felt cut to the quick by her colleague’s gibes.

Suppose… Just suppose he never came home. How would she feel then?

“Oh…”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the Guild door opening.

An adventurer in filthy armor tromped into the room. He was home.

“Welcome back, and fine work out there!” Guild Girl said to Goblin Slayer.

“There were goblins.”

“I see. Just like the quest indicated. What was the number and scale?”

“There was a hob. No spell casters. About ten of them in total.”

“And you dealt with them by…”

“Killing them all.”

“That’s excellent! Perhaps you could walk me through a detailed report, then? Start at the beginning.”

“All right. There were goblins…in a cave.”

“I see…”

What’s so fun about that? Guild Girl’s colleague wondered, heaving a sigh as she listened to the—well, you couldn’t quite call it lively conversation beside her.

There were goblins. He killed them. There were goblins. He killed them. There were goblins. He killed them.

Goblins, goblins, goblins, always goblins.

Didn’t this guy have any ambition?

Just look at the rank tag dangling at his neck; it had gotten absolutely filthy in no time flat. Okay, that was sort of inevitable—but the slipshod way he treated leveling up!

Poor rank tag must be weeping.

And then there was her friend—when he’d accepted the quest, she’d practically smiled as she said, “Another goblin hunt…”

Goblin hunts were jobs for beginners, novices, and newbies. That was simple fact and nothing but.

There was the problem of the quest fee, too. Once you had tramped through your share of goblin caves and killed the inhabitants, you needed to go on to the next thing.

Not to say goblin hunting wasn’t dangerous. But so what? Like dealing with dark elves or exploring unknown ruins was safe?

Anyone who can’t handle a goblin hunt will never hack it as an adventurer.

Sure, the higher-level adventurers spurned these quests, which was why they tended to languish. So yes, it was just as well to have someone who focused on goblin hunts and cleaned up those leftover quests. She could even say she was grateful. He was certainly helpful. And the fact that he successfully completed his adventures was proof of his ability.

Meaning, he’s got promise, this guy.

She didn’t mean to be quoting her senior colleague, but well, there it was.

But then there was his sterile exchange with her friend, and his absolute, obsessive fixation on killing goblins. All of which left her to wonder…

What’s so much fun about that?

If there was nothing unknown, there could be no discoveries. It became disconnected from raising one’s level.

Adventurers were supposed to adventure. They were supposed to take pleasure in growing and moving on to the next thing.

Plus, it’s boring to listen to these conversations.

Not that whether something was boring had any bearing on her work, but if she could pick, she would prefer something interesting.

Besides, when it came to her friend’s love story, she wished for something with a little more, you know, up-and-down. Tears and laughter. Drama!

Okay, so it was a bad habit to use other people’s lives for your own entertainment, but they were friends, so it was okay, right? They were all just actors in their own lives—herself included—so by definition, they might be amusing or distressing to those around them.

And I just don’t feel like doing the whole romance thing myself.

It wasn’t prejudice or sour grapes or whatever. (And using those expressions seemed to make the foxfolk mad.) No, for real. She just plain wasn’t interested. Living with another person under the same roof, eating and sleeping with them, didn’t sound to her like the definition of bliss. But if she enjoyed watching her friend enjoy such things, well, that was something else, right?

“Right, that’s all in order. Maybe this one next…”

“Um, excuse me, I’d like to file a quest…”

“Ah yes, of course! What kind?”

As she cleaned up the papers on her desk, responded to the quest bringer, and listened to her friend in the next seat, she found herself playing with the holy sigil at her chest.

A miracle from the Supreme God.

She felt herself truly fortunate to have been granted it.

It wasn’t that she was so faithful. It had simply been a question of whether she would be married off somewhere by her family, like so much chattel, or if she would spend her days in a convent, praying her life away.

Or she could have become an adventurer, a desperate gamble.

Those had been her three choices, more or less, and she didn’t have the courage to become an adventurer. So two choices really.

And then because she had received this miracle, she’d been able to become an employee of the vaunted Adventurers Guild. In the future, she might be able to aspire to inspector or director. Thank you, thank you, thank you, O gods.

Being able to determine the course of her own life was indeed a blessing.

So that makes me want to, you know, at least try to be an upstanding person.

“Hey, uh, excuse me. Is the investigation of these ruins still open?”

“Sure is. You and the usual crew?”

“Uh-huh. Teach is real keen to take this one on, if we can.”

“I’m sure the quest giver will be thrilled to know a proper scholar-wizard has taken the job.”

She accepted the quest the young warrior brought up with a big smile. She asked him to wait a moment as she got the paperwork in order. As she did so, she stole a glance at the adventurer.

He was an enterprising young man—if not quite at the level of this frontier Guild’s two most up-and-coming groups. He was steadily accumulating adventuring experience and had been a useful player in the investigation of the earthquakes.

I assume he’ll keep climbing the ranks. That’s great, right?

Someday, he would make Silver or, if not that, maybe at least Copper. He certainly had the personality for it. He just needed to demonstrate that he could do the quests. Those two things would foster trust in him.

Promotions… Promotions…

That meant tests. Tests she might be handling herself in the not-too-distant future. Maybe even for the weirdo jabbering about goblins nearby, whom her senior colleague had so recently vetted for promotion.

Am I really going to be handling promotion tests?

“Just use Sense Lie,” indeed. She looked up at the wooden ceiling.

“Uh… Is everything okay, Miss Receptionist?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine!” She gave a particularly wide grin to cover for her lapse and promptly went back to finishing the paperwork.

She looked past the young warrior, where she could see a silver-haired martial artist sitting in a chair, kicking her legs. Was she bored? Was she having fun passing the time? She had the air of a child enjoying herself.

Beside her was an older canid wizard, along with an elf and a dwarf who looked like perfect opposites and squabbled incessantly.

This was a party where no one was specifically the leader; there was no “high” and “low” but only a natural coming together of people.

She let her eyes wander, and she could see several other parties as well. A spearman in the company of a witch. He was—well, not quite cheerful enough be called cheerful, but he was watching the seat next to hers.

Then she stole a glance at another scruffy adventurer, a heavy warrior carrying a great sword and not saying much. A female knight who looked to be the definition of cheerful came after him and then a half-elf leading a couple of kids.

Each of them had their own stories, their own speed, but all of them were moving forward as adventurers.

Whereas, by comparison…

What had made her senior approve this guy’s promotion? And why was her friend quite so into him?

“It’s a real mystery…,” she muttered.

“Huh?”

“I mean those ruins.”

It was no lie but the truth, what she said to the puzzled young warrior. She endeavored to give him a smile.

She would pray that he would come home safely. She knew that sometimes they didn’t. You didn’t have to be a cleric to know that.

Huh. Maybe that’s why.

Every time, you had to live with the anxiety—and then he came home. That would bind you to him.

She looked over at her friend, a knowing smirk coming over her face. Her friend was talking about the reward. Their eyes met for an instant.

Her friend had a suspicious what-is-it? look, so she shot back a nothing-much smile. Her friend looked even more suspicious, but so be it. Only an idiot tried to fight a two-front war.

“There are…a few things. A few things that still bother me,” said the goblin-hunting adventurer.

The grunt was so soft and so unexpected, the words so hesitant, that Guild Girl’s braids bobbed when she gave a start.

“But I…don’t know why.”

The thought flitted through the colleague’s mind—very quickly really—that this adventurer was terribly young.

Well, of course he was. She’d looked very closely at his paperwork, and he was only just past the age of majority. Younger than herself and her friend. Yet for some reason, she’d never really been conscious of it.

Maybe it was because his outfit made him look like a wandering suit of armor. It had been slightly cleaner at first, but each time he showed up, the armor and the helmet were dirtier. It was a crime.

And yet.

“Hmm… I see,” her friend said, sounding a bit excited.

Well, she understood, sort of. Someone asking you for advice was a happy thing generally. At the very least, as a Guild employee, having a real adventurer ask for your thoughts was pleasurable indeed.

Now, as to whether that weirdo is a real adventurer or not…

No, no. He was. Wasn’t he?

He stayed focused, tackled his adventures, succeeded at them, came back, and reported. The worst things any of the other adventurers had to say about him were that he sometimes dissected goblins or that he was filthy and smelled bad.

He even seemed to have cleaned up his habit of coming through and monopolizing all the goblin hunts.

Gods. He is a real adventurer.

Yet at the same time, it was clear that was not the only reason her friend was so happy. Affecting nonchalance, she placed a slim finger to her lips and sweetly looked like she was thinking. It would have been a bit too mean-spirited to laugh at that, so her colleague didn’t say anything.

“If you have doubts, I think you should just tackle them one at a time,” Guild Girl said to the adventurer.

“One at a time,” he echoed.

“That’s right. You can’t possibly hope to figure out everything at once, can you?”

As advice went, it was dead on the mark.

The colleague watched the exchange with a barely suppressed smile, but her friend seemed completely absorbed in the metal helmet anyway. In the end, she even offered him some tea she’d prepared. This was very, very close to mixing personal and private business, but it stopped one step short. Consider it a convenient fig leaf, perhaps.

“Then the elf’s…,” the filthy adventurer murmured.

“Hmm? Something about an elf?” Guild Girl asked.

“No,” he said, and instead of elaborating, he swigged down his tea in a single gulp. The colleague was idly impressed that none of it spilled out the sides of his visor.

He let out a breath, paused as if something had suddenly occurred to him, then set the cup down.

“That…,” he began, indicating the dragon-shaped statue and the smoke curling around it, “…smoke. What is it?”

“Oh, this?” Guild Girl’s voice went up another octave.

Sheesh, her colleague thought and tried again to hide her smile.

“It’s an incense burner,” Guild Girl explained.

“Incense.”

“Yes, but this incense is a bit unusual—the smoke flows downward. Neat, huh?”

“The smoke flows downward,” he repeated in a low mutter. “Does such a thing exist?”

“I guess so. It came to us from the east. I’d never seen anything like it myself, and before I knew what I was doing, I bought it.”

“How does it work?”

“Er, uh…”

The flow of words stopped. She seemed to want to tell him but was unable to find the words. Well, naturally enough. She was no incense master; you could have an ordinary appreciation of incense without knowing the details about it.

She wanted to answer, but she didn’t want to just blow smoke, as it were.

At length, Guild Girl bowed her head, causing her braid to bounce. She’d decided to take the honest route.

“I’m sorry. I don’t actually know…,” she said, then mumbled, “It might be that the smoke is heavy.”

Her comment produced a grunt from the adventurer. “No, that’s useful.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Her braid jumped like a puppy’s tail.

Then the grimy adventurer left with the same stomping stride at which he had entered. Her friend watched him go, then let out a phew. She didn’t seem to realize she had done it.

“Why don’t you just tell him?” her colleague asked.

“Huh? Tell him what?”

“That what he needs isn’t incense—it’s to polish his armor and take a bath.”

There were times when telling the truth required harsh words.

In the space of a moment, Guild Girl’s face, which had been lit by the glow of lingering joy, tensed and hardened.

“N-now, listen here—”

She was interrupted by someone crying, “Miss Receptioniiiiist!”

This time she heaved a real sigh, pasted a smile on her face, and turned to the adventurer who had been waiting in line. “Yes, sir?” she said.

This guy sure gets more points for handling the girls, thought her colleague, watching with her chin in her hands.

She then muttered to herself, “You want to know why he doesn’t have a party? He’s his own reason.”

It was the moment between day and twilight.

As she worked in the fields, a wind suddenly sprang up carrying an unpleasant odor. She wiped the sweat from her brow and looked up. Maybe it was something about the sun that made the sky seem less blue and more like white streaked with gold.

She, Cow Girl, wiped the dust and sweat out of her eyes with her arm, but her vision was still hazy as she looked back and forth.

There.

In the distance, down the road that led to town, came a figure obscured by a dust cloud. He walked with a nonchalant, bold stride. The movements were almost mechanical, like the drinking bird she’d seen once when she was small. His body language gave nothing away—whether he was tired, or glad to be home, or whether things had gone well.

She never knew quite what to say when she saw him.

“Um… Welcome home?”

“Yes.”

The words that came out of her mouth were nothing, inoffensive—and his response was equally brief.

“I just got back,” he added.

“Yeah…”

She told him to wait a moment, then quickly gathered up her farm tools. Realizing how dirty she was, she rubbed at her cheeks and neck with a handkerchief, not that it helped much. Besides, judging by his messy state, there was no reason for her to worry about it at all.

“…Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

He simply stood there, unperturbed by her scrambling. Was he waiting patiently for her? Or simply standing? She didn’t know.

Whichever it was, she set off down the path to the house to encourage him to get going. The shadows stretched out in front of them, tall, so tall. She traced their path with her eyes. She seemed to be following her own shadow, taking the smallest of steps as it ran ahead.

“My uncle, see…,” she began.

“Yes.”

“He went out tonight. The next town, he said.”

“Right.”

“So since he’s going out, I thought…”

“Yes.”

“I thought maybe we should have stew for dinner.”

“Understood.”

The words came one or two at a time, plip, plip, like the first drops of a rain shower. Nobody would collect them, and what had fallen could not come back again.

“Were you…?” She offered another question, as if kicking a stone to him. “Were you hunting goblins again?”

“That’s right.”

“…Yeah?”

“Yes.”

That was their entire conversation.

There wasn’t much farther to go until they reached the house.

Each time Cow Girl took a step forward, she opened her mouth to say something, and then the next step she would close it again and look down.

She wondered what expression he wore under that helmet, walking beside her. Was he looking at her?

I thought we’d moved forward…

At least a little. But so soon, it was this again.

He went on goblin hunts, she stayed on the farm, he came back, and they had conversations like this.

Then they did it all over again.

Not long ago, she would have been happy with that. She was able to tell herself something had changed.

But what about now?

Nothing should have changed since then, yet somehow it was so…

…suffocating.

Her chest felt tight. It was like the way she’d felt when she looked into a grave with two empty coffins in it.

What would happen after this? What should she do? Every day when she woke up, every night when she went to sleep, anxieties swirled. Each time she thought they were gone, they came back to life.

She used to have—well, still had—her uncle to hold her hand. But she’d decided she couldn’t let him coddle her forever, that she needed to walk on her own two feet, except now that she was trying…

I just want something safe.

She wanted someone to tell her that everything would be okay. That things were fine the way they were.

She looked at his face as they walked along together. The metal helmet. He was looking ahead—always straight ahead.

“Is something wrong?”

His words came at her unexpectedly. She jumped and looked forward again and saw a door. The door to the house.

She couldn’t let herself get lost in thought like that.

She had to have her meal with him, talk with him, do her evening chores, prepare for the next day, and then go to sleep.

So she shook her head, and in the most cheerful voice she could muster, she said, “No, everything’s fine!”

“…I see.”

Would tomorrow be just like this? And the day after that? And every day to come?

She had to do something. Something. Somehow. Or else she would keep being driven forward, keep feeling anxious.

Every day until she died.

I don’t want that.

She decided to leave those thoughts outside the open door—and then closed it.

A mage had left him with a supply of books once, but none of them made much sense to him.

Goblin Slayer took a thick book down from one of the shelves in the shed that was fast becoming his armory. He added it to an armful he was already carrying, then sat down in front of his work desk.

He lit a candle and opened the first book. The weathered, yellowed parchment pages produced an aroma he couldn’t quite place. He thought he caught the faintest whiff of apple cider, but then it was gone.

He paid it no mind, simply turning the pages.

Sinking smoke. Smoke that falls…

He knew for a fact that it existed. He simply didn’t know why. Maybe it was the guidance of the sprites. The receptionist woman at the Guild—he should have asked her for more details.

At the least, if it descends for natural reasons…

Then he would not have to stand stupidly, pathetically, in front of any more campfires outside of any more caves.

“If you have doubts, I think you should just tackle them one at a time.”

He was about to try to follow that advice.

He should listen to people. It was surprising how little he knew. That was something he had learned just the other day.

Start with a single candle, they said. Supposedly, those words came from a great scholar long ago who had been teaching children on the winter solstice. He’d said all the laws that governed this cosmos began to show themselves from a single candle and the flame that danced upon it.

Where, then, did that flame come from?

Goblin Slayer looked up from his book and stared into the flame flickering before him.

From the candle, that was where.

The smoke rose from the flame, and the flame came from the candle.

So where would falling smoke be produced? A flame, too—and the flame came from the incense. In other words…

“…It’s a pharmaceutical matter?”

Did that explain what the falling smoke really was?

The incense burner, however, was in the shape of a dragon. Had its maker been attempting to represent a dragon’s smoke?

In that case… A dragon? Such a creature wasn’t even to be found in the Monster Manual.

For the opposite reason, there was so little about goblins of course. Dragons were held to be the most powerful creatures in the Four-Cornered World. Many attempts had been made over the ages to understand the mechanisms of their life, but there was no one who knew everything about dragons. For that would be akin to knowing their true name.

What wound up in the books was nothing more than the great fragments gathered by people’s ancestors.

Over and over…

…he thought of it. Of gaining knowledge. Of the difficulty of putting that knowledge into practice.

Of how brainless he must be, to struggle so much merely to kill some goblins.

It didn’t matter if he opened a book on medicine or a treatise on dragons, he was never going to understand what was written there. He could read them over and over, going back and forth along the pages…

…and I would still grasp only something hazy, there in empty space.

And once he grasped it, it would only dissipate, like he was trying to take hold of a cloud or some mist. Nothing was certain, nothing at all.

Goblin Slayer gritted his teeth, biting back a groan.

It was do or do not.

And he had to do.

However foolish or stupid he might be, whether rightly or wrongly, he had to.

He opened the book, turned the pages, and let his eyes run across the text, chewing it over desperately, trying to understand. Then he did it again. He started to feel like he was suffocating. Like his stomach was twisting itself into knots.

The water carafe—when had he filled it? Before he left? It was too clean for that—he took a drink.

Yes. The water was pure. Cold water ran down his throat, feeling like it washed his stomach clean.

There was no dust in the shed, either, and everything was neat. He suspected the same was true of his room in the main house.

About the same time this realization dawned on him, he noticed something else strange.

It’s quiet.

The night, that is.

The only sound was the crackling of the candle. His own breath. The breeze outside, rustling in the trees. The gentle settling of the house.

That was all and everything.

Who knew the world could be so quiet?

He felt like there was always something screeching in his head, something crying out and filling his ears. So he had never noticed that the world could be this silent, and it unsettled him deeply.

“…”

His head felt floaty somehow. As if his brain were just hanging there in his skull.

If he relaxed at all, everything would just drift away, and he would sink down, and that would be it.

The fear of it sent a chill down his spine, but he ignored it and rolled onto his back.

He stared up at the ceiling of the shed, breathing. He was terrified to even take off his helmet.

His body sank into the floor as if into mud. He felt so heavy, and his fingertips tingled.

He took a gasping breath; it was like there was a heavy rock on his chest. The darkness, the night, pressing down.

Then as drowsiness interred him, he suddenly became aware of a small flash, as of light.

Those goblins hadn’t taken any women as prisoners.

They’d had the numbers—and a hob. More than enough to make a foray into the village or waylay someone on the road…

Comforted to see the face of his discomfort, he began to ponder the reasons behind it. What frightened him was that he could think of none.

So he found himself pressed into sleep by the sandman amid a haze of fear, smothered in it.

Just like every other night.

“Alllll riiiight!”

We need hardly say by now that he was in high spirits.

He proudly displayed—how deliberate it was, however, was hard to say—the new rank tag at his chest.

Any adventurer would be excited about a promotion, a level-up.

Which was to say, one who was not excited about it was no adventurer.

Thus, he was an adventurer, and he was very excited about his level-up and eager to attempt new quests.

He paid no mind to the stares around him, not even that of the receptionist he so worshipped.

If he hadn’t had a minimal measure of self-restraint, he might have started dancing right there in the Guild lobby.

“You’re…a bit…too excited, don’t you think?” a woman whispered languidly to him.

“O-oh. Yeah. Sorry about that.”

It is ever and always a beautiful woman who reins in the hero. When the witch tugged on his sleeve and whispered some annoyance, the spearman finally came back down to earth.

Then again, she may have stopped him, but she was not quite cool and collected herself. By no means. She pulled down the brim of her hat to hide her eyes, her lovely cheeks more flushed than usual and softening into a smile.

Her ample curves, which could only be called ideal, and her ample cleavage hugged the brand-new rank tag around her neck.

This showed that the witch, too, had been promoted. Well, naturally, as she and the spearman always adventured together.

“Man, they sure like to throw tests at you!” he remarked.

His excitement had in no ways cooled. He spoke more calmly now, but the subject of his discussion was still the examination.

As one moved up the ladder, there were occasional interviews with guild staff or even tests.

It was certainly not that he objected to them. Even the young man who had come from the countryside with nothing but a spear in his hands understood the need for such things. So this was not an expression of complaint but of interest. Curiosity. A question born of the things an adventurer needed.

“Can’t they just go by the results of our adventures?”

“W-well…” Witch blinked, her long, beautiful eyelashes fluttering. “This is just…what I’ve heard…but…”

“Oh-ho.”

Spearman straightened up. There was nothing more worth listening to than a story from a beautiful woman.

She said—yes, this is what she said:

Back at the dawn of the Adventurers Guild, the tests and standards for promotion had been simple. Nowadays, it depended on a great many factors that people collectively called experience points, but at the time, there had been only one bar: how much loot you collected on your adventures. Be it the reward for quests or treasures found in a dungeon, the adventurer who earned the most was the greatest.

“Huh, well, they’re not wrong,” Spearman said with a nod. “So what was the problem?”

“The loot…they got. They would return it…to the dungeon.” Witch tried to speak casually so as to hide that she was slightly flustered and broke off at a point guaranteed to arouse interest. “When monsters came…they would go back and get it again. There were…many such adventurers, they say.”

“Yikes!”

Spearman understood in an instant. That would never do. Talk about “putting out a fire you had started”! There was being a munchkin, and then there was…that.

What became, then, of the goal of growth? Such a scheme lacked the joy of progressing after you had had fun adventuring.

“Right…?” said Witch.

“Well, I sure wouldn’t do that! Not me!” Spearman grinned broadly and patted Witch beside him on the hip, provoking a little shriek.

Her behind was fleshy and round and looked like it would be lovely to the touch, but he did no such thing.

This wasn’t from some high-minded, ethical perspective—he just thought it was cooler not to.

“Why…you…!”

“A’right! Let’s get going. We’ve leveled up. Now I’ve got a few choice words for that old bastard.”

Witch had puffed out her cheeks, but Spearman was already prancing off. He was heading toward the facility attached to the Guild—the shop or the workshop; he didn’t know what it was officially called.

Of course he didn’t; he couldn’t read the characters on the sign. He just knew it had a picture of a weapon on it.

“Hey, pops! Guess who’s back!”

Spearman flung the door open with a crash, bounding into the dusty shop. A craggy old man stood at the counter. One could have taken him for a dwarf at first glance. He gave Spearman a severe glare.

“The hell you want? You here to buy this time or just lookin’?”

“Oh, I’m buyin’, old man!”

As Spearman raced up to the counter, Witch shuffled into the shop behind him. She had an elegant walk and smile. She shimmied her hips as she went and gave the man an apologetic little bow.

That was enough to placate the old workshop boss, who put his chin in his hand and decided to entertain the young man with the spear on his back.

“So? What brings you here?” he asked.

“Just look at this! Read ’em and weep!” Spearman said and proudly held out a gleaming chip of metal. It was attached to a chain that dangled from his neck.

The old man gave it a close look, then sighed dramatically. “I don’t buy these.”

“I’m not asking you to buy it, dammit! I’m saying I got promoted!” Spearman cried. “And so!”

The boss could guess what was coming next.

“Sell me a magic weapon! Please?”

A magic weapon. Every adventurer wanted one.

Even a simple +1 couldn’t be found just anywhere. They usually had to be earned from an adventure or even—with immense luck—found in a random treasure chest.

It was the way of the world, however, that one could not always get what one wanted simply because one wanted it.

Most of the magic weapons going around were swords. Some armor. Maybe an occasional bow or ax. Lots of staffs and wands, if you considered those weapons, but that was about it. A club user would find precious few opportunities to obtain a magic club—and spear wielders were in the same boat.

The only thing to do then was to save up your money and buy one—if there was one to buy, of course.

“You said, pops. You told me if I got promoted, you might sell me one!” Spearman insisted.

That had just been a way of putting the kid off—wait, had it really? The shop owner scratched his head. Maybe he’d really been hoping it would galvanize the young adventurer, give him something to shoot for.

Even if I was, he called my bluff.

He let no hint of this thought show on his face as he grumbled, “Guess I’ve got no choice. You have money, don’cha?”

“You bet!” Spearman reached for Witch’s hip; she said, “Hey, now!” and passed him a leather pouch. He tossed it on the counter. It jangled with what turned out to be a collection of gold and silver coins—clearly, the pair had saved for all they were worth.

Blood and sweat and life for the price. Confronted with them, the shopkeeper once again mumbled, “No choice, eh…?”

Got to admit, I can see why the Guild used to award ranks based on earnings.

With this much on the countertop, he couldn’t not show it to them.

The shopkeeper dug under the counter, where he kept his most important wares, and pulled out a cloth-wrapped object.

The package was obviously old, and when he undid the cloth, it was accompanied by a faint smell of dust—and then the whiff of magic.

The first thing to appear was a long, keen blade that gleamed with a faint phosphorescence even in the dim light of the shop.

Next came a hilt that extended slightly to either side of the tip, connected to a moderately enlarged haft.

“Whoa!” said Spearman, his eyes shining, but Witch studied it closely and cocked her head. It was such an innocent gesture that if she did it while asking a man for a favor, nine out of ten would cave immediately.

“This is…a sword…is it not?” she asked.

“Used to be,” the shopkeeper replied as if answering a question from his grandchild, with a somberness appropriate to speaking of the past. “Long ago, back when I was in the fortress city to the north, there was a party who wanted a magic spear.”

“Oh my…”

“Said their friend’s spear had broken in battle. No point in a half-assed weapon.”

