As he followed the village chief's hunched back, Kyle kept his eyes lowered, mechanically analyzing the surrounding landscape.
The village lay steeped in darkness, so silent it felt less like a settlement than a graveyard for the dead. The sparse fences looked less like barricades meant to keep beasts out and more like crude stockades meant to keep something inside from escaping.
The bloodstains scattered along the roadside had already dried black, but the overlapping footprints stamped across them took on a rather interesting pattern. They were not the mindless tracks of beasts fleeing in confusion or rampaging wildly. Along the edges, there were marks where figures had stood at regular intervals, as if keeping watch. The footprints in the center had entered in orderly ranks, then exited again in a consistent direction.
It looked remarkably like a marching route taken by a human army under strict control.
'Not the work of a simple pack of wild goblins.'
The contents of the monster compendium he'd read in the library flashed rapidly through Kyle's mind. A monster group controlled under the command of a hobgoblin leader. Rather than burning the village and committing indiscriminate slaughter, blinded by hunger, they were clearly using it as a stable 'raiding ground' and 'food storage' under a certain discipline. The only being capable of giving goblins this kind of organized movement was the ruler coiled deep within the forest—the hobgoblin.
"...It would be difficult to head straight into the forest on a night this dark. As it happens, there's an empty cabin at the very edge of the village. Why don't you stay there for the night?"
The chief led Kyle far beyond the center of the village. The chief led Kyle far beyond the center of the village. At the spot closest to the entrance of the Black Forest, in a desolate place untouched by human warmth, the chief's steps finally stopped before a ramshackle cabin standing alone.
The chief pulled a rusty key from inside his coat and handed it to Kyle. The rough hand holding the key trembled faintly, but without pause. Kyle stared at the chief's face with empty eyes. The chief desperately avoided his gaze, staring only at the ground. For this to be an act of kindness—offering a place to rest to an unfamiliar mercenary—his manner held far too much anxiety and guilt, tangled together. It was like the cowardly pity of someone handing a final meal to a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse.
"At first light, I'll personally guide you to the forest entrance. So don't come outside tonight, no matter what, and make sure you bolt the door tight. Then I'll be going..."
When he finished speaking, the chief vanished into the darkness without looking back, fleeing as if pursued. Watching his back recede in a flustered rush, Kyle turned away without interest. Being told to bolt the door tight was, in other words, no different from being told to stay put and wait quietly inside. This cabin, isolated at the edge of the village, was practically an altar where the villagers placed the sacrifices they regularly offered to the monsters in the forest. Kyle saw through the villagers' shallow yet desperate ploy at once, but he had no intention of getting angry or chasing after the chief to seize him by the collar.
Creak. Kyle opened the old wooden door and entered the cabin, slowly sweeping his gaze across the interior. A faint smell of blood stabbed at his nose beneath the stink of mold. An overturned chair and a shattered table lay scattered in the middle of the room, while the floor bore dark, muddy streaks as if something had been dragged toward the door. The marks were fairly recent. They were evidence that the home's original owner had been dragged away alive by the creatures that came down from the forest.
Kyle sat on the broken bed. He neither removed his armor nor unpacked his things. Instead, he drew the black iron shortsword from his waist and laid it across his thigh, then lightly ran his fingers over the handles of his three throwing knives as he inspected them. The beastly senses he'd gained by devouring the orc's vitality picked out every object in the room with perfect clarity, even in the darkness.
Ten minutes passed in silence, perhaps.
Rustle. Careful human footsteps sounded outside the cabin. Their owner seemed to hesitate for a long while before the door, then cautiously pulled down the handle.
Creak. Pale moonlight seeped through the gap, and a middle-aged man wrapped in a worn outer garment slipped into the room. He was one of the villagers who had anxiously hovered behind the chief ever since the village entrance. When the man met Kyle's eyes—Kyle sitting alone on the bed in the darkness and staring at him without expression—he flinched and stepped back. The boy's obsidian eyes, as if filled with blood, glinted with an especially chilling light in the darkness.
"...K-kid. Are you... are you asleep?"
