by Kumo Kagyu
“GROOB?!”
“GOBORB?!”
An old proverb said to let sleeping dragons lie. But what did goblins know about proverbs?
Lizard Priest’s tail and the claws of his feet each struck a goblin, sending them flying. The wounds would not be fatal, but all he needed right now was to get Priestess up to the altar.
“Shall I remain on the front row?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
In the middle of this brief conversation, Goblin Slayer let go of the sickle blade, which was lodged in the skull of a goblin.
“GROBBB…?!”
As his victim collapsed, he grabbed the rough-hewn club out of the creature’s hand. It would be enough; he didn’t need to be precise right now.
“Well then, milady Priestess. I leave this to you.”
“Sure thing. Good luck!”
Lizard Priest set her down gently, using his tail to keep the goblins at bay, then made his strange palms-together gesture.
“O sickle wings of Velociraptor, rip and tear, fly and hunt!”
The fang between his palms grew into a Swordclaw before their eyes, and Lizard Priest set upon the enemy, howling.
“Krrraaaaaaahaaaaahhhhaaaa!”
“GOORBGG?!?!”
He was a cleric, yes, but a fighting one, the kind that might be called a warrior-priest. Had he been born to another race, he might have made an excellent knight.
In contrast to Goblin Slayer, who made quick, precise jabs at vital points, Lizard Priest was a whirlwind of violence. The chapel, already besmirched with the blood of the nuns and the filth of the goblins, was now further dirtied with the goblins’ blood.
“Okay…!”
Priestess, for her part, still clutched her sounding staff. She nodded energetically and turned to face her own battlefield.
The young woman’s breathing was ragged; Priestess knelt beside her, heedless of the gore and filth that got on her in the process. The scene was beyond awful, but she swallowed her disgust, along with whatever it was that had come back up from her stomach.
No matter how many times I see things like this, I never get used to them. But…
She must never get used to them, she thought forcefully. And each time she repeated this to herself, her faith became stronger.
“O Earth Mother, abounding in mercy, lay your revered hand upon this child’s wounds.”
She gripped her staff imploringly, lifting up her heart to the Earth Mother in heaven.
Please, be so gracious as to heal this person’s wounds. Save her life. Save her.
And so at long last, she had the chance to cast Minor Heal again.
And the munificent Earth Mother responded to the heartfelt prayer of her dear follower. A pale light bubbled forth, leaping toward the young woman’s injuries, starting to staunch the flow of blood.
The miracle would not, of course, restore lost vitality. Even a divine miracle could not easily undo wounds of the body and mind.
But neither would she die immediately.
“Goblin Slayer, sir, we’re okay over here…!”
“Good.” Without pausing, Goblin Slayer reached into the item pouch on his hip, pulled out an egg, and flung it at the goblins.
“GOOROOROB?!”
“GOOOROBOROOB?!?!”
An unpleasant smoke sprang up, prompting a chorus of shouts. Several of those goblins who had been enjoying torturing the woman now thrashed about in pain, tears in their little eyes. The egg had been a shell filled with Goblin Slayer’s homemade tear gas. He hadn’t been able to use it at first for fear that the gas might get into the wounds of the hostage girl, but that was no longer a concern.
“Eight— Nine!”
He tossed his club at one goblin, then brought down another with a rusty sword he had stolen. He slashed the creature’s throat, not caring whether he destroyed the weapon in the process. There was a whistling from the monster’s windpipe, along with a geyser of blood, and then the goblins collapsed one on top of the other.
“GBBB…!”
“GORBG! GGOOBBG!”
Half the goblin number had been annihilated in the space of a moment, and now the monsters were afraid. As scared as they were, though, they hated to let their hard-won prey escape. Not to mention the ugly part of their minds that longed to add the new young woman and the elf girl to their collection.
However, it was difficult to get past the human warrior and the lizard monk out in front.
Well, then…
“GROOB!”
“GORB!”
Immediately, several of the goblins dropped their weapons and charged blindly. Were they trying to form up, or run away, or—? No.
“They’re going for shields!” Goblin Slayer sized up the situation in an instant and issued orders.
The fleeing creatures were heading for drop lids on the ground. They were going to bring up the women they had captured to bear their young. They would use them as meat shields.
“I hate that about goblins. If they think I’m just gonna stand here— Hah!”
The creatures suddenly found arrows protruding from their hips. From the shadow of the pews, High Elf Archer had let loose a merciless hail of arrows.
“GROB! GROOORB?!”
“GOOROB?!”
Three shots without a moment’s pause. Three goblins fell to the ground, screeching.
It was easy to aim for the head, but there was always the possibility of a fumble. At the moment, immobilizing the monsters was more important; they could be dealt with after that.
High Elf Archer took just an instant to aim, then planted a bud-tipped bolt in a goblin’s eyeball.
“Orcbolg! I’ve got things covered over here!”
“Well then, shall I take the stairs?”
Dwarf Shaman’s work as a spell caster completed, what remained was physical labor. With surprising agility for such a large frame, he bounded toward the staircase. He drew his hand ax almost faster than the eye could see and assumed a fighting stance; he was clearly no amateur.