The story still warms my cockles, the shopkeeper thought. Five years ago already felt like the distant past. Time moved so quickly, and the years piled up so fast. Maybe he’d have to take an apprentice one of these days.

“But there ain’t that many magic spears around. I did the only thing I could: found me a magic sword and made it the tip of a spear.”

He still felt it had been a lucky find if there ever was one. So much loot teemed from the Dungeon of the Dead that it was literally sold in the streets—and at one of those markets, he had happened to find a magical sword—not very magical, mind you, but magical enough. And at a decent price.

“So this, spear…belonged, to that…party?” Witch asked.

“Naw. Didn’t make it in time,” the shopkeeper answered with a laugh. “They found one first!”

“And now this one has passed into my hands!” Spearman picked up the lance, amazed to find it was so light it hardly seemed made of metal. He gave it a twirl. It whooshed through the air. Incredible—it felt different from other spears, the ones he had used until now. “I love it! I’ll take it!”

Looking at the ecstatic young man, the shopkeeper mumbled, “No choice,” for the third time that day and said, “Don’t fling that thing around in my damn store, or I ain’t sellin’ ya shit!”

He dreamed he was hidden under the floor.

His hand touched his face. There were no floorboards. Nor his metal helmet.

He groaned softly and raised himself up off the floor. The cotton balaclava—and the helmet—lay nearby.

Hateful.

What this vitriol was directed at even he didn’t know.

He got up and stretched his body, which was stiff from being hemmed in by his armor. He suddenly thought of a marionette he’d seen when he was a child. It had been controlled by strings.

Pulling his joints up and letting them drop again, he finally gathered up his balaclava and put it on, then shoved his head into his helmet.

He let out a breath. His lips were dry, and his throat throbbed.

I should drink some water.

He registered the sensation not as thirst but simply as a phenomenon; no sooner had he done so than he heard the clattering of wagon wheels from outside.

Goblins?

That was his first thought.

Everything was either goblins, or it was not. That was as it should be. He strived to make it so.

Why? Because he was Goblin Slayer.

When he heard the noise, he acted quickly.

Goblin Slayer grabbed his sword and slammed it into its scabbard, then hitched his shield to his left arm. Even as he tightened the strap, he was rushing out of his shed.

The farm was terribly cold.

The sun was not really up yet, and a white mist hung in the air. The undergrowth was soaked with morning dew, but that was perfect. It would hide his footsteps.

Yes, very convenient.

Even if goblin “night vision” was actually more the ability to see in the dark, they couldn’t see through walls. The mist would hinder their eyesight. They would never spot him coming.

If the fool makes no sound.

And the fool in question was himself.

Goblin Slayer’s lips curled behind his helmet as he advanced.

The source of the sound, the sound of wagon wheels, the road to the farm, the wagon coming that way, and pulling the wagon—

“Gods! Don’t scare me like that.”

He let out a breath when he heard the startled voice of the farm owner.

“Sorry,” Goblin Slayer said, letting his hand fall from the sword at his hip. “I thought you might be a goblin.”

That caused the owner to scowl, but he didn’t say anything.

“If he were, that would be the end of the world.”

That reply instead came from beside him. A figure, indistinct in the morning haze—but when she spoke, her lovely voice made her stand out clearly.

Blue hair, limpid eyes, a sword on her back, long ears, and a slim frame.

A beautiful elf fighter.

Goblin Slayer remembered her, of course.

However tired, even exhausted, she might be, an elf was still beautiful. Not something to be forgotten once seen.

“Hrm,” Goblin Slayer grunted in spite of himself.

The elf smiled and said, “I knew you were a shady one.”

The farm owner, caught between them, was confused. His eyes moved from one to the other, his hand still on the side bar. He simply could not fathom the connection between this beautiful adventurer and the filthy young man.

“An acquaintance of yours?” he asked.

“No,” Goblin Slayer said, and then after a moment’s thought, he added, “I don’t think so.”

“Some greeting,” said the elf, chortling beside the still confused farmer. Her laugh was open and without malice yet still mature and lovely. “Still, it’s good to stay alert. There’s trouble out there—always is.”

“Trouble,” Goblin Slayer echoed.

“Yeah. Gods, what a fix.” The farmer scowled again. “I met an owlbear on the road—an owlbear, of all things!”

“Owlbear.” Goblin Slayer did not know what that was. Was it an owl that was like a bear or a bear that was like an owl? He could not imagine.

“If this adventurer hadn’t been passing through, I’d have been done for! Gods above…” The farmer patted the sword at his hip and mumbled, “I shouldn’t make such long trips.”

“It helped me out, too. I would never have gotten my trophy home on my own,” the elf said. “Had to leave the last one lying there.” The remark sounded almost human. She laughed again.

Goblin Slayer found the conversation had continued while he pondered owlbears.

Now that the elf mentioned it, he noticed there were some reddish discolorations in the wagon’s cart. She must have taken its head, or claws, or pelt or something of the sort and put it in there. She had been on her way to deliver them to the Adventurers Guild, which was why she and the farm owner were going the same way.

That’s why he was so late coming home…no.

A monster.

That, Goblin Slayer concluded, had been the cause.

At the idea that the monster had attacked the farm owner, a shadow not unlike the morning haze fell across his heart.

It was not a goblin. Therefore, he had no interest in it; it was beyond what he could deal with.

He could not bring himself to voice that thought yet staying silent made him feel pathetic.

But what could he say?

He hadn’t been there. And if he had been, he could not have done anything. He’d only hidden under the floorboards.

And now? Now was no different.

While the farmer and the elf talked, he simply stood beside them.

“Well, I think I’d better get going,” the elf said after a while, and Goblin Slayer found it a relief.

She exchanged a quick good-bye with the farm owner, then glanced the younger man’s way and added, “And you, kid—don’t overdo it, eh?”

The words were like the sound of a passing breeze, and then she was gone. Goblin Slayer watched her blue hair fade, melting into the mist, then turned his metal helmet.

“I will help you,” he said.

The farm owner goggled at him and, after a second’s hesitation, let him take the wagon’s side bar.

“Hard to believe you’re both adventurers,” the man said. When you’re so different—that was probably what he was thinking.

Goblin Slayer didn’t particularly object. That beautiful elf woman was an adventurer; he himself was not. Why should he be irate if someone pointed out a fact that he himself acknowledged?

There were more important things.

“Near town, there was a…” Goblin Slayer looked to the air as if it might contain the name of the creature. “…a monster?”

“Hardly unusual.”

The farm owner sounded as nonchalant as the words he spoke. And he was right. There was no need to bring up the possibility of random encounters with dragons. That was simply the far end of a spectrum that started with goblins and wild animals like wolves and bears and went from there. Those on the board could only imagine what might be on the encounter table that the dice of Fate and Chance rolled upon.

“I carry this with me, for all the good it did me. Gods… I’m showing my age.”

The farm owner could be heard to remark that he was neither an adventurer nor a soldier. He placed a hand on the sword at his hip.

It was an old blade. It had probably seen action on battlefields, where he’d been a soldier until he got his land.

The thought crossed Goblin Slayer’s mind: He had once wanted such a sword.

“Still better than five years ago. Much, much better,” the farm owner remarked.

“Yes, sir,” said Goblin Slayer.

The world was not about to be destroyed.

The farm owner stored the wagon back where it belonged and headed for the main house at a trot, wiping his hands as he went.

Another day’s work lay ahead of him. Keeping the farm running. Seeing to the animals, getting their feed, protecting his family.

That’s something I must admit I can’t do, Goblin Slayer mused.

His father could have, he suspected. His mother likely. His older sister certainly.

Well, then.

What could he do?

“…”

He paused and scanned the thinning mist. Through the slats of his visor, it looked like something white running away, seeking a place to hide.

Like a goblin. Like a foolish, ignorant child.

Maintain the fence and wall maybe. Patrol.

He unfurled a vague map of the farm in his head, comparing it to the whitened scenery before him, drawing an equally vague line from one of them to the other.

If he could learn by trial and error, like the defense of Duffer’s Drift, that would be well and good—but he couldn’t for failure was not an option.

Failure was not an option.

What a terrible thought. He didn’t even want to contemplate it—but contemplate it he must.

Adults had built and maintained the palisade around the village, even patrolled it—and it had still been useless. Not pointless; he had survived.

The result of the accumulated life of every adult in the village, including his sister, had been him alone.

Which left the question: What could he alone do?

Indeed.

That had been an exception among exceptions, not unlike the Dungeon of the Dead, a danger to the very world.

Who was it who had said that only a fool bewailed a single exception?

Had it been his master? Or maybe the mage or the Guild employee? He didn’t think it had been his sister.

Say there was one white crow among all the black ones.

That would overturn the assumption that crows were black and show that some were white.

But it would certainly not mean that every single crow was suddenly white. Some 80 or 90 percent would still be black. The question then became, what to do with that white crow?

“Yes, that’s a good question.”

He would pile more stones on the wall.

He would inspect the fence.

He would patrol.

It wasn’t a question of what he could do. He should do all that he could.

Doing something was better than doing nothing. Much better.

When one was challenged to a riddle game, even putting your hand in your pocket could be significant.

It wasn’t a question of what you could do.

Instead, do all that you are able, as best you are able.

“Don’t overdo it, eh?”

At that rate, he would never catch up.

He didn’t know why the fighter had said those words.

“…”

He glanced silently at the main house; a thin line of smoke rose from its chimney, up toward the heavens, where the morning sun had scythed a swath through the mist.

Yes… Of course smoke rose. It didn’t sink like dragon smoke.

The girl must have been up by now, preparing breakfast.

He felt that somehow he didn’t want to see her at that moment.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her face. Just the opposite.

He didn’t want her to see him at trial and error.

He didn’t know the reason. But it had always been like that.

Before the festival, he had found riverbanks, and clearings in the woods, and other places she was not apt to go.

Thinking back on it, he realized his sister probably knew, and he thought bitterly that he should have been more help to her.

But at the time he had believed stupidly that there had been more important things.

“…Practice.”

The ball pitch at the festival. Target practice. If you could sink them all, you were rewarded with a sweet lemon water. Or a fizzy drink.

The perfumer loaded a small weight into each ball so that it wouldn’t fly straight. Once he had realized that, he’d devoted himself to practicing, throwing different things to experiment.

He could not be said to possess a special talent. It was simply something he had been doing for a long time.

“…I will practice.”

Now while the mist still hung in the air, while darkness still tinged the edges of the sky.

He went to his shed to find something to serve as a target, muttering to himself under his helmet as he went.

He lacked too much; there was so much to do—but what he must do was clear.

Because I am Goblin Slayer.

“Dragon smoke? Ain’t that sulfur you’re talkin’ about?”

“Sull-fer…,” Goblin Slayer repeated softly, and thought about it. Sulfur. Sulfur. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Yeah?”

After his practice, Goblin Slayer had headed into town without eating breakfast. And the first place he had gone was the workshop as soon as it opened.

Recently, he had stopped making a beeline to check the quest board. The ones who did that were rookie adventurers burning with hope. He would go after they had picked what they wanted.

What could be so stupid as to think that only he could defeat goblins?

That’s what had been said to him, and he would abide by it.

He also investigated things he did not know. He asked people questions.

The amount of knowledge inside him was so scant compared with the amount of knowledge outside him; that much was clear.

Although admittedly, the question he asked the workshop owner was not about equipment.

His question was what had caused the dwarflike man to ask, “Dragon smoke? Ain’t that sulfur you’re talkin’ about?”

Sulfur.

Goblin Slayer seemed to remember a jar with that word on the label among the reward that the mage had given him. He’d stashed the jars on a shelf in his shed, in his ignorant way, still not knowing what they were.

Yes, he thought, one of them had been labeled sulfur.

“Alchemists and mages love the stuff. It’s used in fire powder, too, but that’s all outside my wheelhouse.” The workshop owner was unconcerned about Goblin Slayer, who stood with his arms crossed; the owner himself looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling with one eye. After a moment, he said, “Also,” sounding as gruff as he looked, “dragon smoke tends to be of the poisonous variety.”

“You know a lot about it.”

“I should! That is my wheelhouse. They use that stuff in battle, y’know.”

“Battle.”

“Long time ago, that.”

A few words of praise. They didn’t precisely put the owner in a better mood, but they made him uncommonly talkative, and he was kind enough to explain.

He said it was back when the gods were still playing their war games.

“One city-state went to war with another, and the defenders holed up behind their walls.”

Castles were widely regarded, everywhere and at all times, as easily defended places that stood well against attack. A well-provisioned fortress with sound strategy was a rock-solid foundation.

“I see,” Goblin Slayer mused.

“That’s if you make all your preparations. Then it’s the besiegers who’ll starve to death.”

Goblin Slayer didn’t precisely follow, but he figured it must be true. Certainly, a goblin nest that was well prepared—within the scope of the goblins’ definition—could be a headache.

In any case, according to this old man, the siege went on for some twenty years, and in that time, the scheme the besiegers devised—well, it was in the history books now.

Maybe they didn’t want the siege to go on any longer. Maybe they were just ready to go home.

“Probably sick of the whole thing, if y’ask me,” he added and laughed.

After all, the besiegers had been brought up in the school of hard knocks from their youngest days—like lizardmen!

But they weren’t lizardmen, just ordinary humans who had nothing but their own bodies to count upon for victory.

“Whether it’s wrong or right,” the workshop owner averred, “it means money for us armorers, thank the gods. Anyway, the besiegers rolled sulfur and pine tar together and set fire to it, then flung it inside the castle walls.”

“Pine tar.”

“It’s the stuff of mages…or I guess alchemists really.”

“Alchemists.”

“They claim they’ll create the philosopher’s stone and make money out of thin air. Not that limitless cash is such a good thing.” The owner scowled and snorted, evidently remembering with distaste the endless stream of loot. “Anyway, don’t ask me to justify it. I don’t know how.”

With that, he put his fists together—fists as hard and hefty as hammers.

“You mix ’em up and you get something like a dragon’s poison breath—and it’s heavy. It sinks.”

“……”

Goblin Slayer was silent for a long moment. Heavy. Sinking. He tried to picture it: poison smoke infiltrating the castle walls. It would settle, stagnate, eddy, and drift through the city.

Heavy, sinking, poison gas.

That’s it.

“That’s a help.”

“Not my intention.” The shopkeeper snorted again, annoyed, and crossed his arms. He seemed to think he had said too much.

Adventurers might be interested in the heroic songs of the bards, but few cared for the actual annals of history. The shopkeeper let himself prattle on too much—though Goblin Slayer didn’t guess it.

“Now buy somethin’, will ya? I don’t have time to waste on lookie-loos, not me!”

“Mm,” Goblin Slayer said with a nod. It was a reasonable enough request.

He thought for a moment.

He wanted to try it immediately. But that would be after today’s work was done. If it was done.

I should get what I can, while I can.

“Do you have pine tar?” Goblin Slayer asked.

“Yeah. Some folks use it to fix bows, or set traps, or as a magical catalyst.” Only after the shopkeeper had answered did he seem to realize what Goblin Slayer had in mind. “You ain’t thinkin’ of using it on an adventure, are you?”

He leveled a probing gaze at Goblin Slayer, who shook his head and said, “No.”

He would use it on a goblin hunt. Not an adventure.

“One mustn’t be careless when testing poison gas,” he added.

“Damn straight. You breathe any of that in yourself, see what happens!”

“I agree.” Goblin Slayer nodded with utmost seriousness. “I feel the same.”

But there is value in producing and testing some.

If it proved unusable, that was fine. He would at least gain the knowledge that it didn’t work.

More than anything, it would help him escape the darkness of ignorance in which he now wandered, without so much as a light to guide him.

“Pine tar, then. And…”

His stomach felt light. His head was spinning. His teeth chattering.

He didn’t want to interrupt what he was doing to bother with food.

“…an antidote, please.”

“Whoa!”

“Hrk!”

“Ugh…”

As Goblin Slayer strode boldly out the door into the lobby, he nearly ran into several other adventurers. The first and third sounds came from a young man carrying a spear.

Goblin Slayer didn’t know his name, but they had seen each other several times before and even talked. So when Goblin Slayer came to a stop, it was not that man’s fault. It was because there, on the border between outside and inside, the cusp between sunlight and shadow, he’d caught a glimmer of blue light.

The source of the glow was the sword—no, the tip of the spear—that rested on the young man’s shoulder.

The spearman noticed the gaze fixed on him from under the grimy helmet.

“How about that, eh?!” he exclaimed. He gave a demonstrative flourish of the spear—a good trick in that space—and grinned. “You’re lookin’ at a magic spear, baby. A magical weapon!”

“I see.”

“Wish we coulda found one in some ruins somewhere, but y’know. Heh-heh! With this thing, I ain’t no newbie anymore!”

He appeared prepared to explain how he had gotten the spear, whether Goblin Slayer asked or not. Was this man happy, or did he simply want to brag?

It’s not that I don’t understand.

One needn’t go so far as to bring up the Black Sword wielded by the Eternal Champion. Magical equipment was rife in the Four-Cornered World, and many great heroes had taken it up: Soul Reaver, the Sword of Kings, the Sword of Destruction in its lead scabbard that gleamed a pale blue, the “talon” blessed by the god of death. Anyone who fancied themselves an adventurer couldn’t help but think, Maybe one day I’ll be among their ranks.

Money could get you, perhaps, a +1 at best, and even then, it might cost hundreds or thousands of silver coins. How many adventures would be needed to save up such an amount?

It was more than Goblin Slayer could imagine.

Unquestionably not something that was possible by hunting goblins.

“Amazing,” he mumbled.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?!” Spearman yelped, baring his teeth as if they were fangs. From the glower he leveled at the metal helmet, it was clear he was upset about something.

I wonder what I said wrong, thought Goblin Slayer.

“I’m gonna go find the golden fleece now. Special request from a bigwig in the capital!” Spearman declared.

“I see,” said Goblin Slayer.

He recalled hearing of such a thing long ago in some song. At that young age, however, he’d found his interest far more piqued by the heroes and their weapons.

“You’ll never go on an adventure your whole life if you keep hunting goblins all the time,” Spearman scoffed.

“Let it go,” someone interrupted. There was a heavy footstep, almost a clank. It must have been the huge sword on the man’s back—no, his metal armor probably contributed.

Goblin Slayer recognized him. He was the one who had said something about a goblin hunt in a village recently.

The man, who had begun to look like a heavy warrior, spared a glance at the filthy metal helmet and said simply, “Not like you have time to mess around hunting goblins, right?”

“Ooh, he’s not wrong!”

Spearman was quick to acknowledge the fact. He’d never meant any harm by his remarks—he quickly changed modes. He just didn’t like that the strange feeling of owing that person something. It was no more than that. He knew that it was better to run out ahead than to drag someone down.

“A’right, I’m off! Way ahead of you guys!”

He raced away, Witch following him at a languorous shuffle.

For a second, Goblin Slayer thought he felt her gaze find him from under the brim of her hat.

And the heavy warrior’s, too. The man took another glance at the helmet, then walked off. He went to what Goblin Slayer took to be his party—a female knight was waving her arms and shouting, calling their leader over.

And then—there he was, alone among the hubbub of the adventurers.

The slayer of goblins with his grimy leather armor and cheap metal helmet, covered in mud and goblin gore, and no one paid him any mind.

This did not bother him, nor did it occur to him that he might be bothered by it. He, too, started walking.

He was headed for the Guild reception desk.

The time should be about right now.

“Oh…!”

Guild Girl’s eyes had been wandering fretfully, but when she saw him, her face lit up.

There was no one in line. Yes, he had chosen the correct time. Goblin Slayer felt some satisfaction.

“Goblins,” he said. “Are there any quests left?”

“Er, oh, yes! I’ll go grab them!”

Guild Girl jumped up so fast her chair rattled, and she went rushing off. She zigged and zagged like a busy puppy, which would make her bobbing braid her tail.

He watched her go, thinking nothing in particular—and then he felt another gaze.

No… He was not so accomplished as to be able to sense eyes upon him. His master had told him that such things were nothing more than a sense that something was off.

He should pay attention to that sense. Expand his imagination. A bit of paranoia could be healthy…

Profitless thoughts. Even as they went through his mind, he turned to the gaze’s owner—the female Guild employee sitting in the next chair—and asked, “What is it?”

She squinted at the cheap metal helmet fixedly, with something close to exasperation.

“Just wondering what she sees in you,” she replied.

“I’m not sure.”

He didn’t know what she was saying to him, nor what “she” saw in him.

The employee sighed, as if she’d expected such a terse answer. “If you’re not interested, then fine…”

The employee of the Adventurers Guild did not specify interested in what. Or who.

Perhaps she was not speaking as an employee of the Guild but a believer in the Supreme God.

Goblin Slayer knew the significance of the sword and scales that hung at her chest.

“…but if you’re not, then don’t you think there’s a certain way you should be acting?” she continued.

“…” Goblin Slayer thought a moment, then nodded. “I will try to be better.”

“You do that.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” Guild Girl chirped, rushing back up. She clutched a sheaf of papers to her chest. That meant he needed to refocus his thoughts.

“Goblins?” he asked.

It was time to hunt.

There’s nothing special at all to write about the destruction of a single goblin nest.

It’s a bog-standard adventure, the place countless adventurers get their first experience points.

Sadly—or perhaps happily—the experience itself can of course sometimes be cruel. But to conclude from that that all goblin hunts are cruel would be myopic.

“There are so many things that should be prioritized over goblin hunting.”

So the Guild employee who had administered his promotion exam had told him.

Then again, that was also, in essence, what the spearman had said on his way out the door.

It was perfectly possible, for example, that the golden fleece was a magical item to be used in some ritual to prevent the world’s destruction. Why should goblin hunting take precedence over that?

I hope I never become such a fool…

“GRRORGB?!?!!”

As these semi-coherent ramblings ran through his mind, Goblin Slayer stopped a goblin from breathing.

The monster, who had stood in a filthy passageway and now had a dagger sprouting from his neck, drowned in his own blood.

That made five.

Each of them insignificant, trifling goblins.

They’d cozied up in this nest and were stealing vegetables from a nearby village. Nothing more. Far from being a danger to the world.

Yet even so, they were a danger to the village. If left unchecked, they would attack young women. All kinds of people.

So a quest had gone out. And Goblin Slayer had come to kill them. There was no problem.

And no profit.

His thoughts were growing scattered, probably from lack of sleep or maybe lack of food. Yet for some reason, his awareness felt taut, like a bowstring; everything seemed so clear.

Feeling squeezed to the utmost, he let his eyes track left then right, searching for the enemy.

“I heard they lived in a cave. However…”

These are practically ruins.

Stone walls, floor, and ceiling. A natural cave had connected somewhere along the line to moss-covered passageways.

He picked up the torch that had fallen at his feet and lit it.

What era were these ruins from? When he tried to think of it, he found he had no knowledge for seeking out years and dates.

Carefully, with his shadow dancing along the walls and floor, he worked his way into the ruins.

This was a problem.

In a cave, the nest could only be so big. So long as it didn’t connect to the dark elves’ underground empire, the one parents used to scare their children straight, then it would eventually end. There might be traps but only goblin ones. If one could summon the mind of a mischievous child, they were easily foreseen and avoided.

When it came to ruins, however…

“…”

The fear that his feet might be pulled out from under him was no reason to stop them from moving.

He could hear his master cackling in the back of his mind; you had to feed the paranoia and still keep going.

“Don’t relax for an instant! Trust no one! And never let go of your magic rod!”

Goblin Slayer didn’t understand what that meant, but he tightened his grip on his sword.

That instant might have saved his life.

“GORRGG…!!”

“Hrk…!”

He turned a corner. As he scanned through his visor for enemies, there was an instant of slowness, not a matter of letting his guard down but simply the result of being an organic life form.

The goblin, incredibly, got a good roll of the dice and lunged at him in that instant.

He cried out and reflexively raised his sword, which with a screech of metal was suddenly a shortsword. By the time he realized the blade had been broken in the middle, the enemy’s blade had already hit the flagstones.

Goblin Slayer rolled forward, past the goblin, catching himself with his hands and pushing himself up.

“GBBG…!”

The goblin had a sword that glowed a faint bluish white. It was much too long and heavy for the monster’s small frame, and he held it unsteadily with both hands.

“…”

Information flashed through Goblin Slayer’s mind: the scale of the destruction. Reports of whether other adventurers had come here first or not.

The chances of a goblin digging through the ruins and coming up with a magic blade—rather scarce. In which case…

It’s from before the goblin.

Most likely, some adventurer had gone into these depths first. They’d gotten caught in a trap or fallen into a hole and broken their hip, then lay there unable to move until they starved to death.

Whoever had met the sad end of their adventure here, they had been carrying a magic weapon.

However…

While a magic sword might be threatening, a goblin was not.

So Goblin Slayer told himself, taking a breath in beneath his metal helmet and letting it out again.

He looked down at the sword—the shortsword—in his own hand, then twirled it around.

This did not change what he had to do. It didn’t matter if his opponent had a magic sword. Or if he died in the attempt.

“GORRRGGG…”

Goblin Slayer didn’t know what he looked like to the monster as he studied the distance between them and tried to judge his moment, but the goblin gave a cruel laugh. Maybe the creature thought Goblin Slayer was afraid. The goblin was not capable of differentiating between his own menace and that of the sword.

The goblin moved first, raising the sword and half stumbling forward.

Goblin Slayer leaped forward.

It was not the result of some deep thought on his part. If he wasn’t close enough, he couldn’t cut the goblin down. It would be risky to give up his weapon by throwing it.

With this shortsighted thought, the magic sword came down from directly overhead.

“GOOROGBB!!”

“Nrgh… Hrn?!”

He parried with his shield—well, if you could call it that. The finely honed magic sword cut through the shield like a hot knife through butter.

It did, however, stop the blade, and that was good enough for Goblin Slayer. One arm and a shield—the calculation was simple.

He lashed out with his broken sword. He felt it bite into flesh. Not deep enough.

