Goblin Slayer Side Story: Year One, Vol. 2

by Kumo Kagyu

  “Your ability to take things for what they are is one of your virtues.” Arc Mage laughed, but…

  The most important thing was that they hadn’t yet run into a large crowd of goblins, but he didn’t like wasting time in transit.

  “Six…!”

  “GBBOR?!”

  Goblin Slayer smashed the edge of his shield into the nose of a goblin who was coming around the corner. It shattered the nose, stabbed into the brain, and the goblin fell back and expired, a bloody mess.

  The brain is a vital point, even for a goblin. Such was the conclusion he had come to after a great deal of fighting, reflection, investigation, and analysis.

  There was something to gain from each goblin he slaughtered, whether it was theoretical knowledge or practical skill. All was reference, all was practice, and all was experience.

  “Seven!”

  This, for example.

  Goblin Slayer hefted the spear in his hand and flung it as hard as he could down the passageway. It stabbed through the air, then through the chest of a goblin, delivering another fatal wound.

  He jumped on the gasping, blood-vomiting creature, breaking its neck.

  “Your throws are getting better and better.” Hee-hee. From a step or two behind him, Arc Mage restrained her laughter as she spoke. “Being able to take the initiative and attack anywhere, in a room or a hallway or wherever else—that makes you strong.”

  And unlike a bow and arrow, he didn’t need two hands to do it.

  Goblin Slayer nodded at this, then picked up a club from one of the goblins. “Do you know where we are going? If we get lost, we’ll be in trouble.”

  “No worries on that score,” Arc Mage said, making a broad and elegant gesture with her left hand. On it was the crackling glimmer of Spark.

  “This will be our guide—or maybe I should say, wherever I go, that’s where we want to be.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The destination isn’t chosen by the spark but by its master.”

  Just keep going. Goblin Slayer heeded Arc Mage’s words.

  Despite several forks and a few chambers, the scenery never changed. The room they finally arrived at looked just like all the others, the only difference being a thick door amid all that empty space.

  No, there was another difference as well…

  “What is this?”

  Something like mist floated in front of the door, which appeared as if made of ebony and had no keyhole.

  Goblin Slayer ignored it at first, inspecting the door. It was good that it didn’t have a keyhole. But although it seemed like two doors that would open in the middle, there was no seam at the center.

  “Hmm… That would appear to make this the center of it all,” Arc Mage said, sounding at once amused and concerned as she started prodding at the mist. Each time she did so, the black haze would shift in its shape, jumping and popping like a bubble. “The true body that’s lost its form by casting this shadow… In other words, I think this is the key.”

  “Can you do anything about it?”

  “We just need to get this thing back into its proper form… I think?”

  “I don’t know,” Goblin Slayer replied, looking back the way they had come.

  He heard the gibbering voices of goblins. Maybe they had finally noticed something was wrong.

  Then there were stamping footsteps, and then more chattering. The sound of a medley of equipment smacking one against another.

  Under his helmet, he let out a breath. This would be relatively easy. No enemies behind, just the one entrance ahead. Much simpler than defending a village. This was a fight he couldn’t afford to lose—but that was as it always was. Nor was there any change in what he had to do.

  “I’ll leave that to you.”

  “Yes, well, I’ll give it the old college try,” she said bravely from behind him, and meanwhile, he met the first goblin to jump through the entrance with his club.

  “GOBORO?!”

  “Hmph.”

  The monster’s skull shattered, spraying bone and blood and brains everywhere.

  Goblin Slayer slammed the club into two or three more before he tossed it away and dropped into a deep stance.

  The grimy leather armor, the cheap-looking steel helmet. On his left arm was tied a small round shield, while in his right hand was a sword of a strange length.

  “GOB! GOOBBG!!”

  “This makes ten!”

  As the goblin shouted and flew at him, he swept his blade upward to catch him under the chin.

  “GOBOGO?!”

  The monster’s twitching corpse smacked into its neighbor as it landed.