“GOOROOB!”
“GRRRRORB!”
This was where the goblin advance would stop.
The creatures had originally gotten in through a crack in the paltry defensive wall, but now they were the ones who were surrounded. Just like many new adventurers, the goblins had never imagined this might happen. They believed that it was theirs to kill, and not to be killed. This was an absolute; yet, here they were in the opposite situation.
Goblin Slayer understood this well. He himself had been that way once.
“Fourteen… Fifteen!”
“Krrraahhhh!”
Goblin Slayer smashed one creature’s head with his club then grabbed a hand spear and stabbed another in the throat.
Lizard Priest struck out with claws and fangs and tail, rendering goblins into clouds of blood.
This was a party with four Silver-ranked adventurers and one Steel-ranked adventurer.
More importantly, one of those adventurers was Goblin Slayer.
There had never been any question of whether he would defeat twenty-odd goblins holed up in a church building. For him, the question was always how to do so quickly, how to kill precisely, and how to rescue any hostages.
§
“Twenty and three, is it?”
The battle had ended some time later. The sun was sinking, and the library was submerged in darkness. The only light came from lanterns flickering here and there.
Goblin Slayer did his work nonchalantly in the pale illumination: he went from one goblin corpse to the next, stabbing each with his weapon to make sure it was dead, then piling them up in a corner of the chapel.
The worship hall, now reeking of blood, rot, and refuse, and stained a gruesome crimson, no longer bore any sign of its former sacred purity. Whether or not it had been the goblins’ objective, they had succeeded in utterly desecrating this place.
Just over twenty nuns had worked in the library. Roughly half of them were st
ill alive. The rest remained only as the meat and bones in a stew pot.
Lizard Priest was in the process of bringing each of the nuns upstairs into the chapel from the basement storehouse.
“Stay strong, now. When dawn breaks, we can take you somewhere less upsetting.”
“Thank you… Truly…”
“Think nothing of it. We may revere different deities, but monkeys came from lizards, in the end. That makes us cousins.”
“Heh-heh… You lizardmen…say the strangest…things…”
The women chuckled among themselves. They were wrapped in cloth, although nothing could hide how filthy and emaciated they were. One look at the bandages wrapped around their ankles made it clear that they were not going to be walking anywhere.
Priestess found herself biting her lip. If there was one pain she did not yet know, it was that of a rusty dagger cutting her Achilles tendon.
“…It’s all right now,” she said. “We’ll get you back to town soon.”
“Tha…nk…y…ou…”
“Don’t try to talk. Right now, you just need to rest.”
Priestess moved conscientiously among the pews, administering first aid to the nuns and the traveler.
Everyone avoided asking what would become of them now.
There are quite a few, Goblin Slayer mused. So many of them who had maintained their sanity, and had neither committed suicide nor been used up then killed. This library could be considered lucky.
Thanks to the traveler, who had no doubt been prepared to fight to the death, one of the nuns had been spared this horror. She had been sent to another temple with a message and on her return discovered what was going on. She had gone back up the road to file a quest at the Adventurers Guild, but it had taken several days for adventurers to be dispatched.
It was thanks to the traveler that Goblin Slayer and his party had made it here. The hours she had bought with her blood gave them the time they needed to arrive.
If the traveler had decided instead to abandon the temple, or to throw down her weapon after only a token resistance, the nun would never have been able to escape, and the situation probably would not have been discovered until things were far worse.
“…Twenty-three, then,” he murmured as if he himself almost didn’t believe it. Then he tossed aside his bloody spear. It rolled noisily over to a corner of the chapel where there rested a pot with what remained of the food. In place of the spear, he took up a sword from a convenient goblin corpse, putting it in the scabbard at his hip.
It was only after doing all this that Goblin Slayer sat down in one of the pews.
“If it had not been for the books and the hostages, it would’ve been quicker to set fire to the place.” He sighed deeply.
“…Hmph. What a thing to say,” Priestess chided, pattering over to him. He looked at her without moving his helmet.
She must have finished providing first aid. Her blood-spattered cheeks softened, and then she managed a full-faced smile. She was trying not to show what must have been considerable fatigue from using two miracles.
“You want her to get angry at you again? No fire! she’ll say.” Priestess put her pointer fingers up by her head and flicked them up and down.
She was trying to joke—maybe forcing herself to. Goblin Slayer didn’t know one way or the other. The shadows cast by the thin candlelight, combined with the visor of his helmet, kept him from reading the subtleties of her expression.
Finally, he simply said, “Indeed,” and then closed his eyes.
He didn’t intend to rest for very long, of course. He steadied his breathing, relaxed his awareness just for an instant, and then focused it again.
After all, there were still goblins around. Perhaps not here, but somewhere. There was nowhere he could let down his guard.
“…It took some work, though.”
“Well, that…” Priestess’s eyes flitted here and there as she tried to pick her words. “…happens sometimes, I think.”
“…I see.”
“Even the gods aren’t all-powerful.”
Then, almost hesitantly, she sat down next to Goblin Slayer. She was close enough that he might have felt the heat from her body, if he hadn’t been wearing his armor. Goblin Slayer’s eyes widened ever so slightly at the faint sound of breath he could detect past his metal helmet.
