The mutant Hobgoblin died, leaving behind a fist-sized lump of silver and a white will-o’-the-wisp.
“C-Crazy. This actually dropped.”
The white will-o’-the-wisp burned in midair while taking the shape of the mutant’s face.
That was a skill-type item called a ‘Soul Wisp’ in the game.
It was so rare that even after killing the same monster one hundred times, you might not see a single one.
‘So even I can get this luc—’
WHIZZ, WHIZZ, WHIZZ—!
Four or five arrows cut through the air toward me as I approached the Soul Wisp.
“Whoa!”
I hurriedly rolled across the ground and avoided them. Goblin soldiers drew their bowstrings again to fire another volley at me.
“Kyacharu, kitan torte!”
Maybe I had heard those phlegmy goblin voices too many times, because I felt as though I could understand what the creature was saying.
It seemed to be shouting, ‘Back away, filthy human!’
The goblin yelling at me was the only one wearing a cloak made from animal fur over its shoulders.
It appeared to be the captain leading the goblin soldiers.
“Do you even know what that is—”
“Karte.”
CREEEAK—.
At the captain goblin’s short command, five bowstrings were drawn taut.
Apparently, it did know what that was.
A ‘Soul Wisp’ was an item that granted a summoning skill. The target of the summon was the monster that had died.
In this case, it would be the mutant Hobgoblin.
With a Priest or Necromancer, the monster could be resurrected together with its body in one hundred percent condition.
If a character from another class obtained the Soul Wisp, they could summon and command a spiritual body possessing thirty to fifty percent of the monster’s former abilities.
‘Can a monster summon the Soul Wisp if it eats it? That never happened in the game, so I don’t know. But this is reality. Maybe it can.’
Since I had no weapon, I reached into my bag and took out one of the few jars I had left. A Signal Flare came out with it, so I held that as well.
I had intended to put it back.
But they were glaring at me so viciously that I couldn’t.
“Kete, tipato noka.”
Watching me warily, the captain goblin gave an order to one of its subordinates. The creature immediately mounted a wolf and raced toward the goblin base.
Was it going to call for reinforcements?
But there were already nearly thirty goblin soldiers here…….
‘Don’t tell me the goblins have a Necromancer. They don’t have a Priest, do they?’
There weren’t many types of goblin mutants.
Shamans, Archers, and Warriors. Those three were supposed to be all of them.
But as I had encountered repeatedly, some carried spears, while others carried swords and shields. There had also been the Sniper Goblin and Assassin Goblin that slaughtered the Hobgoblins.
I could understand that much if they were simply offshoots of Warrior Goblins.
“Come on. No way, right?”
The captain goblin didn’t answer my muttered question.
It merely gestured, ordering the Shieldbearer Goblins and Spearman Goblins lined up behind it to advance.
I wanted to turn on my happy thoughts, but I decided not to.
Interpreting the situation in the way most favorable to me was nothing but cheap self-comfort. It had never helped me once.
It was always better to assume the worst and devise a countermeasure.
‘Should I dive for it now?’
But this time, twice as many arrows were aimed at me. There were ten of them.
The moment I so much as twitched toward the ‘Soul Wisp,’ I would probably be turned into a hedgehog.
While we remained in that awkward standoff, Rion, who had been lying on the ground, woke up.
“…Kain. You defeated it.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I defeated it. So could you hurry up and load a bolt?”
‘Is your body all right?’
Ah.
I had said the opposite of what I was thinking.
“Putai, pachakan.”
The ones who answered me were a group of muscular men who suddenly entered the battlefield.
They were Orcs wielding axes the size of small children.
A patrol?
Damn it. Why did the situation show no sign of improving and only keep getting worse?
CLICK.
After loading a bolt, Rion approached and put her back against mine. She looked somewhat sullen.
Still, given the situation, she didn’t do anything disruptive.
At least she knew how to separate personal feelings from business.
Whoosh.
I thought a thin strand of gray wind brushed across my forehead.
It was probably my imagination.
A line of gray wind extended from the end of Rion’s crossbow. It split into two paths, one targeting the captain goblin and the other the Orc standing at the front of the patrol.
The Orc wore an armband when none of the others did, so he was clearly the squad leader.
