The Night Ambush
Ironically, I was the first one to notice the attack — and I'd been asleep. My enhanced physical stats had sharpened my senses as well, and the countless times I'd been ambushed in the field were enough to jolt me awake even in the middle of a dead sleep.
Shit!
I couldn't figure out why. How the hell had they found us? And this was no chance encounter. They'd come for us on purpose. Roughly thirty of them, most of them warrior-class.
"W-what's going on, Shin-hoo?"
The night watch was Park Nam-young and Nam Eun-ju.
"Have a nightmare or something? Haha."
I sat up fast.
"Ambush! It's an ambush! Wake the others, now!"
"W-what? An ambush? What are you talking about…"
Both of them stared at me, bewildered by the urgency in my voice.
"Damn it, are you telling me you can't see that?"
They followed the direction I was pointing and still looked lost.
"See what, exactly…"
Kieeh…
The distinctive cry of a goblin, drifting in from far off.
"Hiek!"
Nam Eun-ju's face went white as she realized I'd been telling the truth.
"…This can't be. How…!"
Park Nam-young at least managed to do something useful. He started shaking the others awake, and Nam Eun-ju jumped in right after him.
Fortunately, no one had stripped off their gear to sleep. I drew my weapon at once and kicked out the campfire.
It was already too late. The goblins knew exactly where we were.
I relied on the moonlight and my heightened senses to pick them out of the dark.
Kieeh?
They looked almost puzzled.
So they weren't tracking us. They didn't even know we were here.
The confusion lasted only a moment. True to their nature as monsters, the instant they spotted humans in their territory they let out a shriek that could have split the night and charged straight at us.
"W-what the hell!"
"Kyaaah!"
The party, still heavy with sleep, reeled at the sudden assault. But only for a second. Everyone had known something like this was possible, and they had their weapons out and were meeting the goblins almost as fast as I was.
Steel rang against steel beneath the moonlight.
A pack of about thirty, including goblin warriors. Honestly, if I'd still had my old physical stats, this would have been a razor-thin fight — the kind where I'd have told the party to hold for a bit and then fall back. But things were different now. This was a number I could handle alone. I met them head-on, letting just enough of my physical ability show that I wouldn't look completely overwhelming.
"Everyone, form a basic circle and hold! There aren't that many of them! We can win this!"
We'd come this far. Pulling out now would have been a waste.
I cut the goblins down one by one, riding the sheer advantage of my physical stats. After the first few kills, my body felt a shade lighter.
The others stared, startled — and yet, somewhere underneath, they looked like they'd almost expected it.
Showing them just enough had been the right call. Not so overwhelming that it broke the picture, just a cut above the rest of the party. In raw numbers, I was putting out physical ability somewhere in the high teens to low twenties.
"That's our leader! Come on! Hold the line! He'll be right there to back us up!"
Kim Insil was laying it on thick, pumping me up for the others.
The goblins ringing us seemed to realize something was off. They started edging back, hesitant.
Ki-kieeh?
"Not a chance!"
I couldn't let them go. If even one of them got away, the information would spread. Better to wipe them out and finish the commission by another route. Time would be tight, but there was still a window.
That was when it happened.
Kieeeeeh!
Another goblin force was coming in from the distance. Only about twenty this time, but packed with warrior goblins — not an opponent you could shrug off.
Fifteen of the original pack still standing. For reasons I couldn't pin down, goblins just kept funneling toward us.
"Damn it! Why the hell—!"
I wanted to say the same thing.
The others had seen the reinforcements too. Their faces went grim. Our position had been made.
I shouted at them at once.
"We're pulling out! We can't hold here! Fall back to where we rested during the day!"
"Oppa! What about you?!"
"I'll catch up! Go on ahead!"
The encirclement was already half broken, so getting out wasn't impossible. The party hesitated for a beat, then understood there was no other choice when I repeated the order. They smashed through the goblin ring and broke away at a run.
Once we fled, the ten or so goblins left behind just stood there, looking lost.
With no one watching, I poured mana into my body and pushed my physical ability to the extreme.
A rush of air — then a wet, bursting impact.
Ki-kieeh?
Speed on a completely different level from anything I'd shown them. The warrior goblin didn't even have time to understand what had happened before the head of the one beside it simply exploded. After that, killing the rest took less than ten seconds.
That should do it.
I still didn't know why they'd come, but from that first reaction, it wasn't because they'd detected humans here. So if I killed every goblin that had actually seen us, even if another tribe showed up, their response would be a little slower. They'd know something had happened, sure — but they probably wouldn't jump to humans killed them and ran. Not here, in the middle of their own territory.
Cutting down the number of pursuers was a bonus, too.
I sprinted after the party.
They hadn't gotten far.
"Kyaaaaah!"
"Aaaagh, stop, stop coming at me you fucking bastards!"