“GOORG?!”

“Pfah…”

He clicked his tongue and rolled backward as fast as he could.

The goblin’s swordsmanship was pitiful—though as soon as Goblin Slayer had the thought, his lips twisted. As if he knew anything about swordsmanship.

He gave a flick of his wrist and brought his sword back to a fighting position; he raised his shield and judged his distance.

It doesn’t change what I must do.

A goblin with a magic sword was still a goblin, and a magic sword was just a sword.

The goblin, himself—there was no difference between them.

“GORG!!”

“…!”

With a rush of breath, Goblin Slayer lunged forward, hard and fast.

The goblin grunted with displeasure and raised his sword. There was nothing else he knew how to do.

So Goblin Slayer came to a halt, sparks flying from his heels. The magic sword struck the earth.

“GBBB…?!”

“Y—yaaahh!”

He planted his foot squarely on the middle of the blade. The hilt wrenched in the goblin’s hands. Then it dropped away. Now it was over.

Goblin Slayer let the momentum carry him closer, ramming his broken sword into the creature’s forehead.

“GOBBGRG?!”

The blade buried itself in the monster’s skull with a dull thunk, and the goblin pitched backward. The forehead was supposed to be the hardest bone. It might take another hit. Two hits.

Goblin Slayer seemed to recall it was his sister who had taught him that if you wanted to crack stone, you first heated it, then poured cold water over it. There was a stone buried on the outskirts of the farm. It got in the way of the fieldwork. When he returned, he would break it. If he returned.

With the fifth hit, the goblin’s skull cracked like an egg, spilling brains and snot and blood everywhere.

According to his master, the brain was just a tool for producing snot and nothing more. But if you lost it, you would die.

“…It’s not important,” Goblin Slayer muttered, then kicked down the twitching corpse.

He let out a breath and steadied his breathing. He’d all but forgotten why he had come here.

I came to kill goblins.

Goblins who stole vegetables from the village. Who had made their home in these ruins—this cave, whatever you called it.

He counted once more the number he had killed. Five. This made six.

He considered the number of footprints, the amount of waste. The living space. The size of the horde. He brought all the knowledge he had gained, meager as it was, to bear.

Is this all of them?

He doubted the horde was even ten strong. At that size, they began to want…entertainment. Since they apparently hadn’t tried to procure any, it suggested that this goblin with the magic sword was their leader.

Goblin Slayer let out a breath. His head was spinning and felt so heavy.

Sometimes—merely sometimes—he just wanted to throw it all away and lie down on the ground.

Each time the thought so much as passed through his head, it made him terrifically angry.

That would mean, in other words, that he would let the goblins have free rein, and he would simply give up on them.

This is no joke.

He stamped fiercely on the creature. As he had done in the rainy village, he stepped on the goblin corpse and stood there.

“…”

Then after a quiet moment, he realized there was a rotten smell in the air but not that of a goblin. This was…

Some other creature.

We ought to praise how, at that instant, he was able to jump into the shadows. It was well done, at least for someone who was exhausted and thinking hazily.

An eyeball. A giant eyeball. That was his first impression.

A giant eye with hands and feet and a mouth attached, galumphing around.

Its eye glittered with a mysterious light that made him question his sanity—well, so did the creature itself.

“NOOOOOOTTTHHHHHHIIIC…”

A long, impenetrable word slid from the monster’s mouth, and then it uttered an earsplitting, cackling laugh.

It reminded him of a goblin somehow. But it was not a goblin.

The glittering eye looked right at him—even though he was hidden behind the stone.

“…!”

Goblin Slayer did not believe in a sixth sense. He simply moved at the instant he realized he was being looked at.

There was a fssshh like water sprinkled into a hot frying pan, and smoke went everywhere. The stone wall that had been there an instant earlier now melted away.

The creature’s eye—its very gaze—had pierced the wall. It brought to mind the evil eye spoken of in fairy tales.

“In that case…!”

Goblin Slayer moved reflexively. He shoved his hand in his item pouch and pulled it back out, flinging what he had grasped into the air.

The monster’s eye tracked it—more precisely, Goblin Slayer had thrown it so that the eye would follow.

The moment it—the eggshell—pierced the eye, the eggshell exploded with a pop and scattered crimson powder that began to float all over the ruins.

It was his binding powder, made of crushed poisonous bugs and whatever else. If a creature had eyes and a nose, it would be effective—of that he was sure.

“NOOOOOOTTTHHIIIC…!!”

It wasn’t clear how badly the powder had actually affected the monster, but it gave a great howl.

He didn’t waste a moment; he held his breath and dove into the mist, dancing through. As the monster’s eye turned toward him, he felt a chill envelop him, like fear spreading all over his body, but he didn’t care.

“Yaaaaah!”

He slammed his broken sword, still dripping with goblin brains, into the creature’s great eye as if he were hitting a ball. It felt odd, though. It was…bouncy. It sent the sword skittering out of his hands.

“…Pfah?!”

No damage. The monster cackled again, then the eye turned to stare at him.

This cave—these ruins—were too tight to avoid it. Goblin Slayer reflexively raised his cloven shield.

Whatever the truth was about this beast’s eye, he had only a second or two to protect himself. The question was what he would do with the handful of seconds he had earned.

Gods, but he had no idea—

“Normal weapons won’t work on that thing.”

At that moment, a blue wind gusted through the ruins. It took the form of a beautiful elf woman—the elf fighter.

The gleaming blade she held in her pale hand was almost part of the whirlwind that was her slim body. To Goblin Slayer, there appeared to be sparks as the creature’s gaze was deflected.

Was it her skill? Or the weapon? Or was the highly polished blade acting as a mirror?

“NOOOOOOTTTHHHHHHIIIC…?!?!?!”

Regardless, it had one unmistakable result: As the light flashed in its eye, the creature bellowed and tumbled backward.

“Hiiiiiiiiiyah!”

This was followed immediately by the blade being unleashed—and sinking in. It carved a line directly across the monster’s giant eye, a line blossoming in the middle. And then…

“”

The monster made no sound at all as the eye split clean in two. A vile liquid erupted out of it, and it toppled to both sides at once.

Like a nightmare, the creature’s corpse began to bubble along the cut, and then it disappeared, leaving only the faintest stain on the stone—and the endlessly beautiful elf woman.

“A magic weapon, though, that’ll do the trick.” Elf Fighter paused. “Hey, see, there’s one right there on the ground.”

She picked up the glowing sword. But Goblin Slayer didn’t even look at it.

Instead he studied the shadowlike discoloration on the stone. It would dry up in a few days and then vanish like the rest of the corpse.

“…What was that thing?” he asked.

“Not a clue,” Elf Fighter said, a rather laconic answer. She shrugged—she’d returned her blade to the scabbard on her back and was playing with the magical weapon. “Maybe you could call it a BEM. It was small fry, in any case.”

“BEM… A Bug-Eyed Monster, hmm?” Goblin Slayer gave a sort of groaning grunt.

In the end, goblins really were trivial creatures. They were far below even this “small-fry,” monsters nobody cared about.

“Anyway, I’ve got to say. You are looking very scruffy,” the elf remarked, eyeing him like she was appraising a jewel.

When she said that, he looked down for the first time and saw just what a sorry state his armor was in. The creature’s look, he now realized, was a rotting gaze.

“I’ve got business deeper in here, but you, kid—you’d better get yourself back to town,” Elf Fighter said.

Goblin Slayer did not answer.

He didn’t say a word, even after Elf Fighter vanished into the darkness.

He simply stood and stared.

“They say you can’t get through.”

“Whaaaat?!”

Her voice ringing through the tavern, first thing after they got back topside, was as bright as the shining sun. She smacked both hands on the table, making her long silver hair bob like a tail—it was the martial artist girl.

“No whaaaat about it. They said there’s a landslide blocking the mountain pass, and you can’t get through.”

“A landslide,” their elf cleric muttered as if in distaste. “Ah yes, a landslide.”

“It means when the earth comes tumbling down,” their dwarf advised him.

“I know that. Naturally.”

“Oh, I see,” the young warrior said, quietly but easily as he listened to them—he hadn’t known what the word meant.

Practically speaking, a natural disaster was what it was, and they were stuck. He crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, and hmmed. He needed to think about what it would cost to stick around—in other words, money.

Being an adventurer was like a water mill. The water came up, and its own weight brought more water. Whatever money they earned, they used immediately—in most cases anyway. And if they didn’t get back to the Guild, they wouldn’t get the reward for their current quest. Meaning, they would have to stretch what was in their purse further than they’d originally expected to pay for their lodgings.

As someone who was just learning to read, write, and do numbers, the calculations were challenging…

“…”

He glanced over at their kobold wizard, who smiled back at him like a teacher waiting for his students to ask a question or give an answer. Although he was their teacher.

The warrior, who for some reason had been entrusted with the party’s leadership, sighed deeply. “How many days you think we’ll be here, Teach?”

“Now then, it depends on the cause, the scale of the problem, and whether the pass can be cleared.”

“Sure…”

Argh. It was all well and good to come out here on a quest to take out a Metal Eater nesting in a mine, but then to get back aboveground and find out the road had been blocked was…argh.

We just can’t seem to get lucky.

Every time they went into the depths of the earth, something unexpected like this seemed to happen.

They were hardly expert underground investigators, but they seemed to be treated that way.

I don’t even like being underground!

Rock Eaters, abandoned cities—Young Warrior didn’t have a lot of good subterranean memories.

Guess complaining about it won’t get me anywhere.

He decided to break out of that line of thought.

Just because he couldn’t change their situation was no reason to stop working at it. It could determine whether he and his comrades lived or died—maybe that was what they meant by a leader’s responsibility.

“So there was an avalanche or something?” he mused.

“…We didn’t feel any shaking underground,” the silver-haired girl said, sounding somewhat afraid.

She still seemed to be under the shadow of the battle in those ruins. It was good and healthy for her to shine like the sun as she had done earlier, but sometimes these clouds passed over her as well.

He’d decided maybe a change of scenery was in order, which was why he had picked an adventure that they would have to travel to. Had it been the right choice?

I just don’t know, he thought. It was Fate, Chance, and the heavenly dice that determined matters in the Four-Cornered World. Even the gods couldn’t tell how those dice would come out. How much less so those who amounted to merely pawns on the board.

“Doesn’t seem there was a storm or anything, either,” muttered Elf Cleric. “Did you hear anything?”

“They say it was giants,” the dwarf responded sulkily. She put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands like she couldn’t believe she was dealing with this. “The giants went tromping by, the way giants do, and the earth came tumbling down.”

“Yikes…” Young Warrior held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. That was a natural disaster if there ever was one.

“Still, it’s strange,” the canid teacher said. “Unusual for giants to come over this way.”

“It is?” the silver-haired martial artist asked.

“Indeed,” replied their teacher, his ears going back as he thought. “We and they have such different cultures and ways of doing things. Sometimes we cross paths but little more.”

“So that’s what’s going on,” Elf Cleric muttered, earning him a jab from the dwarf girl’s elbow. He yelped. “Well, you know what they say: When there’s trouble, it’s time to send in the adventurers.”

“And there’s definitely trouble.” The silver-haired girl flopped herself out on the table, her hair settling down like a wilted flower.

It was depressing, not knowing how long they might be stuck there.

“Okay,” Young Warrior said and nodded decisively. “Since we’re here, let’s see if there are hints of any adventures around.”

That would mean several adventures in a row, but well, so long as they were careful not to overdo it. It would feel better to be working to earn some money rather than sitting around hemorrhaging it.

Morale, that was important. Your feelings could change the whole world.

Elf Cleric was the first to respond. He nodded gratefully and said, “Time is unlimited and limited. I don’t mind at all.”

“Let me guess. You’re broke because you gave it all to a woman again, aren’t you?” The dwarf smirked.

“How rude. It was a proper donation to the temple.”

With a wry smile at the squabbling pair, Young Warrior turned to look at the canid wizard, who adjusted his glasses on his nose and smiled.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” he remarked. “They do say there’s no end of seeds of adventures in the Four-Cornered World.”

“Adventures… Adventures, huh?” The word got the silver-haired girl to raise her head up off the table. “It’s not something that’s going to put the world in danger, as it?”

“I mean, I can’t be sure…”

After all, they said there could always be a corpse-eater just behind the door. Smiling again, Young Warrior crossed his arms. “But hey, the world can’t get threatened too many times in a row, right?”

“Urgh…”

So she was still carrying around the fearful end of that undead king.

The good news was that she was trying, by hook or by crook, to shake it off.

He pondered whether he could help her somehow—then smiled.

Maybe I am turning into a bit of a leader.

What would that half-elf girl say if she could see him now? Maybe she would tease him. Yes, he had a feeling that was what she would do.

“Since this is our adventure, maybe we can find something where we don’t have to go underground,” he said.

“Yes, good call,” his teacher agreed. “I’d like to adventure somewhere bright and cheerful if we can.”

Well, that settles it.

“I dunno. I think we’re still gonna be stuck heading down,” the dwarf girl said, eliciting an “awww!” from the other young woman.

In spite of that, Young Warrior found himself filled with satisfaction.

A sudden disaster. An enforced halt. Mounting costs. Worried companions. A new adventure. Wasn’t that what it was all about?

In the Four-Cornered World, there was no end of seeds for adventure.

And in that sense…

Young Warrior remembered one of his peers who’d gone off in that direction before the pass was blocked. A guy with a spear on his shoulders and a witch he claimed to be on a “date” with.

He hoped they were okay.

“And… Hup!”

Each new day arrived without regard for the desires of anyone else involved.

Cow Girl placed another stone on the wall, her breath heaving, then wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm and looked up at the sun.

It was terribly hot.

I’m boiling.

The stones, heated by the sun, got so hot to the touch that she felt like her fingers would get singed even through her gloves.

Just thinking any irrelevant thoughts cost her energy. She could only focus silently on the job before her.

Except…

Random things kept popping into her head. Like—yes. Like how her uncle had been attacked by a monster.

It was hardly unusual. The Four-Cornered World overflowed with threats. She’d known that since she was eight years old.

But even so, it wasn’t the case that everyone was in danger all the time. And if the peaceful days went on long enough, you started to think they might just continue until the end.

No, you didn’t even think it; you simply started to believe it. If you didn’t, you couldn’t go on living.

And then just through a roll of the gods’ dice, you found yourself confronted with the shocking reality.

I guess…

The small blessing, perhaps, was that when confronted with that reality, Cow Girl had retained her composure. Her uncle had been rescued by a passing adventurer and was safe. It was a nonevent. That was good, she thought.

But because it was upsetting, she’d decided to check the fence and wall that surrounded the farm and make sure they were in good repair.

That was about it for day-to-day changes. There was always more work to do. But…

I wonder if he’s okay.

Today, once again, he was out on an adventure.

His day-to-day routine didn’t change, either. He was an adventurer, so it was only natural that he would go on adventures.

Cow Girl thought about how she worried—for him? For herself?

Maybe she just wished he would stay on the farm or maybe she wanted him close to her. Or did she merely want him to come back safely?

Something hazy and indistinct took up residence in her chest. She only noticed it when she stopped working.

“Hnn… Hup!”

She laid her hands on the next stone, picked it up, and added it to the wall, making sure it fit tightly.

This wall she’d labored to build would be worn away by the elements and the passage of time until it naturally broke down.

Consider the way the ground had shaken: That was a very rare occurrence, yet it had happened. Even things that seemed to be fixed and firm at first glance could turn out, surprisingly, not to be so.

There was a way to properly cut stone and secure it with mortar…

But this way is a lot simpler.

Besides, just because you cut and mortared the stone didn’t mean it would never need maintenance. It would be great if things could just be done perfectly, but there was never enough ability or tools or money. Did perfection even exist? She couldn’t imagine.

I hope it does…

As she thought, she picked up another stone, hefted it, and piled it on.

The sound of her breath, the sound of the breeze. The lowing of the cows. Her uncle coughing in the distance. Then footsteps.

Footsteps?

Cow Girl looked up in surprise. She recognized those footsteps. She would know them anywhere.

She knew then that he was walking down the road. There was the tattered plume. The metal helmet. And…

“Huh?!”

His armor was in a dire state—it was difficult to describe. It looked like a melted candle.

She stood and stared for a moment, then clasped a hand to her chest. He saw her and stopped.

“I’m back,” he said.

She breathed a sigh of relief at his voice; it sounded normal. Maybe a hint of fatigue? But anyway, it sounded like always.

“Are you all right…?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“Your, uh, armor…”

She wasn’t sure if she should ask.

A moment of hesitation. A whisper from a woman with dirty golden hair. A little push on her back.

“What happened to it…?”

“…” He fell silent for a moment, then grunted softly and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“A monster looked at me, and then I was like this.”

“It just looked at you…?”

Cow Girl couldn’t fathom what this meant. None of it made any sense to her. All she knew of adventuring and of monsters was what she had learned from the songs sung by the troubadours.

She repeated her question. “So…are you all right?”

And the answer she got was, of course, the same as before.

“Yes.”

But one thing was different.

“Did I startle you?”

“Er, uh…” Cow Girl nodded reflexively. “Y-yeah. A little…”

Just a little.

“I see.” After appearing to agonize for a moment, he mumbled, “Sorry.”

She said it was fine, but he didn’t really seem to hear.

He was remembering, sort of, a time his older sister had scolded him, back when he had been young. “If you have to apologize for it, don’t do it in the first place”—that’s what she had said. But it was because he couldn’t imagine he would need to apologize that he did it.

I lack imagination.

He had more than a goblin, perhaps, but only just.

Beneath his metal helmet, he heaved a sigh.

“What in the world happened?!”

It was not very common for Guild Girl to sound quite so panicked. But neither was it common for him—Goblin Slayer—to appear at the Adventurers Guild without his armor. When she saw him with only his helmet, balaclava, underarmor, and mail, she’d exclaimed in spite of herself.

She was rewarded with glares from those around her—chiefly her friend in the next seat, who was trying to help someone—and she coughed demurely. One little “ahem!” to hide her reddened cheeks, and then she sat back down.

“What happened to you?” she asked, more calmly.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“A monster looked at me, and then I was like this.”

His—Goblin Slayer’s—explanation came out smoothly, as if he had already practiced it.

Almost dizzied by the gulf between his brief answer and what she was seeing before her, Guild Girl leafed through her mental Monster Manual.

Melting? Rotting? Heat ray? Some kind of evil eye probably…

Oh, but warlocks can shoot eldritch blasts from their eyes, right?

She seemed to recall such a spell anyway. But he’d said it was a monster, so…

“Was it some kind of demon? Surely not…”

“At the very least, it wasn’t a goblin.”

I should think not!

The words made it to her throat before she swallowed them back down. What would they do if goblins started firing beams from their eyes?

“Um, all right… And what happened to the goblins?”

“I slew them,” he said. “At least as far as it goes.”

The story he then told her was, indeed, a dizzying one. What he had thought was a cave had turned out to contain ruins, where he’d encountered an unknown creature wandering about.

By sheer good fortune, another adventurer—an elf, he claimed—happened to pass by. Otherwise…

Who knows what might have happened.

The thought sent a chill down her spine.

The Adventurers Guild could only do so much to investigate matters beforehand. Anyway, there wasn’t an adventure around where everything had been checked out ahead of time and could be served up on a silver platter. Unknown threats and unexpected developments were part and parcel of adventuring. But still…

“You’re safe,” said Guild Girl. “That’s what matters.”

“Not by my own strength.”

She felt she should be grateful both that he had come home in one piece and that he had no anger for her. Even the gods could not predict the pips of the dice, yet many acted as if the Guild somehow could.

“Regardless, this is important information.” Guild Girl set her mental Monster Manual aside and reached for her abacus. “And it will make an excellent excuse to boost your reward a bit!”

“Is that okay?”

“This reward comes from the Guild, so don’t worry about it.”

She added that it would also contribute to his next assessment, but she wasn’t sure that part got through.

She giggled at the way he just tilted his head in silent confusion, while at the same moment, a flash of inspiration shot through her mind. “I know! This might be the perfect time to get yourself new and better equipment!”

“New and better?”

“Yes! Like maybe…a magic sword! Or some armor!”

Yes, he was truly an adventurer producing consistent results. Eventually he needed to shed the disreputable name of Goblin Slayer.

Although it sure is helpful that he takes those quests for us!

Once an adventurer had graduated from rookie status, however, they were much in demand.

Of course, surviving and completing one’s adventures was paramount.

But when one considered urban adventures, there was more negotiating to be done. One couldn’t remain a countrified, drifting ruffian of a tomb raider forever.

Now that he had been promoted a few times, she would love to see him start acting like the proper middle-rank adventurer that he was. And she thought a good first step would be for him to work on his appearance.

Guild Girl believed this with total conviction, but Goblin Slayer fell silent.

Finally he softly grunted, “Hrm.”

Magical equipment. He agreed that it might be useful to have around.

He thought of his father’s hawk-handled dagger. His master’s short blade supposedly made by elves. And he recalled the sword that was always carried by the barbarian from the far reaches of the north, of whom he’d heard in bedtime tales. The barbarian had found it in a tomb he’d stumbled into when he fled slavery and was chased through the night by wolves.

It was a grand blade said to have been held by an ancient king, and it buried many a foe along the barbarian’s path.

The rest of his memories, though, red like the embers of a fire on the hearth, were hazy and indistinct.

He was less interested in magic swords than he was in swords in general—well, maybe the pale-glowing short blade carried by his mentor was a special case.

But when he thought of that goblin, it made him sick to his stomach.

There were no guarantees.

Suppose that by some turn of events he died, and the magic sword passed into the hands of a goblin—it was not a pleasant picture.

And then there was the simple fact that using a magical sword on a goblin hunt…

…couldn’t be more munchkin.

Someone who used their strength to sweep the weak before them, drunk on their own power—were they not just like a goblin? It was one thing if he would be facing BEMs, but he wasn’t interested in taking on such high-threat opponents.

They were beyond him.

“I don’t need it,” he concluded.

“O-oh. I see…”

Even he could tell that Guild Girl was disappointed by his answer.

Did I say something wrong?

Goblin Slayer tried to think. But he just wasn’t sure.

True, he was grateful that she seemed to have his best interests at heart.

“I need to refurbish my equipment,” he said. “May I have my reward?”

“Oh, y-yes!”

“That helps.”

When he added that remark, Guild Girl’s voice went up an octave as she responded, “Of course!”

He watched her rush around again, her braid bobbing like a tail. He followed her with his eyes as she ducked behind the counter, not thinking much of it, when the adventurer at the next counter left. He hadn’t been paying attention to them, but apparently, they had been speaking to a receptionist themselves. He watched them go, and his eyes met those of the Guild employee in the next seat.

“Hey there,” she said with a grin and raised a hand in his direction.

He recognized her. There were, after all, fewer Guild employees then there were adventurers. Most of the employees’ faces were more or less familiar—but even so, he seemed to see this young lady with some regularity.

Picking his words with particular care, Goblin Slayer replied, “What is it?”

“Aw, just thinking it’s unusual to hear someone say they don’t need magical weapons or equipment.”

“I see.”

Is that the case?

Probably it was. Certainly among adventurers, at least. He’d heard of one hero who’d reached the end of his adventure carrying only an iron lance—but it was precisely because he was an outlier that his story was told.

Then, too, there was the barbarian hero-king from the frozen north, the land of darkness.

“Well, it’s all good,” said the employee, interrupting Goblin Slayer’s thoughts.

Almost in a single motion, she held out a piece of papyrus to him. It was a rough sheet, a world apart from the parchment paper the Guild normally used.

He took it almost before he knew what he was doing. It was covered in lovely, flowing script. A name and a place.

“There’s someone who wants to see you,” the Guild employee said.

“I see.”

“They’re not a goblin, but you can be at least that flexible, right?”

Goblin Slayer wasn’t sure what to say when confronted with that question.

And not knowing was so terrifying.

Finally, he said, “Understood,” even though he didn’t understand especially well at all. “You don’t mind if I go buy new armor first?”

“I’m sure it’s fine. Have fun!” The employee giggled and added that she’d be in for a glaring if she talked to him for too long. Then she, too, disappeared into the back room, leaving him standing there alone.

Goblin Slayer was seized by an awkwardness he hadn’t felt in some time.

It was always like this. He found himself wondering if it was really right for him to be there.

What foolishness. It wasn’t as if anyone was paying special attention to him. Or would. This summons he’d received was probably to do some odd job. Or perhaps…

“Thanks for waiting!”

Guild Girl came bustling out of the back room, and Goblin Slayer let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

If I had my wish, I’d like everything to be a simple repetition of the same things.

Nothing changing from day to day, other than the smallest details.

It was an immense luxury to hope for such a thing—as he’d learned five years before.

“Now I’ve gone and done it…”

Shortly after he left, Guild Girl slumped over her countertop. She would never have been caught dead behaving that way, except that all the adventurers had been taken care of.

Her colleague in the next seat, who had no reason not to needle her about it, was grinning at her like a cat. “You mean because you gave him advice? Or because you got way too into it?”

“Definitely the second one…”

“If it helps, you both got too into it!”

“Arrrgh…” Guild Girl gave a pitiful groan.

Further barbs came at her. “What’s so great about that weirdo anyway?”

“…What do you mean by weirdo?”

“I mean, he’s weird, isn’t he?”

“You’re…not wrong…”

He wasn’t exactly ordinary—that much was true.

But he was dedicated. Serious. Consistently doing what he had to do each day.

Sure, sometimes words didn’t seem to reach him. But he tried to hear them.

There were plenty of people out there who could hear what you said yet not know what you meant or not care. People who would exclaim, I got it! and then just go do whatever struck their fancy. Guild Girl had seen her fill of them during her training in the royal capital, so now to meet him…

I just thought it was…nice.

“What’s wrong with it?” Guild Girl asked, pouting. “Who cares why or who a person…?”

Loves.

Is that what it is?

The word felt so heavy in her mind. Speaking it aloud would only lighten it.

Her pursed lips trembled. She prayed the word wouldn’t reach them. It was such an ambiguous word.

