Chapter 2: From an Attack to a Confession

Chapter 2:
From an Attack to a Confession

 

THE AIR WAS RELAXED, yet Loren’s eyes turned suddenly grim. He grasped the hilt of the sword on his back, and Lapis startled in shock.

“Everyone, freeze! I just heard something!”

A second behind Loren, Narron echoed his warning, sending a wave of tension through the party.

She’s too slow for a scout, Loren thought darkly as he surveyed the surroundings. While they stood in the midst of a thick forest, they had reached a small clearing. This gave them an unobstructed field of vision and enough space to fight.

Right hand gripping the hilt of his sword, Loren used his left to tug at the cord fastening the cloth to the blade. The cloth billowed open, revealing the iron edge to the open air. He fluidly drew it one-handed, gripped the pommel with the other, and readied his mind for battle.

Even if a mercenary spent the majority of his time on the battlefield, his mind and body wouldn’t hold out if he kept himself steeled around the clock. Loren had seen a number of comrades break that way. Consequently, he had taught himself to shift between mental states at the drop of a hat.

Before he had the time to enjoy the feeling of his own power rippling through his body, he caught sight of the river of shadows moving beyond the dark grove. Small, human-shaped. Considering how deep in the forest they were, and how nimbly the shadows moved, Loren doubted these were children from the village.

“What is it? Monsters?” Saerfé asked Narron. His hand hadn’t even touched his sword yet. And while Narron looked around frequently—her ears and eyes straining—she didn’t seem to have perceived the approaching shadows, or even the direction they were coming from.

Is this party really going to make it? Loren worried. Should he warn them? Narron wouldn’t appreciate it.

In that moment of hesitation, the attack began.

A wave of arrows flew between the densely packed trees. They weren’t too fast, and their aim was all over the place; more than half of them landed in trunks or glanced far off their mark. A good dozen made it through, however.

“Erk?!”

Most only peppered the ground around their feet. As luck would have it, one grazed Oxy’s shoulder, drawing a meager spray of blood. She failed to contain her yelp, and Saerfé and Narron’s eyes darted toward her.

“What are you doing?!” Loren cursed. You have to know how dangerous it is to take your eyes off the enemy in an ambush!

So what if they hadn’t seen the enemy yet? The arrows’ trajectory was clue enough, and looking at the target of the attack rather than the direction it came from was practically handing your life to your foe.

Loren’s eyes remained locked on the monsters leaping out of the thicket. Small, ugly, green abominations brandishing crude wooden-board shields and rusted shortswords. Goblins, no doubt about it. This time, he didn’t hesitate, and he swung.

His blade met wooden plank. The sword wasn’t designed to cut, and its edge couldn’t slice through the shield. However, by virtue of its sheer weight and momentum, it smashed straight through with little resistance, crushing the arm of the goblin who held it and cleaving the monster’s torso in two.

Before the blood of its lifeless body hit the ground, Loren caught a second goblin in the head with his return swing. A dull sound rang out, a mangled mix of flesh and bone scattered, and another goblin fell dead.

“Dammit! Bloody goblins!”

Finally realizing what the hell was going on, Saerfé drew his sword. Oxy held her shallow wound, shakily prepared to give support, while Narron readied a dagger.

“Need a defense blessing?!” Lapis called out.

“Don’t waste your breath!” Loren barked and swung his sword again. He caught a third goblin, lifting it off its feet and pulverizing its torso against the trunk of a tree. Taking a barrage of arrows with the body of his blade, he peered into the darkness of the wood.

Loren identified the goblins shooting at him, but he clicked his tongue. With all the trees between them, he’d have a hard time closing in. And the foliage would restrict his movements too much to swing his behemoth of a sword.

If only I had a throwing knife—if only I’d managed to keep my shortsword.

Suddenly, Loren’s eye landed on the crude sword clutched by the dead goblin at his feet. He scooped it up, whipped it aloft, and threw it.

The sword spun end over end, trajectory surprisingly stable for its terrible weight distribution, but the distance worked against him. One of the goblin bowmen suffered a light cut, but nothing more.

Need another, Loren thought.

However, the bowmen seemed shocked by the sudden long-range attack. As Loren snatched up another shortsword, they let out a shrill shriek and fled as fast as their legs would take them.

“Don’t run, cowards! After them!” Saerfé brandished his sword, oblivious to the miffed “you didn’t even do anything” look Loren shot him.

Narron and Oxy immediately obeyed Saerfé’s command, but after taking a swing with his sword to flick off the blood stuck to it, Loren motioned for them to wait. “We shouldn’t pursue them too far. We might get more than we bargained for.”

“What are you talking about?” Saerfé demanded. “We took a goblin hunting quest. Now we’ve got our lead. We have to chase them down and wipe out the nest, or I’ll never be able to say I did the job right.”

“That’s right! Who do you think you are, butting in like that? If our leader says chase, you pipe down and chase!” Narron snapped.

