Outside the old district.

A figure flashed past at speed, like an arrow splitting the sky. Grass tips bent flat in its wake. Birds startled. Insects scattered.

Moving like that should have been impossible to hide. But under the precise control that Basic Dodge lv.1 and a formidable physique made possible, even carrying an extra person, Banxia didn't produce so much as a sound worth noticing.

Before long, the two had tailed the goblin guard all the way to a concealed cave entrance.

"..."

Only when her feet touched solid ground again did Roxy come back to herself, both hands still clutching her black pointed hat.

She parted her lips. Then, after a moment, she swallowed the question back down.

Prying into another adventurer's skills and hidden cards was a major taboo, a rule even rookies knew by heart.

But after that one-sided carrying act, the girl had come away with a brand-new understanding of just how absurd a high-level warrior could be.

No wonder adventurer parties could make do without almost any class, but never without a vanguard warrior.

Without any glaring weaknesses, a warrior could practically shoulder the whole team through the worst of it.

The stronger the party, the more desperately they wanted one.

But if that was the case...

"Mr. Banxia, have you always done quests alone?" The girl finally couldn't hold it back.

She genuinely couldn't work out why a high-level warrior, one whose strength had blown so far past her expectations, would take on a commission with rewards this thin.

Banxia glanced at her with a hint of puzzlement. "Why, is that a problem?"

"No, it's nothing. Just a bit curious..."

"Oh." He withdrew his gaze and said, offhand, "I was in a party before. We ran into a monster we couldn't handle. Everyone was wiped out."

"...I'm sorry." Realizing she might have pressed on something painful, Roxy's chest tightened. She lowered her head quickly, her voice going soft.

"It's fine."

The young man answered without missing a beat.

That easy, unthinking calm only made the girl more certain: this was a seasoned warrior, one long since used to losing people.

She found herself wondering what kind of monster it had been. The one they couldn't handle. The one that had swallowed an entire party — one with a vanguard warrior of this caliber — and let none of them walk away.

"Something's off." Banxia's voice pulled her back. "We followed it the whole way here. Haven't seen a single other goblin."

Roxy followed his gaze.

Not far ahead, an earthen mound rose from the ground, its base hollowed into a deep, dark hole. Around the edges, clear signs of creature activity had been left behind. A foul stench hung in the air, strong enough to reach them even from where they stood.

That goblin guard had dived straight into the opening and vanished.

"Goblins are pack creatures. This doesn't make sense."

Roxy had no answer either.

Normally, a goblin guard's presence signaled a small tribe nearby, one with key units like goblin priests that needed protecting. Goblins of that rank weren't stupid. Their intelligence was no lower than a human's.

At a critical point like a cave entrance, there should have been at least a few weaker ones posted outside to keep watch.

"Mr. Banxia, are we going in?" Without quite meaning to, Roxy had already started looking to this "veteran" warrior for the call.

"Hold on." Banxia studied the entrance. The passage wasn't large, goblins had built it, after all.

For humans, it was far too narrow. Dodging and swinging a sword would both be heavily restricted, and charging in blind would gut their fighting capacity. On top of that, goblin construction wasn't exactly structurally sound. A cave-in would bury them both.

No intelligence. No recon. Pushing in like this was too dangerous.

Even with a pile of "treasure" sitting right there ahead of him, he hadn't thrown his brain out along the way.

"A cave like this shouldn't have any other exits, right?"

"Normally, no. Goblins don't build that way." Roxy nodded with certainty.

"Miss Roxy, do you know water magic?"

"A little." In front of this warrior, the blue-haired girl didn't dare overestimate herself.

Even if her water magic was already among the best of the poor souls who'd been summoned to this world.

"Then this is easy." Something clicked in Banxia's mind. A faint curve pulled at the corner of his mouth.

In those wilderness survival videos from his previous life, when you were dealing with something that loved to dig, wasn't flooding it out the most effortless solution?

He laid out the idea for her in a few words.

"Can you do it?"

"Probably... yes?" Roxy didn't dare promise anything. No one knew whether the cave had other passages branching off inside.

"It's fine, don't stress. We're just trying it. If it doesn't work, we move on."

"Mm. I'll do my best."

The two took up positions at the cave mouth.

Banxia drew his sword, gaze sweeping the surrounding area.

Roxy raised her small hand. A flash of light at her fingertips, and her staff dropped out of thin air, right into her palm.