“…Who they support,” she managed.

“Sure, that’s fair enough.”

Guild Girl looked up, startled to hear her friend back off with such alacrity.

The way she acts like that…

It made her easy to talk to. In a way, it was what you would expect from a cleric of the Supreme God.

“I couldn’t care less who falls in love with who, you know? As long as they don’t push anything on anybody,” she added.

“Oh…”

“Wanna hear the story of the merfolk who fell in love with a snake, and they had a child together?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

Her friend laughed out loud. Guild Girl could only grumble to herself: Oh, for…

The Supreme God, ruler of Law, was magnanimous and compassionate. This deity did not care who loved who. But not caring didn’t mean being required to recognize or acknowledge it. For the same principle meant that there should be no limits on who may hate who.

Er, was that how it works again?

She tried to remember the sermon she’d heard when her parents had taken her to the temple as a young girl. Or maybe it was something her friend had mentioned in the course of some idle conversation? Guild Girl thought she remembered her adding in annoyance that there were a lot of people who misunderstood the message.

Well, be that as it may.

“…I’d like to be, you know, more of an older sister he can count on,” Guild Girl said.

“Oh, I think he counts on you plenty already.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I also think you won’t get any further if you distance yourself like that.”

“Do we need to get, uh, further?”

“Well, that’s also a free personal decision, isn’t it?” her friend said pointedly, still grinning like the cat that ate the canary. “It’s up to you if you want to try to run, but it’s important to go at walking speed, too.”

“…”

Guild Girl didn’t respond to that. No matter what she said, she had a feeling that she would end up in a random encounter with a dragon, so instead she said nothing at all.

“But there are times when you do need to hurry,” her friend said.

“Like?”

“Hmm… Like, say…” Her friend made a big show of thinking, then lobbed a veritable Fireball. “When he’s received a personal summons from another girl?”

“What?”

“Now, now. You can’t just say ‘what’ to that.”

For the second time, Guild Girl flopped down on her counter.

“Hey there.”

“Mm.”

Goblin Slayer found it very unnerving to be wearing only his armor’s underlayer. His eyes darted here and there from under his helmet; he couldn’t shake the sense that goblins might attack him at any moment. So he quickly spotted the person waiting for him in the lobby of the Adventurers Guild.

Then again, it could be characterized as a quiet spot where one found only those adventurers in no great hurry to go meet with their quest givers. And at the moment, there were none of those sitting around. Even Spearman wasn’t there, and he would have lamented having missed this woman if he’d known about her.

Thus, the elf fighter stood out like a cutout from a painting.

When she gave him a lithe wave, Goblin Slayer simply stopped in place.

It would be untrue to say there was no shock in the halting. She must have come back after he had—she’d been exploring the ruins, after all—but she was here before him.

There was no mistaking her. Only in an elf forest could one have the slightest chance of missing an elf’s beauty.

Elf Fighter seemed to pick up on his confusion even behind his helmet, for she smiled. “Surprised? I went through the Lost Woods.”

Goblin Slayer wasn’t sure if she meant this as a joke or not. He didn’t say anything.

It was only his accumulation of daily experience that allowed him to catch the thing she tossed his way. He moved almost without thinking, and a heavy lump landed in his gloved hand. At the jangling sound the lump made, he realized it must be…

“Silver?”

“Nah. Gold.”

“Gold,” he echoed.

“Yep.” Elf Fighter grinned bitterly at him. She made it sound like it was no big deal.

I didn’t know there were any outside the royal family who could handle such a quantity of gold coins so casually.

He’d never even dreamed of it. Let alone that he would hold a bag of such coins in his own hand.

At least, not without becoming an adventurer.

“It’s not that I want to take credit for that magic sword, but you’re not exactly claiming the find yourself, are you?”

“No.”

There was no room to deny it. He would have been embarrassed to claim that he had earned the blade. Perhaps someday, when he could go in that cave and walk away from the encounter with that BEM alone, then he could claim such things.

But that was no goblin hunt.

“I always knew humans were clever, but I’ve got to hand it to you—money was a great invention.”

So she’d sold the magic sword and turned it into gold. Once turned into gold, they could split the value equally. Once split equally, they wouldn’t have to argue over the sword. Plus, one could see the sword’s value at a glance.

“It’s pretty darn convenient once you get used to it. Even if it’s a bit uncouth to assume it applies to absolutely everything.”

After a second Goblin Slayer said, “I heard that the Trade God created money.”

“Oh yeah?” The elf laughed. “You know, it was humans who started referring to the god of the winds as the Trade God.”

There was no way to know who it was who had first invented commerce in the Four-Cornered World. And it would be the height of foolishness to argue about history with an elf. Goblin Slayer might not know much, but he knew that.

“Is this all you wanted with me?” he asked.

“Hmm?” The elf’s ears flicked. “Oh! No, that’s only half of it.”

“Half.”

“Sorry, elves have a tendency to be windbags. Believe me, I know it—and I still can’t help myself!” She chortled again—then suddenly her lovely face went sober. “Sorry to invite myself along, but I’m going to accompany you on your adventures for a while.”

“…”

He didn’t know what she meant by that. Not the words but her intention. What she was thinking, what she was after. Beneath his helmet, he grunted, thought about it, and then voiced the one thing he figured he understood.

“No,” he said. “I’m just killing goblins.”

That wasn’t an adventure.

Confronted with that simple fact, Elf Fighter murmured, “That so?” Her clear blue eyes peered at him without doubt or hesitation. It wasn’t a glare—it was more like he was being pinned in place; he couldn’t move. “Maybe not, but I can sense the aura of Chaos along your path.”

“…”

Once again Goblin Slayer couldn’t say anything. He’d never seen an elf’s eyes so close. For that matter, he’d never even considered speaking with an elf or traveling with one. (His daydreams as a little boy did not count as “considering.” They were hardly valuable enough for that.) So it was a long moment before he finally squeezed out, “It’s probably just happenstance.” A few short words. “Coincidence. No more.”

“It’s hard for those on the board to read the pips of the dice of Fate and Chance,” Elf Fighter said.

Even the gods couldn’t do that. For the pips were the beginning of the Four-Cornered World.

He sometimes saw people fulminating about that on the street corners, as if it were very important. Each time he saw them, he thought it made no real difference to him. For whatever the truth was, what he had to do would not change.

And so… Yes. So…

Let this elf come with him. That, too, would change nothing.

“…It’ll take some time for my armor to be refurbished,” he said slowly, looking down at the cotton layer hugging his torso. His rank tag gleamed dully at his chest. For some reason, he found it terribly embarrassing. “If you can wait until then, I don’t mind.”

“Yeah?” Elf Fighter grinned widely. “I don’t mean you should take me for free, of course. I may not look it, but I’ve learned a thing or two about the human economy.”

She sounded fairly impressed with herself. Then there was what she had said earlier. She moved her feet as if singing, dancing, performing. Her blue hair billowed along with her as if carried by the wind, and beneath his helmet, he found himself naturally watching her movements…

“Unfortunately, I’m a little short on cash.” Her eyes, lovely and mischievous, met his. “So I’ll pay you with my body.”

There was an open space behind the Adventurers Guild. It might have been used for certain business at certain times, but at the moment, it was just a roped-off area with a bunch of boxes piled around.

If a training ground were ever to be built, it would have to be years in the future. At that moment, all that could be heard there was the clacking of wooden practice swords…

“Where the east makes finely honed, sharp blades, the west prefers big, heavy weapons that they can just swing around, trusting to their strength to bash things.” Elf Fighter sliced through the air with the practice sword in her hand, flashing a genuinely beautiful smile all the while. “Or anyway, that’s what you hear. But people who say that are just idiots.”

Goblin Slayer had no time to respond.

Right, left, up, down. Her sword moved like a living thing, and it was all he could do to block it. He had never known, never had any opportunity to discover, that a sword could dance like this.

“There’s a technique to all things, a rationale,” said Elf Fighter. “The sword cuts, thrusts, and pierces; that’s what it’s for.”

The words sounded like a song on her lips. The melody they played, the beauty of her voice, was such as to distract one so much that the words lost their meaning. Goblin Slayer struggled to follow her like a man clinging to a shard of wood in a raging sea.

He didn’t understand how he’d gotten into this situation.

But that was how he always felt—he’d become accustomed to being at the mercy of his circumstances, starting five years before.

He could only do his utmost to react to whatever was going on around him.

That was his daily life, and if there was anything to be gained from it, then this was an excellent place to do so.

Nonetheless, his mentor had put it exquisitely: The only thing he had going for him was guts—meaning he was always bumping up against his limits.

Suddenly, there was a great whack, and he felt a violent tingle run through his hand.

He only realized the practice sword had been knocked from his grip when he heard it scuttling across the ground.

“Who taught you sword fighting, kid?” asked the blue-haired elf coolly; there wasn’t so much as a bead of sweat on her.

“No one,” Goblin Slayer said with a shake of his head. He had not learned from his master. “I’m self-taught.”

“A bit like me, then.”

That answer, he had truly not expected. Not when the elf’s very sword seemed to dance.

He might have no knowledge of art, but he knew what was beautiful.

And a sufficiently advanced skill was indistinguishable from a spell.

“I was taught the very basics. But I had to scrounge the rest by winning real fights. Serious fights.” She tapped the practice sword on the ground with the one in her hand. Almost as if by command, it jumped up into the air, and in the blink of an eye, it was in her hand. “So you should learn some basics, too.”

By the time the words reached his ears, she was already behind him. Her movements were like the wind; he couldn’t follow them with his eyes.

“Always keep the tip of your blade pointed at the enemy. Pass any attacks to the outside.”

She pressed herself up against his back, her pale arms reaching out and enveloping his own, helping him grip the sword, putting him in the correct posture.

Blade tip toward the enemy, attacks deflected to the outside. Sword held diagonally to the enemy.

“There. Yes, that’s it.”

Her whisper tickled his earlobe, as if his metal helmet weren’t even there.

“If you break their line of attack, they’ll never hit you.”

Even through his underlayer, he could feel the warmth and softness of her body, how slim and supple it was.

Now that he thought about it, had he ever been so close to a woman before in his life?

There had been times or so he thought. The proctor, his sister, his childhood friend.

But this woman was somehow different from all of them.

Maybe because she was an elf—a profitless thought that flitted through his mind.

“Okay, now hold that posture and try to parry again.”

“Hrm…”

“Don’t fret. I won’t hit you with a shower of blows like last time.”

And then with one last slight smile, the elf pulled away from him, leaving behind only the aroma of the forest.

She looked genuinely joyous as her hair streamed out while she took the practice sword and stood in front of him.

“Come on, don’t let your attention wander. I told you I would pay you back with my body.”

“…”

Goblin Slayer let out a breath.

This was a rare opportunity. He might have been confused, but even he could see that much.

He did not have the luxury of declining those who offered to teach him.

“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”

The wooden sword came howling toward him.

After all, whatever came of this, the opportunity would surely be for only a short time—until tomorrow or the day after.

“If yer here about yer armor, it ain’t ready yet.”

“Hrm…”

Truthfully, he had been planning to go on a goblin hunt today or tomorrow. But the old man at the workshop informed him in no uncertain terms that his armor was not available and glared at him out of his one eye.

“There’s supposedly some monster that’s shown up in the mountain pass, and it’s blocking the road. Can’t get any components, see.”

“……Is it goblins?”

“Ya think goblins are enough to cause that kind of trouble?”

A fair question. If goblins were such a big deal, his own hometown would not have ended up the way it had.

Or maybe it would have been worse.

When the workshop owner saw Goblin Slayer standing there, he gave a little snort. “I’ll do the repairs with whatever I’ve got on hand—and gussy it up a bit, too. Just wait awhile.”

“But—”

“You can be in a hurry to die or you can take your time to kill. Which is it gonna be, young’un?”

“…”

Goblin Slayer took a breath in, then let it out. He should be grateful to receive advice, guidance.

“Sorry,” he said, bowing his head. The owner’s eyes widened, as if he was seeing something unusual. “Please do that,” Goblin Slayer added.

“Mm,” the owner grunted in response. “You just have to pay, and I’ll get to it.”

“Right.”

With that, Goblin Slayer had no more to do at the workshop, so he left it behind.

As he went through the Guild lobby, he glanced in the direction of the reception desk. Guild Girl was bustling around busily. He stood and watched her for a second, then turned slowly on his heel. He departed the Guild and weaved through the press of adventurers outside, working his way around back.

“Hey, kid. Back again?”

There stood Elf Fighter with the clear sunlight behind her, her face glowing with a smile.

Without a sound, she walked away from the wooden crate she’d been leaning on, and suddenly, she had picked up a wooden practice sword.

“I take it from your outfit that you’re not going on an adventure today.”

“No,” Goblin Slayer said, shaking his head slowly. “My armor isn’t fixed yet.”

“Shall we continue my payment, then?”

Goblin Slayer somehow managed to catch the wooden sword she tossed to him.

“Come to think of it, you said you were having financial difficulties,” he remarked.

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you have the money from selling that magic sword?”

“Oh!” Elf Fighter smiled a bit awkwardly and scratched her cheek. “I may have spent it all already.”

“I see.”

“All right, let’s get started. You humans only have so much time, yes?”

“…Indeed.”

And this was how he spent several of his days.

“You haven’t been going on adventures lately, have you?” Cow Girl asked Goblin Slayer after they had eaten their stew.

Recently, her uncle had taken to retiring to his room as soon as dinner was over—she didn’t know why. So it was just her and Goblin Slayer at that moment, and he didn’t talk much.

There was only the sound of the candle flickering and the lowing of livestock. How could it be that when those were the only sounds around, she found herself feeling oddly energized?

“My armor,” he said after a long moment. “It still isn’t repaired.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Her cheeks crinkled into a smile. He sounded almost pouty, like a child who was upset but wouldn’t say why.

The fact that he went into town every day just the same—he must have been going to find out if his armor was ready yet.

When she pictured him that way, she couldn’t help smiling a little more.

“Okay, then, uh…,” she started hesitantly. “Maybe you could help around the farm?”

“…” He was quiet for a moment, then softly but distinctly, he grunted. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Great, thanks.”

Of course, he would have helped even if she hadn’t asked. But she was still happy to hear him accept a favor she’d requested.

I don’t like the thought of him being in danger…

But if it meant they could be together like this?

Then maybe…just maybe…it would be all right if his armor got broken once in a while.

She knew what a terribly selfish thought that was; it made her cheeks flush. She shook her head from side to side, then stood up from her chair with more force than was strictly necessary.

“U-uh, the stew! Would you like another helping?”

“…”

He didn’t reply immediately but was silent as if thinking about something. Finally, he nodded slowly. His head was encased in the metal helmet that he wore—yes, even inside the house.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

“Sure!”

Helmet or no helmet, the fact that he was here made her happy.

“Running a little late today?”

He appeared behind the Guild after noon that day—and there was Elf Fighter as always.

However, he—Goblin Slayer—stayed resolutely silent and simply shook his head.

It wasn’t that he had any grievances with the elf woman. If anything, he was grateful to her. The problem was within his own heart.

He had nothing to drive him forward—his time was just an accumulation of days and nights passing.

It left him with the inescapable sense that he was running away from something he ought to do.

His heart quailed as if he had been scorched by a weak flame.

But to let that surface, to take it out on others, would have been shameful behavior.

Even he was not foolish enough to fail to see that.

Beneath his metal helmet, he took in a breath and let it out again. Then he strung some words together.

“I was helping on the farm.”

“Huh! That right?” The blue-haired elf didn’t sound that interested. Instead, she tossed a practice sword to him as easily as if it were a branch.

Goblin Slayer reflexively grabbed it out of midair. The elf’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s.

“You people are very unusual. You take things that would grow perfectly fine if left to their own devices and try to help them along.”

“…”

“Then again, there are surprisingly few things that really grow if left to their own devices,” she murmured, not to anyone in particular. Next, she held the sword in one hand and took up a fighting stance. “Shall we?”

Right, left.

The clack of wooden swords striking each other cut through the clear air, a pleasant sound.

“Good, nice work. You’re meeting blade with blade.”

He would meet the opponent’s stroke and bat it down, then reply with a thrust of his own. He’d aim for a vital spot, or the throat, or the heart.

Although if he wanted to reach any of those on an elf, he had to deliberately stretch out.

“You’re aiming too low. It’s a bad habit.”

One blow, then another. The elf’s words were as sharp as a blade itself.

This was the work of rebuilding the style he had learned from his master—not of swordsmanship as such but just brutal brawling.

The art and theory of fighting came down to technique and understanding. It was a system, a theory—a technique that could be replicated. A distilled, repeatable version of what had come to the true masters in a flash, in an instant on the battlefield.

Even an average person could wield some menace if they learned such principles.

He caught his opponent’s sword with the middle of his blade, almost bouncing it away, then thrust for a vital point.

Keep the blade pointed at the enemy and be aware of deflecting their line of attack. Because you had the blade tip toward the foe, shifting from defense to attack—into that thrust—was easy.

Or so he thought, but maybe he was wrong.

“C’mon, you’re forgetting your shield!”

The sword came at him from an unexpected direction. He blocked it with his shield, like a punch.

Did he deflect the sword, or had the sword deflected his shield? The impact tore the shield away from him. But he had blocked the attack; that much was fact.

He almost twirled the sword in his hand, adjusting his grip and position, then stepped forward and thrust out.

Each time he did, his irritability and impatience seemed to vanish—no, perhaps more properly, they were put out of his awareness. They were always there, but he simply placed them beyond the workings of his thoughts. He lost himself in doing the job that was in front of him, so that he need not think anything at all.

It was not what he would call pleasant, but it was simple. For if one was doing what one must do, there was no chance for spare thought or anything else.

“Hey, hey! You think anyone stops thinking during battle?”

Such naïveté, however, was not to be allowed of him.

The next instant, beautiful blue hair sliced across Goblin Slayer’s view.

The elf turned in a sweeping circle, and before he had even registered it—

“Yah!”

—a sharp cry accompanied a powerful blow to his hand, and his sword went flying through the air, shooting high up before clattering to the ground. It bounced once and then rolled to a stop.

“…” Goblin Slayer rubbed his hand and asked, “Were you taught by a rhea?”

“I’m self-taught. Didn’t I mention?” The blue-haired elf smiled lightly and tapped the fallen sword with the tip of her blade. It flicked up into the air, where Goblin Slayer caught it—somehow. “I didn’t have any master, and I don’t have any students. Oh, ahem…” She looked at him and paused theatrically, as if in thought, then smiled. “I guess you’re my student, in a sense.”

“…” Goblin Slayer grunted softly. “I doubt I’m anything that important.”

“You’re not wrong.”

Was she referring to him or to her? Or neither of them?

Abruptly, she gazed out at the west, looking beyond the horizon. Before he could follow her gaze, the voice of a Thunder Drake crackled in the sky. Dark clouds gathered over the western frontier.

“I sense storm giants,” the elf said. “This is going to be a rough one.” Her ears flicked gently. These were the words of an elf; there was no room for doubt. “Let’s call it here for today. If you’re helping out on some farm, you’d best go help them get ready.”

“…Yes.”

If there was a storm coming, there would be a great deal to do on the farm. In fact, he was grateful for it—much as he did not welcome bad weather. At the moment, he was thankful to have something, anything that he should be doing.

“You’re right.”

The next day, his armor was finally ready.

“So, uh, there’s this… Well, there’s this cave that the adventurers say no one comes back from,” Guild Girl said anxiously, alert to the unnerving noise of what sounded like a battle drum rumbling outside.

Standing before her was the familiar—yes, familiar now—adventurer in his armor.

“Is it goblins?” he asked her.

“Perhaps…is sort of the best I can say.”

She told him that goblins had been sighted near the cave. A typical quest.

They’d received the quest from the villagers, who sensed danger, and a party of adventurers had gone to the cave. Then a second and then a third. And even that third had still not come back.

It was unusual, they judged, but they had no clues beyond that. Had the goblins multiplied to greater numbers than expected? Or was there something other than goblins at work?

At the current reward, there were no high-level adventurers who would happily take the job. Yet they didn’t have enough information to justify opening the Guild coffers to increase it. Yet also, the road remained blocked—so there was no hope of coordinating with another Guild office.

And so we turn to him?

Or was she hoping he would indulge her? Guild Girl found herself feeling awfully pitiful.

In all recorded history, there had never been a perfect organization, and she certainly didn’t believe she was a perfect bureaucrat or person. It was just…it made her heart groan to face up directly to things she couldn’t do and couldn’t help.

“If there’s anything other than goblins going on, please return immediately and—”

—we won’t mind, she almost said and then swallowed the words. There was something else she ought to say.

“Please return immediately and report to us.”

Even granting that her senior colleague had personally approved his promotion, it was true that he had little experience hunting anything other than goblins.

Feeling her colleague’s eyes boring into her from the next seat over, Guild Girl somehow managed to compose her expression and look like a proper Guild employee.

“Hrm…” Goblin Slayer grunted softly and looked at the quest paper on the counter.

Guild Girl hadn’t known him long enough yet to guess what expression might be on the face under that helmet. She hoped she would one day, but it was too much for her to know how to deal with herself for having that thought.

To ask what he thought of her—a silly idea, when she hardly knew how she felt herself.

She was no god and couldn’t pretend to understand.

“Very well,” he said after a moment. “I accept.”

“Thank you so much!”

Thus, when she breathed a sigh of relief at his answer, she wasn’t sure if it was for personal reasons or public ones or perhaps both.

It’s both, I’m sure of it.

At the very least, she could be glad in her official capacity as a Guild employee. That much was acceptable. It had to be.

That was justification enough for Guild Girl, who mentally straightened herself up and said, “I’d like to add that in the event of anything unexpected… I mean, if it’s not goblins…”

“I will withdraw and report.”

“Yes, please. Even if you still don’t know what’s going on…”

She broke off at what she hoped wasn’t too unnatural a point.

Official or private? This was official. So there was no problem. No reason to hesitate to say it.

Yet even so, she breathed the slightest of breaths, tried to keep her heart from pounding, and finally she told him, “…because if you were never to come back, that would be the biggest problem of all.”

To the bitter end, she didn’t know how he took those words.

“‘Black wind, white rain’—meaning a sudden rainstorm. There was a man who once took that as his sobriquet, but the whole white-rain thing was one big lie.”

The rain poured down, black as ink, so to speak. The Thunder Drake roared mightily, and the sky was occasionally lit by flashes of lightning. Despite the brief bursts of illumination, the world remained dark as night, with only the roaring wind and pounding rain to assault the ears.

Even walking along a proper road would be difficult—let alone making it through the rough-hewn paths that led to the pioneer village.

Goblin Slayer trudged through the mud, clutching his sodden cloak around him and practically crawling along.

He had never before considered whether his cloak was good or bad, so he had to believe this was the best cloak. It was a far cry from the farm owner’s excellent—the word cool was childish, and he didn’t like it—cloak.

“C’mon, I know you can go faster than this,” said Elf Fighter. “At this rate, we’ll have to camp out in this weather.”

If there was anything wondrous in that moment, it was perhaps the blue-haired woman’s footwork and the way she carried herself as she went on ahead of him. Even in the downpour, she hardly seemed to get wet, and there wasn’t so much as a splash of water as she took each step. The only sign that she was out in the middle of a rainstorm was the slight fogging of her breath.

Her movements were refined, although in a way different from those of the proctor who had administered his promotion exam. He couldn’t tell whether that was because she was an elf or if it was the product of her immense skill.

Both seem possible.

He had never seen an elf up close before, and he knew well that she was an excellent swordfighter. It would be absurd to think he could catch up with her. The only thing he could do, always and at all times, was silently keep his feet moving, advancing forward.

“‘If you were never to come back, that would be the biggest problem of all,’ huh?”

After speaking to the receptionist and getting ready to go, Goblin Slayer had found Elf Fighter waiting for him outside the Guild. He’d stood and looked at her in silence, which she had laughed at and said, “Elves have long ears.”

There in the middle of the rainstorm, Goblin Slayer had a thought: There was something brooding in her eyes. It was partly how she had accompanied him without hesitation or a word of complaint, despite his forced march through the vile weather. But when she glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes had the mischievous glow of a cat’s, as always.

Surely, then, it must have been his mistake. Just seeing things.

“I think you’re loved, don’t you?” Elf Fighter said with a grin.

“I don’t know.” It was the honest answer.

He did not think he was loved. He was just a man who made it his business to hunt goblins.

He only survived because of the warmth and good offices of the farm owner, the girl who was his childhood friend, and the receptionist, among many others. He felt keenly how much trouble he caused them, yet they allowed him to do so—but that did not constitute being loved.

That just makes me sound shameless.

“It’s true enough, though—it would be a problem if you never came back.”

“…”

Even over the howling wind, the elf’s voice reached him like a song. Goblin Slayer never let his feet stop moving forward but allowed himself to focus on her words. Goblins, he thought, would not have the backbone to be out in a storm like this—so taking this opportunity to forge ahead, to obtain knowledge, would help him always to stay one step ahead of them.

“One group goes to check it out and doesn’t come home. They still have no clues, so they send a second group, who also doesn’t come home.” The elf ticked off the numbers on pale, slim fingers that hardly looked like they were accustomed to grasping a sword. “That’s the worst kind of bad news. A scout—a scout has to avoid that kind of thing as much as possible.”

“…” Goblin Slayer grunted softly. “I’m not a scout.”

“I don’t think you’re important enough to turn up your nose at any given skills, right?”

“……”

She was right. So instead of responding, he gritted his teeth and pressed ahead.

“’Course, I’m the same. I’m not exactly one to talk. Ha-ha-ha!” She laughed easily.

Goblin Slayer continued to walk. His darkened vision. The gaps among the trees that lined the hills. He relied on her voice to guide him.

“C’mon, hang in there a little longer. I heard a whisper from the wind sprites a moment ago. They say there’s a big tree ahead. We’ll be able to take a rest.”

“…Okay.”

He gritted his teeth once more and pushed forward desperately.

