Lighthouse and Hope

"They've withdrawn, friend. Can you still stand?" ### "No, no, I don't have any strength left. Let me rest for a while." ### "All right. Maybe I should lie down too." ### Linbuge dropped the longsword in his hand and collapsed onto the ground. ### The gravel beneath his back was uncomfortable, but the earth was soft as mud. Lying in the dark forest, Linbuge found his every breath filled with the fragrance of fresh grass. ### "I can't see a thing, yet we still had to tangle with those damned things for so long..." ### The man beside him tried to raise his voice in complaint, but after exhausting himself, all that came out was a tired, hoarse rasp: ### "Damned? They've been dead for ages! Goblins are clearly a race that clings to life, cowardly, crafty, and despicable. When they launch a sneak attack, they let out a strange 'hee-hee' laugh. They'd never be this silent, this tenacious..." ### Linbuge asked, "If you can't see anything in the dark, why do you think they were goblins?" ### "I know these Green skins better than anything in this world. I know them so well I could tell you exactly how many times they sow their seed on an average day—I used to be one of the Goblin Slayers." ### "Why 'used to be'?" ### "Because we ran into a group of Dragonblood Lizardmen in Deepwell. All we'd ever encountered were goblins. Who had ever seen those things— ### "In the end, one of us lost a limb, another was paralyzed, and after I carried the two of them out with someone else, we went our separate ways." ### "Didn't you think of recruiting two more people?" ### "Forget it. How could adventurers who'd never struggled in the small places