Loren sighed and didn’t object further. No matter that goblins were unintelligent, low-ranking monsters, they weren’t just going to leave their nest wide open for attack. Had this quest even said anything about an extermination?

Yes, they would be paid a bonus for each goblin they took out, but the flat fee for the quest in itself was far higher than any amount they could feasibly hope to earn by slaying additional goblins. Rather than risking the danger of storming the nest, Loren thought they’d be way better off filling their quota by taking out goblins foolish enough to wander outside its protection. It might have been worth bringing up if the party cared about Loren’s opinion at all.

Hey, it’s not like it’s my first time working under an incompetent commander, he consoled himself.

Meanwhile, Saerfé’s party raced into the forest after the fleeing goblins. Not all of them, though. Much to Loren’s surprise, Lapis stuck close to him, keeping pace with his sluggish trawl.

“Your comrades are way up ahead, you know.” He didn’t mean to betray himself, but when the words came out, they sounded just as discontented as he felt.

“Indeed, they are,” Lapis replied without missing a beat. “But I’ve determined that this spot right here is where I ought to be.”

Well, she’s their newest member, if I recall correctly. Guess she doesn’t know if they’re a good fit yet either.

She continued, “I’m not trying to imply anything, mind you. However, isn’t it just good fundamentals for a priest or magician to fight while protected by a specific warrior? Mr. Saerfé covers for Ms. Oxy, so I naturally thought my position should be beside you.”

“Is that really what you’re going with?”

“Why, yes, it is, and I would be quite thankful if you’d play along.”

They shared a smile, and with that, Loren didn’t feel like pursuing the matter any further. What was the point? He took no issue with Lapis’s argument. Any doubts he had remained trapped in the realm of speculation.

That’s quite a personality she has there, Loren thought as he and Lapis picked up the pace.

It didn’t take a genius to track a fleeing goblin. They lacked the intelligence to cover their trail, and with her skill set, Narron could pursue the traces they left without issue. That said, these traces were clear enough for even Loren to track. If she’d missed them, he would have concluded the thief girl didn’t deserve her registered title.

Also, Loren had injured one of the goblins with that chucked sword, and its blood left splotches on the ground, trees, and rocks. Even a complete amateur could follow this particular path.

“Just asking, but…how strong is this party?” Loren asked, feigning nonchalance. He and Lapis still lagged a bit behind Saerfé and the others. The battlefield had taught him the skill to measure distance and his volume so as not to be heard. “Particularly, how good is your leader’s sword arm?”

In Loren’s company, Saerfé’s reaction—or lack thereof—during the goblin attack would have gotten him labeled a failure and retrained from the ground up. Either that, or he would have been shoved on the front line for whatever arbitrary reason they could come up with; it would save them the trouble.

At the very least, Loren didn’t love having him for a leader.

“You were formerly a mercenary, weren’t you, Mr. Loren?” said Lapis, not even pausing to think about it. “In that case, have you heard about the mercenary called the Blade Fiend?”

“I’ve heard the name, at least.”

Most mercenaries knew it. The Blade Fiend, a legendary mercenary said to guarantee victory for his clients and death for their enemies. He wasn’t the only mercenary with a moniker, but word was he outmatched the rest. Only the Infernal Edge, who dealt in both sword and magic, or the Cleaving Gale, another famous swordsman, could even hope to compare.

His name didn’t only float in mercenary circles either. The general public knew the Blade Fiend as a swordsman you never wanted to meet on a battlefield. While those who met him as an enemy died, even those who met him as an ally stood to lose. A mercenary’s livelihood depended on achieving recognition in war—it led to further work. Given that the Blade Fiend’s skill often won him all the glory, other mercenaries often kept him at arm’s length.

“You’re not gonna tell me his sword hand rivals the Blade Fiend’s, are you?”

“If I were to describe Mr. Saerfé’s skills, I’d say you could get ten million of him, and I believe he still wouldn’t be able to defeat the Blade Fiend.”

Loren didn’t understand the point of that comparison, but the takeaway was that Saerfé barely knew which end of the sword to hold. No matter the Blade Fiend’s individual strength, pitted against ten million enemies, he would eventually falter and lose. Loren couldn’t fathom just how weak someone had to be in order to fail at those numbers.

“And you’re entrusting your lives to that guy? Are you sane?”

“Why, you’re in the very same shoes, Mr. Loren.”

“Yeah, sorry. Got no money, so I can’t vouch for my decisions.” Sans financial troubles, Loren would never have chosen to be an adventurer in the first place. “Being broke does things to you. It’s not that I can’t think clearly, more like my thoughts don’t mean anything. Like I’ve got no way around my problems but through.”

“That’s… How should I put this. My condolences?”

Why did you phrase that as a question?

Loren stopped without warning, and Lapis scrambled to hit the brakes beside him. Ahead, Saerfé held up his hand, ordering them to wait. The group converged.

“There’s a cave up ahead. That’s probably the goblins’ nest.” Perhaps Saerfé thought he had lowered his voice, but it carried father than he seemed to be aware of. “The blood trail leads here, and Narron says there’s no doubt about it.”