The squad leader Orc looked between us and the goblins. When he appeared to notice the white will-o’-the-wisp floating behind me, one corner of his mouth rose in a grin.
His tusks stuck out that far, yet his lips still moved properly.
Could they even eat normally?
“Pupata pettai.”
“Kokkan keteku ko.”
The captain goblin and squad leader Orc began talking among themselves.
Judging from the situation, the Orc was telling the goblins that they had entered the neutral zone and needed to leave immediately. The goblin seemed to be saying that they would kill only us and leave, so the Orcs shouldn’t interfere.
[Is that so? Then leave that behind.]
[Nonsense!]
[There will be no negotiation.]
Half the arrows aimed at us shifted toward the Orcs. Several goblin soldiers also raised their shields toward them.
Maybe I could take advantage of both sides fighting each other.
“Rion, when I give the signal—”
THUD.
Just as I was about to explain the plan that had occurred to me, the ground shook.
THUD.
Flutter.
The forest shook again, and the birds resting on the branches took flight in alarm.
CRACK—!
The Tyrant appeared, shoving aside and snapping a perfectly healthy tree.
***
“BUUUUUURP—.”
The creature that announced its arrival with a spectacular belch was the Ogre known as the Tyrant of the Land of the Greenskins.
It was as tall as a two-story building, with arms and legs thicker than logs, a belly jutting out like Namsan Mountain, and a single horn growing from tangled hair that looked as though it hadn’t been washed in days.
And there was a leg hanging from its mouth.
A leg?
After belching, the Ogre chewed and swallowed the leg in its mouth.
Having eaten the leg of something that might have been human or monster, the Ogre smiled contentedly. It looked pleased.
It even seemed excited at the prospect of taking a nap beneath the warm sunlight.
‘If only there weren’t blood around its mouth.’
The Ogre’s mouth was covered in red blood.
It soon licked around its lips, making the stains lighter.
The Ogre slowly looked over all of us standing in confrontation.
It pursed its lips, shrugged, ignored us, and resumed walking.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Until the Ogre finished looking over us, neither Rion nor I, nor even the goblins and Orcs, dared breathe loudly.
Everyone here knew.
If that creature had taken a sudden whim, this place would have become the site of a massacre.
‘Crazy.’
The Ogres I had seen in webtoons and animation were merely used as measuring sticks for the protagonist’s combat power.
The Ogre before me was nothing like that.
They used something like this as a measuring stick?
Apparently, protagonists were called protagonists for a reason.
One knuckle rap from it looked capable of turning a person into chunks of meat.
Some of the goblin soldiers wet themselves on the spot.
When the Ogre passed beside the Orcs, their formerly green faces went so pale they looked white.
Most of all, the creature gave off a terrible stench, along with the smell of death that even the foul odor couldn’t bury.
I saw the Orcs and goblins exchange glances.
They had already forgotten about us.
The two sides seemed to have established a silent truce without including us.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The Ogre slowly passed through the area with all the ponderous weight its appearance suggested.
It showed brief interest in the ‘Soul Wisp,’ but after blowing a hard breath through its nose, it continued on as though it had lost interest.
The Ogre had almost passed all of us when life returned to the goblins’ and Orcs’ eyes.
Who decided on a truce?
I never agreed to one!
HISSSSS.
I pressed the rear end of the Signal Flare in my hand.
With the sound of the fuse burning, white smoke rose from its head.
The goblins and Orcs who had been ignoring us opened their eyes wide.
SCREEEEE—!
Light erupted from the Signal Flare and shot toward the Ogre.
“GRAAAAAAAAGH!!!”
***
The Ogre began rampaging with the back of its head on fire.
SIZZLE.
Its hair burned with a smell like roasting meat.
Driven mad by the heat, the Ogre smashed the surrounding trees and repeatedly rubbed the back of its head with its hand as it struggled to put out the flames.
“Kyarteno!”
“Puketin!”
Judging by their expressions, both the Orcs and goblins had cursed at me viciously.
WHOOSH.
Still, I threw the now-empty Signal Flare casing, which was giving off faint red smoke, toward the nearest target—the captain goblin.
Startled, it caught the casing with both hands.
‘Perfect timing.’
Just as the bewildered creature tried to throw the Signal Flare back at me, the Ogre extinguished the flames on the back of its head and turned toward us.