  Without missing a beat, Goblin Slayer used his shield to catch the club swung by a goblin on the left, then swept, ignoring the numbness in his arm.

  “Eleven…!” When the monster stumbled, he jammed his sword into its throat. Blood came gushing out, polluting the hilt and his hand. Goblin Slayer immediately let go of the sword, taking an ax from the now-dead goblin as he kicked the corpse away.

  The goblins had shoved aside the body of the first monster he had killed and were closing in from the front.

  “Hrm…!”

  He deflected a spear with his shield, dealt out a blow with his ax. He gave no thought to restraint. The slaughter of them all was his only goal.

  “The enemy wants you dead! You think you can win when you don’t care if you hit them or not?”

  Thus said his master, while raining down a flurry of blows upon him.

  Draw your sword with the intent to kill, and think of restraint only after.

  Goblin Slayer took a deep breath, steadying his breathing; he pulled out the ax he had buried in a goblin’s head.

  “Ten, and two.”

  “GOROBG…”

  “GBBB…!”

  The goblins, unsure how to press the attack, growled hatefully at him.

  At this distance, smell could no longer cover for anything.

  A woman. There’s a woman there. A young woman. And it’s just the two of them. Take. Steal.

  The goblins made hideous faces, full of lust and hatred. Shades they may have been, but they were still goblins. Perhaps that made them worse.

  They had found a woman at last, and they were frustrated to discover their way blocked. Yes, they were the ones trying to attack her, but that didn’t give this adventurer the right to stop them.

  If only he weren’t there. This was his fault.

  “GRRGB! GBGOROGOB!”

  “GOROGG!”

  Goblin Slayer didn’t understand the goblin language. But somehow, he seemed to understand what the band of goblins was thinking all too easily.

  Now, how to kill them?

  His hand went to his ax as he thought, Let them come. The narrow entryway would keep them from ambushing him and hamper the effect of their numbers, and in a one-on-one fight with a goblin, he couldn’t lose.

  At least, not so long as his strength held out…

  “…What in the world?”

  This confidence kept him from feeling much concern even when he heard Arc Mage mutter in surprise behind him.

  “This is wrong, this isn’t right…!”

  “What is it?”

  “This sort of corporeal body isn’t supposed to exist! It’s not structurally possible!”

  “I see.”

  He’d never heard her sound so perplexed, or so worried, before.

  But why should he think that he could understand anything, let alone everything, about another person?

  “I can still hold them off,” he said. “For a while.”

  “Yeah, I know… Believe me, I know…!”

  He could hear her biting her thumbnail. But he was more interested in the actions of the goblins, who had begun to smile viciously when they heard the woman’s voice.

  “GGOBOGOBG!!”

  A leap.

  Perhaps the monster was trying to jump over not just the corpse of his companion, but even Goblin Slay
er’s head.

  Goblin Slayer gave a deep sigh. He had plenty of strength left.

  “GOROR?!”

  “Thirteen.”

  He knew one goblin weak point: right between the legs.

  He delivered a merciless ax blow to that point.

  “GOBOGOBOGOOBO?!?!”

  The goblin gave an earsplitting howl, his eyes rolling back in his head as he twitched and thrashed.

  “GOROB?!”

  “Fourteen… Hrm.”

  The goblin screamed and fell backward, trying to extract the dagger from his eye, and there expired.

  Goblin Slayer nodded. So the eyes were soft.

  “That makes them vulnerable.”

  Sometime, he would have to come up with a way of blinding them. That was, if there was a sometime.

  He kicked a weapon from the goblin writhing at his feet into his hand.

  “GOROG! GGBOROGO!”

  “GOOROGBG!!”

  The din of battle continued. Arc Mage, meanwhile, frowned her handsome features, sweat and tears running down her face as she worked at the mist.

  It was indeed just like fog: try to catch hold of it, and you found yourself grasping empty air.

  But so what?

  That was no different from everything else.

  No different from everything she had achieved until now, everything she had obtained.

