“Hey, you got any MP left? I can manage a Taunt and then Strone Wall or Stone Body, and I’ll be dry,” Kasim said.
“I’ve got three battle techs left,” Zeno said. “Festa, what about you?”
“. . . Flicker Flash, twice.”
Grade E adventurers weren’t exactly flush with MP, even if they were Magicians. Kasim knew that it would be hard to make it through this with their remaining MP and overall strength. The only saving grace, arguably, was that they were all men. The worst that could happen was if they all got killed here. That was bad, but being food after death was better than being kept alive for . . . other things.
“Zeno, Fester, I’ll use Taunt to draw their attention. Use the opening to make a run for it!”
“Kasim, you can’t be serious—”
“If there’s a Barbarian on the road, there must be a big settlement of goblins nearby. You need to warn the village!” Kasim lifted his shield as he shouted, preparing to use Shield Proficiency battle tech Taunt on the Goblin Soldiers, who had fallen back a little but definitely weren’t running away.
That was the moment when a child with a large backpack floated into view a ways back behind the Barbarian.
“Huh?”
The newcomer then zoomed in, fast as the wind and just as silent.
“Rend Iron.” The child swept one hand, from which long claws extended, and popped off the Goblin Barbarian’s head.
“Huh?”
“Geh?”
“What in the?!”
The Goblin Soldiers screeched as blood fountained out from Barbarian’s headless corpse. It was killed without so much as a sound. Kasim and the Goblin Soldiers were fixated on the silver-haired child, floating like an apparition beyond the spraying blood. It was like a piece of reality had somehow slipped loose.
“Sorry, but if you’re planning on attacking those goblins, I would do it now.” After a few more seconds of watching them gape, the child—Vandal—gave Kasim and his party this warning.
“Gegah?”
“Huh? Yeah, of course!”
Goblin groans scattered as Kasim and the others quickly used the mace, sword, and knife in their respective hands to slice and smash the stunned goblins into submission. Some of the monsters snapped back to themselves and made a run for it, but Vandal swished his claws around some more, catching all the stragglers.
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Vandal.”
“Hey, well, thanks. You really saved us.”
Kasim and the other Grade E adventurers were still a bit perplexed by the polite death machine in front of them. The child had silver hair and white skin, like wax, with dollish features and a clear, high voice. He looked like an animated toy—or maybe a specter that would vanish when touched. The most vivid parts of him were the delicate, knife-like claws extending from all ten fingers, still dripping with blood, although they were also the hardest part of all of this to believe. Vandal had used those claws to slice clean through the muscular neck of the Goblin Barbarian. A monster that was called a newbie killer at the academy, something far stronger than they were.
Who the hell is this kid? The adventurers could be forgiven for thinking little else but that.
“So, oh mighty Vandal, what exactly—?”
“Please, just Vandal. You’re clearly older than me—adults, even.” On Ramda, most races treated their youth as adults from age fifteen. From Vandal’s perspective, all three of these adventurers looked to be over that age. In fact, they were all exactly fifteen, having graduated from the adventurers’ academy this year.
“Okay, then, Vandal—what exactly—are you, exactly?”
“Kasim! What kind of question is that?!”
“What he’s trying to say is—are you even human?”
“Festa! Don’t be so rude to someone who just saved our lives!” Zeno exclaimed.
Vandal, for his part, wasn’t sure what was getting the three of them so riled up, but he decided to answer their question.
“I’m a dhampir,” he replied. “I was living with my mom in the forest, away from other people. I don’t know where my dad is, or whether he’s even alive. My mom fell sick and died recently, and so I’m heading to a town with an adventurers’ guild to become an adventurer, which was her final wish for me.” He wasn’t about to share all the real details of his life, but he had a fake backstory all thought up in advance.
“A dhampir!?”
“Yeah, look. Different-colored eyes and those claws, too. Not that I ever saw one before.”
“So, do you have . . . fangs?”
