Chapter 178: Mollang Is Acting Strange (2)
Ziiiip.
I pulled my pants back up, carefully pushed Shuru toward the top of my sleeping bag to let her keep sleeping, unzipped the bag, and closed my eyes.
The reflection of human pupils in moonlight could give me away, so I kept my eyes shut, focusing all my senses on the approaching footsteps.
'By the sound of it, there are six of them…'
Rustle, rustle.
As the six sets of footsteps drew closer, cutting through the undergrowth, I pulled the strap attached to my sleeve, grabbed my mana saber, rolled out of the sleeping bag, and rose to my feet.
Hehehe…
Unable to suppress his excitement before the ambush, one of them let out a low, sinister laugh and began creeping toward me in small steps.
Crack!
A rusty shortsword shattered against my mana saber with a loud sound, and the ambushers tried to scream, but my mana saber severed their shoddy weapons faster than they could react.
Zzzzt!
The high heat of the mana saber melted their rusty daggers and shortswords, as well as the crude spears they had fashioned from sharpened wood. The attackers, dumbfounded, looked up at me in shock.
Even though goblins were easy to fend off with just a club—whether you were a man or a woman—an ambush while I was sleeping could have been more dangerous than expected.
Typically, leaving some shiny objects or food would distract them enough to escape. However…
Slash!
In the blink of an eye, four of them were cut down. The goblins collapsed without realizing they had been sliced, writhing in pain from their cooked intestines before dying.
The remaining two began to flee. Grabbing a loose stone from the ground, I activated my mana circuits to strengthen my arm, then hurled it with full force, smashing the head of the goblin lagging behind.
Thud!
"They're fast."
Their legs were short, but their escape speed was impressive—enough to give an ordinary soldier trouble. But I wasn't ordinary.
"Now, let's go wipe out their nest."
There was an old saying among the kingdom's knights:
If goblins attack people nearby, there's always a horde of them lurking in some secluded spot.
If you see one goblin, assume there are thirty more hiding somewhere.
In the past, goblins frequently stole food and livestock from villages. Sometimes, the braver ones even raided villages outright.
However, thanks to the goblin eradication efforts that began over fifty years ago—spreading bait laced with poison and burning goblin caves after gathering men from villages, or dispatching knights to handle larger nests—their numbers had dwindled significantly.
Nowadays, goblins were so rare near the capital that you hardly saw any.
It got to the point where Professor Pandel wrote a paper arguing that completely eradicating goblins, no matter how harmful they were, could have unforeseen ripple effects on the ecosystem. Of course, his suggestion was ignored since goblins continued to harm crops and livestock. Now, it was widely believed that their population could no longer recover unless someone deliberately reintroduced them to the ecosystem.
Even I, having grown up near the capital, had only seen a goblin once as a child. Back then, the villagers swarmed the lone goblin, surrounding it, and I couldn't get a proper look. In the end, the village elder dealt with it and reported the incident to the capital.
'Still… this area isn't exactly a place where goblins could thrive.'
The cold, barren northern region had few villages to plunder. The locals here were primarily beastmen, lamias, lizardmen, and other formidable races that goblins wouldn't dare attack.
Beastmen like the military dog handlers or Shuru might seem docile when accustomed to humans, but when facing hostile monsters like goblins, they were even more brutal than humans, toying with their prey before killing it. Traditionally, goblins were southern monsters, so what were they doing here?
'Well… if it's just a handful, they could be anywhere.'
Goblins were light, leaving no footprints, but their stench and wheezing breaths made them easy to track, even in the dark.
When the wheezing stopped, I knew they had entered a cave or similar hiding spot—their nest. Confirming this, I dug into the damp soil of the forest floor, smearing it on reflective parts of my skin like my face and hands, and drew my dagger for defense.
'It'll be hard to spot them visually anyway.'
If I used mana to enhance my vision, I could easily locate hidden caves, but that would risk alerting the goblins. Instead, I closed my eyes, relying on sound to pinpoint their location.
"Heek! Heeek!"
"Kek! Kekeke!"
Hearing the commotion nearby, I deliberately lifted my heels to move silently and traced the goblins to their cave.
'Found it.'
The cave wasn't large. It didn't have any side passages or enough space for a strategic retreat. It was more of a burrow where five or six goblins could barely huddle together. Confirming that there were no escape routes or places to hide, I charged in.
"Heekkkk!!!"
Slice.
I silenced the goblin reporting to what seemed to be their leader by plunging a dagger into its spine. Then I turned my gaze to the goblin leader—or perhaps a shaman.
There was no need to conceal myself anymore. Blue mana swirled in my eyes, emitting light. At that moment, the goblin leader screamed and tried to flee, but my dagger reached its neck faster than it could escape.
"Grugh..."
As the foul stench of goblin blood spread through the area, the goblins sleeping in the cave began to stir and scramble noisily. I crouched and crawled into the cramped space, just large enough to enter while hunched over.
"Kieeeek!"