His voice was thick with moisture. He trembled, unable to overcome his pity for the young boy and the pangs of his own conscience. Kyle did not answer. He simply stared at him. As the heavy silence tightened around his throat, the man finally dropped to the floor and let out a muffled sob.
"Run! Right now! The job we got from the mercenary guild is completely fake. The chief... we... we deceived you!"
The man crumbled beneath his guilt as he looked at Kyle's young face. Unable to hide the truth any longer, he began confessing everything.
"Those things aren't just a pack of hungry beasts. A huge, terrifying monster... something called a 'hobgoblin' appeared in the forest a while back. It turned the goblins into an army, training them like beasts. Every night, they come down to the village and hurt people. In the end, they dragged the chief's young son, my wife, and all the village children into the forest."
Kyle's eyes narrowed slightly. Just as he had expected. The creatures whose intelligence had increased were taking hostages. There must have been a threat that if Berdam's regular army or a high-ranking mercenary company intervened, they would slit the hostages' throats. That was why the chief had falsified the report, downgrading the request to an appearance of a low-level goblin pack.
"They're holding the hostages' lives over our heads and threatening us to bring a living sacrifice and food to the forest entrance once a week. Today is that day. There isn't a single blood relative left in the village to offer as a sacrifice... So to save his family, the chief planned to throw in some young kid who looked as easy to handle as you. He locked you up alone in this isolated cabin!"
The man sobbed, repeatedly banging his head against the floor.
"No matter how precious my family is, I can't shove a little kid like you into a tiger's jaws. I'll quietly show you the way, so please, kid, escape through the back door and run before it's too late!"
After spilling the truth, the man hurriedly got to his feet and tried to pull Kyle by the arm. But Kyle's body did not move an inch, as solid as a rock. Instead, Kyle gently brushed the man's hand away and reclined diagonally across the bed.
He acted as if he'd already lost interest in this tedious story. The man stared down at Kyle in shock.
"D-didn't you hear me? They're going to storm this house and take you any second! If you stay, they'll eat you alive without leaving enough bones to bury!"
Kyle gazed at the ceiling with dull eyes, then spoke briefly in a calm, dry voice.
"I understand the villagers' circumstances well enough. But I have no intention of running."
Kyle's icy voice froze the air in the room.
"If you want to live, go home right now, bolt the door, and cover your ears. It will get noisy outside soon."
This was not merely the bravado or stubbornness of a young boy. It was the chilling composure of a perfect predator waiting for its prey to step into the trap of its own accord. Crushed beneath the overwhelming coldness in Kyle's gaze, the man could not force out another word.
"I... I warned you."
Those were not the eyes of someone afraid of death. The man backed away, trembling, then fled the cabin with a face twisted by fear and confusion.
Perfect silence returned to the room.
Kyle closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. The beastly hearing he'd developed by absorbing the orc's vitality began gathering even the faintest vibrations dozens of meters beyond the cabin. The villagers' betrayal and shallow lies could not stir even a trace of anger in his ironclad reason. On the contrary, he no longer had to comb through the pitch-black forest searching for their tracks. They were coming to him on their own. There could be no more efficient or perfect hunting ground.
Scuff. Rustle.
Eventually, well past midnight. In the stillness, with even the wind silenced, strange, light footsteps began circling the cabin, stepping over the dry grass. An ordinary goblin would have smashed through the windows with a shriek and charged inside, but these were different. Following a strict chain of command, they muffled their footsteps, making not even the scrape of their weapons, and formed a perfect perimeter. Their chilling organization was no different from that of a human assassination squad.
Kyle slipped a hand beneath the old blanket covering him and gripped the rough leather hilt of the black iron shortsword in a reverse grip. Every muscle in his body compressed tight, like a bowstring drawn to the breaking point.
Creeeak. The cabin's old wooden window was forcibly pried loose from the outside, silently despite the effort. Three gleaming yellow eyes began scanning the room from the darkness. After confirming the shape of a human asleep beneath a blanket on the bed, they exchanged short, grotesque hand signals.
Slip. Three goblin assassins climbed through the window, claws raised, and glided into the room. In their hands were pitch-black daggers coated at the tips with beast excrement and deadly poison. The largest goblin in front approached the bedside and raised its dagger straight up, aiming for the sleeping human's heart.
