Goblin War Chief

"Say that again?!"

Lance grabbed the adventurer in front of him by the collar, his voice full of disbelief.

The first piece of news the adventurer had delivered had already shocked him.

Startled by Lance's sudden movement, the adventurer swayed uncontrollably and nearly fell over.

Only then, in the dappled sunlight filtering through gaps in the canopy, did Lance see the man's miserable state clearly.

This man's equipment was clearly far superior to Lance's patchwork gear. The finely crafted iron-ring chainmail covering his chest had been smashed into a deep dent by some enormous blunt weapon, several metal rings broken and buried deep in his flesh.

Although the wound had received basic treatment, the blood still seeping from it had stained half his body red. With every ragged breath he took, the stench of blood grew overpowering.

After being shouted at by Lance, the man's unfocused eyes regained a little clarity.

"Y-you're the senior who was with Damian this morning?"

The adventurer recognized Lance.

"I'm saying something happened... everything's fallen apart."

"The intelligence was wrong! That wasn't an ordinary Goblin nest at all!"

At that point, the burly man's voice was filled with regret and self-reproach.

"It was a trap! We were surrounded the moment we entered the valley. Leading them was a mutated Goblin War Chief! That monster actually understood tactics!"

"The team was scattered, and the captain was injured... That fool Damian and the captain split off in two directions as bait to draw the pursuers away. They ran toward the stream!"

His agitation stemmed not only from the mission's disastrous failure, but also from the shame of being unable to rescue his comrades and only managing to flee in disgrace.

Lance did not interrupt him. Instead, he calmly asked several more crucial questions about the enemy's numbers and composition.

After receiving the man's halting answers, Lance released his grip on the man's shoulder.

He clenched his fist hard enough for his knuckles to crack.

Then he raised a hand and pointed in the direction from which he had come that morning.

"Follow this road. This area is safe for now. You should be able to make it out alive."

The injured adventurer froze at those words.

He lifted his head and stared blankly at Lance, then looked in the direction Lance had indicated before finally turning his gaze back to him.

"Y-you aren't retreating with me?"

The man looked Lance up and down, taking in his light leather armor and the gathering pack on his back.

"You're just a gathering adventurer, aren't you? The depths of the forest are complete chaos now. Even we couldn't handle it. Going there would be suicide!"

Lance did not answer.

His hand instinctively moved to his waist, his fingertips brushing against the ugly, twisted amulet woven from thick blue hemp rope.

The rough texture beneath his fingers strangely calmed his restless heart.

"Which direction is Damian?"

The injured adventurer opened his mouth. Looking at the hooded man before him, he eventually raised a hand and pointed toward the depths of the dense bushes to the southeast.

"That way... downstream along the creek."

Lance nodded, tightened the short bow on his back, and without the slightest hesitation turned toward that direction.

Watching that resolute figure head against the flow, the injured adventurer felt his throat go dry.

An inexplicable feeling struck him, and he could not help shouting:

"You'll die!"

Lance did not look back. He merely raised a hand high and waved without turning around.

"Then don't die. Enough people have died today."

Before his words had faded, his figure vanished among the shadows of the trees.

As he ran, Lance's breathing remained steady.

He was not rushing off to his death on impulse.

The moment he heard the words "Goblin War Chief" from that fleeing adventurer, the relevant knowledge from the Monster Compendium automatically surfaced in his mind.

It was an extremely rare mutated specimen. Though only a little more powerfully built than an ordinary Goblin, its intelligence was terrifyingly high.

Not only did they know how to enslave their own kind, they had even learned to use tactics and traps to hunt humans.

Damian's team had clearly been deceived by the seemingly lax outer defenses and charged headlong into a carefully designed ambush.

That idiot.

As Lance darted through the jungle at high speed, he could not help grumbling inwardly.

He had clearly told him to survive like a cockroach, yet the kid had turned around and gone off to play the hero.

But his steps only grew faster.

With [Hvergelmir's Boiling Surge], he did not need to worry about conserving stamina and could maintain a full sprint the entire way.

Don't you dare die.

Deep within Copper Creek Forest, beside an unnamed stream.

The air over an open, pebble-covered shoal was thick with a suffocating stench of blood.

Clang!

A sharp ring of metal striking metal echoed out.

Gritting his teeth, Damian barely caught the spiked wooden club crashing toward him with his two-handed greatsword.

The immense impact numbed the web of his hand and drove his legs involuntarily into the soft sand and gravel.

The ones attacking him were not frail ordinary Goblins, but four or five Goblin Brutes with muscles knotted all over their bodies.

These were units specially trained by the war chief and capable of basic tactical coordination.

They held thick round wooden shields in their left hands and heavy, iron-studded clubs in their right, covering one another in alternation as they advanced and retreated in measured rhythm.

Whenever Damian tried to counterattack one of them, the two beside it would immediately raise their shields and squeeze in, restricting his movement and forcing him to pull back his sword to defend.

Worse still, three sinister Goblin Spearthrowers were hiding behind the brutes.

Whoosh—

The sound of something cutting through the air rang out again.

Damian rolled sideways in a panic, barely avoiding a short spear that flew past his scalp.

His situation was terrible.

Seven or eight Goblin corpses lay scattered across the shoal, the result of his desperate counterattacks.

The group originally pursuing him had numbered only twelve or thirteen.

But after he fought and retreated until he was driven into this dead end, Goblin Scouts tasked with searching the area had continuously arrived after hearing the commotion and joined the hunt.

The number of enemies surrounding him had not decreased. It had instead grown larger than at the beginning.

Besides the four or five Goblin Brutes leading the assault, over a dozen Goblin Scouts were forming an encirclement.

"Huff... huff..."

Damian's chest heaved violently. Every breath felt like working a battered bellows, and his throat was filled with the taste of blood.

To break out of the initial encirclement, he had forcibly activated the Breath Combat Technique he had yet to fully master.

Though that explosive technique had greatly increased his combat strength for a short time, it had also drained every bit of his stamina.

Now, the backlash had arrived.