Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash: Volume 2 Read online

  “About what you said earlier,” she said. Merry was probably trying to be considerate. Haruhiro was forcing her to try to be considerate.

  “Ah, right,” Haruhiro put on a more serious expression. “What? What’s this I said?”

  “About maybe changing our hunting grounds.”

  “Oh. Yume and Shihoru opposed it, and the conversation went nowhere after that... All thanks to Ranta. Dammit.”

  “So long as you aren’t rushing things, I think that’s one option.”

  Well, honestly, I am in a bit of a rush. He wished he could say that honestly, but Haruhiro kept it inside. He didn’t want to show Merry too much of his uncool side. Though, it may have been a little late for that.

  “I see. Well, if we were to go somewhere else, where would be good?”

  It was almost like she already had her answer prepared.

  “The Cyrene Mines,” Merry answered briefly and immediately. With no expression.

  Haruhiro almost said But isn’t that where— But he bit back the words. Wasn’t that where your comrades died? You fought a dangerous kobold called Death Spots or something, and lost three people.

  If I recall, wasn’t it the warrior Michiki, the thief Ogu, and the mage Mutsumi? What happened to them after that? It should have been impossible to retrieve the bodies.

  If they weren’t cremated, with No-Life King’s curse the three of them would have...

  Should I not talk about that? Or would it be better to broach the issue? Haruhiro couldn’t decide.

  Ultimately, after asking Merry various things about the kobolds of the Cyrene Mines, he left the tavern for the night.

  On the way back to the lodging house, nothing but regrets came to mind, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.

  I’m so wishy-washy...

  Regardless, it wasn’t something he needed to make a decision on right away. He could take his time and think it over carefully.

  That had been his plan, but he wasn’t able to follow it.

  3. The Inertial Laws of Habit

  “...Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, maaaaan. What the heck is this...?” Ranta muttered with his back pressed firmly against a wall. He was wearing his heaume, a bucket-shaped helmet.

  It wasn’t just Ranta; Haruhiro and everyone else in the party were in similar poses.

  “What does this mean...?” Haruhiro looked at Merry, who was next to him.

  Merry shook her head slightly. “I don’t know, either.”

  “That’s a lotta gobbies...” Yume whispered.

  “Y-Yeah...” Moguzo pulled his huge body back and shuddered just a little.

  Shihoru closed her eyes, clutching her staff tightly. She looked like she was praying. “...We can’t do this. We can’t. There’s no way we can manage this...”

  Shihoru was right. They had to accept that this situation was too much for them.

  Normally the Old City of Damuro was sparsely populated with goblins, but for some reason, today was different. As soon as they entered... no, even before they entered, it was clear something was out of the ordinary.

  There were a large number of goblins lurking around.

  In groups, no less.

  The goblins had formed bands.

  It was as if they were patrolling the old city.

  “...Patrols,” Haruhiro said, grinding his teeth. Maybe... Isn’t that what they are?

  These goblins weren’t like the ones they usually faced. They had good equipment. On top of that, the goblins of the Old City usually lazed around until they noticed the party, but these ones were full of energy.

  They’re probably goblins from the New City.

  A fair number of New City goblins ended up getting exiled to the Old City, but those goblins tended to be kind of apathetic. The armored goblin with the hobgoblin servant had been like that.

  These guys, on the other hand, were full of life. They were working towards some goal. Either that, or they were working under someone’s orders. That was what it looked like.

  “Hmph,” Ranta laughed, trying act cool.

  He doesn’t look cool at all, though.

  “Looks like we overdid it a little here, huh...?”

  No one contradicted him. Of course, that included Haruhiro.

  He didn’t have the energy to waste on something so pointless. It was too dangerous for them to enter the Old City like this. Even after taking the trouble to come all this way, they would have to go home without being able to accomplish anything.

  —No.

  I would have preferred this to be something we decided for ourselves. If I suggest it now, it’ll be like suggesting we do it because we have no choice, or something like that. It’s a way of doing it that lacks a sense of tension, but maybe we should think of this is a good opportunity.

