A chorus of strange cries rose up, and dark-green figures half a man's height closed in from every direction.

They clutched crude spears taller than themselves, their bodies barely covered by tattered rags, limbs so thin they looked ready to snap with a single twist.

Goblins. The lowest class of monster.

In Banxia's experience — from games in his previous life and from what he'd heard local adventurers say in this one — these things were pure fodder. Low-level trash mobs for grinding experience.

A single goblin couldn't take down a wild dog. Even in a pack, emboldened by numbers, they were no match for even the lowest copper-rank adventurer.

So what exactly was he looking at right now?

Setting traps was one thing. But they'd also known to seal off every single escape route.

Were these really what people called the weakest monsters?

The lingering scent of Kazuya Kinoshita drifted in on the breeze.

Drip.

Banxia's gaze swept sideways. The ranger Junko Arimura couldn't even stay standing, a dark wet patch soaked through the front of Junko's trousers.

He'd expected to be afraid. Strangely, he wasn't.

He had only ever killed chickens and ducks for his family as a kid. Yet here, with a living teammate dying horribly right in front of him, he didn't break down. His mind had never been clearer. He was already running through the situation at high speed.

"It's all my fault..." Team leader Marl was still blaming themselves.

Banxia frowned. "What do we do now..."

The words weren't even out of his mouth when a crude wooden arrow split the air with a sharp whistle from somewhere in the forest shadows.

"Ah!"

A dull cry of pain drove straight into his ears.

Banxia's whole body snapped taut. He spun around just in time to see the rough-hewn shaft buried deep in the cleric's chest.

Blood surged out without stopping. Marl clamped both hands over the wound just above the heart, palms shaking, pressing down. "O Light... in the name of the Goddess, heal..."

White light flared.

Then died.

The bleeding didn't stop.

"AAAHHHH!"

Junko had completely lost it. The ranger threw the bow aside and sprinted for a gap in the encirclement.

Several goblins raised their spears in silence.

Junko never even grazed a single green-skinned figure. A cluster of spear tips punched through all at once, and Junko crumpled to the ground.

The cleric Marl, eyelids growing heavier by the second, stopped trying to heal and looked up at the young man with a face full of apology.

"Banxia... sorry... I... cough, cough..."

"Don't talk. Keep healing." Banxia drew a long breath. Everything had blown so far past what he'd imagined.

Teammate after teammate. Dead in front of him, just like that.

No epic last stand. No final farewell. Nobody even managed to finish a full sentence.

And he was about to join them.

Thinking back on it — in his first life, he'd slipped away just as quietly.

No warning. No way to fight it. There one moment, gone the next.

"..."

Banxia's breathing came faster. Something wild crept into his eyes.

Why! All I wanted was to live a quiet life!

Why does everyone have to push me!

Fine. He was going to die anyway,

When he thought about his brief, ridiculous existence, it wasn't really a loss.

Because in the life before his last one, who could have guessed he'd actually get to sleep with every kind of monster imaginable?

A shame he'd never managed to complete the full racial compendium. Still...

He'd already gotten more than his money's worth.

The panel snapped open in front of him,

If he was going to die, he'd rather find out where his limits were first. Not go out as goblin bait.

"System, show me! Where are my limits!"

The remaining-time counter on the panel bled away in a rush.

Forty-six... twenty... ten...

It stopped at six.

[You train the Basic Sword Technique with relentless focus. By the first year, every basic move flows from your hands freely and without thought.]

[The transmigrators of your generation move on one by one to higher-tier combat techniques. You alone stay planted in the most basic sword stances.]

[By the tenth year, every basic move has reached perfection in your hands. The warrior the city acknowledges as its strongest cannot find a single flaw in your sword, and still you are not satisfied.]

[You pour every year left to you into the blade. Swordsmanship becomes your only companion.]

[Finally,

In the fortieth year, in one unplanned flash of insight, you perceive a flaw you had never noticed before. With your own hands, you close it.]

[Basic Sword Technique lv.0 → Basic Sword Technique lv.1]

(lv.0 is the level an ordinary person can reach through diligent practice; lv.1 is a realm only someone with talent for this technique, combined with long and relentless training, can enter; lv.2 is a realm rare enough that those who reach it leave their name in history through this path alone, capable of feats impossible at lv.0 and lv.1...)

...

"They haven't attacked me..." Banxia scanned the seven green figures ringing him in and tightened his grip on the cheap longsword. "Are they scared I've got something up my sleeve?"

In this world, even goblins used tactics. Even goblins thought twice about cornering prey that might turn and take them down with it.

