The Power of Goblins(3)

It was a step taken thinking she would just run lightly.

But with that one step, her vision shot forward like an arrow, and she felt pain.

Only after feeling that pain did Neon realize she had collided with something.

“Ow ow ow…”

Her nose hurt sharply from the frontal collision.

At the pain as if she had dropped a remote control, Neon rubbed her nose and raised her head to assess the situation, but at the sight that met her eyes without needing to assess anything, Neon let out a questioning sound.

Rumble…

The observation room collapsing in real-time visible as she raised her head.

And under the falling debris of the observation room, Neon herself was kneeling and crouching.

“Huh…?”

Looking back, the spot next to the procedure table where Neon herself had been standing just now was visible far away.

A distance of at least 30 meters.

Seeing just that much was enough to know that this situation had occurred because of herself, so Neon got up from her spot in great bewilderment.

“I-I’m sorry…!”

She had gotten up to somehow apologize for this situation she had caused.

However, if Neon had made a mistake, it was…

“Wait, don’t move from there!!”

One was that she hadn’t heard Baek-jin’s shout coming from far away because she was trying to apologize loudly.

And the other was…

Crack—!

The force with which she stomped the floor in her haste to get up was much stronger than the step she had taken to run.

An ominous cracking sound from the floor as soon as she got up.

Her knees and calves had stretched to get up with normal force, but Neon’s leg muscles, which had changed to those of a goblin after receiving the gene mana stone implant, had already prepared to cover a distance of tens of meters with just that one movement.

“Woah?!!”

Crash—!!!

With the sound of the floor shattering, Neon’s body flew past Baek-jin, who was running towards her, and crashed into the opposite wall.

Neon’s body that flew a distance of nearly 80 meters, breaking small obstacles, with just one leap.

And Baek-jin, who realized this a beat late, turned his body to follow Neon and shouted with a raised voice towards Neon embedded in the wall:

“Don’t do anything and stay like that! And then slowly control your strength…!”

“W-wait a moment… My body is stuck too tightly, let me just pull this out…”

“If you stay still, we’ll pull you out, so just don’t move!”

Baek-jin’s shout that felt even desperate echoed inside the procedure room.

But unfortunately, Neon, who had been stuck in the wall, had already put strength into her entire body, and the result appeared in quite a devastating form.

Creak—!!!

Neon, who pushed out the wall itself she was stuck in with unbelievable strength and came out.

Fortunately, this time Neon’s body didn’t fly off somewhere, but the wall Neon’s body had come out of began to grow cracks with a despairing sound.

The cracks that had been small as a person gradually spread across the entire wall surface like tree roots and eventually extended their influence to other walls connected to it.

“Ah.”

“Oh no…”

The sighs of Neon and Baek-jin burst out simultaneously at that.

And with those sighs as a signal, the cracked walls began to collapse with a sound incomparable to the observation room.

Rumble—!!!

The debris of the wall collapsing like rain, raising dust.

Although she had not listened to Baek-jin’s words twice, mixing mistake and intention, Neon wasn’t stupid enough to try to move her body even in this situation.

Glancing back, she saw Baek-jin rubbing his face while wearing disheveled monocles.

“Ugh…”

At the sight of Baek-jin that raised her sense of guilt to the limit, Neon couldn’t say anything and lowered her head.

The result of the chaos that the doctors and nurses in the procedure room and the administrative staff in the corridor gathered to look at helplessly.

All Neon could do in between was to cover her face, which had become hot with embarrassment and guilt, with both hands.

“I’m sorry…”

Along with a sincere apology.

---

Leaving the aftermath to So-eun and Jinhyun, who were originally the leaders of the undeveloped gate, Yeon-ah and I returned to the General Management Team’s tower one step ahead.

The General Management Team’s tower we returned to directly by boarding the flagship we had contacted in advance.

“It looks fine from the outside at least…?”

“…Let’s go inside first.”

Fortunately, the tower we arrived at had no problems when viewed from the outside.

It wasn’t particularly on fire, and there were no signs that Neon had caused a ruckus.

But rather because of that, with hearts that had become more anxious, Yeon-ah and I entered the tower and went up to the floor of the procedure room where we had received the report.

“…Oh.”

“Haha…”

There we could see the chaotic state of the floor.

Debris scattered here and there in the corridor and cracked walls that could hardly be called clean.

And far away where the procedure room was, the wall had completely collapsed and its interior was slightly visible even from here.

A floor thoroughly broken to the extent that not a single place could be said to be intact.

We had heard that she had only rampaged about three or four times on the way here, but to create this kind of scene with just that, I could roughly guess how much force she had used.

To make such a mess, really.

“But well…”

However, although I said this, if we looked at it in detail, it could be considered that they had blocked it quite well to have only this much damage despite rampaging with goblin strength.

“Honestly, I thought about three floors would be destroyed.”

“…Please don’t say such terrible things so casually, Ancestor. But yes… If it’s to this extent, it should be possible to clean up in a day or two. It doesn’t seem like the budget will be too high either.”

Yeon-ah, who had been a little surprised at first like me, soon roughly estimated the repair costs and walked towards the procedure room.

Seeing that calm appearance, it seemed Yeon-ah had also ended up with less damage than she had assumed.

