I’ll Teach You Right Now

As evening passed and night drew near.

Aria moved briskly through the forest.

“Ah—Aria-san!”

“What is it?”

“Isn’t it dangerous to go this deep?”

“I see.”

Aria stopped there and turned back to Kikori.

“Kikori. You said you were ambushed, right?”

“Yes.”

“Goblins are foolish, but they’re not stupid.”

“That sounds like the same thing—”

“It isn’t.”

She stated it flatly, then continued.

“You know that the deeper you go into the Contaminated Region, the stronger the monsters get, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s think from the monsters’ perspective. From their side, the closer you get to the ‘outer edge,’ the weaker the enemies become. For strong monsters it’s negligible, but for weak ones, that’s information worth its weight in gold.”

“That… means…”

“For example, what if a goblin that barely survived shared that information with others? How do you think goblins would move?”

There was no need to think hard about it.

“They’d come closer to the Hero Gate, where weaker adventurers are.”

“Exactly. That’s how the monster distribution beyond the Hero Gate is formed. And then… in order to hunt more reliably, they start devising tactics.”

That was the goblin Kikori had encountered.

Judging that a weak-looking opponent would expose an opening, it had laid a trap.

And Kikori had fallen for it perfectly.

“There’s one way to avoid this.”

“W-what way?”

“I’ll teach you right now.”

Saying that, Aria drew in a breath—and unleashed a thunderous shout.

“Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo‼”

A roar that seemed to shake the air itself. As Kikori nearly covered his ears, Aria snapped her gaze toward the depths of the forest.

With a thud like a fired bullet, a horned rabbit came flying toward them—only to be intercepted and cleaved in two by Aria’s battle axe.

And then… two goblins burst out from the forest, crashing through the undergrowth.

The moment they saw Aria, they flinched and tried to turn—

One of them had its skull split open by a flying battle axe.

“Gi—!”

“Die.”

If the horned rabbit had been a bullet, then Aria was artillery. Wearing full metal armor, she slammed into a goblin with a shoulder tackle, smashing it into a tree. As it rebounded back toward her, Aria pummeled it repeatedly with her round shield.

Each strike landed precisely on the face, killing the goblin in moments—and as if that still weren’t enough, she struck the collapsing body again mid-fall with the shield, driving it into the ground.

“Whew… that’s a war cry. A technique to draw enemies out or intimidate them. Not many monsters can ignore this, so at the very least, it reduces ambushes.”

It can cause other problems too, though, Aria added with a smile.

To that… Kikori could only reply,

“This is… very educational.”

There was nothing else he could possibly say.