005. What Doesn't Kill Me

Nine goblins remained in front of me: one with a shield and a spear, one goblin shaman, and seven more with a dagger in each hand.

Ah. Yes. I was afraid. There was no pretending otherwise.

Two special entities and seven ordinary goblins. It was the sort of scene that would have an ordinary Hunter shaking from fingertips to toes, frozen over what to do, and very likely dying a miserable death right where they stood.

But how many things in this world hand you a return with no risk attached? When you jump into crypto with a seed of ten million won, you go in having already assumed you might lose every last bit of it. Looked at that way, the risk I had to carry was lighter than most. No family depending on me, no lover, and certainly no astronomical debt I had to pay down. I'd been grinding out pocket change on AI-generated videos — a low-risk, low-return life. Who would flinch at a little risk when it meant climbing from a million won a month to ten million, or more?

"Hss... haa...!!"

So that was enough. Enough for me to put a foot forward.

The ground under me was forest, which meant a battlefield where the smaller goblins could seize the advantage through numbers and guerrilla tactics. Their weapons, though, weren't bows or crossbows. Just daggers and spears. There was one goblin shaman to handle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ranged attacks, but how impressive could a goblin's spellwork ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠really be? On the second floor a shaman's attacks were slow and monotonous to a fault, so picking them off one by one was by far the most stable way through. And the method itself was simplicity itself.

I dropped into a crouch and hid myself in the thick of the trees, waiting behind a trunk with an ear to the footsteps. Little goblin feet went tap, tap, tap from several directions at once, and I locked onto the loudest of them. When those steps had drawn in close, I drew Severance across the goblin that had stepped into my face.

"Krrk—?!"

The body split in half. Organs and bone lay open to the air, and yet not a single drop of blood fell as it tumbled to the ground. Even seeing that, the others didn't look frightened. To them I was an enemy, and a life was not a resource worth tallying.

"Krrrrrk———!!!"

Two of them, heedless of their own deaths, scrambled up the trees on either side of me in an instant. Then they kicked off separate branches and dropped for my head at the same time. The moment I saw it, I snatched up the upper half of the goblin rolling at my feet and took one of the strikes on the corpse.

"Krk—?!"

"...Kh!"

The dagger punched through dead flesh, and the impact ran straight up my arm. Heavier than I'd expected — but I had blocked it, and that was enough comfort to move on.

"—Hup!!"

I dragged Severance down from above across the other one and split it into left and right. The first goblin was left hanging there, both daggers buried deep in the corpse. I slammed it to the ground.

"Not a chance!"

A heartbeat later I opened its throat and took everything above the neck clean off.

"Hoo..."

Sweat beaded on my forehead and ran. I couldn't stop. Four goblins and two specials were still out there.

I am not good at fighting. The sum of my experience was a stint as a combat engineer in the army, shipped out to detect mines — and even that was three years ago. Until yesterday I had been no different from an ordinary civilian, which meant I had to think harder, and act more carefully, than anyone.

Move. Severance's reach is short. I have to get in close.

I buried myself in the trees and undergrowth again and circled left, keeping the shield goblin and the shaman at the center of my arc.

"Huff... huff...!"

I hadn't run in a long time, and my breath came ragged. It wasn't a bad kind of pain, though. Doesn't a person need a certain amount of stimulus before they feel they're alive? I could feel, with perfect clarity, that this was better than rotting in my room without even knowing what I was doing — and I pushed on.

"Krrrrrk——!!!"

A goblin burst into view, and I split it with Severance.

"—Damn!"

The blade whispered through, and the thing's cry broke off behind me. I swept the trees again and turned the numbers over.

Three dual-dagger goblins, two specials. Five left.

And coming in right on that goblin's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠heels—

The shield-and-spear goblin crashed through the brush, spear and shield shoved out in front of it. Call it a shield-spear goblin for short. And it wasn't alone. The other three had my position as well, and they were closing in a single formation — numbers pressing from the left, the right, and dead ahead. Arrayed like that, it was as if the only way open to me was back. A formation begging me to run.

