My prediction that the observation post atop this tree would be safe was wrong.
Why?
Because we were fighting right now!
“How much longer until you’re reloaded?!”
“Duck!”
I knocked aside the longsword locked against my machete and immediately threw myself flat.
THUNK.
A bolt struck the neck of the Hobgoblin wielding the longsword.
“Grrk.”
Even then, the Hobgoblin didn’t fall. Clutching its throat with one hand, it swung the longsword at me as I lay prone.
“Just die already!”
I wrapped my arms around the Hobgoblin’s waist and took it down. I pinned the arm flailing the longsword with one hand and used the other to drive the bolt deeper into its neck.
“Gr…grrgh…….”
The visitor who had found the observation post I thought no one would ever discover was a Hobgoblin wrapped from head to toe in black like a ninja.
It had approached while Rion stood watch after dismissing the Observer because she was running low on Mana.
Was she really dead weight without the spirit?
We had been taking three-hour shifts on watch. The guest arrived during the darkest hour before sunrise. Just after we changed shifts, while I blinked my sleepy eyes several times, the board covering the ladder entrance slowly lifted, and our eyes met.
Its glowing yellow goat eyes were more than enough to banish my sleepiness.
At my startled scream, the Hobgoblin also jumped in surprise and sprang out. We immediately began fighting for our lives.
And now—
“Huff, huff. That scared the hell out of me.”
Rion seemed just as startled. She had collapsed into a sitting position with one hand over her chest.
FSSSSSH.
The Hobgoblin dissolved into glowing dust, leaving all its belongings behind.
Just as in the game, killing monsters inside a dungeon gave better rewards than killing them outside. I had assumed the difference in rewards came only from their levels.
I didn’t know how it worked, but when a monster died inside a dungeon, only its corpse disappeared. Everything it carried remained behind.
I couldn’t be certain because this Hobgoblin was the only creature I had killed here so far, but its clothes and belongings had all remained intact.
‘A telescope, a longsword, paper, charcoal… and what are these?’
When I opened the bundle it had carried on its back, several items came out.
The first was a primitive telescope: a long cylindrical tube fitted with a rectangular crystal about two finger joints in length. Rotating the crystal seated in its groove adjusted the magnification.
Then there was the longsword it had used. That was probably loot taken from someone who had entered the dungeon and been killed.
There was also a stack of blank paper that looked as though it had been torn from somewhere, along with a blunt piece of charcoal that could serve as a pencil.
The bundle contained five throwing stars and two black spheres that appeared to be Smoke Bombs as well.
This creature had probably been some kind of scout.
Had the Burrow Goblin that fled to the Orc camp yesterday been important?
Or had we simply been unlucky enough to run into a scout?
‘No. First, we need to get out of here.’
I had been struggling to understand the situation when the thought struck me that, whatever was happening, we needed to leave this place first.
Tap. Tap.
I turned at the sensation of someone tapping my shoulder. Rion wasn’t looking at me. She was staring down below.
I placed a hand on the railing and looked down.
‘I don’t see anyth—’
Rustle. Rustle.
I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell the bushes beside the path leading toward the forest were moving.
They weren’t swaying in the wind. The movement was unnatural, as though someone were forcing their way through them.
Hoot. Hoot.
It sounded similar to the owl I had heard when I woke after falling down the mountainside.
Except this call was dull and harsh, like metal scraping against metal.
“…We’re fucked.”
Hoot. Hoot.
The same grating birdcall sounded again.
“Can you climb down using the rope?”
“…No. I don’t think I can.”
I had cut away all context and gone straight to the point, but fortunately, Rion understood and answered.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the answer I wanted.
Could I descend while carrying Rion on my back?
The rope didn’t seem rotten, and the tree it was tied to looked sturdy.
How had I failed to realize that having only one ladder to climb up also meant having only one ladder to climb down?
You’re an idiot, Seung-woo.
Should I have forced myself to find another campsite?
No. I never should’ve entered this dungeon in the first place…….
SLAP.