  She crouched on the floor, pulling a blackboard and chalk out of her bag. She began writing numbers furiously.

  All was numbers. Data was made of numbers.

  If the gods themselves were data, then even they could be understood, figured out. It had to be possible.

  One, two. Goblin Slayer continued to produce his pile of goblin corpses. In time with him, her brilliant brain began tying ambiguous things together, one, two.

  “…I see, I get it! I understand! It all…makes…sense!!”

  The cheer of triumph came when there were perhaps another ten dead goblins on the ground. Arc Mage threw aside the chalkboard, taking up the deck of cards she’d assembled into a spell book.

  “A projection of a higher dimension! It’s like drawing on paper—in other words, this is the shadow!”

  She gave a powerful tap to the floor of the dark tower as she stood. Then she turned over the cards in her hand, and with the whirlwind of magical powers that came welling up, she set upon the mist.

  “Three vertices, three lines. Four vertices, four faces. And if so, then one dimension higher, the smallest figure!”

  The words, like a spell, came fluently, slamming into the black fog one after another, turning them back from nothingness, changing them like a blooming flower.

  “…Meaning five vertices, five cells!”

  Clack. There was a sound as of something activating.

  Immediately, a single line appeared down the ebony door, a line of light that ran as if carved with a sword.

  Here openeth the dark tower!

  “YYYEEESSS!!” Arc Mage exclaimed in a voice that could have passed for a hunting horn. “Once you understand it, it’s nothing! Child’s play! Goblin Slayer!!”

  “…Yes.”

  He was in the middle of attacking his twenty-sixth goblin, jamming the broken tip of a short spear into the monster’s eye. When he pulled the spear back out, the eyeball came with it, ocular nerve and all. Goblin Slayer threw the whole thing away, spun on his heel, and started running.

  “GORO! GGBGOGOB!!”

  “GOROGB!!”

  With the impediment suddenly removed, the goblins rushed into the room like a dark flood.

  “Can you close the door, too?!” Goblin Slayer demanded.

  “Of course I can! Who do you think I—?”

  “Then do it…!”

  Goblin Slayer grabbed Arc Mage up in his arms, ignoring her little yelp.

  “Gah! You know, I think your treatment of women could use some refinement, you—!”

  “Just do it now!”

  Ignoring every objection and complaint, Goblin Slayer jumped directly through the door. Behind him, he could hear the gibbering, slavering goblins closing in.

  “I know, I know, you don’t have to shout,” Arc Mage groused from his shoulder. She made a motion with her fingers. In response, the black mist roiled and changed shape.

  “GOROOGGB!!”

  One goblin reached out, trying to force his way through the door—but it was too late.

  “You lot…are not invited.”

  The ebony portal closed without a sound, locking.

  The only thing left was a lone goblin arm, lying on the ground like a chopped nut.

  §

  “…So what, exactly, was that?” Goblin Slayer asked as they climbed a seemingly endless spiral staircase.

  On the other side of the door was a set of stairs that corkscrewed around and around, so far it seemed like it might go on forever. Judging by the height of the tower, though, that was only natural, and neither the adventurer nor the quest giver complained.

  Goblin Slayer, though, certainly didn’t voice the question from an inability to stand the silence.

  “Mm, well,” Arc Mage said, puffing out her chest like a proud child. “It was a shade. Those who live in a world of lines and faces can’t comprehend height. We’re not so different, ourselves…”

  We know length, width, and height, but add another axis that springs from an additional dimension…

  Still, there was a knowing grin on her face. “…But we can see the shadow the thing casts and tease it out. If we know how, that is.”

  “So that was that strange object.”

  “You got it.”

  “Can the goblins break through it?”

  Hmm. She stopped, leaning against the wall for support. Goblin Slayer stopped as well, looking back at her.

  “Well,” she said, nodding, “I understand what you’re asking, but strictly speaking, the answer is no.”

  “It’s impossible for them?”

  “Not impossible. But it’s possible in the same way it would be possible for a monkey to write a novel by scrawling random letters.”

