The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 13 E-Book

Yu Okano

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Unwanted Undead Adventurer
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 266

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

After accepting a plea for help to save a small village from marauding skeletons, Rentt stumbles into much more than he bargained for while searching for their source. There’s almost no time to dig into his new discoveries, however—back in Maalt, the blacksmith Clope has an unexpected request of his own. And to top it all off, Rentt has the Silver-class Ascension Exam to prepare for!

Being an adventurer is busy work. Getting stronger requires constant effort—you can sleep when you’re dead, after all! Unfortunately, for our unlucky undead hero, that doesn’t apply!

The grind never stops in The Unwanted Undead Adventurer Volume 13!

Leseprobe

Chapter 1: A Strange Monster and a New Find

“Things have gotten a lot more lively...”

After purging the village of skeletons, I spent a night keeping watch to ensure no more of them could enter. In the meantime, Rivul and the village headman Jiris were going around to all the other villages and towns to inform the evacuees that the skeletons had been taken care of.

Day broke and, come noon, they made their return. To my surprise, they weren’t alone: the village’s original occupants had tagged along with them, teary-eyed and weeping. It wasn’t everyone from the village, of course—just the young, able men and their wives—but they planned for the children and elderly to trickle back in as the village recovered.

Jiris commented that some evacuees likely wouldn’t return, choosing instead to settle in the towns or villages they’d escaped to. The majority would come back, though, which spoke to how much they loved their home.

Currently, I was helping them bring the village back to life. That being said, it was just simple work for the time being: repairing the fencing around the area, gathering the debris from damaged buildings, and sorting out what was still usable, that sort of thing. It looked like we’d be able to get enough done to at least ensure everyone who returned today would have a roof over their heads tonight.

“It’s all thanks to you, Rentt,” Rivul said, carrying a plank into the village’s center plaza. It had probably been part of some house’s wall.

“Just doing my job,” I replied. “Besides, the real recovery effort is just beginning. It won’t be easy...but seeing how many people came back today, I guess you’ll be fine.”

Around twenty or so people had returned so far. That was a quarter of the village’s original population of around eighty, and more would come tomorrow. Naturally, it wasn’t realistic to expect everyone would return after only a day or two—it was surprising enough that a full fourth of the population was already back. If someone told me the village would make a full recovery, I’d believe them.

“Luckily, most of the houses weren’t majorly damaged, and the fields were left unharmed too,” Rivul said. “We’ll do just fine. Did we escape more serious destruction because it was only skeletons?”

“That’d be my guess,” I agreed. “If it had been mainly wolf-species monsters, your fields would have gotten torn up, and goblins or slimes would’ve done a number on the houses.”

The monsters I’d listed were the most common types that assailed human villages. Wolf-species monsters came in many shapes and sizes, but generally they were all motivated by finding food, and to accomplish that goal they would uproot fields or even devour the villagers themselves. Goblin-species monsters acted similarly, raiding food stores and dismantling houses to find materials for their own dwellings. If they managed a complete takeover, they’d usually strip the village down to its bones.

Slime-species monsters didn’t raid in the same way, but since they could dissolve and eat anything and everything, they could consume a whole village—fields, houses, and all—and reduce it to a barren wasteland.

All of these monsters could be described as humanity’s natural enemies. That was why there was a long history of people learning how to fight them.

One might think that dragons or chimeras were the more dangerous types of monster, but large creatures like those rarely left their own domains. Looking back through the ages, it was actually the small fry such as goblins that were always at odds with humanity, fighting over places to live.

That was how humanity had managed to survive to the present day. If dragons and chimeras had been attacking us every day, we would’ve gone extinct a long time ago.

Of course, in the modern age, humanity had ways to fight back. That hadn’t been true of our ancestors, though. The only reason our species had managed to claw its way to survival despite its weak physical abilities was that we possessed slightly more intelligence than the other animals of the world.

Humans really were fundamentally weak creatures, huh...

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Rivul said. “I’ve heard what other monsters can do to a village. Sounds like we were pretty lucky, then.”

“In that sense, I guess you were...” I replied. “Though, from a timing perspective, you could call yourself unlucky too, given all the trouble you went through trying to hire an adventurer in Maalt.”

“Not at all! You ended up accepting, didn’t you? I count that as good luck, especially now that you’re going out of your way to help when you don’t need to.”

