Dodging through the winding rocky passage for about ten minutes…
“Kek! Keeeeek!”
“Tesshaaaak!”
Finally, the residents of this dungeon decided to graciously welcome us.
“Goblins!”
Reed glanced around and yelled while pointing to his quiver.
“Twenty in front, ten behind! Seven and eight to the left and right! They’re coming from all sides!”
Goblins.
Monsters that are like little five-year-olds distilled with a few extra spoons of malice.
They’re so ugly they rank number two on the list of monsters female adventurers loathe, and they’re a long-standing nemesis to adventurers beneath the level of metal plates.
“Forty-five goblins? That’s nothing.”
Of course, for us, they were just pathetic little bugs that made us feel guilty for being tense.
“We’ll take care of them, so save your miracles and arrows. Don’t waste them on goblins.”
“Yes!”
Dealing with these losers was more than enough for Friede and me. No, it was essential that only Friede and I handled them.
There’s a limit to how often you can use divine miracles, and arrows are consumables that can easily break, making recycling them a pain.
It’s such a waste to use them on mere goblins. Cleaning up weak little things is the warrior’s job.
“I’ve got the back! And the sides!”
“Just leave it to me!”
I asked Friede to take care of the enemies behind me and leaped forward.
“Kyak! Kyaaaak!”
“Kerloook! Keekyaak!”
There were sixteen with melee weapons, four archers. Twenty goblins roared and charged at us fiercely.
Crack!
The sound of metal tearing through bone.
With a powerful swing of my longsword, I cleaved the goblin gang’s waists in one go.
The severed upper bodies spun around, spraying blood everywhere, and the thrashing lower halves crashed onto the head of the goblin behind.
“Kyak?!”
One goblin, struck right between the eyes, lost its balance and fell, sliding in blood.
I lifted my foot and crushed its head, feeling like stomping on a bell pepper.
“Four.”
Kicking the headless goblin aside, I quickly scanned my surroundings.
Four goblins had come close now.
Two wielded axes, one had a spear, and the last was just holding a club.
“Kyaaaak!”
“Kieeeek!”
The stone axes, made from chiseled glowing crystals, aimed for my thighs.
I plunged my longsword down, smashing the head of the left one and twisted to kick the other goblin away.
“Thud!”
My iron greaves shattered the crystal axe as they struck the goblin’s bulging abdomen.
With a splat and a wet sound, the kicked goblin flew away like a soccer ball, its stomach exploded, spewing innards from its mouth and groin.
“Kyak!”
While one goblin rolled in from the ground, spear poised to stab my groin, it must’ve realized it couldn’t penetrate my armor. Not amazing or admirable, just plain annoying.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
Grabbing the spear shaft, I swung it violently.
“Thud!”
The goblin was sent crashing sideways, colliding with its club-wielding buddy, both collapsing in a messy embrace.
“Eight!”
Twelve goblins remained.
I stabbed two more with Edelmut, and only then did the archers on the other side start shooting at me.
“Swoosh!”
Four arrows whizzed through the air.
I jumped, grabbing the neck of the goblin aiming for my head, cracking its vertebrae and using its corpse as a shield.
Thud, splat.
The headless goblin spilled blood like a fountain, flailing its limbs.
Two arrows lodged in the meat shield; the other two bounced off my armor.
“Eleven.”
I flipped Edelmut, driving it downwards. The silvery sword pierced the twelfth goblin, pinning it to the ground.
“Aaaah…”
I snatched the spear it dropped and tossed it towards the goblin archers. With wide eyes, two goblins were simultaneously impaled and buried under a heap of remains.
“Fourteen.”
I yanked my sword from where it was stuck, swinging it again. Because the corpses were skewered like kebabs, it was more like swinging a club than cutting.
Thud, thud.
The body stuck to my blade exploded, showering chunks everywhere, and two goblins went flying like mice whacked by a broom.
Now, only four goblins remained.
“Kek, kiiiik…”
“Kechak…”
Did those goblins feel fear?
While two in the distance loosed another volley of arrows, the ones right before me recoiled with glazed eyes and hesitant steps.
