Goblin Slayer - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.1

Interlude – Of How The Girls’ Slow Reactions Are To Blame

“Huff… Puff… Pant… Ahh!”

Huffing and panting, she tumbled through the hellish greenery.

Her bare feet were torn by rocks and scratched from the thorns and branches of the forest plants, none of which she recognized, and all four of the limbs visible under her short clothing were slick with blood.

The trees blocked out the sunlight, yet the dim world under the canopy was brutally humid, and she sweat profusely. Running made her throat burn, but she had no idea where there might be safe water.

It was the same with food. She saw berries and bugs and grass but couldn’t begin to guess which were edible.

At this point, in fact, she had no sense of which direction she was even going. The sun was hidden, depriving her of any way to determine where she was running. Her path didn’t seem to be headed north, but she couldn’t be sure.

In the rain forest, the sounds of animals and birds, the rustling of trees, all came together to envelop her in a cocoon of noise. She had never really been able to detect anything as ambiguous as “presence,” but…

If I’d known this was going to happen, I would’ve taken some ranger training.

“Oww, ow…”

She hated the way her hair clung to her skin; she tried to brush the sweat from her forehead but immediately regretted it. She only succeeded in making her wounds there hurt worse.

How did this even happen?

There was no answer. There was no one left to answer. She had lost all her companions.

It would have been easy to sneer at them for being naive.

Another possibility was that they had simply been unlucky, but that was cold comfort.

This was the reality: she and her companions had attempted an adventure, they had failed, and they had been routed. That was all.

“If only…I at least…had a weapon…!”

Their raft had capsized, and by the time she’d come to on the riverbank, it had been too late. Her equipment was gone, along with her friends.

Why did she continue to run rather than give up? Because she was an adventurer.

And adventurers didn’t give up.

It was their right to complain about whatever was happening, but they never backed down from it.

Above all, even when the situation looked hopeless, it wasn’t over.

She didn’t know where her companions were. That meant there was a possibility she might still find them again.

My sister… I’m sure she’s all right… She’s gotta be.

The thought of her older sister, with whom she had been working, brought a smile to her face.

The last she had seen of her was a hand reaching down from the leaning raft to pull her out of the river where she had fallen in.

Her sister, the leader of their party and the object of everyone’s respect, had been a druid.

A person who was one with nature—surely she was all right.

Or so the girl kept telling herself as she ran desperately through the forest.

That’s it! I can follow the river.

It might have been a dangerous gambit in light of her pursuers, but it was better than barreling aimlessly among the trees.

Yes. She was running away. Desperately, in order to survive. And they

would fully understand that. “    Eeek?!”

Following the sound of water, she broke through the trees to arrive at the river again—and quickly suppressed a scream.

She was confronted with a bizarre object.

It looked like something that had fallen prey to a butcherbird—impaled on a twig, stored to be eaten later. Or like a frog that some children had been tormenting for fun. Or a marionette tangled up in its own strings.

It was a person.

A corpse. This person had died in an awful way: a spike pounded from the anus through to the mouth, the body impaled upon it.

It brought to her mind a series of comical images from shadow-puppet plays she had seen.

“Wha— Urr… Ackk…”

It hardly seemed real. But she felt herself twitch reflexively, the contents of her stomach rising up toward her mouth.

She tasted something bitter. A simple fact flashed through her memory: the last thing she had eaten had been grilled fish. Skewered and burnt.

“Oh… Ugh…”

She couldn’t stop herself from dropping to her knees. It was the wrong thing to do, but she realized that too late.

They could be sensed moving nearby. It wasn’t that they were trying to hide themselves. They weren’t really capable of that.

It was simply that she wasn’t paying attention. “Ee… No—ahh—ahhh!”

When, in a panic, she tried to react, scads of the tiny shadows were already upon her. Overwhelmed, she fell backward, her bottom sinking into the mud.

I’m gonna drown…!!

Her reaction was instinctive; she began to flail her arms and legs, windmilling, kicking.

Against this many opponents, of course, such resistance was futile. All present knew how this would end.

“Hrk?!”

There was a cackle and something caught her feet. She gave a strangled cry as she felt her legs being forced open.

A crudely sharpened stick was driven in with a dramatic flair, and she felt herself go pale.

“No… N-no, no, no, no, nooo! How can—I don’t wanna—die…like this…!!”

Why did things have to end up like this?

She didn’t know.

It would be all too easy to sneer and say she was too stupid to know.

Another possibility was that she had been unlucky; but that was cold comfort.

Whatever the case, she never registered that it had been her sister on that spike.

She didn’t even think of it as one of her party members. All she knew was how they were going to kill her.