The Goblins’ Rampage

~At the Front of the Guild Alliance~

The adventurers fired arrows toward the goblin fortress, then charged. The first to rush in was Beck, one of the Den of Starving Wolves’ strongest members, wielding a weapon called a 《Black Iron Staff》. He was a skilled Green Moon-class adventurer.

“Come on, come on, come ooon!! Goblins!! I’m gonna kill every last one of yooou!!”

The goblins waited with bows drawn. Literally resembling little demons, they were generally considered unintelligent. Ugly faces, rags for clothing, bows and arrows in hand. Adventurers rarely encountered goblins in large groups, usually fighting them one at a time. And because of that, adventurers made a mistaken assumption.

That goblins were nothing but weaklings.

“Take thiiis!!”

Beck swung his club at a goblin holding a bow and crushed its head flat. Wearing a savage grin, he moved toward his next prey. The rookie adventurers behind him could not hide their excitement at the sight. One goblin after another was crushed as Beck pushed farther in. The rookies poured in after him. The adventurers continued advancing, defeating every goblin along the way.

“Is this all you’ve got, goblins!? Take thiiis!”

With a wet crunch, another head was smashed apart. Guild Master Sid followed behind with his greatsword over his shoulder, overpowering the goblins in his path. His aide, a Green Moon-class adventurer named Krel who wielded short blades, also slaughtered the goblins that kept appearing. The adventurers’ morale steadily rose.

“Keep this up!! Crush ’em, crush ’em all!!”

As expected of veterans, they butchered the goblins with practiced movements. Centered around Krel, Beck, Sid, and Ezel, even the rookies gradually became accustomed to fighting, and their momentum showed no sign of stopping.

Beck killed a nearby goblin, rested his club against the ground, and took a breath.

That was when it happened.

“Gaaah!!”

An arrow pierced Beck’s hand. A single arrow had been fired from a ramshackle hut. Goblins had been hiding inside. But Beck thought that a single arrow wound was nothing worth worrying about.

“Wha… aaagh!? Is this… poison?”

The arrow had been coated in poison. Still, that could be solved with a potion. He hurriedly pulled a potion from his status screen, and then—

The potion burst into flames.

“What!?”

Magic flew from the bushes. He narrowly dodged it, but the poison had unmistakably slowed his movements.

“A goblin… sorcerer?”

“Igiiii!!”

Flames erupted from their staves. Beck managed to evade them, but the rookie nearby could not.

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

The rookie adventurer was engulfed in flames in an instant. The smell of burning flesh made Beck instinctively cover his mouth. That mistake proved fatal.

Numerous goblins emerged from the bushes and released arrows. They flew straight toward Beck, who did not possess the 《Arrow Evasion》 skill, and—

“Ah…”

pierced his head.

“Beck!!!”

Sid shouted. Under normal circumstances, Beck would likely have dodged them, but the deadly poison had already spread throughout his entire body. The goblins had created poison using their own filth and poisonous plants gathered nearby.

Stepping on Beck’s lifeless corpse, a goblin took his Black Iron Staff. Farther back, the situation was deteriorating just as rapidly.

“Gyaaaah!”

“What!? Kyaaa!”

“Ugh! Arrows! There are archers up there!! Gah!”

Large numbers of goblin archers stood atop the cliffs. Their arrows were coated in deadly poison. Meanwhile, adventurers whose movements had been slowed by the goblin sorcerers hidden in the undergrowth were killed one after another.

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! Hot! It’s hot! It buuuurns!!”

“Noooo! I don’t want to die! Noooo! Gyaah!”

“Gah… stop… that’s my sword…”

A goblin grinned and pressed a sword toward the head of an adventurer crawling along the ground. After the man died with his eyes wide open, the goblin stripped him of everything and equipped his gear.

Naturally, the tragedy was not limited to rookies.

A veteran adventurer beheaded a sorcerer and set fire to the bushes, killing the goblins hidden there. Yet numerous archers and goblin soldiers surrounded him. Even after taking countless arrows and suffering from their poison, the swordsman continued cutting down the archers.

But he was hopelessly outnumbered, and swords were soon driven into his body.