It was rather novel to see a fire burning in the middle of a storm. Sparks crackled and drifted upward, and warmth spread from it.

Goblin Slayer breathed a sigh, not least because they had finally been able to take shelter from the rain under the great tree.

It was just where Elf Fighter had said it would be, a huge, venerable tree, standing there as if by magic. He was sure he would never have found it on his own.

“Building a fire in the rain, now that’s ingenuity,” Elf Fighter said. Speaking of things that were like magic, her hands might as well have been spells in and of themselves.

Maybe it was because she was an elf—but with a flick of her long ears, she found perfect firewood in the blink of an eye. The branches were all slim, but they tied several of them together with a hempen rope.

Once the firewood was ready, she kicked at the soaked earth with the toe of her boot, turning it over. Then she piled some stones together almost like an oven and easily lit a fire.

“If you find buried branches, the rain won’t have gotten to them, and if you snap them in half, they’ll be dry,” she said. She peeled some bark from the great tree, which came off almost as if the tree were offering it to her, and used it to help keep the rain away. Then she lined soaked branches around the burning fire in a circle. “That’s how you start the fire. Then you use it to dry out more branches, like this, and then you can use them to feed the fire.”

She made it sound so simple. Goblin Slayer only sat and listened.

Maybe she could see how bone-tired he was, for a small smile came over Elf Fighter’s face. “You should loosen your armor. An accumulation of small, clever things can make a big impact in the long run.”

“Right…”

Maybe it was because his voice was so distant, not that he meant it to be. Or maybe it was the way he had been staring. The blue-haired woman kicked back against some tree roots, then asked, almost shyly, “I guess it’s unusual?”

Only when she asked the question did Goblin Slayer realize what she meant.

It was true: For an elf to be experienced in handling fire and rocks went against the impression he’d gotten from the stories he’d absorbed so avidly.

“Fire and rocks are part of nature, too, you know,” she said. “The work of the sprites. Though, of course, you can be better or worse at working with them.” She took off her boots with no sign of embarrassment, revealing lithe legs and feet. They didn’t look wet to him, but maybe she perceived it differently.

The elf put those beautiful legs near the fire to warm and dry them and went on talking.

“Besides, if you have skills and knowledge like this, you won’t have to burn your map because you have no other way to get a fire started.”

“Does that happen?”

“It’s all about choices. If you’re out in a storm and don’t have the magic to get a fire going, you can either just try to tough it out, or you can burn the precious map on which you rely.”

“It’s like having to eat dirt…”

He understood that. He could not find it in himself to laugh at those who burned their maps as fools.

“Speaking of which, we should probably put a little something in our bellies, too. Happily, we have a choice besides dirt,” Elf Fighter said and reached into her bag.

Goblin Slayer did likewise. When camping out on the hunt or the like, it was important to limit the consumption of provisions, but a storm like this changed things. So he took out his food, dried meat and cheese—mundane items, but he never got tired of them. Then there was some hard-baked bread and a canteen of grape wine thinned with water. That would be enough.

He glanced at what the elf had produced from her bag and saw that it was much the same. The main difference was that instead of meat, she had dried nuts and berries.

In spite of himself, under his helmet Goblin Slayer widened his eyes at the sight—for what he saw there was not what his master had told him.

“…I heard that elves eat a provision of baked bread.”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop it.

This time it was Elf Fighter’s turn to goggle. Then she laughed, a beautiful sound like the chime of a bell.

“Oh, please!” she said. “Making that stuff isn’t the work of an instant, and we sure don’t share it with humans.”

“I see.”

“Darn straight. Heh…heh-heh! Do I look important enough for that stuff? Gee, I’m honored.”

Goblin Slayer wasn’t sure what was so funny, but the elf continued to laugh like an innocent girl. He simply watched her across the light of the flames.

“My master,” he said softly. “He said he ate so much of it he nearly got sick of it.”

“He must have been some real big shot.” It would have been perfectly understandable if she had brushed this off as simple boasting on his part, but instead she accepted it earnestly.

The conversation ended somewhat abruptly.

There was the sound of the lonely wind, the thunder, the pounding rain, and the crackling fire. The leaves hushing. The forest itself whispering. The dark. The blackness of the stone. All of them mingled together and seemed to press in on him, as if the whole Four-Cornered World were there all at once.

How small, how small he was in the middle of it all, crouched under the branches of a giant tree.

Goblin Slayer’s breath hissed through his visor without his thinking about it. The elf’s ears twitched.

“I’d love to hear your story, but I guess it would be cruel to make you talk right now. Hmm…” She was hugging her knees, no longer leaning against the tree trunk; she gazed into the fire and murmured, “Let’s see… Maybe I’ll tell you the story of a certain wizard.”

“A wizard?”

“Yeah,” she replied, her voice quiet. “A real notorious one.”

The man appeared in the village suddenly.

He must have had quite a journey, because his cloak was covered in dust; he was filthy, downright scruffy.

His attire was unmistakably that of a wizard who had undergone the rigorous training of the Academy. And yet he didn’t carry the staff that was proof of one’s graduation from that esteemed institution. Had he never received one? Or had it been broken? Or perhaps he had lost it after leaving the school?

To the bitter end, they never knew the answers to those questions.

The people of the village welcomed the man gladly.

“It is our pride to give lodging to any who ask a place to stay for the night.”

The great tree did not reject any who sought to shelter under its branches.

Everything in the four corners was there, and in the truest sense, there was little that could be owned.

One of the few exceptions to this, perhaps, was knowledge. From that perspective, the visitor could be said to have been a rich man.

He had packed his head full to bursting with knowledge, until it almost seemed to swell with everything he knew.

“And it seemed to overflow, you see…”

Elf Fighter said she well remembered how much he spoke.

They welcomed the traveler, made a place for him, and prepared a banquet. And all the while, the man talked.

He did indeed call himself a wizard.

He claimed that he was seeking a way to make a better life-form.

The words came in a torrent, unasked for by anyone else, and allowing no one else to get a word in edgewise.

Not that anyone wished to. This feast was laid to welcome the traveler.

For all that, the man appeared eminently normal.

What prompted the change?

One of the people at the feast reached out to a branch of the tree and spoke to it and received berries.

The man said, “You give orders to the trees. What True Word did you use?”

But the answer was: none. This was a blessing from nature, a gift given in affection, and not in obedience to a True Word.

“Boy, he really didn’t like that.”

The man’s attitude changed completely.

It was naught but True Words that controlled all the laws of everything in nature; therefore, it must have been a True Word, he said. He would not listen to the elves’ explanations nor the stories of their elders.

“Why not?” Goblin Slayer asked.

“Apparently, because ‘I do not believe it to be so.’”

Goblin Slayer went quiet at that, then grunted softly.

The storm continued to rage.

“Is that,” he asked, “not the thinking of a fool?”

“Yeah… Maybe so.” The blue-haired woman sounded terribly tired, but she smiled slightly. It was a weak smile. “Be careful, kid. Wherever the likes of him goes, he leaves only death and ashes in his wake.”

“Does that man have some connection to goblins?”

“I’m saying we might run into someone like him where we’re going.”

“…It sounds to me like you’re saying you hope we will.”

“…”

The elf didn’t answer.

Instead, still hugging her knees, she leaned back and bumped her head against the tree she had so recently been leaning on. “All right, I think it’s time for you to go to bed. Don’t mind me. Elves don’t need a lot of sleep…”

And with that, she ushered the conversation to an end, as if she had never shared the story of which she had only just spoken.

She narrowed her eyes and added one thing. Something she’d once said with a certain measure of pride.

“I can sleep with one eye open.”

Their attempt to gather information in the village did not yield much. Not because the villagers shunned the adventurers who had appeared in the middle of a storm—but they were suspicious. Three parties had already passed through their village and not come back; what was a fourth doing here and composed of just two people?

Nonetheless, when they showed their tags proving their ranks, things changed; everyone was all smiles and shared what they knew.

It was simply that, as it transpired, they did not know very much.

In the forest, there was a cave of some description, like a bear’s den. And there were goblins near it.

That was all.

It looked dangerous, so the villagers had been avoiding it. They wished the adventurers would deal with the goblins before the monsters attacked the village.

Just exactly what Goblin Slayer had been told at the Adventurers Guild.

And what was more…

“Something feels wrong,” he muttered as they hiked down a hunter’s trail in the pouring rain.

“How so?”

He didn’t answer Elf Fighter’s question but summoned all his meager knowledge and experience.

“You should always be honing your instinct.”

That was what his master had been forever telling him—and the old rhea would look for any chance to ambush him and beat him if he left an opening.

“What’s instinct? It’s just another name for experience!”

Goblin Slayer studiously compared his experiences of hunting goblins, slight though it was, with the current situation.

Then he gave his conclusion:

“The village has not been attacked.”

Three adventuring parties. The fact that they had not returned home suggested they were dead.

If there were enough goblins to do that, then to him, it seemed impossible that they would not grow cocky. There was the possibility that the adventurers had inflicted grievous losses on the horde, but if so, that was all the more reason for the goblins to help themselves to the local resources. Even if they didn’t attack the village en masse, there was no reason one or two of them shouldn’t go out to make some trouble.

And yet the villagers said that no livestock had been abducted, and nothing had even been stolen.

“…I once dealt with a horde led by a goblin lord, but this is different from that as well.”

Something is going on.

Ultimately, that was all Goblin Slayer’s experience allowed him to know.

It barely counted as “knowing,” in his mind. He felt pitiful, offering this half-baked conclusion.

“All right, next look down at your feet,” the blue-haired elf said. She sounded just like she had the night before, almost as if she were offering guidance to a young child.

There were footprints on the ground. The earth was muddy from the rain, but the tracks hadn’t been washed away; they stood out clearly.

At first, he thought they were bear prints. But did bears walk quite like this? He didn’t think so.

Maybe this is instinct, too.

In other words, experience. All that his sister had taught him when he was so young was helping to keep him alive now.

One thing he did know: Bears did not have six legs.

“I knew it. Everything you do does have the aura of Chaos about it.” Elf Fighter grinned, and her smile was like the crescent moon floating in the twilight sky.

Her hand was already on the sword at her back. Belatedly, Goblin Slayer likewise reached for the blade at his hip.

There’s something there.

It wasn’t that he could “read auras,” whatever that meant. But he had an elf beside him, and he saw that her sharp senses had detected something.

So beneath his helmet, his eyes swept from left to right behind the narrow visor, and he dropped his stance.

It was his usual posture: ready for goblins to come from any direction at any time.

But instead, they heard thudding footsteps, audible even over the storm.

In the underbrush, beyond the mist kicked up by the rain. Snapping branches as it went, it appeared.

“…!”

Goblin Slayer caught his breath. The first thing he saw was a lion’s head—the first time in his life he was seeing such a creature.

Next, there were six thick legs, like a bear’s. Following that, a torso encased in what looked like a tortoiseshell. And finally, a snake’s tail.

It was a monster—the very definition of the term.

“CHIIIII—MEEEEEERRRRRRAAA…!”

It opened its great fanged jaws, emitting a beastly howl along with fetid breath.

“A tarasque!” Elf Fighter cried excitedly. “Or, eh, something like it!”

At which moment, the lion’s mouth opened and spat a column of white flame.

If one were to seek a metaphor for this, it was like a rain of fire.

The flames from the lion’s mouth traced a broad arc, pouring down on the two adventurers from overhead. The conflagration seared such that it burned even amid the storm. But what really made Goblin Slayer’s eyes go wide under his helmet was how the fire had a flying spray.

Naturally, he jumped back and raised his shield to protect against the flames. Nonetheless, it struck the shield and seemed to cling; he felt covered in it, and it enveloped the shield in flames.

“What is this?!” he cried.

“Burning water!” shouted Elf Fighter, who had evaded so neatly that not a drop had gotten on her. “Roll on the ground!”

Is there such a thing?

This was not like fire powder. It had an unpleasant odor. Almost like oil. If he had a chance, he would try using it.

If I have a chance.

Even as the thought went through his mind, Goblin Slayer flung himself down on the drenched ground.

He was not averse to getting covered in mud—he had gotten used to that five years ago—and he pressed his shield into the ground and rolled around.

Only much later would he learn how it worked: Fire sprites were kin to wind sprites, and the earth sprites chased the wind sprites away.

“…It’s out…!”

Goblin Slayer gave the scorched surface of his shield an experimental smack. It might have been reinforced with leather and metal, but it was never meant to repel fire. Without it, however, he would have been cooked in his armor.

It was good equipment. This was thanks to the workshop boss and also the elf’s words of advice. It was always other people who kept him alive.

“…!”

Not wasting another second, Goblin Slayer rolled to his feet and faced the monster.

“Shaaa!”

A gleaming blade flashed through the rain—Elf Fighter hacked at the monster’s great legs, cutting off its bearlike claws.

It was a brilliant display.

The creature might have had six legs, but when it was on the ground, all of them could not attack at once.

Still, four of the massive paws lashed out in every direction. Was it possible to dance one’s way among them?

He did not believe he would be capable of it, but the lithe woman before him managed it.

If a single blow had connected with her, it would have shattered her bones, burst her organs, and left her graceful body a gory mess.

She slipped past that outcome with exemplary footwork, as if she was dancing.

Line of attack: The expression Goblin Slayer had learned only a short while ago flitted through his mind.

So long as you did not place yourself along the line of attack, the enemy blade would never touch you…

“…Hrm!”

The way his body moved reflexively was certainly instinct—the gift of experience. The instant he saw the shadow squirming behind the woman, his body raised his sword of its own accord and flung it.

The long blade sliced through the storm, struck its target true—and bounced off.

But at least he prevented the monster’s long snake tail from attacking her from behind.

“Good work!”

Elf Fighter chortled, showing her teeth, her eyes quivering and her blue hair streaming out behind her. Her slim legs kicked out and nudged the sword, which had lodged in the ground, like a small bird passing along a branch. It spun through the air, and then it was back in his hand. He gripped it tightly.

Beneath his helmet, he let out a breath, which fogged and drifted past his visor.

“What is that thing?” Goblin Slayer grunted. “It’s no goblin.”

“It’s a tarasque. One of the most terrible monsters around. It’s a serious threat, not just in the four corners but to the entire multiverse.”

The elf sounded cool as anything, delivering her answer even as she hopped backward and to one side.

It was only after hearing what she said next that he realized this was the equal and opposite reaction to having kicked the sword.

“Or anyway, it’s like one. You can tell that bastard doesn’t know what a real tarasque is. ’Cause they’re a kind of dragon…”

“That bastard?”

“The guy from the story last night.” Elf Fighter snorted—elegantly yet without hiding her contempt. “Although he would probably ignore that fact and whine that this is a real tarasque.”

“CHIIIII—MEEEEEERRRRRRAAA…!”

The monster had gained some distance and composed itself, and it showed no sign of being any less hostile than before. From its hideous lionlike maw, it spewed forth the flaming liquid again, singeing its jaws and tongue as it did so.

Its eyes perceived the adventurers, but they were cloudy; they lacked the spark of life in them.

“In the end, it’s nothing but a flesh golem, a bunch of dead bodies all stitched together. It’s got a stomach full of burning water—that’s all.”

“What does that mean for how we kill it?”

“We can’t kill it. Because it’s not alive.”

The blue-haired elf made it sound so simple as her beloved blade wavered in the dim light.

Within his helmet, Goblin Slayer’s eyes narrowed. It was an expression of thought, but Elf Fighter might have taken it to be displeasure or discontent. Her wise, honed look softened for a moment, the corners of her lips turning up.

“So we break it instead. Tear off its legs, cut it into pieces, and smash it until there’s nothing left,” she declared.

“Understood,” Goblin Slayer replied immediately, giving no thought to how difficult a task that would be.

The elf’s eyes widened the slightest bit—but there was no reason to be surprised.

He knew the method. All that remained then was to do or do not. And he had long ago thrown away the choice to do not.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

His hand was there. Always there, in his pocket.

So his master would say, then hide himself with a magnificent trick of concealment—before sending him flying with a kick and raining abuse down on him.

Goblin Slayer still did not know the secret to how his master made himself disappear. He did not think he could do the same.

He thought it was only natural that he should be laughed at. The only thing he had going for him was guts.

But here, making a two-pronged attack with the elf woman, he could at least execute a pincer movement on this monster, whatever it was called.

“CHIIIIIII…!!”

“Shaaaa!”

“Hrrrr…?!”

Elf Fighter’s sword sent one paw flying, then two, while Goblin Slayer just managed to parry the tail with his own blade. He felt as if he had been struck in the arm. But even though his hand tingled as if it had been hit by lightning, it wasn’t enough to dull his movements. The bone was okay.

I can fight.

That fact, at the very least, was enough for him. He could just hope for more.

“RAAAGHHH!!”

The enemy had three weapons: its six bear paws, its winding snake tail, its burning water, and its fangs. Four weapons, then.

With claws, fangs, tail, and fire breath, it was as good as a dragon, but it was still merely a concoction of dead bodies. A dragon’s intelligence surpassed imagination, but this beast did not seem to be that smart.

It swiped at the woman in front of it with its paws, waved its tail around trying to get to Goblin Slayer, and turned its head from side to side, hoping to spit flames.

As long as it twisted and turned, trying to target two enemies at once, they could ignore everything north of its neck.

In other words, the enemy had two weapons.

As the thoughts plunged through Goblin Slayer’s mind, he saw that the snake tail was indeed a snake. It was an entire snake that sprouted from the monster’s behind.

In other words, it, too, had a head.

He met the thing with his shield as it struck at him, fangs bared.

“…Nhh!”

He could fight. But that was all he was doing.

His shield arm was numb. The rain sapped the heat from his body. His feet were caught in the mud.

Elf Fighter danced a sword dance that didn’t seem to leave so much as a footprint in the muck. She didn’t even care that the creature was trying to crush her, just kept dancing around its relentless attacks.

At this rate, he was going to be the first one to go out of this fight—if he didn’t do something.

“…I have a hand. A plan.”

Beneath his helmet, he all but took a bite of his balaclava, which was soaked through with rainwater. He wrung moisture out of the cotton, wetting his mouth and throat and steadying his breath. There was a plan. There always was.

“CHHHIMMMMM!!”

The monster’s tail surged up again, the snake striking out. It was almost as if its eyes could see.

Can they see?

A hair’s breadth; he rolled to one side, dodging the attack, as he tried desperately to think.

This monster, he was told, was already dead, just stitched-together corpses. It probably didn’t need to breathe. Probably didn’t feel pain. But what about its eyes? Its ears? Its nose?

Before he could worry about those questions any further, Goblin Slayer had already taken a projectile out of his item bag.

The snake tail—or was that the tail snake?—batted it easily out of the air, and it shattered.

A cloud of crimson powder…did not emerge.

It was the rain.

The blinding powder got wet in the downpour and fell to earth along with the eggshell, painting itself across the mud.

“Pfah…!”

With a click of his tongue, Goblin Slayer dodged the next attack. He made his breathing even again. A rookie mistake. He knew that.

So what would he do?

He took the mud he had grabbed as he rolled and threw it as hard as he could.

The snake lashed out at it, just as it had with the last projectile.

With a splorch, the mud ball burst—and covered the snake’s head.

Bereft of its target, the snake tail struck out helplessly at a nearby branch; the tree swayed with the impact.

“So it has eyes and ears but no brains!” Elf Fighter exclaimed, her joyous shout lovely even over the din of battle, even over the storm. She closed the distance with the tarasque from the front, quickly and easily. To Goblin Slayer, just for a second, she appeared to be shining.

The light of her split the darkness of the storm, a blue streak—it was her sword.

Her blue hair described an arc, and it was only then that he realized she had spun around.

The stroke seemed to cleave the air, to fly, but it could not have been longer than the length of her blade.

Yet the tip found its mark. It gouged out the eyes of the lion’s head that had been stitched to the bear’s body.

“RAAAGHHH?!?!?!”

A crossways slice, and black liquid poured like tears down the monster’s face as it howled.

Sadly, no tarasque (imitation or otherwise) would be stopped merely by the loss of its vision.

“CHIIIIIIGGGG!!!”

The creature planted its feet in the mud with such strength that its bones creaked.

Thoom. Its enormous body rose up, and there was the sound of something cracking; maybe part of its back legs had broken.

The monster didn’t even seem to care. Still it rose, keening to the heavens.

Along its jaws, they caught glimpses of something—fire of a terrible color.

“Here it comes! Dodge!”

With those words, Elf Fighter kicked off the ground and flipped easily into the air.

Belatedly, Goblin Slayer threw himself forward—directly under the beast.

When you scatter water, you don’t let it land on your feet.

Maybe it was something his sister had taught him, a way of hunting bears.

With a roar, the rain of fire erupted from the monster’s mouth, mingling with the water from the storm and all coming down.

The blue-haired elf was already higher than the jet of flame. Directly above the creature.

Not that Goblin Slayer, underneath it, saw her. He clambered up on one knee.

He braced his sword—at this moment, he regretted its strange length—against his shoulder and shoved.

The great beast shuddered, then pitched forward, trying to plant its feet on the ground.

Goblin Slayer used the momentum, stabbing into the bear torso.

He felt a tremendous shock, and then a great weight came crashing down on top of him. The marionette made of corpses, the thing created in imitation of a tarasque, was no more organic and alive inside than out.

Or maybe bears were just that heavy.

It could easily have been either, but whichever it was, Goblin Slayer was losing consciousness under the crushing pressure.

At that moment, he heard a breezy voice: “Just hang tight, kid.”

Elf Fighter’s blade seemed to cleave heaven and earth as it severed the monster’s head from its shoulders.

Goblin Slayer was drowning.

It was not a metaphor.

His flagging consciousness was revived by a stabbing cold that struck him in the face.

Water.

Rainwater. The storm. Mud.

It took him a second to realize that it was the mire created by the downpour that now pressed against him.

As filthy water flooded his helmet, he began to panic.

He tried to struggle, but the weight of the monster’s massive corpse pinned him down, kept him from moving.

My Breath ring.

He should have it. In his pouch. Should. Had he put it in there? He didn’t know. He didn’t know, but…

The earth that clogged all five of his senses was more than enough to sink him beneath the floor.

No one was coming for him. He would have to get out of this himself. And if he couldn’t, then he would die.

Death. He knew it would come one day. He had never supposed he would be the only one to avoid it.

And yet miserable though it might be, he wanted to live. To do the things he had to do.

Otherwise, why had he—?

“I said hang tight, didn’t I?”

The voice, with a touch of exasperation, was accompanied by something slim and soft brushing his neck, clasping his collar.

He was being dragged. Pulled up. Hauled out of the mud. He could breathe again.

He choked down air desperately, and with the elf woman’s help, he crawled along the ground.

All he could see were tall boots encasing long legs—her boots, now soiled for his sake.

“Gods, but you do push yourself,” Elf Fighter remarked with a chuckle from overhead. “I told you to dodge.”

“I thought that,” he said, coughing up mud, “would be the safest place.”

“First, your little fire, now this. You’re not much for thinking ahead, are you?”

He couldn’t deny it.

Instead, he groaned and flopped over on his back as the rain came down.

He wanted to tear off his helmet and his balaclava. The mud clung to them; it was hard to breathe.

He was stopped by a simple fact: There could be monsters—goblins.

His vision seemed cloudy, obscured by the haze of rainwater, but he could still see the elf, smirking at him, almost mischievous. She appeared to find it genuinely amusing to watch him flop in the mud.

“You’re walking in the desert. Suddenly you look down…”

“What?”

“It’s a riddle.” Elf Fighter laughed. “There at your feet in the desert is a tortoise.”

“A tortoise?”

“You know about them, right? Or it could be a tarasque; doesn’t really matter.”

“What about it…?”

“You flip the tortoise over on its back. It kicks and struggles, but it can’t get back on its feet. Not without your help.”

“…”

“You don’t help the tortoise. Why not?”

Goblin Slayer groaned. Then he let out a breath, and with no special emotion in his voice, he said, “Because at that time, I thought that was the necessary thing to do.”

“Probably.”

A delicate hand stretched out to him. It had no trace of mud or blood on it.

He promptly clasped it with his mud-stained glove.

The elf clasped his hand back firmly and helped lift him out of the mud.

The rain continued to fall.

They intended to forge ahead, but that didn’t mean they shouldn’t take a short rest.

Elf Fighter leaned against the monster’s corpse, watching the raindrops drip down, and then exhaled, her breath white.

If the enemy was dispatching agents into the very forest, then was there anywhere they could take a real rest? Even if they perched in the branches of the trees, who but the corpses of the birds might come after them?

And something else bothered her, too…

“What exactly do you think you’re going to do, kid?”

Her companion, freshly emerged from the muck, had drawn his knife and was approaching the monster’s corpse. The cheap metal helmet he wore obscured his expression, but it was obvious that he was exhausted. Nonetheless, he marched up to the corpse’s belly with mechanical motions and squatted down beside it.

He sure wasn’t there to give it a proper burial. The metal helmet turned slowly toward her.

“I’m going to cut open its stomach,” he said flatly. “And transfer the fire water into a waterskin.”

Indeed, in addition to his knife, he carried a deflated waterskin.

The elf wasn’t sure whether to be appalled or impressed—but either way, he was dead serious.

Even now, flames crackled around them in spite of the storm, belching forth thick black smoke. It seemed to him that this could be most useful for confronting goblins in the midst of a downpour.

As the son of a hunter, he’d learned the theory of dissecting a bear from his older sister—although this would be his first time actually doing it.

Make a cut along the flank from the crotch to the anus, then remove the internal organs—that, he seemed to recall, was how to start.

Pouring rain would help wash the blood away and tamp down the smell of it as well. The goblins would not notice it. Otherwise, he would have had to find a lake or river in which to submerge the body.

That’s right. First, I need to tie the bear’s limbs to trees with rope, to spread them wide.

The sword he’d used to stab the beast was still lodged in its chest—an old bear-hunting method, exactly as he’d been taught. Even the things to which he had only half paid attention had now saved his life repeatedly. He always wished he had listened more closely. Then he might have learned to do some of them better.

