Chapter 19 (1/2)

“In any case, let’s move from this place. If we stay, the next wave will come.”

At Lapis’ suggestion, Ritz looked at Jack’s condition.

Jack had suffered a blow to the head from the mock-goblin, and though Nim had treated it, he wasn’t in a good condition. He shook his head to clear his mind, but it seemed ineffective.

“Should I use Divine Arts?”

Lapis asked Jack, whose head was bandaged up and was chugging a potion, but he shook his head.

“Don’t need it. The potion is working. My head is still a bit dizzy though.”

“A blow to the head is quite dangerous, so I recommend seeing a doctor when we get back to the city.”

‘Thanks for the warning. If we’re able to get back safely, I’ll do as you say.”

“Can you move?”

Jack bit at Ritz, who seemed worried about him.

“Don’t be stupid. If you want me to move just give the order.”

“It’s not good to push yourself.”

When Nim, still looking discouraged, said that to Jack, who was trying to put up a bold front, he patted her on the shoulder, trying to reassure her.

“I just took a good one and went unconscious. Don’t worry about it. I can move properly.”

“I’m the one with the bigger problem. I’m out of magic spells. I can’t fight anymore.”

Quartz spoke up apologetically, but no one blamed him for it.

If Quartz hadn’t used his magic to kill one of the mock-goblins, the situation would’ve been way worse, and everyone thanked him for that, much less think of him as a burden.

“It couldn’t be helped. In any case, let’s hurry and move from here. More goblins might come, and if those black ones come again, I don’t think we could handle them.”

As soon as Ritz spoke up, Nim lent Jack her shoulder and helped him up. Then the group started to walk away from that place.

Loren, who had instantly slain the two mock-goblins that even silver adventurers had a hard time dealing with, and Lapis, who announced that she found out something about the ruins, led the group.

“What were they? Their skin and flesh were hard, but their bones were even harder. Were those a kind of high rank goblin?”

Loren looked at his great sword’s blade as he asked Lapis.

The blade was able to cut down the two mock-goblins, but Loren found some large nicks in the blade.

It wasn’t as sharp as most swords and was used more like a blunt weapon, but the edges were close to crumbling.

“They were similar to hobgoblins, but I’m sure that those were probably goblins that got larger.”

Lapis was walking forward with no hesitation at all.

It was as if she knew where she was going, and although cautious, she was leading the group confidently.

“If that was a hobgoblin, there was no way they would’ve survived such a blow from Loren and not die. That probably could’ve made an ogre’s head fly off, couldn’t it?”

“Never fought one before, so I have no idea. What were those black goblins?”

“Loren, have you noticed anything else?”

Since Lapis asked him a question instead of answering his question, Loren decided to tell her about what he noticed while he was fighting.

“The goblins were retrieving other goblins’ corpses. I don’t think they were going to preserve them as food. The goblins here are definitely strange.”

Lapis wasn’t walking that quickly.

They had no choice because of Jack and Quartz, but Loren was becoming slightly paranoid about more goblins appearing out of nowhere. He realized that he was thinking about goblins again, and tilted his head.

It was true that from the cave all the way to the ruins, the only monsters he had seen were goblins, but that didn’t mean that the next thing that came out would be goblins as well.

As Loren warned himself that biased thoughts will cloud his judgment and affect his reaction when the next problem occurred, Lapis seemed to have read his mind and told him.

“The only monsters in these ruins are goblins. Probably.”

“What?”

Loren was confused that the monsters that appear in an Ancient Kingdom ruin would be limited to goblins.

It wasn’t that he wanted there to be a guardian of sorts like he had heard from stories, but the probability of it happening being completely zero wasn’t too satisfying, either.

“Loren, have you heard of pharmaceutics and alchemy?”

The question seemed unrelated to what they were talking about until now.

But if it was from Lapis, who was demon kind, Loren decided that she must have a reason for it and answered her question.

“I’ve heard of it. But I don’t know anyone who practices them.”

“Knowing about it is enough. Then do you know about the test subjects people who practice them use?”

For a second Loren was at a loss for words as he couldn’t understand what Lapis was talking about, but immediately realized what kind of answer Lapis was looking for.

“You mean mice? The ones they use to test new medicine and stuff”

“That’s correct. Then do you know why they use mice?”

Loren didn’t know the answer to this one.

He didn’t know anything about this kind of topic at all.

“Do you think a mercenary would know something like that?”

“It’s a useless piece of information, anyway. They use mice as test subjects because they have short sexual cycles, grow quickly, and produce many offspring at once. Do you know anything else that fits this description?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a clue.”

A creature that could mate with anything, grow up in no time, and increase in numbers rapidly.

Loren said the name of the creatures that he had encountered enough for a lifetime during this quest with disbelief.

“Goblins?”

“That’s exactly right. They’re easy to breed, economically stable, won’t hurt one’s conscience, and humanoid. Are there any other creatures that are more fit to use as test subjects? I don’t think so.”

Lapis explained with quite a bit of emphasis, but Loren wasn’t sure what she was trying to emphasize, and just asked her about a word that caught his ears.

“Economically sound?”

“They’ll eat anything they’re given. Whether it be leftovers or corpses. Records from the Ancient Kingdom says that when they gave them trash from the city, the amount of trash decreased by 80%.”

“Well, I guess that’s pretty economically sound?”