Then, a problem occurred.
“Grooooooooar!!”
With a mighty wail, a magical beast appeared from between the trees. It was standing majestically atop a small cliff, and slowly its eyes turned toward Gobta.
This was a blade tiger, the so-called king of this dense forest. It enjoyed a rank of B, pretty well ensuring that an F-ranked goblin stood no chance.
This beast was here for the animals around the watering hole, just like Gobta was—but thanks to Gobta taking action first, all the animals had scattered, leaving the blade tiger with nothing. Nothing, that is, except Gobta himself. And his catch, of course, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to sate this monster.
“Gehh! Are you after me?!”
The blade tiger leaped from its perch, unfazed by the height of the cliff, and landed in front of Gobta without a sound. It made him flinch, but his instincts told him that running was pointless.
As it was, there was no escaping a fate that ended in the tiger’s maw. What should he do?
Gobta thought as hard as he could. Then…
If this is how it is, I’ll have to struggle as much as I can!
Steeling himself, Gobta readied himself against the blade tiger. There weren’t many options at his disposal. His left hand still had a stone in it, but against a blade tiger, that wouldn’t accomplish much.
Maybe that would work…
He suddenly recalled the knife given to him before his departure. Maybe it could wound the creature? And maybe, if he was lucky, that’d buy him enough time to escape. Once he made that conclusion, there was no time to waste. There was nothing else at his disposal, so he decided to believe in his chances and keep resisting until the end.
First, Gobta lobbed the stone. The knife was his real ticket out of here, but if the tiger dodged it, he was dead. So he used the stone first to distract the beast. The blade tiger easily leaped out of its way, and Gobta, anticipating where his adversary would land, removed the knife from his pocket and prepared to hurl it toward—
Um, this is a mushroom…?
It took a few moments for him to realize that it was no knife he was about to throw at the blade tiger. But he was already in motion, unable to stop, and away the mushroom went. He was kind of planning to eat that later. The one dull-colored mushroom he could find in a grove full of poisonous ones. He’d meant it for a snack and then promptly forgotten about it.
But then something beyond Gobta’s imagination took place. It turned out that this mushroom was a rare poisonous type, one containing spores that were loaded with lethal venom. Gobta had been walking around with that in his pocket the whole time, and then he’d thrown it at a magical beast.
The blade tiger glanced at the mushroom hurtling toward its face, then opened its mouth. It used its Voice Cannon skill in an attempt to vaporize it—which proved to be a mistake. The pulverized mushroom immediately released all its spores, which floated on the breeze and landed all over the tiger’s body. It fell to the ground, twitching, racked from head to toe with pain; the spores had entered its eyes, ears, and mouth and were relentlessly punishing its senses.
For the first time since birth, the blade tiger was experiencing a truly indescribable level of pain. Gobta wasn’t very smart, but he was smart enough to take advantage of the situation.
Whoa! I don’t know what happened, but this is my big chance!
A greater adventurer would have closed in to stab the final blow. Not Gobta. Quickly, he planned his escape, making sure to pick up his hare before he left.
Reaching his battered old wagon, he tossed the bunny corpse on top of the load and ran away at full speed. He kept going as long as his breath would let him, until he finally made it to what seemed to be a safe place.
He breathed a sigh of relief, having escaped what had been the greatest danger ever to occur in his life.
✦ ✦ ✦
Being freed from certain death immediately reminded Gobta that he was hungry. He recalled the hare in his possession, but not even he was simple enough to let his guard down here. He decided to move over to the riverbed, which would give him a good view of his entire surroundings, and used some stones and dead sticks to fashion a serviceable outdoor stove.
The danger of the past few moments was now firmly behind him as Gobta’s thoughts turned to his appetite. He drained the carcass of blood, bristling with anticipation, and skinned and gutted the animal.
Before long, it was arranged on a stick atop the fire. Now all he had to do was rotate the stick around and make sure the surface was fully cooked. It was a simple recipe, combined with some berry juice squeezed over the carcass, and it took only a few moments to wrap up.
“This is great! This is so great!”
Gobta chewed on the meat, not minding the oils dripping down on him. There was nothing more delicious than the first meal after staring death in the face. In Gobta’s case, after living off wild strawberries and assorted nuts for the past X number of days, the first meat he could remember tasted as though he had ascended to heaven. Nothing could have made him happier.
As far as he was concerned, the fear he’d felt before the blade tiger was all in the past. His brain had already processed it as just another incident in his life. It was the first time Gobta had gotten to eat his fill in a while. This he did, with gusto.
“Right!” he said. “I have a feeling tomorrow’s gonna be a great day!”
To Gobta, the past might as well have been a faraway oblivion. All that really mattered was the next day.