## Chapter 28 – Goblin Extermination
Goblin Park received three skulls.
“Wow, seriously. I never imagined anything like this.”
After the frenzied slaughter party, we counted the goblins’ corpses. Burned to death, suffocated, crushed, and riddled with holes, the bodies of the goblins numbered a staggering 40. It was an incredible number.
Initially, I thought it would be a win if we caught just four each, but in terms of numbers alone, it was more than double that, at 10 each. At 3 coppers per goblin, that was a whopping 30 coppers per day, which was a pretty hefty price for playing with fire while hiking.
“Ugh… the smell of burning meat…”
“Can you eat goblin meat?”
“I wouldn’t really recommend it.”
Surprisingly, the smell of burning meat felt fragrant.
It had been ages since I’d tasted proper meat. Goblins are monsters, so if properly grilled, it might taste decent, but these were all burnt to a crisp, so I couldn’t eat them. They were all just lumps of carcinogens. No matter how desperate I was for meat, that was a bit much.
“Anyway, shouldn’t we cut off their heads?”
Gibson said. As he said, we had to take the heads as proof that we had exterminated the goblins. But with so many, it was going to be difficult to carry them all. As I said, we were only expecting about four, so we didn’t bring a separate sack.
“How should we transport them? It’s 40 heads, after all.”
“The village is close, so can’t we just go back and forth twice?”
“I guess so.”
Anyway, we carried out the unbelievable, unprecedented task of cutting off the goblins’ heads one by one.
No matter how much I’ve adapted to this other world, my sensibilities are still those of a modern Earthling.
One or two might be okay, but I couldn’t just happily separate bodies and heads in the midst of such a massacre.
Naturally, my hand slowed down. Not to mention Saint, even Gibson and Meria were hacking off necks like slicing tofu, so I felt a little ashamed being the only one like this.
“Ew.”
Meria made a disgusted noise, probably because the neck bones weren’t cutting properly, so she just used force and ripped the head off along with the spine. The blackened blood vessels and dangling spinal bone created an absurdly gruesome scene.
Oh, damn. As I hesitated at the sight, Meria looked at me and said.
“What, you’ve only done that many? You need to get it done faster.”
“It’s just… seeing them all dead like this suddenly feels gross.”
“What? Gross? You’re a bit sensitive for a guy.”
“Aren’t you grossed out, Meria?”
“I don’t know? Not really?”
Well, she was born and raised in a world where killing and being killed is commonplace, so there wouldn’t be much difference just because she’s a woman. She was gleefully beating goblins to death just a moment ago. Cruelty and ruthlessness are virtues in this world.
A kind-hearted person like me has a hell of a hard time living in this other world.
So I sliced off the goblin’s head with my knife. It was truly a dog-shit job.
“I have the impression that all foreigners are barbaric, but I guess that’s not the case.”
“Whatever my people are like… this is a chilling thing to do.”
After cutting off 40 heads and lining them up, I felt like a police officer who had just discovered a bizarre collection in the home of a serial killer suffering from antisocial homicidal urges.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I couldn’t help but curse.
It was a truly dog-shit experience.
“What about the bodies?”
“Leave them. Other monsters will come and eat them all.”
Gibson, who was kicking the headless bodies with his foot, asked, and Saint said as if it were nothing. It’s not like the goblins were our friends. I don’t think we need to bury them. If we leave them alone, they’ll all become part of nature.
They’re nicely grilled, too.
“The smoke’s clearing out, so why don’t we go inside now?”
Meria said.
“Ah, right.”
I looked inside the cave. Now that we were done cleaning up the corpses, it seemed like the smoke had cleared out somewhat.
Now it was time to explore the goblin’s lair in earnest. Since they have intelligence, they have a habit of collecting “useful” things inside their lairs.
Now that it was completely empty, we could get better loot by raiding their lair than by just taking a few heads.
“We should be careful, though.”
Gibson said. As he said, there was a possibility that some surviving goblin remnants remained inside.
If we let our guard down and got hit in the back of the head, the medical bills would be huge, so we slowly searched the cave with our weapons pointed forward. Meria, with her shield raised, took the lead, and I guarded the rear of the party.
The inside of the cave was very dark. However, the mineral dust embedded in the walls emitted light here and there, providing adequate visibility. I don’t know what it was, but when you go into caves, these things often glow.
“There are a few more corpses.”
Whether there were more goblins who couldn’t escape, several goblins were slumped over here and there. We each stabbed the lying goblins once. There was no chance they were alive after this mess, but double-checking was essential.
If those damn goblin bastards pretended to be dead and suddenly jumped up, I’d be like, “Oh, shit, you scared me!” and my liver would fall out. There’s no medicine for a dropped liver.
“Oh my, these must be babies. How pitiful.”
After turning a corner at the innermost part of the cave, a small room appeared. There, baby goblins were huddled together, dead.
Meria said they were pitiful, but it didn’t seem like we were the ones to say that, since we had just roasted and cut their mothers and fathers with fire and knives.
“It’s a shame. If we caught these and sold them to the arena, we’d make some money.”