The party was already in a fight with another pack. About fifteen — a number they could handle, except the dark was working against them.
A third pack already. I still couldn't see the cause. Then a memory from my first life cut through my head.
Johann!
Johann had done something. Not just the food and the map — he'd smeared the scent of Zeh on something else as well.
But this many attacks… they hadn't tracked our route from the day. For the word to spread this wide, he would have had to use a whole pile of the stuff…
I'd sort out the details later. First I had to reach the party.
I had no choice but to show a little more of what I could do.
And this still wasn't the end. They were coming again.
Packs of ten, packs of nearly forty — goblins pouring in from every direction at once.
I yanked some of the food Johann had given us out of my inventory and scattered it.
"Shin-hoo, what are you doing right now…!"
"Did anyone open their inventory while they were on watch?"
There had been no attack at the first village we'd found, and none while we were moving. Whatever the problem was, someone had taken it out during tonight's watch.
The party froze.
Then Nam Eun-ju spoke, quietly.
"Park Nam-young said he got it from Johann and threw some insect-repellent on the campfire. It was some kind of dried leaves…"
Damn it.
I understood exactly what had happened.
"W-what does that have to do with anything…"
The goblin packs I could sense around us were multiplying by the second.
How much had he burned? How far had the smell spread? There were five tribes in the area. I'd only shown the party two of them. And we'd come in fairly deep, and the tribes weren't that far apart to begin with…
Part of me wanted to grab only the Na sisters and run. I couldn't. If I made that call, thinking of the Na-yeon I remembered from my first life, there was a real chance she'd walk away from me.
We'd gotten reasonably close — but there was a limit to that, and I knew it.
It was still manageable. This was a situation I could still get us out of.
"Follow me. We move as fast as we can."
In the end, I gave up on pushing deeper. Running was the better play. As far as I was concerned, the commission itself was already done. If I marked this area for them, the lord would accept it. We might not get the underground waterway commission like this — but Na Seoyun mattered more than some hidden piece, and more than screwing Johann over.
We peeled toward the outskirts, avoiding the goblins' presence as much as we could, and when we had no choice but to meet them we hit only the smallest groups. I had no choice but to show close to half of what I could actually do.
I slaughtered a pack of about ten in an instant and we started moving again. That was when Joo Ha-yeon asked, carefully,
"…Shin-hoo, how are you so strong?"
"Leveling up, and the power of my mana stat."
"…Mana?"
"My mana stat is at five. I only just became able to use it recently, but when I do, my physical ability and my senses both amplify."
"How did you even get mana? I leveled up once and mine is still at zero…"
"I had three from the start. At first it wouldn't budge no matter what I did, and then somehow it just… worked. Once I could use it, my stats started growing faster too, so getting to five didn't take long."
A lie. But it was a lie that wouldn't come back to bite me, even years from now. By then they might just remember the old me as a genius.
You weren't supposed to throw your real stats around, but this was false information anyway, and I needed the party — specifically Na-yeon and Na Seoyun — to buy it. Physical stats in the high teens plus a mana of five was more than enough to explain the kind of fighting I was doing right now.
We were cutting hard for the outskirts when it happened.
"Aaaagh!"
A scream tore out of the back of the party. It was Park Nam-young. An arrow was buried in his knee.
A sniper!
A goblin sniper — one of the highest-tier classes in the goblin line. Regular goblin archers were rare enough. A sniper?
Why? We'd come in deep, but we were still a fair distance from the heart of their territory. A bad feeling crawled up my spine.
There was no time to dwell on it. I snatched a stone off the ground, dumped as much mana into it as I could, and slung it at the goblin sniper's face.
The stone crossed the dark at a monstrous speed and burst the goblin sniper's head apart.
A single wet crack, and what was left of the sniper's body folded. It didn't even have time to scream.
Every eye in the party locked on me, but there was nothing I could do about that. I just hoped the mana excuse would hold.
"Nngh…"
I hauled Park Nam-young onto my back.
"Keep moving. Keep moving. We don't have time."
That bad feeling of mine landed exactly as I'd feared. We did everything we could to avoid the goblins, and instead of breaking out toward the edge we were driven deeper and deeper into the forest.
An encirclement was forming.
The scent of Zeh had to be soaked into our clothes and gear by now, and even our way out was cut off. We didn't have much odor-eliminator to begin with — enough to scrub the smell off one or two people at most — and we didn't have time for that anyway.
The fighting never stopped as we ran. The goblins had started making torches, lighting up the forest. They knew, clearly now, that they were being invaded.
I argued with myself a hundred times over as we moved. If this kept up, I really might have to grab only the Na sisters and break out.
But if I did that, as I'd already told myself, there was a chance the sisters would leave me.
In the end, I reached back into the memories of my first life and decided to go with the last method I had.