Magic in this world was so much more convenient than back home.

Common folk spells like this one — storing a staff, were a genuine blessing for any magician. And that wasn't even the best of it. Many spells here could be cast without any chanting at all. High-level magic could be abbreviated to something nearly instantaneous.

Roxy wasn't there yet, of course.

She'd only been in this world a month. Plenty of spells still demanded long incantations, which was part of why she hadn't found a suitable party yet.

But over that month, she had managed to learn a few water spells that needed no chanting.

A piece of folk magic: "A stream of water that can continuously irrigate farmland."

Magic was imagination made real. Visualize the scene clearly enough, and the learning came fast.

"..."

The blue-haired girl closed her eyes. Several seconds of silence.

Then the air before Banxia shivered, barely, like a breath held too long.

A droplet of water seeped out of nothing. It hung in front of her, then began to spin, faster and faster, swelling outward until it tore open a deep-blue ring-shaped void in the span of a single breath.

The next instant, a torrent burst through, dragging mud and dead leaves with it as it poured down into the dark.

Not one word of incantation. Just the faint blue glow still fading on Roxy's staff, flickering softly through the mist.

"Magic really is something," Banxia said with genuine feeling. "If only there were a few cool chant lines to go with it."

Who transmigrated to another world and didn't want to be a dashing mage?

Unfortunately, when he'd been summoned, not a shred of magical aptitude had shown up. So here he was, honestly pulling a warrior's weight through sheer muscle.

One day, when he had time, he was absolutely going to figure out how to learn it.

Roxy: "..."

This casting speed was already painfully slow. Completely useless in real combat.

Add a few cool chant lines on top of that, and her teammates would never let her hear the end of it.

➤ Next: Goblin Cave

Chapter 14 - Goblin Cave

The cave wasn't particularly large, goblin-dug tunnels were naturally cramped.

As the torrent Roxy poured inside grew fiercer, ferocious roars echoed from deep within.

"Grolu..."

That scalp-prickling sound made Roxy instinctively tighten her grip on her staff, her gaze drifting toward the young man beside her.

Banxia hadn't moved a muscle. His eyes burned with anticipation, fixed on the cave mouth where his meal was about to be served.

His calm settled something in her. Roxy steadied her staff and cranked the flow up another notch.

BOOM,

A muffled thud rang out from inside, followed by a cascading roar of collapsing rock.

A cave-in. Something had given way in there.

It also confirmed for Banxia that not rushing in blind had been the right call.

As the collapse sounds rolled outward, the shrieks drew closer.

Before long, the two of them caught sight of the source.

Several dark-green goblins were fighting the raging current, scrambling desperately to claw their way out.

Banxia's eyes lit up.

He bent down, grabbed a stone the size of a grinding plate, and without bothering to weigh it, whipped his arm back and hurled it forward.

Fueled by terrifying brute strength, that thoroughly ordinary rock struck with the force of a siege cannon. It pierced straight into the cave mouth with a sharp crack of split air.

The first goblin's head burst open on contact. The stone plowed on without losing a shred of momentum, pulverizing everything behind it.

[Killed Normal Goblin. Total Lifespan: 22 years. Remaining Lifespan: 20 years. Absorbed.]

[Killed Normal Goblin. Total Lifespan: 20 years. Remaining Lifespan: 3 years. Absorbed.]

[Killed Normal Goblin. Total Lifespan: 21 years. Remaining Lifespan: 2 years. Absorbed.]

[Current Remaining Time: 25 years.]

The water surged backward, washing the goblin corpses deep into the cave.

"Oh? Didn't know goblins had a policy of letting the elderly and children go first."

Banxia flicked his wrist. He watched the numbers tick upward on his panel in real time, and the corners of his mouth refused to stay flat.

With a cheat like this, the play was obvious, target the young ones with plenty of lifespan left.

The old fossils weren't worth the effort.

The instant payout felt fantastic. His arm swung so fast it blurred into afterimages.

Six stones per second was the limit of available stones. Not the limit of his arm.

One exit. Nowhere else to go.

Goblins weren't exactly known for their intellect, and right now that worked against them completely. They had no choice but to bite the bullet and charge forward, hurling their bodies into the relentless barrage of flying rock.

[Killed Normal Goblin. Total Lifespan: 19 years. Remaining Lifespan: 7 years. Absorbed.]