But I knew better. Go back, and something far more hopeless would be waiting. The space inside the Tower is not infinite. Run long enough and you hit a dead end: a transparent wall stretched across the way, or a cliff outright. They seemed to know it, and they wanted to drive me there.

Then what I had to do was painfully clear.

I break through forward.

A human being can't be perfect, and I am no exception. But in my hand was Severance, a gift from an Outer God beyond human reckoning. With a fragment of an Outer God in my grip, who couldn't endure a little fear? I, at least, was not that person.

I swallowed the breath climbing all the way to my chin and kicked my way up a tree.

The shield-spear first!!

I launched into the air, reversed my grip, and drove Severance down at the crown of the shield-spear goblin in the center.

"Krk—?!"

Astonishingly, its reaction was fast. The shield came up and met the body I'd thrown into the air, cutting Severance off before it could land. But Severance is not stopped by a shield. Where the blade passed, as if drawing a line, the shield split to either side.

"Keruk?!"

In the beat while it reeled, I thrust Severance in and cracked the skull behind the shield in a single stroke.

Now. This was the moment that mattered. The formation the shield-spear had held together was broken, and the others were caught in the split second of deciding what to do. This was the turn for the killing blow.

I swept Severance through a huge horizontal arc in a reverse grip ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and stepped in, forcing them back.

"Got you."

I seized the head of the one farthest to the left and drew Severance across its neck. Then I hooked the ankle of the one right beside it, spilled it onto the ground, and drove the blade into its heart. Shrieks — kyaak, kyaruk — hit my ears and ran straight out the other side.

What remained was one dual-dagger goblin and the shaman. The closest thing in front of me, though, was the dual-dagger.

"Hoo...!"

I drove off my feet and leapt, meaning to finish it cleanly.

"...?!"

Only then did the shaman's spell take. A green light of mana, like a snake, wound around my arm and bound my torso.

This is probably where a lot of people panicked and died.

The survival rate in a Tower once special entities were added was extremely low. A fight is nothing but a knot of variables from one instant to the next, and plenty of people — people like me — have died because they couldn't answer them. Unfortunately for these goblins, what I had in my hand was Danjeol-i.

Astonishingly, Danjeol-i performed its severance on mana as well, and cut the power that had bound me.

Ah...!

A thrill of ecstasy went through me. Countless people must have met their end right here. But simply by having Danjeol-i in my grip, I had come through.

"Kiiiyaaa—"

"—Ack..."

Once again a dual-dagger goblin's head tumbled across the ground, and Danjeol-i showed off just how capable it was. I turned. The shaman was rattling off a chant in a panic, and I could tell the thing was rushing.

All of this was as good as done thanks to an Outer God artifact. Only I could use one cleverly and efficiently. Only I could see the countless possibilities an artifact like that contained. Once my thoughts reached that far, I couldn't hold the laugh in.

"...Haha."

So I strolled up to the goblin shaman and looked down at it as it looked up at me from below. Then I took its head off along with its staff.

As my level rose, the shaman's corpse turned to violet liquid and seeped into the earth. A blue mana stone rolled to a stop where the body had been, and I picked it up, thoroughly satisfied.

"A stone this size... three million won, easy."

An unwritten rule of the Tower: the higher the difficulty, the greater the reward. Feeling that in my bones, I understood all the more that I had no choice but to treasure Danjeol-i.

One thing was strange, though. The clear confirmation never appeared. I looked around. The other corpses hadn't dropped much in the way of byproducts either, and I was just wondering whether there was some hidden objective—

My thoughts had no choice but to stop cold. The Nameless Corridor? A special community — what was that supposed to mean? But as if there were no time to waste on questions like that, line after line of text bloomed in front of my eyes.

...From the look of it, a community of Outer God fetishists had just opened its doors.