by Kumo Kagyu
“Do you want to be asked?”
“Oh, just ask the question.” She opened her arms wide as if looking for a hug.
“Hmm,” Goblin Slayer murmured. “What do you mean, talking about bodies like that?”
“I mean I could cast an illusion on you and have all the fun I want, then weave a little spell of forgetfulness and send you home hardly knowing what had happened.”
“I see,” Goblin Slayer replied, but then a thought took him, and his helmet tilted questioningly. “Isn’t that a scam?”
“Value isn’t absolute, see—it’s relative.” Arc Mage’s eyes narrowed behind her spectacles; she sounded almost like she was making this up as she went along.
Goblin Slayer thought for a moment, then came to the conclusion that this was pointless.
It reminded him of the riddle games his master had so often played with him. The words themselves had no meaning, no worth. What mattered was figuring out what lay behind those words.
I understand. That is relative indeed.
“In that case,” he said, knowing the answer now, setting the jar at his hip on the desk with a plunk, “does this have value? To you, that is.”
“I did just get some yesterday, but I could be had. Nothing wrong with keeping a little on hand.”
On her desk, the otherwise brand-new bottle was already half empty. Yet, all he smelled was the sweet aroma of apples, not a trace of alcohol in the air. Arc Mage fell into laughter again, not seeming the faintest bit drunk.
“Goblins, goblins… That’s what you wanted to learn, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Goodness gracious, then you’ve come at exactly the right time.”
Arc Mage swept up the bottle of cider, gave it a little kiss, and then resettled it at the edge of the desk. Then she grabbed a sheaf of sheepskin documents, pointedly clearing away the accumulated dust.
“This slipped my mind for a bit,” she said—though he wasn’t sure he believed her, and the odor of apples came drifting on her breath—“but as it happens, I’ve agreed to help revise the Monster Manual.”
“…” Goblin Slayer gave this a moment’s thought, then asked, “At the Guild’s request?”
“Errata and revisions are produced regularly—it’s no small job.”
Even Goblin Slayer was aware that monsters’ ecology sometimes shifted and morphed. It was not possible for humans to record and capture everything there truly was to know about the world. Any sense of understanding was a sort of vanity—though people realized this all too rarely.
“An old master of mine asked for my help. Apparently, they’d been told to get me involved. Me! What a kerfuffle.”
“And so what if I write whatever I want? That’s what I want to know. Eh? Complain to me, will they?!”
He remembered the aged rhea muttering such things to himself as he scribbled in a notebook.
Goblin Slayer had asked him once what he was writing.
“Poems,” came the answer. Then a little needling: “Do you know how to read a poem, let alone write one?”
The memories came back unbidden when he heard the word master; he chased them away again. Putting together the information he had, Goblin Slayer came to something like a conclusion and quickly voiced it.
“Is it about goblins?”
“Precisely. Goblins, indeed.” She gave an exaggerated nod, then leaned over toward Goblin Slayer. She was so close, she could have put her lips on that steel helmet.
Goblin Slayer looked through his visor, into her eyes.
“I want to dissect some goblins, maybe observe them in their natural habitat. And everything I learn, I’ll share it immediately with you. That’s what I’ve been thinking.” Arc Mage’s eyes seemed to glitter behind her spectacles, like the deeps of a rapid river. Her lips formed apple-scented words. “You happen to be something of a specialist in goblin slaying, yes?”
§
It was every bit of it a perfectly ordinary quest.
Goblins, it was said, had appeared outside a small farming village on the frontier. If that had been all, it might have ended there. It had been five years since the great battle. It was hardly unusual to see roving bands of goblins.
But the goblins started ravaging crop fields, then stealing livestock. And when the young men of the village heard that one of their young women had been attacked while doing her chores, they got angry.
There was a man among them who had served in the military and others who had heard from their fathers and grandfathers about combat. They had tools in their sheds; they might have even found some battered old armor if they looked. And they had plenty of hands.
