041 – Water Lily Forest (2)
If you want to see the most horrendous wars, watch Goblin Wars.
The person who left these words was Tobiere, a renowned monster behaviorist and sage.
The victorious group of goblins leaves a seal of slavery on the defeated group by kindling fire, and they serve as slaves for the rest of their lives.
When a slave gave birth to a child, he burned alive to death, and when he was hungry, he killed the slave and devoured the flesh.
Goblins do not treat slaves as a species, but rather as animals.
If there is a shaman within the goblin group, it is a bigger problem.
The goblin shaman reigned as the king of the group and used the defeated group as a sacrifice for witchcraft rather than slavery.
The offering is not only for goblins, but also for all races such as play, mankeys, and white fur monkeys.
According to ancient records, there is a record that the entire estate of a nobleman was devastated by a goblin shaman. When a goblin shaman appeared in a nearby village, he had to summon a knight or mercenary to kill him.
If you make a mistake, the entire village will be sacrificed to the goblin shaman.
– Kyaaaaaaah!
Goblins from the Goblin Shaman group slaughtered other groups of goblins with their eyes closed.
They did not tremble even when a blade or a club flew away with the pain and fear castrated, but only repeated slaughter and slaughter.
Those goblins are afflicted with a spell called ‘Madness’.
Mad goblins run like crazy dogs only to kill their enemies with their survival instincts completely castrated.
In addition to strength and agility, it was even healed naturally by eating other people’s flesh, so it was like seeing a swarm of zombies run by ancient witches.
Tigris turned back, ignoring the goblins already fighting.
About 20 goblins were seen there.
The goblins were all drooling with their eyes closed as if they had lost their senses.
In the center of it stood an old goblin with a staff carved out of bones.
That guy was a goblin shaman.
“Killing a goblin shaman is a bit tricky. It’s because he’s clever and doesn’t know what traps he’s set up around him. It could be a magically triggered trap, or it could be a trap that cuts off the ankle.”
“Then how do you hunt?”
“The easiest and safest way is to use powerful magic to kill them all at once. But we don’t have wizards. From now on, please teach me how to catch the shaman goblin while the knights are together.”
Of course, if Tigris came forward, he could kill them all in less than three seconds.
But there is no point in bringing these two together.
“From now on, team play is important. One has to be the judo that catches the goblin and the shaman’s attention, and the other has to be the striker and hit the goblin shaman’s neck. If only the shaman dies, the spells on the goblins are completely removed, so the rest will be easy to deal with.”
Charlotte and Irene looked into each other’s eyes without a word.
Charlotte raised her hand.
“I’m going to be a judoist.”
“good night. Then Irene becomes a striker and strikes the shaman’s head. If it becomes dangerous, I will intervene, so act confidently.”
Tigris said looking at Charlotte.
“You should not be afraid of the goblins that follow you, but watch out for the shaman’s mouth. If the shaman casts a spell on you, you have no defense. He’s a low-level shaman, so he has no choice but to use a ‘tan’ type of magic, so don’t think about hitting it and just focus on avoiding it.”
“Yes. All right.”
After a while···
Charlotte was the first to move.
“Hey, you bald, stocky!”
The goblins and the goblin shaman immediately reacted to Charlotte’s voice.
– Kie hey hey!
As the shaman beckoned, the mad goblins rushed towards Charlotte.
Still, the shaman only sent half of it to see if he was thinking, and left the other half alone.
But that was not what Charlotte wanted. .
Charlotte picked up a stone rolling nearby and threw it right at the shaman’s head.
Three goblins nearby reacted immediately and threw themselves at the stone.
Pussack!
The stone smashed a goblin’s head and ripped through the goblin’s intestines behind it.
Charlotte fed him a fist potato.
“Do you think that will work, bastard!”
– Kyaaaaaaah!
When the shaman noticed that Charlotte could also attack from a distance, he immediately dispatched more goblins.
Now, only four were left of the shaman.
“Yeah, that’s enough to save face!”
Charlotte was steadily playing the role of a judoist.
There was no narrow distance and no siege, and he only walked on the safe path that he and Tigris had seen with his own eyes a while ago.
Now it was Irene’s turn.