I struck myself across the cheek and regained my focus.
‘Will regretting this shit solve anything? Stop whining and find a way!’
I shouted at myself internally and pulled myself together.
“Rion.”
“Y-Yes.”
I called to Rion, who had been standing there blankly just as I had, and snapped her out of it.
“How many are there?”
Gray wind gathered in the air, and a Sylph appeared. At Rion’s whisper, it vanished, then immediately returned.
“…Eight. It says they’re all armed.”
“How many mutants?”
“It says they all look the same, so it can’t tell.”
That spirit was subtly useless.
In the worst case—
No. I should simply assume the worst and act accordingly.
Even when I was lucky, my life had only ever given me the lesser evil.
“First, we deal with them. Then we leave the dungeon.”
The Tracking Scent on Miyu, the black panther cub, supposedly wouldn’t disappear until the end of today. But I thought we needed to escape this dungeon, which had turned into a den of horrors, before anything else.
It would probably be better to face the remaining Hunters in the Black Forest.
At most, they only had five members left.
Hoot. Hoot.
The owl calls continued, sounding almost irritated.
“I’ll draw their attention first. Climb down the ladder while I do.”
“All right. B-Be careful.”
Forget being careful. Just get down quickly and give me covering fire, damn it.
I stepped onto the foothold beside the tree and grabbed the rope. I wrapped it around my waist, held it with enough tension that it was neither clenched too tightly nor left too loose, and pushed off from the tree.
“Grrk.”
“Kyachan.”
At that moment, the bushes shook, and one of them emerged into the middle of the path.
It stood twenty meters from the tree.
It was a goblin carrying a wooden shield with a round iron boss fixed to its center.
Beginning with that one, the creatures that had been approaching through the bushes emerged onto the path.
‘Should we just run?’
The thought of fleeing, humiliating as it was, flashed through my mind.
Every goblin that emerged from the grass was a mutant.
No, they looked somewhere between mutants and higher variants.
For goblins, the difference between ordinary creatures and mutants usually wasn’t large. At the smallest scale, it was the difference between carrying a stone axe and an iron axe. At the greatest, it meant a difference in height of one palm—roughly ten or twenty centimeters.
But the creatures before me were at least twenty centimeters taller than Common Goblins, and their musculature was entirely different. Their builds were one and a half times larger, and they were fully armed.
They wore helmets I didn’t even possess and covered their entire bodies in wooden armor.
The biceps and triceps left exposed by the armor were remarkably developed. Apparently, they hadn’t neglected their physical training.
Their weapons were well maintained too.
By comparison, my machete was chipped in so many places that it could’ve passed for a saw.
‘Ah. I wasn’t planning to use these here.’
It seemed I would have to reveal my hand.
***
The goblins emerging from the forest consisted of three Shieldbearer Goblins, two Spearman Goblins, two Archer Goblins, and one Shaman Goblin carrying a staff.
That last one looked qualitatively different from the shaman I had killed before.
The moment I landed, I crouched low and concealed myself among the bushes. The three Shieldbearer Goblins took the front, with the Spearman Goblins positioned between them. The two Archer Goblins followed behind with arrows knocked.
‘How long does that bastard need to cast one spell?’
I moved as stealthily as possible toward their rear.
The Shaman Goblin I had encountered before had needed more than a minute to complete a single spell.
‘Please take at least thirty seconds.’
They outnumbered me, and their weapons were superior.
The only thing I had over them was my physical ability.
My conclusion was that the only way to win under these conditions was through an ambush. And to gain the greatest advantage from an ambush, I needed to eliminate the ranged attackers first.
“Kekantiporcha.”
“Kankotopaki.”
They were conversing among themselves. They looked tense, but they didn’t seem to have noticed me.
“Haaap-!”
I burst from hiding with a shout and swung the machete at the Shaman Goblin like a lightning bolt.
The Shaman Goblin’s eyes widened.
But the blade had already bitten into its neck.
GRRRIND.
The chipped blade failed to cut cleanly through its throat. Instead of taking its head off, the edge caught against bone.
