Chapter 34

“I knew it. That thing isn’t human.”

Drich raised his hammer forward.

“Quil! Get your head straight. If we can’t kill those two, we’re the ones who die. You wanted to see Twella, didn’t you?”

Quilbion lightly crumpled the talisman gripped in his right hand.

They’d reached a point where words couldn’t resolve things. Lil had confessed. That she’d killed the children brought here four years ago.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not some lunatic who enjoys murder. It was an unavoidable sacrifice.”

Her tone was cold. It felt even more chilling because she seemed to be stating truth rather than making excuses.

“People aren’t pigs. To kill them and call it a sacrifice…”

“You don’t know anything!”

Lil shouted. Cracks appeared in her previously composed face.

“I didn’t kill them because I wanted to. I wanted to protect those kids to the very end too. But look at this situation. Look around!”

Lil scanned the surroundings with trembling eyes.

“There’s no way out. It’s a perfectly sealed world. Is merely staying alive really living? No, it’s a curse. I released those children from the curse they would’ve experienced.”

“Quil, if you’re going to keep listening to that bullshit, listen by yourself. I can’t take any more.”

He’d said that, but Drich was stepping back half a pace. The momentum that had seemed ready to charge at any moment had disappeared.

If this were the Drich I know, he would’ve rushed in without a word—Quilbion glanced at Drich.

Something had changed since he’d remembered being betrayed by his father. A subtle change that was hard to pinpoint and explain.

“Drich.”

“What?”

“Calm down a bit.”

In alley fights, the excited one charging in always suffered losses. At least that’s how it was in street brawls.

Moreover, the opponent was a goblin. Even if they’d learned sorcery, could they really fight that monster?

The fear he’d tried to ignore spread up his spine. Geron’s rigidly extended tail. If swept by that, their soft flesh would be cleanly bisected.

“Then tell me. What exactly are you trying to do?”

Lil stepped forward, gently pressing on Geron’s shoulder.

“Geron told me. That you both have talent. That hammer you’re holding, you created it with sorcery power, right?”

Lil pointed at the black hammer. Drich glanced around, then scattered his nark.

The black hammer disappeared.

“It might be a strategy to drain our nark.”

Drich whispered. Drich could maintain the hammer for 4 minutes. Considering nark recovery speed, keeping the hammer summoned throughout the conversation would be wasteful.

“You watch for an opening and go for Geron’s head. I’ll try to draw their attention.”

While Quilbion was speaking to Drich, Lil kept endlessly talking.

“Individual power is weak. You can’t escape this place with that kind of sorcery power. But even in despair, hope springs forth.”

Lil took one step forward. Quilbion stepped back by the same distance.

“Goblins. Yes, they’re terrifying and awful creatures. But not all of them are like that. They’re just like humans. There are humans who commit terrible acts, and there are humans who save others through self-sacrifice. Right?”

“So you’re saying Geron is different?”

Lil turned her head to look at Geron. Eyes filled with trust. Lil seemed to understand and accept everything about Geron.

Well, that’s why she’d be showing her back to a goblin.

“I’m not saying Geron is completely good. But he’s close to good. He also wants to escape from this place.”

“The children?”

“…It couldn’t be helped to raise and accumulate sorcery power. But listen!”

Lil’s expression was gradually brightening. She walked over casually, as if approaching a friend.

“Hey, don’t come any closer!”

Drich shouted fiercely. Lil held both hands forward as if she understood, telling him to calm down.

“The children. Yes, those kids. The kids I cherished and cared for. I’m truly sad when I think of them. But those kids went peacefully. They finally escaped from this place full of nothing but despair.”

“When we slaughter pigs outside, we don’t make excuses like that. We need meat, so we slaughter them. Sister, just tell me one thing.”

Quilbion looked back and forth between Lil and Geron as he continued speaking.

“You killed the kids because you wanted to live, right?”

Lil cried out almost like a scream.

“It’s different! You saw it too, didn’t you? How much those children followed Geron.”

He had seen it. The children smiling brightly while looking at a monster. That wasn’t intimacy formed overnight.

“Those kids escaped from hell and found peace here. Over the past two months, under my and Geron’s care, those kids regained their smiles.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why did you do that? In the end, you’ve been killing kids all along. No, before that, let me ask one more thing. Exactly how many people were in that house? Huh?”

The more the conversation continued, the more it reeked.

Lil’s words were smooth, but rotten things clung between the words. The employer’s words, full of curses and kicks, felt cleaner by comparison.

The employer at least knew what he was doing. He didn’t cry out for justice, nor claim it was for your happiness.

“We’re done here, you two.”

Lil’s face, which had been turning gentle, suddenly turned cold.

“Right. It was greedy of me to hope for understanding. But don’t worry. ‘We’ will definitely survive.”

The moment Lil’s lips closed.

“Dodge!”

Quilbion sensed Geron’s nark changing.

The dizzying sensation of a spike looming before his eyes.

He threw his body backward as he shouted.

Thud!

The tail that had flown in at some point pierced the ground. He saw the dirt floor deeply gouged out.

“Haa, haa, haa.”

He turned his head at the ragged breathing.

Drich, gripping the hammer, was staring at Geron with vacant eyes.

“Drich!”

It was an opportunity. With all four tails stuck in the ground, now was when they had to close in.

His nark moved according to his will.

He formed a hand seal and used the ‘art that makes the ground sticky.’ The talisman that left his grip fluttered down beneath Geron’s feet.

Sizzle.

The talisman burned with a yellowish glow. The nark contained within scattered in all directions.

The mana that should have moved along with the nark didn’t budge at all.

Huh?

Quilbion’s mind froze.

It was sorcery he’d practiced countless times in Al Terua’s room.

