Chapter 6: Goblins, Demons, and Children (2)

It was too early to get excited. Kadim carefully looked around the inside of the hut. He needed to check if there were any other monsters lurking around first.

The stale air and twilight seeping through the cracks in the walls revealed thick dust floating everywhere. Cracked pottery and dried fruits were scattered messily across the floor. No crying sounds could be heard and the only smell was the musty odor typical of old huts.

Fortunately, there were no signs of other monsters hiding anywhere.

But it wasn't completely empty of human presence.

'Mmph... mmph, mmph...'

Under the table was a girl about six or seven years old. Her arms and legs were tied up and her mouth was gagged with cloth.

Deep furrows appeared on the barbarian's brow.

'They tied up a child like this and just ran away...'

It was absurd. Unless they had offered the child as a sacrifice to the goblins, it was a scene he simply couldn't comprehend.

There must be some complicated reason, one he wasn't particularly interested in understanding. Kadim decided to untie the child and hear her story.

The rope had been tied so tightly that her arms were covered in rope burns. The cloth gag was soaked with saliva and snot. Kadim crouched down to meet her eye level and asked the child.

“I have something to ask. Where did your parents go?”

"Sob, sniff... waaaah, mommy, waaaaaaah..."

Instead of answering the child burst into tears and crawled into a corner. Kadim quietly stood up and approached her again.

“Hey, I won’t hurt you if you just answer, so stop crying…”

"Waaaah, mama, mommy, hic, hic, waaaaaaah..."

The fact that he had untied and saved her meant nothing. To the child, the fearsome barbarian was just terrifying. Kadim clicked his tongue and muttered a curse under his breath.

"...Damn it."

The problem was solved only after the merchant arrived.

Duncan entered the hut belatedly and looked around nervously. He was clearly terrified of running into a monster or a demon. He was startled for a moment when he saw the goblin with its head split open, but consoled himself that this was better than facing a living goblin.

Kadim told him to try calming the child down. Duncan nodded solemnly.

Duncan took out a licorice root and put it in the child's mouth then started shaking a small iron rattle.

"There, there! Oh my little miss! If you keep crying like that, the stream next to the village will overflow! Look at this and stop crying! There, there!"

"Sniff, hic, huu..."

Though she still looked anxious, the child somehow stopped crying thanks to the sweetness in her mouth and the merchant's smooth talking. Kadim glanced over at them.

"You're good at that. Were you a nanny before becoming a merchant?"

Duncan was momentarily flustered by the innocent question.

"Ah, ahaha... that's not it my lord. My own son back home is about her age…”

Kadim nodded indifferently as he couldn’t care less. Now it was time to hear the child's story.

"Hey, little one. What happened here? Where did your parents go and who tied you up and left you there?"

"Mommy and daddy. Sniff, mommy and daddy left me..."

"..."

"What!?"

Hearing this unexpected story made Duncan's eyes go wide as saucers. Just as Kadim narrowed his eyes, the door of the hut burst open.

Standing in front were quite a few people. A bearded man holding a hand axe and a shabby-looking woman along with what appeared to be their children.

The woman shouted in a frantic voice.

“Lenny! Baby! My baby!!”

"Damn it! Be quiet! There might still be goblins inside..."

The man tried to stop her but it was no use. The woman shook off his hand and rushed to the child.

"Lenny! Are you okay Lenny? Oh my god, baby..."

"M-mommy..."

The woman hugged the child tightly. But even in her mother's arms, the child didn't seem relieved. While the woman shed tears and muttered prayers of gratitude, the child's eyes were filled with confusion, her small shoulders trembling.

Meanwhile, the man with the hand axe flinched when he saw the barbarian's menacing build. Then he flinched again when he saw the goblin with its head split in half.

The man asked while trying to suppress his nervousness.

"D-did you do this?"

"No. My sword did it."

The man stared blankly with a dazed expression.

Kadim walked over to the table. Then he stuck his sword into the wooden floor with a thud and sat down on a relatively small-looking chair.

