Chapter 26: Sir Roland
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 26: Sir Roland
A troll that even uses game skills? There was no need to overthink it. In the game, this one skill would have cut a party member’s health in half, but reality was completely different.
For starters, my superior eyes allowed me to pinpoint the landing spots of the rocks, and I escaped without a scratch. Roland, meanwhile, was the picture of composure, dodging the large stones and batting away the smaller ones with his sword.
Of course, it was a different story for the mercenaries.
“Crazy bastard! I’ve never heard of a troll pulling a stunt like this!”
“Agh! I’m gonna die!”
The mercenaries scrambled around frantically, yet they still seemed to get hit by half the falling rocks. Should I call it lucky that none of them were seriously injured?
“Krrk-krrk-krrk.”
The troll laughed like a spectator at a circus, continuing to pound the ground. It was as if to say, So, who has the advantage now?
‘I have to attack again!’
We couldn’t just keep dodging. Our stamina wasn’t infinite. We would be the first to tire. With that thought, I charged the troll.
The troll swung its club to meet me. Its speed was much slower than before, a clear sign it wasn’t using its full strength. Its gaze was fixed on Roland, who was watching for an opportunity from behind. In that instant, a fire lit in my chest.
A mere monster dares to ignore me?
I threw down my one-handed sword and torch. In their place, I gripped my longsword with both hands. With the troll’s attention elsewhere, its club was easy to dodge.
“Eu-ong?”
The troll wore a stupid expression. Only then did its eyes finally land on me.
“Too late, you monster!”
I stomped on the ground, pouring my body weight into the sword. It was a slash with all my might. After a moment of faint resistance, the blade sank into the troll’s leg as if slicing through tofu. Blood burst forth, revealing the stark white of its shin bone. It was a deep wound.
“K’heong!”
The troll let out a monstrous scream and fell to its knees. Its glistening yellow eyes were now fixed only on me.
“Roland!” I shouted as I rolled to the side.
The troll’s club smashed the spot where I had just been. Its other fist shot out in a follow-up blow. It was focused solely on me.
But Roland, who should have seized the opening, didn’t move. He was watching Jimmy, who was dashing toward the now-unguarded passage. Jimmy was using me as bait to escape.
It was a betrayal.
“Jimmy!”
“Shit! I have to survive, don’t I?!”
For someone saying that, the smile never left his lips. He was after the relic.
“K’eong?”
The troll, finally noticing Jimmy, tilted its head. Its hesitation was brief. Despite the fact that I, the one who had deeply wounded it, was right in front of it, the troll turned its back and began to run toward Jimmy.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Only after the troll showed its back did Roland finally move, and not with any particular urgency.
“Sir Roland!”
“I cannot let a traitor claim the treasure.”
“And you’d let this opportunity slip by for that?”
Roland fell silent. His eyes, shadowed by the flickering torchlight, gleamed.
He had judged that he could handle the troll by himself. Otherwise, it made no sense to waste this chance.
But I couldn’t let that happen.
The party system meant that experience points were distributed based on contribution. The more Roland did, the less experience I would get.
What would be the point of painstakingly leading him here, then?
I thought for a moment. Could I take on the troll without Roland’s help? I was skeptical. It had been less than a week since I’d resumed my training; defeating a troll was out of the question.
Nevertheless, I gripped my longsword and chased after the troll.
‘There’s a chance. Just one.’
The troll’s behavior suggested that, just like in the game, it was programmed to prioritize attacking whoever was closest to the passage. If that was true, its back would be defenseless until it killed Jimmy. It was just as I predicted.
Even though I was right behind it, the creature only cared about Jimmy, who was nearing the passage. It even bent down to kill him, presenting the back of its neck to me.
The moment its club turned Jimmy to pulp, I kicked off the ground. I stepped on the troll’s bent calf and ran up its gently curving back. My feet landed on its shoulders.
“Kkeo-ong?”
Finally aware of my presence, the creature straightened up, raising both hands above its head. It intended to swat me like a mosquito.