  “Hey, how about we try going to the Cyrene Mines? It’s not really on the way, but it’s in the same direction. It looks like we can just divert around Damuro and continue to the northwest.”

  Ranta looked thrilled, and Yume, Shihoru, Moguzo and Merry didn’t present any opposition to the idea.

  So, the group went another 4 km northwest of Damuro. Now, strictly speaking, it was only 4 km as the crow flies. This being their first time, the trip there ultimately took them close to two hours.

  The Cyrene Mountain Mines.

  It looks like any other mountain.

  Apparently, these mines had been developed long ago, back when the human kingdom of Arabakia had held power in the frontier. Later, after the Arabakia Kingdom had been driven out by the Alliance of Kings lead by No-Life King, a faction of kobolds called the Bosh, or something like that, had occupied the mountains. They had lived in the mines ever since.

  Once they reached the foothills, the party could see what looked like an entrance to the mines in the distance. It looked like a rectangular tunnel reinforced with wood.

  There was a small stream, so they followed it up the mountain and saw a bear. It was a wild animal, and cautious to an almost cowardly degree, so they figured it probably wouldn’t attack them. However, there was no guarantee of that, so they decided to avoid it.

  On their way up the slope, they came across what seemed to be a game trail in the forest. As they continued along it, they ran into some furry humanoid creatures with dog-like heads.

  The creatures carried rusty swords and wore what looked like the tattered remnants of chain mail. There were two of them.

  You could call it a chance encounter. The two stepped out from the shadow of a tree nonchalantly, and the party hadn’t been expecting them either, so for two or three seconds they stood there just looking at each other awkwardly.

  “Kobolds...!” Merry shouted.

  Haruhiro unintentionally cried out “Whoa!” and jumped backwards.

  “Moguzo, we’re doing this...!” Ranta slashed at the kobold on the right.

  “Y-Yeah!” A little after him, Moguzo closed in on the kobold to the left.

  Haruhiro pounded his chest. —Comb down.

  No. That’s not right. It’s calm down. Oh, crap. I’m not calm at all.

  “—Shihoru and Merry, fall back for now! Yume, support Ranta and Moguzo...!”

  “Fwah!” came Yume’s nonsensical response, but she still moved forward with Haruhiro.

  “Hah, hah, hah...!” Ranta was in a furious exchange of blows with a kobold.

  Moguzo was grunting loudly and busily swinging his bastard sword around, but he didn’t even touch them.

  “Yume, you help Moguzo...!” Haruhiro shouted.

  “Gotcha!”

  Haruhiro took aim at the back of the kobold fighting Ranta. First, he’d take care of one of them quickly, then they’d all gang up on the remaining one. That was the plan.

  However...

  “H-Huh...?”

  What’s this? Maybe, are kobolds strong? Are they ridiculously fast?

  He couldn’t seem to get behind it. He couldn’t predict its movements, and they were too fast for his eyes to follow.


  “Dammit! Haruhiro, what are you doing...?!” Ranta shouted.

  While Ranta was matching blades with the kobold, he didn’t seem to be on the attack. If anything, he was being pushed back. Mostly he was blocking the kobold’s attacks with his sword, unable to get off a decent counterattack.

  What about Moguzo and Yume?

  No good. I don’t have time to look.

  First, I need to do something about the kobold in front of me.

  “Don’t move around so much, Ranta!”

  “Oh, shove it! I’ve got my reasons...!”

  “I can’t work with you moving so much!”

  “Like I care! Whoa...!”

  The kobold stepped in close, locking blades with Ranta.

  Good. That’ll keep them from moving. Now’s my chance.

  “Backstab...!” Haruhiro tried to stab his dagger into its back, but it dodged it.

  That way of dodging it is rather... The kobold leapt to the side, slapping aside Haruhiro’s dagger with a whish of its tail. ...I dunno... tricky?

  “Man, you’re useless, Haruhiro!” Ranta chased after the kobold. The kobold met his attack, hopping left and right with irritating dance-like steps.

  That movement style. That’s what’s giving us so much trouble.

