Cat Power Gauntlet (3)
Cat Power Gauntlet.
Thwuck!!
A vicious sound rang out. And the result was every bit as vicious as it sounded.
A long arrow shaft had come flying — and lodged itself squarely in the meat of Yumi's palm, the same palm that had just thrown itself in front of me.
"You okay, nyang?"
"Th-that's what I should be asking you, Miss Yumi… Your hand — is it all right?"
"It tickles, nyang!"
Even with the arrow buried fairly deep, Yumi yanked it free from her palm as if it were nothing. In that brief span between the shot and the impact, she had already stretched out her hand and stopped it cold.
"Hah… Truly worthy of a great warrior of the Cat Tribe."
"Remarkable. She was already moving before I could even react."
Max and Bearwolf both voiced their admiration in turn. They had each noticed the threat, it seemed — but Yumi had simply been the first to move.
At any rate, Yumi turned her gaze and pointed off to one side.
"That way, nyang."
"Understood. Sir Bearwolf."
"Yes. I'll take a look."
Bearwolf nodded, then cast a glance toward his men. At the silent signal, several knights rose and plunged into the dense, reed-like thicket ahead.
I had just begun to wonder whether that was dangerous when —
Kyaaaaaaaah!
Gueeeeh!
Kiaaaaaaagh!
— a chorus of sharp, piercing screams tore through the air from beyond the growth.
"Shall we, then?"
Bearwolf strolled after them as if he were out for a walk. I felt no particular sense of danger myself and followed at an unhurried pace. Once we pushed through the dense undergrowth, a thick stench of blood hit us — and with it, a swarm of monsters no one could possibly mistake for human.
"Those are…"
"Goblins, my lord."
They came snarling and thrashing at the northern soldiers — only to be carved apart in real time by knights whose sword strokes moved at a speed the eye could scarcely follow. One flash of steel, one strangled yelp, and down they went. I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that riding in the back of a bus this well-driven was a comfort indeed.
"The knights of the North truly are extraordinary."
"Haha. Elite soldiers I've trained myself, in my own way."
They were clearly of a different caliber from the men Yumi had subdued on the climb up Jangbaek Mountain. Well — anyone under Bearwolf's command would be, belonging as they did to a knight order that represented the entire North.
Before long, the cleanup seemed finished. Knights with blood still dripping from their blades approached, a few goblins dangling by the hair in their fists.
"Commander. Mission complete."
The subdued goblins were shaking with terror. They had clearly been brought in for questioning.
Bearwolf gave a curt nod and fixed his gaze on the lot of them.
"I will not waste words. Where is your chieftain?"
"K-kik! We won't t— Kyaaagh!"
No debate. The moment it resisted, Bearwolf's hand moved. I never even saw the blade leave its scabbard — and yet the drawn point had already turned a goblin into a gob/lin, its head rolling emptily across the ground, the body left behind.
"Hieeeek?!"
The survivors trembled violently.
"The next one will hurt more. Where is your chieftain?"
"Kieeek!! Th-the chie— Kiik!!"
The next goblin shouted through its shaking, and Bearwolf's sword moved again. This time, though, he added one more cut.
Thud. Thud-thud—
Now it was a go/b/lin.
As the body, divided into thirds, tumbled across the dirt, the remaining goblins finally understood what Bearwolf had meant.
The further down the line we go, the more pieces he means to carve us into?!
It was a truly brutal display. Hard to believe this was the same man who had been gasping and raving over iron ore the moment they found a mine. But the look in Bearwolf's eyes as he went about his "dismantling work" never so much as flickered — and neither the knights nor the common soldiers watching showed the slightest reaction.
It was a moment that drove home, all over again, what kind of people "Northerners" really were. And by the end of that moment, we had progressed all the way to a fully disassembled g/o/b/l/i/n.
"I-I'll talk!! I'll talk, so please!!"
When they reached the seventh goblin — and it watched its predecessor get carved into eight pieces — it couldn't take any more and surrendered on the spot.
Even so, a part of me wondered if this wasn't a little too cruel. That was when Max, standing beside me, spoke up.
