Goblin Slayer, Vol. 1

by Kumo Kagyu

  “Let it be said, though, that it was we dwarves who forged it,” Dwarf Shaman interjected.

  The elf snorted. “And called it ‘Beard-cutter.’ What an awful name. Dwarves might have good heads for crafting, but not for anything else.”

  “So, long-ears, you admit that your people aren’t the skilled craftsmen mine are!” He heaved a huge belly laugh. The elf puffed out her cheeks.

  The lizardman gave a great roll of his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and exchanged a look with Priestess. She was beginning to understand that this was his way of making a joke.

  She had come to appreciate the friendly arguments, too. It was just how elves and dwarves were. Priestess, faced for the first time with people of other races, knew she could never trust her party members if she didn’t get to know them. So she went out of her way to talk with them, and in no time at all, they had become fast friends.

  The lizardman’s ancestral faith did not clash with the teachings of the all-compassionate Earth Mother. And there was another girl in the party who was Priestess’s age—or who at least looked it. It put her very much at ease.

  Goblin Slayer, for his part, didn’t seem to especially embrace or reject any of them. But this seemed somehow quite to the dwarf’s liking. Whatever Goblin Slayer did that annoyed the elf, he seemed to enjoy imitating it.

  This strange little party had met most unexpectedly, and yet, somehow, there was a sense they belonged together.

  Priestess felt an unusual warmth spreading through her.

  “Hey, wanna go adventuring with us?”

  Which wasn’t to say there was nothing that pricked at her heart…

  “Oh yes, there is a thing I have been wondering,” the lizardman said, his tail sounding, opening his jaw. The fire danced. Before he asked his question, he made the strange, palms-together gesture. He claimed it was an expression of gratitude for the meal.

  “Wherefrom do the goblins spring? My grandfather once told me of a kingdom under the earth…”

  “I”—the dwarf burped—“heard that they were fallen rheas or elves.”

  “What prejudice!” High Elf Archer glared at Dwarf Shaman. “I was taught goblins are what become of dwarves who grow obsessed with gold.”

  “Prejudice, indeed!” The dwarf looked triumphantly at the elf, who shook her head slightly.

  “Now, now, didn’t our priest say they came from under the earth? And isn’t that where dwarves come from?”

  “Grrr…!” The dwarf could only grit his teeth at this. The elf gave a satisfied chuckle. The lizardman, of course, licked his nose with his tongue.

  “Under the earth I said, but of elves or dwarves naught. What stories do humans tell, Priestess?”

  “Oh, um…” Priestess had been in the midst of gathering everyone’s dinnerware and wiping it clean. She set the work aside and straightened, putting her hands on her knees. “We have a saying that when someone fails at something, a goblin appears.”

  “What?!” The elf giggled.

  Priestess nodded with a smile. “It’s just a way of teaching manners. If you don’t do such and such, a goblin will come for you!”

  “That seems grim news indeed, girl!” the dwarf said. “Why, long-ears alone would account for an entire goblin army!”

  “Hey!” The elf’s ears pointed straight back. “How rude. Just wait till tomorrow. You’ll see if any of my arrows fail to hit their target.”

  “Oh, they’ll hit something, all right—I’m afraid they’ll hit me, right in the back!”

  “Fine. Little dwarves are welcome to hide behind me.”

  “Damn right I will! You’re a ranger, aren’t you? A little scouting would help us all out,” the dwarf said, patting his beard with a smirk.

  The elf raised her arm and seemed about to reply, when a single, muttered word dropped between them. “I…”

  Naturally, the group’s attention turned toward the source.

  “I heard they come from the moon,” Goblin Slayer said.

  “By ‘the moon,’ do you refer to one of the two in our sky?” the lizardman asked.

  “Yes.” Goblin Slayer nodded. “The green one. Green rocks, green monsters.”

  “Well, never thought they might’ve come from over my head,” the dwarf said with a long, thoughtful sigh.

  With great interest, the elf asked, “So, shooting stars are goblins coming down here?”