Not that he could imagine himself being better at anything than he was.

“…Okay, hold on. Just a second,” said Elf Fighter.

Indeed, even now it was true.

He was about to roll the mighty bear’s corpse with its six legs over—when the elf reached out and stopped him.

Goblin Slayer halted his work. Had he made some mistake? He couldn’t think of what that might be.

“Do you know how to handle burning water?” she asked.

“…No.”

“I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that stuff is dangerous unless you put it in an alchemist’s bottle.”

“……”

An alchemist.

Had there been any bottles of that description in the workshop of the woman he’d known? Even if there had been, they certainly were not here now.

What do I do, then?

He would have to work with what he had on hand. He had to think through what was in his pocket.

“…”

After another long moment, Goblin Slayer recommenced the dissection.

“What’s your plan?” Elf Fighter asked him.

“I don’t have a bottle,” he said. The stink of the corpse and the steam rising from the flesh washed over him, making him grimace under his helmet.

Dead, rotting worms poured out of the monster’s belly.

Well, perhaps not all of them were dead. A few still twitched and writhed or hopped in the puddles on the ground.

“But this thing must have one, yes?”

It took the blue-haired elf a quiet moment to grasp what Goblin Slayer was saying—and then she nodded. “I see. Yes, very logical.”

The tarasque-like creature spewed burning water from its jaws—which meant that somewhere within it, there must have been a bag to store the stuff.

At least, knowing him…

The man who acknowledged the rightness of nothing but what he himself made would almost certainly incorporate such an elaborate device.

Elf Fighter turned, her blue hair billowing, and then crouched down. She hugged her knees to her chest and watched Goblin Slayer work from directly beside him.

Once again, his hand stopped moving. From uncertainty this time.

“I’ve seen plenty of things you’ve never even imagined,” she said with a chuckle. An aroma wafted from her, the refreshing smell of the forest. What could it do in the face of the stench of decay coming from the body? “But there are still tons of things in this Four-Cornered World that I’ve never seen, either.”

Goblin Slayer was silent, then grunted softly, and at last said only, “I see.”

A few minutes later, he pulled out the stomach filled with burning water. He cinched off the end and hung it at his hip.

“You really think there are going to be goblins?”

The forest seemed to go on forever, as did the rain.

There was no sign or shadow of the kind of den in which goblins liked to live, and now darkness enveloped everything.

They advanced into that darkness, almost as if they were swimming through it, Goblin Slayer trailing behind the elf.

“If there aren’t, I think you ought to go home now,” Elf Fighter replied.

“No…”

Only after he spoke the word did he register that he had refused.

No—what did that even mean? That goblins would show up? Or that he didn’t want to go back and leave her here alone?

There will be goblins.

That, he suspected, was what he was trying to say. It clarified the matter in his own mind.

“…I think goblins will be there,” he said.

“With a monster like that wandering around?”

“Exactly because of it.”

Huff. Huff. His breath fogged out from between the slats of his visor.

“Probably,” he muttered—having thought back on his experience to date.

Probably. It was not as certain as was the ground under his feet as he pressed forward.

“They assume that if they follow creatures like this, they’ll find ripe opportunities…,” he added.

He had yet to encounter goblins serving another kind of creature. There was whoever had brought the fire powder to the goblin lord’s cave. But what could he have said about the subject if he had not had that experience?

Goblin Slayer knew. He had known for five years.

“They were in the Demon Lord’s army,” he said. “They have no reason not to follow others.”

Be it a Demon Lord, a dark elf, a warlock, or a goblin lord.

To goblins, there could hardly be a real difference among them.

Just as there was hardly a difference which village they would attack next.

So long as there was food and women and entertainment, that was enough.

In their own eyes, it was always they themselves who were most important.

That was what goblins were.

“So…”

“So it’s not impossible that he could have goblins serving him, huh?” Elf Fighter said.

Goblin Slayer couldn’t see her face as she marched ahead of him.

Then again, even had he been in front, he would not have turned around. Unless they were walking side by side, he would never have seen her face.

“He might use goblins to his advantage, to get what he wants.” Thus, Goblin Slayer didn’t see the expression on her face as she spoke. “So in the end, he’s no better than a goblin himself.”

There in the midst of the downpour, the blue-haired elf came to an abrupt halt.

Goblin Slayer looked up. Ahead of them, a cave entrance yawned in the middle of the forest.

Standing in front of it, looking supremely bored, were two goblin guards.

“What do you think?”

The words came naturally to his lips.

He crouched in the undergrowth, trying not to breathe. Thankfully, his breath didn’t fog.

Maybe that just went to show how cold his body was. He was somewhat concerned about getting stiff.

“Right, then. I think the best plan will be to snuff out those two guards sooner or later.”

He and the blue-haired elf appeared to be on the same page in that regard.

The goblins held a sword and a short spear, respectively. They would lose out to Goblin Slayer’s full-length sword. That sword had not only been crushed by the tarasque but had even pierced its flesh. He was just lucky it was still shaped like a sword at all. The very fact that it hadn’t shattered at that moment practically qualified it as a masterwork.

He silently gave thanks to the workshop owner who had created a mass-produced item that didn’t seem mass-produced at all.

He also now saw where he could exchange it for a new weapon. This was the time to use it up.

He hadn’t reached these conclusions in some kind of logical fashion. He simply knew that he would take out one of the guards, then jump on the other, and if he wasn’t fast enough, the elf would help him.

With that and only that in mind, he began to raise his weapon…

“Okay, hold on.”

Elf Fighter, as she had so often, stopped him, sounding terribly relaxed about it.

Without quite meaning to, he turned his metal helmet to look at her. She gave him a quick wave of her palm and said, “Don’t be too hasty.”

Her expression was gentle, and the distinct edge he’d heard when she whispered earlier was gone without a trace. She lounged in a bush to keep the rain off, as comfortably as if it were her own bedroom. “Wouldn’t be very good for us if we killed them just to have the change of guard show up, would it?” she said breezily.

If new guards showed up right after they killed these ones, it would only make more work for them. If they made their move immediately after the guard changed, it would buy them that much more time.

Goblin Slayer grunted softly and considered it, then slowly shook his head from side to side.

“Goblins aren’t that diligent,” he said.

“Then we just wait for them to start goofing off,” Elf Fighter replied before whispering, “Don’t know how many hundreds of years it’s been, but from that perspective, it’s just a few hours.”

Goblin Slayer didn’t quite comprehend the meaning of the elf’s whispered words by the time she said, “You get as ambitious as all that after just a few years, kid?”

The question left him silent. Three years. Five years. The five years he had spent on this.

The five years in which a child who had survived begged for teaching and was formed into the shape he now had, be it ever so rough.

Was that something he could boast about?

After a long moment he replied, “No.”

“Then let’s wait.”

So the two of them hid in the bushes, letting the time pass. The rain and wind only beat harder, enclosing them and wiping out all sounds and smells.

He was listening to the rain slap against his helmet when suddenly he heard something move beside him. He realized the elf had retrieved some dried berries from her pouch and was eating them.

Taking a page from her book, he poured some watered-down grape wine through the slats of his visor, into his mouth, and tossed in some dried apricots as well.

It was poor sustenance, as such things went, but the effect was dramatic. He felt his pulse in his hands and feet, and it almost seemed he could hear the blood rushing through his body. Heat traveled through him, and his vision cleared.

Until that moment, in fact, he hadn’t realized how hazy his sight had seemed. It almost felt as if the world that met his eyes was brighter than it had been before.

“Looks like you were just about in the grip of the god of sunstroke,” said Elf Fighter, who grasped what he was feeling with just a glance. She chuckled.

“Yes.”

“You’ll need to do better about that in the future, but hey, don’t worry about it. That deity especially likes the dedicated types.”

“Right.”

There was all they said, and then the conversation stopped. Time itself seemed to cease flowing, and he wasn’t even sure if it was morning or night. All he knew was the black sky and the wind and the rain. That was everything, and he was like a rock.

It was just a few minutes, or hours, or perhaps days or years.

When change came, it came without preamble, almost anticlimactic.

“GOORRG!”

“BBRR?! GROORGB!!”

Two goblins shuffled out of the cave, and the ones in the rain lit into them. It was obvious they were saying something like: You’re late! or Hurry it up!

In any case, it was the way of goblins to care about nothing but themselves and to assume everything else was less than they.

“In that respect, he’s much like them,” Elf Fighter muttered with profound amusement, and then she stood up. Her blue hair happened to brush Goblin Slayer’s helmet.

A beat later, he rose, too, slowly spinning the sword in his hand.

His throw and the fighter’s approach seemed to happen at almost equal speed.

“GRG?!”

“GOORGB?!”

“Shaaa!”

The sword went spinning end over end through the air and lodged itself in the skull of one of the goblins, spraying its modest contents everywhere. As the body collapsed, spewing brains like snot, the other goblin’s head went flying. Elf Fighter had drawn her sword and decapitated it in a single smooth motion.

“GRBBG?!”

“GBBRG…!!”

The two remaining goblins didn’t move. They couldn’t.

Were they confused or scared? Maybe they didn’t grasp what was happening. Maybe they were excited by the sight of an elf woman.

If there was any way of knowing the truth, it was lost forever in the next instant.

Two bodies, dispatched with strokes of the sword, fell to the ground, the splashes hardly audible over the rain.

It had been the work of only one or two turns to eliminate four goblins from the four-cornered board.

“…”

Only then did Goblin Slayer finally shuffle out of the underbrush. He watched the woman flick the blood off her sword and return it to the scabbard on her back.

“I don’t think you need me,” he said.

“Don’t be silly. Hmph.” Elf Fighter snorted, and even that looked elegant somehow. “This is our adventure, isn’t it? The two of us.”

“…”

Goblin Slayer didn’t answer. This was not an adventure. It couldn’t be.

“…It’s a goblin hunt,” he remarked.

“I should say it is.”

Once again, Goblin Slayer didn’t respond. He only, in silence, fished the goblins’ weapons out of the mud and inspected them.

He was not looking for fine quality. If he could kill one or two more with them, that would be enough. A goblin weapon could not be expected to do the same work as a blade capable of crushing a goblin’s skull in, brains and all.

After a moment, he decided on the sword that one of them had been carrying and shoved it into his scabbard. Then he took several of the daggers dangling at the goblins’ hips and put them on his own belt.

He could hardly be called ready for anything. It was always so.

“You good?” the blue-haired elf asked.

“Yes,” he said shortly and got to his feet.

Before him was the entrance to a cave, just as always, leading down into the abyss.

Goblin Slayer took a decisive step into the darkness. Elf Fighter followed him.

Perhaps…

Perhaps, years later, they would have taken some other action.

With more experience to his name, Goblin Slayer would accumulate knowledge of goblin habits and customs, a little bit at a time.

Goblins believed that they were the best and most important. When things didn’t go their way, they got upset, angry, and then they wanted to hurt somebody.

Like an elf, for example.

Elves were beautiful and brilliant—practically on another plane compared to goblins.

Goblins did not like that. Those elves thought they were so great. The goblins would shatter them.

This was the moment when Goblin Slayer learned just how sensitive goblins were to the smell of an elf woman.

“…Hrm.” Goblin Slayer grunted the moment he had taken his first step into the cave, torch in hand.

Something…

Something was wrong.

The fetid, rotten air, the moist earth and mold, the filth, the corpse of something or other…the atmosphere of a goblin nest.

At the moment, the storm added humidity to the mix, but there was nothing remotely different from usual.

Yet something felt so slightly off to Goblin Slayer, and he stopped cold.

This is instinct, he heard his master cackle in his mind.

Instinct was just another name for experience and—so he was told—could very much be developed and honed.

Goblin Slayer never once thought that his own instinct was anything to shout about.

But still, he was not foolish enough to take that intuition lightly.

He stopped and took his sword—the chipped one he’d liberated from the goblin corpse—into his hand with a twirl of the blade.

“The aura of Chaos,” a breezy voice whispered by his ear. It tickled his earlobe, as if he wasn’t even wearing his metal helmet and cotton padding.

Then there was the fresh air that brushed his nose. It wreathed the elf, and it had no place in this cave.

Elves were practically on another plane compared to humans.

He shifted his eyes behind his visor. The blue-haired elf had her hand on the sword at her back.

“Aura,” he echoed.

“Heh—they do exist, you know, in this world.”

There was a clear ringing of metal as she drew her sword, a sound so beautiful that it, too, was out of place in a goblin den.

The lovely, elegant blade appeared in Elf Fighter’s hand as if by magic, and she calmly stood ready with it. Her long ears gave the slightest twitch.

Some people disparagingly compared elves’ ears to donkeys’, but to him, they looked like gorgeous blades of grass.

This woman didn’t seem to show the slightest distaste at stepping into a goblin den, with all its filth and foulness. She almost seemed used to it, which made Goblin Slayer question the value of his own existence. She could surely have handled this all on her own with no problem.

“And another thing,” Elf Fighter said. “There’s a strange sound.”

“A sound?”

“Yeah. It’s a ways off, but it’s like…how do I put this?” Her booted feet stepped on some leaf mold—leaving no footprints—and she peered deep into the cave. “It’s like when humans cook that greasy meat they use for food…”

The sound of sizzling bacon!

“The wall!” he cried.

“Ah, that makes sense.”

Goblin Slayer’s and Elf Fighter’s reactions were speed itself.

It was a narrow corridor. They positioned themselves about five feet apart, so that their weapons wouldn’t interfere with each other.

At that moment, there was a thud, and the earthen wall collapsed, and a dark green tsunami crashed over the two of them.

He didn’t know how the goblins had dug through the rock—with some tools or perhaps a spell he didn’t know—but he strongly suspected this wall had been thinned out so it could be used for just such a surprise attack.

He brought up his small shield to ward off the shower of dust and dirt and quickly struck out with his sword.

“One!”

He stabbed the goblin foolish enough—there was no such thing as a brave goblin—to be in the vanguard, who tried to attack through the blinding curtain of dust.

He kicked the thrashing corpse away, freeing his blade and sending the unfortunate creature tumbling backward into its companions.

“GROOGB?!”

“GBBG! GROGB!!”

The greenskin army rolled together into a big lump like a dumpling, falling all over one another.

The first thing they did was upbraid their stupid, dim-witted fellow for getting in their way. It was the manner of goblins to see only what was in front of them and to think of nothing else. They would never abide anyone who put them at a disadvantage.

Having wasted a precious moment slapping the dead goblin aside and braying at him, the second goblin also died.

“GRGGBB?!”

“Two.” Muttering the number under his helmet, Goblin Slayer slid his feet forward so as not to be swallowed up by the greenskin wave.

The monsters’ collective nose had been bloodied, but far be it for goblins to wait for their companions to get back up; they would sooner trample them underfoot.

He could not allow himself to be surrounded by the onrushing horde and taken from behind. Not even if he did have a metal helmet.

Goblin Slayer’s eyes moved relentlessly under his helmet, and he used his torch to keep the monsters at bay, rebuffing their attacks and striking back himself.

The line of attack.

He was blessed with not only the chance to learn but also to put into practice what he had learned.

It would save his life. Good fortune.

“Three…!”

“GORB?!”

He avoided his foe’s attack to the outside, then filled the space that appeared with his shield.

The edge shattered the goblin’s cheek.

No.

Not yet. The skull was tough, of course, and the wound was superficial. Critical, yes. But the creature was not yet dead.

That might mean a difference of seconds or tens of seconds. It was a big difference. Worth spending a turn to eliminate.

Goblin Slayer stepped forward quickly and shredded the creature’s throat with his sword.

The blade groaned. Goblin Slayer had never expected much from it or trusted it. He let go of the hilt without a second thought.

Instead, he grabbed the club from the goblin’s hand, let the monster drop to the ground spitting blood, and turned to the next one.

“GRROOGB! GOBOGG!!”

“GROG!”

No matter where he lashed out or how, he would hit a goblin. That was good. But he had no spare capacity to think of anything but himself.

Was she safe? Probably. All he heard were goblin death rattles, not the screams of a woman.

That was as far as his thinking got before he felt a wave of anger and repulsion at his own irresponsibility.

Who do I think I am?

He channeled his anger into the club in his right hand, letting it out by crushing a goblin skull. Unlike his shield, the club smashed the goblin’s head like a pomegranate, brains spattering everywhere.

“GOROGGB?!”

With a feeling like his mind had gone blank for an instant, Goblin Slayer returned to reality.

He, for one, did not have the wherewithal to be thinking about pointless things at that moment.

“Four and…five!”

“GBBGGGG?!!”

He shoved the club into the mouth of an oncoming goblin and felt the creature’s teeth break. He kept driving it forward into the monster’s throat. Goblin Slayer slammed the goblin against the wall—thankfully not so thin here—pinning him by the back of his head; the greenskin died when his brain stem was crushed.

How many left?

The horde was probably ten goblins or so. Goblin Slayer steadied his breathing, and swinging his torch—now his one remaining weapon—he looked around.

“Lot of trouble, so many of ’em, huh?”

Amid the nauseating scene of gore, he saw a beautiful woman, who looked completely out of place. Her blue hair billowed behind her, and she held a sword in her hand. At her feet lay a pile of goblin corpses.

It was like she was traveling through an empty field. He’d heard the metaphor somewhere, and now he knew what it meant. A mere horde of goblins could hardly slow her down as she walked along.

Goblin Slayer let out a great breath. “Amazing work,” he said.

“What this?” The blue-haired elf gave a self-deprecating chuckle, then flourished her sword to get the blood off. That simple motion was enough to send the filthy goblin blood spraying through the air, clearing the shining blade.

A sword of elvish make—Goblin Slayer suddenly remembered the shortsword of which his master had been so proud.

“A sword is simply a way to kill things,” said Elf Fighter. “Trying to make it all about art and theory is the mark of an amateur.”

“Hmm.”

“You swing your sword, the other guy dies. Any other technique, when you get right down to it, is just a big show.”

With that, the blue-haired elf frowned, although she had said nothing to be embarrassed about. She gave a slight shake of her head, her blue hair leaving the slightest trace in the darkness.

“That’s just my take, mind you. Not every elf would agree with me.”

“Yes.”

“My enemy is precisely a guy who assumes everyone should agree with him. I don’t want to cut you down.” It was hard to tell from her tone if the elf was joking. “What say we get going? If they’ve attacked us, I think we can assume we’ve been noticed.”

“Yes,” Goblin Slayer agreed.

But when and where did they notice us?

He was a warrior, hardly versed in spy craft, but he knew goblins’ passive perception should not have been great. He had never been discovered so quickly on any of his other goblin hunts.

The torch—a light source. He knew that it might be seen, but they’d come too quickly to have set up an ambush through the wall only after spotting his light.

He hadn’t masked his scent this time. Was that it? But the rain and the mud should have eliminated the smell of metal.

So there was something that the rain and the mud couldn’t hide. What was it?

Suddenly, the half-elf girl, her face already murky in his memory, passed through his mind.

She was a member of another party that had accompanied him on a goblin hunt. Then, too, the goblins had responded with unusual alacrity. Now there was a blue-haired elf before him. The pleasant scent of the forest wafted off her.

If it was pleasant to people…what was it to goblins?

“An elf?” he mused.

“Hmm?” Elf Fighter said.

“No…” Goblin Slayer shook his head quietly. “It’s nothing.”

This was more experience.

He privately promised himself he would remember this.

Not that he ever expected to have another opportunity to go on a goblin hunt with an elf.

The two adventurers advanced through the cave like a lightning bolt.

“GOROGB!!”

“GBB! GROOBG?!”

There was more than one path. He did not think the goblins had excavated them. The tunnels took crazy patterns through the earth. A Rock Eater’s leftovers, perhaps.

From the right, from the left, the goblins came at them in small groups, trying to slow them down, but their swords carved a path—literally.

The two were like a bow shot, like a whistling arrow, with Elf Fighter the arrowhead. She walked without hesitation.

“It’s easy enough. I’ve got a pretty good guess what path that jerk would take,” she said and laughed as if it was nothing. There was only one route that a person could traverse without difficulty—and that had footprints.

However…

Goblin Slayer felt he understood. Even he, with his mere modicum of knowledge and experience, could offer an answer: No one was eager to walk through a goblin habitat, even if it was their own home base. If anyone were, it could only be someone with a goblin’s level of intelligence and class.

“I can almost say for a fact that he wouldn’t even picture himself ducking his head and crawling through cramped side tunnels.”

After a moment, Goblin Slayer remarked, “You seem to know a lot about him.”

“We’ve known each other a long time. Sadly.”

This long acquaintance clearly had not endeared her to “him”—to whoever lurked in this cave.

“He’s rotten to the core.”

Elf Fighter flicked her ears and scowled when she heard the lewd screeching from behind them.

Goblin Slayer skidded to a halt, then turned and threw his shortsword in a single motion.

“GRAARGB?!”

It pierced the throat of the goblin who had been coming up behind them; the creature choked on his own burbling blood and died.

The goblin who had appeared in front of them to block their path at the same moment expired in a geyser of dark blood.

Goblin Slayer didn’t know how many attacks this was now. The goblins from behind never seemed to slow down.

Elf Fighter lifted an ax from the corpse in front of her and tossed it casually to Goblin Slayer. “If we keep ignoring the side passages, the goblins are going to keep coming up on us. And if we have to keep fighting them, we’re going to get tired.”

This was how dungeons worked—something Goblin Slayer had no way of knowing.

It was a kill zone designed by the dungeon’s master with malice aforethought to slaughter any intruders. A ritual site to accumulate the deaths of any adventurers or monsters who wandered in, to bind them up and steal them away and make them the dungeon master’s own strength.

The dungeon of the Death, once said to be the deepest dungeon in the world, had threatened to swallow up the whole Four-Cornered World.

This one was just a pale, pitiful imitation of it.

The aura that emanated from it was that of Chaos—no, it was the smell of the dead ash that sought to burn up the world.

“Goblin hunts are your specialty, kid. What should we do?”

The elf’s whisper was almost mischievous. Goblin Slayer grunted softly and didn’t respond right away.

In his opinion, she hardly needed to ask him. She could cut her way out of here with no trouble at all. And yet she had asked anyway, meaning that he felt he had to answer.

He didn’t have that many cards in his hand, and the thought left him feeling absolutely pathetic.

But I do still have my hand.

It was always there in his pocket.

“…I can’t be certain,” he said quietly as they rushed through the gloomy cavern.

He reached into his item pouch and pulled out one of the projectiles he had readied in advance. He lit it on fire with his torch, and without even waiting for it to smoke slightly, he pitched it down one of the side passages.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Hmm?” Elf Fighter grinned, clearly intrigued, and decided not to waste any time standing there. She raced ahead, and he followed at a run. As they went, he lit and threw his bombs down each tunnel they passed. Projectiles he had made with no knowledge, on the basis of hearsay and what he had read in the books the mage had left to him.

It was an improvised bit of equipment, highly dubious as something to trust their lives to. But the heavy, thick, sinking smoke—a poisonous gas produced by sulfur and pine tar—had its effect.

He did not know what expression the blue-haired elf, running in front of him, had on her face. But her unexpected, whispered words sounded surprisingly satisfied—almost merry.

“That’ll take care of some would-be pursuers,” she said.

“It seems so.” Goblin Slayer nodded without slowing down.

If he lived to go home again, he would use this item in the future as well.

Probably—he thought as he watched the beautiful blue hair bounce on the woman’s back as she went ahead of him—probably, if she was joyous, it was because this meant fewer obstacles to stand in their way. Now she did not need to worry about the side passages or what might come from behind but could focus on pressing toward her goal.

I envy her.

The thought was sudden and terribly selfish. His goal was not whatever was deep in this cave but the goblins who gathered to the left and right and behind. He had chosen to face them of his own volition. He could not then be dissatisfied by his choice.

“Hey, kid.”

The refreshing voice was tossed back to him suddenly from ahead. Goblin Slayer, who had found himself looking at his feet in the darkness somewhere along the line, abruptly looked up.

“When you’re done hunting goblins, you want to go to the west?”

“The west?”

“Yeah. The Four-Cornered World is a big place, and known space is just a tiny part of it…”

Elf Fighter stopped talking and cut down a goblin who appeared at that moment with nary a sound.

She ran past the corpse. Goblin Slayer followed. He kept looking from side to side, throwing projectiles into the holes and tunnels. There was no sense that the smoke was coming up toward them. How far down did it sink? Endlessly, to the depths of the earth.

“The frontier is just a word people use. There’s always something beyond it. Right?” she added.

“I…”

Even he didn’t know how he was about to respond.

“My business here will be done pretty soon. After that, I wouldn’t mind hanging out with you.”

“…”

“Well, give it some thought.”

Before he could say anything to that, they emerged into a large open space, a great cavern in the rock. He saw one figure. Two.

Mages, he thought at first—but it was not so. Each of them held a sword.

Each of them also had long ears like grass—but the left and right ears were not the same length. When he looked closer, he saw that something was…wrong with the arms and legs, too. They seemed mismatched.

They were elves—marionettes inexpertly stitched together from a panoply of body parts.

There was the faintest sound of water. Rain? No. Not even the storm outside should have been able to penetrate this deep into the cave.

Goblin Slayer held up his torch, the firelight glinting faintly off the ground in the dim cavern.

Underground water—maybe a spring or the tributary of some river. Or maybe someone had brought it here by force. Whichever it was, dark water spread out in the vast space.

The water was very much not what caused Goblin Slayer to catch his breath, however.

“…What are those?” he asked.

“Magical beings,” Elf Fighter spat. “At least, that’s what he would call them. They’re just corpse golems. They don’t even rise to the level of zombies.”

“Zombies…”

He knew of those creatures by name, at least. Though he had never seen one.

Goblin Slayer was less interested in unknown monsters, however, than he was in the threat that stood before him at that moment. If these were just sewn-together corpses, then…

“…They’re the same as that whatever it was earlier,” he said.

The elf didn’t answer. He thought she whispered someone’s name, ever so briefly. Perhaps the name of the corpse.