The moment the cave entrance darkened and my glowing blue eyes appeared, a female goblin inside shrieked and tried to run further inside. I grabbed its leg, dragged it out, and mercifully ended its life with a swift cut to the spine, sparing it unnecessary pain.
'Even for goblins, the least I can do is ensure a painless end.'
"Kiek! Kieeeek!"
Crack!
One goblin resisted, swinging a rusty dagger at me. However, without proper swordsmanship and with such a crude weapon, it was no match for my knight-issued assassination dagger. I parried the dagger with ease and drove mine deep into its abdomen, silencing it completely.
'Is that all of them?'
I pressed my hand against the cave walls, checking for any remaining threats. Near the back of the cave, I noticed a pile covered with a filthy cloth, from which faint breathing sounds emanated.
'This must be prey they captured… but it seems a bit large?'
If it were just an animal, I could take it for my breakfast. But when I pulled back the cloth, what I found curled up inside was a small girl.
'Kidnapping?'
Thinking she might be someone abducted from a nearby village, I checked her face and body for injuries. Fortunately, it seemed the goblins hadn't had a chance to harm her. She appeared more exhausted and frightened than physically hurt.
Her face was turned away, and I couldn't get a good look, but the long rabbit ears poking from her head and the round, fluffy tail near her hips gave away her race.
'A rabbit beastman?'
---
"It's quite noisy for a midnight stroll."
"You're awake, Professor Pandel."
"With you spreading the stench of blood nearby, how could I not wake up?"
'More likely, he just doesn't sleep well because of his age…'
Standing at the carriage door and keeping watch, Professor Pandel beckoned me over, instructing me to bring the rescued rabbit girl inside.
"A rabbit beastman."
"She's still young. It's unfortunate."
"Young? By their standards, this is fully grown. You can tell just by the length of her legs."
'Beastmen appearances vary so much by race. How am I supposed to know?'
I hadn't noticed while she was curled up, but stretching her legs revealed smooth, well-proportioned limbs with a hint of elegance. Although she wasn't very tall overall, her proportions were impressive, and her breasts were quite full and rounded. Despite her short stature, her figure was that of an adult woman.
Just as goat beastmen sometimes look like old men because of their long beards, beastmen's appearances can be deceptive.
"She's exhausted from stress. She'll recover with some rest in a safe place."
"Understood."
"For now, we need to move. Take her with us."
"Are we not going to find her family?"
"Rabbit beastmen usually live alone. Unless it's mating season or they're raising offspring, they either fight their own kind to the death or mate constantly when with the opposite sex. Typically, they live in solitude. Since she's an adult and doesn't seem to have had any offspring, she's likely recently independent from her parents."
Leaving the rabbit beastman's care to Professor Pandel, I stepped outside, where Mollang poked her head out of my sleeping bag with a pout.
"Sorry, sorry. I got ambushed."
She extended her slime arm and pulled me back into the sleeping bag. Unlike before, when she would meld with me naturally, she now stubbornly maintained a humanoid shape, as if determined not to be pushed aside.
'Why is she acting like this…?'
Shaping herself into a human form was uncomfortable for Mollang. Normally, even when transforming to connect with me, she would only form a head and torso, leaving her arms and legs in their slime state. But now, from head to toe, she maintained a human-like appearance, her movements slow and clumsy, as if it was a strain.
Since she couldn't speak, I couldn't ask her why.
'Is she not getting enough food?'
Even after I entered the sleeping bag, Mollang didn't go for my lower half as she usually did. Instead, she rubbed her head against my chest. I couldn't tell if she was laying the groundwork for an easier connection later or if she had some other intention.
"…Hmm."
Seeing her cling to me and imitate human behavior, I pondered for a moment and came up with a hypothesis.
'Lately, she hasn't shown jealousy, but she does seem anxious…'
"Mollang."
I deliberately touched the core at the back of her head as I spoke. Mollang couldn't talk, but she could understand me.
"You don't need to transform into a human. Mollang is the cutest in her soft, slime form."
Hearing that, Mollang flinched and froze.
"Are you feeling threatened because I keep bringing in other girls?"
It's common for the eldest child to act more affectionate and try harder to please when siblings are added to the family. Mollang might have started feeling insecure as Delphine, Erin, Silvia, and other girls became more prominent around me.
I thought I'd been giving Mollang plenty of attention and feeding her regularly, but from her perspective, perhaps she felt she was just being used to dispose of semen, her affection overlooked, leading to her distress.
"You silly girl…"
If I didn't care about Mollang, I wouldn't keep her with me.
Still, it made sense that words alone might not reassure her.
"Fine, fine. I won't sleep tonight. How about we sneak off somewhere just the two of us, without Shuru?"
Mollang nodded.
Without a moment's hesitation, she nodded against my chest, making it clear my guess was right.
Sneaking away from the group carried some risk, but I decided to humor Mollang. Carrying her humanoid-shaped body in my arms, I headed into the dark forest.