Boom! A dull, explosive crack erupted in the silent room. Kyle's body sprang up from the bed like a released spring, violently throwing the old blanket at the lead goblin's face.
"Kieee?!"
As the blinded goblin flailed its dagger through the air in panic, Kyle's overwhelming reflexes tore through the darkness and surged forward. When the orc's brutish strength and speed combined with Kyle's thin, lightweight frame, they produced an abnormal velocity the goblins' eyes could not even begin to follow.
Slash! The black iron shortsword in Kyle's hand flashed diagonally like lightning. From the lead goblin's right shoulder to its left flank, it split the creature cleanly in two, thick leather armor and all. Before the blood could even gush, Kyle kicked off the floor and spun his body, before the corpse had touched the ground.
Only then did the two goblins in back, having watched their companion get severed in an instant, charge at Kyle with bizarre shrieks. Like trained soldiers, they attacked in tandem—one swinging at Kyle's lower body while the other thrust at his upper half. But instead of panicking and retreating, Kyle dropped his stance as low as possible and drove straight into their guard.
Slice! The wrist of the goblin attacking low was severed clean off by the black iron shortsword.
"Kieeeaagh!"
As the maimed goblin opened its mouth to scream in agony, Kyle's left hand drew a throwing knife from his waist and drove it all the way into the creature's open mouth. With a gruesome crunch, the knife pierced its neck vertebrae, and the goblin collapsed face-first onto the floor.
Only one remained. The last goblin realized that the human boy before it was not a simple sacrifice. He was the real monster that had waited in the darkness to tear them limb from limb. It spun around and leaped for the window, desperate to warn its companions outside.
"Going somewhere?"
Along with Kyle's dry voice, the black iron shortsword left his hand and cleaved heavily through the air.
Thud! The heavy black iron shortsword buried itself deep in the middle of the leaping goblin's back. The sheer force and impact kept the goblin from being thrown out through the window; instead, it was horribly pinned to the cabin's old wooden wall like a giant insect. The creature's limbs twitched and then went slack, and a heavy silence settled over the room once more.
It took only three breaths to butcher the three elite assassins that had infiltrated the room. It was an overwhelming, one-sided slaughter. Not a single proper scream had escaped the cabin.
Hissss. A murky mist began to seep from the goblins' corpses sprawled across the floor, then was drawn deep into Kyle's lungs on his breath. But the intense pulse of vitality he'd felt when devouring the orc did not come. There was only a faint energy, enough to ease the fatigue throughout his body by the slightest degree.
'Because they're weak monsters?'
Even after taking three goblin lives at once, he experienced none of the bodily evolution or explosive increase in strength that had come from the orc. Instead, some strange, alien sensation swept across Kyle's nervous system. The heavy darkness obscuring his vision receded another step, bringing the nighttime landscape into unnervingly sharp focus, while the sensation of his weight pressing against the ground beneath his feet grew as light as a feather. He had acquired the goblin species' innate traits—the ability to silence their footsteps and crawl stealthily through the darkness.
'Not their strength. Their cheap, sneaky habits.'
Rather than click his tongue, Kyle coldly cataloged the sensations of the newly acquired [Night Vision] and [Light Footsteps] in his mind like data. They were nowhere near as overwhelming as the orc's strength, but paradoxically, these gloomy and stealthy traits were horrifyingly perfect for the midnight forest hunt ahead. Kyle approached the corpse embedded in the wall, braced one hand against it, and wrenched the black iron shortsword free.
He lightly shook the blood from the black blade, then indifferently cut off the goblins' right ears and tucked them into his pocket. This was not the end of the hunt. It was the beginning of the real hunt. Outside the cabin's shattered window, along the forest's edge beneath the pitch-black darkness, dozens of yellow eyes still glinted in silence. They had yet to grasp what had happened inside and were simply waiting for the sacrifice to be dragged out.
Kyle adjusted his grip on the short sword dripping blood. Absorbing the creatures' traits, he opened the cabin door and slowly stepped outside on footsteps from which every sound had been perfectly erased.