Goblins.
Infamous as cockroaches, they could be found in nearly every plane that had anything to do with “Western fantasy.”
Small, greedy, and vile by nature, they ranked near the bottom of sapient races in average intelligence. If they had been even a little smarter, the words “cunning” and “deceptive” would probably have been added to their reputation as well.
Their species leaned heavily toward evil.
Their poor intelligence meant terrible productivity.
Together, those traits ensured that Goblin survival almost always revolved around raiding, stealing, and plundering from others.
Worse, their species had no females.
To reproduce, they had to abduct members of the opposite sex from other sapient races and rely on some bizarre method of unknown origin.
As a result, Goblins had somehow managed to earn a reputation across the multiverse that was, in certain respects, even worse than that of Abyssal Demons and Infernal Devils.
Individually, however, Goblins were weak.
Very weak.
An ordinary peasant woman armed with a pitchfork could easily kill an unarmed white-tier Goblin.
But as Maji had said earlier, these creatures were much like the stray dogs roaming around town.
One alone was hardly worth worrying about.
A pack of them was another matter.
Once their numbers reached the double digits, or even the triple digits, their courage and destructive power grew dramatically.
They plundered merchant caravans.
They attacked villages.
And once a Goblin settlement became large enough, an elite individual with the ability to lead would naturally emerge among them.
If left alone long enough, an infestation could eventually become a disaster capable of threatening an entire kingdom.
The Goblin tribe the ragtag party was currently hunting had clearly not developed to the point where it could plunder towns.
But it had already become bold enough to launch attacks on Humans.
The cooling corpse of the Gnome who had loved making badly timed jokes was all the proof anyone needed.
“ROAR!”
A bestial howl exploded through the forest.
Gagu sprang upright like a startled wild beast, both hands clamping around the shaft of his bloodstained two-handed axe.
The sudden attack and the death of a party companion seemed to awaken some faint trace of ancestral ferocity in the mixed-blood bastard.
His canine teeth looked sharper than before.
The muscles across his body swelled and flushed red.
Whatever was happening, the Half-Orc had clearly entered some kind of battle state.
Maji reacted fastest.
Almost the instant the dark wooden club emerged from behind Elki, the hunter understood what was happening.
He shouted the warning and immediately scrambled up the towering hardbark oak behind him, moving on all fours with startling speed despite the longbow strapped across his back.
His thin figure vanished into the dense canopy in seconds.
Xia Nan, meanwhile, had to admit an unpleasant truth.
He was the slowest person in the entire party to react.
For more than thirty years before his transmigration, his life had gone from classroom to office chair.
He had never even slaughtered a chicken.
In this life, he was still only an honest farmer who spent his days working the soil.
One moment, he had been wondering how to coax more information about this world’s supernatural powers out of Elki.
The next, the Gnome’s skull had been smashed open right in front of him.
Brain matter had spilled out.
Xia Nan’s thoughts simply stopped.
Instinct made him snatch up the one-handed sword from his knees, but the rest of his body refused to move.
He stood frozen.
Until…
“Whoosh!”
A violent rush of air brushed past his cheek.
His hair whipped sideways, and a line of sharp pain stung his skin.
A wooden arrow shot from the canopy above, slicing through the forest shadows.
“Aagh!”
A shrill scream came from directly behind him.
Xia Nan jolted.
The world that had seemed muted a moment earlier came crashing back all at once.
There was no time to thank Maji.
Xia Nan spun around.
His gaze swept behind him, and his pupils tightened.
Two short figures crouched in the dark.
Their rough, dark-green skin was mottled with sores and scars. Crimson eyes glinted with malice and low cunning.
Each wore nothing but a filthy brown rag tied around the waist.
Their limbs were thin, yet wiry muscle shifted visibly beneath the skin.
Two Goblins.
At some point, they had crept right up behind him.
If Maji had not intervened, Xia Nan might already have ended up like Elki.
The thought sent a chill through him.
His hand tightened around the rope-wrapped sword hilt.
“Wa-cha!”
Their ambush had failed.
One of the Goblins had an arrow punched straight through the top of its foot, pinning it firmly to the ground.
The naturally cowardly monster seemed to lose its nerve the moment its stealth was broken.
Instead of charging, it raised the wooden club in its hand and waved it threateningly at the young Human.
Firelight washed over the pitch-black club, painting its surface a dangerous orange-red.
Xia Nan’s eyes locked onto the rusty nails embedded in the wood.
For a split second, the image of Elki’s ruined skull flashed through his mind again.
Fear surged.
His body moved before he could think.
Xia Nan stamped his right foot forward.
At the same time, he bent his sword arm and gathered his strength.
“Thud!”
His foot sank into the soft earth.
Deep.
It felt almost as if roots had burst from the sole of his foot and driven into the ground.
Then that familiar force appeared.
It erupted from beneath him and surged upward through bone and muscle, gathering the strength of his entire body as it climbed.
Waist.
Chest.
Shoulder.
Arm.
Finally, everything poured into the blade.
[Spinning Slash]
“Shrrk!”
The sword ripped through the air with a shrill hiss.
Mist rolled violently around him.
A brilliant arc of silver flashed across the campsite.
For one instant, everything seemed to stop.
A carefully maintained blade.
A technique practiced hundreds of thousands of times.
Against those two things, the Goblins’ skin, muscle, and bone might as well have been paper.
[Proficiency +1]
Translucent text flashed before Xia Nan’s eyes.
Two brief jolts of resistance traveled through his hand.
Then the sword completed its rising diagonal arc from left to right, exactly as it had countless times against straw targets in the fields.
Blood erupted.
A severed hand hit the mud.
Half a skull followed.
Then foul-smelling entrails and steaming, filthy blood splattered across the ground.
The two treacherous monsters that had tried to ambush him were split apart by a single stroke.
No harder than cutting through the straw dummies of his past.
The forest went still.
High in the canopy, Maji slowly relaxed the longbow he had already drawn to full tension.
His eyes moved from the mangled Goblin corpses scattered across the meadow to Xia Nan, who was slowly exhaling as he brought his sword back under control.
Maji swallowed.
Once.
Twice.
The astonishment on his face was impossible to hide.
[What the fuck kind of newcomer is this!?]