  Also, when I’m behind it, its tail really catches my eye. It’s always moving, and I can’t help but pay attention to it.

  “...This is tough!” Haruhiro shouted.

  It probably wasn’t an issue of their opponent being strong or weak. Haruhiro and the others didn’t know these enemies. How would their opponents attack? How would they defend? How would they react to different situations? How would they respond to different approaches the party took? There was just too much they didn’t know.

  “If this were a goblin...!” Haruhiro grunted.

  When he took aim at the kobold’s back again, like he always did— That’s it, Haruhiro realized.

  In his head, there was always a goblin. He was looking at the kobold’s back like it was a goblin’s. A goblin’s physique. A goblin’s habits. A goblin’s thought processes. Those things were ingrained in him now, and he couldn’t wipe them away.

  Have we gotten too used to fighting goblins...?

  “Smash...!” Merry suddenly leapt out and smashed her priest’s staff into the shoulder of the kobold Moguzo and Yume were fighting.

  The kobold yelped and ran away at an incredible speed, barking far off in the distance.

  “These are lesser kobolds. They shouldn’t be tough opponents by any means!” Merry said, thrusting the pommel of her priest’s staff into the ground, causing the rings on it to jingle. “If you keep a level head while fighting, I guarantee you can win this!”

  Yeah! Haruhiro thought. Merry, you’re so cool.

  “...Wait, I don’t have time to stand here and be impressed!” he added out loud.

  Haruhiro exchanged a glance with Ranta. He didn’t like that he and Ranta understood one another without words but, technically, they were comrades, so it wasn’t hard for them to understand what the other person was thinking at times like this.

  Look closely.

  Observe.

  It’s not a goblin we’re fighting. It’s a kobold. An unfamiliar enemy. However, it’s just unfamiliar. If you think about it, it’s not like it’s really pushing us hard. That means, like Merry said, it’s not a tough opponent.

  “Ohm, rel, ect, vel, darsh...!” Shihoru cast her Shadow Beat spell with its distinctive vwong.

  The shadow elemental, which looked like a ball of black seaweed, struck the kobold that had come back and was loping towards Yume and Moguzo. The kobold fell to its knees, its entire body convulsing.

  “Moguzo, now!” Yume shouted.

  Moguzo charged at the kobold with a shout. They had that one covered, which meant Haruhiro could focus on the other one.

  “There! Take that! And that!” Ranta shouted. He was irritatingly loud, but unlike before, he wasn’t just swinging his longsword around randomly. He was watching the kobold’s moves closely. When the kobold went right, he went right. When it went left, he went left. He wasn’t able to act ahead of it, but the kobold wasn’t running circles around him. He wasn’t just defending anymore; he could attack occasionally, too.

  Thanks to that, the kobold doesn’t have attention to spare elsewhere.

  Now, I can get there.

  Behind it.

  Don’t let its tail distract me. In the end, it’s just a tail.

  Goblins are similar to humans, but kobolds move in a more wild, beast-like way. Kobolds seem like they have strong legs. They’ve got spring, which gives them jumping strength. That’s why they feel faster than goblins.

  But how long it takes them to do things, their reaction time, their reflexes and whatnot, those probably aren’t much different. When it comes to how flexible their bodies are, goblins probably have them beat. If I look closely, when the kobolds lean forward, their upper body doesn’t move much. They swing their swords differently from how goblins do, too. Goblins use their entire body to swing, but kobolds only use their arms. They swing their arms like whips. Maybe they have stiff shoulders. They’re probably about 150 cm tall. That’s a little bigger than a goblin, but the goblin probably swings harder.

  Though, compared to goblins which use their whole body for big moves, kobolds’ attacks are more compact. That makes them faster. If I fight them like I would a goblin, I’ll always end up acting later than they do.

  While there were a lot of differences, the kobold wasn’t always superior. Haruhiro and the party could take on up to five goblins simultaneously. Right now, they were facing two kobolds.

  We can win.

  Actually, there’s no way we can’t win.