The arena always buys monsters to be opponents for the fighters, so they always buy monster babies and eggs at high prices. But would they pay 3 coppers for a baby goblin? I was going to cut off their heads, but I didn’t because I was conscious of Meria, who had just said they were pitiful.
“There’s a lot of stuff scattered around.”
“Indeed.”
As we went further inside, there were various pieces of junk scattered everywhere.
Unidentifiable bones and fur. In addition to branches, there were also tools used by humans. Mostly rusty axes, rusty knives, or half-broken arrowheads.
Goblins know how to use tools. Therefore, they know that human tools are very good. That’s why they pick up things like this whenever they see them. Even if they’re rusty, iron blades have considerable power.
Looking at it, it seems like it was originally stuff the goblins had, but they dropped it all when they ran out in a hurry because of the fire.
I picked up a very old, crude dagger.
“Well, there’s a lot, but there’s nothing that’s really worth money. It’s all old and worn out. Wow, look at this rust. Is this an ancient relic?”
“Hmm… I guess so. I had high expectations for nothing.”
“Still, let’s take everything we can.”
“Of course.”
Anyway, these tools can be sold for money, so we decided to take everything we could.
And so, the quest was finally coming to an end. We gathered the equipment and heads we had collected outside and settled the accounts.
“43 heads… and several pieces of equipment that don’t seem to be worth much… If we divide this by four, we’ll each get about 35 coppers.”
It was clear that we couldn’t carry all the goblin heads and the equipment we had collected in one trip.
As Meria said, we would have to go back and forth twice. But it would be quick. The village was right in front of us.
“It seems impossible to carry it all at once. We’ll have to come back.”
“If I had known this would happen, I would have brought a sack.”
So we went back and forth to the village twice.
“Oh… you’ve collected a lot! With this, we won’t have to worry about crops for a while! As expected of Saint! It was worth trusting you with it!”
It was around sunset when the transportation was finished. The old man we saw this morning came out with the reward money and welcomed us. Judging by the smile on his face, he seemed genuinely pleased that the goblins had died en masse.
“Chairman, we found this in the cave, is there anywhere we can sell it?”
“Hmm, the quality isn’t very good. But if you take it to the blacksmith, you might get a few coins. No, I’ll just buy it from you here.”
“Thank you.”
The reward money was 145 coppers. Meria, Gibson, and I each took 35 coppers, and the remaining 40 coppers were given to Saint. In effect, he used his connections in the village to dispose of junk that might not have been sold, so we gave it to him as compensation. There were no complaints.
Saint expressed his gratitude.
“Shall we go back?”
“Let’s.”
“Ah, I want to sleep soon.”
We completed our first E-class quest in Isvant. Now all that was left was to go back to the guild and get it stamped. Wow, 35 coppers. It was a pretty good earning. I’ve been lucky lately. I couldn’t have imagined this in the old days.
Overall, the party members were decent, and the quest went smoothly without any problems. There were only a handful of times like this.
“I’ll stay here, so I’ll leave the processing to you.”
Saint said to us as we were about to return to the city.
“Is it because you know the village? Are you planning to stay overnight?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, okay.”
Saint stayed in the village, and only we returned to the Adventurer’s Guild. It was only when it was completely dark, as the sun had completely set halfway there, that we arrived at the guild.
We passed the tables where the drinking party had already started and received the quest completion stamp.
It was truly a touching moment.
“It was easier than I thought. Fire, I mean. If something like this happens again, we should use it again.”
“I agree. I think we learned something good from Saint.”
If there’s a cave, set it on fire first, and the public will applaud.
I repeated those words in my mind.
“Hey, just speak casually. We’re going to keep seeing each other at the guild anyway, right? Come to think of it, I’ve been the only one doing that.”
Meria said that. Come to think of it, I was the only one who had been using honorifics.
I felt a kind of freshness from this. The only woman I knew was Winia, and there was no way that bitch would treat me this kindly and casually. Seeing Meria’s attitude made me feel strange.
It seemed that Meria was kind.
“Is that so? Okay, then. Goodbye, Meria.”
“You change your attitude quickly. Okay, Katt. You too, goodbye.”
I smiled and waved back at her as she smiled and waved her hand.
“Thank you for today. I think we were able to finish the job easily thanks to you.”
“No, no need to thank me. All four of us worked hard, so that’s why. Gibson, have a good night. I hope we can work together again sometime.”
“Then goodbye.”
After saying goodbye to Gibson, we all finally parted ways.
I had rarely encountered such a successful party in my life. Like the law that if five people gather, one of them is bound to be trash, the parties I had joined were all flawed in some way. That’s just the average personality of adventurers.
To think it would end so smoothly… I congratulated myself with a happy heart and returned to the inn.
The inn was, as always, at dinner time. The owner subtly asked me if I was thinking of having dinner, but I didn’t think it was worth paying for, so I refused.
Instead, I bought a glass of beer. Then I went into my room, threw off all my clothes, emptied the glass by myself, and then threw myself onto the bed in a good mood.
And I fell asleep like that.
