Chapter 51

It felt strange.

Quilbion rolled his eyes while keeping his head pressed against the pillow.

The world was still black. His eyes weren’t functioning.

That much was certain.

He turned his head to the left. The wall touching the bed. The countless tally marks carved there somehow felt like they were ‘visible.’

He raised his hand and traced along the wall.

“What the hell?”

He sat up and surveyed his surroundings.

He could sense the desk Drich had used, and the string installed on the floor. He shifted his gaze. The fruit he hadn’t managed to clear away, rotted and mushed, entered his view.

He got out of bed and walked toward the fruit rotting in the corner. He bent at the waist and reached out his hand.

There really was fruit there.

It was a bizarre sensation.

His eyes were still broken. It should be impossible to see, so why did his surroundings feel visible?

He held the rotted fruit in his left hand and covered his eyes with his right. Even with his vision blocked, he could see the rotted fruit.

“It’s not the eyes.”

There was an unknowable organ that sensed Winte as gold, the hawk as green, and goblins as dark red.

Sixth sense.

Was this what Lil had called sixth sense?

A faint laugh escaped.

He could see even without eyes. At last, he’d escaped from the past where every step required tension, where picking up objects demanded curses.

Quilbion slowly emerged from the room. The moment he stepped outside the building without relying on the string, he looked up at the sky and shouted.

“Fuck! I can see! I can see!”

Not everything was perceived clearly, but he could distinguish where things were and what was there.

Besides, when he concentrated, the shapes became distinct, so there was no major problem.

“You like it that much?”

Twella’s voice came from behind. Normally he would’ve ignored it, but today he looked at her with joy. Even the terrible person who’d killed him seemed endearing for just today.

“What’s with you?”

She was hazy.

When his eyes had been blind and everything was invisible, Twella’s fantasy had been clearer than anything in the world, but today it had become murky as if trapped in fog.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re hazy. Ah! I get it.”

Quilbion approached Twella and grabbed her shoulders.

“Fuck, our days of seeing each other are numbered.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My head is healing! That’s why you’ve gotten all blurry.”

He shook Twella’s body mercilessly.

“Are you that happy that I’m disappearing?”

“If you were human, you shouldn’t ask that. Oh, you’re not human.”

He removed his hands from the fantasy.

“Anyway, I’ll put up with your chattering for today. I’m in that good a mood. I mean, being able to see is this…”

He turned around while preparing coffee. The Twella fantasy that had been standing there had vanished.

“Can’t stand to see me happy, is that it? Damn annoying woman. Give me some congratulations, huh? That’s what friends should do.”

He climbed to the rooftop holding the coffee he’d prepared while chuckling. He took the stairs two at a time. A hum rose naturally.

“Looks like you can see well.”

Winte said while receiving the cup.

“You knew?”

“It was time.”

Quilbion concentrated and looked at Winte. He wanted to see what kind of person this was, but Winte only rippled with golden light.

“Winte.”

“You’ll gradually be able to see faces too.”

“Every time you say what I’m about to say first, what fun is there for me to talk?”

“What can I do about you being simple?”

He looked down. A chair had appeared before he knew it.

“This is comfortable. Is it something like ‘sorcery for making chairs’?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“I just made it.”

He sat in the chair and asked back.

“Can I learn that too?”

“This isn’t learning. And it’s not something I can teach either.”

“If it’s difficult, there’s nothing I can do. I know my limits. I just want to get out of here and make some money.”

The conversation cut off. Silence arrived, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Actually, keeping his mouth shut was more familiar than chattering.

Work in the livestock pen hadn’t been easy enough to have leisure for small talk.

Only the occasional sound of drinking coffee came.

“Looks like preparations are mostly done, so shall we start?”

“Huh? What preparations?”

“Preparations not to die.”

At the same time, his body shot upward.

His body rose about 10 meters.

“Wait, hold on!”

“Don’t be too scared. I’ll set you down safely.”

“Where are you setting me down?”

Intense dizziness struck.

He squeezed his eyes shut then opened them.

The scenery had changed. The building rooftop was nowhere to be seen, and forest spread out beneath his feet.

“How many sorceries are in your head?”

He whipped his head around. Winte was on his right. Unlike earlier when his entire body had been covered in golden light, now golden ripples only flowed across his face.

Winte sat in an invisible chair with his left leg crossed, leisurely raising his coffee cup.

“Get your solidified nark moving again. That’s the start.”

“Wait. Right now what are you…”

Intuition struck.

It was disgustingly ominous.

Quilbion looked at the forest spread below. More precisely, he stared at the red lights embedded throughout the forest.

The filthy goblins were down there.

“You know well.”

The moment Winte’s words, mixed with laughter, ended, his body plummeted.

Quilbion looked at the receding Winte and screamed.

“Hey you, son of a bitch!”

Thud!

His back stung. It was a minor injury for having plunged from dozens of meters up, but there was no time for relief.

There was a goblin right in front of his nose.