  Or like a random encounter with a dragon. Goblin Slayer grunted softly.

  The chance was greater than zero. That fact could inspire courage, or concern. By chance or by fate, what would happen would happen. To hell with the rest.

  “Then answer what I was actually asking.”

  “If you meant are there goblins up ahead, the answer is certainly.” Arc Mage gave a wave of her hand as if she were tossing a ball. “Those are shades, remember. You glance up, and poof, there they are. You can’t fathom where they come from.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Even I was surprised.”

  She gave her cider bottle a loving pat, then one of those kisses, drinking noisily from it. Phew! She let out a warm breath then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I finally get a fix on my destination, and it turns out to be a goblin nest.”

  “That happens often.” Then Goblin Slayer elaborated quietly: “Very often.”

  “I wonder if we should chalk that up to fate, or to chance. It’s a puzzle.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You’re no fun.” Arc Mage laughed aloud. Goblin Slayer ignored her, taking the next step, then the next.

  If there were goblins here, then he had to focus on being ready for them. Everything else was trivial.

  He pulled a stamina potion out of his bag, drinking it down in a single gulp the way Arc Mage drank her cider. There was no telling how high this tower was, how long the fight with the goblins would continue—so perhaps he should have nursed it a bit at a time.

  “Well, you don’t need to worry about anything other than goblins,” Arc Mage said, jogging up behind him, and she sounded very confident. “If this tower is for us, then that amorphous thing is my obstacle… In a word, the shade of a god.”

  “A god.”

  “What you might call an avatar or a spirit. It’s not e
asy to grasp the form of a deity. My mathematical formulas might even count as divine, you see?”

  A god.

  Goblin Slayer didn’t look back. The word felt so far from him.

  It wasn’t a goblin, and that meant it was of no interest.

  §

  Arc Mage, indeed, was as good as her word.

  “Yes… Yes, yes!” She challenged the gods’ froth on the next level as well and achieved a brilliant victory. “When you know the rules and the formulae, the rest is calculation! Try that on for size! …Yes, I’m sure about this!”

  The blackboard and chalk had been summarily abandoned back on the second level. Now Arc Mage simply put a finger to her chin, muttered to herself for a moment, and then exclaimed, “It’s eight!”

  The amorphous foam reversed, shining like stars as it formed into a key that then opened the door forward. Goblin Slayer, who had been defending them against the encroaching goblins, immediately hefted Arc Mage up and ran through.

  “I thought I told you to learn some manners!”

  “Not interested.”

  All was repetition. On the third level, and the fourth, she didn’t even bother pretending to calculate. She would simply give the floor a hard tap with her foot then use the magic that swelled up to control her cards, opening the door on the spot.

  “Sixteen—,” it was, and then, “—Twenty-four!”

  And even so, it was like magic.

  Thankfully, it allowed Goblin Slayer to conserve a considerable amount of his strength. The goblins’ aggression didn’t seem to wane for having to climb the stairs. And if he couldn’t wipe them out all at once, then he would just have to keep up the work individually.

  He changed tactics, changed equipment, changed weapons, used every bit of his knowledge, relied on practiced movements, then switched to something different. He slashed throats, gouged eyeballs, split skulls, spilled viscera, smashed faces. The less work it took, the better.

  From that perspective, the fifth floor could be called just a bit of trouble.

  “Hrm, hrm, hrm… Well now, this sure is something else.”

  “Is it difficult?” Goblin Slayer asked, stepping on the neck of his hundred and second—or was that hundred and third?—goblin.

  “GOROOG! GBBGR!”

  “GRB!”

  His shoulders heaved with his breath. He fought to get his breathing under control then smashed another goblin with his shield. Despite a brief rest and some potions, the fatigue was undeniably building. The delving of massive, complex labyrinths was the work of powerful, Gold- or Platinum-ranked adventurers. Goblin Slayer, still among the lower ranks, had never imagined himself in such a world.