Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

”The northern snowfields aren’t exactly known for their biodiversity. It’s perfectly normal that you haven’t seen creatures like this before, Sera,” Constance chuckled. ”If you were in a city, you’d see even more novel things!”

”Oh?” Sera, who was walking ahead with the Grip of the Vast Wave slung over her shoulder, couldn’t help but turn back at the words. ”Go on then, tell me. What kind of monsters could there possibly be in a city that I haven’t seen?”

”Oh, there are plenty: half-human turtles living in the sewers, giants on the streets in the middle of the night... Although cities are generally much safer than the wilderness, plenty of Spies and bounty Hunters make their living off them!”

”You say that like you’ve seen them yourself,” Aive said, glaring at her cousin who was clearly making things up. ”When I first started as an Adventurer, I took on city quests too. Other than a few Ratmen who broke into houses because they couldn’t make ends meet, the sewers were just full of various Mud Monsters. There was no such thing as ’half-human turtles’—that’s obviously nonsense.”

”You must have heard that from some Bard, didn’t you?”

In response to Aive’s doubt, Constance just stuck out her tongue and said nothing. Sera, on the other hand, was intrigued. She spent the rest of the way begging Constance to tell her those strange and bizarre stories, which added a bit of fun to their otherwise oppressive journey.

But Ron and the others all thought it was more likely that Sera wanted to use these stories as material for her drunken boasts to Rurik. After all, she had previously bragged to the Dwarf that she’d single-handedly defeated a whole dozen Hill Giants!

”Uh, excuse me, could you pause the story for a second?” After passing through a thicket tainted by Withered Monsters, a Cultist standing on a small hillock interrupted Constance’s tale.

”Look over there. Isn’t that the place we’re heading to?”

Following his finger, they saw a small, black, monument-like structure standing in a clearing between the forest and the swamp. Surrounding it were countless Undead of all kinds—zombies, skeletons, Ghosts, and...

”Boneless,” Silvia identified the corporeal Undead creatures that lacked skeletons. ”These things couldn’t possibly appear here unless they were deliberately created.”

”Only a body that has suffered extreme torture before death has a chance of producing such a creature,” the Vampire Descendant said, gazing with a hint of pity at the distant creatures that resembled living skin. ”My good-for-nothing teacher once researched this subject. The conversion rate wasn’t ideal. For so many to be gathered here, a massive tragedy must have occurred.”

”Your teacher was a Necromancer?” Yelena asked, tilting her head with interest. ”You should have continued studying with him. They usually possess considerable knowledge.”

”You go, if you’re so inclined,” Silvia snorted. ”His research topic was ’How to Maximize the Utilization of a Single Corpse.’ The specific procedure was to simultaneously summon a Boneless, a skeleton, and a Ghost from one body. If possible, he also wanted a crawling claw, necrotic pus, and a brain in a jar.”

”When you left him, how far had he gotten?”

”An aggregate of all of them, minus the Ghost,” Silvia said with a pout. ”A zombie.”

Yelena: ”...You’ve got to be kidding me! Isn’t that the same as making no progress at all?!”

”I never said he made any progress,” Silvia said, no longer paying the Shadow Spirit any mind. She noticed the Priest seemed a bit dazed. ”Victoria, what are you looking at?”

”With this many Undead Creatures here, it’s finally your time to shine. Go destroy all of these pitiful things!”

”Huh? Oh, of course,” Victoria replied without turning around, her gaze fixed on a patch of grass not far away. ”Can you guys help me see? Is that thing over there an Undead creature or not?”

Between the clearing around the monument and the hillock where Ron and his group stood, a patch of overgrown grass was crushed down by something heavy. From their angle, they could only vaguely make out the back of a medium-sized, somewhat short creature, but no one could see clearly what it was.

”Please don’t be another ambush...” a Cultist shivered. Although Ron and the others had fended off the Withered Branch Monster’s attack earlier, it was enough to leave him with some trauma. ”I’ve heard that some intelligent Undead creatures love to do this—play dead or pretend to be unconscious, and when you walk past, CHOMP!”

”That’s easy to solve,” Delaford said, nocking an arrow and aiming his bow at the figure. ”I’ll just shoot it, and we’ll have our answer!”

”If it’s an Undead creature, it’ll stand up once it’s injured or knows it’s been discovered. If it’s a living thing... uh, it’ll die. Either way, it won’t be a threat to us anymore!”

”Besides, out here in the middle of nowhere, even if it is a living person, they can’t be up to any good!”

”You can tell the good guys from the bad guys now?” Aive glanced askance at the goblin. This wasn’t so much a distrust of his principles as a distrust of his intelligence.

”What’s so hard about it? For someone to suddenly appear here, they must be trying to beat us to the treasure!” Delaford had, of course, heard from Gracia that part of the queen’s remains were buried here. But finding the remains meant they could be exchanged for treasure from the Duke, so anyone else coming here was, by extension, a treasure hunter.

And since they weren’t part of his group, they were obviously here to steal the treasure. They were undoubtedly bad guys, so there was nothing wrong with killing them.

A bowstring can’t be held taut for long without being released. As the saying goes, ”an arrow on the string must be let fly.” So, after Delaford had briefly run through his logic, the string twanged, and the released arrow shot straight toward the suspicious figure’s back.

If Ron and Silvia hadn’t both acted at the same time, using two Mage’s Hands to knock the arrow off course one after the other, someone’s journey would have likely ended right there.

”Hey! What are you doing?!” Delaford stamped his feet. ”How are we supposed to identify it now?”

”Actually, we still can, we just forgot about this before,” Ron said, scratching his head with a sheepish grin. ”We don’t need to attack it. Why not just use Mage’s Hand to flip it over?”

Two Mage’s Hands pushed aside the tangled weeds and thorns around the figure. On Ron and Silvia’s count, they heaved together, flipping the target over and rotating it sixty degrees so that its weathered, closed-eyed face was pointing directly at the group.

The man was tall, but he had seemed somewhat short before because he was curled up in the grass. He wore tattered and messy gray-brown robes. His grizzled hair and beard were so unkempt and tangled with the surrounding vegetation that even the Mage’s Hands couldn’t pull them apart. Beneath the intricate mess of hair, the small part of his face that was visible was etched with deep lines from the long passage of time, so much so that one had to look very closely to even make out his closed eyes.

”Whoa! It’s an old man with a white beard!”

Delaford let out a whistle.