The Caster of Destruction

by Kugane Maruyama

  Enri and Nfirea dashed down from the rear watchtower and ran to where the women and children were gathered by the gate. Nfirea’s grandmother, Lizzy, wasn’t among them. She was busy hiding the many alchemical items Ainz Ooal Gown had given her.

  She probably wouldn’t have time to escape, but she undertook the task with that understanding.

  “It’s okay! We didn’t see anyone in the area. Let’s open the gate and head for the forest!”

  The group of children were so frightened their faces were pale, but they nodded seriously.

  As Nfirea and Brita turned the crank, one side of the gate began to open.

  First, Enri poked her head out the slim opening to survey the area. There was no mistake. Just as they had seen from the watchtower, there was no sign of any soldiers. Jugemu’s strategy must have worked.

  “Okay, go!”

  The first ones to leave were Arg and the goblins from his tribe. Their role was to cut an escape route for them if there were soldiers waiting for them in the woods. Next went Brita. She was on the lookout for any soldiers Arg and the others might miss.

  Out of consideration for the feet of the children behind them, the vanguard adjusted their speed as they ran toward the trees. After that, the children took off running with a buddy. Some mothers ran with their children in their arms. Children without mothers grabbed the hand of any older child.

  Bringing up the rear, Enri and Nfirea glanced at each other and then ran.

  After exiting the gate, it was a long way to the forest. And it seemed several times farther away than usual.

  They frantically pumped their legs.

  Still so far.

  Still.

  Just then, they heard a horse neigh behind them.

  Enri’s cardiopulmonary function during this period was shockingly good—to the point where it kind of grossed her out. Even so, her heart jolted and her breath grew rough. Terrified, she turned around and saw something she didn’t want to believe. She saw despair.

  “No way…”

  Over a hundred mounted knights had appeared behind them. They must have been lurking in the watchtower’s blind spot, pressed up against the wall. If they were showing themselves at this point, it was probably because they had determined that, since no one else was running out, those two were the last of the escapees.

  It wasn’t that far from the village to the forest, but humans and horses moved at different speeds.

  Even if Arg and Brita could get away, it would be impossible for the children. The horses would definitely catch up to them.

  The knights were raising things that gleamed, so she had no doubt they meant to cut them down from behind. She cringed with the fear of the time before. Nemu was running toward the front. Will she make it?

  “Enri, keep running!”

  Nfirea stopped.

  “Nfi!”

  “I’ll buy you time!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! I don’t think Lupusregina is going to come out of nowhere to save you at the last minute like last time!”

  “I said to run!” Enri had stopped, and he screamed at her.

  “If you want to buy time, I have a better way than you.”

  Enri took out a shabby-looking horn.

  It would summon nineteen goblins. Still, each one was strong, so they would be sure to buy them time.

  “You dummy, look how many of them there are! What’re twenty-odd goblins going to do?”

  Nfirea was right. They would just go around them and continue their attack. But it would be dumber to not blow it.

  “That goes for you, too!”

  Enri didn’t have any more time to talk. She put the horn to her lips, ready to blow.

  Save us, goblin friends!

  It was a bass sound that thundered out, shaking the ground.

  Enri blinked, hardly believing she had produced it. When she summoned Jugemu and the others, it had made a sort of pathetic poooot like a kid’s toy.

  “E-Enri…”

  She noticed that Nfirea’s alarm stemmed from something he was looking at past her, farther back. She turned to follow his gaze.

  She shouldn’t have had time to while the cavalry was charging at them, but for some reason, the knights had jerked their reins and come to a stop. Perhaps because it was so sudden, the horses were rearing up.

  Enri looked behind her.

  “…What…? Huh?!”

  In Yggdrasil, players were able to name their own items save for a few exceptions. One of them was artifacts, which were dropped as completed items.

  The artifact Goblin General’s Horn…

  It was a small, shabby-looking item, so there was one question.

  This item summoned nineteen goblins in all. But the goblins it summoned were, to Yggdrasil players, mobs so weak that they were practically useless. So why did an item like that get such a grand name with “General” in it? Why not just call it “Goblin Troops’ Horn”?

  Many Yggdrasil players wondered the same thing. But no one ever came up with a satisfactory explanation; everyone had just kind of accepted that it was a strange name.

  But actually, there was a reason for it.

  And the reason was…

  Jugemu swung the magic great sword he’d taken from the Giant of the East. He put all his might behind the blow, but an enemy soldier blocked it. It seemed he couldn’t halt its momentum entirely, though, because his stance broke momentarily. Normally that would be when Jugemu would launch a follow-up attack, but the soldiers surrounding him didn’t allow that.

  They came at him from either side, well synchronized to cover the first soldier’s weak spot.

  With a click of his tongue, Jugemu swung his great sword like it was part of his body to repel both attacks.

  “…This goblin is magnificent. I can’t believe he’s holding the three of us off this well.”

  “He’s quite a fighter. I never thought I’d meet a goblin this strong.”

  Jugemu noted the composure in their impressed voices, which irritated him.