"Young Master. Those are goblins. Their nature is exceedingly cunning, and they heed no voice but their own chieftain's. Rehabilitation is impossible."
"Pardon?"
"I only mention it in case the thought occurs to you. They may lie at any moment — so Sir Bearwolf's method is the best available."
I still hadn't fully adjusted to the weight of this world, it seemed. Without meaning to, I had let a look of discomfort show, and Max had gently expanded on the point.
Well… if that's the law of this world, so be it.
While I nodded along, trying to accept the rules of this place, the interrogation was already over.
"Young Master. I shall escort you again."
Bearwolf flicked the blood from his blade with a casual swing and pushed back through the reed-like growth. I had half expected something like this, but watching a slaughter show unfold right in front of me still left my head a little foggy.
Blood never does get easier to look at, no matter how many times you see it, I was thinking — when a sweet scent brushed past the tip of my nose.
Sniff, sniff.
Sweet?
Curious, I looked around. The smell was coming from the surrounding plants. More precisely, from the juice seeping out of the slightly cut midsections of their stalks. The moment I saw that, I knew exactly what I was looking at.
This is… sugarcane.
A crop that only grew in warm, humid climates. For a second I simply marveled at finding a plant you never saw in the North — and then the full weight of the realization hit me like a bolt.
Wait. Sugarcane?!
My mind snapped fully awake. Sugarcane. What was it, really? The same plant Columbus had introduced to Haiti, the one the Western powers had gone mad planting across their colonies afterward.
And why?
Because this is the raw material for sugar.
That sweet scent brushing my nose came from the sugar content in the stalk juice. Squeeze it, concentrate it — and you get sugar.
And that wasn't all. Once you extracted the sugar from the cane, a dark liquid remained. That was molasses — a foodstuff in its own right, and more importantly, something you could ferment into alcohol or MSG. Rum, for the record, was the liquor made from this very sugarcane — specifically from its molasses.
I only know this because I used to make liquor myself.
With this one plant alone, the number of dishes the North could produce would jump by entire orders of magnitude!
There really was treasure in this dungeon!
My head felt like popcorn going off.
Before coming here, I had actually asked Max about dungeons.
"Butler. There's a legend that dungeons hold treasure. Is that true?"
"Treasure in a dungeon? Haha. That really is little more than a legend."
In any other story, clearing a dungeon meant the boss room dropped loot — that was the unwritten rule. This world had no such romance. A dungeon was nothing more than a distorted space, and all you found inside were monsters and open ground.
The reason they reported these places to the Imperial Court at all was purely a monarchical concern — the fear that someone might secretly raise private troops in a hidden pocket of space.
So Max's advice had been not to expect treasure of any kind.
No treasure? It's sitting right in front of me!!
The sugarcane fields stretched as far as the eye could see, from one end of the visible ground to the other. The entire space might as well have been one vast plantation.
The Northerners around me looked at the scene and registered nothing more than well, plants are growing here. Not me. Especially not once I remembered that sugarcane was good for far more than just eating.
So there I stood, grinning like a man who had just struck gold — when a thunderous roar exploded from the far side.
"KRAAAAGH!!! Who dares trespass on the King's land?!"
I lifted my head. At the edge of the sugarcane fields, a settlement had been built across a wide open clearing. And at the head of that settlement stood a goblin easily twice the size of any of the others.
"A Goblin Lord."
Max spoke.
"He would appear to be the master of this space."
This world's dungeons may not have held treasure — but they did have boss monsters that played at being kings. The master driving the goblins that had ambushed us was, without a doubt, that Goblin Lord.
"Kyahahah!! I'll tear you all apart and devour you alive!!"
The Goblin Lord came on, radiating a murderous aura. Looking closer, I saw drool running freely from its mouth — thrilled, it seemed, at the prospect of a long-awaited feast. The other goblins followed in a similar mood. I turned my head and asked Max at once.
"Butler. Is that thing strong?"
"As a Goblin Lord, it will be stronger than ordinary goblins. But a goblin is still a goblin. Weaker even than the mutant ogre you saw last time. In short — a nobody."
