Before too much longer, he saw a stone wall in the distance.
Finally, he thought. But it looks like it’s covered in moss and vines. Borkz said this used to be a pretty affluent place. A trading town connecting Talosheim and the Heartner Domain had grown rapidly after the two regions connected, meaning it had a relatively short history but had been a lively place for all that. With the fall of Talosheim, however, the trade had dried up, and so the town had probably fallen on harder times.
Vandal also felt like there were too many monsters this close to the town. But he hadn’t been this close to a settlement since Evbejia, so he couldn’t be sure on that part.
“Don’t tell me the place is in ruins!”
Vandal was getting concerned, so he used Detect Life to search widely in the vicinity. He was relieved to discover more than one thousand life forms, mostly clustered toward the town center. The settlement had fallen on hard times, indeed, but it wasn’t a complete ruin yet.
He noticed some of the life readings were stronger than might be expected from regular civilians. Vandal assumed those were soldiers garrisoned here or adventurers.
“Good news, anyway.” Vandal gave a relieved sigh and then dropped to the ground and started walking toward the gates. The guard on watch spotted him coming and started to make gyah-gyah noises. Vandal had turned off his Flight so as not to cause alarm, but it didn’t seem to have worked.
The impish-looking guard had dark green skin, a long nose, and drooping eyes.
Can’t beat around this bush. That’s a goblin. It was carrying a spear—a Rank 2 Goblin Soldier, from the look of it. Beyond the gateless opening, he saw a horde of other goblins, chattering, pointing in his direction, grabbing weapons, and rushing toward him.
“Gegiiiiii!” There was one goblin that stood out above the others—literally. Among his child-sized fellows, this big boy was closer to a male human in height and was also shouting the loudest. He had better gear—proper armor and shield—than the crude hides worn by the other goblins. He was also equipped with a halberd.
This was a Goblin King.
“Wow. The last King I met was of the kobolt kind—apart from my own reflection,” Vandal quipped. Then he launched off a Death Shot.
The battle between the Ghoul King and Goblin King had begun!
Skill level increased for Brawling Proficiency, Poison Dispersal (Claws, Fangs, Tongue), and Suck Blood!
“I see. So the town had become the base of operations for a Goblin King,” Eleonora said.
“You did well, though, to take down a disaster-level threat alone!”
“I wanted to see you in action, King!”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything special,” Vandal replied. The night after the battle, Vandal regrouped with Eleonora and the ninja unit, including Braga and Zulan, and was sitting, sharing food, and chatting with them.
Vandal had indeed fought the goblins. He had used Astral Projection and Spirit Bodification to divide himself and Substantiation to solidify all the new parts and then fired off Death Shots while raking his foes with his claws, chopping down the scampering goblins in a completely one-sided massacre. He even used Golem Creation to make weaponized Stone Golems from the walls of the town. He had butchered every last goblin in the place.
He hadn’t even considered letting Braga and his other ally goblins breed with the female goblins. The black goblins didn’t speak the normal goblin language, and they also looked a lot closer to humans. Neither side was going to find the other attractive.
“It was nothing special. A thousand goblins, if that,” Vandal said.
“I’d call that special!” Zulan enthused. “A Grade C adventurer would flee from numbers like those.”
“Well, I do have my tricks,” Vandal said.
“You’re amazing, King,” Braga replied.
A thousand goblins, led by a Goblin King. A relatively small horde, to say they had a king presiding over them, but regular adventurers wouldn’t go near them even if they were in a party, let alone on their own. Even at low levels, the effects of Enhance Brethren would make the enemies stronger than normal. Simply having a king with them turned normally cowardly goblins into vicious warriors. To Vandal, though, they posed no threat.
He was weak against enemies who could launch focused attacks with enough power to break through his Anti-Attack Barrier and Magic Sucking Barrier. But that meant he was close to invincible against enemies who couldn’t break those barriers. He protected his real body and soul inside the barriers, while his spirit bodies used Substantiation to fight outside. The Goblin Soldiers and Goblin Generals, equipped with conspicuously rusty weapons, couldn’t hope to land anything close to a killing blow.
The Goblin King and Goblin Mages had done a little better, managing to defeat some of his clones, but that barely registered as pain to Vandal. He could also quickly resolve the issue by using Astral Projection again. Once he turned the remaining sections of the town wall into Stone Golems, the goblins couldn’t flee even if they wanted to.
In the end, the Goblin King and his minions were eradicated, at the cost of little more than ten million of Vandal’s magical power. That power was itself well on the way to recovery, with his Magical Power Auto Recovery skill and having used Suck Blood on the Goblin King.
“But, Lord Vandal, couldn’t you have defeated them even more quickly if you used a sickness?” Eleonora asked.
If he wished, Vandal could have created a viral version of the sickness he had used during the defense of Talosheim against the Milg Shield Kingdom the previous year. Such a disease could have rendered the goblins immobile almost at once. It wouldn’t have killed them, but finishing the incapacitated monsters off would have been so easy that it wouldn’t have even counted as a battle. There were issues with that approach, however.
“True, but if the goblins had been holding captives, it would have been bad for them. There weren’t any in the end, but still.”
Goblins, like orcs, captured women to impregnate them. Vandal had considered that possibility, but luckily this particular horde had no captives. There had been some suggestive life signs, but those turned out to be female goblins.
“That’s very considerate of you, to worry about women who might not even be there,” Eleonora said.
“It was a perfectly reasonable concern. That said—don’t stop with the praise.” Good food and praise from others were the lubricants of life. Throw in some physical touch, and what else could you need?
“Well done!”
“Great work, King.”
Now everyone was giving Vandal gentle pets too. The support of these four finally helped Vandal over the hump of dejection he had been feeling after his first visit to a human settlement had failed so completely. Thanks to his friends, he got the energy to turn the dead goblins into zombies, mainly to tidy up their corpses. Then they started to prepare to sleep rough.
Vandal had no intention of using the dwellings of the goblins, so he gathered suitable wood and stone materials, then used Golem Creation to dig out some rather nostalgic hexagonal sunken homes. It was summer, so they only needed about ten of these.
The Goblin King was actually still alive, clinging on with all his limbs smashed. Vandal had Braga finish him off. He did earn some experience for it, but even the Goblin King was only Rank 4. It wasn’t enough to gain a level or anything like that.
“A bit of a waste,” Zulan commented. “If you’d defeated this Goblin King after becoming an adventurer, it would have provided a big boost up the grades.”
“It’s that big a deal? Taking out a Goblin King?”
“Sure,” Zulan confirmed. “A newly registered newbie defeating one alone? You’d go from Grade G to E right away, and probably be allowed to take the test for D in short order.”
“Wow. A bigger deal than it looks. I suppose a king is a king is a king!”
“Oh boy. That’s a huge miss.” Vandal groaned, his shoulders slumping. He wasn’t taking it so well. Lefdia had to scramble around his head to avoid falling into the cookpot.
A newbie adventurer taking down a Goblin King all alone—that would have been big news, something to catch the attention even of non-adventurers. The subculture content Vandal had enjoyed on Earth often included main characters who quickly achieved something flashy and impressive to make a splashy debut. That would have been possible here, for him—if only he had registered as an adventurer first.