Rivul was talking about how I was assisting with repairing the village. He wasn’t wrong—none of that had been included in the details of the commission, so I would be perfectly within my rights to kick back and laze around the headman’s house right now. I couldn’t imagine myself actually doing that, though.

“No, I consider this part of the job too,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Sure, I cleared out all the skeletons, but I’m fairly certain this isn’t over. There’s a good chance more will come knocking. We need to shore up the village’s defenses in preparation.”

“I...guess you’re right. There were more skeletons when we arrived compared to when I left to submit the commission. They’ve gotta be coming in from the outside.”

“There you have it. That means there’s a source somewhere out there, and it needs to be shut down. But there’s only one of me, and I couldn’t bear it if the village were overrun again while I was out there looking, so I want to do what I can to prevent that.”

“You’d really do all that for us...?”

“Of course. Why else do you think I’m killing these monsters? It’s so you all can live here. There’s no point in doing all that work if they’re just going to come back tomorrow...so let’s do our best to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“Yes, sir!”

◆◇◆◇◆

“I’ve got all sorts of things—just tell me what you want,” I said. “Ah, though...you’ll have to pay, of course.”

Spread out in the village plaza was an arrangement of various foods and sundries. They were the contents of my magic bag, and all told, it amounted to several wagonloads’ worth of goods.

There were also a number of odds and ends that I always kept in the bag, the kind of items that always made Lorraine say, “Why do you even keep this thing in there...? Not that I’m not going to use it, mind you. It’s just the thing for this situation.”

I’d forgotten why I originally put some of this stuff into the bag, but being an adventurer meant that unexpected things could come in handy at unexpected times. Others might’ve called me a hoarder, but I didn’t see any problem with my little habit.

It was important to keep everything organized, naturally, but as it happens, I was quite the orderly person when it came to this. After all, I’d been in charge of cleaning Lorraine’s place for a long time. While she’d since matured into an individual capable of doing that herself, it just took one new research project that grabbed her attention a little too much for the mess to start piling up.

All of that actually made me wonder if the amount of concentration or self-control a person could use in one day was fixed, just like mana or spirit.

Whatever the case, I wasn’t laying out the contents of my magic bag in the village plaza for no good reason. Given that the village had been damaged in a hundred and one different ways, I thought that some of my collection might be able to contribute to the repair effort.

Of course, I had no intention of handing it all out for free. I needed to make a living too...or, that’s what I would say if a lot of what I’d laid out wasn’t random bric-a-brac that I never used. Mostly, I just knew the villagers would refuse to take any of it if I didn’t ask for any compensation. Strange purchases made on the cheap could seem suspicious and not worth the trouble. With items like these, it was easier to just make a straightforward transaction.

That was the thing about random junk, I guess. It was almost worthless and I would be happy to give it away for free, but nobody actually wanted things like that. The only reason it wasn’t completely worthless was because one man’s junk was sometimes another man’s treasure. For any given item, you could always find an eccentric out there who wanted it...like me, for example.

“I didn’t know adventurers could fit so much in their magic bags...” Rivul was half taken aback, half amazed as he hunted through my odds and ends. “You’ve got even more quantity and variety than traveling merchants.”

He was focused on the tableware: plates, cups, forks, and the like. Actually, most of the villagers were focused on that too, which made sense—those were the kinds of items the skeletons had broken the most of. As one might expect, the villagers hadn’t possessed any actual glassware, but they’d had a lot of ceramics, and all of that had been the first thing to go once the monsters started rampaging about.

That said, the damage wasn’t all-encompassing—the majority of their tableware was wooden, after all—but whether you were in a big town or a little village like this one, people always wanted fancier pieces that they could break out for celebrations. On such occasions, it was common to use colored ceramics.

Ironically, it was actually popular among the aristocracy and big merchant families in cities to use finely carved wooden tableware, and they treasured such pieces. The fact that supply and demand differed everywhere was the backbone of the traveling merchant’s trade.

“Just between you and me, my magic bag’s bigger than the ones you usually see,” I explained. “Normal ones can only hold as much as three or four leather rucksacks, and those still sell for hundreds of gold.”

That was exactly the sort of magic bag I’d used in my human days. My current one would probably be priced in platinum, not gold... If it hadn’t been for Nive, I could’ve gone my entire life without being able to purchase one like it.

