But We Had To Do It

“Inside its head…”

Kuon fell silent as if thinking… then nodded.

“Yeah. Well, that’s true—most living things have their head as a weak point.”

“…I feel like you understood that in a slightly off way, but whatever.”

Even if he told him to explain it in detail, Kikori would’ve been at a loss.

It was only something he understood as “that’s how it is” from knowledge of his past life.

There was no way he’d know the exact mechanism.

…Well, in that sense, you could say his past-life knowledge had been useful.

Though truthfully, he didn’t want to rely on it too much.

“More importantly—what do we do about this?”

“Huh? About what?”

“This thing batted away my full-force axe, you know. I don’t think we can even pull out a mana stone.”

“Ahh… hey, Kikori. If you do it again, will it be the same?”

“Huh? Oh—like that thing where it becomes brittle after it dies?”

Once it clicked, Kikori brought his axe down on the Big Goblin’s corpse with all his strength… but it still didn’t get so much as a scratch.

“See? It doesn’t work, does it?”

“Yeah. In that case… we’ve got two paths.”

“Two, huh?”

“First option: leave it here and report it to the Guild.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Second option: drag it with us. If it can withstand Kikori’s axe, I don’t think dragging it will leave even a scratch.”

Kikori thought the same—those really were the only two options.

The easiest would be reporting it to the Adventurers’ Guild, but he immediately saw the downside.

“If we leave it here… someone might take it.”

“Yeah. Either monsters, or other adventurers who want to steal the credit… it’d probably get taken by one of those.”

“I hate that.”

“Me too.”

“So that means…”

Kikori and Kuon looked down at the Big Goblin’s corpse.

A Big Goblin corpse as huge as an orc’s.

Carrying it was impossible. It was obviously heavy.

But… even dragging it would be—

“No, even transporting it is kind of insane, isn’t it?”

“But we had to do it.”

“Yeah…”

Kikori looked around as if weighing it… alternating his gaze between the trees and the axe in his hands.

“Hey, Kuon.”

“Hm? What?”

“Do you know how a sled is built?”

“A sled? Why a sled—oh.”

Seeing Kikori idly turn the axe in his hand, Kuon laughed. “I get it!”

“Right, yeah. We didn’t need to haul it the honest way!”

“Yeah. Leave the tree-cutting to me. I’m pretty good at it.”

“Haha, as expected of you, Kikori! Uh, if I remember right, a sled is…”

And so, with a simple sled structure designed by Kuon, Kikori and Kuon started hauling the Big Goblin’s corpse back toward the Fortress City.

Of course, that still wasn’t easy… but it was time that felt strangely fulfilling.