Irene took a deep breath to warm up the Auror.
His muscles swelled up and he prepared to rush.
Irene kept an eye on the path the goblins had passed a while ago to chase Charlotte.
There would be no traps along the way.
Irene’s new model flew like an arrow.
Irene, who narrowed the distance of 50 meters at once, swung her sword.
– Kyaaaah!
Surprised by Irene, who suddenly attacked from behind, the shaman immediately used magic.
The four goblins nearby melted away and gathered with the shaman’s white staff.
The shaman raised his hands high to block Irene’s sword.
Wow-!
Irene’s Greatsword and the Shaman’s Bone Staff collided.
A sharp roar cut through the forest.
Irene was slightly surprised.
It was because he had completely blocked Irene’s greatsword in the subject of a goblin.
It wasn’t a 5th grade monster in the same order as Beomchi for nothing.
Irene gave me more strength.
Then the goblin shaman’s arm trembled, and the red staff lost its color.
Puffy-!
Eventually, the goblin shaman’s arms were completely broken and he lost his staff.
It was a golden opportunity to kill the goblin.
Irene’s greatsword mercilessly cut the goblin’s body into pieces at an angle.
-Keek!
At that moment, dark red smoke came out of the goblin shaman’s body and rushed towards Irene’s body.
Irene reflexively tried to hit him down.
“You mustn’t knock it out.”
The sword of Tigris, who was approaching all of a sudden, cut through the air.
A strong sword wind blew red smoke into the sky.
“The magic made by sacrificing oneself has a high success rate and is just as deadly.”
Ordinary witchcraft disappears automatically when the shaman’s life ends, but the witchcraft created with his own soul and body permanently tormented the victim.
“You must kill the shaman and leave the place. Just before you die, you can cast a spell on your body and die.”
“···Yes. All right.”
Charlotte approached, wiping away the blood on the sword. When all the goblins chasing him fell by grabbing their heads, Charlotte killed them all.
“Is the shaman dead too?”
“okay. They both did well.”
It wasn’t empty words.
Both followed exactly what was entrusted to them and performed their mission perfectly.
They both had the qualities to be good swordsmen, talented soldiers, and knights.
Unlike the Tigris before the return.
“Then I will teach you how to dispose of the corpse.”
“Eh? Do you handle corpses?”
“Everything is of the utmost importance. In particular, the shaman’s corpse leaves traces of witchcraft on the body, so if left unattended, a curse is placed on the land or strange magical phenomena often occur.”
Charlotte tilted her head.
“What the hell is magic that makes you so persistent?”
“I will tell you after I dispose of the body. First, take all the goblin corpses and bring them here. I will make a fire.”
The body does not catch fire.
Since more than half of the body is water, it was necessary to dig up quite a bit of firewood to completely burn it down.
Fortunately, it was a dry spring season and there had been no rain in the last month, so there were many dry trees nearby that could be used as firewood.
Tack-! Tack-!
After raising all the dead goblin corpses in 15 minutes and setting them on fire, Tigris talked about magic.
“Witchcraft, in very simple terms, is a force that twists cause and effect. Using the magician’s body as a medium, he twists the causality of the world to create the phenomenon that the magician desires.”
“I don’t understand anything… What do you mean?”
“I’ll show you more than words.”
Tigris decided to cast a simple spell.
Tigris could not perform magic without a magic tool, but there was a magic tool left behind by a goblin.
Tigris half-buried his bone staff into the ground, took some burning firewood, and wrapped it around him.
It was just like a child playing with fire, which seemed meaningless.
However, Tigris completed the entire series of courses with great care.
“The only thing I can do is spirit magic. In fact, he can’t even be called a psychic because he knows how to kill souls rather than knowing how to use spirit magic.”
A true psychic can cast a spell of her own will, without the need for a magic tool.
Tigris drew his sword.
“Still, when you have such a magical tool, you can do really simple spirit magic.”
Charlotte and Irene swallowed their saliva and watched Tigris’ behavior.
Tigris did not cast spells like other shamans.
It wasn’t even about putting the sword into the sword.
I just slowly parted the blazing fire.
also honestly.
“It can’t be done all at once.”
Charlotte was heartbroken.
“…have you done it now?”