“GRAAAAAH-!”
CRASH—!
The Ogre raised one foot high, then stomped the ground.
With a deafening impact, the earth tilted as though someone had flipped over a dining table. The goblins rolled down the slanted ground toward the Ogre.
‘Ground Leveling.’
The reason the Field Boss Ogre was called the Tyrant of this forest wasn’t that monstrous body.
Of course, its physical build was terrifying when seen in person.
But its skills were even more horrifying.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
Every time yellow light erupted from the tip of the Ogre’s horn, it stomped the ground.
Each time, walls rose from the earth and formed prisons around the goblins.
It was one part of the creature’s skill combination.
‘Tread Underfoot.’
The Ogre jumped onto the imprisoned goblins and gleefully stomped them.
Along with the screams of the trapped goblins came the horrible sounds of flesh being crushed.
Then—
Whoooosh.
Green flame flew toward the Ogre’s back.
The will-o’-the-wisp arced through the air, but despite its momentum, it failed to injure the Ogre at all.
Once the Tyrant began using Mana, minor attacks no longer worked against it.
Powdered earth cascaded from the Ogre’s back.
It was Sand Armor, the skill that gave the Ogre its disgustingly high defense.
The Ogre’s horn was now glowing yellow.
With a sinister grin, it turned around.
A goblin in a blackish-purple robe was running toward it while holding a skull-decorated staff and leading roughly ten goblins.
‘Those creatures are…….’
Among them were the mutant goblins that had slaughtered the Hobgoblins on the day of the gathering between the small monsters on the plain.
“Kain.”
Rion turned me around while I was distracted by the battle between the Ogre and the goblins.
The Orcs were already walking toward us.
I took another Signal Flare from my crossbody bag.
The approaching creatures flinched and stopped.
I stepped backward by the same distance they had advanced.
Then the Orc holding the halberd stepped forward and opened his mouth.
“Stop.”
What the hell?
Had that bastard just spoken the human language?
His pronunciation leaked around his tusks, but it wasn’t difficult to understand.
“Hand over that soul flame. Then we will let you live.”
“What?”
“The soul flame is all we want.”
The interpreter spoke while watching the squad leader Orc’s expression.
Come to think of it, wasn’t that bastard the one who had saved the Burrow Goblin back then?
Was he one of those kind, intelligent characters from movies and dramas who secretly did good deeds from behind the scenes because of his low status?
The sucker archetype?
“Are you serious? You’ll let us live if we hand over the Soul Wisp—that thing? How can I trust you?”
The squad leader Orc glared sharply at the interpreter.
“…Yes. We will let you live. Trust me.”
The creature looked at me with desperate eyes.
He seemed kind.
The ones behind him, not so much.
“Rion.”
“You don’t seriously believe that, do you?”
Of course I didn’t.
I couldn’t even trust my own kind.
“You can compensate me for the summoned beast later.”
“What are you talking ab—”
Sensing something strange, the interpreter hurriedly added more.
“Trust me. I will make certain that you—”
“I don’t trust you, idiot.”
I had watched enough movies to know that trusting a sucker character like that only turned you into a sucker too.
I pushed Rion behind me and threw the jar in my other hand toward them.
The purple jar decorated with a skull sailed toward them in an arc.
The enraged Orcs grabbed the interpreter by the shoulders and shoved him backward, then swung their axes.
SMASH—!
The jar burst, and purple powder seeped into the Orcs.
The [Poison Jar], made from the paralytic poison Brian had used on me, paralyzed them.
“GROOOOAR-!”
The goblins fighting the Ogre were fleeing for their lives.
The short Assassin Goblin had just retrieved the captain goblin. All four of the captain’s limbs were broken, but it appeared to still be breathing.
“PATAAN-!”
Apparently, the poison Brian carried had been extremely cheap.
Not even ten seconds had passed, yet the paralyzed Orcs were already trembling as the effect began to wear off.
HISSSSS. SCREEEEE—!
Red fire ignited on the victorious Ogre’s ass.
I threw the Signal Flare casing at the trembling squad leader Orc, grabbed Rion’s hand, and ran.
Naturally, I kept the lump of silver clenched in my other hand.
“Have fun, you idiots! I’m leaving!!”