Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

“A little disappointed?”

Seeing the Vampire Mage who had just saved her standing frozen in place, her eyes fixed only on Ron as he focused on controlling Bigby’s Hand, Anastina was suddenly struck by a mischievous urge. She sidled up and gave Silvia a teasing bump with her shoulder.

“Just say the word, and I’ll be on your side, you know.”

“You?” Silvia tilted her head, taking a step away. “Haven’t you settled down yourself?”

“How could you possibly help me? You and Liya are old comrades-in-arms.”

“Honestly, the way you talk,” the Elf Mercenary rolled her eyes. “Who says I’ve never settled down? I have, and more than once!”

“My first love was a minor noble from the Hailan Empire. When I decided to join the resistance and was betrayed, he went to the gallows to cover for me. My second was a human Paladin who died fighting against the Hailan Empire. My third love was…”

“Alright, alright. What about now? Is your other half waiting for you at home?”

Anastina burst out laughing. “What are you thinking? How could there be… Ahem. As of right now, I, uh, don’t have an other half…”

Silvia shot her an “I knew it” look. The Elf Mercenary was quite annoyed by this, but she was also helpless to do anything about it.

“However my savior chooses, it’s his decision. I’m just doing my best to win him over,” Silvia’s voice sounded in the elf’s ear alone a moment later. “You don’t need to worry yourself with that.”

‘The time just isn’t right yet,’ the Vampire Descendant firmly believed.

“There shouldn’t be any more ambushes,” Delaford said, stepping out from behind Aive’s tower shield after the last of the Tiger Man remnants had been eliminated. “The swarms of rats have basically swept the entire area.”

“We left a few alive. Should we finish them off?” Constance and Carlos’s group had also finished their fight. Unlike the bloody battlefield over here, their engagement had been somewhat milder—most of the Tiger Man bandits were lying scattered on the ground, limbs intact, groaning and writhing in pain.

A piercing wound to the torso can easily be more fatal than a slash, but targeting only the limbs makes it easier to leave captives incapacitated.

“Please, have mercy! We’ll never do it again!” a Tiger Man whose hand had been disabled by a Swift Sword shrieked as he struggled. “By the gods, I was the one who advised against attacking you great personages!”

“I told the chief to retreat, but he wouldn’t listen!” another Tiger Man with an injured right leg chimed in.

“You bastard! That was my idea!” “Bullshit!”

“Alright, alright, shut up!” Ron, who was getting a headache from their bickering, barked, ending their argument. “I don’t care which of you tried to talk your chief out of it—you still attacked us in the end, didn’t you? That’s no reason for me to spare your lives!”

Ron glanced around at the Tiger Men, surprised to find that there wasn’t a single assassin among them. All the ones still alive and breathing were the bandits.

“Constance, it wouldn’t have been easy for you to take one of those assassins captive, would it?”

He could understand that. After all, her skills still had room for improvement.

“It’s not her fault, Sir Ron,” Quest explained. “Those assassins seemed completely unable to communicate. Their minds could seemingly only comprehend attacking enemies, and their blood was also highly corrosive. This made it nearly impossible for the creatures to stop their attempts to harm others.”

“We had no choice but to kill them all.”

“Only comprehend attacking enemies? Horned guy, you’re giving them too much credit!” one of the Tiger Men couldn’t help but retort. “They attack everyone, including us!”

“Oh?” Ron looked at the Tiger Man. “Well said. Could you tell me more about these Strong Acid Tiger People? I’m a little interested.”

“If you tell me a good story, you get to live.”

“Really?!”

The eyes of the incapacitated Tiger Men lit up, and they began scrambling over each other to tell Ron what they knew. But their clamoring only made their fragmented accounts even more chaotic. Left with no choice, Ron had Sera silence them all. He would then call on them one by one to share everything they knew.

“You call them Strong Acid Tiger People? Well, whatever you call them doesn’t matter,” the one who had spoken up first got the first chance to talk. “We ran into these guys a month or two ago. They weren’t as far gone as they are now. They still had some of their wits about them, but they were all starving and weak. Nearly ten of them died in the first week.”

“Our chief—the one at your feet—and a few of our elders talked it over. They decided to take them in to bolster our numbers. We even gave them a lot of food and helped them through that initial crisis, but…”

The Tiger Man wanted to say more, but the murderous glares from his comrades made him stop. He gave Ron a dry laugh. “Sorry, that’s probably all I know.”

Ron, of course, understood his meaning. He pointed to the next Tiger Man. “You continue the story.”

“You got it!” The chosen Tiger Man was ecstatic and hurriedly continued, “But later, once they weren’t starving anymore, their minds actually got worse! At first, they couldn’t recognize people. Then they couldn’t even tell the difference between other Tiger Men and different creatures!”

“We had no choice. We had to chain them up with corrosion-resistant copper chains while they slept, only letting them out when we ran into a ‘tough nut’—in fact, this was the first time they were actually used for something like this.”

The Tiger Man gave a bitter smile. “Treating our own kind like we’re raising dogs or wolves… It’s probably hard for you to hear, but we didn’t like it either. There was just nothing else we could do.”

“You’re saying they still had some of their senses when you first met them?” Ron asked, resting his chin on his hand. “Next, you. Did they ever mention where they came from?”

“A product of a Mage’s experiment? A mutated version of the Beast Transformation Curse? A side effect from some Magic Items? Or some other reason.”

Ron’s suggestions made the Tiger Men exchange glances. Finally, the one he had pointed to showed a complicated expression. “Well… you’re surprisingly accurate, but you haven’t guessed it all.”

“Because all the reasons you mentioned… they’re all involved to some degree.”

“They claimed they were being hunted by a terrifying creature. With nowhere else to turn, a Mage saved them. That Mage caused the Beast Transformation Curse on their bodies to mutate into what you see now, as a way to hide from their pursuers.”

“But this Mage was no selfless saint. The protected Strong Acid Tiger People were forced to work for him more than eighteen hours a day. The Mage also claimed that if they tried to ungratefully run away, he would detonate a hidden failsafe planted in the Magic Items that induced their mutation, turning them into true beasts.”

Even just retelling the story from a third-person perspective, the Tiger Man bandit couldn’t help but shudder with lingering fear. “As for the result, well, you’ve seen what happened.”

“So, where did they come from?” Ron threw out his next question.

The designated Tiger Man immediately raised his uninjured arm and pointed toward the northern mountain range. “They said it was that way! Just behind those mountains!”