If you’d asked me back then, I would’ve wondered if I’d actually get my money’s worth out of it. These days, though, I could definitively say the answer was “yes.” Platinum coins were above the pay grade of a Bronze classer like me, but I had no regrets about my purchase. I saw this bag as an investment in my future. Besides, I saw no point in banking platinum coins anyway. My sights were set on becoming a Mithril-class adventurer, not getting rich. I’d spend every coin I had to accomplish that goal if that’s what it took.

“Hundreds of gold?!” Rivul exclaimed. “I’d heard that adventurers earned a lot, but to think you were so wealthy...”

“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea. It took me years to save up,” I said. “It’s true that adventurers make more than your average laborer, though. The thing is, we’re constantly risking our lives to do so.”

Rivul gulped. What I’d said was the blunt truth—adventurers were the kind of people who thought the risk was worthwhile.

That wasn’t a normal way of thinking, though. To the average person, all the coin in the world wasn’t worth one’s life. In their minds, those who chose to be adventurers all had a screw or two loose.

In fact, if you asked me how loose mine were, I’d take a while to get back to you with an answer. Unlike most adventurers, who often bragged in taverns about their exploits and how many times they’d brushed up against death, I actually had died once—more, depending on how you counted it. I wouldn’t have ended up like this if my screws weren’t at least a little out of alignment.

“I can’t tell you how much I admire adventurers,” Rivul said. “Especially ones like you, Rentt. You could be out there making that kind of coin, but you still chose to accept my commission.”

“The work comes and goes, though. It’s not as if I’m never troubled for coin.”

“I suppose not. Oh! But isn’t this...?”

Rivul had been browsing as we talked, and it looked like he’d found something that caught his interest. He wasn’t looking through the tableware, but the items I’d taken from monsters.

As for the specific item that had caught his eye, it was a spear that had been wielded by one of the skeleton soldiers.

◆◇◆◇◆

“Is something the matter?” I asked, watching Rivul pick up the spear.

It wasn’t unusual to see him pick up a weapon in and of itself. The headman had called him a skilled hunter, so it only followed that he would have more of an interest in weapons than most.

The strange part was why he’d immediately gone for the spear. The lineup only consisted of a number of knives—some cheap, mass-produced ones and others meant for cooking—and the spoils from slaying the skeletons the previous day, including their bows. The bows weren’t bad either, quality-wise, and would probably sell for a decent amount. Given his own archery skills, Rivul would have been able to see that, so I would’ve guessed that his attention would be drawn there first. However, he’d picked up the spear, piquing my interest.

After scrutinizing the weapon, Rivul satisfied my curiosity. “I’ve...seen this spear before. No, saying that doesn’t do it justice. I know this spear. It...it was my father’s.”

Ah. That would explain it.

There were a number of different ways in which skeletons came to be, but the most skin-crawling one was when they, for one reason or another, emerged from a deceased person’s remains.

To be fair, it wasn’t just skeletons: that was a possible origin for undead in general. Circumstances changed when you got to undead of a higher order, like vampires and such, but it was quite common for bottom-feeders like skeletons and zombies to originate from dead bodies. That was why religious organizations strictly managed graveyards, and why small villages like this one reduced the risk by holding seasonal festivals during which they entreated the spirits of the dead to move on.

Well, thanks to the Kingdom of Yaaran’s scepter, things were a little different here. The risk of undead rising was low to begin with, which in turn was why religious organizations had less influence.

In any case, since that was a possible origin for undead, it wasn’t unusual for some to wield the weapons they’d used in life. In short, a skeleton soldier wielding Rivul’s father’s weapon meant...

“That skeleton soldier was your...”

“It was probably my father, yes... I doubt he ever expected that he’d end up ravaging his own village after he died. I...can’t thank you enough for what you did, Rentt. Truly.”

I’d lost count of the number of times he’d thanked me at this point. “You really don’t need to keep thanking me,” I said. “That aside...can I ask when your father died?”

I wasn’t asking because I was insensitive. Well, maybe I was, a little, but definitely not to the extent that I felt the need to reopen other people’s old wounds. I had asked the question because it was necessary for me to know—it could lead to finding out more about the source of the skeletons.

“About three years ago,” Rivul said. “He spotted a goblin wandering the area and gathered the villagers to slay it before it could call its brethren over. A single goblin is well within a group of villagers’ capabilities to fight, you see. Not only that, but my father was a skilled hunter—far more so than myself. He knew how to use a sword and spear too, on account of being a city soldier in his younger days. It was he who taught me how to use a bow.”