More than enough to chase off the next goblin who came sneaking into the village.
The problems came after that.
The young men, passions inflamed, were eager to mount an assault on the goblin nest. But the village chieftain put a stop to that. There was no need for the youth of his village to do anything dangerous, he said. Hire an adventurer instead…
“You’re saying this is typical, then… Practically a template?”
“Yes,” Goblin Slayer said. “Although no girls have been kidnapped… But yes.”
They were in a forest that was dark even in daytime, talking as they worked their way through the trackless woods.
Goblin Slayer pushed his way through the undergrowth, following the signs the young men had left in their rush a few days before. Arc Mage was holding up the hem of her long robe, though strangely, leaves didn’t seem to stick to it. She looked like she was out for a pleasant stroll, apparently having an easier time than Goblin Slayer himself.
I think it’s a difference in level, not skill, Goblin Slayer decided as he glanced back at the humming wizard.
Now that he thought about it—did she even have a specific level? And if she did, what was it?
He didn’t actually care much, though, so he promptly forgot the question.
Instead, he became aware of continued chattering behind him.
“That would suggest that goblin hordes have a hierarchy of their own.”
Arc Mage didn’t seem to be speaking to him but rather talking to herself.
“They’ve only just settled here, right? Wanderers, trying to kidnap a woman. They’re looking to expand.” As the nest got bigger, the attacks on the village would become more audacious: step two. She counted on her fingers. “And then they would arrive at step three…”
“Destroying the village.”
“Yes, that’s right.” She nodded like an approving instructor. “Demons and evil cultists and dark elves—with every kind of Non-Prayer, you find their path ends up there.” As she recited this, Arc Mage brought the jar of alcohol from her hip to her lips. She drank lustily, gave a satisfied ahhh, and pulled the bottle away from her mouth with saliva hanging like a silver thread. She licked the last drops from her lips as she said, “Right, then. Is there a stage four?”
“…”
“That’s the sort of question I would expect you to ask, but I’ve never heard of a nest getting big enough to reach that level.”
A goblin kingdom. She practically sang the words, but he kept silent and focused on trampling through the brush.
“They’re opportunistic, violent little devils. Even if they had a king, I’m sure his kingdom would fracture immediately… Or he’d be assassinated.”
“There are adventurers, too,” Goblin Slayer said brusquely. He spoke even more quietly than when talking to himself. Then he added, “Most of the time.”
“Well, history hasn’t seen a perfect government yet. Pray-ers or not.” Then Arc Mage chortled happily again.
Shortly thereafter, they arrived at a small hillock nestled in the forest.
No, it wasn’t exactly a hillock. It was a grave, covered in earth and ground cover and grown mossy.
A funerary mound—perhaps that would be the right expression.
Maybe it belonged to some ancient king or general, nam
e unknown, tomb now hardly visible.
One lone goblin stood outside the entrance, nominally on patrol, giving a great yawn as he held a spear flecked with red rust…
“Argh, these little beasts don’t know the value of what they have,” Arc Mage said, her tone considerably lighter than her words. Then she winked at Goblin Slayer. “So what do you think?”
“Hrm.” He grunted.
He crouched in the bushes with her, surveying the situation. The goblin was still yawning.
His conclusion was simple.
“We kill him.”
“If we wait long enough, someone might replace him, or he might just wander off, right?” Arc Mage glanced up at the canopy of trees, in the general direction of the sun. “Anyway, he looks tired. Maybe they’re nocturnal?”
“Possibly.” Goblin Slayer took careful note of her words as he checked his weapon over. He reviewed his plan in his mind, confirmed the steps involved, including what he would do in case of failure. No problems anywhere. “But we are going to kill him.”
“Why?” Arc Mage almost sounded amused, like she was teasing him.
Goblin Slayer answered without hesitation, “Because eventually, we will kill all the goblins.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
Show me what you’ve got, then. By the time the whisper left Arc Mage’s lips, Goblin Slayer was already in motion. He steadied his breath, then lunged out of the underbrush and flung his knife.