Is that so?
Indeed, the moment Bearwolf spotted the Goblin Lord, he set his hand on his sword hilt without waiting to hear a word of its ranting. He looked ready to annihilate it on the spot, as if no grand strategy were required at all. And at that sight, the Goblin Lord — which had been charging forward with its booming roar — skidded to a hard stop right where it stood.
"Kieek?!"
From a distance it hadn't felt much, but with a blade shoved in its face, reality seemed to have forcibly snapped back into focus. The Goblin Lord shrieked and flailed in pure panic — a genuinely pitiful sight. And behind it, the lesser goblins, still oblivious that their commander had lost its nerve, kept charging on pre-loaded orders.
"Kieek! Kiek!"
"Kiik! Kiiik!"
It was the scene just before a massacre of the helpless.
And then — something flashed through my mind like lightning.
"Wait!!!!!"
I shouted the idea that had struck me with the force of a thunderclap. At that cry, the Goblin Lord — and Bearwolf and the knights who had been about to charge — all froze mid-step.
"…Young Master?"
Bearwolf turned, asking with his eyes what on earth had happened. I stepped forward at once and spoke.
"Hey, you. I've got a splendid proposal."
"Kik?"
"Become an oni for me… No. How about a duel of chieftains?"
"Kiiik?"
"Y-Young Master?!"
I brushed past Bearwolf — who looked more shocked by my bombshell than he had by the goblin ambush itself — and kept my eyes locked solely on the Goblin Lord.
"I am the chieftain of this group. Looking at you, you seem to be the chieftain of yours. So let's settle this between leaders."
Needless to say, chaos erupted the moment the words left my mouth.
"Young Master! You'll be killed!"
"Have you gone mad, nyang?!"
"Why all of a sudden?!"
Bearwolf, Yumi, Max — every one of them tried to stop me. But to me, this situation mattered more than anything. And the creature across from me was every bit as desperate.
"Kiiik!! Wh-what are you talking about?!"
"Exactly what I said. If you win, we withdraw as we are. I'm their chieftain — I have that much authority."
"I-is that true?!"
"Of course. I swear it on my name. In return, if you lose, you hand all of your authority as chieftain over to me. And you give that order to your underlings right now."
The uproar behind me was still going strong, but I waved them down. Uneasy as they looked, they seemed to decide I had something in mind, and fell quiet.
The Goblin Lord saw that, too.
Look at those eyes rolling. Calculating hard.
From what I'd been told, goblins were like Zerg. The chieftain made the decisions; everyone else just followed orders. Which meant, put another way, that the chieftain was the only one among them who even understood the concept of fear.
Looking at this group, I'm clearly the softest target here — so of course it thinks this is worth a shot.
I can see right through you.
The goblin that had strutted out full of swagger, only to realize the ground under its feet was a grave, now seized on the lifeline that had dropped from the sky and cried out in a trembling voice.
"F-fine!! You keep your promise too!!"
"Ah, of course."
Only then did the Goblin Lord spin desperately around and bellow something at its underlings. In short: a deathmatch had been arranged — and with the armband of leadership on the line, every last goblin's eyes lit up like stars.
Yeah. No one can resist a deathmatch.
And so the duel of chieftains was set. We agreed to clash in the open ground between our formations, and the Goblin Lord edged forward, casting sidelong glances at everyone around it.
"Hey… keep the promise…"
"Ah, of course. In return, do me one favor."
"A… favor?"
"Yeah. Looking at us, I'm clearly weaker than you. So I'll attack first — just take the opening hit for me. More precisely, let's decide the match with that one blow. If you withstand it, you win. If you don't, I win."
"Kiiik?"
The Goblin Lord tilted its head for a moment. And then —
"Kiiik!! Fine!!!"
— its mouth stretched ear to ear in a grin wide as a washbasin. Had it decided a path to survival had just opened? It craned its neck out obligingly, presenting a perfect target.
Okay. Got you.
I swung my fist at the creature grinning so giddily in front of me.
And then —
Crack—!
Its head burst apart like a watermelon.