So Rivul’s father had been a city guard during his teens and twenties, then married and returned to his hometown to support his parents. It was a common story, even among adventurers. In fact, that was pretty much how it went for the majority of them who’d moved to the city from the countryside, seeking fame and fortune.

Only a small fraction could succeed, after all. The rest learned their limits and place in the world, and headed back to where they could find a modest sort of happiness for themselves.

Rivul’s father must’ve had a similar story. But returning to your hometown, teaching your son the skills you’d mastered, and watching him grow up into a fine man? That was by no means a bad life. When someone has a legacy, they can feel at ease. That was the kind of thing happiness came from.

“It sounds like your father was a great man.”

“Rentt... Yes. As far as I’m concerned, he was the best dad anyone could ask for. In the end, though, there were some things even he couldn’t do. Especially when it came to monsters...”

“By that, do you mean...”

“Yes. It was that goblin that killed him. Except it wasn’t just one—there were more than ten of them. According to the other villagers who barely escaped with their lives, he took up the rear guard by himself to ensure everyone got away. Thanks to him, they all made it back, albeit heavily injured. I can’t count the number of times they apologized to me. They still do, sometimes.”

It was no wonder—put bluntly, it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that they had left Rivul’s father to die. The guilt must have weighed on them quite heavily. That might’ve been the better outcome, though; given the circumstances, there was every possibility they could have criticized Rivul’s father instead and justified their own actions to themselves.

The reason that hadn’t happened probably came down to who Rivul and his father were as people, as well as the villagers’ inherent natures. After all, when I had fought the skeletons, they had sworn to back me up, going so far as to say they’d even use themselves as shields for my sake.

Perhaps the villagers who had been rescued by Rivul’s father were the very same ones who’d been keeping watch over the village from behind the hill.

“That’s all in the past, though,” Rivul said. “I don’t hold a grudge against them at all. If I’d been in their place, I doubt I could have done anything different. And as sad as I am about his passing, I’m also happy that my dad was a great man until the end.”

“You’re a fine man yourself. I think I’d have held a grudge, had it been me.”

“You wouldn’t, Rentt. I can tell.”

“You think too highly of me... Back on topic, though, the fact that your father’s weapon is here means that he became a skeleton soldier. And that means there’s a possibility that the skeletons are coming from the place where your father passed away. In regard to his burial...”

“We weren’t able to give him one. The goblins were handled by an adventurer we hired, but since it was a good distance away from the village, the risk of monsters was too high to make the trip. I couldn’t persuade the adventurer to help either...”

“Really? Maalt’s adventurers wouldn’t have minded helping out for something like that.”

“The adventurer we asked was just a wanderer. I don’t mean to speak ill of them, but they weren’t particularly concerned with anything other than slaying the monsters...”

◆◇◆◇◆

“Well...I can’t confidently say they did a bad job,” I said. “I don’t know what their circumstances were, after all.”

“As far as we were concerned, we were just grateful that they’d slain the goblins,” Rivul agreed. “Still, when I think about how that might have been the origin of the skeleton attack... We should have asked them to do more.”

Rivul was talking about his father’s burial. If they’d buried him properly back then, the recent skeleton attack might not have happened.

In many cases, once a single skeleton appeared, the number would gradually increase—either others gravitated toward the location from elsewhere, or old bones buried in the ground would reanimate, drawn to their former comrades. If Rivul’s father had been the starting point, then a proper burial would have prevented all of this.

“Well, we don’t know if your father really was the reason. I wouldn’t worry about it so much.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yeah. Regrets come as part and parcel of life. When they show up at your door, the most efficient way to go about things is to quickly forget them and move on to whatever’s next. This goes double for us adventurers—we’ve got more regrets than you can count.”

Regrets like: if I had done this or that differently, would that villager, comrade, or friend still be alive? I doubted there were very many adventurers who hadn’t had that thought at least once. Many of us, however, also instinctively knew that if you allowed those emotions to overwhelm you, they’d drag you down into the underworld yourself one day.

So, to forget, we drank wine like water, told stupid stories about our friends who had journeyed so far away, let the painful memories slip from our minds, and from time to time stopped by their graves to pour them a drink of their own.