Unbelievable.

But that wasn't what was occupying his mind right now.

What mattered was whether the lifespan drain was going to affect his body.

Six years remaining. By the calendar, he was now a man in his fifties.

Yet his entire body hummed with energy, a force that felt bottomless, welling up from somewhere deep inside and not stopping.

The sword that had felt foreign in his grip minutes ago now moved like a third hand.

As if he truly had walked away from everything else and spent a whole lifetime drilling the basic sword stances into his bones.

Not just technique, either. The peak physical condition built up over forty years of hard training had come with it, remade on his body as that time burned away.

...

It was the middle of the day. The forest was cold enough to raise the hairs on his skin.

The goblin with the crossbow slipped through the shadows to a new position and quickly reloaded.

The others held their formation the way they always did on a hunt, patient, waiting. All they needed was for the crossbow to land its shot. Then they'd move in clean, take zero damage, butcher these walking supplies, and strip them of whatever they were carrying.

The goblin found its spot. Loaded the bolt. Finger settling on the trigger,

Terror locked every muscle in its body.

The man was looking straight at it through the thin mist. Eyes flat and cold.

"Gah!"

It was like being nailed to the ground by the gaze of the Grim Reaper.

It panicked. Fired.

CLANG!

The bolt that had never once failed split clean in two.

Banxia kicked off the ground with his left foot. The fallen cleric's staff snapped up into his palm.

The goblin hadn't finished processing what had happened.

The staff was already coming.

It hit like a battering ram and punched straight through the goblin's heart.

[Ding-dong, Monster goblin slain. Total lifespan: twenty-three years. Current Remaining Time: eight years. Absorption complete.]

[Current Skills: Basic Sword Technique lv.1 (1|1000), Basic Dodge lv.0 (1|100)]

[Current Remaining Time: Six years]

[Held Monster Time: Eight years.] (Note: Time obtained by hunting monsters can only be used to enhance skills.)

Banxia looked down.

One last look at the cleric Marl, lying dead on the ground with eyes still open.

Then he raised his gaze to the goblins that remained.

"Sorry, Marl. Right now, I don't feel grief over your death. I don't feel like these goblins are particularly hateful, either."

He lifted the tip of his sword.

"I just feel... that this world, right now, is so wonderful."

➤ Next: Cleaning up the Battlefield

Chapter 4 - Cleaning up the Battlefield

In Banxia's brief life, he had learned one truth.

Humanity has its limits.

The harder a person strives, the more unexpected complications arise. Too many things in this world cannot be achieved through effort alone.

In his original world, running a hundred meters in under ten seconds already pushed against the walls of human physiology.

Yet even at that speed, forget modern automobiles, countless wild beasts could leave a person in the dust without breaking a sweat.

But this world was different.

Summoned "heroes" were granted the trait of growth by the world itself, without exception or prejudice.

Like the locals, they only needed to train to break free from the shackles of mortal flesh, step by step.

Even the most mediocre talent, after grinding through a few decades, could step into the realm of the superhuman.

And Banxia, relying on his cheat ability, had effectively spent forty full years immersed in the way of the sword.

His swordsmanship was already far beyond any ordinary person's. His body had long since outstripped the vast majority of adventurers.

"Gah!"

The remaining goblins finally snapped out of their daze from that staff strike.

They raised their spears and closed in, furious, dark green figures pressing through the thin mist in overlapping layers.

Surrounded. At a disadvantage in reach.

Any seasoned adventurer would find this situation difficult to handle.

Banxia didn't care at all.

The power continuously surging through this body was desperate for somewhere to go.

Under the bewildered stares of the goblins, the young man vanished from where he stood.

In the dim forest, a streak of silver that the naked eye couldn't track flashed and was gone.

An instant later, Banxia reappeared outside the encirclement.

The blade of the cheap longsword in his hand now carried a smear of thick crimson that hadn't been there before.

Blood crept slowly along the spine of the sword toward the tip, then broke away as individual drops.

The drops hit the ground. Behind him came the dull, heavy thud of seven heads and seven headless bodies collapsing all at once.

[Ding. Monster slain: Goblin. Total lifespan: twenty-five years. Current Remaining Time: seven years. Absorption complete.]

[Ding. Monster slain: Goblin. Total lifespan: twenty-one years. Current Remaining Time: three years. Absorption complete.]

...

[Heaven Rewards Diligence; all efforts bear fruit.]

[Current Skills: Basic Sword Technique lv.1 (1|1000) · Basic Dodge lv.0 (1|100)]

[Current Remaining Time: Six years.]

