10 Years After – 114
Battle with the Goblins
Carefully, but quickly, we made our way through the ruins.
Grulf took the rear.
While he was a pup, Grulf wouldn’t allow the goblins to surprise him.
I kept looking back to make sure that Nia and Grulf were still behind me.
“…”
Nia was following silently and with a serious expression.
It would have been nice to turn this expedition into a lesson.
I could ask her to inspect the footprints to guess the number of goblins.
Tell her what you could learn from the leftover food.
Which rooms were likely to have goblins.
However, this was a time when it was most important to stay alert.
Normally, you wouldn’t be able to talk to each other like that once you enter the goblin cave.
It was possible to communicate through Telepathy, but I decided against it.
We just used hand signals as we made our way forward.
Several goblins attacked us on the way, but we killed them without much effort.
Nia had trained every day, and so she had skills that were shocking for her age.
I inspected the tracks and continued on.
It seemed that there weren’t any human captives after all. All the better.
This mission would be able to end without incident.
It was just as I started to have such hopes.
“…?”
I found a strange footprint.
It was bigger than a goblin’s. Maybe four or five times as large.
I looked at Nia. She had noticed it too.
She pointed at it and looked at me. Like she was waiting for instruction.
It was good that she hadn’t panicked.
It could be a Goblin Lord.
I had encountered a Goblin Lord the first time I met Shia.
Shia was a B-rank Adventurer and struggled in that fight. That was how strong Goblin Lords were.
Still, Nia would be fine as long as I was here. Especially if we could ambush it.
However, it was strange that the footprints seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Goblin Lords couldn’t fly. So it must have walked in from the entrance.
And yet the footprints seemed to start here.
(Was there a different entrance?)
There could be, if this was a cave.
But this was a dragon ruin.
A dragon ruin that Kathe had cast magic on to protect.
I think Kathe would have told me about any other exits.
But then again, this was Kathe. Forgetfulness wasn’t entirely out of the question.
I decided to use Telepathy.
And with that, I connected to Nia and Grulf through magic.
And then I talked to them slowly so they wouldn’t be alarmed.
‘This is Telepathy. Be calm and listen.’
“!”
Nia and Grulf looked shocked for an instant, but then nodded in unison.
While surprised, Nia hadn’t made a sound.
But even I was surprised that Grulf was smart enough to also stay silent.
‘I don’t have time to teach you how to do it. So just be quiet and listen for now.’
“…”
‘There is likely a Goblin Lord up ahead. But there was no trace of it coming in here. And so there must be a teleportation circle.’
Nia and Grulf were alarmed by this again, but kept quiet and listened.
‘In other words, there could be an even stronger enemy than a Goblin Lord. We will have to retreat for now.’
The dark ones often used teleportation circles.
So my guess was that it was a Vampire Lord.
Koko wa Ore ni Makasete Saki ni Ike to Itte kara 10 Nen ga Tattara Densetsu ni Natteita