This is hopeless. Loren massaged his temple. “Are you going to charge in? In that case, I’d like to excuse myself.”

The cave looked hardly wide enough to fit two people walking side by side. It would be near impossible for Loren to swing his bulky weapon within those narrow confines.

“Then run home alone,” mocked Narron, concealed in a nearby thicket to get a better look at the cave. “Without pay, of course.”

“It’s just goblins. It should be fine, right? If you’re worried about your weapon, why not try this one?” Saerfé held out a rusted shortsword one of the goblins had wielded. “I thought it might be useful, so I took it with me.”

While mildly impressed by this unexpected shrewdness, upon evaluating the crude construction of the sword, Loren concluded it would be more useful as a cudgel than as a blade.

Better than nothing. He gave up. So, rewrapping the cloth around his greatsword and draping it over his back, he let the blunt shortsword dangle loosely from his hand.

“Oxy, use your magic to light the place up. Narron, stay alert. We’ll press on if we don’t run into any issues.”

You didn’t bring a lantern or torch or something? What was in all that luggage? Loren didn’t even know how many times he had sighed by now. He had long since stopped counting. Of course, he didn’t have a light source either, unless he wanted to set fire to himself.

“No lookouts, and I don’t detect any ambushes or traps nearby.”

“All right, in we go. They might have some abducted villagers in there. Let’s hurry and get this done.”

Oxy gingerly raised her staff. “Let there be light. Lighting.” Its tip began to emit a warm, magical glow.

We’re not even in the cave yet. Why are you wasting your magic here? thought Loren, but his head, too filled with resignation and dread, had no room for the motivation to retort.

“Are we good? Then let’s go.”

Completely ignorant of Loren’s inner monologue, Saerfé nodded at Oxy. He inched from their hiding spot in the shadows of the trees to the mouth of the cave.

This is definitely a trap. Loren was certain of it. Didn’t matter how simpleminded goblins might be—if they were smart enough to run, they had to be smart enough to post lookouts outside their nest. Even beasts of instinct knew to watch the edge of their flock. Such were the laws of nature.

And yet, he saw no goblins near the entrance.

“Were they in a hurry? Lucky for us, they didn’t leave any lookouts.”

Saerfé’s thoughtless mutter made Loren consciously stop intaking all sensory information coming to his ears. Otherwise, his soul wouldn’t last through this job. The rest of the conversation barely entered his brain, reduced to meaningless background noise.

“The blood trails continue down into the cave. No doubt they went in,” said Narron.

“In the end, they’re just goblins. I doubt an injured beast has much time to think about strategy,” said Oxy.

“What are your thoughts on the matter, Mr. Loren?” Lapis asked.

Loren intended to maintain his silence, but maybe talking with Lapis would help. He decided to humor the girl peering into his face with strangely intense curiosity.

“It’s a trap. Inviting us in like this means they’re ready to meet us inside, on their own turf.”

“Are goblins smart enough to do that?”

“I don’t know goblins. But monkeys have lookouts. And goblins don’t look dumber than monkeys.”

“The difference in intelligence between monkeys and goblins? Now that sounds like a somewhat interesting debate.” Lapis placed a hand on her chin, appearing to ponder the question with all seriousness.

This left Loren with a different sense of exasperation than he got from the rest of Saerfé’s party. Perhaps she couldn’t help thinking that way, being a priest of the god of knowledge, but there was a time and place—hadn’t she said that herself?

“Are you on the side that sees goblins as smarter than monkeys?” she asked.

“Well, of course they are,” he answered sincerely. To his surprise, he found himself invested in the question. She really was distracting.

“Is it really so obvious? I don’t see it that way. Monkeys, for one, form societies, and they can use tools to a certain degree. They are animals that learn and study. There isn’t much of a difference between them and humans.”

Loren was hard-pressed to counter that. Firstly, he didn’t really know enough about goblins to prepare a well-reasoned rebuttal. Secondly, he’d classed goblins as smarter than monkeys purely on gut instinct, not logical thought. Thirdly, if he accepted her proposal, didn’t that mean accepting that there wasn’t much difference between humans, monkeys, and goblins, intellectually speaking?

The words escaped his lips nearly before he thought them. “Which means we shouldn’t underestimate them?”

Lapis stared long and hard at his face, gulped, and nodded once.

As they spoke, Saerfé’s party proceeded further and further in. Thanks to Oxy’s magical light, Loren could follow them even if he and Lapis trailed somewhat behind, but he couldn’t help feeling they were going far too fast. Neither could he shake the sense that they were being incredibly careless.

Just as he mustered the wherewithal to tell them this, circumstance beat him to the punch. Saerfé stopped, right where the straight path turned into a gentle curve.

“There’s a light in the room the path opens into,” Saerfé said.

If that’s true, then they can see Oxy’s light from their position too, Loren thought. But surely Saerfé realized that.