The instant I felt it, I yanked the blade back.
It came free as though tearing through bone and muscle.
The Shaman Goblin didn’t die instantly. Purple blood sprayed from its throat.
The remaining goblins must have undergone brutal training befitting their appearances, because they moved without panicking.
Both Archers immediately drew and fired.
WHIZZ. WHIZZ.
Sorry, but this body had already dodged arrows fired at point-blank range.
I took large steps from side to side, avoided the arrows, then hurled the machete forward.
The blade buried itself in the center of one Archer Goblin’s face.
I decided to use the other as a shield.
Before it could finish reloading, I planted a hand against its chest and drove it backward. The force knocked over one Spearman Goblin and two Shieldbearer Goblins that hadn’t managed to turn around.
A spearhead thrust toward my face.
SWISH.
I ducked beneath it, though several strands of hair were cut away.
Instead, I caught the shaft and drove a knuckle punch into the Adam’s apple of the goblin pulled toward me.
I felt its windpipe break. The creature collapsed, coughing blood.
“Kryak!”
THUNK.
A bolt struck the back of a Shieldbearer Goblin that had been about to swing its blade at me.
Rion had fired while still clinging to the ladder.
Ha.
I couldn’t decide whether to shout at her to hurry down or thank her for covering me while she descended.
“Kyaaak-!”
“Kyarrk-!”
The fallen creatures rose and snarled savagely.
SLASH—.
I drew the longsword taken from the Hobgoblin and cut through a goblin along with its spear.
Shoving aside the creature’s twisted face, I charged forward.
CRASH—!
I put my weight into a shoulder charge. One of the two goblins went flying, while the other managed to withstand it.
STAB.
“Krgh.”
A blade thrust from behind its shield grazed my side.
I didn’t know whether its stance had broken or it had failed to absorb the impact properly, but at least it hadn’t stabbed me in the neck.
I wasn’t dead.
‘Am I going insane too? Or am I just adapting to this world?’
I had been stabbed, yet my first thought was that I was lucky not to have died.
“Damn it.”
I stepped backward and kicked the goblin away, shield and all.
No matter how much muscle it had built, it couldn’t overcome the difference in weight class.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Rion aiming the Hand Crossbow at the creature I had knocked down with my shoulder.
‘She’s making good use of Wind Path.’
A single line of gray wind connected the tip of Rion’s crossbow to the rising goblin.
I could ignore that side for now.
CLANG. THUNK. THUNK.
I exchanged blows with the creature that had stabbed me.
Even though I was striking downward from above, it blocked me skillfully. It had knocked aside my longsword at first, then apparently realized it was losing in strength and began hiding behind its shield to stop every attack.
‘Why is it so good at blocking?’
Only its eyes peeked over the edge of the shield as it stopped everything I threw at it. Yet whenever an opening appeared, it thrust into the gap like a viper.
I saw one corner of its mouth curl upward behind the shield.
That pissed me off.
“Don’t underestimate me!”
Gripping the longsword with both hands, I thrust it toward the creature.
It raised the shield to block again, but this time I didn’t stop. Keeping the blade planted against the shield, I forced the creature backward.
Unable to withstand my strength, it stumbled in retreat.
“Ki! Karkanta!”
Had I heard too much goblin speech?
It almost sounded as though the creature were saying, ‘Y-You brute!’
“RAAAAH!”
I kept pushing until its back struck a tree. Then I put more strength into the blade.
The longsword split into the wooden shield and drove deeper.
Soon, the tip punched through the shield and touched the creature’s breastplate.
“Kata.”
I saw fear spread across its face.
Now that expression suited it.
It flailed the sword in its hand, but it couldn’t reach me or knock away the longsword.
CRACK. SPLINTER.
With the sound of wood breaking, the blade pierced its chest.
Fortunately, I had won without revealing my hand.
I had saved the magic jars.
“Rion, let’s head back to the portal—”
BOOM.
An impact like being struck by a truck sent me flying through the air.