The wounds didn’t really heal, but in our day-to-day lives, we grew used to forgetting that they were there. That was the only way people knew how to move on.

“Returning to practical matters, Rivul, while we haven’t pinned down the exact reason for the skeleton attack, we have figured out something we need to do.”

“Um...you mean we have to go to the place where my father died, right? Because there’s a high chance it could be the source?”

“That’s right. The issue is, I don’t know where it is. I guess I could ask you to mark it on a map...but one wrong step in a forest like this will send me off track. I’d rather have a guide come with me, if possible.”

Though I hadn’t specified, it was obvious who I was talking about. My gaze met Rivul’s—it looked like he’d picked up on my implication.

“You mean me, don’t you? Okay. I’ll go. I haven’t been to the place myself...but I’ve heard about it more times than I can count.”

I did not doubt that Rivul had thought about going to search for his father’s remains and mementos himself in the past. However, he had likely decided against it after taking his own abilities into consideration. As someone who’d be going with him, knowing he had that sort of composure was reassuring.

During the fight with the skeletons, he too had been the only one of the villagers to maintain his calm while the others had been nervous and hasty. Perhaps seeing the monsters had reminded them of when they’d left Rivul’s father behind.

In the end, no matter how people’s scars faded, they were still there...

“That settles it, then. Don’t worry about your own safety—I’ll protect you at the cost of my own life.”

If nothing else, I could serve as a meat shield for him any number of times. I might have some trouble coming up with explanations for my resilience, but as long as the wounds weren’t excessive I’d probably be able to explain them away as being less serious than they looked.

If they were excessive...well, that was what I had divinity for. I could brute force the issue with my divine blessing. It likely wouldn’t hold up in the face of multiple observers, but if it was just Rivul, I could pull the wool over his eyes. At least, I was pretty sure I could...

Of course, the best outcome was neither of us running into trouble and both returning unharmed. Still, one had to be prepared for the worst.

“I’ll do my best to not take any unnecessary risks,” Rivul said.

That was a relief to hear. The other villagers being willing to risk their lives had actually done more harm than good. “Glad to be traveling with you,” I said. “Shall we set out tomorrow, first thing in the morning?”

“Okay, I’ll get everything I can ready. First things first—it’d be best if we told the headman about our plans before the end of the day, right?”

At the moment, I was primarily what stood between the village and any more skeletons that showed up to attack. I couldn’t up and leave without any warning; I’d have to give a proper explanation.

“Yeah. After I wrap up here, let’s go to the headman.”

“Okay.”

As for what I was wrapping up, it was Rentt’s Impromptu Emporium. There were still people browsing, so it’d be remiss of me to suddenly declare that I was closing for business. We weren’t departing until tomorrow, so we could leave persuading the headman until after I’d originally planned to be done hawking my odds and ends.

“By the way, Rivul, don’t you want this bow?”

I held out the archer skeleton’s weapon to Rivul. Its make was pretty decent—enough that it was several notches above the ones Rivul and the villagers had used during the battle. Since he was an archer too, I figured he’d be interested in it.

“I’m interested, of course, but...the spear’s more important to me,” Rivul said. “I don’t have enough to buy both, so...”

He wanted his father’s spear, huh? I’d been considering it his from the moment he’d explained its origins, but it appeared that he thought of it as something he’d have to buy from me.

Strictly speaking, he was correct. The spoils from slain monsters belonged to the adventurers who slew them, even if they had originally belonged to other monsters or people, adventurers or otherwise. Technically, the spear did belong to me.

However, that was just a general principle, not a hard rule. There was room for bargaining and negotiation—there pretty much always was when it came to the rules of adventuring. As long as everyone agreed to it, nobody really minded if the rules were bent—the exception, of course, being attempted murder and the like. Besides, that was the purview of a country’s laws rather than adventuring rules.

All of which was to say that as far as I was concerned, the spear already belonged to Rivul, and I wouldn’t be taking any payment for it.

“While this might have been something I won from a monster, it’s a memento of your father. I can’t take your money for that.”

“But...”

“Just take it. That’ll leave you with enough to buy the bow, right? I’ll even give you a discount.”

“Rentt... But then you won’t earn—”

“I’m not that bothered about a small difference in coin here and there. I’m not even a merchant in the first place. We’ll be risking our lives together tomorrow, so it’s in my best interest that you’re as well equipped as you can be. Come on, take them.”