"I'd like to hear what happened here. Did a demon possess you and make you sacrifice your child or something?”

Creeeeak.

The old wooden chair let out a worn groan and everyone inside and outside the hut simultaneously gulped.

***

The woman took all the children outside while the heads of the households from the slash-and-burn village all gathered in the man's hut.

Pea stew and hard bread were placed under the flickering candlelight. They offered a modest dinner and then opened up to the barbarian and merchant about their situation.

“This forest was originally swarming with goblins. When the soil where we lived before became depleted, we set fires and moved our settlement here. When the goblins saw the flames, most of them ran away with their tails between their legs."

“…But then a strange thing happened. A while ago, the remaining goblins in the forest started attacking us. They were so vicious that we had casualties left and right. This fellow got his bones broken by a club and this one nearly went bald after getting his scalp bitten off."

The man pointed to a young man with a splint on his forearm and a middle-aged man wearing a worn cloth wrap. Both couldn't hide their gloomy expressions.

“Of course, we didn't just stand by. We gathered the men of the village and set out to exterminate the goblins. But there… we saw 'it' with the goblins.”

Bulging eyes and saw-like teeth. Ears that stuck out sideways even pointier than a goblin's. Its skin was completely dark red. Its arms were gauntly thin, but its claws and hands were abnormally large.

The air surrounding it screamed something malevolent.

Most shockingly of all, it could speak the human tongue.

–Humans… you are?

A chilling voice that made you lose the will to fight just by hearing it. The faces of the villagers all contorted as they recalled that voice. Kadim, who had already guessed the culprit's identity, remained unfazed.

"How many horns were on its head?"

"...Huh?"

“I said, how many horns did it have on its head.”

"Uh... none. It didn't have any."

"..."

The number of horns on a demon's head indicated how strong it was.

According to the classification Kadim remembered, a demon with no horns was low-grade, and with each additional complete horn, its grade increased to mid-grade, and then high-grade.

Kadim then asked if it had any strange abilities or characteristics. The man answered that the already vicious goblins became especially savage when they were near that demon.

That wasn't a particularly strange ability. Monsters that stayed close to demons or ate demon flesh naturally became more aggressive and stronger. Those monsters had been turned into demonic beasts under the influence of demonic energy.

Kadim gauged the demon's level based on the testimony.

'Low-class rank. Since it doesn't have any distinguishing features from other demons the type must be "Original"... It won't be difficult to deal with.'

Meanwhile the man hesitated while reading Kadim's mood. When he looked at the other villagers they nodded their heads with sorrowful faces. Only then did the man painfully open his mouth again.

"We... didn't have the strength to face that demon and the goblins. After barely holding off the goblin attacks we finally gave up and surrendered to the demon."

"..."

"Surprisingly, the demon spared our lives. Instead, it made this proposal. It would come to the village next week, so each household should offer the most useless child as a sacrifice. So we... tied up a child in each house and left."

Thanks to the goblins coming to the man's house last, his youngest daughter survived. But the other houses had already had their children kidnapped by goblins. Deep sorrow shadowed the faces of the fathers who had lost their children.

At that point, Duncan, who had been listening quietly, jumped to his feet in agitation.

"Are you all insane? How could you sacrifice your own children to a demon? Can you even call yourselves parents after doing that?”

The eyes of the man and the villagers twitched.

If it had been the fierce-looking barbarian who said those words, they would have quietly hung their heads. But since it was the relatively harmless-looking merchant, the slash-and-burn farmers retorted with angry tones.

“…Then what were we supposed to do? We're freemen who escaped a lord's reach. We can't expect a lord's protection or a Paladin's help. Are you saying we should have just fought the demon and all died like dogs?"

“Hah, do you have to fight? You’re slash-and-burners, aren’t you? Then why didn’t you just abandon your huts and run away?”

