The Hunter, the Goblins, and… (3)
The Hunter, the Goblins, and… (3)
#
"Yuri, how's it look?"
"Fine. No sign of anything coming."
The minimap showed that Whitebeard was still in the mating room. I'd posted Yuri as a sentry just in case, but there hadn't been any movement yet.
"Then let's get started. Move back now."
"Yeah."
"Reni. You know what to do, right?"
"Yes. Keep using Purification so the smoke doesn't choke us."
"Good. Then here goes."
I unleashed Holy Fire onto the pile of wood we'd stacked deep inside the cave. The firewood instantly roared into a blaze. Before long the dungeon was filling with smoke.
"Alright. Let's run!"
Acrid smoke filled the cave, making everyone cough. Reni repeatedly cast Purification as we fled, but even so, I nearly choked several times.
"Haaah... you okay?"
"Haah... haah... yes... haah..."
"Th-that wizard... cough... he didn't make it out, did he?"
Yuri kept glancing back a bit fearfully. It was fine. I'd checked over and over, and the minimap showed no movement at all.
"He's trapped inside. Now we wait."
#
What I'd done was set the entire dungeon on fire.
On the way back to the dungeon, I'd used the Ultrasonic Cutter to chop down every tree I could and stuffed as much as possible into my inventory.
I'd piled the wood near the mating room, set it alight, and left him to suffocate.
In truth, I'd considered this from the moment I heard they were goblins. If we blocked the dungeon entrance and set it on fire, would they not either burn or suffocate? Goblins were neither undead like skeletons nor amorphous creatures like slimes. They even carried the Humanoid tag, so they must breathe like people.
[Monster Status: ▼]
[Normal: 10]
[Irregular Entity: 01]
...
[Monster Status: ▼]
[Normal: 08]
[Irregular Entity: 01]
Seeing the numbers drop meant my reasoning had been right.
I should've done this from the start.
Judging by the half-goblins' appearance, we could hardly have avoided assuming people had been kidnapped. In the end, however, all that panic had been unnecessary. We'd witnessed a needlessly horrific scene and nearly gotten hurt. Well, at least I'd gotten to do it with Yuri...
Anyway, now all we had to do was wait near the dungeon entrance while watching the smoke pour out.
"It's burning nicely..."
"It really is..."
"But seriously... that's incredible. A hero really is different."
The word hero made me cringe. The idea itself wasn't anything special. It was something anyone could do as long as they had an inventory.
"You two could do it too. As long as you had a dimensional pouch."
"Those are too expensive for us."
...Come to think of it, the way they had talked about high-grade artifacts before did make them sound that expensive. In any case, the sun would be setting soon. Time to check...
[Monster Status: ▼]
[Normal: 00]
[Irregular Entity: 00]
"Good. That's all of them. They won't be coming out now."
Only then did the two of them sigh in relief. Yuri spoke with an envious tone.
"Whoa... so you really can check all of that? Why did the Goddess give that only to heroes...? Does she have some special reason for favoring you?"
That I didn't know. But I deliberately put on a grave face.
"The Goddess never gives that sort of ability for free. Unlike what you think, the Goddess is underhanded and insidious—"
"Yoo-jin!"
It was a joke, and look at her taking it literally and getting mad. Still, if I kept making jokes like this, someday Reni was really going to chew me out. If I didn't somehow fix this reflex of spewing curses...
Anyway, with Whitebeard dead it was time to search the dungeon...
"The smoke doesn't look like it's stopping. What now? Go back?"
"...No. We'll camp here."
"What?!"
"It's fine."
There wouldn't be any danger. The dungeon had burned, and it was still smoking. And the goblins were wiped out.
Most of all,
[Dungeon #1052]
[Type: Goblin (Humanoid) / ???]
[Until Respawn: 47:56:23]
Like this, I could see exactly how long remained before the goblins respawned inside the dungeon.
I didn't need to worry about the surroundings, either. The dungeon goblins had already exterminated the local wildlife, predators included.
If smoke hadn't been pouring out of the dungeon, I would've bedded down inside the dungeon itself. A dungeon with its monsters gone was, ironically, the safest place to be.
Once I explained that, Yuri's face showed understanding.
"I'm in favor. They say the beasts are gone from this area, but we don't know about the path. Moving through the mountains at night is dangerous."
"Th-then I also..."
A confident Yuri and a hesitant Reni.
Reni... At Emils, you'd taken charge of both Yuri and me at once, yet now you'd shrunk back into yourself again. It was cute, but also painful to see. What should I do...? I needed to think about it.
I hid my concern and forced my voice up into a cheerful tone.
"Alright. Then let's set up camp!"
...
We set up just below a ridgeline where we could keep watch on the dungeon.
I took a pickaxe from my inventory and dug a pit, filled it with the stones Yuri and Reni had gathered, then heated them with Holy Fire. After covering the pit with soil again, I pitched the tent we'd bought at Guardian's Fort and spread a blanket inside. That gave us a reasonably cozy place to sleep.
"You look weirdly comfortable doing that. Done this before?"
"Nothing special. I served in the military once."
"Whoa..."
Yuri's eyes sparkled. Seeing such open admiration on a face that was usually nothing but shameless made me want to tease her.
"What? I was an actual soldier, so do I look a bit different now? Unlike some hunter's daughter..."