[Killed Normal Goblin. Total Lifespan: 23 years. Remaining Lifespan: 4 years. Absorbed.]

[Current Remaining Time: 123 years.]

Banxia had no idea how long his arm kept swinging. It was only when not a single throwable object remained beside him that he finally cast a satisfied look into the depths of the cave.

"Oh? There's actually one still standing."

A dark-green figure. About the height of an ordinary human.

If there was anything remarkable about it, it was that it was exceptionally fat.

Water swirled around its feet, but it stood rock-steady. A pair of beady eyes glared out from behind the collapsed dirt and stone, fixed venomously on the two humans outside.

"Humans... just what have you done?!"

That voice was cold as a grave. Roxy shuddered, instinctively taking half a step back.

"M-Mr. Banxia, something doesn't seem right..."

"..."

He didn't need Roxy to tell him. The moment human speech came out of that mouth, Banxia already knew things had gotten complicated.

Low-tier monsters — goblins especially — communicated through bestial roars, conveying only the simplest intentions. Even mutated variants like goblin guards or goblin shamans rarely possessed genuine language ability.

To adventurers like them, monsters capable of actual conversation mostly existed in hero legends and the memoirs of Platinum-rank adventurers.

That caliber of monster was, in all likelihood, a walking catastrophe. The kind that could bring an entire city to ruin.

And among goblins, as far as Roxy knew, only one ultimate mutation could hold a real dialogue.

A Goblin King.

Except that should have been impossible. By all logic, only one Goblin King emerged per district, and the local one was supposed to be over in the New District. For certain reasons, it would never casually leave its own territory.

One mountain couldn't hold two tigers. Even if a second young Goblin King appeared somewhere, the reigning one would never allow it to survive...

Then Roxy thought about the Old District. All those abandoned buildings, a faction with high-tier mutant goblin protection could have claimed any one of them and settled in comfortably. Yet this group had deliberately hidden in a place like this. A godforsaken hole nobody would bother looking at twice.

The pieces clicked together.

The color drained from Roxy's face, but she forced out the words immediately.

"Mr. Banxia — that has to be a mutant Goblin King. One that was born not long ago."

Banxia had already been preparing to grab the girl and run. At that, he paused.

The faint tension in his eyes shifted. It changed flavor entirely.

"You're saying... it's not at full strength yet? It's still in its infancy?"

Most of what he knew about Goblin Kings came from bedside pillow-talk with girls at interspecies establishments.

The reason these ruins still hadn't been reclaimed by the kingdom was precisely because a king with strength rivaling a Platinum-rank adventurer had risen among the goblins. Paired with the countless mutated variants under its command, even regular military forces didn't dare set foot here carelessly.

Just imagining what a fully grown Goblin King would be like was enough.

"..."

Roxy had been planning to urge him to flee with her. But the moment she finished speaking, the light that flared in his eyes killed that plan completely.

She hadn't realized it before. Mr. Banxia was this kind of battle-crazed maniac.

And of all things, the opponent turned out to be a Goblin King, one of those terrifying mutations...

She didn't even get a chance to argue.

"The death of every single goblin leaves an irremediable void in my heart..." The chubby green goblin stared down at the corpses of its kin lying in the water, its face twisted with grief and fury.

Every one of them had been painstakingly recruited, elite fighters gathered one by one. Especially those few special mutants.

Its gaze snapped to the two humans outside. The voice dropped, sharp and cold.

"You bastards... deserve to die!"

The roar was still in the air when that silhouette moved, blindingly fast, a complete betrayal of its portly frame. It shredded the remaining current and charged out against the flow.

Its bulk hit the narrow cave mouth and gouged a massive breach through solid rock. Rubble and dirt rained down against its body and left no mark whatsoever.

In Roxy's eyes, the dark-green shadow expanded at terrifying speed.

At this distance, a mage of her rank had no time to erect any meaningful defense.

Her mind went blank.

Banxia was already in front of her.

He shoved her aside in one motion, his burning gaze locking onto the charging monster. The corners of his mouth split open in a grin he made no attempt to control.

"..."

Roxy hit the ground. She stared at the back standing between her and death.

It should have been a deeply moving scene.

It really should have been.

"Come on! Let your uncle give you a great big hug!"

Roxy: "..."

➤ Next: Slaying the Goblin King