After killing Billy, who had tried to rob me, I became well-supplied. Yet my body was more exhausted than ever.
“Ah, these bastards are monsters, and they’re hunting people.”
The backpack Billy had left me had long since been torn in several places instead of my back, courtesy of the wild dogs’ teeth and claws.
“Kek.”
There was that damned goblin laughter again. After being chased and chased by three wild dogs—no, wolfdogs—and two goblins, I had reached a dead end in some place I didn’t even recognize. Individually, none of them was anything special.
Were goblins born with fish bones lodged in their throats? They always laughed as though something were stuck there.
“Grrrr.”
“BARK! BARK!”
The three dogs had cornered me at the dead end and kept barking. It would’ve been different if I were barehanded, but all I needed was one clean hit with the machete.
THWACK.
Just as I was about to charge, I twisted my head away from a flying stone. One of the goblins behind the dogs was holding a crude-looking slingshot. Its vile grin made me want to kill it for real. The goblin beside it held a stone axe and licked its lips.
“Kyak!”
At the goblin’s shout, the three dogs charged. I hurriedly slipped off the backpack. Gripping its straps with both hands, I swung it with all my strength. The backpack knocked aside both the incoming stone and the dogs.
“YELP.”
I charged straight forward. A stone shard fired in panic grazed my hair.
‘You’re dead.’
That slingshot was a major reason this chase had dragged on for hours since morning. It wasn’t powerful enough to break bones. But the goblin kept aiming for my face, and I had missed several chances to counterattack because of it.
THUD.
I threw the backpack at the stone-axe goblin and sent it flying as well. Then I dove at the fleeing slingshot goblin.
GRAB.
I had tried to seize the back of its neck, but it was faster than expected, so I caught its ankle instead. Feeling resistance, I looked back and saw one of the dogs clinging to my ankle with its teeth.
“You son of a bitch-!”
I swung the goblin in my hand at the dog.
“YELP!”
Using the slingshot goblin as a club, I swung it around wildly. The dogs struck by it backed away.
FSSSSSH.
The bastard in my hand dissolved into glowing dust.
Tsk. It was already dead.
Weakling.
I drew the machete tucked into my belt. The dogs still crouched low and growled, but their folded ears and retreating steps made it obvious they were frightened.
‘Should I bluff?’
I smirked and approached the stone-axe goblin pinned beneath the backpack.
“Whine.”
Even as they watched me, the dogs could only whimper. They didn’t dare attack. I kicked away the stone axe in the goblin’s hand. The bastard, now reduced to an ordinary goblin, was lifted into the air by its head.
When I looked back, the dogs still couldn’t bring themselves either to attack or flee.
“Ggggh.”
I slowly drew the blade across the goblin’s throat. Purple blood flowed as it made a phlegmy sound.
When I threw the head toward the pack, the startled dogs fled. As the goblin’s corpse dissolved into dust, the purple blood on my hand disappeared with it.
“Ah, I almost got fucked there.”
In terms of pure combat power, the dogs that had fled were a greater threat to me. What if they had surrounded me and attacked? I wasn’t confident I could protect my vital points while fighting them.
Goblins had pathetic combat ability, but their use of tools and tamed animals made them endlessly troublesome.
“Companions. I need companions.”
Now that this was reality, I felt it even more strongly than when I played the game. I finally understood why the game had you gather NPCs as companions and hunt in a party.
If I’d had even one companion to watch my back, I wouldn’t have needed to spend hours being chased.
“Whew, shit.”
Acid seemed to rise from my stomach. This wasn’t the first time monsters had chased me.
Three days had passed since I killed Billy.
After that, monsters began appearing in groups of three or four. Three or four ordinary goblins wouldn’t have mattered.
But everything that appeared before me was either an armed goblin, a goblin that had tamed wild animals, or a pack of wild beasts. After a single shot, the Hand Crossbow often left me open to a counterattack while I reloaded.
Slosh, slosh.
After being ganged up on four or five times, my once-luxurious clothes had been torn into rags, and my body was a wreck. Each time, I had sparingly used the wound-healing medicine—the potion—but I had already gone through half of it.
I was exhausted.
Staying awake for one night had been bearable. But once I went nearly two days without sleep, the fatigue felt unbearable. I had wandered aimlessly to keep myself awake and fallen dozens of times. My knees had long since become filthy with blood and dirt.
In the game, the monsters died after only a few hits. In reality, they were completely different creatures.
I put the backpack on again.
First, I needed to find somewhere safe.
I was so tired I felt like I was going to die. I would dig a burrow or crawl into any cave I found and get some sleep.
How long had I walked like that?
I couldn’t even see the edge of the territorial castle anymore.
Had I gotten stranded?
Ah, I didn’t know.
I just wanted to sleep.
By sheer luck, I found a cave that was neither too large nor too small.
There was no way I was this lucky.
“Fuck it. I don’t know anymore.”
The sun was already on the verge of setting. With eyes that could barely see through the exhaustion, I examined the area around the cave. There were no animal droppings near the entrance and no claw marks. Nor did the cave carry the musky stench I had been forced to smell for the past three days.
Dragging my feet, I went inside. I stabbed the machete into the darkness. Despite how dark the cave was, ten steps took me to the end.
‘I can’t take this anymore.’
I lay down without even taking the sleeping bag out of the backpack. The cave floor was hard and painfully uncomfortable, but my eyes were already closing.
Even so, I didn’t let go of the machete.
***
Step. Step.