[Held Monster Time: Fifty-eight years]

"..."

After an indeterminate stretch of time, the swelling sensation of power finally ebbed.

Banxia stared at the remaining time on his panel. The heat that had been burning in his chest cooled down, degree by degree.

The crisis was over. He had gained strength beyond imagining. Those were two things worth celebrating.

He couldn't smile at all.

Even though he had steeled himself during that desperate moment, made his peace with burning through this entire life just to survive, actually facing the six years he had left still left him silent.

"...So 'Heaven Rewards Diligence; all efforts bear fruit' just means working hard to slay monsters gets you the experience needed to level up?"

"Then what was the point of my miserable half-month of non-stop training..."

He let out a long sigh. There was nothing to do but accept it.

"Whatever. Regret won't change anything. This world is enormous. It's full of things my past life couldn't even dream of — something that extends lifespan might actually exist out there."

"That said, it's definitely not something the current me can even think about reaching. Before I ever find it, I need to get stronger first."

With that, Banxia looked at his held time on the panel. Fifty-eight years.

Already more than the total lifespan he'd originally had.

That counted as getting rich overnight, didn't it?

He only had two skills right now. Basic Sword Technique to lv.1 had already cost him forty years. lv.2 was out of the question, the time he had on hand wouldn't even begin to cover it.

The decision was easy.

"System, max out Basic Dodge for me."

[This is a domain you have never touched before. In the first year, you begin studying how to evade enemy attacks.]

[In the fifth year, relying on your superior swordsmanship, you repeatedly challenge renowned local warriors.

You are quickly defeated. You return home and think it over for a long time.

In terms of technique and physique, you are not inferior to them. Your only weakness is defense.

An all-offense, no-defense approach only exposes more openings when you face a warrior of the same tier.]

[Ten years pass in the blink of an eye. Against opponents of equal rank, you still cannot win. You enter seclusion, cutting yourself off from the outside world, vowing not to emerge until you have crossed into that realm.]

[In the fiftieth year,

Burning through a lifetime's worth of effort, you finally cross the threshold that only geniuses can touch.]

[Basic Dodge lv.0 → Basic Dodge lv.1 (1|1000)]

[Current Remaining Time: Eight years.]

"They're both lv.1 — but dodge took a full ten years longer than swordsmanship?"

Banxia stared at the panel, brow furrowing slightly.

The next instant, a torrent of insights and hard-won combat experience around evasion flooded his mind.

He worked through all of it, piece by piece, until it settled. Then he exhaled softly.

It wasn't quite what he'd expected.

In pure technique, the time required to reach Basic Sword Technique lv.1 and Basic Dodge lv.1 was actually about the same.

The extra ten years dodge demanded had gone entirely toward conditioning the body.

That was the lesson his simulated self had learned from fighting those renowned warriors.

No matter how refined the sword technique, no matter how precise the defense, if the body was too frail to back it up, none of it meant anything.

To come out of a fight unscathed, the body had to be tough enough to eat a full-power strike head-on.

In Banxia's view, this was really just his simulated self getting stuck at a bottleneck for way too long, then going a little obsessive and arriving at a fixation born of desperation.

But it was useful all the same. His physical toughness had climbed another tier.

Those extra ten years were not wasted.

"...You worked hard."

Banxia let his gaze fall on the small figure on the panel, the one that had already burned itself out completely, and offered it a quiet moment of respect.

He closed the panel and looked out over the now-still clearing. Time to clean up.

"Cleaning up" amounted to cutting off the goblins' ears and prying loose the silver coins hanging from their chests on rough twine.

Goblins liked to keep their valuables on them at all times. These ones only had silver coins, which, by goblin standards, put them on the weaker end of their kind.

And yet even the weakest goblin party had nearly wiped out their entire adventurer team.

"Reality really is brutal."

After stripping the goblins of everything worth taking, Banxia finally turned his gaze toward Marl's body.

That arrow had gone straight through the heart. Killed on the spot.

Marl's eyes hadn't fully closed. In them, faintly, something that looked like regret still lingered.

They hadn't spoken much. But Marl had still been one of the few people Banxia could actually talk to since arriving in this world.

Looking at the body, Banxia felt the quiet, sinking weight of it, the hollow feeling of watching a fellow stray meet their end.

But grief was grief. Life had to continue.

He removed the identification tag from Marl's body, then glanced over the clothing for anything valuable.

"You're dead now — it's not like you can take any of it with you."

"Don't worry. I have no problem with a dead person's money."

"We were teammates. I'll make good use of it."

➤ Next: The Young Couple