  “Don’t know. But there is no grass, or trees, or water on the moon. Only rocks. It’s a lonely place,” he said soberly. “They don’t like it there. They want somewhere better. They’re envious of us, jealous, so they come down here.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “So when you get jealous, you become like a goblin.”

  “I get it,” the elf said with a disappointed breath. “Another little story to teach kids manners.”

  “Um, who told you that story?” Priestess asked, leaning forward slightly. He was always so realistic and rational. This kind of tale seemed unlike him.

  “My older sister.”

  “Oh, you have an older sister?”

  He nodded. “Had.”

  Priestess giggled softly. The thought of this hardened adventurer being scolded by his sister was somehow heartening.

  “So,” the elf pressed, “you really believe goblins come from the moon?”

  Goblin Slayer nodded slightly.

  “All I know,” he said, staring up at the twin orbs in the sky, “is that my sister was never wrong. About anything.”

  With that, he fell silent. The bonfire crackled. With her long ears, the elf detected the hint of a sigh.

  She quietly moved her face closer to Goblin Slayer’s helmet. She still couldn’t make out his expression. A mischievous grin spread across her face. “Pfft. He fell asleep!”

  “Oh-ho, fire wine finally got to him, did it?” The dwarf was just shaking the last drop from the bottle.

  “Come to think of it, he’s had his fair share of that stuff, hasn’t he?”

  Priestess took a blanket from their gear and carefully placed it over him. Ever so gently, she touched the leather armor on his chest. She was tired, too, but he needed to rest.

  “Let us, too, take our repose,” the lizardman said solemnly. “And let us determine the watch. A good night’s sleep will itself be a weapon in our arsenal.”

  Priestess, the elf, and the dwarf each volunteered for a shift.

  As she snuggled down under her blanket, the elf stole a glance at Goblin Slayer. “Hmm,” she murmured to herself. “They say a wild animal never sleeps in front of those it doesn’t trust…”

  To her own annoyance, she found this inspired in her a faint glow of happiness.

  The nest was smack in the middle of a huge field.

  Maybe nest wasn’t even the right word for it. It had a square entrance of white stone that jutted up from the ground, half-buried in the earth. This was no cave. It was clearly man-made: ancient ruins.

  The pale stone caught the light of the fading sun, shimmering red as blood.

  Two goblins stood guard. They were stationed on either side of the entranceway, spears in their hands, poor leather plate covering their bodies. With them was a dog—no, a wolf.

  “GURUU…”

  “GAU!”

  One of the goblins, glancing around, made to sit down and was scolded by the other. The first monster forced himself to stand, yawned widely, and looked at the sun with undisguised hatred. The wolf lay on the ground beside them. Its ears twitched. Wild animals didn’t let down their guard even when they rested.

  The elf saw all this from the bushes not far away.

  “Goblins with a guard dog? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “It proves this horde has time and resources to spare.” Next to her, Goblin Slayer lay prone on the ground. He was tying a bit of rope to a small rock, his gaze never straying from the goblins. “Stay alert. There must be a lot of them inside.”

  “Just
out of curiosity, what if the horde didn’t have extra resources?”

  “Then they wouldn’t keep the dog. They’d eat it.”

  The elf shook her head. She shouldn’t have asked. Lizard Priest laughed soundlessly.

  “Is this safe?” the elf asked. “It’s going to be night soon. Shouldn’t we wait, make our move during the day tomorrow?”

  “It’s early morning for them now. The time is right.”

  “…Fine, then. Here goes.”

  The elf drew an arrow like she drew breath.

  The elves did not use iron. The shafts of their arrows were made of tree branches that naturally had the right size and shape; the heads were animal teeth, and for the feathers, they used leaves.

  High Elf Archer’s bow, made of the branch of a great beech tree and strung with spider’s silk, was taller than she was. But she handled it lightly, crouching in the underbrush and fitting an arrow to the string.

  The spider’s silk made a sibilant sound as she pulled it tight.