"Ah, come on! You're still going on about that? That's so petty!"
"..."
I'd kicked away my own chance to gloat... Should've stopped after the first verse...
"Yoo-jin... isn't it best to... forget that sort of past now...?"
"..."
Reni looked at me with slightly sad eyes. How was I supposed to clear up this misunderstanding...?
...
"Alright. Night watch order is Yuri, me, Reni."
Reni couldn't read the stars and tell the time, so she'd take the last watch. I could wake myself for the middle watch with a system alarm.
Why keep night watch? Because everything inside the dungeon was clearly dead, but just in case.
"What're you going to do about the goblin... Wilson?"
"He's got his own job."
I'd hidden Wilson near the dungeon entrance to keep watch. If anything happened, he'd make noise. It'd ring through on my system, too.
Keeping him by our side wouldn't have mattered but... it just... felt a bit... unpleasant...
...
Night had fallen, but it was still a little early for sleep. While keeping an eye on the dungeon, we had a simple dinner.
"Come to think of it, this is my first time seeing the night sky since I came here."
I didn't know anything about constellations, but there was something I could clearly sense. Anyone who'd come from Earth couldn't miss it.
"It really is different here."
"Wh-what was it like where you lived, Yoo-jin?"
Reni spoke up a little hesitantly. Ever since she'd started misunderstanding me, Reni had avoided talking about my past like that. So what had gotten into her today?
"Hmm... well, first, the moon's a bit smaller."
This world's full moon was so big and bright that if you had decent night vision, you hardly needed a torch or a Light. But that wasn't that major a difference. The biggest difference was...
"...those satellites around the moon? Small moons? I'm not sure what to call them. We don't have those."
Small satellites orbited the moon in a line. I could see at least four... no, five.
"Those are the moon's necklace."
"What's that?"
"Heh-heh... listen carefully."
In a show-off voice, Yuri began an old tale.
The Hero of the Sun and the Demon Lord of the Moon shared a forbidden love but could never be together. The hero ultimately withdrew without killing the Demon Lord, who was then sealed in the moon. As proof of his love for the Demon Lord, however, the hero left behind a necklace.
"How is it? Romantic, right?"
"...Yeah."
My impression after hearing that was...
'Mix Romeo and Juliet with the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl and run it into the ground, and you get a story like this.'
It was a bit of a trite melodrama. I didn't know if it was this kid's poor storytelling or if all old stories were like that. She called herself a genre novel maniac, but her story-telling skills weren't great. Is she only good at reading them?
"That's not what they are."
Reni let out a small sigh after listening to Yuri's tale.
"That is not something romantic like a necklace... It is evidence. Proof of subjugation—proof that the Goddess made the Demon God submit."
A dog collar? Just as sinister as I'd expected...
"Yoo-jin?!"
"No, it's nothing."
Right. It would have looked weird if I'd used Self-Slap in the middle of a conversation. Still, it was better than getting zapped by static.
"In any case, that's how our church records it. A thousand years ago, during the War of the Gods, the Goddess ultimately prevailed. Those chains bound the Demon God of the Moon as proof of submission."
"Really? But either way, the Goddess and the Demon God still interacted, didn't they? So isn't it possible they had that sort of thing going on?"
"Yuri! That's blasphemy!"
Yuri grinned slyly and Reni looked as though she'd heard something she shouldn't have.
"Heh-heh... what do you think?"
"They are both pathetic. One is a cheap melodrama, and the other is about a perverted Goddess..."
...
Their glares were too sharp. Unconsciously I'd been much too honest. I'd let my guard down because I didn't think the arrows would turn back on me.
I needed... I needed a different subject...
"B-by the way... you said you defeated the Demon Goddess of the Moon? Then what's the war going on in the east with the demonkin? Shouldn't you have wiped them out?"
Reni spoke with a somewhat serious expression.
"Yoo-jin... well, of course you wouldn't know. Even if something like that happened in the Heavenly Realm, the Goddess doesn't interfere with us in that way."
"Why?"
Come to think of it, Kate had said something similar.
"Because she values our will. It's the same with the demonkin. Though they are creations of the Demon God, to do that to beings who could be redeemed... the Goddess is merciful."
...Merciful? Words I couldn't quite shape into curses squirmed inside me.
Of course I was grateful to the Goddess, but that didn't mean I didn't also want to curse her. People did not have to feel only one way about someone. It was what you called a love-hate relationship.
"Alright. Then I'll turn in. Yuri, take care."
"Yeah, get some rest."
...
I squirmed into place inside the tent. Reni suddenly spoke in a slightly subdued voice.
"...Yoo-jin."
"Mm?"
"Even if you are not a servant of the Goddess... still, just a little..."
"..."
Her slightly bitter expression soon became forlorn.
"If it weren't for the Goddess... I-I would never have met you, Yoo-jin... and I would've spent my whole life like that..."
...That was true. Because the Goddess had sent me, badmouthing her like that, from Reni's perspective...
It wasn't only a problem for her as a priest. There was that issue too.
"I'm sorry. I'll be careful."
"Yes..."
Reni burrowed into my arms with a sorry face. Ever since I'd done it with Yuri, she'd kept acting pitiful.
Come to think of it, her behavior had been odd since Emils.
What should I do...
I fell asleep while worrying about it.