“GOROGO?!”
Before the goblin could shout anything, he had it screaming with pain from the knife in its shoulder. Goblin Slayer sucked his teeth. He had been aiming for the throat.
He drew his sword and let his momentum carry him forward to drive the blade into the monster’s neck.
“GBRROB?! GOB?!”
The goblin choked and frothed blood; and in its flailing, it managed to whack Goblin Slayer’s shoulder with the haft of its spear. But he gave a violent twist of his sword, and the goblin’s body had one great jerk and stopped moving.
“One.”
“Splendid.” Arc Mage walked over to him, clapping. He stood beside the body, breathing hard and spattered with blood. “I see the throat is a killing blow. Maybe they aren’t so different from people after all. I get the feeling they may be close to rheas.”
“I don’t know.” Goblin Slayer pulled the knife out of the goblin’s shoulder and cleaned it off on its loincloth. He also shook the blood from the sword he had used to run through the creature’s throat and put it back in its scabbard. Then, finally, he picked up the goblin’s spear, checking its quality.
The tip was too rusted to be of any use, but it could serve as a pole. He stuck it into his belt behind his back.
“Sometimes a strike to the throat fails to finish them off.”
“Huh. When it’s not a critical hit, eh? Very interesting.” Arc Mage prodded at the body with her staff, then peeked under the goblin’s loincloth and laughed aloud. A moment later, she said, “Right, then,” and looked at him cheerfully. “Let’s save the dissection for later—time to head into the nest!”
“Right,” Goblin Slayer said, but he didn’t immediately move. From behind his visor, he fixed Arc Mage with a serious gaze.
“What is it?” she asked with a tilt of her head, smiling alluringly.
“…They may notice a woman’s scent.”
“Ooh,” she said, her eyes shining, evidently unbothered by the possibility that she herself might be a target. “Good smellers, are they? And to think—such filthy creatures, living in these stinky holes.”
“There have been times when I’m sure I have not been seen or heard…,” Goblin Slayer said, thinking back to the lesson of his first battle. “…But they notice me anyway.”
“Well, now.” Arc Mage nodded, then suddenly shrugged off her robe. Beneath was a short jacket that revealed a soft line running down to her belly button and a pair of short pants. “Wait just a moment, please.”
She tossed the robe to Goblin Slayer, then took a knife full of strange curves from its place at her hip. She drove it into the goblin corpse, slicing open the hideous, protruding belly, and pulled out the innards.
She doused her hands in the dark gore that came pouring forth, covering herself in it as if she were playing in the bath.
“I happen to like that robe, but as for these clothes… Eh.” She spun in a circle like a village girl flaunting a bit of tepid fashion. “What do you think?”
“Fine,” Goblin Slayer said. Then he added, “I assume.”
“Noses are built to filter out the smell of your companions and the other things you encounter routinely.” She took the robe back from him, and then, after letting the muck drain off her as much as possible, she put it back on. “For example, you don’t notice the smell of fresh leather or new metal, right?”
“No,” Goblin Slayer said with a shake of his head. Then he looked at the entrance to the tomb. “But goblins do.”
“Precisely!” Arc Mage said as if her point had been made, then she gestured with her staff and a broad grin. “So let’s hurry up and get in there!”
Goblin Slayer’s only answer was to start walking. Arc Mage followed behind him.
For an instant, it seemed there was a whiff of apples.
No—an olfactory illusion, surely.
It was inconceivable that a goblin nest would smell like anything but goblins.
§
Goblin Slayer peered into the gloom and let out a sigh. He retrieved a torch from his item pouch, striking a flint to light it, then holding it in his left hand, the same side to which his shield was affixed.
“Wouldn’t it be better to avoid any light?”
“They have good night vision,” he replied to Arc Mage. “I do not.”
There was no reason to throw himself headlong into a disadvantageous situation.