“Are the goblins laying an ambush?” Narron asked thoughtfully.

“It’s somewhat troublesome that they have archers,” Oxy said.

They sounded awfully carefree.

Saerfé seemed to weigh his options, and at length, he turned back to the others with resolve on his face. His proposition: “I’ll stand at the lead and block the arrows while pushing forward. Everyone else, please support me.”

Charging head-on at archers lying in wait? You’ve got some guts. Loren had transcended exasperation, putting him just barely in the realm of true awe. A direct assault with no cover, and no space to evade left or right. No matter what weaklings they faced, confronting multiple archers under those circumstances was suicide. Even that was putting it lightly.

“Do you want me to cast Protect?” Oxy offered, holding out her staff. As Saerfé nodded, she closed her eyes, focused her spirit, and cast her magic.

Loren’s jaw dropped; he couldn’t keep quiet about this. He was watching a magic that could only be used three times a day get wasted on a thoughtless charge. Before he could speak up, however, Lapis tugged on his sleeve.

“You look unhappy.” She almost sounded like she was teasing him.

Just like that, Loren lost the will to argue. “Who knows?”

“Incidentally, Mr. Loren. If you were in charge here, what measures would you take?”

What good will knowing that do you? Nevertheless, he answered her—why not? “I’d stuff the cave entrance with wood and light it up.”

That was, in his experience, the simplest and most reliable means to start an assault on someone holed up in an enclosed space. Granted, he didn’t know how large the interior of this cave was, but the smoke and heat produced by burning wood quickly filled such spaces and killed almost everything with a respiratory system.

“You’d need oil to pull that off, wouldn’t you?” said Lapis.

Freshly cut wood was exceedingly difficult to burn. In order to produce the effect Loren envisioned, he would either have to dry out the kindling or soak it with copious amounts of oil.

“No oil and no flint. If that was ruled out, I’d shrug and go home,” Loren offhandedly replied. Not that he could. That’d just dig a hole in his heart as deep as the hole in his pocket.

“I see.” Lapis looked satisfied and said no more on the matter.

However, Saerfé called over to him. “You’re going out front with me.”

“I didn’t get any protective spells.”

“You have that oversized sword. Can’t you use it as a shield?” Oxy said with a frown.

Narron vigorously nodded along, in full support of the notion.

“Sorry,” said Saerfé. “We don’t have enough magic to cast two Protect spells. I’ll support you, don’t worry.”

“Fine, got it. Man, I really am out of luck.”

All Loren had to attack was the rusty goblin shortsword. He could hardly count on it to block a flying arrow, and if he were to use his greatsword as a shield, its size and weight would hinder his movements. He gripped the shortsword nevertheless. It’s not like I’ve never reluctantly obeyed hopeless orders before.

Perhaps taking that as a sign of readiness, Saerfé brandished his longsword and raised his voice, “All right, let’s go!”

The enemy definitely heard that one, Loren thought gloomily, but he still chased after Saerfé as he jumped out.

In the end, the goblins proved smart enough to figure out what the hell was going on. A salvo of arrows came flying from the end of the corridor. A little ahead of Loren, Saerfé tried to swipe them down with his sword but failed miserably. Even so, his protection magic weakened the already weak arrows, and they clattered to the ground after only lightly scratching his leather armor.

Well, I’ll be damned. Magic’s convenient. Loren was rather impressed. He used the shortsword to strike down an arrow that slipped past Saerfé. The arrow fell to the ground, snapped in half rather than sliced. “This thing is terrible.”

But he had no time to bemoan the dullness of his blade. Loren followed Saerfé as he leapt into the chamber where the goblins awaited.

There, Loren came to an abrupt stop. Saerfé keeled over, falling flat toward the goblins.

“Saerfé!”

Narron rushed in to help him. A little further behind her, Oxy and Lapis raced right past Loren. Team order collapsed around him.

“Hey, wait!” Loren warned, and he just barely managed to grab Lapis’s collar to stop her.

She snarled at him, but upon seeing Oxy tumble and fall just like Saerfé, she gasped in shock. “A trap?!”

“Looks like one of ’em’s got a brain!”

Across the floor slashed a shallow ditch just deep enough to fit a foot, perfectly camouflaged by the uneven ground. This simple trap took no more than a little effort to produce, but it had gone unnoticed, and even worse, both Saerfé and Oxy had fallen for it.

“Saerfé! Get up!”

Presented with such defenseless targets, the archers showed no mercy. A salvo of arrows flew at Saerfé, and while Narron managed to strike a few of them down with her dagger, the ones she couldn’t block pierced her right flank as well as Saerfé’s right shoulder and left thigh.

“Dammit! How dare you!” Oxy cursed as she retreated and prepared to cast magic.

Loren, meanwhile, analyzed the goblins’ formation. Close to ten goblin archers lined the end of the corridor, and a troop armed with shortswords and clubs began to shamble out from behind them. Even further back, one goblin, larger than the rest, held a staff of animal bone, a strangely glossy gold ornament hung from its neck.

