By Zephyria The knight straightened as if he hadn’t hesitated. His kind-looking face was filled with worry.
“Yes. I accompanied Lady Rosalia Pitche when she carried out the goblin rescue operation, didn’t I? Thanks to Mage Boulder then, I got a bit friendly with the goblins. Those goblins are currently staying in the northeastern part of Duke Ernhardt’s Territory.”
“But, they’re goblins?”
“They are creatures who came from the Magic territory. They are far more cunning than the goblins to the south, and I’ve already crossed the Yuil Mountains with them once. Of course! Of course, I’m not suggesting we just go. They will surely be of help. Even if they can’t patrol all the way there, we could at least ask them to watch the sky and report back if they see anything.”
“⋯Still⋯.”
“If that thing explodes, they’ll be in danger too, so I at least want to tell them where to hide.”
That was the last point he wanted to make. All three of them looked at Oswald in silence for a moment.
I thought all wizards liked monsters, but that didn’t seem to be the case. A frightened wizard clung to my arm, so I glanced down at her. Startled, she quickly let go of my arm and became demure.
Hugh glanced at me. This time, our eyes met for quite a while.
“⋯Indeed. Kkokko was installing Aventa Bumps, so at least she can estimate how big that dot will get, or when it will explode. Let’s go for now. But I don’t know Goblin.”
“It’s alright, Lord Benson. Kkokko is intelligent, but I’ve also learned some Goblin myself, so I will translate.”
“⋯Yes. Let’s do that.”
The goblins’ dwelling, which we visited thereafter, smelled of wet mud.
From the village entrance to far near the coast, huts barely reaching waist height lined the area. Over a hundred houses, built by mixing mud and plastering it on in thick layers from floor to wall. Some houses had awnings woven from branches and seaweed, while others were decorated with shells and arm-crab shells stuck on them.
They said they had succeeded in migrating, and they had already produced many offspring. Young goblins, half the size of adults, greeted us with squeaks, unafraid. A few of them crawled on all fours and approached our feet. They sniffed us and played a game of tapping our feet and running away.
The goblins, who had been moving about, stopped in their tracks and pricked up their ears warily. But none of them ran away. They didn’t even stop the young ones from playing. They just observed us quietly.
Hugh’s expression had been grim since we entered the village.
Hugh and I had slain many monsters over time. No matter how many we killed, as if to annihilate them, the monsters kept coming from the Magic territory; they were enemies of humanity and useful resources. Goblins, trolls, owlbears, ogres, without discrimination.
I understood the uncomfortable feeling that came from realizing the world I knew had changed. But the more I learned, the easier it was to understand, and the more comfortable I became with familiarity. It would continue to change like this. Just as I, who grew up in the desert, became Sierren’s knight.
The knight who came with us strode forward without hesitation and reached out his hand towards the goblins.
“Hey, long time no see. Do you remember me?”
“Kyak!”
“Yeah, yeah. What the heck. I haven’t seen this one before.”
A few of them recognized the knight and cautiously approached, spitting on the ground with sharp cries. A Sword Master could kill goblins with just a finger, so they weren’t a threat. But it wasn’t like wanting to pet them like one would a horse or a cow, or patting their backs.
A few young goblins clung to the knight’s thick forearm, acting cute. The knight skillfully soothed them and called out for Kkokko in a loud voice.
“Kyak, kyak.”
“Kkik!”
“Uh, long time no see. Long time no see. Where is Kkokko?”
“Kkokko.”
“Yeah, yeah. Your leader, I mean.”
It seemed few of them could speak human language as well as Kkokko, as it wasn’t until the knight repeated the chicken-like squawks of Kkokko, Kkokko, that a goblin with a somewhat familiar appearance popped out. Holding a rough net tightly in its hand, it looked like it had rushed out while weaving a fishing net.
“Os! Os!”
“It’s Oswald, O-S-W-A-L-D.”
“Os!”
“Yeah, that’s it. Uh, I’m glad to see you too.”
Oswald, who was rubbing the hairless head of Kkokko, who was leaning its head forward as if to be held, watched. The wizard hunched her body. Ugh, gross. I heard the sound she swallowed quietly into her mouth. I had never considered the aesthetics of goblins, so it was an unfamiliar sensation.
Hugh, who had been watching the human and the goblin greet each other with some enjoyment, tapped the knight on the back.
“I’d like to let them enjoy their reunion a bit more, but even now… You know, right?”
“Gasp, I’m sorry. Kkokko, we have a problem right now.”
“Kkik?”
“Hey, do you see that up in the sky?”
“Kki… Hieeeek.”
The green goblin instantly turned a pale green.
Goblins generally have poorer eyesight than humans. But it wasn’t so bad that they couldn’t see the black dot embedded in the sky. A familiar word came out of the goblin’s mouth, which was agape with eyes and mouth wide open.
