In a slightly listless atmosphere, Loren’s eyes suddenly turned sharp.
Lapis, slightly surprised, watched Loren as he started to reach for the great sword strapped to his back.
“Wait! I just heard something!”
Naron’s warning rang out a moment after Loren’s sudden action, and everyone tensed up.
Loren scanned the area, concluding that the others noticed the danger too late.
They were within the forest, but he decided that it wasn’t a problem because they were in a small clearing, with space to move around and see their surroundings.
As soon as he used his left hand to pull the string strapping the cloth wrapping his sword, it fell off, revealing the blade.
He pulled out the sword in front of him with his right hand and put his left hand on the handle, right above his other hand, and switched his thought process for battle.
Even for mercenaries, who were in battle very often, straining their senses for battle all the time would chip away at their minds.
Loren had seen too many who broke their minds and hearts doing so, thus he made sure to switch back when he wasn’t in battle.
He didn’t have time to enjoy the energy flowing through his body before he spotted a few shadows moving behind the trees.
The shadows looked small and humanoid.
Based on how deep into the forest they were currently in, and the speed of the moving shadows, he was sure that they were not children lost in the forest.
“What is it? Monsters?”
Sarfe asked Naron, but his hand wasn’t even on the grip of his sword.
Naron, although she pricked up her ears, hadn’t even grasped the direction of where the monsters were coming from.
She kept looking around, pricking her ears and squinting, but she hadn’t noticed that Loren already found the enemy and was tracking them.
Loren, wondering if this party was going to be okay, was trying to decide if he should point out the enemy’s location, but wasn’t sure if he should take Naron’s job. Before he could decide, the enemy made the first move.
A few arrows flew at them, threading the space between the trees.
They didn’t have much speed to them, and some of them flew off into a completely different direction. But still a good amount of them were headed toward where Loren was.
“Ugh!?”
Most of them missed their target and fell around them, but one of them grazed Oxy’s shoulder, spraying a bit of blood.
Sarfe and Naron shifted their gazes to Oxy at the sound of her pained voice.
“What are they doing!?”
Loren cursed. The two should know how much of an advantage they could give an enemy if they looked away during battle.
Not even facing the way the attack came from, but instead facing a cry from a comrade, was equivalent to begging the enemy to make the next move.
Loren’s eyes turned to the monsters that started to run out from between the trees.
They were green and ugly, with shields made of wooden planks and short, rusty swords.
Loren swung his sword at the goblins.
The sword and the wooden shield clashed.
Loren’s sword didn’t cut through it, as his sword wasn’t made to cut.
But instead, with its weight and sheer force, it smashed through the shields and crushed the goblin’s arm, then ripped its body into two bloody pieces of meat.
Before the pieces could even hit the ground, Loren swung the sword again and hit the second goblin right on the head.
A dull sound erupted, and another goblin lost its life, spraying around things that couldn’t be made out if it was bone or flesh.
“Crap! These goblins!”
Sarfe finally realized who the attackers were and pulled out his sword, while Naron pulled out her knife to protect Oxy, who had her hand on her wound.
“Defensive arts!?”
“Don’t need them!”
Loren answered Lapis wildly and kept swinging his sword.
The third goblin instantly got crushed between the blade and a tree.
Loren reflected the second wave of arrows with the flat of the blade, then tracked the direction where they were coming from.
He was able to find the goblins with bows, but was irritated at where they were standing.
There were trees blocking the way so it was difficult for him to rush at them, and there wasn’t enough space between the trees for him to freely swing his sword.
He wished he had a knife or a shorter sword. He then glanced at the ground and saw a small sword that belonged to one of the dead goblins. He picked it up and threw it at the archer goblins.
The feeble sword flew across the clearing and hit one of them, but only succeeded in giving a shallow cut.
Loren picked up another one and prepared to throw it but the goblins let out a cry, surprised that
Loren had a way to attack from a distance, and started to run away.
“We’re not letting them get away! Let’s go!”
Watching Sarfe giving out orders, Loren thought
“You didn’t even do anything…”
Naron and Oxy followed his orders but Loren gave his sword a swing, shaking off the blood stained on it, and stopped them.
“I don’t think chasing is a good idea.”
“What do you mean? Our job is the hunt the goblins. We finally found them, so we should chase them and make sure we destroy their nest.”
“Yeah! A lowly mercenary like you shouldn’t butt into the leader’s decision. So just shut up and follow him!”
Loren stopped and didn’t even try to talk back to Naron.
No matter how low intelligence the low rank monster called a goblin had, they weren’t stupid enough to leave their nest completely vulnerable.
Their quest didn’t say that they had to exterminate the nest.
All they needed to do was walk around and hunt down a certain number of goblins and receive their reward, so Loren wanted to avoid danger such as going into the nest, but it seemed that the rest of the party wasn’t going to listen to him.
While he was comforting himself thinking that it wasn’t the first time he was working under a useless leader, Lapis came up to him and started walking next to him.
“Your friends are way up ahead.”
Loren told Lapis without thinking, revealing his irritation, but Lapis smiled, not affected by it at all.