The way to form the hand seal, the method of throwing the talisman, the format for inducing the phenomenon.

It was sorcery he could do with his eyes closed from practicing it until he was sick of it…

He couldn’t even enter phenomenon induction before the sorcery broke. Was there a problem with the talisman as medium? Or had Geron done something?

More than that.

Can we even win this fight? No, is this even a fight?

A Yellow Form goblin.

He’d believed they could handle it easily. Because the nark they possessed was similar, so if they just landed their sorcery, there’d be a chance.

It was all wrong.

From the start, it was wrong.

Practicing sorcery and using sorcery in combat were completely different things.

Al Terua had snapped a Yellow Form goblin’s wrist like breaking a child’s arm. Seeing that had given him hope.

Wait, wait.

Al Terua didn’t teach us how to fight…

The thoughts whirling through his mind stopped in an instant.

He felt nark moving again. The sensation that made his neck run cold.

He gave up trying to confirm with his eyes and entrusted his body to instinct.

He threw himself to the left.

Swoosh!

The tail swept past where he’d just been standing. The spines embedded in the tail made a clamorous sound.

Confirming with eyes and dodging seemed impossible. The moment he thought “huh,” it was already right before him.

He had to read the nark moving according to the enemy’s intent.

But would miracles happen one after another?

“Drich! Move!”

If they stayed bunched together, they’d be taken out in one strike. Drich moved to the opposite side.

Geron’s head slowly turned, then its face split in half.

The head split in two looked at Quilbion and Drich respectively.

“Geron!”

Lil shouted. Geron briefly said he understood, then moved.

Damn it.

Geron’s body moved toward him. Quilbion gripped a talisman again and formed a hand seal.

Sitpin Yellow Form sorcery.

‘The art that makes cats cry from all directions.’

As he crushed the talisman and threw it into the air, the talisman caught fire again and the sorcery was interrupted.

Geron’s third tail. The faint nark that flowed from there had merely touched the talisman.

Just that was enough to shatter the sorcery.

The moment he realized the twenty types of sorcery carefully stacked in his head had become useless, Quilbion drew out the wooden dagger.

Once.

After using it he’d collapse from exhaustion, but if the powerful force this magical instrument poured out could kill Geron.

If even this got interrupted like the talismans…

“Just give up. You two shouldn’t die yet. If you overexert yourselves and get hurt, it’ll be too big a loss for us.”

Lil spoke from a short distance away.

Quilbion finally realized.

If Geron had wanted to, he would’ve died already. He wasn’t using lethal attacks because there was a reason to keep them alive.

Which meant.

Quilbion looked at Geron’s split face. A monster wearing human skin, but the eyes were saying many things, like a human’s.

Perhaps a similar animal after all.

Geron was calm. Eyes that didn’t know danger at all. The gaze of a seasoned hunter on a boring hunt.

That monster knew.

Just how powerless the two humans before him were.

That’s why he was completely letting his guard down.

Quilbion aimed the dagger at Geron.

Despite confirming the newly drawn weapon, Geron’s steps were unhesitating.

As expected, he believed.

That it couldn’t possibly be harmed by powerless humans.

“Now!”

He shouted toward Drich in the distance.

A promised situation.

If he attacked Geron with the magical instrument, Drich would charge in from behind.

Quilbion looked at Drich. Their gazes met. His friend standing about 6 meters away had his body half-turned.

The mouth that had contained countless words of friendship and loyalty was bizarrely twisted.

The kid was scared.

That’s why he’d chosen.

To run.

All sorts of thoughts passed through that brief moment.

Betrayal surged up first, but soon a hollow laugh appeared as if the strength drained from him.

“Yeah, fuck it. Your own life is most important.”

Quilbion looked at Geron and moved his nark. The dagger ruthlessly absorbed the nark.

He looked at Geron’s expressionless face and bared his teeth.

“You can’t properly read nark, can you?”

Geron stopped dead in its tracks.

But it was already within range.

He could feel it. The dagger brimming with nark was trying to spew everything out.

Krrrrkk!

The tip of the wooden dagger split apart, creating hundreds of strands.

Got it!

The powerful magical instrument that had half-destroyed Al Terua’s room swept across Geron’s body.

And then.

Thud, thud thud.

With feeble sounds, the strands the dagger created bounced away. It couldn’t even cut through the one tail wrapped around Geron’s body.

Strength smoothly drained from his grip.

Geron slowly approached and thrust his split face forward.

“Would there be a reason I’d need to read nark?”

The split mouth produced a bizarre voice. It was when Quilbion was rapidly moving his hand to his waist.

“Aaaah!”

His palm was pierced through. A single long spine was embedded in his palm.

Pain like being burned, and strength draining from his body.

He was collapsing. Even wanting to hold onto consciousness, there was absolutely no way. Even the pain was becoming hazy.

Thud.

Geron leaping off the ground and flying away entered the vision of Quilbion, who’d fallen face-first on the ground.

He could hear Drich’s scream faintly.

“…Should’ve just charged in.”

Between his vision slowly closing, he saw Lil’s feet.

“Don’t worry. You won’t die painfully. I really do cherish and love you both…”

The sound grew muffled.

Quilbion slowly closed his eyes.

* * *
Translator Note:
I’ve been debating whether to use he, it, or they for the goblins. So far, we have read description like, this goblin have woman face, this goblin have man face, etc etc.
I’ll be honest, I’m still unsure. But, what I think I would do in the future is that, use they/them generally. If, later on, when there is a description like “this goblin have woman face” or the opposite, I will use the appropriate pronoun.
Sorry once again if you found any inconsistency on how I use pronoun for the characters. I will improve them in future chapters.