“Gah… you cowardly…”

The veteran adventurer had his head crushed without dignity, and his prized sword was stolen. The goblins’ rampage continued.

“What!?”

Blocking the path of the veteran group were goblins holding women suspended in front of themselves as shields. They were probably women captured from the village earlier. While the adventurers hesitated, goblin archers shot them down.

“Gah!”

“Uwah!”

“Guh…”

Green Moon or White Moon, rank meant nothing there. What awaited them was nothing more than a one-sided massacre.

“Why…? Why are goblins moving with this much coordination!?”

Sid shouted. Then—

“Are you… the commander?”

An especially large goblin lumbered out from farther within. In its hand was Beck’s Black Iron Staff.

“You’re… the Goblin King!? Why!? There wasn’t any information about this!”

The enormous goblin wore a black robe, with the bones of some animal resting on its head like a crown. Every race had individuals who could become kings of their kind. But information about such creatures would normally have reached them through eyewitness reports.

“I killed the scouts, the witnesses, and the nobles. The people behind you will all die too. The men will die, the women will be violated, then they will die as well. You will die soon too!”

“Damn it!”

Sid swung his favored greatsword, trying to tear through the Goblin King’s body. But the Black Iron Staff knocked aside Sid’s greatsword and sent him flying.

“Gaaaaah!!”

Sid slammed into a rock wall. The Goblin King slowly approached him.

“It is over.”

The Goblin King brought the Black Iron Staff down. Green Moon-class Krel and Ezel tried to intervene, but—

“You are in the way.”

The Black Iron Staff changed direction, blasted Ezel’s sword away along with his body, then crushed Krel with the second strike.

“Aaagh!”

“Gugh!”

“Kreeeel!!”

The Goblin King turned toward the surviving, gentle-looking Ezel. Overwhelmed by the pressure, Ezel threw away his sword and fled.

“Uwaaaaaah! No! No!! I don’t want to dieeee!! Nooooo!!”

The Goblin King watched him with apparent boredom.

“Pathetic. That female swordsman at least put up a better fight.”

“You mean… Flora? What happened to Flora…?”

Sid forced himself back to his feet and asked.

“I broke her arms and legs. Now she merely waits to become entertainment for my soldiers. At first she cried and screamed, but now she has become quiet. It seems her pride has been thoroughly shattered. Fuhaha!”

“Y-You bastard!!”

Sid picked up his sword and bravely charged again. But when his blade collided with the Black Iron Staff, his prized greatsword shattered into pieces. His body was sent flying once more, and he slammed hard onto his back.

“This time, it truly ends.”

The Black Iron Staff rose overhead. In that instant, Sid understood that he was going to die.

(So this is it… Because I rushed into a reckless battle without even gathering proper information, I got countless adventurers killed. I’ll have to repay this debt in hell. I’m sorry, Beck, Flora, Ezel, Krel, Lady Forest… girls…)

The faces of the young girls from earlier came to mind.

(Come to think of it, I’ve gotten them killed in this battle too. I’m truly sorry. Fortuna-sama… at least let those girls survive… please, at least them…)

The Black Iron Staff descended as though in slow motion.

“《Quick Draw》!”

A flash of white light entered Sid’s vision. In the next instant—

“What!?”

The Black Iron Staff split cleanly in two. Then—

“Uguuaaaaaaaaaah!!”

Black blood erupted from the Goblin King. Standing before Sid was a silver-haired girl!?

“I made it. No… I didn’t make it in time, did I? I’m sorry. Because I was too late, people… died again.”

The girl turned around. A white-haired girl wearing an oni mask. Slowly, she removed it. Beneath it was—

“…Little… miss?”

The White Moon-class girl from the Guild Hall. The girl Sid had dismissed as a novice rookie. The girl whose accomplishments he had declared were nothing but false rumors. The girl Forest had acknowledged.

“My name is Konoha Kushibiki! I’m glad I could at least save you.”

Covered in the enormous amount of blood that had sprayed through the air, the girl smiled brightly. Her appearance was almost like—

(A Demon King… just like the Demon Kings from fairy tales.)

That was what Sid thought.