  If it was Jugemu against one of the soldiers, he would win. Against two, it would depend on the enemy. Against three, he was very likely to lose. And—

  Sensing another soldier trying to come around behind him, he inched backward.

  —against four, he had no chance.

  At first, it had been easy to break through—all the soldiers were weak.

  The wedge formation of Carne’s heroes sliced through the kingdom’s formation and dug deep into it. But like the layers of rocks in the ground, stronger men had appeared. Their gear was much better, and they seemed to be the enemy’s elite forces.

  It wasn’t that far to where the enemy’s commander stood, and it didn’t seem that densely defended.

  But—their opponents were tough.

  Without taking his eyes completely off the four soldiers he was fighting, he looked around and saw that his subordinate goblins were outnumbered.

  The ogres were in the same boat; they had powerful arms and great stamina but not much else. Soldiers specialized in hit-and-run tactics ran circles around them.

  Carne had already lost several residents. Though the goblins were the front line of the wedge formation’s frame, their enemies were so numerous they couldn’t hold them all back, and each time they managed to make inroads, someone hit the ground.

  It was an impossible battle from the beginning, so these results were only natural.

  But it was true that Jugemu wondered if maybe…

  That’s when it happened.

  He couldn’t completely block the sword that swung down and took a scratch.

  “Tch!” He brandished his great sword and created some distance. “Who are ya? Definitely not just militia, that’s for sure.”

  Jugemu was level 12. With that in mind, his opponent’s level must have been 10 or 11. The other three were 8 or maybe 9.

  A typical villager was level 1. The people who had trained in Carne might have made it to level 2. Even
the soldiers who accompanied the tax collector from E-Rantel seemed like level 3 or below, so these soldiers were quite strong.

  Incidentally, Nfirea and Enri weren’t warriors, so he couldn’t say for sure, but they seemed strong, so he counted them as exceptions.

  “This goblin…or is he a hobgoblin? Well, I guess it makes sense since there are so many?”

  “He doesn’t look like a hobgoblin… Maybe he’s goblin royalty? Maybe he took the village by force…? But that doesn’t explain why the people are putting up such a desperate fight.”

  “Ha! Humans aren’t very smart! It’s because we’ve taken them hostage. Can’t ya figure even that much out?”

  “That’s definitely a lie. Villagers like that can’t fight to this level. They’d be more likely to stab you in the back. I sense battlefield bonds that transcend race from you guys. But why? Why are goblins and humans fighting side by side?”

  “How should I know, dimwit?!”

  “Looks like I was right that you’re on the same side. If you weren’t—”

  “Shaddup! That satisfied smirk on yer face is pissin’ me off!”

  Jugemu brought his sword down.

  But the outcome was the same as before.

  The soldier could block the blow, but he couldn’t halt its momentum completely. His stance broke, but when Jugemu tried to perform a follow-up, the others all aimed at his weak points to intercept.

  In that case… Having made up his mind, Jugemu didn’t dodge the swords.

  The blades aimed at unarmored parts of his body sliced into him.

  The sensation in those two places was less like pain and more like heat.

  Jugemu gritted his teeth, used a skill, and shifted his great sword’s attention to the soldier coming to slash at him from the side.

  “Goblin Blow!”

  He unleashed a powerful attack aimed at the soldier’s mail—a weak point. It cut through the armor and left a large wound in the man’s flesh. The moment he was hit, the soldier spasmed.

  The great sword had poison magic, though the man seemed to be resisting it, albeit not perfectly. His ability to fight hadn’t been completely eviscerated.

  But then: It wasn’t as if Jugemu was distracted, but he failed to dodge a strike from behind.

  The breastplate he was wearing protected him, so he wasn’t seriously injured, but the impact of the sword made his whole body shriek.

  “Shit!”

  “That’s my line. How dare you do that to Vike?”

  “Vike, fall back. Go around behind him!”

  This was a melee, so Jugemu dispatched other soldiers who entered his range, as well. Their shabby gear meant they were probably peasant conscripts.

  The sheer numbers they had were really unfair.

  “Fall back! These guys—these goblins—are seriously tough! Fall back! We’ll handle this guy. Go to the villagers in the rear!”

  “I don’t think so!”

  Jugemu whipped his sword around, and the peasant soldiers backed up, frightened.

  The heat turned into a throbbing pain.

  Aside from swinging a sword, one of the most important things a warrior trained in was the ability to get used to pain. And another was to gain an understanding of one’s pain threshold—so that it was possible to run when things felt bad.

  Jugemu’s senses told him he could still fight. But only that he could still fight. How many more minutes would he be able to stall them?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another villager collapse. The earth soaked up his blood.

  They hadn’t had much of a chance to begin with, but now they were doomed.

  That said, he figured they had bought Enri and the others enough time to escape, so all that was left for him to do was lurch forward toward death.

  Our objective is the enemy boss.

  I’ll go even if I have to go alone.

  Did they see his determination? The expressions of the soldiers in front of him hardened.

  Just as Jugemu clenched his sword and resolved to charge, a commotion went through the entire battlefield. When he glanced in the direction his opponents were looking, he couldn’t look away again.