A monster wreathed in dark red light, like the one that had appeared in the dormitory.

It looked like a snail. A disgustingly huge snail.

Dozens of long tentacles protruded from its smooth body. It was a sight that made his skin crawl instinctively.

The swaying tentacles all went rigid at once and turned toward where Quilbion was.

“…So those are its eyes.”

He could feel it.

That thing had recognized him.

The body covered in slime approached.

Very sluggishly.

Quilbion steadied his breathing and tried touching his nark. It still only twitched without moving as he wished.

Damn it.

He looked around. He saw a stone about the right size to grip firmly. He watched the goblin while casually taking a step.

The thing’s protruding tentacles moved.

Quilbion grabbed the stone and faced off against the goblin.

Should I go smash it first?

It didn’t seem like a monster with intelligence like the Ascetics. If it was just a big bug, he could win like last time.

“Just need to crush its head.”

The thing’s body that had been stuck to the ground slowly lifted. Quilbion’s head tilted slightly.

It looked well over 3 meters tall.

It looked stupid, so why did it feel so intimidating?

When his eyes couldn’t see, he’d charged in without knowing better, but now that he could see, he felt unnecessarily afraid.

He looked up at the sky.

He could see a speck of golden light.

Would it come help if things got dangerous?

The deliberation was brief. It wouldn’t come. It would just watch from above and disappear saying “can’t be helped” if he died.

He had to stay sharp.

Besides, since when did he ask other people for help?

When working, when burning with fever, when getting harassed by the employer’s daughter—he’d solved everything alone.

That’s what living meant.

You had to handle things alone.

He charged forward gripping the stone.

Since his nark wouldn’t move, all he could trust was his body.

The tentacles that had risen a span in length moved. Quilbion circled to the side and approached the goblin.

Even when he reached a distance where he could touch it with an outstretched hand, the goblin remained sluggish.

He struck the thing’s torso with the raised stone.

Squelch!

The squishy flesh was crushed.

He immediately created distance. The goblin twisted its entire body. Tentacles gathered toward the wounded area.

Making strange sounds while squirming, the thing pressed its body against the ground and started moving.

It was running away. Sluggishly.

After thinking briefly, he charged forward. He struck what corresponded to its waist with the stone.

Slime spread out as something watery flowed from inside. The thing shook its body mercilessly.

“Just die nicely!”

He clung to the slippery body and kept striking down with the stone. As he crushed and gouged, a sizeable chunk of flesh fell off with a plop.

The thing split from the gaping wound. The part with tentacles still crawled forward writhing, while the remaining severed torso stuck to the ground reeking foully.

Quilbion chased the goblin and swung the stone.

Before long, the remaining half also stopped moving.

The thing’s body that had been visible in dark red gradually lost its light.

It was dead.

Quilbion could tell for certain.

For how violently he’d moved, it wasn’t that tiring. His breathing was fine too.

Above all, the hand gripping the stone was clean without a single wound.

Had the 70 days spent in bed affected his body?

He was brushing off his hands and looking at the dead goblin when black heat shimmer rose from its corpse.

The shimmer swirled through the air like dancing, then immediately rushed at Quilbion.

Its speed was so fast that Quilbion couldn’t dodge even seeing it.

Urgh, he ducked while crying out, but the black shimmer had already seeped into his body.

What just happened?

He tensed up in preparation for potential pain.

There was no change.

No, rather he gradually felt refreshed. His tingling soles from running loosened, and his slightly stinging eyes felt fine.

Though it had looked hideous, that energy…

“You’ve become able to consume nark.”

When had he arrived?

Winte was behind him.

“Consume nark? What just entered my body was nark?”

“Yeah. You’ve seen it a few times. Those things consuming nark.”

“I’ve seen it, sure. But that was goblins eating people…”

Quilbion said while stroking his arm.

“I’m not a goblin though?”

“You’re not. But you’re not in the state of being over there either.”

Over there.

Quilbion realized Winte’s ‘over there’ meant the outside world.

“What did you do to me?”

“I didn’t do anything. You did.”

“I’m done. I’m not a goblin. I don’t need that disgusting stuff.”

“You need it. To remove that nark clinging to your eyes, you need to build up power.”

“Don’t tell me that power is…”

“You’d better hurry. Even if they’re goblins that haven’t even reached Yellow Form, not all of them are stupid. A few will have realized prey appeared and are coming.”

Quilbion quickly surveyed his surroundings.

His sixth sense was whispering.

Get away from here quickly.

“Winte…”

Before he could finish calling his name, Winte flew up. He hovered in the distant sky briefly, then soon disappeared.

“Damn it.”

He was looking at the ground trying to find the stone he’d abandoned when he saw a bundle of talismans.

He muttered while picking up the stack of about 80 talismans.

“I can’t even use sorcery, so what’s the point.”

It was absurd, but he collected them anyway.

The sense of crisis was growing thicker. Something on a different dimension from that stupid snail was approaching.

Quilbion dove into the undergrowth.