A Good Goblin Is a Dead Goblin
Wielding a greatsword is the ultimate dream and romance. The mages of the White Tower might lack any sense of decency, but they’re still the clients, so I have to take the request. Not that it has anything to do with me, of course.
“Well then, I’ll be on my way!”
“Nix, wait…!”
I heard Marco calling from behind but ignored him. You don’t just eavesdrop on request details. Do that and you might end up in a knife fight.
“Guess I’ll go catch some goblins.”
I pulled out the goblin subjugation request I’d taken from the board earlier and looked it over. “Hmm, the western side. That place is crawling with bugs. I really don’t like it.”
These goblins scatter their filth everywhere, so bugs are constantly swarming them. On top of that, the forest they’d claimed was already notorious for having the worst insect problem around. I always suffered whenever I took requests there.
At least these were fantasy bugs, which meant they were huge. The small ones were the size of a palm, while the big ones were practically as large as a mastiff.
“This won’t do. I need to prepare properly.”
Wrapping my whole body in cloth seemed like the only way to feel even a little safe. I stopped by a nearby fabric shop and bought a massive pile of cheap cloth. If I did some quick modifications and attached them to my armor, they should work as decent barriers.
“Pretty tough.”
I checked the texture and durability of the cloth. Even though it was cheap, it felt sturdy enough to last a while.
“This adhesive should do the trick.”
On the way back to the inn, I dropped by an alchemy shop and bought some powerful glue. It boasted adhesion strong enough to laugh off most impacts. The super glue from my previous life would’ve cried in defeat at this stuff.
“Time to get to work.”
Once I reached the inn, I spread out everything I’d bought. It was simple reform work, but since I had to cover an entire set of clothes, it still took quite a bit of time.
“The real problem will be washing this later.”
Cleaning cloth covered in that glue wasn’t going to be easy. I might have to throw it away after just one use. At least the breastplate could be scrubbed clean with a brush, so that was a relief.
“All done!”
I put on the simply modified clothes and the breastplate one after another. The result was the birth of a fully equipped exterminator.
“Doesn’t this look like the outfits those pest control guys wore in my old world?”
In a medieval fantasy world, investing this much just to block bugs was only natural. Fail to prepare and you could literally die out there.
“Let’s go.”
The moment I stepped onto the street in my reformed outfit, curious stares poured in from every direction. It wasn’t every day people saw someone dressed like this, so I couldn’t exactly blame them.
I passed through the village’s western gate and headed toward the plains where the goblins had built their settlement.
“Seeing them come out to the plains means their tribe is pretty big.”
Goblins normally preferred settling in forests. It was better for survival. But sometimes they claimed plains instead, and in those cases you had to be extra careful. It meant their tribe had grown large enough to hunt the predators that already lived there.
Even a rough count puts them at several thousand.
No matter how rapidly I’d grown stronger, taking on thousands of goblins alone was impossible. The usual tactic in situations like this was guerrilla warfare. It offered the best efficiency and highest survival rate.
But this time, I didn’t need to bother with any of that.
“I’ve got the cheat ability called leveling up.”
This level-up had a special feature. It restored all status conditions and maximized my stamina. In short, every time I leveled up, I returned to peak condition.
“It’s basically the same as infinite energy.”
Apparently fatigue counted as a status condition, because all my sleepiness had completely vanished.
“Come here! You filthy things!”
I taunted the green-skinned goblins. They hated being called filthy more than anything.
“Grk! Human!”
“It’s alone! Catch it! Grk!”
“Female scent! Make it a slave!”
Even though there was still some distance, the stench of their disgusting waste was already reaching me. The closer they got, the worse it became.
“There are quite a few bugs too.”
Attracted by the excited goblins’ pheromones, a swarm of insects trailed behind them.
“Today my greatsword will feast on blood.”
I wonder if green blood really is green? Let’s find out!
The goblins had almost reached me. I swung my greatsword down at the one leading the pack. The goblin couldn’t handle my strength and was sliced clean in half from the top of its head to its crotch. At the same time, I slammed the ground, sending up a spray of dirt that blocked the others from advancing.
“There’s a lot of them!”
The number of goblins rushing to catch me had to be in the hundreds.
“Die, all of you!”
I charged at the panicked creatures and swung my greatsword horizontally. In an instant, three of them screamed in agony as their waists were severed.