It was not just one name. Both ears, the face, the body, the arms, legs… Ten names, at least.

Goblin Slayer refrained from asking any more questions.

He needed only to think of what he had to do.

“They’re the ultimate proof that my theory was correct,” came a voice so fluid and unconcerned that it grated on the ears and interrupted Goblin Slayer’s thoughts.

On the far side of the cavern, before a portal of darkness that led even farther into the depths, there was another figure. It took on human form, and the hand that emerged from the cloak it was wearing held a staff.

The elves clasped their swords almost audibly.

“Elf corpses may be controlled by a True Word, as you see. Which implies that elvish words themselves may be controlled by True Words.”

The pronouncement dripped from the figure’s lips like spittle; he was oblivious to the expressions on the faces of the two adventurers.

“Logically, then, elvish words must be equal to True Words. And here is the proof before your eyes.”

The shadow—yes, that’s what it was, a shadow. Goblin Slayer slid forward, judging the distance between them, and heard a raspy voice in his memory.

“Wizards, you see, they’ve gotta confront their own shadows.”

It was one of the lessons his rhea master had imparted to him in passing.

Any wizard—no, any person—had a shadow within them.

You could cut at it but not cut it loose, yet at the same time, it was hard to acknowledge as your own.

If you tried to get rid of it, to deny it, it only got bigger. Fear was a shadow, and the shadow was power.

People were blinded by power. They often ignored inconvenient truths.

“Listen up and get this straight: A truly great wizard…”

…wasn’t great because they defeated dragons or balrogs.

A truly great wizard had acknowledged and accepted the shadow within themselves and made it part of them.

Ignoring the shadow like an inconvenient truth was not so bad, either. But if they convinced themselves that the shadow was power, well, then.

They’re dumbasses who go to Phantasien, the land of dreams, and never come back.

“…” Goblin Slayer grunted softly.

“Whatever could it be?” The shadow’s awful question tickled his eardrums. “I see that you cannot make the slightest rebuttal to my proposition.”

“No,” Goblin Slayer said with the slightest shake of his head. “I was only thinking that you’re every bit as foolish as I heard.”

“Ha!” The shadow laughed. Its mouth seemed a jagged rent across its face, sneering at the people before it. “That shows the limits of your intelligence. If you look at what I have achieved, you can see at a glance what is truly right.”

“…This is right?” Elf Fighter growled. Then for the first time, Goblin Slayer saw that even an elf’s anger made her more beautiful. “Burning forests, threatening people, commanding goblins and corpses, hiding in holes—that’s your precious answer?”

“Pointless blather from one who would shear away a part of my work, then spread poison gas throughout my domain.”

The shadow, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not understand the value, the meaning, of that beauty. If anything, it seemed to take the elf’s anger as a sign of its own success.

“Your actions are neither perfect nor complete,” the shadow continued triumphantly. “They’re merely rash and random.”

And yet when one stopped to think about it…

After all that, it was the shadow who was cornered.

Most likely, for this man, all phenomena that did not accord with his view of things were mistakes. For if he were to acknowledge them, to accept them, it would mean accepting the fact that he had been foolish—that he was a fool.

Instead, his view was warped, so that it had to be others who were mistaken, the world that was wrong.

Ah, I see.

In the end, anyone who would use goblins to achieve their ends…

…is not so different from a goblin themselves.

“Then again, there were certain things that were not mistaken,” the shadow said.

Goblin Slayer ignored how the shadow smiled wider, no doubt taking this in the most favorable possible way.

He heard something more important—hideous footsteps and gibbering from behind him.

That meant the poison projectiles had been effective but not infallible.

A thoughtless goblin—for there were no brave goblins—who’d rushed through the smoke.

A sneaky goblin—for there were no clever goblins, either—who’d hidden in a hole until the smoke passed by.

They, or some goblins of the sort, had worked their way over the corpses of their stupid fellows and now approached the adventurers.

In front of him was the wizard and the elf corpses. Behind him, a horde of goblins.

They were going to have to take on all three at once. Ah yes, neither perfect nor complete.

But I already knew that.

He had known it since he had crawled under those floorboards five years ago.

Goblin Slayer looked at Elf Fighter beside him through the slats of his visor. Her rage was like a taut bowstring, much like her unyielding beauty.

It was a kind of perfection, the kind that could be seen only in the instant before an arrow was loosed.

Goblin Slayer got to observe it from up close, just beside her, and then he let out a breath. “The goblins,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “and the corpses, I will handle.”

Who caught their breath with widened eyes? Was it the shadow or the elf? Whichever, it was the shadow who spoke first, with a mocking laugh.

“At least you talk big, boy. I’ve been thinking how unpleasant I find you. Are you thinking of the fire water you stole from me? This is a lake. Unless you have fire powder or the like—”

“Sounds good,” Elf Fighter said, cutting off the shadow, and her words were sharp and unbearably beautiful.

Even before Goblin Slayer nodded silently, the blue hair was shooting off like a comet. He watched it go, then turned. He took a crouch, keeping one eye on the corpse and one on the goblins.

Should he fight the corpse while avoiding the goblin horde or the other way around?

He couldn’t decide.

It was well and good to say he would handle them, but he had nothing resembling a plan.

That was all right. He could figure it out as he went along.

He had a hand, something he could do. Always there in his pocket.

It’s fine.

It was certainly easier than answering riddles while dodging falling icicles.

“GBBR…”

“GROGB! GBBGROGB!”

“”

The goblins pressed toward him. The corpse golem shambled closer without a sound.

What should he do at such a moment? He should start with the greatest threat.

In that case, the answer is simple.

Goblin Slayer took the “stomach” from his hip and opened the mouth, then scattered the contents on the corpse.

“”

Burning water.

The shadow seemed to be fixated on the idea that he would set fire to it, but that was not the only way to use it.

The black liquid cost the corpse its footing, and it tumbled to the ground in a heap.

This shows that it may be made of elf corpses, but it’s not an elf.

That was important information. And it had bought him more time. Even if it was just a few seconds.

He put that precious time to use, pinching the bag closed and launching himself at the goblins.

Being set upon by the goblins while fighting the corpse and being set upon by the corpse while fighting the goblins: The former was more threatening, the latter easier to deal with.

After all, at least he knew something about how to fight a bunch of goblins.

“GROGBB!!”

“GROB! GRGGBBGRG!!”

“That’s one…!”

Goblin Slayer was still using his hand to hold the stomach closed, so instead, he kicked the goblin as hard as he could. His reinforced steel boot was more than enough to crack the creature’s jaw, sending the green-skinned monster flopping onto his back. The goblin took several of his greenskin companions to the ground with him, and Goblin Slayer left them there, making use of these additional seconds he had earned.

He shoved the stomach into his item pouch, lifting his shield and torch with his left hand while his right grabbed a weapon from the goblins on the ground.

It was a hatchet—where had they gotten that? He gave it a twirl, feeling its heavy blade made for cleaving flesh.

It would do.

“GBBGR?!”

“Two!”

“GGORRGBB?!!”

It was plenty powerful. A goblin, his head split like firewood, tumbled backward with a spray of brains. Goblin Slayer cleared the corpse and freed his blade in the same movement, covering the opening with his left hand.

“GROGGB…!”

“GRB! GORRGB!!”

The goblins quailed for a second, not so much at his shield as at the sparks and heat scattered by Goblin Slayer’s torch.

If even one of them would actually attack him, the torch would be meaningless. But goblins, of course, each wanted someone else to be that one.

Not Goblin Slayer, however. He waded in among them without hesitation.

“Three… Four!”

Skin split and bones cracked, gore and organs went flying, with each hideous scream. The hatchet was thick and heavy, and the blade was dull; it was hardly better than a club.

Not suited for throwing.

He let go of the haft, trusting that the goblin in which the hatchet was presently buried would slip on the blood. Instead, he grabbed the monster’s dagger as it went down.

“Five—no!”

He was about to bring the knife down but threw it instead.

“”

The blade flashed through the darkness of the cave toward the corpse golem, which still made no sound as it batted the knife down.

It had been getting toward Elf Fighter—or perhaps returning to its master—it didn’t matter.

The corpse wielded its own sword with a casual motion, not even looking in Goblin Slayer’s direction as it deflected the dagger clean out of the air.

But that was all right.

With the unsteady gait of a mannequin or a puppet, the golem slowly changed directions, working its way over the viscous liquid on the ground. It seemed to be choosing its targets not based on which was more threatening but which was easier to gang up on.

He didn’t know whether the wizard had ordered it to do so or if it had some criterion built into it.

Regardless, it was still a mage who had implanted it and either worked for Goblin Slayer.

I have a few turns until it closes the distance with me.

He would make the most of them.

He tossed his torch from his left hand to his right and lashed out with it.

“This makes five!”

“GBBGRRRGBBB?!?!?!”

There was a stomach-turning stench of burnt flesh, and the goblin gave a scream. It tumbled backward, clutching its scorched face; Goblin Slayer let go of his torch and took the monster’s sword.

“The line of attack, that’s the thing.”

He felt the whisper tickling his ear once again.

He was not a good enough student to be able to put that teaching into practice under the circumstances. He didn’t have the talent.

“GGOORGB!!”

“GBRG! GRRBORG!!”

The goblins continued to press in, the torchlight playing over them from the ground. He met them with his sword and shield.

In terms of strength, size, and weight—including equipment—he had a slight advantage, even against two of them together.

His feet slid. He saw the torchlight glimmer on the face of the dark water.

“Hrrnn…gh…!”

Summoning all his strength, Goblin Slayer shoved the two goblins into the blackness.

“GGBBRRGGO?!”

“GOBBG?! GROOGB?!!”

There was a pair of heavy splashes and sprays of water. Goblin screams and further splashes. The underground lake was cold enough to pierce. They would not easily escape it.

That makes six and seven.

Goblin Slayer, however, had given up his fighting posture to make that move—and the goblins would not miss their opportunity.

“GROGB! GGRROGB!!”

“GBBOGORR!!”

They came at him, jabbering—not from courage but because they wanted all the glory for themselves.

Goblin Slayer rolled along the ground and flung the thing he had pulled from his pouch.

“GOORGBBGBGO?!!?!”

He wasn’t even sure if it was one of his poison gas projectiles or a tear-gas bomb. Whichever the thing was, it hit the goblin square in the face, and the creature stumbled backward screeching.

Goblin Slayer got to his feet. “Eight…!” He drove the blade into the monster’s windpipe, killing it. As he kicked the body aside, freeing the blade, it made a high-pitched whistling sound.

That leaves…

“”

Reflexively, Goblin Slayer interrupted his own thinking and jumped backward—and it saved his life.

The blade made an earsplitting screech as it grazed his helmet, taking off a bit of the tassel.

It was the elf corpse.

It had closed the distance without a sound, without any sense that it was there, without even breathing, and had made this strike. He’d avoided it by the finest of margins.

Goblin Slayer had never “sensed” a killing aura before and didn’t now. It was the footsteps, or his breathing, or the sound of the wind. Something like that. His experience and his knowledge had worked together to warn him of the danger.

It was good fortune. He’d been blessed by the dice of Fate and Chance.

I can’t let them put me in a pincer!

“GOROOGGB!!”

Goblin Slayer dove headlong among the goblins, paying no heed to their attacks of opportunity. A club slammed into his shield, but it only caused some numbness, no pain.

He kept running. With his back to the goblins, needless to say.

“GRROG?!”

“GBBR! GROBB!”

Goblins were creatures who were neither compassionate nor thoughtful enough to let that pass. They would laugh and sneer at one who had made fools of them and was now running with his tail between his legs—and they would punish him for it.

They went after Goblin Slayer, their unreasoning anger exploding as they shrieked foul yells and taunts, spittle flying from their mouths.

The result, of course, was that they had no hope of coordinating an attack with the golem.

“Nine…!”

“GBBR?!”

He slashed backward with his sword, and the head of the goblin who had foolishly lunged at him went tumbling through the air, followed by the rest of it, blood spewing from its neck. He dove under it as it went.

One step. Two. He flipped the blade over in his hands so that he was holding it in a reverse grip and brought it up again.

“Ten!”

“GRRGBBGB?!!?!”

The sword flew true, running clean through a goblin skull.

He didn’t even glance at the corpse as it thudded to the ground but only steadied his breathing. He didn’t look at it even as he picked up the goblin weapon at his feet.

It turned out to be a dry, rotting club—but it was better than nothing.

Because as he could see in the light of the torch lying on the ground, there in the darkness…

“”

…was the elf corpse golem, still drenched in burning water and still standing, implacable.

It was bizarre.

The swell of its chest was of a different size on each side. The wizard must have sewn together male and female corpses.

Yet it took a stance like an experienced swordfighter and shuffled closer.

“Like” is right.

It was certainly not an experienced swordfighter. Goblin Slayer had seen how the blue-haired Elf Fighter held herself, so he knew this much for sure. The golem was like a crude drawing done by someone who had used her as a reference but with no understanding of her art or theory.

From the length of the limbs to the size of the head, the posture, the bone structure—everything was warped and wrong. The way it staggered closer without a sound was bizarre, unsettling, blasphemous.

It was a sight to make one doubt their sanity, but Goblin Slayer was unmoved.

He had never assumed he was sane. His thoughts were entirely upon the club in his hand and his opponent’s sword.

We have different distancing.

The elf might have been a patchwork, but it had reach and a sword. He had only his body and the club.

Goblin Slayer slid his feet along the ground, maintaining the distance.

The elf corpse shambled forward once more, and he moved again to keep it from getting closer.

They circled the cavern like two dogs trying to bite each other’s tails, in a great spiral. But the spiral led inward, and eventually it would reach an end point.

He needed a plan before that.

“…”

“”

It’s the line of attack.

How many times now had he heard the chuckle and the bracing voice?

He steadied his breathing and slowed his steps. He adjusted his grip on his club. His opponent was doing by imitation but so was he.

In other words, we’re even.

This would work out somehow. He felt better at the thought. Some of the tension left his body.

Finally, Goblin Slayer stopped, just beside the torch.

He adjusted his grip on the club once more, then gradually raised it and stood ready.

The corpse did not stop moving. It shuffled toward him, walking faster, closing the distance.

One more step, and it would be in range. It was coming.

“…!”

“”

It was like a bolt of lightning; no sooner had he seen the flash of the blade than it was coming down on him with immense power.

So he met it.

With utter simplicity, he raised his club so that it would overlap the line of attack.

There was a thock, and the sword bit into the rotting wood, which cracked, then split.

It was like splitting firewood. The blade sliced through the club—but Goblin Slayer was no longer in its line of attack.

“Y—yaaaahhh!”

He had already let go of the club and picked up the torch from the ground.

He thrust it at the golem—which was still covered in the burning water.

“”

There was a whoosh as the fire caught, enveloping the creature in crimson flames. The fact that it was being immolated did not seem to slow the golem down.

He knew that. He knew this would not be the end. What to do next? Next…

“”

“Hngh?!”

The shock came before he could think. He was too late to notice that the corpse was charging him headlong, still wreathed in flame.

His mind couldn’t keep up with the movement. And yet his perception of the world seemed horrendously slow, drawn out.

His stance gave way. He couldn’t slow the momentum. This was bad. His vision swam. His body floated through the air. He was collapsing. Falling.

The water—

From some distance away, there was a noisy splash, but the blue-haired elf didn’t so much as turn toward it. She was confronting the man in black, the wizard who was like a shadow.

She chased the shadow.

Somewhere along the line, their fight had spilled into the adjacent cavern, but it meant nothing to her.

She needed no words. The rage and hatred in her chest fueled her burning wrath. To give them voice would only have weakened the flames. If she spoke them aloud, she might find she was satisfied with that.

So she poured them into her blade. Into her sword. Into her gaze.

She let all of it flow into the single objective of cutting down her opponent.

“For all your fine talk, you seem perfectly happy to sacrifice your companion for your own ends. A sad excuse for an elf!” the wizard said.

Don’t listen to him.

It was just an animal’s cry that happened to sound like a human voice.

His objective was not mutual understanding; those were only sounds he made to amuse himself.

She hadn’t understood that before, and her failure to understand was why he was still alive. And she was here now, at this moment, to redeem that awful mistake.

“…Shaaa!”

With a cry that rent the air, she leaped in, so fast she didn’t even cast a shadow.

Her hair became like a blue wind, like a streaking comet, her sword a white flash aimed at the wizard’s neck.

“Magna…nodos…facio! Form, magical binding!” the wizard cried.

She knew, of course, that it would not be over in a single stroke. She made each move with intent to kill; the only question was when she would finally connect.

The wizard pronounced his spell with mocking ease and blocked her blade with an invisible force field.

“You see? Even the elves must bow before the power of True Words!”

She must not lend an ear to his yammering.

The breath came from her mouth in a rush, and she kicked off the force field with a delicate foot, gaining distance.

“I see why you’re so thoughtless. Elves are long-lived—but nothing like as smart as humans!”

The wizard chewed over another incantation in his mouth, and spheres of light flew from his staff one after another, gouging holes in the cavern’s walls and floor. Far distance was perfect for him. She saw that. But his piss-poor aim couldn’t hit so much as the elf’s shadow. That much was also obvious. The blue-haired elf moved without even leaving footprints and was already several steps away by the time the lights reached where she had been.

It was a perfectly ordinary exchange in combat, but the shadow wizard’s face contorted in disgust. “You always, always make a hash of other people’s work like that!”

He makes it sound like he’s the victim here, Elf Fighter thought.

The words reached her long ears whether she wanted them to or not, and even she couldn’t resist a wry grin.

But once again she let them go in one long ear and out the other. There were only scant moments of life left—for both of them. Or one of them.

After crisscrossing the cavern, the elf skidded to a halt.

This was the place. The perfect distance between the two of them.

The blue-haired elf drew her sword with her lovely arm and stood ready. She let the tension permeate every part of her body, so she was like a taut bowstring.

“……”

She stored up her power, as if pouring her entire eternal life into it.

“Ha! I see you have nothing left to say…and no tricks left to pull.”

Don’t listen to a word. Focus entirely on his movements. Picture yourself as one with your sword.

“I suppose I, too, should go back to basics here. I haven’t precisely been holding back, but still…”

The shadow seemed to have convinced himself of something; he raised his staff.

“Sagitta…quelta…raedius! Strike home, arrow!”

The bolt of magical light unleashed from his staff became a Magic Missile, utterly accurate, and flew through the air.

He fired two, three, four of the bolts of power.

Supposedly, the number of Magic Missiles increased with the spell caster’s level, but if so, it suggested this man was more talk than one might think.

A faint smile crossed her lips as she took aim at the first one.

The arrow came closer. It stretched out like melting butter, and her vision contracted to focus on it. She focused her strength so totally she almost thought she could hear it, her body tense and ready.

The arrow came closer. She took in a breath. The arrow came closer. She held her breath. The arrow came closer. She released.

Instantaneously, her blade was a blur. Its light merged with movement like a dance, the two of them carving a circle in the air.

Her blue hair streaked like a comet, following the flash of the blade.

In that instant, and only for that instant, the sword danced perfectly around the young woman, impacting the Magic Missile.

“Nggha?!” the wizard wailed.

The elf’s technique sent the True Words he had bound together flying back at him.

The wizard had no way to resist his own spells—no doubt it had never occurred to him that this could happen. Even though if he had bothered to open the classic texts, it was obvious.

An elf’s sword overcome words of true power?!

“Yaaah!”

As the wizard stumbled backward, run through by his own magic, the blue-haired elf leaped at him without a moment’s hesitation.

She felt a piercing pain through her whole body. Heat rising up her throat. Blood. Her own inexperience. But she didn’t care. She laughed.

I go the same way as everyone else.

A spell she hadn’t managed to deflect had pierced her through, ravaging her body, even as she ran.

One step, two, three, four.

Just four steps and everything would be over. That was why she couldn’t lose her focus.

“Now you…”

“Hrgh?!”

The wizard looked up at her with an expression of astonishment. Their eyes met.

His face conveyed that he didn’t understand why he was meeting this fate. They were the eyes of someone subjected to an inexplicable outrage.

He can eat shit.

“…diiiieeeeee!”

The thud could be heard all around the cavern.

Hrnn…?!

Goblin Slayer’s consciousness had fled for a moment, but now he came around to a stabbing pain, like his whole body was being pierced with needles.

His thoughts were confused. Where was he? What was he doing? Why was it so suffocating and cold?

…I’m in the water!

The disorientation lasted only a second—for this was not the first time he had experienced this.

Goblin Slayer struggled against the underwater plants that entangled him, bubbles escaping through the slats of his visor. In the darkness, he could hardly tell up from down, but he could see where there was light.

The burning corpse. The elf corpse golem.

It had fallen into the water with him, still half aflame and right beside him. It flailed in the water without emotion, kicking toward him, trying to rise back up.

I won’t let it.

He couldn’t breathe. His thoughts flickered in and out. He felt a rising panic, like heat going to his brain.

But his hand was still there. He could still do something. What? He had a hand. Where? His pocket.

Subconsciously, Goblin Slayer’s hand reached into his item pouch. His fingers found something. He pulled it out, not caring what it was.

A bottle.

His body was moving before he could even register what kind of bottle it was. He gripped it and slammed it against the golem as if he were throwing it.

His throw proved effective even underwater, if not as powerful as above the surface.

There was a dull sound—unless he was imagining it—and then he hit the creature a second time, then a third. He was surprised how readily he could move.

The corpse did not feel pain to speak of, and each time Goblin Slayer hit it, he sunk down slightly, but he did not care.

He was after something else.

The bottle finally reached its limit and shattered, spilling its contents into the water.

“!!”

Abruptly, flames erupted.

In a matter of seconds, the blaze that the water had largely extinguished roared back to life.

Goblin Slayer’s eyes widened. He saw what karma was, even if it meant nothing to him.

Unless I have fire powder…

He remembered the words the man had spoken with such confidence. Well, fire powder he had. A little bit, left over from the literal mountain he had used on his earlier adventure.

He had no way of knowing that fire powder released ether even under the water. But he had grabbed hold of it. And it had cooked the corpse in the lake with him.

The golem continued to move despite the flames raging all around it, but then quite suddenly, it came apart.

Perhaps the stitches holding it together had burned up.

As the bits and pieces drifted apart, Goblin Slayer saw something he didn’t recognize swimming through the water. They were long, and they squirmed—some hideous agglomeration of worms.

They escaped the body as it fell apart but not the flames, which consumed them.

Goblin Slayer watched them from the bottom of the lake.

So all those things the wizard had spoken of—they weren’t magic after all but bugs.

It wasn’t so impressive.

Only then did he realize he was not having trouble breathing.

Something on his finger caught the light of the flames, glinting. When he looked at it, the light winked out—but it was a single, small ring.

The Breath ring.

I see.

It was to be used at times like this.

Goblin Slayer knew that others had saved him from his own ignorance and inexperience.

But there are also things I myself know.

The dark water held him tight, inundating his equipment and making it heavy. The surface was so far away.

But at times like this, one sank deep, then simply kicked off the bottom.

He let himself sink down, then kicked as hard as he could off the floor of the lake.

All that was left was to rise.

Air rushed into his lungs as he broke through the surface. It was the fetid, moldy air of the cave, but even so, it was a relief.

Goblin Slayer crawled onto dry land, sopping wet. He felt terribly heavy. Not from fatigue, he suspected, but the water. And if it was fatigue, so what?

He took off his ring, trying to get his breathing under control, and put the object carefully back in his item pouch.

A weapon…

He found one.

When the elf corpse had charged him, it had dropped its sword. Goblin Slayer picked it up and put it in his scabbard.

It was longer than he liked, but it was better than nothing.

Next he took a torch from his pouch and went over to where the last one was still burning on the ground. He wasn’t sure whether the inundated new torch would light, but happily enough, the fire took. He let out another breath.

This will do.

This fight was not yet over.

There were goblins. The wizard. No—the wizard was probably dead. Likely.

He listened closely but heard no sounds of combat. Only the running of the underground water in the crackling of his torch.

Goblin Slayer set off at a slow walk down the stone passageway that led deeper in from his cavern.

He proceeded through a totally unremarkable cave. Step-by-step, he started walking faster. He had a strange sense that something was wrong.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but it could not have been that far.

It opened into a yawning cavern.

At the very center of the room, a figure lay on the ground, curled up. As he got closer, it gradually resolved into a human shape.

It was a woman.

The blue-haired elf.

She lay on the ground, face up, a great rent torn in the abdomen of her willowy, beautiful body.

She was in a pool of blood, and her breath came in short gasps.

Her eyes were clouded over, but they suddenly focused on the grimy metal helmet.

“Ahhh.” Her voice came out as a rasp. “It’s you, kid.”

Goblin Slayer crouched beside her and lowered his head.

“What happened to…to the thing?” Elf Fighter asked.

Goblin Slayer grunted softly, then replied, “It’s dead.”

“Heh… Heh-heh!” She laughed. Merrily, her eyes crinkling. That expression, if nothing else, had not changed. “I know I don’t have long, kid, but don’t just tell me what I want to hear.”

“…”

“If you’re gonna lie…do…a better job…”

There was nothing Goblin Slayer could say to that.

The blue-haired elf let out a breath like a groan, shuddered, and then somehow managed to speak again.

“Pretty pathetic. Here at the end of all things, I’m…like this… What a sorry sight.”

What should he say? How should he speak to her?

Goblin Slayer did not know. He hadn’t known five years ago, and he wouldn’t know in the future.

But he had gotten much better, in that he could even speak now.

It was all he could do, and it made him think himself foolish and sad from the bottom of his heart.

“I’ll do what I can,” he told her.

“I’d appreciate that…,” the elf murmured, almost a groan, and then her face collapsed. She looked so disappointed, sounding as if she might cry as she said, “I don’t want to be worm food…”

Worms.

Ah yes, worms. Goblin Slayer nodded.

He had the golem’s sword, the one he had picked up a moment ago.

“You know the vital points?” she asked.

“…I think so.”

