You Guys…

Horned rabbits and goblins. Both were among the weaker monsters, but there was a trap beginners fell into once they got used to them.

A trap you got caught in right when you started thinking you could handle it.

Kikori was staring that very thing in the face.

“Gigigi…”

A goblin in his line of sight laughed while lazily swinging its sword back and forth.

It looked like an obvious lure, but… Kikori was not stupid enough to drop his guard when he saw it.

Because he knew goblins set ambushes.

‘Behind the tree, one, two, three… what is this. Four, five… there are more.’

There was also a goblin with a bow up in the trees.

It was clearly aiming at him, but… even so, there were too many of them.

What should he do? No matter how he looked at it, he did not think he could charge that number and come out unscathed.

But he also did not think they would let him run. The moment he turned his back, he could practically see the future where an arrow hit him.

‘I have a bow. But they will not let me use it…’

He had the bow and arrows he had taken from goblins.

But he was not arrogant enough to think he could land shots with a weapon he had never used.

So what did he do? It was decided. If he did not want to be killed, he had to kill them first.

As if telling him to fall into the trap, the goblin grinned invitingly. Kikori drew in a breath.

“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A war cry. Kikori’s roar—his declaration that he would kill them—rang out, and the bow goblin loosed an arrow in a completely different direction as the goblins in hiding revealed themselves just a little.

And then Kikori… threw his knife straight at the goblin in front.

“Gi—!?”

He did not check whether the goblin that screamed and collapsed was dead. It was alive.

Keeping that certainty, Kikori threw away the bow and arrows, then first charged the group of goblins on the left, raising his axe high.

Thud. He smashed the axe into one of them, yanked out its club, and drove a thrust into the next one’s face.

“Bugeh… gah!?”

He tossed the club aside, brought his axe back down into a goblin’s neck, then lunged at the last goblin in that cluster and killed it too.

Ignoring the bow goblin panicking in the tree, he turned to meet the goblins rushing him from the other side.

“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A second war cry. The goblins’ movements dulled for a moment, but the effect was weaker than before.

They were getting used to Kikori’s killing intent. He had known it, but war cries were not a trick he could rely on again and again.

But it was still enough. Kikori slammed his axe into the tree the bow goblin was perched on, and as the tree shook with a scream, the bow goblin fell.

Kikori killed it with his axe as if smashing it into the tree.

As the other goblins flinched at the sight, Kikori hurled his knife into one of them, then immediately pounced on the remaining goblins.

It was not a sight that could be called graceful. A fight closer to a beast’s—yet one that still clearly carried reason. It was the only tactic Kikori, “without talent,” could choose.