“Yes, you’re right. But I decided that this is the best place to be.”
He remembered that if he excluded himself, Lapis was the newest member of the party.
“It’s not that I have an ulterior motive or anything. Since priests and magicians usually fight with warriors to protect them, and since Sarfe and Oxy are together, I thought that it would be natural for me to be with you, Loren.”
“Is that how I should take it?”
“Yes, please take it like that.”
Seeing her replying with a smile, Loren didn’t feel like pushing the conversation any further.
There was no point in doing so either because what Lapis said was indeed true, and the only thing he could do is try to guess what she was trying to imply.
“Well, it seems she has a good personality of her own.”
Thought Loren as he accompanied Lapis to where Sarfe was headed.
Tracking the goblins wasn’t difficult.
They weren’t smart enough to cover their tracks, so it was easy for a thief like Naron to track them.
But the tracks were visible even to Loren, so if she couldn’t find them, she probably should become something other than a thief.
In fact, blood spilled from the goblin that Loren had injured gave a such a clear sign, even an amateur could find them.
“Just asking.”
Loren turned to Lapis, who was walking next to him.
As one who had experienced many battles, it was easy for Loren to distance himself from people and talk in a voice where it would only reach the ears of whoever he was talking to.
“How strong are they? Especially our leader’s skill on the sword.”
Judging from Sarfe’s reaction to the goblin attack, he would be labeled as a failure in Loren’s mercenary group. He would either be sent to be retrained or to the very frontlines of battle for no reason.
Loren didn’t want to put someone like him as a leader for sure.
Lapis replied without hesitation.
“Loren, you used to be a mercenary, right? Okay, let’s see…Have you heard rumors of the mercenary called the ?”
“I’ve heard that name before.”
It was a name that was known among mercenaries.
He was famous not only among mercenaries, but was well known swordsman in general. The was a legendary mercenary known to bring victory to his allies but death and destruction to his enemies. He was a being that no one wanted to meet in battle, both as an ally or an enemy.
It was because if he was an enemy it would mean death, and if he was an ally there was a risk he would take all the credit.
Mercenaries got more offers the more they took part in battle. The existence called the was distanced from others for that reason.
Although there were mercenaries with titles here and there, the was considered the one of the strongest. It was believed among mercenaries that the only ones who could stand up to him was the , who used both sword and magic, or another swordsman called the .
“Don’t tell me that he’s as strong as him?”
“Even if ten million Sarfe’s got together, they wouldn’t be able to beat the .”
It was a confusing way to compare, but Loren understood that she meant Sarfe wasn’t strong at all.
No matter how strong the is, he would run out of steam going against ten million enemies. But if that many number of people couldn’t beat him, it meant that Sarfe was very weak.
“You guys must be insane, trusting your lives to that kind of guy.”
“Loren, we’re in the same shoes right now, you know?”
“Oh yeah, you’re right. I have no money. I can’t say that you’re insane.”
If Loren didn’t have the problem of being broke, he probably wouldn’t have chosen to become an adventurer.
“Being broke sucks. It’s like I don’t have a say in the decisions I make.”
“Well, how should I put it. My condolences?”
Loren wondered why she said it like a question, then suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Lapis stumbled, not expecting Loren to stop walking. She then saw Sarfe with his hand up as if he was signaling them to stop.
“Look, a cave. That must be their nest.”
Sarfe must have meant to talk softly, but Loren facepalmed at how loud his voice still was.
“The trail of blood goes into it, and Naron is sure of it as well.”
“Are we going in? I’d rather not.”
The cave was barely wide enough to fit two people side by side, and there wasn’t enough space for Loren to pull out his weapon and fight.
But Naron appeared from a nearby brush and started to make fun of him for saying so.
“Then just go back. But you’re not getting any of the rewards.”
“They’re just goblins, so we should be fine. If you’re worried about weapons, try this.”
Sarfe then handed him a small sword that belonged to one of the goblins he had slain.
“I brought this because I thought maybe we could find a use for it.”
“Well, you’re not completely thoughtless.”
Thought Loren. He was actually a bit impressed at Sarfe, but not at the sword. It was made poorly and it was so blunt it couldn’t even cut anything.
But it was better than nothing, so Loren strapped his great sword onto his back and took the sword.
“Oxy, use a spell to give us some light and Naron, watch our surroundings. Looks like there’s no problems. Let’s go.”
Loren sighed again, wondering how many times he had sighed already and didn’t even want to count, at the fact that they didn’t even have a torch or lantern with them.
Of course, Loren didn’t have them either, but that was only because he didn’t have the money to purchase them.
“They don’t have anyone keeping watch or hiding, and no traps either.”
“Okay, let’s go. There might be villagers in there. We should hurry and save them.”
Oxy raised the staff she was holding.
“Behold, light. .”
A magic light appeared at the tip of the staff.
Loren didn’t understand why they would use the spell already when they didn’t even step into the cave yet, but had completely given up on them a while ago so he didn’t even try to point it out.
“Let’s go.”
As soon as Oxy gave a nod, Sarfe started walking toward the entrance of the cave, with no way of knowing everything going on in Loren’s mind.
ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
