Fog Ahead, Beware of Falling
The fog was thick ahead, and the sign warned of a sheer drop. (2)
Frustrating as it was, the battle dragged on exactly as expected. First, I had no decisive means of attack besides magic. If I really had to count something, there was the dagger in my right hand, but using that as my primary weapon felt ridiculous. It was more like an improvised shield. At best, I could use it to parry incoming melee strikes. If I tried to get flashy with it, the only thing waiting for me was an outcome perfectly matched to my pathetic close-combat sense. In concrete terms, that meant getting gang-beaten by goblins and saying goodbye to this life.
Second, the goblins had no ranged projectile weapons. Since their main battlefield was the forest, they seemed to have abandoned long-range options long ago. If they had bothered to make any, it would probably have been some primitive bow made by tying a string to a tree branch. The power was pathetic, it took more effort to craft than a simple wooden club, and it couldn’t even penetrate the knights’ plate armor. So they had given up on distance entirely and chosen the quantity-over-quality close-combat meta. That was fortunate for me.
I didn’t have any child-sized plate armor, so what I was wearing was a leather hunting jerkin. Even if they had fired stone arrows, they would have punched right through me. It was a relief they didn’t have any.
Third… these bastards were cunning. There were many goblins and only one of me. What was the smartest way for a large group to defeat a small number? Rotation tactics, of course. If they just kept rotating in and attacking until I exhausted myself, they could win easily. I don’t know how many times I’ve said this, but why the hell are goblins in a medieval fantasy world using proper tactics?
…You might ask, aren’t there situations where the smaller force has the advantage? The knights who came with me were also few in number, so why didn’t the goblins use rotation against them? It’s called Lanchester’s Laws. It might be unfamiliar, but one of the premises is that the quality of both sides’ forces must be somewhat comparable for the larger force to overwhelm the smaller one. The classic example is the Spanish conquistadors versus the indigenous peoples of Central and South America. Of course, many factors were at play in reality, but if you simplify it to the extreme, it was ultimately the difference in firepower that overturned the difference in numbers. There was no way an army of aura users clad head to toe in plate armor—literal combat machines—could be considered equal in quality to a goblin horde that didn’t even have proper leather armor.
But in my case, it was the standard situation where the many could overwhelm the few. The only magic I could still use was Fire Ball, and I probably only had three or four shots left. Yet the goblins weren’t clustering up or charging in a swarm. They clearly had no intention of engaging me properly until my stamina ran out. Looking at it objectively, if things continued like this, I was definitely going to die.
“Fuck! Come at me properly, you sons of bitches!”
Rage boiled up inside me, but with a faint sliver of hope still lingering in one corner of my heart, I screamed at the top of my lungs. From above, however, only the faint echoes of violent battle returned—dull clangs of metal mixed with war cries. As expected, I had to solve this situation myself. A sigh was all that came out.
——Perhaps my last chance was to aim for the goblin leader and the one who looked like a shaman standing motionless in the back. Paradoxically, because they had chosen rotation tactics, I actually had more breathing room than I expected. Though that breathing room would run out the moment my stamina did—synonymous with the end of my life—at least I had enough leeway to observe my surroundings.
Strangely, there was almost no fog around here, while the battlefield above was so thick with mist that you couldn’t see even an inch ahead. I wasn’t imagining that this was artificial. By process of elimination, the one most likely causing this phenomenon was that goblin shaman. In that case, even if it was a life-or-death gamble, the answer might be to dispel the fog and hope the knights could find me.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Huff… huff…”
There wasn’t much time left anyway. My stamina was already near rock bottom; I was running on pure willpower. I had to throw the dice somehow.
“Hup!”
Letting out a short shout, I advanced for the first time. As I moved forward, I locked blades with the nearest goblin, creating a standoff—
“Impact!”
Ting!
They must have let their guard down thinking all I had to do was burn stamina. With a clear metallic ring, the goblin’s sword bounced off my dagger and sliced through empty air. It was one of the few tricks I had to cover my abysmal close-combat sense with magic. And then—
“Telekinesis!”
Using psychokinetic force, I seized the sword that had been knocked flying and hurled it at another goblin. Caught completely off guard by the unexpected attack, the goblin I was aiming for couldn’t dodge in time. The blade sank into its shoulder. It was a shame I didn’t kill it, but regardless, I had just taken two goblins out of the fight. I had to use this brief opening to finish my final gamble.
But the rest of the goblin horde was still charging. They maintained a certain radius from each other, slowly tightening the noose. From the enemy’s perspective, it made me want to shout, ‘This is supposed to be the weakest monster?’ What a load of bullshit—
“Kerrk!”
