Of All Things, Like This
A warrior costs a fortune.
It is a class that has to fight while taking the hits on the front line, and early on there is nothing to it but strength and stamina—no other abilities worth the name—so you end up leaning on your gear all the harder. That was exactly the hole I had fallen into.
Darkland. The game I had played my whole life. I had been farming through the night, dozed off, and at some point I was here. Of all the classes, I had become the one that devoured the most money, and—just as I always did out of habit whenever I made a character—I had come out a woman.
"Kiet!"
"Hah!"
A dull crack.
"Why the hell did it break?!"
Damn it. I had cut down three goblins, and the sword snapped.
"Swing it like that and of course it breaks. Hahaha."
I should have been warier of merchants peddling junk. There was still far too much about this place I had not gotten used to.
"I bought it today!"
Ever since I arrived, every fight emptied my pockets. I had not had a single easy day. It was the same now. The weapon I had scraped my entire fortune together to buy—the one I had finally worked up the nerve to purchase—had broken clean through.
I was staring blankly at the ruined sword, snapped so completely I could not see any way to fix it, when the man beside me tossed me another blade.
Levan. The rogue who had been traveling with me ever since I got here. A rogue by class.
"Use this, at least. Just picked it up."
A longsword a hobgoblin had been carrying. It had looked a little large on him; in my hands it felt a little small.
"We're almost done. Tough it out with that."
Levan said it as he strode on ahead.
We had come to steal the goblins' treasure. My sword had already broken, and if we went back without the loot I would be one step from bankruptcy.
"Still, I think we've dropped most of them."
Levan spun a small dagger around his finger, playful, and scanned the surroundings. He was right. The place had gone quiet, and it seemed all that remained was to ransack the hut where the goblins were supposed to have hidden their treasure.
"We still don't know that."
"In a situation like this, what could—...hm?"
Levan was strolling toward the hut at his ease when the ground suddenly seemed to shake.
"Uh. That..."
He turned toward the sound and stumbled back in shock.
What had appeared in the goblin village was an ogre, something like twice the size of a man. It carried an enormous club, and goblins clustered around it. A helper to the goblins, by the look of it. The moment Levan saw the thing, he slapped my shoulder and fell back.
"O-ogre. We run."
"Wait."
"What—why?! If we don't go now we'll get caught. That thing is insanely fast!"
He was not wrong. Contrary to the common belief that ogres were slow, this one was a massive brute that could also sprint—extremely dangerous.
"You want to leave empty-handed?"
"N-no, but even so..."
I stepped forward with the sword. Maybe it had not expected us to fight, because the ogre faltered when it saw me come out ahead.
The goblins shrieked in rage, as if telling it to hurry up and fight, and the ogre began to move.
"Hey, hey... that thing is way too fast."
The words had barely left Levan's mouth when the ogre swung its club at me.
I already knew perfectly well how fast it was.
Steel rang.
"Ghk—!"
I got the sword up and barely blocked it, then was shoved straight back and went down. Up close, the strength was monstrous. Take a hit anywhere and I'd be pulverized.
Before I could get up, the ogre came slowly toward me. I sat there beneath that huge shape and lifted my head.
"Ugh..."
The blow must have been worse than I had thought. Strength drained out of me, and I could feel myself shaking. No—I can't afford to freeze like this.
"Uooh."
The ogre did not attack right away. It only stared at me, limp and helpless, as if it were thinking something over. What's it considering?
Then the hand that was not holding a weapon reached for me.
"Ghk—let go...!"
"S-Selen!"
The ogre that had seized me swung its club at Levan as he moved to pull me free, and because of that he could not get close.
"I told you to be careful!"
"Aaaah!"
This—this isn't how it's supposed to go.
I had never been caught like this before. Panic hit, and I thought I could hear the goblins laughing.
"Aaaah! Let go of me!"
I was thrashing in the ogre's grip when Levan charged it again.
"Haaaa!"
He read the opening cleanly, closed in fast, and slashed the ogre across the belly.
"Graaah...!"
The ogre twisted at the speed of it, and the arm holding me went slack. But Levan could not dodge a movement faster than he had expected. The club caught him square and sent him flying.
Insane. He took that hit head-on?
"Hhk—ugh."
He must have gotten an arm up at the last second, because he did not look dead. The arm was definitely broken, though.
"Ugh... hey! Try to get out of there!"
With his injured arm he heaved up a nearby rock and threw it at the ogre. Struck, and now enraged, the thing simply hurled me aside and lunged at Levan.
"Aaaah!"
Levan threw himself out of the way and ducked into the goblin hut.
In that gap I snatched up the sword I had dropped.
"Hah... hah..."
Having lost Levan, the ogre turned back to me at last.
It no longer seemed interested in taking me alive. It charged and swung that huge club with everything it had.
The wind of it tore past.
"Ugh."
The earlier blow must have landed hard on it too; its movements had slowed. I dragged up every scrap of focus I had, ducked under the incoming club, and closed on the ogre fast.
Please let my blade be enough to finish this.
