Chapter 3: Goblins.

Notorious as cockroaches, they are distributed across nearly every plane of existence that touches upon the elements of Western fantasy.

These short creatures are naturally greedy and base. If the average intelligence of their race were not at the very bottom tier of sentient beings, one could perhaps add the adjectives cunning and deceitful to describe them.

A species alignment heavily skewed toward evil, combined with low productivity caused by backward intelligence, means their survival behaviors are almost always linked to plundering and theft.

Furthermore, because there are no females in their race, they must rely on abducting the opposite sex of other sentient species, as well as some bizarre method of unknown origin, to reproduce.

This causes them, to some extent, to possess an even worse reputation across the multiverse than abyss demons and hell devils.

The individual combat strength of a goblin is extremely weak. An ordinary farm woman holding a pitchfork could easily deal with a naked goblin carrying no weapons or equipment.

But it was exactly as the hunter Maji had described earlier.

These little things are just like the stray dogs seen everywhere in towns.

A single one cannot amount to much of a threat, but once they gather together, and their group number reaches double or even triple digits.

Then the courage of the goblins and the destructive power they can cause will explode geometrically.

Plundering merchant caravans, raiding villages…

Especially when the number of their tribes grows to a certain extent, certain elite individuals capable of leadership will naturally emerge.

Over time, if left to develop, they could even grow into a kingdom-level disaster.

Right now, the goblin tribe being tracked by the bottom-of-the-barrel party might not have developed to the scale of plundering towns.

But clearly, they already possessed the capability to actively ambush humans.

The humor-loving gnome who once liked to tell ill-timed jokes, whose corpse was now growing cold on the ground, was proof of this.

“Roar!”

An inhuman roar suddenly rang out in the forest.

The half-orc Gagu, like a startled jungle beast, leapt up fiercely, both hands tightly gripping his blood-stained two-handed axe.

The sudden ambush and the death of his companion seemed to make this mixed-blood mutt with thin orc blood recall some of his ancestral glory.

Vaguely lengthening canine teeth, along with his noticeably swelling and reddening muscles, indicated that this half-orc was entering some kind of combat state.

The hunter Maji was the fastest to move in the entire bottom-of-the-barrel party.

Almost the exact instant that dark wooden club emerged from behind Erki’s head, he reacted.

While shouting a warning, he carried the longbow on his back and used both hands and feet to nimbly climb up the towering ironbark oak behind him.

His lean figure vanished into the dense canopy in the blink of an eye.

Though he really did not want to admit it, Xia Nan was undoubtedly the slowest to respond in the entire squad.

For more than thirty years before his transmigration, he had gone almost straight from classrooms to offices, never even killing a chicken.

In this life, he was also just an honest, simple farmer with his face to the yellow earth and his back to the sky.

One second he was thinking about how to coax more information about this world out of Erki’s mouth, and the next second the other party was brained by a wooden club right in front of him, with even his brains leaking out.

Xia Nan only felt his mind go completely blank. Though he lifted the one-handed sword from his knees under the influence of instinct, his body stood frozen in place, as if trapped in some kind of paralysis state.

Until…

“Swoosh!”

Strands of hair whipped around as a violent rush of air scraped past his cheek, leaving a stinging sensation.

A wooden arrow pierced through the shadows of the forest, shooting out from the tree canopy overhead.

“Ah!”

A sharp cry of pain rang out from behind him.

Xia Nan jolted violently, snapping back to his senses instantly.

The world that had seemingly been muted a moment ago suddenly became vivid again.

With no time to thank Maji for lending a hand from overhead, he spun around rapidly.

His gaze swept over, and his pupils shrank slightly!

Those were two short figures crouching down.

Their dark green, rough skin was covered in blemishes and scars, and their blood-red eyes were filled with cunning and malice. Their entire bodies were wrapped in only a piece of dirty brown rag around their lower halves, and while their limbs were slender, the outlines of swelling muscles could faintly be seen beneath them.

Without his realizing it, two goblins had actually crept up quietly behind him!

If not for Maji’s timely intervention, he would probably have suffered the same fate as the gnome Erki.

A wave of lingering fear washed over Xia Nan’s heart, and he subconsciously tightened his grip on the twine-wrapped hilt of his sword.

“Wacha!”

The stealth attack having been exposed, one of the goblins even had the top of its foot shot through by the wooden arrow from above, firmly pinning it to the ground.

These naturally cowardly monsters seemed to lose the courage to continue their assault at this instant.

They merely raised the wooden clubs in their hands high as a deterrent against this young human before them.

The entirely dark shafts of the clubs revealed a dangerous orange-red hue under the reflection of the campfire.

Staring at the rusty iron nails embedded in the surface of the wooden club, Xia Nan’s mind suddenly recalled the wretched image of Erki’s skull shattering just now.

Like a stress response driven by the deep, lingering fear in his heart, his right foot stomped forward violently, while his right arm holding the sword bent to store power.

“Thud!”

The sole of his foot sank into the soft muddy ground almost instantly.

Like the roots of a tree growing downward to absorb nutrients from the soil.

An inexplicable power erupted from the sole of his foot, traveling along his bones and muscles, gathering strength from his entire body along the way.

Finally, it poured out along with the blade.

Whirlwind Slash

Slash—

Accompanied by a sharp, piercing sound that tore through the air, the lingering mist rolled violently.

A sharp silver light possessing a beautiful arc flashed and vanished before Xia Nan.

Time and space seemed to freeze at this moment.

The meticulously maintained blade, combined with a technique practiced hundreds of thousands of times, made the goblin’s skin, muscle, and bone as fragile as sandpaper, unable to withstand a single blow.

“Proficiency +1”

A string of semi-transparent text flashed before his eyes.

Xia Nan only felt a brief sensation of resistance travel through his hand before the one-handed sword was swung in a sweeping upward arc from left to right, just like during those countless previous days and nights.

Blood splattered.

What landed on the mud were the severed hands of the goblins, half a skull, foul-smelling internal organs, and their filthy, scalding blood.

Those two insidious monsters that attempted a sneak attack were easily cleaved into two halves with just one strike, exactly like countless scarecrows on the ridges of the fields before.

The forest seemed to fall into a dead silence at this moment.

High up in the towering canopy, Maji subconsciously loosened the longbow that he had originally drawn to its full limit.

Staring at the fragmented corpses on the grass, his eyes rolled as he took another look at Xia Nan, who was slowly exhaling and sheathing his sword.

His Adam’s apple bobbed twice, his face filled with unstoppable astonishment.

“This is a newcomer!?”

(End of Chapter)