Ch.11Prologue (11)

Once, before the attack, this village was likely a typical self-sufficient farming community commonly found in baronies.

The wooden palisades and watchtowers would have been barriers ensuring the village’s safety, and the people inside, being self-sufficient farmers of a sort of middle class, would have lived quite comfortably.

But such idyllic and vibrant scenery had long since been turned into chaos by the hands of those who attacked this village.

The watchtowers and palisades were collapsing or burning in the face of irresistible violence, and the wooden houses, weaker and softer than these defensive structures, were crumbling and burning without exception.

The green wheat fields that should have been flourishing were completely burned to ashes, and the vegetable plots like cabbage and turnip fields were no exception.

Moreover, bodies fallen alongside what appeared to be farming tools and hunting bows, along with small green corpses scattered about, proved that quite a fierce battle had taken place here….

And within this chaotic village, goblins—the perpetrators of this attack—were carrying out a massacre against the villagers.

“AAAAARGH!!”

“KYAAAAA─!!”

Amidst the agonized screams of people echoing everywhere, the scenes glimpsed through the collapsed palisades showed dozens of goblins committing atrocities against humans.

Each individual goblin, compared to humans, is really nothing more than a violent and fierce monkey.

Especially these goblins raised in such barbaric tribes are far inferior to humans in both intelligence and physical ability, but….

“KIEEEK!! KIEEK!!”

“AAAAA─”

-CRACK!

Instead, they possess a bottomless malice that ordinary humans could never match.

When one dies, two more rush in. Armed not with courage in the face of death, but with vile courage born from having others to die in their place, the malice of these goblins was utterly horrifying.

Charging with makeshift daggers—pointed stones or metal fragments tied with cloth—they leap onto the backs of fleeing people using their only advantage, agility, and stab wildly with their crude weapons.

Their expressions were filled with nothing but joy for slaughter and hunger, and they seemed to derive some disgusting satisfaction from killing humans larger than themselves.

In the goblins’ aesthetic sense, humans must have a horrific appearance, as they weren’t subjected to vile violations—merely tortured to death at the hands of goblins who savored the killing with strange ecstasy.

And this chaotic and terrible situation was immediately noticed by the cavalry who had quickly ridden into the village….

“Everyone disperse! Disperse! Save the people and kill those green abominations!!”

“””””””””Yes, sir!”””””””””

At the knight commander’s order, the men-at-arms and knights on horseback quickly dispersed and charged into the village.

The men-at-arms rode toward the goblins causing havoc outside. Though not in full plate armor, they wore at least plate helmets and breastplates, and their charge with spears and cavalry swords was fierce.

-THUD! CRACK!

“KEH─”

-SLASH! Splatter….

Though not lances, their spears were more than adequate for cavalry charges, impaling goblins, while their cavalry swords, swung with momentum, cleaved goblin bodies in half.

They knocked goblins flying with the combined weight of horse and rider, crushed them under hooves, and even the horses themselves would bite and chew any goblins that leapt at them.

The warhorses of this world were biological weapons created by mixing superior horse breeds with various equine monster bloodlines.

Far stronger and more intelligent than Earth’s warhorses, they were closer to horse-shaped chimeras that could never be recreated even with modern genetic engineering.

Thanks to this, the cavalry’s performance was nothing short of a one-sided slaughter.

Against lightly armored infantry (the goblin horde)—the perfect target to maximize cavalry advantages—they were sweeping through with their own strength….

-SLASH!

Particularly, the knights’ performance was truly terrifying.

With casual swings of their swords, goblins fell to the ground in clean pieces. The curtain of aura emanating from their bodies easily deflected the goblins’ arrows.

They were like beings one step more evolved than humans. Human-sized tactical weapons, one might say.

The synergy between the knights—aura users who extended their power to their mounts—and their warhorses, now able to keep up with intermediate-level movements, was truly dazzling, but….

“….Huh.”

I couldn’t close my mouth as I watched the slaughter unfold.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah. For now.”

Lord Basque asked, probably thinking I was shocked by witnessing such a terrible scene directly, but that wasn’t the case at all, so I gave a noncommittal answer.

Yes, I was certainly shocked by the situation.

However, the reason for my shock was far from what Lord Basque imagined.

In my previous life, as I recall, I was not someone particularly close to bravery or courage.

When I was young, seeing a dead sparrow on the street shocked me so much that it appeared in my dreams, and after watching zombie movies, I would tremble with anxiety, fearing that zombies might actually appear.

Yet here I was, once an ordinary person, feeling absolutely nothing while witnessing such a horrific scene?

Terribly mangled human corpses. Somewhat human-like goblin corpses. As my keen senses detected them slowly rotting, my mind remained as calm as a still water surface.

I did feel anger at the fact that people had died, and both anger and hatred toward the goblins who killed them.

‘….Why? Why is this?’

But apart from those emotions, I felt not the slightest disturbance in my heart despite seeing brutally killed human corpses for the first time. I was seriously wondering if something inside me had broken.

And as I was lost in such serious contemplation, staring blankly at the battlefield… that’s when it happened.

[─AWOOOOOO!]

The sudden sound was none other than the howl of a wolf, or some large canine animal.

After the howl, what came charging fiercely from beyond was a goblin wolf cavalry composed of monstrous wolves larger than humans with experienced goblins mounted on their backs.

These goblins, slightly larger (1.2 meters) than ordinary ones, had rather solid physiques unlike the pot-bellied, skinny goblins elsewhere, and they were also quite well-armed.

With their appearance, my already heightened senses went into overdrive, and I realized that the warning signals I had been feeling were actually alerting me to them.

And… right then.

“…Damn it!”

“Young master, they’re coming this way! Please take cover!”

Had those goblin riders identified this group’s weakness?

The ten goblin wolf riders spotted me and charged with all their might. Naturally, Lord Basque, who was supposed to protect me, stepped forward and drew his arming sword.

“My lord, please wait.”

“…What?”

But for some reason, I restrained him and stepped forward myself to face the charging wolf cavalry.

Why? Why did I step forward?

If I had just stood back and watched, no one would have blamed me. After all, I was the precious sole heir candidate to the lord, so even if I acted shamefully to save myself, no one would fault me.

Moreover, even without acting shamefully, Lord Basque, who was dozens of times stronger than me, would handle them, and if they realized I was in danger, other knights and soldiers would naturally throw themselves in harm’s way.

I could give many reasons, but instead of speaking, I calmly drew my longsword, feeling the pleasant vibration unique to blades.

It might be awkward to use such a large sword—better suited for two-handed use—on horseback, but having stubbornly used the longsword since first picking it up, it wasn’t easy to change.

And while I was lost in these idle thoughts, one goblin wolf rider with particularly fancy attire—quite large for his kind—looked at me and charged with a spear in hand—

-SLASH!

In the next moment, I drove my horse into a visible gap, decapitated the creature, and was covered in blood from its neck. Only then did I understand the reason.

“…Ah.”

Yes, that was it.

Using my anger as justification, I simply wanted to see blood through the skills I had built up until now.

Slaughter was the finest delicacy to satisfy my hunger—