Goblin Slayer, Vol. 6

Goblin Slayer didn’t know whether his words would be of help to them. He had no certainty. After all, he knew that cantankerous old rhea all too well.

But there was no such thing as too much help on a journey. Such was the way of things.

Goblin Slayer squinted slightly beneath his helmet then turned slowly on his heel before striding off at his usual bold pace.

This would not change what he did next.

Tomorrow, presumably, he would kill goblins.

And the day after that. And the day after that.

Every day.

His rest, his training, his purchases of equipment, were all in the service of killing goblins.

Why? Because he was Goblin Slayer.

“All done?”

He had stopped in the road, near the fork that led to the farm.

There was his old friend, lounging among the dappled shadows of a grove of young trees.

“Yes,” he answered, and she bounced up from the root she was resting on to line up beside him.

Let’s go home together. She didn’t have to say it for them both to understand.

She set off eagerly, and he followed at a more measured pace. Careful neither to overtake her nor to fall behind.

“It seems they are going on a journey together.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“…I heard the lake dried up.”

“Yes,” he said. Then he thought for a moment before eventually adding, “…I’m sorry.”

“…Mm.”

That was as far as their discussion of the incident went.

She didn’t say anything, nor did he.

Nothing about the fact that the training grounds had been built on the bones of their village nor that the area was becoming quite lively.

Not a word about how he had annihilated the goblins who had attacked those training grounds.

Not about how the ground was soft now, after he had emptied an entire lake into a tunnel beneath it.

Nor how it would now be difficult to build around that lake.

They didn’t mention any of it—not a word.

The sky was blue, the trees’ leaves bursting into a vibrant green. The wind rustled through the grass, and the sun was hot enough to make them sweat.

That road ran back to town, but they took the fork that would lead them to the farm.

It was too short a distance to communicate all that they thought yet too long for their hearts not to hear each other.

“Hey…” she said suddenly, pattering up in front of Goblin Slayer. Her hands were joined behind her, and she spun around. “You seem kind of…happy.”

“…Hrm,” he grunted deep in his throat. He hadn’t considered it. “I do?”

“I can tell. You better believe it.”

“I see…”

She chuckled triumphantly and puffed out her generous chest. “I understand you. I always do.”

She sounded rather proud. But she looked like she was having fun, just as they always had since the days when they dashed around that open field together.

“Something good happen?” she asked.

“…Yes,” Goblin Slayer responded, nodding. Then he looked back.

The road stretched ever on and on under the blue sky, and far down along it, he could just make out two figures, growing smaller in the distance.

Perhaps someday—be it tomorrow, next year, a decade from now, a century—there would be talk of a red-haired wizard dragon buster.

Maybe the deeds of those two dragon slayers would become tomorrow’s legends.

It was so easy to call it impossible, a childish dream.

But what if?

If, someday, they truly did it, then that—

“That would be a very good thing.”

“Oh yeah?” Cow Girl murmured, smiling, and then the two of them set off walking together along the road home.