Chapter 18 (1/2)

Although the goblins broke through the wall, it wasn’t like the whole thing broke down.

Only a portion of it broke where the goblins were coming out of, so the wall was still quite functional.

Loren decided that it was still possible to buy some time. He stirred himself up and took a swift step forward and swept his great sword sideways, cutting two of the goblins in half.

As he caught another one with a back swing, he realized something; the floor was too clean.

After all these goblins raining down from the hatch getting slashed by his sword, there should have been quite a bit of goblin corpses around it.

However, though there were bloodstains on the floor, he couldn’t find any of the corpses.

Loren, although not too familiar with monsters, had heard about goblins’ eating habits.

Loren knew that they would eat anything that they could find, but wondered if it was so bad that they would go as far as to eating the corpses of their own.

But still, it was weird that there was no trace of anything left.

Loren, thinking about how many weird things he has encountered this time around, continued to swing his sword with ease.

The goblins’ shields and weapons were meaningless against the weight and the force of the great sword it was being swung with.

While crushing shields, snapping daggers, and rendering the defenseless goblins into hunks of meat, Loren, without even turning around, called up to Ritz.

“Are you up yet!?”

“S-sorry!”

Loren glanced up at Ritz’s anxious voice and saw that he just above the half way point.

Loren decided it was going to take a while, and with a feeling close to giving up, he kicked a goblin that tried to slide under him and stabbed it.

“Can’t you guys pull him up!?”

Ritz was still far from the top, but Loren asked without thinking.

Meanwhile more of the wall crumbled before him, allowing more goblins to flood though.

Loren knew he could still fend them off, so he calmly looked at the number of goblins and the speed which the wall was being broken, and resumed swinging his sword.

Loren could feel the sensation of cutting flesh and crushing bones in his arms.

Taking a step back so he wouldn’t trip on the dead goblins, he heard the bad news from Lapis.

“Loren! More goblins have appeared up here as well! Jack and Nim are fighting them, but they’re slowly increasing in number!”

“Goblins again!? Why do these ruins like goblins so much!?”

Irritated, Loren took another swing, and another corpse rolled at his feet, staining the floor with its blood.

“Ritz! Are you there yet!”

“Wait just a bit more!”

“I’m fine but the guys up there aren’t! If we take too long, we’re going to be pincered from both sides!”

“I know! Damn it! I’m so clumsy!”

Loren focused on his own opponents, thinking Ritz and the others had to manage it themselves somehow.

The number of goblins coming past the wall continued to increase, and Loren immediately realized that soon enough, even he wouldn’t be able to deal with them all.

He was keeping them away from the ladder, but he started feeling impatient as the goblins started to surround him.

Even in such a situation, a calm part of Loren’s head caught strange movements from the goblins surrounding him.

Although the goblins came toward him bloodthirsty, as soon as they saw their allies’ dead bodies, they dropped their weapons and started gathering the corpses, ignoring Loren completely.

Loren had no idea what caused them to do that, but thanks to this weird behavior, he faced less goblins than he had first expected.

None of the information in his head explained their weird behavior, but he wasn’t about to ask them about it.

Even though he didn’t know the reason, it was an opportunity.

Not thinking about the logic behind it, if he killed a good number of goblins and spread the corpses around him, the goblins would retrieve them and leave, thinning their numbers.

There was no way that he was not going to take advantage of that.

The goblins that surrounded him were the ones that didn’t pick up the corpses, so if he focused on those, the goblins coming after would have to retrieve their corpses, and the number of goblins that Loren would have to face would not increase by much.

Loren couldn’t tell the difference between the two types of goblins, but he tried to choose to kill the ones that didn’t retrieve the corpses.

Above him, Ritz finally made it to the top and Quartz and Lapis pulled him up.

“You need to hurry Ritz. Jack and Nim can’t handle all of them.”

“Hurry up Mister Ritz. The goblins aren’t our only foes.”

“Huh? You mean something other than goblins finally appeared?”

“Well… Something that looks like a goblin.”

“What are you talking…Jack! Damn it! Jack!”

Ritz suddenly shouted and tried to rush up the last few rungs, but misplaced his foot, and Quartz and Lapis barely caught him from falling.

Loren was irritated at Ritz’s clumsiness, but judging from their conversation, something had happened to Jack, and guessed that he needed to get up there as fast as he could.

“Man, why does so much shit…Keep coming at me!”

Loren, for the first time, changed the way he swung his great sword.

Up till now, he had only used his arms, but this time he twisted his body while he swung his sword, using the strength in his whole body.

He was already able to crush many goblins with a single swing, but this strike was sharper and faster than ever.

The goblins that took the strike not only got cut into two pieces, but became nothing but a rain of blood and pieces of flesh, and those flew back and rained into the goblins out of the sword’s reach.

Loren, who massacred the large number of goblins around him, used that opening to jump onto the ladder and climb up.

He then swung his sword at the ladder beneath him, making sure that the goblins couldn’t chase him up, and finished climbing up the ladder, setting foot on the upper floor with no help needed.

He immediately readied his great sword and looked around at the situation, and saw Jack lying down with his back against the wall, blood dripping from his head.

Ritz was using his sword and shield to protect Jack, while Nim was struggling against something that pushed her down onto the ground.

“What the hell is that?”