Why Bad Premonitions Are Always Right
Why are ominous premonitions always right? I glanced back and forth between the goblin corpses strewn across the ground and our guide, demanding an explanation.
“Th-those goblins are seriously everywhere! Once they spawn, their numbers explode and they keep popping up from all over the place. That’s why it’s so hard to track them!”
“Ugh… fine. At least they weren’t bandits.”
There was no point getting any angrier. No matter what came out of his mouth next, it would just be more of the same, so I dropped it.
“So where are we sleeping tonight?”
The sun was already starting to set. Between the bandits and the goblins, we’d lost time. If we wanted to reach our original destination, we’d have to pick up the pace.
“It’s not far now. Just a little farther and we’ll reach a spot where travelers often camp.”
“A spot where travelers often camp, huh…”
There were plenty of things I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. In this world, camping out was basically the default anyway. I’d vaguely heard that spatial teleportation magic existed here, but there was no way these people would use it for us when they wouldn’t even lend us a horse. At least they’d given us blankets and sleeping bags, so I counted that as a win and moved on.
“If you’re all packed, let’s go.”
“Yes!”
The team members who had been harvesting ears from the goblin corpses quickly straightened up and prepared to move at my words. The days of automatically getting points just for killing monsters were long gone. Now you had to collect the byproducts and turn them in one by one to earn points, so every single piece mattered. And since we’d have to sell those byproducts for money once we left the cradle to survive, we needed to get used to gathering this disgusting stuff whether we liked it or not.
“By the way, how much do they pay for goblin parts?”
I asked Kim Yoon-hwan, who was stuffing goblin byproducts into his bag.
“I asked around a bit when people visited the cradle… they said five brons.”
“Five brons? Is that even worth five hundred won?”
“Not sure… I’ve never actually calculated it.”
The currency went gold, silver, then brons. Since it was the smallest unit, it obviously wasn’t a lot of money. But having never bought anything outside, I had no idea about the actual cost of living, so I couldn’t tell if it was a lot or a little.
That’s why I asked the guide while we walked.
“To eat one proper meal outside, you need at least fifty brons.”
If I compared one meal to minimum wage, then the minimum wage here was around fifty brons. Fifty brons… so killing ten goblins would just barely get you one meal.
“At this rate, if I want to eat, I’ll have to wipe out an entire goblin tribe.”
The cost-performance ratio was absolute shit. No wonder mercenaries would rather risk their lives and head to the Border Region. Trying to survive by hunting goblins around here just didn’t pay enough. Of course, distorted phenomena sometimes brought stronger monsters here, but you couldn’t just sit around waiting for them while starving. That’s why most well-known mercenaries lived in the Border Region. The same went for Hero Candidates.
They were called Hero Candidates, but they were essentially mercenaries sent by the goddess Aeteria to kill demons. Their lifestyles ended up pretty similar.
“Here we are!”
The guide announced our arrival with the confidence of a hotel concierge, proudly presenting a random patch of dirt on the roadside. I had nothing to say.
“What do you think? This wide-open view! You can spot enemies immediately, and there’s a huge tree to shelter us from the rain.”
“Yeah… let’s set up camp.”
After being possessed, I had done various practice runs, but I hadn’t done much genuine wilderness camping like this. Who the hell would have expected to be transmigrated? I’d been thinking more along the lines of an apocalypse scenario, so I’d only considered environments with buildings that could block the wind. Pure outdoor camping like this wasn’t something I was used to.
“Should we eat right away?”
“Yeah. Start the fire first.”
I nodded at Kim Yoon-hwan’s question. He was basically acting as vice-leader. There wasn’t much luggage, so we finished setting up quickly. All that remained was eating and sleeping, so we lit a fire first. We were planning to boil some soup, but the weather was the bigger issue. It wasn’t too cold during the day, but the nights got pretty chilly. We needed a campfire.
“Ugh… I already miss the cradle.”
“Right? We only had a week of comfort.”
As the air grew colder, everyone wrapped themselves in a blanket, sipped their soup, and sat around the campfire chatting.
This is actually kind of nice. This was the kind of atmosphere I’d wanted to feel during a university MT trip. Why I had to experience it while camping in a place like this, I didn’t know. The sky was full of stars, and for this one moment, it wasn’t bad at all.
“I wonder if the ones who got kicked out are doing okay?”
At least until someone ruined the mood by dragging reality into it.
“Hyun-jeong, don’t worry too much. They’ll be fine.”
“You think so? They probably didn’t just throw them out with nothing, right?”
They were having a great time. I shook my head as I watched Kim Yoon-hwan and Park Hyun-jeong worrying about their friends, assuming everything would be okay, and comforting each other. It wasn’t wrong to worry, but if they were genuinely concerned, they would have tried to find out what happened. If they had, there was no way they could say something like “They probably didn’t just throw them out.”
Because they really did just throw them out.