“More than half of witchcraft is luck. And the magic tools aren’t good either.”
“Ah… if you can’t do it, you can’t…”
– Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Once again, the sword of Tigris cut through the fire, and a scream erupted from the staff.
“Well. It was.”
“Ji, what are you doing now?”
The cane kept screaming. .
Irene also became contemplated by the strange phenomenon.
“The spirits bound by this staff have been released.”
“Does that make sense? That a staff has a spirit?”
“Why does that make no sense? Isn’t Jane in Lenny’s cast iron pan too?”
“ah···. is it? No, wait a minute, how do you know how to use magic other than that?”
“learned.”
“To whom?”
“To the demon hunter.”
“When, how, and why?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Is the last one the most important?!”
Charlotte didn’t ask any further questions.
It was because he thought that if Tigris was a secret, there was a reason why it was a secret.
“Coming back to the point, witchcraft refers to the art of connecting two phenomena that have no causal relationship. It was as if I had cut fire and freed the goblin spirits from their staff.”
“Then does this arrangement of fire make any sense?”
“No, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Witchcraft is accomplished by carefully doing things that are intrinsically useless.”
It is the same principle as the ancients held a rain festival or the sea people made human sacrifices.
There is no causal relationship between a person praying to the sky for rain and rain, but if the sincerity and desire are put into the magical method of ancestral rites, then it will rain.
But there is a lot of luck involved in that too, so sometimes it comes down and sometimes it doesn’t.
“The scary thing about witchcraft is this. By performing an action that has no causal relationship, the magician can bring about the desired phenomenon. You can break someone’s arm just by breaking your own finger, you can just blow a whistle and your sword rusts and crumble, you save a person, but you can starve to death because it’s full of black gel.”
Everything I just said was the deeds of Lota’s Mouth Levis, who tormented Tigris until the moment of his death.
“So, if you meet a person who calls you a shaman, you will mercilessly cut and kill them, and if you meet someone who wears strange clothes and behaves strangely even though they do not say that you are a shaman, run away.”
Originally, I would have simply ignored it, but I had no choice but to believe what Tigris was saying because he was actually demonstrating magic and was no one else.
“yes. All right.”
“Then move on now. There were even goblin shamans, so more strange ones might have flowed in.”
* * *
After all, the investigation reached its fourth day.
Meanwhile, Charlotte and Irene learned a lot from Tigris.
He taught me a lot of practical things that are difficult to learn at school, such as how to track monsters, how to check traps made by goblins, and the habits of monsters.
Irene picked up a stick and threw it over the bushes.
Then a snare of tree trunks came up.
“Is this a goblin trap?”
“right.”
In particular, Irene learned faster than Charlotte.
Do you have good eyesight?
If it was not a knight, but an adventurer or a hunter, it would have been great.
“Are there any more places to go now? If we just look at the windy cliffs here, it’s over, right?”
“right.”
Tigris’ task was actually on the easy side.
There were hardly any monsters living in the Forest of Training as menacing as Norberd’s orcs or ogres, and the places where the monsters could inhabit were limited, so it was easy to figure out.
The real difficulty was identifying vegetation, hunting monsters near the water lily forest, and maintaining security magic around the water lily forest.
Tigris didn’t have to worry about such things because professional adventurers and wizards were doing them.
Tigris entered the windy cliff.
As the name suggests, the windy cliff brought a cool and cool breeze.
Those words were the same as saying that it was the perfect place for monsters to live.
“The gnolls are living.”
“The number of individuals… huh?”
The state of the gnolls was a bit strange.
The number of gnolls was 10, and all of them had lost their minds and collapsed.
“Are you suffering from a strange disease? Why don’t you go hunting in broad daylight and lie down like that?”
“You two, wait here. I will come and see you.”
Tigris slowly approached the Gnolls.
The bonfire was burning with black ashes as if it had been extinguished a long time ago, and leftover meat was lying on the floor.
Tigris checked the status of the gnolls first.
Although he was breathing, he looked like he had been starving for a long time.
Tigris immediately understood why they had lost their minds and collapsed.
The two gnolls held identical ruby necklaces in their hands.
‘I found it.’
