“Don’t worry too much. You were planning on leaving town right away,” Zulan reminded him. “You wouldn’t have had the time for all that.”
“That’s right,” Eleonora assured him. “You defeated this big fish before you even registered. It won’t be long until you do the same thing again.”
“I guess that’s true,” Vandal said, quickly snapping out of his funk. “But why was the town overrun with goblins in the first place? The Heartner Domain does still exist, right?”
“Yes. Of that, I’m sure,” Eleanora said. “I’ve never been here to the Olbaum Electorate Kingdom myself, but if an entire ducal domain had been eradicated, word would have reached Amidd. From the look of these ruins, this place hasn’t functioned as a town for a while.”
“This is only my second time here,” Zulan said. “I’m guessing it’s because of the end of trade with us in Talosheim? Still, there should be a bigger town to the north and a mine to the south. I would’ve thought this place could cling on as a waypoint between them.”
“Maybe monsters made it too hard to maintain the town,” Braga suggested.
“That might be it,” Eleonora said. “The same thing has happened on the Milg side as well.”
Kachia, a former adventurer from the Milg Shield Kingdom, had told them that Talosheim getting wiped out by the Milg army had led to a proliferation of monsters that giantling adventurers had previously removed from the equation. These monsters had crossed the Boundary Mountains and started to cause trouble in Milg. The same thing had probably happened here. As Braga had suggested, maybe the duke decided to abandon this place rather than fight to keep it.
“Makes sense. I was wondering why the area is semi-demon barren,” Zulan said. “You think they can’t thin the monsters out?”
The difference between a demon barren and semi-demon barren was the strength of magical power that polluted the ground. The term “demon barren” required an amount of magical pollution that would corrupt regular plants into monsters by simply growing there, making monsters a naturally occurring phenomena. Another condition was the presence of demon barren produce, such as kobol fruit. A demon barren could be returned to normal land by removing everything that held magical powers—for a forest, chopping down the trees, or for a swamp, draining it—and then having members of the clergy purify the region.
On the other hand, semi-demon barrens were places inhabited by multiple monsters that, for various reasons, moved there from an actual demon barren. For those using the land, this essentially made it the same as a demon barren. But if the monsters were wiped out, no new ones would appear. The land would continue to be a normal forest or swamp.
Based on this description, the city of Talosheim and its surrounding environs, which turned everything growing there into monster plants, legitimately counted as demon barrens. But no one living there cared about that.
“What do you want to do?” Eleonora asked. “Go back to Talosheim?”
“No. We’ll try the town to the north.”
“That’s more promising than the mine,” Zulan agreed. “After 200 years, whatever veins ran underground have probably dried up.”
“What? Veins of ore in this world can dry up?”
“King, you’ve been spending too long in dungeons,” Braga scolded.
Vandal felt a surge of appreciation for how fortunate of a location Talosheim was.
The following day, Vandal set about turning the remains of the town into a base that Eleonora and the others could use. He turned the water in the wells into Aqua Golems (which looked kinda like slimes) in order to swap it out with fresh stuff and had the black goblins do some cleaning. He smoothly repaired the walls, put up watchtowers, and laid traps, all using Golden Creation. Then he extracted information from the spirits of the goblins he had slain concerning the direction of the town and set out on foot.
He got sick of walking but decided his muscles needed more of a workout than yesterday. He switched to all fours and dashed along by digging into the ground with his claws.
“Once I’m registered with the guild, oh, once I’m an adventurer—!” He was humming a tuneless song to himself, rumbling along for about thirty minutes.
He finally found the road. It was a rough piece of work, likely to rattle some bones if ridden in a carriage, but also definitely the work of human hands.
He looked at it for a while, determining for sure that this was an Olbaum Electorate Kingdom road. Then he raised both arms to celebrate this big step toward another of his goals—before freezing up in place and muttering to himself.
“Traveling alone is no fun.” He had tried singing to himself and celebrating his progress, but the feelings didn’t last. He couldn’t maintain the mood.
Vandal had been lonely in both of his previous lives, but on Ramda he always had people—living or otherwise—around him. His resilience to loneliness had therefore taken a nosedive.
Of course, he had more than a thousand spirits around him in that very moment. However, as soon as a person became a spirit, their personality started to break down. All the spirits around him, including the goblins he had killed the previous day, were closer to tools he made with Golem Creation than allies or friends.
“I need to get to the town quickly or I’m going to start making undead to talk to. North is—that way.” Vandal drew his bearings from the position of the sun and started to gallop again.
After a while longer, a smell wafted to his nose that stirred up his hunger. “That’s the smell of blood. It’s goblin . . . but with human mixed in.”
It smelled like goblins and humans were fighting up ahead. I should help the humans out! Vandal floated up off the ground using Flight and then zipped off at top speed. He didn’t know whether the adventurers or soldiers were winning or losing, but even if they held the upper hand, surely they wouldn’t complain about someone else joining on their behalf. That was Vandal’s thinking. Still, he certainly didn’t feel confident about communicating with people on whom Death Attribute Allure didn’t work.
Kasim blocked the club on his shield, then smashed his shield into the enemy.
“Eat this! Shield Bash!”
“Glebah?!” The Goblin Soldier took the shield in the face and went flying away. However, another Goblin Soldier immediately stepped into the gap.
“Hey, Kasim! When did you learn Shield Bash?!” shouted Fester, a hopeful future swordsman.
“I was just saying it!” Kasim, hopeful future shield bearer, shouted back. “I can’t actually use the battle tech!”
“That’s what I thought!” said Zeno, the scout who rounded out their party of three adventurers. They were out hunting goblins in order to thin down the numbers of the monsters appearing on the road between the village and mine. All three of them were Grade E adventurers who had only recently graduated from the adventurers’ academy, but they were confident that they could handle a small force of goblins with maybe a handful of Goblin Soldiers. But they weren’t expecting, on a road that wasn’t even a demon barren, more than ten Goblin Soldiers at once.
“Gi-gah-gi-gah!” Even worse was the goblin in command. It had featured in their lessons at the academy as a well-known newbie killer: a Rank 3 Goblin Barbarian.
“Why is there a Goblin Barbarian here anyway?! We weren’t warned about this!”
“Everyone mistakes it for a normal goblin! That’s why it’s called a newbie killer!”
Up close, a Goblin Barbarian clearly had a thicker neck and more muscular limbs than other goblins, but from a distance, it just looked like a slightly fatter goblin. In most cases, it also used the same weapon as other goblins—a wooden branch, swung like a club, although maybe a slightly bigger one. Newbies would therefore mistake it for a Rank 1, regular goblin, and close in just to get hammered to mush by its Brute Strength.
“Better than the other type of newbie killer—a Goblin Mage!” yelled Zeno.
The inside of a Goblin Barbarian’s head was no different from that of a normal goblin. It might be in command, but the only commands it was going to give were “Don’t run away!” and “Keep fighting!”
“Sure, but this is still dangerous! We aren’t scaring them off!” Festa chopped down a Goblin Soldier with his sword, but another just stepped up. He had already killed three of them.
Goblin Soldiers would normally get the hint by now and decide to cut their losses and run for it. But a Goblin Barbarian only cared about fighting. The Soldiers were more scared of the Barbarian than they were of Kasim and his party, meaning they weren’t going to run anywhere other than into battle.