“So that’s their leader,” Loren muttered.

Lapis gave up on shaking free of his grasp and squinted. “Is that a goblin magician?”

“That an evolved form? That ain’t good.”

With their fearsome reproductive power, goblin populations grew at an incredible rate. As a simple matter of probability, every so often, one with a unique ability was born. In some cases, otherwise normal goblins mutated into abnormal forms over the course of their lives.

Scholars called these “evolved forms” and considered them several times more dangerous than a normal goblin. A group of goblins led by one of these evolved entities inevitably proved several times more dangerous than one without.

Even among evolved forms, a goblin magician was rare. These creatures had not only awakened to knowledge of the mystic arts, they also possessed the relevant abilities to use them. Such beings were terribly dangerous.

If we face that thing without preparing for it, we’re screwed, Loren concluded, and he immediately searched for a means of retreat. However, Saerfé and Narron, closest to the goblins, could hardly move with their arrow wounds, and Oxy was already chanting.

“What a pain…”

I should probably warn them—tell them to get them out of the way, at least—but I don’t think I can reach them all, Loren thought as he glanced behind to confirm their evacuation route. At this, his mind blanked. “We’ve been pincered!”

He had been certain they followed a single straight path all the way into the cave, but perhaps due to the poor lighting, or because he’d been distracted, or because he had grown careless—whatever the case, a sea of goblins advanced down the path they’d come from, led by a few larger specimens.

“Do we really have to do this?!” Loren snarled.

With both the front and back blocked, there was nowhere to run. Loren’s only option was to break the goblins’ guard—one way or another.

As he summoned his resolve, Oxy unleashed her magic. “May scattered sand shut their eyes! Sleep!”

Her motions and eyeline directed the magic at the goblins in front of them—not behind. Loren mentally clicked his tongue at that decision. Oxy likely thought to save Saerfé, who lay vulnerable before the archers. But if they wanted to get out of this damn cave alive, then targeting the goblins behind them would have made things a lot easier.

That said, Oxy seemed fixated on her fallen comrades—she had yet to notice the group closing in from behind.

Still, if we can break through the enemies in front, it’ll be better than being attacked from both sides. Loren changed his trajectory and waited for the magic to take effect.

At that moment, for a brief instant, the goblin magician’s necklace glowed. Loren tensed. In concert, for some reason, he felt a weight in his hand. Lapis’s body had fallen limp, and she dangled in his grip by the collar. She had buckled at the knees. Loren hurriedly released her neck, lending her a shoulder before she could fall.

“Hey! What happened?”

“This is…” she muttered, sounding not all the way there.

Before Loren could assess her condition, Oxy shrieked, frantic. “No way! Why?!”

Loren realized why soon enough. Oxy had cast Sleep, yet not a single goblin had fallen unconscious. The close-range fighters rushed out in front of the archers and fell on Saerfé and Narron.

“You fiends! Get away!”

“St-stop! Let go of me!”

With shoulder and leg injured, Saerfé could neither stand nor swing his weapon. With a wound to her flank, Narron was likewise unable to properly face the goblins, and the horde swiftly pinned her to the ground.

“Hey! Get away from Narron!” Saerfé howled. Try as he might to save his friend, the merciless onslaught of crude goblin weaponry beat him down.

The sound of near-edgeless shortswords tearing through flesh, of clubs snapping bone, of Saerfé’s shrieks, of Narron’s clothes being torn away—all these the sounds mixed in sickening chaos before being drowned out by Narron’s screams.

Face pale, hands shaking, Oxy gripped her staff, unable to do anything but watch, until she too was caught by the goblins swarming up from behind. They dogpiled her body before she could let out a sound.

There was no helping them now. By the time he reached that conclusion, Loren’s legs had already moved.

For a moment, he thought of leaving Lapis behind. She had lost the use of her limbs, been left too weak to even hold on to Loren’s shoulder. She was nothing but baggage, and unnecessary at that. If he left her, not only would he be nimbler, she could be a distraction to slow the goblins. The ranks would thin, and it would be far easier for him to break through. At most, the issue lay in his conscience, and what compromise he would eventually have to reach with it. Considering the merits of abandoning her, it hardly seemed like an issue.

When he looked down at her, she let out a slight, short sigh. “It’s hopeless. Leave me.”

Her tone was different than usual, her words short and rough. But rather than the sudden change in tone, Loren was surprised by the offer.

“I’m in the way, aren’t I?” she said. “That lot won’t kill a woman. But a man is good as dead. Leave me here, I won’t blame you.”

Resignation haunted her words. However, again, what tickled his emotions wasn’t her tone, but what she said—almost as if she was thinking about him, not herself. And for that, he kept his silence. He gripped the shortsword in his left hand and hoisted her under his right arm.

“Huh?”

“Better not talk. You’ll bite your tongue.”

Tightening his grip on Lapis’s waist, Loren gritted his teeth, took another step forward, and accelerated. The shrieks and the screams, the strange grunts Lapis let out in his arms—none of these entered his ears.