Elf Fighter closed her eyes like a maiden about to receive a kiss. “Let’s go with the throat, then,” she said, her voice trembling. “I don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want to suffer…”

Goblin Slayer’s hand was shaking. Was he tense? Or afraid? He didn’t know.

He took the sword carefully in both hands and managed to hold it upside down.

Slowly, he raised it. He must make no mistakes. But what else was new?

At the last, the elf woman spoke something, someone’s name.

He didn’t know whose it was.

It was the first time he had killed a person.

The pursuit was easy enough.

Just beside the woman’s corpse was the lower half of a man’s body; he’d been split in two. A dark trail of blood led deeper into the cavern. It looked like a streak of ink on the ground, and Goblin Slayer simply had to follow it.

The trail felt much shorter than the one earlier.

He arrived at what seemed to be the wizard’s laboratory. Shelves carved out of the rock face housed scores of books and unidentifiable drugs. In fact, they were arranged quite neatly—but compared with the house of a certain other mage he had known, it seemed so empty.

To him, the room seemed not the result of accumulated knowledge but merely a place designed to show off.

The wizard was like a shadow in the middle of it.

Instead of guts, a mass of worms writhed from his midsection, and he flailed like a fish on dry land.

“This is wrong—it’s all wrong! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be—it’s not right!”

“…”

Goblin Slayer walked silently up to the man.

He looked around and saw a single chair. An exquisite piece of furniture.

He sat down in it, not caring that he was covered in mud and dripping water. The chair creaked under his weight.

“It’s always like this—they don’t want to talk, so they resort to violence! Not a shred of intelligence…!”

The shadow was yammering something, but Goblin Slayer hardly noticed. Instead, he stared vacantly at his own sword, which was bathed in a faint but unmistakable red glow. Then he looked at the worms squirming on the ground. They didn’t look very long to him.

So slowly, he put his sword back in his scabbard.

The shadow’s jabber took on a new tone. “Forgive me. Forgive me… I never meant for it to be like this. I never meant to anger—!”

Goblin Slayer said nothing but leaned back in the chair.

He had grown so tired of holding this torch—so after a moment’s thought, he decided to let it roll at his feet.

This would do. With the light shining on him, the shadows around the wizard’s face vanished, and Goblin Slayer could see his expression clearly.

The wizard’s eyes were a welter of emotions: fear and anger and despair and regret and confusion.

The eyes seemed to mock Goblin Slayer, to call him cruel or worthless or selfish.

He might, just might, have thought he heard a cry for help, or a howl of pain or suffering.

But he had no intention of intervening. He felt he ought not to.

It was she who had finished this thing off. Not him.

So Goblin Slayer simply sat and stared at the shadow.

Until the bitter end.

Once he had seen it all through, Goblin Slayer got up from his chair.

At his feet, there squirmed a pile of worms that had crawled from the lump of flesh.

Ruthlessly, he doused them in the burning water from the monster’s stomach. He ignored how the worms flailed in surprise and simply tossed the stomach on top of them as well.

Then he picked up the torch from the ground, lit another one off it, and threw it down again.

The water caught fire, enveloping the worms in a conflagration.

The heat was so intense that it dried his soaked clothes and armor almost immediately.

To kill bugs and sickness clinging to oryza, douse the field in burning water.

The words had meant nothing to him when he’d heard them long ago. Now they flitted through his mind, and a laugh came to his lips. A dry, hollow laugh.

He proceeded to set fire to all the meaningless, worthless drugs and books in the room, from one end to the other. Parchment flapped as it scattered, bottles shattered, and smoke billowed up.

He intended to burn everything.

Once he had set alight all that he saw, he finally turned his back on the place and walked away.

It was not yet over.

No one had told him it was.

So it wasn’t.

He returned to the cavern from earlier and found the elf still lying there. The only difference was up ahead—the dark-green-skinned goblins creeping toward her. For them, it was enough that she was an elf; it didn’t matter whether she was alive or dead.

Goblin Slayer drove the sword covered in her blood into the ground.

He did not care. Any number of weapons much more appropriate to him would come to him—were coming now.

The goblins were coming.

How many were there?

He didn’t want to think about it.

He didn’t want to think about anything.

Which is not to say he was grateful to them.

“E-eyyaaarrrghhh!”

Spearman screamed in a way he’d sworn he would never scream again, ever since he’d fallen from a tree as a little boy. A pathetic way.

Plummeting from those branches, he’d felt like he was in danger of his life—but nothing like how he felt now.

After all, at the moment, he was being pursued by a massive creature some twenty feet tall. From the way it made the ground rumble and the shadow it cast over him, it might as well have been the oncoming specter of death.

So maybe a bit of pathetic bawling could be excused as he attempted to escape.

One of the legendary heroes might have had a wry smile and a bit of dry, cool wit for a moment like this—but Spearman was still just an ordinary adventurer, far from that realm.

Or maybe even a legendary hero would have fled with a scream?

“Put…me…down! I said—down!”

“Don’t think so!” Spearman told the woman—Witch—slung over his shoulder. “I’m doing this because I want to!”

Her flesh bounced pleasantly with each step. As he well knew, the softness and the smooth skin and the sweet smell were proof of a woman’s beauty.

To run for his life for the sake of a beautiful woman was truly joyous; it made his heart sing. Yes, for that, he could deal with a pathetic yelp or two.

Okay, so I wouldn’t mind looking a bit cooler!

He hopped across the gravel, jumping from boulder to boulder, hearing the splish, splish as he moved.

It came from the golden jar Witch clasped, a sound nearly as important as the jiggling of her breasts.

“I won’t drop you, so just make sure you don’t drop that!” Spearman said.

“I…know, that!”

We’ve never sounded quite so short with each other.

Spearman’s ears were battered by a tremendous roar, like thunder, that sounded overhead, quite disregarding his thoughts.

“I told you that if you handed over the jar, I would kill you painlessly, but you insist on resisting!”

And well, yes, that was pretty much how this had all started.

The dry sea—when he’d first heard the name, Spearman had wondered what such a place could be. He’d never seen the sea, but he was pretty sure you didn’t find them among the mountains.

When he and Witch arrived, what they found was unmistakably a valley cleft between two sheer cliffs.

But once within…well, then it made sense.

The white pebbles at their feet turned out to be shells, bleached by eons of time. The skeletons of ancient fish still swam in the rock walls. And when they arrived at the far end of the valley, they found the hulk of an old wooden ship resting on the dry ground.

That, more than anything else, revealed that this land had once been covered with water.

The beached ship looked like the corpse of some giant creature. It must have been stunning centuries before, but now it was a moldering frame hidden among the shadows, merely suggesting what had once been.

Spearman learned then that the sight of things past could inspire pity in him.

All the same, ancient wrecks were the kind of place where you found adventure, and as an adventurer, in he went.

The two of them boarded the ship and successfully dispatched the giant octopus that had taken up residence in a remaining puddle of seawater. If they’d been on the open ocean, it would have been one thing, but in the dry sea, the two of them were able to deal with the threat.

The giant octopus, it transpired, did not like sunlight, and when they smashed a hole in the ship’s side and the light came streaming in, it gave a scream and retreated into the water.

The two of them continued deeper into the vessel, until they found the golden jar the quest had described…

“You seek to steal what I myself mean to bring to my master, the Demon Lord? Pathetic thieves, too clever for your own good!”

…and there it was.

This was the point at which Spearman promptly swept Witch up (“Heek?!”) and she grabbed the jar, and they’d set off at a dead run.

Good freakin’ luck to that giant octopus, Spearman suddenly thought. They should never have gotten involved in this.

With scant hope of hiding from the giant, Spearman dove for the shadow of one of the boulders that peppered the valley and took a second to catch his breath.

True, they’d heard rumors along the way—some said there was a giant. But who would have expected to actually run into the thing?

As a general rule, people may imagine danger, but they assume that they won’t actually encounter it, or they simply cut it out of their calculations.

“The Demon Lord?” Spearman spat. “The All Stars axed him years ago!”

“Believe that if you wish, puny creature. Ignorance can indeed sometimes be a blessing.”

There was laughter that seemed loud enough to shatter the very rocks—the mocking guffaw of one who points in ridicule.

But it was still far off.

Maybe the giant had figured out where they were and maybe not. Maybe they were that much faster than him or maybe he was just playing with them.

Whatever it was, they had some distance. One turn, maybe two, to think and act.

“Put…me, down…,” Witch said weakly.

“Oops! Sorry…” Spearman nodded and set her gently on the ground in the boulder’s shadow.

Now, when it was time to come up with a plan, it was not his own brain he relied on but hers.

“Thanks,” she whispered as he put her down; then she tugged on the brim of her hat and looked at the ground. “It’s…a choice, between running…and beating him.”

“Which do you think would be easier?”

“If we…don’t, stop him, I don’t…think we can run.”

“True enough.”

Even if they dashed off right now, the giant was after the jar they were carrying. So long as they had it, they would never be able to truly escape. Spearman didn’t think they could rely on the giant to be a great detective or grasp human connections. Even if they delivered the jar to the quest giver, they would still be the ones he was after…

“What if we just give him this thing?”

“If, we do that…,” Witch said sadly, “he’ll have, no more reason not…to kill us.”

“True enough…”

In short, they had to deal with the giant or there was no way out of this.

“But what do we do?!” Spearman groaned and put his head in his hands—and his spear shifted with a metallic clack. He’d just happened to have let the point drop as they were running, and now it nudged the jar.

He immediately pulled the weapon back. “Oh shit! Sorry…”

Witch shook her head. “N-no, it’s all right.”

Spearman, however, noticed something odd. The spear was wet with something red—blood? Wine? No, not that either—but what?

“Whoa, wait!” he cried.

“Oh…”

There was a small hole in the jar that had allowed a few drops of the red liquid within to leak out, coating the spear.

Seeing their metaphorical lifeline fray before their eyes, the two of them forgot all about the approaching giant and rushed to tilt the jar to one side. They stuck some oil paper to it as a stopgap measure to prevent any more liquid from leaking; only then could they breathe easier.

Spearman wiped the sweat from his forehead, then frowned and said in a half groan, “But why did it break? It’s gold, ain’t it? Never heard of gold breaking like that.”

“Gold is…soft, you see.”

Yeah, but still. Maybe it was a fake? In that case, they were really screwed. Even if they did hand it over to the quest giver, they’d only get a lot of rage for supposedly trying to trick the person.

Spearman had no interest in getting himself killed over something he wasn’t responsible for.

“It might…make sense…if it’s just, plating. A thin coat of gold.” Witch sounded as perplexed as he felt.

Her slim fingers played across the surface of the jar, until—

“Oh!” Her lovely eyes widened slightly.

The tip of the spear, which had gotten just a little bit of the red liquid on it, glowed and shivered. Only a little, and it lasted only a second, but she was sure she had seen it.

She began to ponder a variety of different phenomena, connecting one to the other until she came to a conclusion. One in which she hardly placed much stock—a dubious gamble at best. It could hardly be said to give them a serious chance of victory. And yet—she saw no other possibility.

She looked at Spearman, her face grim, hoping, pleading. “There…might, be…a way.”

Spearman didn’t hesitate. “Let’s do it, then.”

If he died carrying out her plan, well, there were worse ways to go—and if they won, wouldn’t that be grand?

“Hoh, starting to see things my way?” The giant’s smile deepened; it had been worth his while to terrify the diminutive adventurers.

Spearman and Witch emerged from the boulder’s shadow, carrying the golden jar together, one to each side. They brought it over and placed it before the giant with a tunk.

Then Spearman chuckled. “Yeah, we’ve come around.”

“Uncommonly sensible for pray-ers.” The giant’s shoulders shook with a rumble of laughter, gravel shaking loose from the cliffsides at his voice. The adventurers grimaced a bit at the noise but didn’t appear afraid.

That pricked the giant’s pride, which was as big as he was. Disrespectful louts. They didn’t know their place.

“So hey, this is what you’re after, right?” Spearman asked the giant.

“Yes, so it is.”

But when the giant leaned down, he saw that maybe he’d been wrong.

Spearman had done all the talking so far; Witch hadn’t said a word. She gripped her staff with both hands, holding it close to her chest, which was quite abundant for such a small creature. The giant was most satisfied at the thought that this must be true fear.

The only question left was how to torment them.

“I got a question for you,” Spearman said.

“Hmm?” The giant, caught up in his foul thoughts, hadn’t expected the impertinent remark from the thing at his feet. Normally, he might have simply kicked the thing away, but it didn’t have long to live.

The giant nodded magnanimously. “Very well.”

At that, Spearman rested his spear on his back and squinted, taking a good look at the giant’s height. “Do you want the jar? Or what’s in it?” he asked.

“Well! I wondered what you could possibly ask. It couldn’t be more trivial.”

But so be it, the giant thought.

Small beings were concerned with small things. It would be narrow-minded of him to ignore them.

“His Excellency cares not for gold and jewels. What lies within this jar, that is what he desires to—”

“Okay,” Spearman said, cutting him off with a laugh. “Then take it!”

“Magna…manus…facio! Form, magical hand!”

Witch let go of the jar, and it—or rather, the crimson liquid within—burst up of its own volition. A hand of invisible magical energy scooped it up and dumped it over the giant’s head.

“Wha—?!”

Witch’s melodic chanting had produced what amounted to a child’s prank. But the result, brought about by the very contents of the jar, was dramatic.

“Dragon’s…blood,” Witch murmured. It had probably belonged to some dragon centuries ago before being sealed in that jar.

Whoever bathed in the blood achieved immortality—several heroes of this sort had appeared throughout the ages. And so…

“Rrraahhh!”

…the dragon-slaying sword in Spearman’s hand was more than eager for the task.

He screeched, almost a metallic sound itself. The sword—the spear tip—quivered and shone with light as it arced through the air. The magical protections Witch had given him before they faced the giant allowed him to leap nimbly off the ground, flying like a carp from a river.

Even without the spells, though, he would surely have been able to do that much. Spearman felt amazing. He could hardly believe he was in such a crucial fight, facing a giant.

Yes, it was thanks in no small part to the dice of Fate and Chance and the help of many other people, but none of them were here right now.

It’s all me, thought Spearman.

The magic spear danced in his hands like a thing alive; he turned it around and brought it up, ready. It gleamed brightly.

He saw the giant’s eyes open wide. The giant was a dragon now, and surely he felt the fear.

“You’re a dragon!” Spearman cried.

O Dragon Valor! O Dragon Buster! Howl and bellow! Your foe stands before you!

“Take this…you fiend!”

A streak of light drove across the wasteland.

If there had been anyone—except Witch and the giant octopus—to see the moment, they would have thought a star was falling.

The dragon-slaying sword came from above the giant and drove deep into his eye, pierced his spine, and emerged again at his groin.

The explosion and the blast wave caught up with them—and a beat later, the giant pitched over.

The boom as it hit the ground shook the very board, yet still it was not louder than the howl of the magic spear.

“…”

“…”

Spearman rolled to the ground at the giant’s feet, and Witch watched the scene almost not registering what she was seeing, and both of them were silent.

Spearman got up with a frown as if to say he’d been sloppy, then grabbed the haft of the spear where it stood lodged in the earth.

“Hey. You okay?” he asked.

“Er… oh…” Witch blinked. “Y-yes. The jar…is in one, piece.”

“I’m not asking about the damn jar. I’m asking about you.”

“…I’m in one, piece, too.”

“Good.”

Neither of them had the strength left to run to each other and catch each other up, shouting and celebrating. They could hardly believe it was over. Instead they kept asking themselves: Was it really?

At the moment, all they wanted was to find an inn somewhere, collapse into bed, and sleep until morning. After that, they could go back to the frontier town and report to the Guild. He couldn’t wait to see Guild Girl’s face.

He didn’t want to have to bother with a single other thing—but the world had other plans.

He heaved a sigh and rested his weapon across his shoulders. It had grown considerably lighter since it was now only a haft.

“When we get back, I guess I’ll be needing a new spear, huh?” he said.

Gods dammit. In the red again.

The money she had given him for the magic sword helped substantially in buying a boat at the village. Although he was somewhat surprised how readily the villagers had agreed to the request of a scruffy man streaked with mud and blood. Maybe his appearance was what had made them so amenable or maybe the guild rank tag had swayed them.

He chose a fine boat, one that the villagers used to cross the river. Given how pleased they looked as they clutched his gold coins, he wondered if he might have overpaid. But that did not really matter to him—he had his boat, and that was all he wanted.

“…”

Goblin Slayer cleansed the elf’s body as best he could, then laid it in the boat. He was vexed by his inability to get her in a proper position for burial, but he came close. Beside her, he placed her sword, still in its scabbard.

He looked through her items, just in case, and discovered a collection of random toys, hardly more than junk, like a child’s miscellany. He suddenly thought of his own bag when he was younger. Where had the things in it gone?

A breath slipped past his lips.

“West is…”

He was grateful for one thing: Any river anywhere must eventually make its way to the sea.

And that if he looked at the sun, he could guess general directions.

The rain had finally abated, though in its wake, it left a sky full of ashen clouds, like thin mist. Even so, the bright sunshine, like the gods’ ruler or their template, pierced through the murk and stretched down to the four corners of the board. Goblin Slayer was able to use it to judge direction.

This river would go to the sea. The sea to the west.

“…”

He inspected her items, making sure everything was there, then put them carefully back in her pouch and decided to set it, too, with her—for good measure. It would be where she could reach it if anything came up.

Finally, he was left with her rank tag resting in his grimy palm.

He supposed he should take it back to the Adventurers Guild and turn it in. But instead, he put it back where he’d found it, resting at her neck under her folded hands.

This had been a goblin hunt. Somehow, the idea that her journey would end with that was something he found impossible to accept.

His master had told him once, sometime long ago, that it was the way of the elves to journey into the west. To the western sea—and beyond.

Goblin Slayer waded into the muck of the riverbank without hesitation, giving the boat a push. He went one step at a time, shoving with all his might, then leaning against it, almost as if he were flinging the vessel into the river.

At last, the small boat slipped out onto the water. It had no sails, yet it moved as smoothly and lightly as if the wind carried it. It left only a white trail behind it, and that, too, quickly disappeared, swallowed by the river. After that, there was no trace. No sign that the boat had ever been there.

Although he thought it would be good if there was something. Something… Something grand.

He did not know how to hold a funeral, or petition for the repose of the dead, or even how to pray really.

So instead he simply wished.

It took several more days to get back to town after that. The storm had passed, but the road was half-dried, full of churned-up mud, and congested with a great many travelers coming and going.

As for him, he silently lifted a foot, put it in front of him, took a step forward, and then did it again. Other people on the road gave him suspicious glances, but he just kept silently walking along. He looked in the direction of the farm, but he didn’t see the girl and her red hair. He was privately relieved by that.

He went through the town gate and headed for the Adventurers Guild, but when he got there, he stopped. Something seemed off.

“…?”

It was…noisy. Or festive maybe.

He looked around to discover that the Guild was alive with adventurers. There, at the center of a circle composed of folks of every race, class, and rank, was someone he recognized—an adventurer with a long stick resting across his shoulders.

“So I say to the octopus, ‘Hey, buddy! How about a little fun in the sun?!’”

“We heard that part! Tell us about the giant already!”

“I’m gettin’ there! So we abandon ship, but then—boom! Boom! Boom!”

He looked as joyous as a child swinging a stick around in play—except everyone was bubbling, their eyes shining. Some of the young ladies were listening with flushed cheeks and obvious excitement. A few boys—rookies, judging by their all but unscratched armor—clenched their fists.

Amid the crowd, a particularly quick—quick to spot an opportunity—bard was tuning their instrument, their quill already racing along a sheet of parchment.

Behind Spearman was Witch. The way she rested her head in her hands looked rather glum, yet nonetheless, her eyes crinkled with a proud smile.

This was a true adventure. These were true adventurers.

Goblin Slayer stood in the doorway and gazed at them.

A young man, around Goblin Slayer’s own age, pushed past him, eager to hear the story.

From beneath his helmet, Goblin Slayer let out a deep sigh. And then with very wet, very heavy footsteps—though he tried not to be too loud—he headed for the reception desk.

Guild Girl was at the counter, looking rather fed up with the whole thing, but when she saw him, her face lit up in a smile.

“Excellent work out there!” she called.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, uh, is it—? I don’t really object to all this, you know?” Guild Girl gave a little smile, though she was clearly trying to hide her embarrassment.

Adventurers went on adventures, made names for themselves, and went on to greater adventures. That was what it meant to gain levels, wasn’t it? A joyous thing it was, wonderful. Except…

“Except I’ve been hearing this same story all morning.”

“All morning?”

It was only then that Goblin Slayer realized it was past noon. How far had he walked and for how long?

It didn’t matter. He had to do what must be done. He had no room in his head to think of anything else.

So instead he opened his mouth and tersely related only the necessary information.

“There were goblins.”

He told her how many and where they had been. He communicated where he had gone and what he had done.

He pondered for a moment whether to speak about the wizard. That was her adventure, not his goblin hunt.

But—well, for that exact reason, he felt there should be some record of her achievement.

The spearman evidently had slain a giant. The elf fighter had brought an evil wizard to destruction. These things, he thought, deserved to be told of down the centuries. The fact that he himself was so inarticulate and slow of tongue struck him as terribly pitiful.

He was extremely grateful for how Guild Girl took detailed notes on her parchment paper, her pen scratching along.

“And so… Oh,” she said after a moment. She looked up, her braid bouncing. “Is she not with you?”

He had spent the walk home thinking about how he would answer this question when he was asked.

“She went to the west.”

He thought he’d been able to say it smoothly.

When Guild Girl heard that, a slight cloud passed over her face. “What will we do with her reward…?”

He hadn’t thought about that. But there was no need to worry too much. If he hesitated, he was afraid he might never be able to answer.

“I’ll take my half. As for the rest…”

Because he had resolved not to hesitate, he spent only a second gazing into the air, looking for the words. But the ones he found, he was satisfied with.

“…they’re for if and when she comes back.”

“Oh! Of course!” Guild Girl’s face split into a smile again, and she clapped her hands as if this was the best idea she had ever heard. “We’ll do that!”

“Yes.” Goblin Slayer nodded.

It would be a long time, he was sure, until she came back. For she was an elf and an adventurer, who sought revenge, and had gone far away to the west.

“Please do that for me,” he said.

“Huh? Welcome home!”

When he heard the words from behind him, he realized with a start that it might have been the very first time. Goblin Slayer’s hand was on the door of the main house, but he let it drop and slowly turned around.

She stood behind him, holding her red hair down against the wind. She was more dressed up than usual. She must have been out somewhere.

She hunched ever so slightly, as if embarrassed to let him see her and trying to hide it. Of course, a bit of waving her arms could hardly make her disappear.

So Goblin Slayer didn’t say anything. Perhaps we could say he couldn’t say anything. He simply watched her from behind the slats of his metal visor and then averted his eyes the slightest bit.

He didn’t think anything special of it; he noted that she was in her going-out clothes but felt nothing more than that.

The girl, his childhood friend, looked wide-eyed at his reaction, then took a few steps closer.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“What’s the matter?” he echoed, his voice scratching just a little. “Meaning…?”

“Are you tired?”

“…” He grunted softly. What to say, how to communicate it? He didn’t know. At length, he said, “Maybe.”

She just replied softly, “Okay,” and didn’t press him further.

He opened the door, and they entered the main house of the farm together.

“We’re home!” she called, as if there was someone to hear her, her voice echoing around the empty house. Then she turned to him and said, “Have a seat,” so he obediently did as he was bid.

He sat down in the chair as if he were falling, sinking. His equipment felt heavy, like it would drag him and his chair and all down into the floor. His every motion felt agonizingly slow. But still he painfully raised his head; there was a question he felt he must ask.

“Where is your uncle?”

“Oh, he’s at the temple—I mean the Temple of the Earth Mother. We went together. There’s a meeting.”

He watched her vacantly as she pattered in and out of the kitchen. She started a fire in the oven and boiled some water, not yet used to it but getting there.

“He’s still there. Some difficult conversation, I guess,” she said.

“I see,” Goblin Slayer replied and nodded. He had a strong suspicion that they were talking about the whatever it was, the monster that had appeared nearby recently.

The air seemed unsettled. The very aura felt malign. If the elf was to be believed, it was the aura of Chaos…

He couldn’t bring himself to say those things to the young woman in front of him, to try explaining them.

He was painfully well acquainted with his own carelessness. He didn’t wish to let the farm owner’s thoughtfulness toward her go in vain.

“The Earth Mother’s teachings are… Oh, I just thought it was interesting. I heard a sermon from the high priest before I came back here.” His childhood friend, her back to him, chattered away as she worked in the kitchen. Falteringly—but compared with the report he had given earlier, she sounded like a born orator. “Protect, heal, save… Did you know that?”

“No.”

“They’re the words of the Earth Mother. But I guess they aren’t commands. Like, ‘Do this!’”

As her voice came into his ears, Goblin Slayer let his thoughts drift along with them. “Then what does it mean?” he asked.

“It’s a voice that speaks to us.”

It didn’t mean protect, heal, and save others—but first protect, heal, and save yourself. Such was the Earth Mother’s wish, her prayer, and her words to the people of this world. On that basis, then, to reach out a hand to someone else—what a beautiful thing that was.

“…”

Goblin Slayer didn’t understand it. He had his hands full with himself. How was he supposed to care for others? And if he was supposed to care for others, how could he prioritize looking after himself?

If there were, indeed, someone who could balance those things, they would be a wonderful person. But they would be different from him in every way. It was something he could not do. Something worthy of respect.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to talk your ear off.”

She set a mug in front of him with a tunk. Tea maybe? She sat down across from him, holding another mug. He peered into the cup, and through the white steam, he saw a very thin, colored liquid inside.

He figured she must not be used to it. But he also thought: It’s warm.

“No,” he said and shook his head slowly. “I want to hear you.”

“Sure!”

Then his friend’s face lit up with a smile like a blooming flower, and she nodded eagerly.

Right now, for this moment, he felt that was enough.