Chapter 3: Goblins

Goblins,

Cockroach-like in their infamy, they were scattered across nearly every plane that could be associated with “Western fantasy.”

These diminutive creatures were inherently greedy and despicable. If not for their race’s average intelligence lingering at the bottom of sentient beings, one might also describe them as “cunning” or “adept at deception.”

Their species, heavily skewed toward “evil” alignment, coupled with low productivity due to their stunted intellect, meant their survival often revolved around “plundering” and “stealing.”

Moreover, their race lacked females, forcing them to rely on abducting females from other sentient species or some bizarre, unknown method for reproduction.

This made them, in some respects, even more notorious across the multiverse than abyss demons or hellish devils.

A single goblin’s combat strength was pitifully weak. An ordinary farmwoman wielding a pitchfork could easily dispatch an unarmed, unarmored goblin.

But as the hunter Maji had described, these little creatures were like the stray dogs you could find anywhere in town.

A lone goblin posed no threat, but once they gathered in groups of double or even triple digits,

their—courage—and destructive potential would multiply exponentially.

Raiding caravans, attacking villages…

Especially when their colony grew to a certain size, an elite individual with leadership qualities would naturally emerge.

If left unchecked over time, they could even grow into a kingdom-level catastrophe.

The goblin tribe the Rotten Fish and Shrimp team was currently tracking might not yet have reached the scale to plunder towns.

But clearly, they already possessed the ability to actively attack humans.

The now-cold corpse of the humorous dwarf who once loved telling ill-timed jokes, lying on the ground, was proof of that.

“Roar!!!”

A beastly roar suddenly echoed through the forest.

The half-beastman Gagu leaped up like a startled jungle beast, both hands tightly gripping his bloodstained double-handed axe.

The sudden ambush and the death of a teammate seemed to awaken some ancestral glory in this half-breed with diluted beastman blood.

His faintly sharpening canines and visibly swollen, reddened muscles showed that this half-beastman was entering some kind of battle state.

The hunter Maji was the quickest to react in the entire Rotten Fish and Shrimp team.

Almost the instant the blackened wooden club emerged from behind Erji’s head, he reacted.

While shouting a warning, he slung his longbow from his back and, with hands and feet, nimbly climbed the towering hardbark oak behind him.

His lean figure vanished into the dense canopy in an instant.

Though I hated to admit it, I was undoubtedly the slowest to respond in the entire team.

In my thirty-plus years before transmigrating, I’d gone from classroom to office, never even killing a chicken;

in this life, I was just an honest farmer, toiling with my face to the earth and my back to the sky.

One moment, I was thinking about how to pry more information about this world from Erji, and the next, he was bludgeoned in front of me, his brains spilling out.

My mind went blank. Though I instinctively grabbed the one-handed sword from my knee, my body stood frozen, as if locked in some kind of paralysis.

Until…

“Swish!”

A gust of air brushed past, stinging my cheek as my hair swayed.

A wooden arrow shot through the forest shadows from the canopy above.

“Ah!”

A shrill cry of pain came from behind me.

I snapped back to my senses in an instant.

The world, as if a mute button had been lifted, suddenly came alive again.

No time to thank Maji above for his aid, I quickly turned around.

My gaze swept over, and my pupils contracted!

Two hunched, diminutive figures.

Rough, dark-green skin covered in scars, scarlet eyes brimming with cunning and malice; clad only in a filthy brown rag around their waists, their slender limbs subtly revealed the bulging outlines of muscles beneath.

Unbeknownst to me, two goblins had silently crept up behind me!

If not for Maji’s warning, I might have ended up like the dwarf Erji.

A wave of dread washed over me, and I instinctively tightened my grip on the sword hilt wrapped in coarse rope.

“Wazha!”

Their stealth exposed, one goblin even had its foot pierced through by the arrow from above, pinned to the ground.

These naturally cowardly creatures seemed to lose their nerve to continue the attack in that moment.

It merely raised its wooden club threateningly at me, a young human.

The blackened stick gleamed with a dangerous orange-red hue under the campfire’s light.

Staring at the rusty iron nails embedded in the club, I suddenly recalled the gruesome image of Erji’s skull splitting open.

Like some kind of stress response, fueled by intense fear, I stomped my right foot forward, my right arm bending to gather strength.

“Tap!”

My foot sank into the soft, muddy ground almost instantly.

Like a tree’s roots burrowing into the earth for nutrients, an inexplicable force surged from my soles, coursing through my bones and muscles, gathering strength from my entire body.

Finally, it poured out through the sword’s blade.

[Whirlwind Slash]

Screech—

With a piercing sound tearing through the air, the lingering mist churned violently.

A sharp silver arc, beautifully curved, flashed briefly before me.

Time seemed to freeze in that moment.

The meticulously maintained sword blade, combined with a technique honed hundreds of thousands of times, sliced through the goblin’s skin, muscle, and bone as if they were mere sandpaper, utterly fragile.

“Proficiency +1”

A string of translucent text flashed before my eyes.

I felt two brief moments of resistance in my hand, but the one-handed sword, as it had done countless nights before, slashed diagonally upward from left to right in one fluid motion.

Blood sprayed.

What fell to the muddy ground were the goblin’s severed hand, half a skull, foul-smelling entrails, and their filthy, scalding blood.

The two treacherous creatures that had tried to ambush me were, in a single strike, cleaved in two like the countless straw dummies on the field ridges.

The forest fell into a strange silence in that moment.

From the towering canopy above, Maji unconsciously relaxed his fully drawn longbow.

Gazing at the two mangled corpses on the meadow, his eyes shifted to me, slowly exhaling and sheathing my sword.

His throat bobbed twice, his face filled with uncontainable astonishment.

“This is a freaking newbie!?”

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