Just like Kim Yoon-hwan had asked visitors about goblin byproduct prices, I had asked people inside the cradle about various things too. That included what happened to the expelled candidates. I couldn’t find out exactly how they were living now, but I did learn the condition they were kicked out in.
Completely penniless. They were dragged away that day and thrown out without being told anything. Even though they still had a chance to become Hero Candidates again, I hadn’t expected the cradle to be so heartless. I didn’t know the rest for sure since it was all speculation, but I seriously doubted anyone thrown out with nothing could be doing well. If they all stuck together and somehow made it work, that would be lucky. But it didn’t seem likely.
“……”
The mood was completely dead. After the topic of the expelled candidates came up, the group sank into silence. Everyone just sipped their soup and stared into the fire, so I went along with it and stayed quiet too. As I started feeling sleepy and thought about turning in, I brought up the most important issue for camping.
“How should we handle the night watch shifts?”
The moment I mentioned night watch, the atmosphere grew even heavier. I suddenly had a thought and quickly scanned their faces. Is it possible I’m the only one here who’s been to the military? Even the guys looked noticeably tense at the word “night watch.” When I thought about it, I realized I was the only one who had served. And I’d gone twice, while these bastards hadn’t gone even once.
It felt incredibly unfair, but I was also worried. In the first tutorial, I was alone so there was no environment for setting watches. In the second, there was no need to set watches. The third hadn’t lasted long enough to sleep. This was essentially my first time dealing with night watch.
This is really fucking unsettling.
Still, we had to sleep. I couldn’t stay up forever.
“Sigh… I’ll take the middle shift as much as possible. If anything shows up, wake everyone immediately…”
I explained night watch duty as best I could and assigned shifts with the mindset that I would endure the longest during the middle hours. I wasn’t sure if this was the right way, but it was what I went with.
“Senior, you need to wake up.”
At the voice waking me, I shot up without complaint, grabbing my sword in case something had happened. Following the junior’s finger—which I could barely see in the dark—I looked toward where he was pointing. Two red dots were moving around erratically.
Anyone could tell they belonged to a living creature. I stayed tense and slowly approached until I could make out the silhouette.
Whine.
“Goddamn it.”
A single dog was standing there, drooling heavily as it stared at us. Still pissed off from being woken up, I sliced it down in one clean cut and quietly signaled the junior with my eyes to dispose of it.
I was a bit annoyed that the thing that woke me in the middle of my shift was just one mutt, but in a world like this, you had to wake people even for small things. It was better than not waking them and letting a situation escalate.
That’s what I thought.
While the junior stepped away briefly and I took over the watch in his place…
“…Hm? What was it?”
The guide, woken by the commotion, asked what happened. I answered casually.
“It was a dog.”
“A… dog, you say?”
“Yeah.”
“Dogs… ahem. Some of them live in packs, so you should be a little careful.”
“Understood. Go back to sleep.”
“Yes… then I will.”
Even if they lived in packs, they were still just dogs. How many could there be? It would be annoying if they swarmed us in the middle of the night, but I didn’t think it would be anything we couldn’t handle.
That’s what I thought…
“Senior!!!”
I changed my mind the moment I saw the number of red dots behind the junior who came running, along with one red dot that was conspicuously higher than the rest.
You should’ve told me there were big ones too, you son of a bitch!
“Everyone, wake up!!”
I urgently roused all the sleeping team members.
“What is it? Are dogs attacking us?”
“If you’re awake, start waking the others. This is urgent.”
“Ah… understood.”
I drew my sword—the blood of the dog I’d already killed hadn’t even dried yet—and charged forward with the plan to stop the big one first.
“Fuck, it looks even bigger up close.”
I stepped between the junior and the creature to get a proper look and realized it wasn’t a dog. It looked more like a tiger. Just what the hell did it eat to grow this big?
“It’s a giant hound! It acts exactly like it looks, so be careful!”
Some advice. The guide had shouted the information in a loud voice, but other than the name, it was completely useless.
Grrrrr.
While I was distracted for a moment, the beast let out a low growl as if to say not to underestimate it. At the same time, it lowered its body like it was about to pounce. I drew one of the throwing knives I’d prepared in advance with my left hand and hurled it to test the creature’s reaction.
Whoosh!
The knife flew toward it with a powerful sound. The beast tried to raise its front paw to block the sudden attack, but—
Thud!
The knife flew faster than its movement and embedded itself precisely in the shoulder I had been aiming for from the start.
“Hmm, not bad.”
I still didn’t know exactly how strong this giant hound was, but for someone with only ‘Low’ talent in knife throwing, it seemed like a decent result.
And then—
“You’re not as tough as you look, are you?”
Its appearance was intimidating enough that I’d been a little nervous, thinking it could probably eat a kuchalak whole. But seeing how easily the knife had landed, I could roughly gauge its strength. Stronger than a goblin, about the same as an orc. I wasn’t certain, but it definitely wasn’t any stronger than that.
In that case…
Time to fight. It had to pay the price for waking me from my sweet sleep.