“How is the traveler girl?” he asked.
“Asleep, finally… She’s okay in the short term. But she doesn’t have enough blood.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
Priestess immediately grasped what Goblin Slayer meant by this brief response.
They would act the next day. In other words, they would spend the night here. They certainly couldn’t ask the rescued women to walk. They would need a carriage or cart of some sort. Moreover, moving this many people at night would be dangerous. Especially without a plan.
“Make sure you rest a bit in the meantime.”
“…Right.” Priestess nodded. Her eyes drifted shut. She entertained no notion that she might actually sleep, but just closing her eyes was enough to relax a little. Goblin Slayer had been willing to take on a bit of the weight on her shoulders.
“But…” She heard Lizard Priest’s footsteps approaching softly. He looked around somberly then continued in a quiet voice, “I feel the little devils have been…rather more clever of late.”
“You think so?”
“It’s only a feeling, but…” And then he went on quickly, with the special excitement that lizardmen seemed to have for matters of battle. “Ever since the goblin paladin, I have noticed it.”
“I agree,” Goblin Slayer said with a nod. “Perhaps they’ve gotten smarter…?”
Although, he added, he had labored to kill them precisely so that they might not learn.
Or perhaps my enemies to this point have been only puppets?
No. He dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. In some cases, one could chop off the head to destroy the body, but this was nothing nearly so simple. Was that not a lesson he had learned fully a decade ago?
“We will need some new plans ourselves.”
“Pfah! The little monsters wouldn’t know the value of a gem if it hit them in the eye.” Dwarf Shaman bustled up, carrying an armful of cargo. The copious dust around him indicated that he must have been in the storehouse or somewhere similar.
None of them, of course, would stoop so low as to steal from these nuns. The point was to make sure everything was safe.
All the same, Lizard Priest rolled his eyes in his head with great interest. “Were any of the texts safe?” he asked.
“Just the ones they didn’t take for trash,” Dwarf Shaman replied. There was a clatter as he piled several objects onto the pew: stone tablets—no, perhaps clay. Such items were not as convenient as paper, but they were proof that records from the Age of the Gods and the Elder Days still existed.
“I doubt they could tell these from flagstones,” Lizard Priest said, brushing the surface of one of the tablets gently so as not to scratch it with his claws.
The form of the letters appeared quite old; even Lizard Priest could not read them. The assiduously nongeometric characters formed patterns that threatened to make the reader dizzy.
“In our ignorance of what they say, perhaps we are not so different from the goblins. But let us be grateful that something survived.”
“We’ll have to figure out exactly what they are when we have a chance. But that can wait.”
“Yes.” Goblin Slayer nodded. “How are things outside?”
“Long-Ears is having a look around. She’s got good night vision, and a ranger’s agility.”
If there’s any left, she’ll find them. The dwarf pulled out his wine jug. Goblin Slayer accepted it and took a swig, drinking lustily through the visor of his helmet. The spirits burned on the way down, calling his attention to how his focus had been dulled by fatigue.
“…You’ve both used spells. You need rest.”
/> “And so do you… But maybe that’s a luxury we can’t afford. We need to make sure we have enough for a front row.” Then the dwarf took a mouthful of wine himself, before passing the jug to Lizard Priest.
“Oh-ho,” the lizard said, squinting, and took a big mouthful of wine. His long tongue slid out to lick the droplets from his jaws, and he coughed once. “It makes one wish for cheese.”
“When we get back,” Dwarf Shaman reassured his companion, pounding him on the shoulder. “Can’t let ourselves get distracted just ’cause we’re heading home.”
“True, but I think we’re okay for tonight.” The clear voice came from the direction of the door, which creaked as it opened. A silhouette slipped into the chapel, like a cat making its way along the road at night. The woman shook slightly, her long ears twitching—it was High Elf Archer.
“I did a circuit of the area, but I didn’t see any footprints from any escaped goblins.”
“You’re sure?” Goblin Slayer asked softly, to which she replied, “I’m sure.”
High Elf Archer frowned and scratched at some dried blood on her cheek. “So as far as heading home, if we don’t spot any goblins between here and there, I think this is the end of it.”
“I see.” Goblin Slayer nodded shortly, looking at the pile of corpses in the corner of the chapel.
Twenty-odd goblins. Twenty-odd goblins they had dealt with and killed themselves.
Then there were the injured women sleeping on the pews.
Is this the end of it?
“……I see.” He nodded again and shifted slightly. Then he gently shook Priestess, who was leaning against him. “Wake up. She’s back.”
“…Mm? Ah. Oh, r-right.” Priestess sat up with a start. She gave a few quick shakes of her head and rubbed her eyes, forcing her drifting attention to focus.
“Okay, I’ll clean up, then. We’re all…”
The words very dirty never quite reached her lips; she swallowed them instead. She grabbed her sounding staff and began walking among the women sleeping on the pews, High Elf Archer following her. Priestess emerged into the center of the room, and there she knelt, clutching her staff in both hands. A posture of prayer.