The reason why Tigris volunteered to maintain the water lily forest, and the reason for finding the windy cliff at the end.
It was just to get ‘Perschen’ and ‘Adne’, the sacred relics of the lover.
“Charlotte, Irene. Come this way.”
“Ah yes.”
The two approached cautiously.
“What is it that makes them faint?”
“Because of those necklaces. The name of that necklace is the relic of the lover of Perschen and Adnero.”
“A holy thing?! Wait a minute, then that’s why they’re all down…”
“okay. These guys have fallen into the ordeal of the constellation.”
ordeal of the constellation.
It is an ordeal that tests whether the constellation is worthy of its own holy things.
Usually, the trials of the constellation occur frequently in the case of a holy object that appears suddenly after not appearing for a long time.
Most scholars do not know why the trial of the constellation is triggered under what conditions, but Tigris did.
There is only one condition for the ordeal of the constellation to trigger.
It is created when the holy relics are completely destroyed and disappear from this world, and the constellation creates a new relic and sends it back down to this earth.
Perschen and Adne, the sacred relics of the lover, had also been broken in the past, but the lover has newly placed the sacred relics in this water lily forest.
“What do you do in this case? Should I report to the Empire?”
“The holy relics belong to the first to discover and obtain them. I will report to the Empire, but there is no need to give it to the Empire.”
“Then will you be tested by the constellation?”
“okay.”
Tigris said looking at Charlotte and Irene.
“okay. If I don’t come to my senses for half a day, call someone.”
“I heard that the trial of the constellation is very dangerous…”
“You already know how to overcome the ordeal of the constellation of Lovers.”
In fact, the ordeal of the constellation of Lovers was very famous.
All adventurers knew about it.
The problem was the difficulty.
The ordeal of the constellation of Lovers was famous for being the most difficult of the trials.
For that reason, when Rakan was tormented by the constellation, he fell into a coma like these gnolls for over three weeks.
However, this ordeal was too easy for Tigris’ year.
“Don’t leave soon.”
The two looked slightly anxious, but they nodded in the vague belief that Tigris would come back.
“Go and be careful.”
Tigris picked up Perschen.
Tigris just lost consciousness.
* * *
Wrath-!
Gradually, the senses began to return.
The first thing that came back was the sense of smell.
It was a familiar smell.
The smell of dry dust and the blood evaporated from sunlight tickles the tip of the nose.
It was the smell of battlefield.
The next thing that came back was hearing.
visor-! visor-!
– Whoa!
It was full of the voices of soldiers struggling to survive and the sound of sharp metal clashing.
Next was the time.
As soon as I opened my eyes, a spear flew towards Tigris.
Tigris reflexively grabbed the spear and pulled it.
“Aww!”
Tigris grabbed the opponent’s neck.
Wow-!
Then he twisted his neck and broke his neck.
There was no guilt or hesitation.
This is the battlefield.
Hesitation on the battlefield means death.
Spear knives flew from all directions.
It was the signal that signaled the final phase of the war, and a melee situation in which most people died in vain.
“Tigris!”
A man grabbed Tigris’ shoulder.
Tigris did not respond because there was no life in the midst of a melee.
Tigris checked the man’s face.
It was a knight with blonde hair, inside the wall, and equipped with silver plate armor.
“Tigris! I have a request! I have to get out of here and go to where Adne is!”
Although the man had never met Tigris, he spoke as if he knew Tigris well.
Tigris wasn’t too surprised to know that this was a ‘characterization’ that happens when he enters the ordeal of the constellation.
Tigris looked at the red ruby necklace hanging from the man’s neck.
This man was Perschen, one of the protagonists of the ordeal of this constellation.
“I know you’re ignorant in this war, but I can’t lose Adne like this…”
“Branch.”
Tigris pulled out the Salamander’s sword with a simple word.
And he drew the sword horizontally.
Then, a graceful silver curve flew forward, cutting the waists of the enemy soldiers in front of them.
Perschen was at a loss for words, perhaps embarrassed by that cruel and beautiful swordsmanship.
Breaking the ordeal of this constellation was simple.
To safely take Perschen to Adne, who fell in the middle of the enemy camp.
It was too easy for Tigris.
Kill all the enemies in front of you and move on.