The rotten stench behind them gradually faded away, but that did nothing to calm the adventurers. The red-haired Magus gripped her staff tightly, her teeth clenched. Her companion beside her lowered her head in silence. Mailu looked at the scene before her, at a loss herself.
This was not their first time going on an adventure. But until now, the girls had imagined adventure as accepting requests and then slaying monsters. They had taken requests from the Adventurer's Guild before, but most of them involved killing Demon Beasts that damaged farmland, driving off goblins harassing villages, or hunting rock lizards for merchant associations.
The caravan request they had received from Fang Zheng had been their first attempt at a different kind of escort mission. This time... they were facing a mission unlike anything they had ever encountered.
Still, delving into a goblin nest to rescue a village chief's abducted daughter sounded very much like the work of an adventurer in Mailu's imagination.
Reality, however, struck them with a brutal blow.
The villager abducted by the goblins would not simply stand blankly in a cell like an NPC in a video game, delightedly crying, "Hero, thank you for saving me!" when her rescuers arrived, before handing over experience points and items.
Instead, she had been humiliated and harmed, tossed onto a heap of garbage like a toy and left to rot to death. Mailu felt a shock unlike anything she had ever experienced. Her body was trembling. She clearly possessed tremendous power, and she believed that with her strength, she could easily wipe out every goblin here.
Yet now, staring at the pitch-black corridors and passageways, Mailu felt fear for the first time.
It had nothing to do with strength. It seemed to come from somewhere far deeper...
At last, the