Whoever approached was walking as quietly as possible, but they couldn’t hide the vibrations traveling through the ground.
Who is it?
I need to get up.
It felt as though chains had been fastened to my arms and legs. My eyelids wouldn’t move either, as though enormous weights had been piled on them.
Slide.
Tap.
Something slipped from my hand. As the object slid through my loosened grip, it brushed lightly against my fingers.
Then came a moment of silence.
ZIIIP.
Soon, I heard a zipper opening.
“…I’m lucky today.”
A middle-aged man’s voice was followed by the sound of a weapon being cocked.
CLICK.
Click?
My half-asleep mind quickly snapped back into place. My impossibly heavy eyelids flew open.
My eyes met those of a silhouette wearing my backpack, with the machete sheathed.
“Tsk.”
The silhouette clicked its tongue and sprinted toward the mouth of the cave.
Fuck. An outright thief this time?
My body, which had felt as though someone had beaten it while I slept, shot forward as if the exhaustion had been a lie.
No.
My muscles were still screaming in pain.
I was just that pissed off.
THUD.
“Huh?”
The bastard pitched forward after my flying kick struck his back.
“Don’t ‘huh’ me, asshole-!”
I roughly yanked away the backpack hanging from one of his shoulders.
Thump.
The backpack fell to the ground. I charged the bastard as he awkwardly pushed himself up, grabbed him around the waist, lifted him, and slammed him into the floor.
“Ghk-.”
I rained down punches without restraint. The way he raised both arms to block my fists made me feel like a school bully beating up the class outcast.
What a shitty feeling.
“Let me sleep, you bastards.”
“S-Stop…….”
Had he passed out? His faint breathing suggested he wasn’t dead.
Should I just kill him?
The thought crossed my mind, but I shook my head and erased it.
Had I already adapted to this world?
Light was already filtering into the cave. It seemed the sun had risen quite a while ago.
I was about to bind the thief’s hands and feet with clothes from my backpack when—
THWACK.
The thief I had thought was unconscious swung a club. I barely twisted my head aside and avoided having my skull smashed.
As always, this body’s reflexes were….
Whew—
“Oh, fuck.”
The thief was already sprinting out of the cave.
Fine. All right.
Just go.
I didn’t have the energy to chase him.
***
Bubble, bubble.
I stared blankly at the water boiling in the pot. I checked the tree I was leaning against. I had already examined it before settling down, but there were no goblins hiding in its branches.
The stream flowed quietly.
Judging only by the view before me, I might as well have come camping in the mountains.
“This should be enough.”
I chewed dry hardtack while waiting for the water to cool. The last time I drank directly from a stream, I got an upset stomach.
‘Mortal Realm Escape No. 1’ had said mountain water was safe to drink if it looked clean. This had been Class 1 pristine water where even mantis shrimp lived.
On the way here, I encountered adventurers—people I supposed I should call NPCs wandering around the hunting field.
‘Not one of them could be trusted.’
Maybe it was because the first adventurer I met was that lunatic Billy, who had tried to kill someone over sugar.
I couldn’t bring myself to trust anyone.
“If you’re alone, would you care to join our party? The forest is dangerous right now.”
An older adventurer with relatively normal eyes had made me an offer. His party consisted of three men. But I rejected it after seeing the bloodstained knife held by the man standing behind him.
Still, I obtained one useful piece of information.
“So those bastards were rebels.”
According to the friendly-looking man, the soldiers who attacked the wagons on the mountainside had been the previous lord’s guards. There was a rumor that the current lord had poisoned his predecessor to death.
That rumor was regarded as all but established fact.
The previous lord’s knights and guards were apparently hiding in the Black Forest and the mountains. They had turned to banditry while building their strength to take revenge on the current lord.
After hearing that story, I realized something.
“Penance Mode.”
[Madness & Abyss] allowed players to adjust the difficulty. The original difficulty settings were [Normal], [Difficult], and [Hardcore]. But several years ago, the company released [Penance] Mode as DLC.
“And it got torn to shreds.”
Originally, raising the difficulty increased monster attack power and health, lowered item drop rates, and increased the chance of bizarre behavior.
But in [Penance] Mode, characters became strange the moment they joined as companions.
For example, shieldbearers used their companions as shields, while mages couldn’t cast magic and beat enemies with their staffs instead. These idiotic settings made the game impossible to progress through.
Still, I played it a few times because it was fun.
I quit soon afterward, though.
‘I think some mastermind-like character appeared—.’
Rustle. Rustle.
The sound of shaking bushes cut off my thoughts.
“Yowl.”
A black wildcat emerged. The creature had a wound in its side, and it approached me the moment it spotted me.
“What? Why are you coming closer?”
“HISS! HISS!”
Though wary of me, it inched closer. What was this thing doing?
A wildcat wouldn’t eat hardtack, would it?
“Tsk.”
I took some jerky from the snack pouch Billy had hidden. I cut it into pieces with the dagger and held it out.
“HISS!”
The creature smacked the jerky from my hand with its forepaw.
What an unfriendly bastard.
Instead, it bit my sleeve and tugged. Then it urged me on as though telling me to follow.
The way it did whatever it pleased was exactly like the one I had left at home.
I simply watched as it ran off.
I hesitated for a moment.
Should I follow it?
I searched my memory. Has there been a quest that started like this? Or was this an event I didn’t know about? A Random Quest, perhaps?
As I wondered, my eyes fell on the blood running from the creature’s side.
“Tsk. I don’t know.”
I followed the limping wildcat.
And then—
I found a wild ‘Druid.’