Chapter 6 (1/2)

In a slightly listless atmosphere, Loren’s eyes suddenly turned sharp.

Lapis, slightly surprised, watched Loren as he started to reach for the great sword strapped to his back.

“Wait! I just heard something!”

Naron’s warning rang out a moment after Loren’s sudden action, and everyone tensed up.

Loren scanned the area, concluding that the others noticed the danger too late.

They were within the forest, but he decided that it wasn’t a problem because they were in a small clearing, with space to move around and see their surroundings.

As soon as he used his left hand to pull the string strapping the cloth wrapping his sword, it fell off, revealing the blade.

He pulled out the sword in front of him with his right hand and put his left hand on the handle, right above his other hand, and switched his thought process for battle.

Even for mercenaries, who were in battle very often, straining their senses for battle all the time would chip away at their minds.

Loren had seen too many who broke their minds and hearts doing so, thus he made sure to switch back when he wasn’t in battle.

He didn’t have time to enjoy the energy flowing through his body before he spotted a few shadows moving behind the trees.

The shadows looked small and humanoid.Based on how deep into the forest they were currently in, and the speed of the moving shadows, he was sure that they were not children lost in the forest.

“What is it? Monsters?”

Sarfe asked Naron, but his hand wasn’t even on the grip of his sword.

Naron, although she pricked up her ears, hadn’t even grasped the direction of where the monsters were coming from.

She kept looking around, pricking her ears and squinting, but she hadn’t noticed that Loren already found the enemy and was tracking them.

Loren, wondering if this party was going to be okay, was trying to decide if he should point out the enemy’s location, but wasn’t sure if he should take Naron’s job. Before he could decide, the enemy made the first move.

A few arrows flew at them, threading the space between the trees.

They didn’t have much speed to them, and some of them flew off into a completely different direction. But still a good amount of them were headed toward where Loren was.

“Ugh!?”

Most of them missed their target and fell around them, but one of them grazed Oxy’s shoulder, spraying a bit of blood.

Sarfe and Naron shifted their gazes to Oxy at the sound of her pained voice.

“What are they doing!?”

Loren cursed. The two should know how much of an advantage they could give an enemy if they looked away during battle.

Not even facing the way the attack came from, but instead facing a cry from a comrade, was equivalent to begging the enemy to make the next move.

Loren’s eyes turned to the monsters that started to run out from between the trees.

They were green and ugly, with shields made of wooden planks and short, rusty swords.Loren swung his sword at the goblins.

The sword and the wooden shield clashed.

Loren’s sword didn’t cut through it, as his sword wasn’t made to cut.But instead, with its weight and sheer force, it smashed through the shields and crushed the goblin’s arm, then ripped its body into two bloody pieces of meat.

Before the pieces could even hit the ground, Loren swung the sword again and hit the second goblin right on the head.

A dull sound erupted, and another goblin lost its life, spraying around things that couldn’t be made out if it was bone or flesh.

“Crap! These goblins!”

Sarfe finally realized who the attackers were and pulled out his sword, while Naron pulled out her knife to protect Oxy, who had her hand on her wound.

“Defensive arts!?”

“Don’t need them!”

Loren answered Lapis wildly and kept swinging his sword.The third goblin instantly got crushed between the blade and a tree.

Loren reflected the second wave of arrows with the flat of the blade, then tracked the direction where they were coming from.

He was able to find the goblins with bows, but was irritated at where they were standing.

There were trees blocking the way so it was difficult for him to rush at them, and there wasn’t enough space between the trees for him to freely swing his sword.

He wished he had a knife or a shorter sword. He then glanced at the ground and saw a small sword that belonged to one of the dead goblins. He picked it up and threw it at the archer goblins.

The feeble sword flew across the clearing and hit one of them, but only succeeded in giving a shallow cut.Loren picked up another one and prepared to throw it but the goblins let out a cry, surprised thatLoren had a way to attack from a distance, and started to run away.

“We’re not letting them get away! Let’s go!”

Watching Sarfe giving out orders, Loren thought

“You didn’t even do anything…”

Naron and Oxy followed his orders but Loren gave his sword a swing, shaking off the blood stained on it, and stopped them.

“I don’t think chasing is a good idea.”

“What do you mean? Our job is the hunt the goblins. We finally found them, so we should chase them and make sure we destroy their nest.”

“Yeah! A lowly mercenary like you shouldn’t butt into the leader’s decision. So just shut up and follow him!”

Loren stopped and didn’t even try to talk back to Naron.No matter how low intelligence the low rank monster called a goblin had, they weren’t stupid enough to leave their nest completely vulnerable.

Their quest didn’t say that they had to exterminate the nest.

All they needed to do was walk around and hunt down a certain number of goblins and receive their reward, so Loren wanted to avoid danger such as going into the nest, but it seemed that the rest of the party wasn’t going to listen to him.

While he was comforting himself thinking that it wasn’t the first time he was working under a useless leader, Lapis came up to him and started walking next to him.

“Your friends are way up ahead.”

Loren told Lapis without thinking, revealing his irritation, but Lapis smiled, not affected by it at all.

“Yes, you’re right. But I decided that this is the best place to be.”

He remembered that if he excluded himself, Lapis was the newest member of the party.

“It’s not that I have an ulterior motive or anything. Since priests and magicians usually fight with warriors to protect them, and since Sarfe and Oxy are together, I thought that it would be natural for me to be with you, Loren.”

“Is that how I should take it?”