His blade swept through the neck of a goblin blocking their way. It was more a tearing through than a severing, and once its head had left its body, he kicked its torso aside. Another goblin came at him after that, and once he smacked his sword into its forehead, its whole skull cracked open. The blade was stuck, wedged in goblin bone with only the handle coming free.

Loren didn’t have to look to tell what had happened. He threw the hilt at another goblin and snatched the club from the goblin whose head he’d cleaved. Then he lunged forward and accelerated even further.

He skidded past a disassembled Saerfé in a puddle of blood, then hurtled past Narron, who had been stripped bare and pinned to the ground. One goblin at a time, he closed in on the archers.

Several arrows shot at him point-blank. No matter how unskillful these goblins archers were, they couldn’t fail to hit him at that distance. Yet not a single one landed. They whizzed fruitlessly through thin air.

Baffled by how they could have missed, the outermost archer suddenly ate a powerful flying kick that sent him flying into the others, toppling them over. The second the archers had fired, Loren had swiftly leapt sideways and kicked off against the wall before launching himself into them in a three-point turn.

Loren didn’t stop to survey the extent of the damages, instead pressing even further at unbelievable speed, especially given his passenger. He charged at the goblin magician beyond the archers.

The magician, of course, didn’t twiddle its thumbs and wait. It grunted some incantation, pointed its finger, and manifested a fiery orb smaller than its fingertip. This was the spell Fire Bullet, elementary in nature, but it flew far faster than arrows. While Loren avoided a fatal hit, he took it on his left shoulder.

He grit his teeth to bear the pain as the spell burst and seared his flesh black. It wouldn’t slow him down. The goblin magician had seemed so confident when it fired its shot, but seeing Loren charge at him undeterred, its face contorted in surprise, and it scrambled to prepare its next spell.

“Too late!”

Loren wouldn’t give it the chance. Using the momentum of his charge, he cut off every flaring signal of pain from his shoulder and swung the club.

The magician’s head took the blow directly to the temple and burst.

The wooden club didn’t fare much better. Loren tossed aside the splintered handle, grabbed the strange glowing necklace off the magician’s falling body, and yanked on it so hard he snapped it off the chain.

“You should really get rid of that,” muttered Lapis, who glanced at it sideways from his midsection.

But that was the least of Loren’s worries at the moment. He plunged into the passageway behind the goblin magician.

This was in the direction opposite from the entrance, but the sheer number of goblins behind him forced him to take this path. As a result, he fled farther and farther into the cave, where he risked running in a circle or a dead end. For now, he ran, and he prayed for a detour that would allow him to outmaneuver the goblins and get out.

“Can’t believe you run so well without a light,” Lapis mused. While her tone was calm, she had lost her usual polite air.

Was she putting on an act before? A question for later.

The goblins behind them had food and spoils. For the moment, they would be too occupied to pursue a fleeing foe. Soon enough, they would realize the need to chase them. Loren wanted as much distance as he could get before that.

“Don’t tell me you can actually see in here?” snorted Lapis.

“Shut up, seriously. I’m losing focus.”

As one might expect, Loren couldn’t see a thing as he ran down the path of the lightless cave. However, during his mercenary days, he had picked up the art of using the echoes of his own footsteps to get a general idea of his surroundings. It was mainly a skill used for preparing an ambush or other such scenarios where he couldn’t light a fire. In such times, he still had to be able to maneuver to a degree, though the accuracy of this technique didn’t allow for much beyond that. If he lost focus for only a moment, he risked tripping on uneven ground or running straight into a wall. This was no time to keep Lapis company.

“Hey, it’s boring being hauled around like so much baggage.”

“Do I look like I care? Our lives are at stake here. Please, just shut your mouth.”

“Perhaps you have a point. Oh, then let’s do this.”

No sooner had Lapis spoken than a soft, white light lit up their surroundings. Loren shielded his eyes from it until he noticed the light came from around his own chest—that is to say, the girl under his arm had clearly produced it. He frowned down at her, slowing a bit.

“Can you see now? Then quit holding me like a sack of potatoes, would you? I won’t ask for a princess carry, but would it kill you to give me a piggyback or something? What do you say?” As she proposed this, she dangled as limply as ever.

Sure, he could have just ignored her, but Loren sensed something ominous about this situation. He gently set Lapis down on the floor, then lifted her onto his back.

The moment Lapis was on his back, her tone suddenly turned courteous again. “Yes, that’s much better. Now, with that said: Mr. Loren, you have my utmost gratitude for saving me.”

What’s that supposed to mean? he wondered as he took in their situation with his newfound light.

“But I wonder, why did you save me of all people? You abandoned all the others.” When Lapis asked this, it didn’t sound the least bit accusatory. It was as if she had a simple question and desired a simple answer.

“It was a whim,” Loren replied, somewhat annoyed. “Or you were lucky. Or because I never returned your copper. Pick whichever one you want. The right answer’s probably somewhere in there.”