I pushed both the spear and bow into Rivul’s arms. He looked troubled for a few moments, but it appeared that my last reason had been enough to persuade him.

He nodded and bowed his head. “I...understand. Then I gratefully accept.”

◆◇◆◇◆

Rivul and I left the village first thing in the morning. Our objective, naturally, was to discover the source of the skeletons that had attacked the village.

After consulting the headman, Jiris, we’d decided that the village’s defenses would hold for the time being—the fences had been partially rebuilt, and the young men would be making rounds of the perimeter. It couldn’t put up much resistance against anything more than a few skeletons, but at least with the patrols, the villagers would have early warning, allowing them to run.

Skeletons were monsters that could fight in the dark, but that didn’t mean their range of vision was particularly good. If the young men acted as the rear guard and let the women and children escape first, withdrawing from the village wouldn’t be impossible.

Jiris had wanted me to stay in the village at all times, but he also understood that would expose them to danger after I returned to Maalt. In the end, he agreed to the plan, recognizing that discovering the source of the skeletons and dealing with it would be safer in the long term. A little risk in the meantime was necessary to achieve that end.

“This way, Rentt.”

I advanced deeper into the forest with Rivul. You could really tell he was the village’s best hunter—he walked like he was right at home, taking silent footsteps and concealing his presence, all the while maintaining his bearings. I was confident in my own abilities when it came to traversing forests, but if this had been an ordinary hunting trip, I doubt I could have matched him.

As if to prove my suspicions, the few times we spotted deer or wild boars, none of them seemed to sense he was even there. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve taken them down in one shot.

I hunted on occasion too, when I was staying outdoors and needed to secure food, but I wasn’t as skillful as he was. At the end of the day, I was an adventurer, and my trade was fighting monsters.

After a while of walking, we finally reached our destination.

“That should be it, Rentt.”

Rivul was hiding in the shadows of the undergrowth. I followed his line of sight and saw a cave, its entrance gaping like an open mouth. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see farther in, so it was hard to tell how deep it went.

Makes sense, I thought.

Rivul had told me about times when goblins had appeared near the village in the past. Those monsters commonly used these kinds of natural caves as dens. Unlike skeletons, they increased their numbers via ordinary breeding, meaning they needed places like this. Although goblins multiplied at a terrifying rate and matured to adulthood in a single month, their offspring were still defenseless and tiny, making them easy prey for other monsters—or even regular animals. That made defensible dens a necessity.

The goblin tribes that traded with humans built small settlements for this purpose, albeit crudely, and the ones who couldn’t mainly used natural caves like this one. If you asked me what the difference was between the goblins that built settlements and the ones that lived in natural caves and attacked humans, I wouldn’t be able to give you a good answer. I supposed even goblins had their individual differences. It was like how some people were townsfolk and others bandits. That was why it was impossible to make the sweeping generalization that all goblins were evil.

There were a number of monster species like that, and they were often treated like demihumans as a result...but the distinction was hazy at best. Their relationship with humans depended on what part of the world you were in. Some places followed a doctrine of zero tolerance for monsters, while others were happy to engage in mutually beneficial trade.

Yaaran’s policy was relatively loose, as these things went, and leaned more toward allowing trade—but perhaps it was more accurate to say the Kingdom was just not the strictest place in a lot of ways. The people’s view of monsters wasn’t particularly prejudiced either.

If attacked, however, they’d retaliate without mercy. That was only to be expected.

“Your father’s in there?” I asked.

“From what the others told me back then, that’s where they left him,” Rivul confirmed. “Though...maybe that wasn’t the nicest way to put it. It was how he was able to buy everyone time to get away, they think.”

“That’s probably right. It doesn’t look like there’s much room in there,” I agreed. “They wouldn’t have been able to surround him. If they’d managed to cut him off though, that would’ve been it. An ambush waiting outside for him would’ve led to a pincer attack.”

Goblins were almost as intelligent as humans. They were dumb in their own ways, but when it came to hunting, they had a sort of cunning, or perhaps natural instinct, that was more than a match for a person’s. Things like pincer attacks and traps were a common part of their repertoire...though, their lack of technical finesse meant the efforts were often crude in nature or construction. That didn’t go for their whole species, however. The goblins who could build settlements were capable of pretty detailed craftsmanship. That was likely why they were said to be a monster well worth researching.