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“Hey, Daniela.”

“What?”

“How long will we have to walk until we reach, uh…”

“Replant.”

“Ah, yes, yes. When will we reach it?”

“It will likely take us three days.”

“Right…”

 

It seemed that a lot of these places were a similar distance from each other. This empire made things quite easy for us travelers.

 

As the two of us walked through the mist, Presence Detection alerted us of a monster. I unsheath the greatsword that hung from my shoulder.

 

“Grass wolves? Seems a little different this time.”

“I do not know… I have heard that there are monsters that only appear in the mist. Perhaps it is that.”

“Are you serious? I was in the thickest mist when I first came to this world. I could have died…”

“Do not worry. These monsters only live in Flugelnia.”

 

There really are all kinds of monsters in this world… And this one would show itself any moment now. I wanted to see what it was like first, so I lowered my sword to a defensive stance. Daniela also unsheathed her sword and stood behind me.

And what appeared from the mist, was none other than those humanoid monsters, goblins. But these ones were strangely pale. Perhaps it was a camouflage for the mist? They wielded the same iron swords that the other goblins carried. This one was thin and short, so close to a shortsword. He was looked like an assassin.

 

“Mist goblins…monsters that attack you from the mist.”

“Is that their real name?”

“I think so.”

“I see… Daniela, we’re surrounded.”

“Aye, I know.”

 

With Presence Detection, I could clearly sense that we were surrounded. A person who couldn’t use Presence Detection would likely get attacked quickly in the mist, and die. It was a horribly frightening way to die…

I stared back at the goblin, not giving it an opening to attack. Then it pulled back and vanished into the mist. In the same instant, a different goblin jumped out from the side. Daniela moved to engage, as I turned to face yet another goblin who came from the opposite direction. I blocked the first blow with my greatsword, then cut through him with a swing. The blade was sharp. There was something that looked almost exaggerated about the way the goblin was hacked and how the pieces went flying back into the mist.

 

“Daniela, these guys are really coordinated! We can’t underestimate them!”

“Still, they are no match for us!”

 

Our backs faced each other as we defended against the goblins that jumped out from the front and back. Just then, a second goblin appeared from behind the one that I was facing. As both of my hands were full, I generated an ice arrow in the air and shot the goblin. The goblin that was in front of me looked shocked by my display of magic, and so I kicked him, then rammed the sword forward as he stumbled. He struggled to pull the blade out, but his strength was gone, and I shook the dying goblin off of the blade. Daniela was also using her wind magic to fight.

 

“…Looks like that’s all of them.”

“It was quite an attempt…”

 

Daniela swung her sword to remove the blood before returning it to its sheath. My sword was too big to do something as cool as that. And so I was forced to use blue magic in the sword and create water to wash the blood off. It created a great gush of water that cleaned the blade nicely. And I put it back in my sheath and hung it over my shoulder.

 

“Hahh…that was scary. Let’s get out of here. It’ll really slow us down if we get attacked again.”

“Yes, but wait. We have to collect the proof of the hunt.”

“Ah, right. I have to collect their weapons for my allowance as well.”

 

We squatted and quickly salvaged what we needed. I didn’t know what we needed for proof, so we took the hands and ears. There were six swords in all. And we had proof of hunting six goblins. The swords were in surprisingly good condition. Where had they picked these up…I didn’t really want to think about it.

 

We were attacked several times after that, but it wasn’t too hard to deal with. I just watched as my allowance grew until we were finally out of the mist. Our surroundings were the same flatlands, but there was a forest in the distance. Apparently, Replant was on the other side of that forest. We camped in front of the forest that day, and on the next, we plunged into the forest that spread out before us.

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