“Scream louder! Give them fear and terror!”
Battle is all about momentum. If you start off losing the momentum, even a fight you should win can end in defeat. That’s why commanders are so desperate to maintain their soldiers’ morale.
“Not weak female! Grk!”
“Need more allies!”
“Stop it! Surround it!”
Even though their intelligence was low, they weren’t completely ignorant of tactics. They were trying to encircle me.
“You think I’ll just stand here and take it?”
In a one-versus-many fight, you always have to watch your back. The moment you’re surrounded, attacks will rain in from every direction.
“Pathetic!”
I hurled my greatsword at the goblin archers shooting from a distance. The flying blade became a vicious weapon, carving through the archers. Then I used the daggers I pulled from my inventory to slit the goblins’ throats.
“Here’s a present!”
I grabbed the goblins whose throats I’d cut—the ones gurgling and choking—and hurled them like shot puts. The formation collapsed instantly under the impact of their flying bodies.
“Stat distribution!”
I distributed my stats evenly. In this kind of situation it would’ve been best to dump everything into physical stats, but that was too risky.
I’d collapse from extreme muscle pain.
If I collapsed in the middle of battle, I might as well consider myself dead.
“Uahaha! This feels great!”
With my slightly stronger power, I swung the goblins around like weapons. I think there was a technique in one of the manhwa from my previous life where someone used people like weapons. Was it called Dress?
The goblin weapons had better impact than I expected.
“M-monster! Grk!”
“Our kin became weapons! Run! Grk!”
The sight of me swinging their own kind as weapons was clearly devastating their morale.
Hmm, this is pretty good. I might be able to use it against other monsters too.
When an enemy’s morale drops, their combat ability is cut in half. I seized the momentum and chased down the fleeing goblins, slaughtering them.
“A good goblin is a dead goblin. Accept your death obediently!”
While chasing the runners, I also picked up my greatsword that had been lying on the ground. I could kill even more with this.
“Too slow!”
Maybe because they were small monsters, their running speed was pathetic. The problem was their sheer numbers, which made chasing every single one a bit exhausting.
I distributed the stats evenly again and pushed the hunt even harder.
“Strange. There are fewer than I thought.”
After slaughtering goblins for a while, I eventually managed to wipe out most of them. Unfortunately, a few dozen had escaped.
“For a tribe that came out to the plains, their numbers are pretty low.”
That was when I noticed something odd. Their numbers were too small for a settlement established on the plains.
“It doesn’t even look like a few hundred, let alone thousands.”
I’d killed quite a lot, but it was still only a few hundred. The numbers were far too low to call it thousands.
Maybe these guys were just the vanguard.
It happened sometimes. If a goblin tribe’s lord was a high-intelligence individual, it could use strategies and tactics like a human. It was an extremely rare case—so rare that you might only see it once in a mercenary’s lifetime.
“This just got annoying.”
If they were using human-like tactics, subjugating them would become much more difficult.
“I might need backup.”
I didn’t know exactly how intelligent their lord was, but the fact that it could use tactics meant I had to stay alert. There was no telling what it was plotting even at this very moment.
“I should put the subjugation on hold and scout first.”
Goblins might be stupid, but they’re also cunning. They instinctively know what benefits them and how to make their prey submit.
“It’s been a while since I’ve done reconnaissance.”
In all my time living as a mercenary, I hadn’t gone on many scouting missions. Reconnaissance was the ranger’s domain and required quite a lot of knowledge. It wasn’t for nothing that rangers were so picky.
It’s their livelihood, so of course they’d be picky.
Still, I had the basic knowledge, so it wasn’t too difficult. Besides, since they were goblins and not people, the difficulty of scouting should be even lower.
“There they are.”
As I moved further west from the battle zone, I spotted goblins moving in squad-sized units for reconnaissance.
“…Goblins doing reconnaissance? Did all the stupid goblins I knew die off?”
I didn’t know how intelligent their lord was, but this was a bad sign. There were dozens of squad-sized goblin units out scouting. That meant they clearly understood the concept of vigilance.
There’s a saying in the military: You can forgive a soldier who fails in an operation, but you can never forgive one who fails at vigilance.
So how exactly should I deal with goblins that have pushed vigilance to the extreme?