123

Lumbering after the fleeing goblin, I arrived at a small pack.

There were only seven of them in total, a small group that had been screeching noisily but fell silent the moment they saw me.

I calmly set down my baggage, unfastened the large saber tied to my pack, and gave it a light swing.

The goblins bolted.

They tried to scatter, but because they had made their base in terrain chosen to guard against raids, their escape routes were limited.

Using it as a defensive position without knowing their place had sealed their fate.

The green filth was annihilated before it could fully scatter and run.

“Hm, having a weapon really was nice.”

I swung the saber, shaking off the blood clinging to it.

My technique was little more than copying what I had seen in comics, but with this weight and the hardness of the metal, just smashing and cutting with it was more than strong enough.

It was a rare weapon that could withstand my full strength—this had been its first real outing, but… goblins as opponents were far from satisfying.

If anything, it barely felt like I had used it at all.

Even as a test cut, I should have chosen my targets a bit more carefully.

As I maintained the saber, I checked the goblins’ nest.

The result was nothing.

As expected from the small numbers, it seemed to be a newly formed pack.

We were not that far from either Canaan or Seizeria, so I had hoped there might be some loot, but for something freshly formed, this was about all there was to it.

Leaving the spot and retracing my path, I quickly found the place where I had cooked my meat.

I resumed cleaning up and scrubbed the area so thoroughly that not even a trace remained.

If I went that far, there should be no chance of a forest fire.

Now I could head to my target town with an easy mind.

I moved through the forest on alert, and by the time the sun was overhead, I picked up the sound of footsteps.

(Headcount… three. Hm, one of them was a bit heavy? A heavily armed warrior type mixed in?)

Maybe I was just getting used to distinguishing sounds, but lately I had become able to estimate weight like this.

They were definitely bipedal.

And when people walked normally, I could tell by the sound of branches snapping underfoot.

If someone moved as cautiously as a scout it would be harder to tell, but this time I would use the three I had locked onto to see how accurate I was.

I activated my mimicry ability, blended into the surrounding scenery, and moved quietly so as not to make a sound.

(Seeing it in practice, knowing human hearing really was a huge advantage.)

Because I used to be human and knew those specs in detail, I could pull tricks like this; information was everything.

I predicted their direction of travel, got ahead of them, and hid while I waited for them to enter my field of vision.

There was a slight discrepancy, but within about ten minutes I had them in sight.

(Two lightly armed warrior types and one heavily armed one—just as I thought.)

I was honestly pleased my prediction had been right, but it was disappointing that they were all men.

And it made me wonder what a meatheaded group with clearly no designated scout was doing in this forest.

I tried to gather information by listening closely, but no one spoke.

(For people supposedly searching for something, their formation was weird. I could tell they were wary of their surroundings, but…)

In a word, the three of them were jittery.

They kept glancing around, and their faces clearly showed fear.

(…I see, they got separated from their comrades.)

That explanation fit all the bits of information neatly.

In that case, I did also want to know the cause, but there were any number of reasons why a bargain-bin mercenary band in cheap-looking gear might end up like that.

Still, there was also the possibility that some unexpected powerful enemy was lurking nearby.

“This is all from a human-standard point of view, so none of it applied to me, though,” I thought, striking a pose in my head with a grin—when the three of them did something I had not expected.

They pointed in the opposite direction from where I was and let out screams that were almost shrieks, then started running straight toward me.

Since I was still using mimicry, I broke eye contact for a moment, then slowly stepped out from behind a large tree.

One of the mercenaries noticed me and let out a pathetic scream, yet still did not stop running my way.

In other words, whatever was chasing them right now was more threatening than I was.

(Oh… so I was the better option, huh…)

I watched them, hand on my chin, as one of the heavily armed men tripped.

Tears streaming down his face, he reached out and begged for help, but the two lightly armed men completely ignored him and kept running straight toward me.

That was when I saw it.

Or rather, I supposed I should say I ended up seeing it.

The instant I witnessed the mass of black “things” swarming over the fallen man, a chill ran not just down my spine but through my entire body.

At the same time, the two who had been sprinting flat out blew right past me.

(These bastards were trying to use me as a decoy!?)

Even for me, the odds were bad against those things.

Actually, there was no way I ever wanted to fight them without preparation.

With the screams of the man who was probably still being eaten echoing behind me, I started running away as well, a bit late to the party.

The moment I caught up to the two in front, I grabbed each of them firmly by an arm.

I could have used them as bait, but that would not even buy me much time.

So I threw the two of them off in different directions.

If either one survived and made it back to town, they would definitely report what they had seen.

(I would leave dealing with those things to humans. Two hundred years ago, every country had a way to handle them; they should be fine.)

I had the feeling one of them ended up stuck in a tree where I had thrown him, but as long as the other survived, that was all that mattered.

Shaking off the swarm chasing me, I finally managed to catch my breath and checked the sun’s position.

Apparently I had kept running east, so I decided I might as well keep going that way and head for a river.

“I never thought it would be a magic insect swarm…”

Given the conditions, it had certainly been possible for one to form, but I had never expected to actually run into it.

Basically, even when those things appeared, in most cases they naturally died out through cannibalism and almost never made it into inhabited areas.

But if you ever let them into a town, they would eat everything in sight and their numbers would explode.

In the past, they had been feared as something that could cause damage on a scale that went far beyond a single nation.

Nowadays, though, every country had firmly established countermeasures, so it was standard practice not to let them anywhere near, let alone into, a town.

At the end of the day, they were still just insects.

There were endless ways to deal with them: lure them, burn them, blow them to pieces.

Unfortunately, I currently had no means of facing those things myself.

So my only move was to run.

(Still, that did mean I would have to make a detour to reach my target.)

I scratched the back of my head and let out a long sigh.

First, I would get to the river and refill my water.

I might as well catch some fish while I was at it.

So I kept pushing eastward through the forest, and by this point I was close enough to the old base where I had met Boobs Lady before that I was tempted to swing by.

I did not think I had missed anything, but there might be some wonderful new encounter waiting there.

By the time the sun dipped low and it was evening, there I was, busily exterminating the goblins that had sprouted up again around the base ruins.