Fortunately, it sounded like Vandal’s explanation had worked. Here in the Olbaum Electorate Kingdom, dhampirs had human rights like anyone else, but mixed bloods with vampires were rarely born, and while the state might recognize them, their own kind might be pickier. That meant many people living here had never actually seen a dhampir. Kasim and his party only recognized him from the things they had been taught at the adventurers’ academy—the different-colored eyes, the claws, and the fangs. They could therefore easily chalk up anything else weird that Vandal did to his being a dhampir.
I feel a bit like a monkey in the zoo, Vandal thought. “Yes, I have fangs. But shouldn’t you be more worried about these goblin ears, first?”
“Ah! Of course!”
Kasim and Festa snapped back to themselves and hurriedly set about their duties of taking the bounty parts from the Goblin Soldiers—their ears—as well as checking their chests for any magic stones. They also collected up the spear hafts from the Goblin Soldiers and even the club from the Barbarian, all wood that could be used as fuel. Vandal was surprised they would go to quite such lengths, but this behavior was normal for newbie Grade E adventurers. Kasim’s party might have looked to be fairly well kitted out, but all their gear were hand-me-downs from adventurers ahead of them. Kasim’s shield was bronze, but his mace was stone, and his armor was the heavy leather kind made from animal hide. Zeno’s knife and Festa’s sword were mass-produced items made by pouring molten metal into a mold, and they were wearing cheap light leather armor. If they weren’t relatively clean and had guild cards to show for it, they could have easily been mistaken for bandits eking out a living in the mountains. Vandal had seen plenty of those.
Vandal, meanwhile, was dressed not to attract attention. He was wearing a top and bottoms made—with a lot of effort—from soldier’s gear stolen from the Milg Shield Kingdom fort built at the entrance to the other tunnel last year. At a glance, anything of any value he might have been carrying was only in the pack, which was bigger than he was.
In reality, the only items of value were the sandals he wore. Talea had made them to allow him to use his claws. The soles were a mixture of ogre and Earth Dragon leather, with strings made of Rock Dragon tendon. Selling his sandals would have afforded a complete makeover for Kasim and his party.
“Here, you can have the bounty part and magic stone from the Goblin Barbarian—”
“No, you take them,” Vandal said. “I’m not an adventurer yet.”
“We couldn’t possibly keep them,” Kasim replied. “A Rank 3 magic stone is worth 100 baum, and the bounty part will go for 300!”
“. . . So that was a Goblin Barbarian?” Vandal asked. This was the moment when he realized that the first goblin he had killed (that day) hadn’t been a regular goblin. The sums of money being discussed didn’t really mean much to him, however. “Instead, can you show me to a village or town nearby? If you could tell me a bit about the place and where to find the adventurers’ guild, that would be a big help too. I don’t know much about things out here,” Vandal said.
Kasim and his friends seemed to accept that on face value.
“Okay. We’ll take you to the village that we work out of.” And so, Vandal got his first foothold into a human settlement.
——Name: Kasim
——Race: Human
——Age: 15
——Alias: None
——Job: Apprentice Warrior
——Level: 72
——Job History: None
——Passive Skills
[None]
——Active Skills
[Agriculture: Level 1] [Club Proficiency: Level 1] [Shield Proficiency: Level 1] [Armor Mastery: Level 1]
——Name: Zeno
——Race: Human
——Age: 15
——Alias: None
——Job: Apprentice Thief
——Level: 65
——Job History: None
——Passive Skills
[Detect Presence: Level 1]
——Active Skills
[Short Sword Proficiency: Level 1] [Bow Proficiency: Level 2] [Traps: Level 1]
——Name: Festa
——Race: Human
——Age: 15
——Alias: None
——Job: Apprentice Warrior
——Level: 71
——Job History: None
——Passive Skills
[Strength Boost: Level 1]
——Active Skills
[Fishing: Level 1] [Sword Proficiency: Level 2] [Dismantle: Level 1]