Chapter 190: From Camping to an Encounter (1/2)

And so, night came.

According to Lapis, a fire at this outer region wouldn’t attract the demons’ attention. The reason was, the demons were actually aware of humans and other races entering their domain and collecting intel. If humans came near or into their town, of course they would think about dealing with them. Otherwise, they would simply acknowledge that there were few trespassers doing something sneakily, but they didn’t care enough to go over and repel adventurers.

“Because humans come here gathering intel just to know whether demons will cross the mountains and attack them.”

Dealing with some mere adventurers would only add to demons’ already-bad reputation, while those adventurers only did that much… To demons, such an action simply brought no profit. After being told so by Lapis, Loren came to think that acting with extreme caution here was somehow stupid.

Still, this time, demons weren’t their only opponents. In order to not attract unwanted attention from other creatures, they didn’t make a fire. After dinner, they hid in a corner of a village and kept watch for any strange occurrences.

“I want cooked food.”

“Later.”

As expected, Gula complained about their scarce dinner, and Loren and Lapis had to sooth her. They decided to not set up a tent, but took turns getting into their sleeping bags and keeping watch.

The strange occurrence took place past midnight, when the moon was high in the sky. It was Loren’s and Lapis’ guard shift, and Gula was sleeping soundly. Their camping site was hidden next to a building at the edge of the village, and even though there should have been no one else but themselves here, some living creature was approaching them. It was Lapis and Shayna, who noticed its appearance.

“Something’s coming. From the East. There are about twenty or thirty of them.”

[‘Onii-san, East of the village. Twenty-eight.’]

As expected, the night belonged to the King of Death. Loren gestured Lapis to wake Gula up, then moved to a spot where he could watch the east region of the village. He saw figures climbing over the village fence and got inside. The figures looked a bit bigger than a human and, for some reason, they began demolishing a nearby building with tools held in both hands.

It happened so suddenly that Loren had to wonder if he saw it wrongly. He blinked, but no matter how many times he looked, the figures still continued their work. They were extremely quiet, but very efficient in their work. As some of them carried scrap materials out of the villages, new figures joined in as if to replace them.

“What are they doing…?”

“Maybe destroying evidence or something like that?”

Before Loren realized, Lapis had come to stand behind him. She watched the scene with him and guessed with her head tilted in confusion.

“Destroying evidence…”

“To cleanly erase what happened here. Like, before it’s exposed that some unforeseen accident has happened and annihilated a dwarves’ village, let’s make it as if there has never been anything here.”

“You sound like an experienced person, don’t you?”

“I don’t make such blunders.”

Loren thought Lapis could come up with such an idea so smoothly because she was a demon, but Lapis denied it, so he didn’t delve into the subject further. Actually, if she answered ‘Yes’, he wouldn’t know how to react, thus Loren cautioned himself to not ask questions he wouldn’t know how to react to. Gula’s drowsy voice came from his back just then; Lapis had woken her up.

“What? Are those big dark goblins?”

“Big dark… goblins? You can even see colors in this situation?”

Since they didn’t start a fire, they had to rely on the moonlight for visibility. In such a situation, Loren could only see several human-like figures working, but Gula’s eyes could discern even colors in such meager light. He was once again astonished by the powerful abilities of Evil Gods. Aside from that, he was concerned about the phrase ‘big black goblins’ Gula used.

“I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before?”

“I dunno? Anyway, those are big goblins with dark skin.”

Loren searched his memory for big dark goblins, he thought he had met them before. Lapis looked at him in shock and said:

“It was our first job, wasn’t it?”

“Ah? Ahhh, that.”

It was the very first job Loren had taken after becoming an adventurer. He was asked by another party to accompany them on a goblin extermination, but that party was wiped out at the scene. He saved Lapis, who belonged to that party, and they began working together. They were chased by the goblins, got lost, then ended up in a ruin of the Ancient Kingdom. That was where they encountered the big dark goblins. These goblins were more intelligent than normal ones, and their strength and skills were also superior. They were such formidable enemies that even a party of silver-ranked adventurers like Ritz’ was also put into danger.

“No, but we sealed that ruin. It shouldn’t be serviceable anymore.”

The ruin was a facility that experimented on breeding and strengthening goblins. Loren had destroyed it by his own hands and made sure that it wouldn’t be able to run again, and the Adventurer Guild had sealed it as it was classified as a dangerous ruin. Even if the Guild’s seal was temporarily broken, the facility wouldn’t function because Loren had destroyed it. It wouldn’t be able to produce strengthened goblins anymore.

“That ruin isn’t the only one that exists. If the information is taken out, it’ll be simple to do the same thing in some other ruins.”

“Simple…”

“That ruin was dormant, but then became active again. Someone entered it before Ritz’ party.”