  “Tell me those things work better than they look,” the dwarf said despairingly. He found he couldn’t trust a bit of wood and leaves. “Please don’t miss! You have a quiver full of arrows, but we’ve got only so many spells.”

  “Hush,” the elf commanded archly. The dwarf obediently shut his mouth. After that, no one said anything.

  The bow bent with the merest sound of straining wood. The wind whistled. The elf moved her long ears ever so slightly.

  The goblin on the right yawned. The elf loosed her arrow.

  It left her bow soundlessly. But it appeared to have landed several paces to the right of the goblins.

  Dwarf Shaman gave a frank cluck of his tongue. The elf, though, was smiling. She already had a second arrow in her hand.

  In an instant, the grounded arrow drew a large arc through the air, passing through the goblin on the right and taking part of his spine with it. It continued into the cheek of the goblin on the left; it encountered his eye socket and drove straight through.

  The wolf leaped up, not sure what had happened but opening its mouth to howl a warning—

  “Too late!”

  The elf loosed the second arrow almost too quickly to see. The wolf flew back. It was only then that the two goblins collapsed to the ground like twin sacks of bricks, dead.

  It was a spectacular display of skill, far beyond human capacity.

  “That was amazing!” Priestess looked admiringly at the elf.

  “Indeed,” Lizard Priest said, his large eyes growing even larger. “But what did you do? Is it some kind of sorcery?”

  The elf gave a proud chuckle and shook her head. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Her ears bobbed knowingly.

  “That’s a bold statement with me standing here,” said Dwarf Shaman, who was quite well versed in both technology and magic.

  “Two… Strange.” Goblin Slayer stood up from the bushes. When the elf’s arrow missed, he had been planning to fling his rock at the enemy instead.

  “What? Got a problem?” the elf said, thinking he was referring to her archery.

  He shook his head with a hint of exasperation. “They were afraid. Have you ever known a diligent goblin?”

  “You don’t think they’re worried because they’re next door to an elf forest?”

  “We can hope,” he said, and with that halfhearted answer, he strode over to the goblins and knelt down to inspect their corpses.

  “Oh, um…” Priestess seemed to guess what he was doing. “Sh-shall I h-help…?” she asked in a thin voice, a stiff smile on her face.

  “No need,” Goblin Slayer said bluntly. Priestess let out a sigh of relief. Her face had gone a bit pale.

  “What are you doing?” The elf, whose curiosity was naturally piqued by this exchange, walked over to Goblin Slayer and looked down.

  A knife had appeared in his hand. He dug it into the goblin’s corpse and casually cut out the creature’s guts.

  The elf stiffened and tugged at his arm. “H-how can you do that to them? I know you hate goblins, but you don’t have to—”

  “They have an excellent sense of smell.”

  “…Huh?”

  Goblin Slayer was calm as he delivered this answer that was no answer. He daubed his gauntlets with blood, then pulled a liver out from one of the bodies.

  “Especially for the scent of women, children, and elves.”

  “Wa…wait a second. Orcbolg. You can’t possibly mean…”

  In reply, Goblin Slayer wrapped the liver in a hand cloth and squeezed.

  High Elf Archer, finally understanding where he got the stains on his armor, went whiter than the stones that towered over them.

  Moments later, the dead guards hidden safely in the bushes, the party advanced toward the ruins. The chalky walls surrounded a narrow pathway that seemed to slope gently downward.

  Goblin Slayer was in the lead. With his sword he tapped the floor and walls. Then he tossed his pet rock forward, saw that it landed safely, and reeled it back in.

  “No traps.”

  “Hmm. I speculate, but this place appears to be a temple.”

  “It looks like this field was the site of a battle back during the Age of the Gods,” Priestess said. She brushed her hand across a carving in the wall. “Maybe it’s a fortress or something from back then… Although the construction certainly seems human…”

  “First a home for soldiers, now for goblins. Which is crueler?” Lizard Priest pondered grimly, joining his hands.

  “Speaking of cruel,” the dwarf chimed in, “are you going to be all right, long-ears?”