  That wasn’t overconfidence speaking, it was the answer his experience and observations had led him to.

  It’s amazing, thought Haruhiro. Once he calmed down and started to believe he could do this, his field of vision widened. Until moments ago, he had only been able to see the kobold in front of him and Ranta, but now he could keep track of the movements of the rest of his comrades.

  “Thanks...!” Moguzo cut down one of the kobolds, swinging his sword down diagonally with all his might in a Rage Blow.

  When the other kobold sees that, it’ll probably shake it up. It did.

  Right now, it’s not watching its back at all.

  Haruhiro held his breath and threw his full weight against the kobold’s back. Of course, he did more than just tackle it. Backstab. He stabbed it with his dagger. Deeply, through a tear in its chainmail.

  The kobold let out a yelp.

  Haruhiro immediately leapt away from it.

  “Heck, yeah...!” Ranta stepped in, thrusting out his longsword. “Anger!”

  It went through.

  Ranta’s longsword struck the kobold in the gullet. The kobold collapsed, unable to utter a sound.

  Haruhiro breathed out. “...We won.”

  “It’s all thanks to me!” Ranta hoisted his sword high, boasting.

  “Nuh-uh, no it isn’t,” Yume looked exasperated. “No matter how you look at it, it was thanks to Merry. What she said back there, that was super cool. ‘If you keep a level head while fighting, I guarantee you can win this,’ she said. It gave Yume the little zap she needed to get her going.”

  “S-Stop it...” Merry looked down. Her face was a little red. “...I’m sorry for butting in. It wasn’t my place to say that.”

  “Th-That’s not...!” Shihoru spoke in a loud voice, which was uncommon for her. “That’s not... true, I think. I don’t think you have anything to apologize for...”

  “Y-Yeah,” Moguzo nodded slowly. “It helped me find my courage.”

  “You’re all a bunch of small-fry!” said Ranta.

  How could Ranta be so full of himself? Haruhiro wanted to know the reason why. Was it because he was an idiot?

  “You can’t find your courage without someone giving you a pep talk? You�
��re crap, you know that? Crap!”

  Haruhiro deliberately ignored Ranta, crouching down in front of one of the kobolds’ dead bodies. “Let’s see, their weapons and armor don’t look like they’re worth anything, but—Looks like it’s wearing something. A nose ring, I guess you’d call it. It’s made out of an animal’s fang or something.”

  Like a priest mourning the dead, Merry made the sign of the hexagram and then crouched down next to Haruhiro. “Those are talismans. Every kobold always has one.”

  “Hmm. But it doesn’t look all that valuable, maybe.”

  “The kobolds living in the first level of the mines are like the outcasts of kobold society. They’re dressed poorly, and they have meager physiques. That’s why volunteer soldiers call them lesser kobolds,” she said.

  “So, does that mean non-lesser kobolds have better talismans, then?”

  “Yes. Made from pretty stones, or metal. Even lesser kobolds occasionally use humans’ copper and silver coins to make talismans.”

  “I see. Then, if we fight a lesser and it has a silver coin or something, we can consider ourselves lucky,” he mused.

  Merry was being rather talkative. That alone was enough to make Haruhiro really happy.

  “Well, for now let’s snag it anyway,” Ranta said. He tore the nose ring off the kobold’s corpse. “—Huh? What?”

  “Nothing...”

  I know we have to retrieve the loot, but aren’t there better ways he could do it? I know it’s weird to say that after killing them, and all. But—

  That’s right, isn’t it? From the kobolds’ perspective, we’re like invaders.

  What Haruhiro and the others were doing was slaughter, and even if he felt some pangs of conscience over it, that didn’t change what he was doing. Whether he gently cut the nose ring from the dead body or violently tore it off, it was the same in the end. Not just in the end, it was the same the whole way through.

  When he looked at Ranta, it was like looking at an image of himself stripped of all pretense, and that was hard to bear.

  Ranta did it without hesitation, but Haruhiro tried to keep up appearances. Perhaps Haruhiro’s way of thinking was nothing more than hypocrisy.