  It had appeared next to the village…

  …quite simple. Its true power wasn’t to summon nineteen goblins.

  In Yggdrasil, no one had managed to put its actual value on display, so it had been discarded as a junk item.

  In this other world, however, it unleashed its true power for the first time.

  Its name, once more, was…

  Goblin General’s Horn.

  Its real power, if used when three conditions were met, was…

  3

  The heavy, rhythmic sound of a drum echoed across the battlefield from next to Carne. The eyes that gathered in the direction of the noise popped wide open immediately—because an army of about five thousand strong was advancing to the beat of the drum with orderly motions.

  Both Prince Barbro’s side and Carne’s side first assumed it was reinforcements for the kingdom’s forces. The only difference was whether they could think of someone who would send Prince Barbro reinforcements out here or not. But the way the newcomers looked made it immediately clear they weren’t kingdom reinforcements.

  The army was made up of goblins.

  The race of subhumans called goblins was smaller than humans, only about the size of children, but their determination made them seem double or triple their actual size.

  They were wrapped in the sparkle of steel. Their weapons, made for maiming and killing, were polished to perfection. They were the weapons of warriors.

  This wasn’t a militia but an army of true warriors.

  “Now! Anyone still alive, run for it! It’s reinforcements! We have reinforcements! Run that way!” Jugemu barked loudly.

  He didn’t know who they were. They could have been friend, foe, or someone totally uninvolved. Running over to them just because they were of the same race was the wrong choice. Really, they probably should have fled back to the village.

  But Jugemu sensed something like sympathy. He had a hunch they honored the same master. He had the feeling they would shelter them and protect them.

  The Carne survivors didn’t hesitate to run for the great goblin army.

  The encirclement crumbled as they ran. The kingdom’s soldiers knew they should be pursuing the runners, but their movements were sluggish. But that was only to be expected. The huge army that appeared was so well disciplined. Approaching carelessly had to be dangerous.

  There were two reasons the kingdom’s army let Jugemu and his men go.

  The first was that if they passed on the chance for a follow-up attack, it would let them reorganize their formation. The drums were already telling them to fall back.

  The other was that they worried if they killed any goblins, the great army would unleash fierce and immediate retribution to avenge their kin.

  The new goblins readily accepted Jugemu and his men, loosening their formation to allow them to slip inside. The moment the last ally had been welcomed, they closed their ranks and returned to their original positions—like a steel door.

  Jugemu looked over his friends as they lay on the ground, dead tired. No one had made it unharmed. Many of them were so relieved to reach safety that they fell unconscious.

  As he scanned the area, his vision seemed like it might begin to blur. The number of goblins, ogres, and villagers had decreased.

  “But I guess we’re lucky that over half survived. Konaa!”

  He called the name of the only goblin in their group who could use healing magic, the cleric. But Konaa shook his head. He had already used up all his mana in the fight.

  “Then what about first aid? Can anyone—?”

  Midway through Jugemu’s shout, he saw a bearded goblin wearing a Chinese headdress and carrying a fan made of feathers approaching.

  From his demeanor, he was clearly the core figure of this army.

  “Ho-ho-ho-ho. You
are General Enri’s escort, I take it? I have been entrusted with command of this army. I am a goblin strategist. Now that we have come, no one will do you harm. Never fear. We’ll take them to the healing corps right away.”

  The goblin raised his fan and a robust group of goblins arrived bearing stretchers.

  “Quickly now, load them up and carry them over. Since we’re here now, the loss of even one life would be a disgrace.” The injured were carried away. “You are also wounded. I think it would be best for you to get treatment from our—”

  “Uh, sorry. That’s very kind of ya, but can we talk first? I’ll last that long.”

  The strategist must have believed that Jugemu’s attitude wasn’t just bravado, because he nodded once and replied, “I would expect nothing less from the leader of General Enri’s escort. What would you like to ask? Well, ho-ho-ho, I imagine there is only one question on your mind. If you’re looking for General Enri, she’s in the screened position behind me. I’m sure she will be pleased to see you.”

  “Oh? That’s good.” He heaved a genuinely relieved sigh. So much tension went out of his body that he felt like he might fall over, but he didn’t want to look so pathetic in front of their successors. “All right. Then I suppose I’ll go see her. It doesn’t seem like we’ll have much of a role to play in the battle to come anyhow.”

  “Ho-ho-ho-ho. I appreciate you yielding the action to us newcomers.”

  “What? Ah, it’s fine. The seniors’ duty is to give their juniors a chance to earn some achievements, after all… Thank you.”

  “Ho-ho-ho-ho. We’ll be sure to show you what we can do. Now, then! Our only option is victory. Instruct the heavy infantry to advance!”

  “What’s that?! We nearly had them! Shit!”

  Barbro’s eyes practically popped out of his head as he glared at the intruders who had obliterated his efforts.

  Nothing was going his way. Why do I have to face a goblin army in this tiny village? It was so aggravating he wanted to rip his hair out.

  If it was an imperial army, he would have happily ordered his men to continue fighting. But these were goblins. Even if they won, who would care?