“How about because Mr. Loren is kind? Does that one not work?”

“Then I wouldn’t have abandoned the others,” he replied with a bitter smile. He got the feeling she was mocking him.

But Lapis didn’t seem put off by his response. She leaned into Loren’s shoulders, and answered quietly, “But I, for one, was saved. So I’ve decided to choose that one. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Do whatever you want,” he replied. As far as Loren saw it, whatever Lapis thought was of no consequence to him.

“Then I’ll do just that,” she laughed.

“By the way, what was that?” Loren asked.

By now, Loren had been jogging a while with Lapis on his back. Her body squirmed restlessly, perhaps uncomfortable with having his greatsword pushing against her, but he still didn’t feel any strength in the arms wrapped around his neck, or the legs under his forearms.

“What might you be referring to?” Lapis brought her face a little closer to his shoulders. This naturally led her to push her body against his, but owing to the sword between them, the only sensation he felt was hard metal.

“Did you not notice you were speaking differently? Is that your normal tone or something?”

Her squirming suddenly stopped.

Did I hit where I shouldn’t have? Loren wondered. But they would be stuck together for the foreseeable future, and he wanted as much information as he could get. “Your body’s strange too. You suddenly stopped moving. You sick or something?”

“Is that something I have to answer?” Her slight hesitation said blatantly that she didn’t want to talk about it.

Loren wondered if it was, indeed, necessary information. He got the feeling he would ultimately learn something he really didn’t care to know, but sometimes important tidbits were hidden in what seemed inconsequential. Considering his current situation, he couldn’t dismiss any possibilities.

That said, Loren wanted to avoid digging up secrets that might ruin their relationship. Now that everyone else in their party had been done in by goblins, Lapis was his only ally.

“I’m not gonna force you, but maybe I’d have a better idea of what to do if you did.” In the end, he passed the buck back to her. He had been honest. Now it was on her.

“You’re right. After you saw all that, I might as well tell you.” Lapis took some time to get her thoughts in order, then brought her mouth up to his ear to whisper.

I guess it doesn’t matter what they’re saying. Having a woman whisper in your ear sends shivers down your spine, Loren thought. He focused his ears on her words, his eyes on his surroundings, his legs on pressing forward.

“Mr. Loren, if I may ask, how much do you know about demons?”

He nearly stopped at that question, but he quickly recalled he was in no situation to do so. Keeping up a jog, he reached for what little information he had about demon-kind.

One: Generally speaking, they were beings who didn’t interact with humankind.

Two: The world was rife with races, ranging from demihuman-kind to beast-kind, with each forming their own society in which to live and thrive. Demons were one such race. But their reputation wasn’t especially great.

Three: They didn’t just distance themselves from humans; they barely interacted with any of the other races. Just going off the name “demon,” one would expect them to be evil or something, and of course, some of them were cruel. But the ones who didn’t go out of their way to be known as villains weren’t a complete mystery either. Non-demons actually knew a surprising amount about the race as a whole.

Four: While demons possessed powerful physical abilities and magical aptitude, they generally disdained the rest of the world and its inhabitants. In fact, it was said they didn’t care how they treated others in the service of their own self-interest. That was apparently the main source of their ill repute. However, to quote a fellow mercenary, “If that’s all there is to it, that describes plenty of humans I know.” In the end, no two people were alike, and Loren’s company had taught him that he was better off not judging someone just for being a demon.

Five: Appearance-wise, demons were indistinguishable from humans, save for their eyes, which were a deep purple.

Six: At times, a “demon lord” stepped up to plunge the world into a state of great terror, but as the title implied, a demon lord was literally just the name for whatever guy reigned over the demon race. As such, demons weren’t necessarily out to conquer the world even when their lord was, and monsters hated demons as much as they hated everyone else.

Loren spoke each of these thoughts as they came to him. Once he finished, Lapis nodded, then casually declared, “I just so happen to be one of those demons.”

“You’re kidding me.”

As far as Loren knew, demons didn’t believe in gods; in fact, the various churches shunned demons for that very reason. And a god would never lend power to a nonbeliever. That Lapis proclaimed herself both a priest and a demon was, simply put, a nonstarter. On top of that, her face was at that moment quite close to his, and from what he saw, her eyes were just as black as her hair.

“Certainly, I have not an iota of faith in the Supreme Lord or the Great Mother Earth, but my kind’s interests do tend to align with those of the god of knowledge.”

While each god reigned over a different aspect of the world, they all largely preached to their adherents to be peaceful and love thy neighbor and all that. According to Lapis, the teachings of the god of knowledge didn’t contain a word of such moralizing. He taught his followers only to seek knowledge, and then seek more of it. These teachings were ones even demons could accept, and thus the god had garnered himself a small but devout demonic following.

“Magic is a facet of knowledge, you see. With the other gods, it’s impossible to use magic by the point you learn to use blessings.”

