Goblin Settlement

Without any warning, two of my companions collapsed. Just moments ago, they had been joking around, saying pointless things to each other.

One had his head crushed and split open like a pomegranate, while the other had a stone deeply embedded in his chest, his face twisted in disbelief.

The sheer impossibility of it all made everyone present gasp, and for a moment, silence fell.

But that silence was shattered as countless spears rained down from above. This time, this time, several of my comrades were skewered all at once...

A whimper escaped me, overwhelmed by terror.

I desperately tried to move my limbs to flee. But no matter how frantically I struggled, I didn’t move forward at all. Puzzled, I glanced down—only to realize a white spear had pierced my abdomen without me noticing, pinning me to the ground.

(Enemies! RUN AWAY!)

I wanted to scream it at the top of my lungs, to warn my companions of the danger—but all that came out of my mouth was bloody froth.

Then came a black… a black demon.

It sprinted forward, clutching what looked like hard bones in both hands. Each time it swung them, a dull sound echoed, and my companions fell one after another into a sea of blood.

Following the black demon came a red demon.

The red demon, wielding a sword, flicked its wrist, scattering foul-smelling droplets. My comrades who were hit let out agonized screams. Twisting in pain, they shrieked and emitted white smoke as their skin melted, writhing on the ground even then.

And then, and then at last, a massive demon of red and gold arrived.

Amid the wafting yellow smoke, it strode leisurely forward, stepping on the corpses of my companions, a white spear in hand.

(The Demon King…!)

I’d never seen or heard of him before. Yet, for some reason, I felt it with absolute certainty. It was suffocating. My chest tightened.

The Demon King stood before me. But then, the world spun wildly. A sensation of floating—before my cheek suddenly sank into cold mud.

As I watched the Demon King’s retreating back and my own headless body, still impaled and twitching grotesquely, I finally realized: my head had been lopped off.

…….

Three days later, we conducted a massive cleanup of the mountain.

“Hmm… I think it was around here? Yeah, this was the goblin settlement, roughly 25 to 30 of them…”

After saving the map displayed on my comms device, I sent it along with the details to the Special Dungeon Countermeasures Bureau.

Not like I had to go this far, but I keep a journal anyway, so it’s just part of the routine. Plus, if I’m diligent with activity reports, people might think I’m a serious guy, which could come in handy someday.

Still, cleaning up the mountain was a painstaking and tedious task.

The area was vast, with treacherous terrain all around. If we hadn’t done proper mobility training beforehand, it would’ve taken even longer.

For this scouting and extermination mission, I didn’t use any tamed monsters, like pixies.

First and foremost, we needed to master proper sneaking techniques ourselves.

If we relied on the sharp eyes and ears of pixies from the get-go, we’d never develop those skills. Plus, I didn’t want Nina-san and Serai-san getting complacent, thinking, Even if I don’t notice, the pixies will. In the end, I think it helped us approach the mission with the right tension.

That said, tamed monsters had their own issues.

Pixies are highly agile and magically adept, but they’re fragile and lack stamina. Letting them loose in the mountains for scouting felt risky. Fine if they stayed in sight, but the terrain was vast with poor visibility—perfect for ambushes.

Worst-case scenario? The pixies get jumped by monsters lying in wait and get one-shot. They’re that frail.

Another option was unleashing a roach swarm, but Serai-san sternly warned me, “Absolutely NOT that!”

Yeah. Honestly, I wasn’t about to use roaches either.

Sure, roaches are monsters, but… they’re still roaches. Their intelligence is limited. You can release them in all directions and, if some panic and return, go Ah, must be something over there. But expecting detailed reports like “Three goblins at twelve o’clock! Distance, 1.5 km!” is impossible.

And if any roaches go missing? You have to search for them. If a lost one starts laying eggs, it’s a disaster.

So, we scouted on our own and found multiple goblin settlements.

No point sugarcoating it—we trampled them. Wiped them out… Yeah, it leaves a bad taste. How many times did I wish the goblins could’ve just lived untouched on some remote southern island?

But leaving them be wasn’t an option. They’d multiply and cause harm. We’d already seen ruins of settlements destroyed by the giant boar. We had to deal with them before they spread further.

At any rate, we found the dungeon entrance too. Feels like we’ve finally reached a stopping point.