“This much is much less than I expected…”

If she muttered like that while walking ahead, how much loss had she been expecting?

However, thinking that those severe worries were probably the aftermath of seeing me throw a mountain two days ago, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry.

But since I couldn’t apologize for this, I just walked past the staff cleaning up the corridor and followed behind Yeon-ah who had gone ahead, and how long did we walk like that?

Not walking for very long, we finally arrived at the procedure room.

“It’s much more of a mess.”

“It’s a disaster.”

Even before entering, Yeon-ah and I muttered like that without needing to be first at the interior of the procedure room clearly visible from the corridor as all the walls had collapsed.

Then, passing by the debris that hit our feet and entering, what came into view were two people, male and female, who were the only ones keeping their places at the center of the procedure room.

Baek-jin sprawled on a chair with all his energy drained, and Neon maintaining a fixed posture with her whole body tensed.

“Ah, Ancestor! You’ve come!”

“Shin-yeon! Have you finally arrived?!”

And as soon as they saw us… more precisely, me, the two made expressions as if seeing a savior.

Looking at the appearance of the two, it was enough to guess how the current situation was without needing to be told.

“Looking at it, it seems you just stayed still until I came for fear of causing more trouble if you moved.”

“Ahahaha…”

“It’s as you said.”

At my words accurately guessing the truth, Neon laughed as if ashamed and Baek-jin affirmed.

After all, since there had been no cases of gaining a goblin’s body among Yeon-ah’s family members so far, I could understand using such a simple and foolish method, but seeing it exactly as I had thought, I awkwardly scratched my head.

And I let out a sigh of resignation at Neon’s gaze looking at me as if asking to be saved and Yeon-ah approaching Baek-jin, and moved my feet from where I had been standing.

“You must be tired today.”

It seemed I would have quite a lot to do today, so a deep sigh spread behind my back.

---

The Goblin Clan’s body is hard, flexible, and strong.

The muscles filling the body were powerful enough to easily throw a mountain, and the skin was flexible and hard enough to easily deflect that recoil.

The Goblin Clan’s body was truly a perfect combination of strength and softness.

Therefore, the Goblin Clan’s body was revered by humans in the past as if it were given by God.

And now, looking at Neon’s changed body, I couldn’t hide my admiration.

“Then, I’ll swing!”

“Eek…!”

Clang—!

As Yeon-ah’s swung sword touches Neon’s arm, it bounces off without inflicting a single wound due to the strong repulsive force.

The sword that bounced off without even making a tiny scratch.

“Hooh… It’s really no different from a goblin.”

“This is really scary…!”

“You’re not even getting hurt anyway. What’s so scary?”

I grabbed Neon’s arm that had deflected the sword and examined it while uttering such words of admiration, and Neon made an expression of dislike with a very shrunk face.

The place where I had brought Yeon-ah and Neon now was the 12th District Gate that we had temporarily rented.

We couldn’t turn the surroundings into a wasteland by testing in the tower or within the city, so we had entered the dungeon.

And as a result of experimenting together with Yeon-ah now, Neon’s changed body was really no different from that of a goblin.

“By the way, why are you still so stiff even after coming all the way here? I said it’s okay to move comfortably since I’ll watch over you, didn’t I?”

“B-but I think I still need time to get used to that speed…”

If there was anything unfortunate, it was that Neon, who had gained the Goblin Clan’s body, was completely stiff due to the incident at the tower.

She had maintained a fixed posture until coming to this dungeon from the tower because it could be dangerous, but I didn’t know she would stay still even after entering a dungeon without a single hunter, so Yeon-ah and I looked at each other and sighed.

“It seems we have a long way to go, Ancestor.”

“What can we do? Since she wants it, we have to teach her how to control her strength first.”

“How do you plan to teach her? If I can help, I will.”

At my words saying I would teach strength control first, Yeon-ah asked if there was anything she could do to help.

However, I waved my hand at such a Yeon-ah and lightly stretched my body.

“It’s not a method that particularly needs help from others. It’s fine, so just watch carefully from there.”

“Watch carefully… you say?”

At my meaningful words, Yeon-ah showed a puzzled look and then carefully took a step back.

Seeing that appearance of her understanding my words well, I smiled and then approached Neon who was very stiff.

“Now, Neon?”

“Y-yes?”

“We’ve confirmed that your body is now the same as mine, a goblin, right? Although a bit lacking compared to me, your muscle strength is similar, and your skin hardness is similar.”

“S-so…?”

Neon started sweating cold sweat as if sensing something ominous at my words.

Thinking that her intuition had developed well like a goblin, I cracked my muscles that had been adjusting again after fighting the fusion monster mass.

“First, try to block well on your own?”

“…Pardon?”

At my words, Neon asked back after a moment of silence, but what returned was my fist thrust out.

“…?!”

A fist swung at a moderate speed, though with full force.

At that speed that a goblin could react to even if caught off guard, Neon reflexively raised her guard and blocked my fist, and flew far away towards a rock.

Crash—!!!

The rock that Neon crashed into begins to collapse with a roar.

And I smiled like an evil spirit at Neon, who was still stiff in the scattering dust.

“First you need to properly know your own strength before you can control it or anything.”

So for that purpose.

“Let’s get hit first.”

For now, it’s time to gain a sense through actual practice.