A heavy downward slash came in from the upper left.
Clang!
I somehow managed to block it with brute force. If I had better technique, I could have deflected it, but—
“Kerrk!”
This time it was a spear coming from my blind spot. I tried to take a big step to dodge, but my legs gave out from exhaustion and I rolled across the ground.
“Kerrk!”
The attacks kept coming. I rolled again to avoid another spear.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Curses spilled out involuntarily. I had to get up first—
“Gah!”
An ambush from behind. Fortunately the attacker’s blade was dull, so it wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was by no means light. Probably at least a serious injury. Thanks to that, I collapsed back to the ground. These damn bastards. I didn’t even have the strength to stand anymore, but still—
“Still… I won, you fucking insects.”
I had already achieved my original goal of buying time. The magic I had nearly finished constructing glowed in my left hand.
“Die! Fire Javelin!”
Lying on the ground, I raised my left hand. The moment I shouted, the spell flew toward the goblin leader. The magic I had built while picturing a missile made of fire had a launch speed to match. Compared to actual modern weapons its power was lacking, but it was the strongest and best spell I could use right now. Eat this and perish!
Kwaaaaaang!
With a tremendous roar, the spot where the goblin leader and shaman had been standing exploded. When the black smoke that rose for a moment cleared, all that remained were two charred corpses.
After that, the fog above began to dissipate as well. The remaining goblins looked back and forth between the explosion site and me in confusion, then turned tail and fled without looking back.
“Kekerrk! Kekerrk!”
I didn’t know if that was their language for “retreat,” but seeing the goblin swarm fleeing from the upper battlefield as well, it probably meant exactly that.
It was a relief. I had no stamina, no mana—nothing left. If any random goblin had pressed a blade to my throat, I would have had no choice but to welcome it with a polite “Irasshaimase!” But they seemed to have judged that escaping the knights was far more urgent than finishing me off.
I had won.
Despite all the hate and skepticism, I had seized victory. I survived, damn it!
The joy of having survived loosened the tension in my body. Once the tension eased, my exhausted body naturally began to feel drowsy.
Wait… if I pass out in this half-dead state… wouldn’t that be an express ticket straight to the afterlife…?
“Is… is anyone there?! Help me!”
I was truly drained, but perhaps my survival instinct kicked in. Gathering every last ounce of strength in my body, I shouted with all my might. But even that lasted only a moment. My ten-year-old body completely ignored the brain’s judgment of “This is dangerous, get up and call for help” and began to sink into the embrace of sleep. My eyelids felt as heavy as if lead weights had been placed on them; it was impossible to keep them open.
Damn it. I had a huge slash across my back, my left hand was a mess of burns, and I had rolled down a cliff so there were probably countless other wounds. If I fell asleep like this, there was no way it would end well. Even though that thought crossed my mind, further resistance was impossible. The only saving grace was that the last thing I saw was Uncle Paul desperately running down the cliff toward me—
“Zzz…”
I really survived by the skin of my teeth.
Fortunately, both the wound on my back and the burns on my left hand were cleanly healed by a single emergency potion that Uncle Paul carried. Healing without a single scar? This one thing was definitely better than my previous life.
——No, wait. In my previous life, I wouldn’t have been in a situation where I got this badly injured and nearly died in the first place, you idiot.
Agh, thinking about it again pisses me off. The fact that I rolled off the cliff and ended up on death’s door afterward was all because of that goblin leader and shaman, wasn’t it? Still, I got my revenge pretty spectacularly, so I guess I don’t have any lingering resentment.
…Of course, the fact that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t caused an accident while practicing magic was something I deliberately ignored. There was no point in remembering that now except to feel even worse.
On the way back, I lay quietly in the carriage like a piece of luggage. I could somewhat guess how my mother would react when she saw me returning injured like this. A three-hour lecture was probably guaranteed.
Clip-clop, clip-clop. Even the sound of the horses’ hooves outside the carriage sounded gloomy.
“Whatever happens, happens.”
I had already poured everything I had into the subjugation and my battery was completely drained. Whatever awaited me when I got home, the me of that moment would have to deal with it.
…It’s depressing. I won and I’m on my way back, yet today the color of my heart is a deep, dark blue. The biggest worry is that I can’t guarantee this kind of thing won’t happen again in the future.
…Whether it’s my previous life or this one, I really do go out of my way to suffer.
“…Let’s just sleep. I’ll think about the headache later.”