“Owner…?”
Owner.
Communication with goblins was fundamentally not much different from conversing with wolves or camels.
We understood a few gestures and discerned preferences through expressions. Simple words were replaced by pointing to or visualizing associated objects.
Although Kkokko couldn’t speak human language fluently, its ability to listen and understand was excellent. Thanks to Hugh’s detailed questions and Oswald’s patient kindness, the group learned quite a bit.
One, the Training Grounds was the space of the corpse-maker called the Thousand-Faced Devil.
Two, the three closest apostles to the Ninth God were the Thousand-Faced Devil, Soho Cheon-nyeo, and Owner.
Three, the dozens of black magicians below them had never stayed in the same place for more than a month.
Four, Owner flies.
Hugh Benson clicked his tongue as if dumbfounded and ran his hand through his front hair. The wrinkles between his brows deepened. He pressed his fingertips to his temples and let out a groan, his wrinkled chin trembling.
Kkokko, who had been flinging its short arms around and mimicking flying, whined.
“⋯Flies? It flies?”
“Yes! Thank you!”
“No, damn it. Does that guy make Divine Revelations and fly around on his own? The Ninth God himself walked… Well, he did travel by portal. If there are two who run and one who tears through space, it’s plausible there’s one who flies.”
The wizard tensed at Hugh’s muttering voice, which sounded incredulous.
“It makes Divine Revelations? Uh, am I… am I supposed to know this?”
“Yes. Well, it won’t change anything if one more person knows. Above all, only participants of the Floyd battle are here. The three of us know this story, so I thought it would be uncomfortable for you to be here knowing nothing. Mage Sellars also saw the musical praising His Majesty the King Consort, didn’t she? That’s why she volunteered for the construction site.”
“That… but still.”
“You know that our King Consort defeated the Ninth God, and that His Majesty the Emperor, with the help of the gods in the Floyd battle, defeated two of the Ninth God’s direct apostles, right?”
She, who had seemed unusually calm compared to other wizards, suddenly had her eyes sparkle like a wizard’s when the story of Blue Star came up. She replied in a slightly excited voice, clasping her hands earnestly in front of her body and nodding her head.
“Yes, of course! I’ve seen that third story alone more than five times.”
“I don’t think the names of those apostles were mentioned in the play, but two were defeated then. The Thousand-Faced Devil and Soho Cheon-nyeo. And there was one more guy who was just mentioned, whose name was Owner. He must have been one of the direct apostles too.”
“Tenmenkwo, Jahotenno, Owner…? Are those really people’s names?”
“Well, they say they aren’t from this world. Anyway, that was the situation, but until the day His Majesty the King Consort went missing, and even after he returned, we thought there were only two direct apostles. Because we’ve never seen even a single hair of the Ninth God’s third apostle.”
“Two out of the three have similar tones, a similar feel, but ‘Owner’ is different in texture. Strangely.”
To me, who wasn’t human, they all sounded similar, so I didn’t understand what was different.
“⋯Why is ‘Owner’ strange?”
“It’s a word not usually used for people’s names. It’s closer to a common noun, like honor or something. If you were to use it as a name, you’d usually use something like Wayne or Leonore.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, since there was no news and no sign of him, I thought he was just one of Soho Cheon-nyeo’s disciples and didn’t pay attention… But it turns out he was on the same level as Soho Cheon-nyeo. He can fly in the sky, and, well, he can plant things like that in the sky.”
“⋯.”
“We have to catch him… No, but why does that bastard only have a name and no face? Can he do Polymorph or something?”
“Kyak?”
“Can he change faces, change bodies, stuff like that?”
Hugh mimed by stretching his face or rubbing his palms in front of his face. Then, Kkokko, who had been rolling its eyes and thinking hard, shrugged with both hands raised to shoulder height.
“You don’t know?”
“Kke….”
“No, not ‘no,’ but ‘I don’t know’?”
“Ack?”
At Hugh’s serious expression, Kkokko became increasingly frightened. A hand suddenly rested on the head of the creature, which had hunched its thin shoulders. Oswald, who had stepped aside for a moment since Hugh and Kkokko began direct communication, gently stroked the goblin, calming it.
“For now, why don’t we go back and check the headcount first?”
“⋯Let’s do that. These goblins here…”
“⋯.”
“⋯.”
“⋯Do we… take them?”
“Yes! Thank you!”
“⋯.”
Kkokko answered.
Oswald smiled broadly, and Hugh nodded his tired head.
If this was truly the work of the remnants left by the Ninth God, the goblins would be wiped out. Since they were brought all the way here from the Magic territory, accepting Blue Star’s will, we couldn’t just let them all die.
The wizard carefully hid behind my back, avoiding Kkokko, so I let her.