  “Errgh… I think I’m gonna be sick,” High Elf Archer whimpered. Her traditional hunting gear was covered in gore. The liquid that had come spurting out of the goblin’s liver coated her hair and ran down her body. Even the dwarf lacked the heart to tease her in this state.

  “Get used to it,” Goblin Slayer said from next to the elf. On his left, his shield was fixed to his arm, and in his hand was a torch. In his right hand, his sword glinted. The elf shot him a glare as she changed her great bow for a smaller one, but the tears held back in the corners of her eyes and the pitiful droop of her ears made her less than intimidating.

  “When we get back, I hope you remember this!”

  “I’ll remember,” he said shortly.

  The torch guttered. The elves’ wards seemed to extend even here. Or perhaps, many, many moons ago, the elves had lived on this land.

  To Goblin Slayer, the real problem was that this limited his ability to attack with fire.

  “You humans are downright inconvenient,” the dwarf said, patting his mustache. Of the party members, Goblin Slayer alone carried a torch. The dwarf, elf, and lizardman all had varying degrees of night vision.

  “I know. That’s why we have our tricks.”

  “Well, I wish you’d think of some better ones,” High Elf Archer said dejectedly.

  Priestess, feeling quite sorry for her, spoke up in an attempt to offer some comfort. “Um, it’ll come out when you wash…mostly.”

  “You understand my pain.”

  “I’m used to it,” she said with a weak smile. Her vestments were, once again, covered in goblin juices. Priestess stood in the middle of their formation, lightly gripping her sounding staff. The path was wide enough for two to walk abreast, so High Elf Archer and Goblin Slayer went side by side in front of Priestess, while Dwarf Shaman and Lizard Priest came behind. She was Porcelain-ranked, after all. She was the weakest and most fragile member of their party. They had to protect her.

  Despite this, and despite Priestess’s touch of an inferiority complex, none of the others saw her as a burden. Every spell caster could use only so many spells, so many times. None of them were Platinum-ranked adventurers who could use their magic or miracles dozens of times a day. Having a healer in the group might mean someone had a spell left when it was needed most.

  Or rather, one who could conserve their sp
ells was one who could survive…

  Priestess watched her companions in attentive silence. She held her staff loosely.

  It’s almost like any other adventure…

  And suddenly, she was walking in front of Wizard again.

  Just like that first time…

  With trembling lips, Priestess recited the name of the Earth Mother several times. She hoped nothing would happen on this quest. But she knew it was a futile wish.

  The adventurers’ footsteps echoed weirdly from the pavestones on the path. There was no sign of goblins. Yet.

  “The underground and I are old friends, but I don’t like it here,” the dwarf said, wiping sweat from his forehead. They had been proceeding on a slight downward diagonal since they entered the ruins. The path looked straight to the naked eye, but actually curved very slowly, forming a corkscrew. The turning and the descending played havoc with the adventurers’ sense of balance.

  “It almost seems like we’re in a tower,” Priestess said, exhaling.

  “Some of the old fortresses were indeed built in such a shape,” the lizardman said. At the rear end of the party, his tail swung back and forth.

  “I wish we could’ve come here when it wasn’t infested with goblins,” the elf whispered. “I would’ve liked to look around a little.”

  Sometime later, the slope ended and the path split off left and right. Both routes looked identical.

  “Wait,” the elf said sharply.

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t move,” she said to Goblin Slayer.

  She crawled along the ground. Her fingers reached into the space between the paving stones just ahead of them, seeking something.

  “An alarm?” he asked.

  “Probably. I noticed it because it’s brand-new, but it would have been easy to miss. Everyone be careful.”

  The spot the elf indicated was indeed raised a little. Step on it, and a noisemaker would sound somewhere, alerting the goblins to the intruders.

  Priestess swallowed heavily. The long, twisting slope had thrown off her concentration and her senses. She could see the trap now that it had been pointed out to her, but without the elf’s warning, she would surely have missed it.