Before it could, I planted my feet to steady myself and, with a reverse grip, plunged my sword into its neck. Soon after the tip went in, I felt something hard. It was undoubtedly its cervical spine.
Even so, its palms closed in. The rushing wind made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end. I was less than a second from death.
Instead of dodging, I pushed off its shoulders, putting all my weight onto the sword lodged in its neck.
“Die—!!!”
Suddenly, a snapping sensation traveled up the blade. The resistance, which had felt like a clogged drain, vanished, and the sword slid deeper into the beast.
“…!”
Here was another difference from the game: there was no HP. The massive hands that had been closing in with a roar lost their strength and fell. The colossal body followed.
THUD.
A small cloud of dust rose and spread out in concentric circles.
[Calculating experience points. Target level is high. A critical attack was successful. Bonus experience will be awarded.]
The message confirmed the troll’s death. I jumped two levels at once. I’d already accumulated some experience fighting goblins, but even considering that, this was an enormous amount.
All the trouble and hard work had paid off. A thrill more intense than holding a woman surged through me.
The satisfaction was short-lived. There was still more experience to be gained.
I turned to face the approaching Roland. Blood from the still-warm troll dripped from his lowered sword.
*
After dealing with the troll, we took a moment to regroup. The party, which had started with seven, was now drastically reduced to three.
“Just the three of us left now. We really might not make it back alive. Ain’t that right?” Hendricks said, looking down at Jimmy’s pulped remains.
“Who knows? The exit might not be far.”
“Quite the optimist, aren’t you. But there’s no guarantee we’ll survive even if we escape. Not when he won’t let us go quietly,” Hendricks said, lowering his voice and nodding toward Roland, who was leaning against the wall beside the passage.
It was as if he intended to replace the troll as the gatekeeper.
“…”
I answered with silence. That seemed to be enough. Hendricks spoke quietly.
“Don’t forget what I said.”
He was talking about our promise to join forces the moment Roland showed his true colors. I nodded, though my intentions were different. Roland wasn’t the only one who had stood by and watched Jimmy die.
The journey resumed under a blanket of silence. In truth, the other two had already revealed a good deal of their intentions.
Roland had used various excuses to whittle down the number of mercenaries and was now sizing me up with an air of certainty. Hendricks had positioned himself against Roland, yet he had allowed a fellow mercenary to die.
Everyone knew. Only one person would make it out of these ancient ruins alive. In the end, it was only a matter of time before we turned our blades on each other.
That moment came sooner than expected.
“Wait.”
Roland, who was in the lead, held up a fist. At the end of the long passage, a light was visible. It was a clean, orange glow, like an incandescent bulb. The light, at first a mere dot, grew larger as we approached, until our torches were no longer necessary.
The light was seeping out of a hole in the wall of the seemingly endless passage. It was just large enough for one person to squeeze through.
Roland pressed himself against the wall and peered through the hole, his expression hardening. Hendricks, who knelt below him to look, sucked in a sharp breath.
“Hah! Th-that’s—!”
It was understandable. The massive cavern below the hole was filled with goblins. There had to be thousands of them. It looked as if every goblin we had seen since entering this place had gathered here.
Fortunately, the passage we were in was high up on the cavern wall, a spot the goblins wouldn’t see unless they randomly decided to crane their necks all the way back.
“Fuck. How many of them are there…?”
“The light is coming from over there.”
I casually pointed to a raised section of land on the opposite cliff face. In its center, a stalactite and a stalagmite had met, and at their meeting point, an orange crystal was emitting light.
Just as we were all captivated by the mystical glow, the light pulsed like a heartbeat. Grains of light flowed out from the crystal and formed a goblin.
“What in the…?”
“It’s artificially creating monsters?”
As if on cue, I whispered to the two astonished men.
“If you could install that behind enemy lines during a war, it would be perfect for disrupting their rear.”
Gulp.
It was, without a doubt, a priceless treasure. It might even be worth the price of a castle. Roland and Hendricks’s Adam’s apples bobbed.
“An exit.”
To top it off, there was an exit behind the crystal. Through it, we could see land covered in dense trees and fallen leaves.