The longsword, shimmering in the lantern light, cut into their fear.
“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty… Great, got them all. What happened to the rest?”
After dispatching the last two archers, I turned to check on my party members.
Kiiiii…
Grrruk…
That place too looked like a battlefield. The ground was a crimson mess with splattered blood, and chunks of flesh and organs floated atop the puddles.
Man, they really did a number here. Someone would think this is a sashimi restaurant.
Of course, it was Friede. No one could match her talent for slicing things up.
Diced, julienned, sliced lengthwise, and shredded. The ten goblins from earlier were now nearly a hundred pieces.
And that wasn’t all.
“Hyaaaap!”
With a cute shout, Friede swung her sword like a whip and launched it like a top.
The sword whirled in the air, dazzling in the light, slicing through the charging goblin horde effortlessly.
Everything that brushed against the swirling blade was chopped like vegetables on a cutting board.
“Kigyaak!”
“Chibeeet!”
Heads, upper bodies, and severed arms flew up like popcorn, while blood caught in the centrifugal force sprayed everywhere like waves.
Thud.
Having torn the goblins apart, the sword returned like a boomerang. Friede gripped the hilt to stop it, giggling as she watched the collapsing corpses.
Wow, now this is something else.
A sword boomerang? If the enemy had any chance of retracting the weapon, they would have just aimed to keep it.
If my mom were watching, she might’ve scolded her for playing around during battle.
… Well, as long as it worked.
Of course, I just smirked.
Since the main thing was to ensure the enemies were defeated, the method hardly mattered. Anyway, the power was undeniable, right? That’s what counts.
As the saying goes, if you fail, it’s a rebellion, and if you succeed, it’s a revolution; bizarre pranks will often get appreciated if they yield results.
The remaining seven goblins couldn’t last twenty seconds.
By the time Friede retrieved her thrown sword, I’d already severed five in quick succession, leaving the last two to Arine.
“Repent!”
“Kooek!”
With a precise axe swing, Arine split one goblin’s head, then kicked it into another goblin, sending it flying, before embedding her axe into the chest of a goblin trying to leap over to avoid the corpse.
Her movements were as natural as flowing water. At that level, she should’ve been a paladin, not just a priestess.
“That’s it, right? This was quick.”
“It’s goblins, after all. Going down will be way tougher.”
Reed, who had put his pulled arrow back, looked down the dark corridor.
As he mentioned, you couldn’t judge the whole dungeon’s difficulty based only on the monsters of the first floor.
Generally, the deeper you ventured, the stronger the monsters became.
What was the reason again? Something like… the hierarchy of monsters?
Monsters in dungeons are typically minions created by the demons sitting deep underground.
Thus, they tend to see residing in lower levels as a kind of privilege, being closer to their creators.
‘That’s why the difficulty increases with depth.’
Privileges only hold value when monopolized.
Stronger beings take those privileges by force, hence weaker ones naturally get pushed to higher floors.
It’s the agony of the incapable.
The saying “If you want to survive, you have to get stronger” rang true not just for humans but also for monsters.
◆◆
The monster ambushes continued to occur three or four more times after that.
It wasn’t just goblins. Initially, it was all goblins, but then different kinds of monsters began to crawl out midway.
Giant spiders descending from stalactites.
Worms as thick as arms creeping along the ground, aiming for ankles.
Huge frogs leaping out from discovered underground springs.
And a vampiric monster that looked like a mix of a mosquito and a bat.
Every type of monster continuously poured out when there was a chance.
From the endlessly similar landscape of the second floor to the sponge-like holes of the third, we pressed on through every kind of attacker.
Finally reaching the fourth floor, we faced another horde of monsters.
Wooooooo…
A jelly-like, translucent shell filled with dark purple liquid; an amorphous monster.
The nemesis of warriors.
Due to its color, it looked like it would scream “Tekeliri!” if you talked to it, a monster swarm known as slime.
“I’ll handle this one.”
Arine, who seemed to have transformed from a priest into a killer with an axe, confidently smiled and stepped forward.
A monster that couldn’t be defeated with swords and arrows.
It was the moment for divine miracles to shine.
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