Chapter 27
“Hyaaaaaah!”
“Gugyah!”
A roar rang through the quiet cave.
Porta carefully raised his sword, making sure not to hit the cave wall, then cleanly cut one of the goblins in two.
“Oh, that’s a fine sword stroke.”
The thought slipped out before I could stop it.
It was unsettling to stand around calmly in the back while everyone up front fought desperately. But that was my job, so I had no choice.
So I decided to pay close attention to the way they wielded their swords.
“He understands the need to be careful in close quarters.”
Apparently, Surena beside me felt the same way.
I couldn’t say how he compared to the average Bronze-Rank adventurer, but that boy, Porta, seemed to have promise.
The short sword, like the longsword, is a fairly standard weapon.
Its sharpness depends on the quality of the weapon, and it has no particularly distinctive features. But its length and weight are just right, making it popular with everyone from beginners to veterans.
It’s an excellent weapon that can adapt to a wide range of situations. Still, every weapon has its strengths and weaknesses.
With longswords and short swords—in fact, with long blades in general—you have to be careful handling them in a confined space. Otherwise, you might hit the walls or ceiling.
“...!”
“Gah... gyah...”
A different goblin from the one Porta had cut down was killed by Salikatz’s dagger as Salikatz crept up from the side.
In a narrow place like this, short weapons like daggers, or thrusting weapons like rapiers, are easier to handle than long blades such as short swords, longswords, and broadswords.
Of course, daggers lack power, and they’re difficult to use for defense, too.
In that respect, Salikatz seemed to understand the strengths of that weapon well.
Salikatz made sure never to engage the goblins head-on, instead staying ready to exploit openings from the side.
“Hya—ah!?”
“Gyagyagya!”
Oh, dear. That’s exactly what I was afraid of.
Perhaps he was panicking. Nidly swung his short sword in a wide horizontal arc, but it caught on the cave wall and bounced back.
Seeing an opening, the goblin raised the club in its hand.
I didn’t think it would be a fatal blow, but... should I step in?
“Nidly!! Salikatz, help!”
“Yeah...!”
Oh? Maybe I don’t need to intervene after all.
Porta, having already taken care of a second goblin, was the first to notice Nidly was in danger.
To sum up the situation, Porta and Nidly were each facing a goblin on the front line, while Salikatz darted between them to provide support.
Three goblins remained.
Porta was fighting one, and Nidly another. The last was watching the situation and moving to attack Nidly as well.
All right, it was time for the nimblest of them, Salikatz-kun, to shine.
I almost felt like a parent watching a child grow up.
“...Take this...!”
“Ggi!?”
Perhaps deciding that a dagger wouldn’t be enough to stop the goblin, Salikatz tackled the one raising its club over Nidly.
Struck from behind at an angle, the goblin tumbled to the ground with its club still raised.
“N-Nidly...!”
“Y-yes!”
Seizing the opening, Nidly quickly finished off the fallen goblin.
That left two.
Goblins were weaker than humans in raw strength to begin with. Now that they no longer had the advantage of numbers, the adventurers’ victory was all but assured.
Unless they became seriously overconfident or let their guard down, they should be able to win. And this team didn’t seem like the sort to make such a mistake here.
“...Looks like it’s almost over. What do you think, Surena?”
“For Bronze Rank, they’re doing well. Porta especially is very observant.”
“Yeah, I think he’s moving well, too.”
As we exchanged impressions, we watched the three up front move into the cleanup phase.
Nidly seemed to have recovered from the earlier mistake and was now vigorously hacking away at the goblin. Good. It was nice to see him full of energy.
“...C-cleanup complete... We’re moving on...”
The three had defeated all six goblins. They hadn’t come through completely unscathed, but they were mostly unharmed.
Salikatz, acting as their Seeker, confirmed that all the goblins were dead, bringing the battle to an end.
But this was only one part of their training.
Their mission was to clear out the entire dungeon.
Though it looked like an ordinary cave.
“By the way, is this place used often?”
Once we’d started walking again, I asked Surena a question that had just occurred to me.
I mean, if this were a ruin infused with magical power, that would be one thing, but this looked like an ordinary cave no matter how you looked at it.
If the cave had been used before, the monsters here should already have been driven out. Otherwise, they’d sent beginners into a cave none of them had ever seen before.
“...Because of the conditions here, small monsters settle in if the place is left alone for a while. There are other places like this, too. They use them regularly for rookie training.”
“I see...”
So that was why they knew where monsters were distributed, but didn’t keep every place under strict control.
In other words, the Azalamia Forest was also being used as a convenient training ground.
Man, that’s not the sort of idea you’d come up with if you stayed cooped up in the countryside.
I suppose you could say it was just like the Adventurers’ Guild.
It was true that swinging swords around in a training ground wouldn’t build up your practical experience. But they couldn’t exactly send greenhorns who knew nothing about adventuring to an unknown frontier. That would only increase the death toll for no reason.
So they’d come up with a system of regularly sending rookies, under supervision, to places where small monsters were likely to settle.
City folks come up with all sorts of things. I’m impressed.
After that.
Including the first battle, they cleared out twelve goblins, four Big Bats, and two Cave Worms in total before reaching the deepest part of the cave.
That brought the training session to a successful end.
“Well, all that’s left is to head back. I’m glad we didn’t have to get involved.”
“...Yes. That’s certainly a good thing.”
I had no intention of losing to goblins, but fighting while protecting someone else was still nerve-racking. It was a feeling you could never experience in a spar—and one I hoped to avoid whenever possible.
“...Surena? Is something wrong?”
I asked when I noticed something was bothering her.
For some time now, she hadn’t been reacting much.
It wasn’t as if her mind was elsewhere, but she seemed to have been thinking about something the whole time.
“No... There are clearly too few of them.”
“What do you mean?”
Surena spoke carefully, choosing her words as she went.
“This place hasn’t been used in a while. There weren’t many goblins inside the cave, and we haven’t been attacked since entering the Azalamia Forest. Normally, there should be more animals or monsters around.”
“Hmm...”
Well, now that she mentioned it, given the size of this forest—and the cave sitting right in the middle of it—you’d expect there to be a few more monsters.
Still, there was no point worrying over something I couldn’t figure out.
I had no choice but to conclude that we’d simply happened to find fewer of them this time.
“Lisandera-san! Gardenant-san! We’re outside!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll be right there.”
Perhaps excited after successfully completing the training, Porta called out cheerfully, pointing toward the end of the cave.
As we got closer to the entrance, I could feel fresh air brushing against my cheeks.
After spending so long in that damp, enclosed space, the air outside felt wonderful.
Porta hurried outside ahead of us and stretched lazily.
Well, the sun was probably still high, so on the way back we could relax with a refreshing walk through the woods――
――Wait.
By my estimate, sunset was still a long way off. The weather had been clear today, so even in a forest, shouldn’t it be brighter than this?
And there was a faint, unnatural breeze.
My five senses picked up on a subtle but unmistakable wrongness.
――Something’s above us!
“Porta!! Get down!!”
I was already running as I shouted.
Surena turned toward me, startled by my shout.
A large shadow fell across the strangely dim cave entrance.
At almost the same moment, Porta, who was standing near the entrance, was flung away by something and vanished from sight.