There was another passage below the hole we were at. If we hadn’t taken the shortcut and had instead pushed straight through the goblins, would we have ended up in that cavern below? The two men’s eyes darted about.
“The way down is…”
“Even if we could somehow get down that sheer cliff, I don’t see how we could break through that goblin horde to reach the exit. Well, Sir Roland might be a different story.”
I stared at Roland, who was now stroking the hilt of his sword. He looked to be in deep thought. But it seemed even he lacked the confidence to fight his way through thousands of goblins, as he gritted his teeth.
“To have a treasure right before my eyes and have to just pass it by?”
“No need to be so disappointed. Now that we know the way, we can return to the mansion, prepare properly, and come back. For now, let’s see if there’s another way out.”
Neither Roland nor Hendricks answered. Only after I started walking did the other two reluctantly tear their feet away and follow. It wasn’t long before we found another exit.
“An exit!”
At the end of the passage, an opening awaited us, revealing fallen leaves and trees beyond.
We stopped in front of it and began to eye each other. No one wanted to go back empty-handed. Especially not Hendricks.
As a mere mercenary, he might not even get his wages, let alone a share of the relic. He could very well be silenced to keep his mouth shut.
“Now!”
That must have been why, right after exchanging a look with me, he immediately fired his crossbow at Roland. Roland, who parried the bolt with his sword as if he’d been expecting it, hastily pointed his blade at me.
“What…?”
Roland couldn’t hide his confusion. It was because I was just standing there, watching blankly. I’d had no intention of keeping my promise to Hendricks from the start. And neither had he.
Hendricks, who had promised a joint attack, fired a single bolt before tossing his crossbow aside and bolting. But he was running back toward the hole that overlooked the cavern.
“You’ve been tricked, Sir.”
Despite my words, Roland didn’t lower the sword pointed at me. He couldn’t decide whether to kill me or not. To deny him any more time to think, I kept talking.
“His plan is to make us fight each other while he escapes with the relic.”
“He doesn’t have the strength to get through thousands of goblins.”
“He must have found a way to get the relic while avoiding them. Otherwise, why would he run in the opposite direction with an exit right in front of him?”
Roland chewed on his lip. After a moment, he gestured with his chin in the direction Hendricks had disappeared, his sword still aimed at me.
“You go first!”
Roland was finally showing his true colors. I let out a smirk.
“Why should I?”
“Do you not see this sword?”
“Hmm, so you’re going to fight me, just as Hendricks intended? While he makes off with the relic? He’d be the only one to benefit from that. Is that what you really want?”
As a show of my willingness to fight, I raised my own sword and pointed it at Roland. His face twisted.
“You…!”
“Whatever you choose, you’d better hurry. Hendricks is getting closer to the relic with every passing second.”
Having seen it, Roland would not give up on the crystal. The one thing I had overlooked was that a greedy man will sometimes try to give up nothing at all.
Roland, whose eyes were tracking the now-vanished Hendricks, suddenly spun around and drew a dagger from his belt. His target, of course, was me. In that instant, time began to stretch out.
The dagger, which at first appeared as a dot, grew larger and larger. Even in stretched time, its speed was faster than my reaction. Roland had been hiding his true skill until the very end.
‘Move! Move!’
Once again, I was trapped in the prison of my own body. The only difference from my spar with Andrei was that my body reacted, if only slightly.
I twisted my torso and, thanks to the slowed perception of time, brought my sword into the dagger’s visible path. The dagger, the only thing moving fast in this slow-motion world, struck my sword by a hair’s breadth and ricocheted away.
Clang—
The sound came a moment later, and the flow of time returned to normal. I leaped back, wary of Roland. But the attack I expected never came.
In the time it took for him to throw the dagger and for me to block it, Roland had vanished, chasing after Hendricks.
“Ha. A great prize if you kill or wound me, but if not, you still get the crystal? I really can’t let my guard down for a second.”
But in the end, I was the victor.
After calming my heart, which was pounding like a runaway locomotive, I followed the two men. There were still things I needed to see to for the finale.