“Huh,” Arc Mage said, apparently very interested by this, and pursed her lips in thought. “Maybe it’s not about night vision. It could be that humans and goblins simply see completely different worlds.”
She was muttering to herself again. Goblin Slayer listened to her, but he didn’t understand.
“Ahh,” Arc Mage said when she noticed, laughing. “I guess what matters to you is the point that they can see in the dark. Night or not.”
“Is that so?” He took care to remember this. Not night, but dark. It was a major difference.
“Hey, do goblins ever use traps?” Arc Mage asked, looking at the drawings on the walls revealed by the light of the torch. “The previous Monster Manual said a little something about it…”
“Sometimes they’ve tunneled through to a section of wall behind me,” Goblin Slayer answered, scanning the area carefully.
“The sound of frying bacon, huh?”
“…What?”
“Please, carry on.”
“…”
He considered how large the tomb had looked to be from the outside, along with where they stood now, the width of the passage, the thickness of the walls. Would goblins be able to break through? He thought about it, but he wasn’t yet able to guess. Vigilance would be needed.
“They use pits as well, and sometimes ambushes.”
“Simple stuff all around. I guess when you live in a hole, you break down walls and floors… Maybe they could learn to use the traps in ruins, too, through experience…”
“Some assume they couldn’t do such a thing… I never have.”
“I guess it depends on the living environment. And whether you can learn how those things work from experience. Snowy places, deserts… Different geography means different traps…” Arc Mage was lost in thought again, but then she gave a great laugh. “Not that any of that’s going to make it into the book. They use primitive traps. There, done.”
Still grinning, she indicated the corpse of some living thing that had been hung up conspicuously. A symbol, put there by the goblins to exemplify the fruits of their killing, eating, and raping.
“You know what wasn’t in the book? The stench. How hard it is to walk around here. The claustrophobia, the malice. All the little details.”
Goblin Slayer mulled over this for a moment, then said, “I don’t think goblins are the only ones like that.”
“You’re right—I just described the whole book!” she said, then laughed aloud.
Arc Mage’s speech had the lyrical flow of music and seemed never to cease. That made Goblin Slayer intensely uneasy. He looked around constantly, straining his ears, trying desperately to catch the slightest sound.
He heard noises and voices belonging to something other than himself and the goblins, felt the presence of it. Something was moving.
Am I getting distracted?
No, no. It just meant there were one or two more things he had to pay attention to.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the fetid, dank air, then slowly released it. Some kind of sticky filth clung to his boots and seemed likely to make noise when he walked. He would have to be careful.
Come to think of it, it seemed he could hardly hear the footsteps of the woman with him…
“Hmm?” Suddenly, cut off by a sound of surprise from Arc Mage, the torrent of words stopped, and Goblin Slayer stopped with them.
“What’s wrong?”
“Look at this,” she said, gesturing at the muck at their feet with her staff. “It’s animal dung.”
Goblin Slayer knelt down, unhesitatingly reaching into the stuff with his glove-clad hand.
He remembered this shape. His older sister had taught him about it long ago, when he was small.
“It doesn’t appear to belong to a goblin…”
“No, definitely not. It’s probably…” She trailed off, looking down the passageway, into the tomb. Belatedly, Goblin Slayer brought up the torch.
The walls and floor, but not the ceiling, glittered in the light, almost as if they had a wire frame on them.
And then from far away came an echo, a faint sound. It sounded like…
“It’s from a wolf,” Arc Mage said.
The sound was the howl of an animal.
“Do you know any spells?” Goblin Slayer asked quietly.
“Can’t have you underestimating me,” Arc Mage replied. “I would hate for you to think wizards can’t do anything but fling fireballs and call down thunderbolts. But then again…” The electric magus started shuffling the deck of cards she’d taken out of her item pouch and laughed as if the whole thing were a giant joke to her. “…I’m the quest giver today. It’s your job to do something about this, not mine.”