Chapter 4

After learning how to move in my newly reincarnated goblin body, I went out for my first hunt.

Actually, it was kind of an “if you don’t work, you don’t eat” situation. Today, the goblins who had been feeding us newborns with plump caterpillar-like creatures—which are surprisingly tasty, by the way—told us, “From now on, you must get your own food. We’ve all been through this, so accept it.” Thus ended the food distribution, and that was that.

On the fourth day of my new life, I had to hunt for my own food. It taught me how tough life could be in the wild. I knew it would be hard to hunt alone—gob-lone, if you will—so I told all kinds of lies and used sweet talk to get a friend or gofer, Gobkichi, and we explored the forest together.

It seemed that in this world, goblins were basically stupid. But that definitely made my job of deceiving them easier.

Another thing I learned was that while goblins could reproduce with each other, their chances of having offspring were slightly lower. As a result, they mainly abducted human women from various locations and impregnated them. I discovered this when I explored the deepest part of the cave, which also served as our sleeping quarters. In a dimly lit room next to what could be called a treasure vault—although it’s really more of a storage room filled with rusty swords, scrap wood, and other junk—I found several nearly naked human women, dressed only in tattered cloth. They were also covered in a white, cloudy fluid that they made no effort to clean off, with eyes that appeared empty and lifeless, like dead fish.

That was how I realized that goblins impregnated human women to reproduce. Some of the women in the room were beautiful, while others were less so, but all were more attractive than the goblins. The more beautiful women, however, seemed to have suffered the most. I prepared myself mentally as I understood this cruel reality. I knew I had to find a way to survive in this brutal world.

Obviously, all of the human women had been abducted from somewhere. I wanted to do something for them, but frustratingly, I knew all too well that there was nothing a weakling like me could do. I clasped my hands and said a brief prayer to Buddha instead, though it was just a token gesture. I figured that one of the women was probably my mother, but thinking about that too much was depressing, so I consciously skirted around the thought. Anyway, that’s enough on this topic for everyone’s sake.

In the vast forest outside the cave, I successfully completed my first hunt thanks to teamwork with Gobkichi, who moved exactly as I instructed—two are better than one. However, I still needed to establish a hierarchy. For example, when Gobkichi tried to eat our prey without permission, I hit him with a stick just hard enough to avoid breaking any bones and then left him lying there. It was necessary for the future.

After that, I moved on to getting what I could from the prey itself. My glorious first catch was a wild rabbit with brown fur and a twenty-centimeter horn protruding from its forehead. I decided to call this prey a “Horned Rabbit.”

I snapped the horn off at its base. It might have been too small for me to use as a weapon when I was human, but for my diminutive goblin body, it was just the right size. The best way to use it would be to stab rather than cut, like an estoc.

[Gobrou has obtained Small Bunnicorn Horn!]

The moment I laid claim to the horned rabbit’s horn, I thought I heard some announcement echoing around me from somewhere, but it was probably just my imagination.