That was indeed what had surprised Loren when Lapis produced a magic light. As far as he knew, priests could only borrow power from their god to perform blessings, and no priests could also use magic.

“Then can human priests of the god of knowledge use magic too?”

If that was the case, members of their priesthood could fulfill two roles in military operations; no matter how high a price they commanded, they would be in great demand as both adventurers and mercenaries.

“There may be a few who can use it to a degree, but I doubt any are as good as me. I mean, I’m a demon. It’s pointless to compare my abilities to those of mere humans.” Lapis sounded just a little proud of herself.

And rightfully so, thought Loren. While he didn’t have a full picture of her abilities, both magic and blessings were rare and sought after. If Lapis possessed the ability to perform both, he didn’t blame her for being a little bit conceited.

“So why’s a demon faffing about as an adventurer? Aren’t demons generally holed up in those central mountains? They rarely come down to speak to us lowly mortals.”

That was why demons rarely interacted with the other races. Sure, their terrible reputation and high and mighty personalities also played a role, but it ultimately came down to territory. They’d taken up residence in the center of the continent, in a region surrounded by tall, rocky mountains. It was physically considerably difficult for anyone to go in or come out. The reason they’d chosen to live there was subject to much speculation, and Loren didn’t know anything for certain. However, the most prominent theory held that they had retreated there and secluded themselves after facing persecution in a prior era.

“To tell you the truth, we actually visit the outside world quite often,” Lapis said. This ran contrary to everything Loren knew. “We just don’t get found out. See, we look pretty similar to humans, and as long as we’re careful, we’ll simply be seen as exceptionally talented individuals.”

Is that really how it works? Loren wondered. Be it magic or swordplay, those with a certain level of skill had a certain aura to them, and while there was the occasional exception, he at least could usually pick up on it quite quickly.

His unspoken question evidently got across. Lapis went on: “Those skilled enough to be found out at a glance aren’t allowed to just blithely enter human territory. A restriction is placed on them first.”

“A restriction?”

“Yes, that’s…well, that would be the explanation for my current predicament.” Lapis feebly lifted the right hand she had slung around Loren’s neck. It moved with dreadful slowness, and it seemed it would take a while before she could move normally. “These are fake, you know?”

“What?”

“Currently, my limbs and eyes are magically enchanted artificial prosthetics. I can move them by sending mana signals, and you can’t imagine how much power they consume.”

Lapis raised her hand to Loren’s eye level, and he stared at it. From what he could see, it looked like real flesh and blood, even though she claimed it was an imitation. He couldn’t detect a single flaw.

“Did you notice how Ms. Oxy’s magic failed to activate?” she asked.

Loren had picked up on that. Oxy’s magic had failed to affect the goblins, and that failure had factored into the party’s collapse.

“That was probably because the goblin magician activated Disjunction or some similar effect. That’s not a spell a goblin should be able to use, not even a goblin magician. I presume he picked up an enchanted item.”

Disjunction was a spell that dispersed mana with mana, rendering it impossible to exercise magic within a certain range. However, according to Lapis, the amount of mana it took and the difficulty of the spell sequence rendered it far above goblin capability.

“And as it can’t be done with a goblin’s paltry mana capacity, I have to assume the tool itself accumulates mana.”

“Are you talking about this?” Loren flashed the necklace he had torn from the magician’s neck.

After staring at its plain, unornamented gold finish a while, Lapis nodded. “Probably. Though that leaves the question: What was a goblin doing with an item enchanted with a spell that would be difficult for even a human magician to use?”

Lapis had told Loren to get rid of the necklace when he first obtained it. She had likely sensed it was what had stolen her freedom, but judging by her gradual recovery of movement, it wasn’t permanently active. Lapis had also said it accumulated mana. Meaning that after a certain amount of time, it would store enough mana to be used again. Loren stuffed it back into his pocket.

“Regarding the eyes, I managed not to lose any functionality this time around.”

“I see. And what about your tone?”

“That…was my natural speech, I admit. But this manner comes naturally to me as well. Rather, this is how I usually speak.” She somehow sounded like she was making excuses. “And this has nothing to do with me being a demon either. How should I put this—it’s like a mindset I switch to in the midst of combat.”

“Oh?”

“Thanks to the rather critical nature of the situation, as I had lost the use of my arms and legs, I naturally swapped over to that state.”

Loren could accept that explanation. He himself consciously switched his mindset between moments of peace and violence. Even if that change for Lapis was so major that it seemed to affect her entire personality, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

“I see. I get the gist.”

“When I told you to leave me, it was the best answer I could summon at the time. Yet I’m thankful you ignored the suggestion and carried me all the way here, Mr. Loren.”

Loren couldn’t look Lapis straight in the face, but when he glanced over his shoulder, he met earnest eyes. Her words came from the heart.

“We demons might not have the best reputation, but we never let a debt go unpaid.”

“That so. Well, we can get to that eventually. But it will have to be after we survive this cave,” he said bluntly, as if to hide a touch of unanticipated embarrassment.