"Haah!"
The distance vanished in an instant. There were plenty of open places to stab. I aimed for the ogre's badly wounded belly and drove the sword in.
"Uoooooh!"
A cry of pain. Even so, I was certain it would not go down like that.
I clenched the sword buried deep in its gut and took one more step. And then—
A wet rip.
I put everything I had into hauling the blade upward. The ogre's blood poured out, and it toppled where it stood.
Once the ogre fell, the goblins around us began to stir. But the only one still standing here was me, and I was badly spent.
"Ugh... this isn't right."
The cold reality of it made me swallow hard. In that moment my vision started to blur.
"Kieeet!"
Footsteps hammered in—goblins charging.
Thrown weapons came even sooner. I tried to knock them aside with the sword and took one in the forearm.
"Aagh!"
What had flown in was a throwing knife, very small. Buried deep in my arm, it stole the strength from the limb completely.
"Ugh..."
Poison. I lost my grip on the weapon and reached with my other arm to pull the poisoned knife free. Blood welled, and the pain was vicious. If I'm going to end up in some horrific state, maybe it'd be better to pass out first...
The moment I gave in, the clamor around me went quiet.
My darkening sight slowly began to make something out again, and before long a hazy woman shone gold in front of me.
"You who have been chosen by the Goddess..."
What?
She reached a hand toward me. Warmth washed over me, and my vision flooded white.
A feeling somehow familiar and gentle wrapped around my body, and for a moment the pain seemed to vanish.
"W-wait. Don't tell me."
This was a scene I could not forget. The prologue of Darkland. The story in which the character, brought to the brink of death, is saved by the Goddess.
Since I had possessed this body, nothing had happened—and now, at last, it had. I had waited forever, wondering when it would start.
It seemed the prologue began the moment a crisis of death arrived, just as the original scene had staged it. Kicking it off by dying to goblins, though—even for a half-baked warrior, that stung my pride.
I had not pictured it going like this. Not once. Not really.
Then, with a blaze of light, I was back at the place where the fight had been about to resume. The goblins were gone—fled, or otherwise vanished—and only the ogre's corpse remained in front of us.
"Ha. Still... I'm alive, at least."
The certainty that I had survived put a strange vigor into a body that had been dying. Alive, so I had to stay alive. Instinct, probably.
I pulled a potion from the pouch at my belt and drank about half. As the energy started to return, tears suddenly came.
"Hey, hey! You all right?"
Levan, who had been hiding in the hut, crawled out and called to me.
"What, you're crying?"
"Hic... I'm not all right."
Why are the tears coming like this? Was it my pride, bruised at nearly dying to goblins? Or had the blank stretch of the future finally scared me stiff?
"Come on, quit the dramatics. I'm the one who's actually hurt. Hand over some medicine."
Says the guy who took one hit and hid. I went over to Levan as he struggled his way out and held out the potion I had been drinking.
"You're giving me one you've already drunk from?"
"What, you planning to down a whole one?"
He did not look hurt badly enough for that. Half each would be plenty.
"Ha... I save you from nearly getting dragged off by an ogre, and this is what I get."
Levan grumbled, but he took what I offered and drank.
"Ghk... a bit better."
"The arm?"
"I think I can manage."
The medicine here would not close a wound completely, but it would restore you enough to move. As long as you were still breathing, you could make it work somehow—which was exactly why you had to ration it.
"Treasure first."
"Ah. Right."
We headed for the hut deeper in the village, the one we had heard the goblins used to pile up their goods. Once I had hacked through the straw walls with the sword and cut a rough opening, I could see the chest inside.
"Oh. It's actually here."
Levan hummed as he approached the chest with care. He checked the surroundings, then drew a small knife from his pouch and worked the lock on the chest.
"All right. Let's see what we've got."
The moment he opened it—
"Uh."
Levan stopped, flustered. His body blocked the chest from view, but the chill of it already had me uneasy.
"There's nothing."
"What?"
I shoved aside Levan, who had been crouched in front of the chest, and looked for myself.
There really was nothing. We had fought to the edge of death for this.
"No other chests besides this one? Unbelievable..."
So we had ended up worse off than if we had simply run earlier. I squeezed my eyes shut, and almost at once my head went cold.
"How much would an empty chest even fetch?"
"You think it'd be worth anything?"
"The ogre's corpse?"
"Oh. Hmm..."
Ogres were a rarer breed than people realized. Mages used to buy things like the blood or the heart. Whether the two of us could actually harvest any of that was another question.
"There are people who do that kind of work for a living, but right now we don't have much choice. Give me a second."
Levan said it grimly and walked toward the ogre.
"You sure you can?"
"What else am I supposed to do? Walk away like this and you're bankrupt."
He's worrying about me all the way out to that. Traveling together this long had been worth it.
"Keep quiet and watch our backs. Someone might show up."
I nodded and watched him work, gathering materials.
Levan muttered as he cut into the ogre's body.
"Oh. Hold on, this... we might actually come out of this with something unexpected."