"We can't do that! It's not easy to find a settlement like this and we've already finished planting! Last year's harvest was poor too, so giving up this year's farming would be like telling us all to starve to death!"

"But still, how could you do that to a girl who isn't even ten years old..."

"For fuck sake, do you think we wanted to do that? The demon said so! Offer the most useless child!"

"Hell, then, who would you have offered? Your son who's grown enough to do a man's work? Your daughter who's engaged and waiting to get married? Just who should we have offered? Tell me! Tell me!!"

People raised their voices and screamed with veins bulging in their necks. The atmosphere became threatening as if a brawl might break out at any moment.

Duncan, who belatedly understood the mood, panicked and floundered. Shouts filled the hut and distorted shadows cast by candlelight swayed roughly.

BANG—!

The commotion ended with a heavy sound.

The table shattered as soon as the fist hit it. The food and candles on it were scattered across the floor. The barbarian gave a dry look at the overturned candlestick. He leisurely stomped out the flame before it could catch on the wooden planks.

A suffocating silence descends.

Terrified gazes wandered aimlessly in the darkness. Someone worried their heartbeat was too loud and might be heard, while someone else squeezed their eyes shut and swallowed dry saliva to hold back a sneeze.

Kadim slowly looked around at the frightened faces. He didn't particularly want to judge right and wrong. He wasn't in a position to morally condemn them either.

He didn't want commotion. Right now, what he wanted was just one thing.

"Where is the demon now?"

One of the villagers in front barely managed to answer.

"...It's in a cave deep in the forest. All the goblins have made their base there too."

"Guide me there. We'll have dinner after I get back."

The villagers’ eyes widened in unison, a chaotic mix of hope and fear.

"Y-you're going right now? Isn't it too dangerous to face a demon on such a dark night? Wouldn't it be better to wait until dawn..."

Kadim tilted his head as if he was hearing something strange.

"If you want the corpses to be fresh, do so by all means."

Though the subject was omitted, they could understand what he meant well enough. The villagers hurriedly lit torches and prepared to guide Kadim.

But the owner of this hut was somewhat hesitant.

The man was worried about a completely different problem from everyone else. He kept glancing between the shattered table and the barbariann. He approached Kadim while mumbling words he had been holding back and spat them out in front of him.

“S-Sorry to say this, but we don't really have anything to offer you as payment. As you can see, the whole village is barely scraping by so we can't offer money or even meals other than dinner..."

"I'll take it if you give it, but you don't need to pay me. I'm doing this because I need to."

Ah, is that so? Ha, haha! Thank you so much! You’ll be blessed, uh… mercenary sir!”

Though you couldn't openly sell them, demon byproducts were valuable. That's why he'd heard there were mercenaries who hunted only demons like Paladins. The man stroked his beard and secretly flashed a materialistic smile.

The shattered table had also been somewhat upsetting. But his daughter hadn't even been kidnapped anyway. If the man had demanded money, it would have been an unnecessary shared expense. He was relieved that he could get the job done for free.

But Kadim's words weren't finished.

"Instead, I'd like you to give me this. I only have one weapon right now."

Kadim picked up the small hand axe the man had been using. A faint wrinkle appeared on the man's forehead.

"Uh, that's made for cutting firewood... wouldn't it be unsuitable for killing a demon? There are bigger and heavier axes at other houses, so maybe you should take one of those instead..."

THUNK—!

The hand axe that shot out like lightning cut off the man's words.

“…H-Hah!”

The man glanced at the axe blade buried right next to his temple. The throw was so powerful that it had pierced halfway through the wooden wall. He shuddered at the thought that if the aim had been off by just a little, his own head would have been like that.

Of course, there was no chance Kadim’s aim would be off.

During previous cycles, he had chopped things to death with axes roughly thousands of times. The barbarian warrior's throwing skills had reached a level where he could hit an ant a hundred paces away with his eyes closed.

He had lost his strength, but his senses remained. Kadim pulled out the axe and said quietly.

"No. This is just right."

The man's legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground.

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