Chapter 3
“Um... I dropped my wooden chopsticks. Could I get another pair?”
To be precise, I hadn’t dropped them—I’d stuck them into the goblin’s forehead. But the result was pretty much the same as throwing them on the ground. They were unusable now.
Thankfully, the part-timer handed me another pair of wooden chopsticks as if giving out one or two pairs was no big deal.
Thank goodness. I couldn’t eat cup noodles with my bare hands. Triangle kimbap, maybe, but not noodles.
After polishing off the cup noodles and triangle kimbap on the outdoor terrace, I felt them catch in my throat a little, so I bought a carbonated drink at the convenience store and washed them down.
Hmm. Back when I was a man, I would’ve had a zero-sugar soda... But now I need to replenish every calorie I can. Looks like I’ll have to give up zero-sugar drinks for a while.
I’d have to keep using the Vitality Conversion Method until I’d built up enough mana. I really liked lime-flavored zero-sugar drinks, too...
I’d just have to think of it as having a body that never gained weight, no matter how much I ate.
After tossing the remains of my meal into the convenience store’s trash can and cleaning up after myself, I sat on the terrace and thought about the goblin that had just appeared.
Goblin.
The weakest among the green-skinned demi-human monsters commonly known as “greenskins.”
A small humanoid monster about the size and strength of a child, with enough intelligence to use simple tools.
But they reproduced at an alarming rate and were known to build nests in narrow, dark caves, using their small size to set primitive traps. They were monsters adventurers had a hard time wiping out.
But each individual was so weak that beginners just starting out as adventurers would fight them to gain experience.
That was what a goblin was.
And after I’d been stranded in another world with nothing I could do, goblins had been one of the monsters I’d hunted relentlessly as a beginner adventurer, just to make a living.
Why had a goblin like that appeared on Earth? And right in front of me, after I’d returned from another world...
It felt almost as if it had followed me here, but that made absolutely no sense.
Maybe if it were Asha, my disciple and a dragon, but a goblin following me all the way to Earth? How? Goblins couldn’t even use a proper system of magic, only primitive shamanism.
And a goblin using grand magic that required a magic circle prepared with vast amounts of mana and complex reagents? It’d be more likely for a monkey sitting at a typewriter to write Shakespeare.
I’d fought plenty of monsters and demons while saving that world, but I’d never heard of a goblin capable of using grand magic like that.
It would make more sense if someone else had sent the goblin for some purpose... No, even that didn’t make sense.
The wall between worlds wasn’t exactly thin. Why go to the trouble of piercing it and sending over a goblin? Why spend vast amounts of mana and reagents made from all kinds of expensive ingredients just to send a goblin?
That was like using cheap ingredients to make a top-tier fine-dining meal.
So... hmm... There had to be some reason the goblin had appeared in front of me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Hmm.
I let out a small sigh and walked over to where the goblin had appeared.
The dark, oval-shaped Gate had vanished along with the goblin, and there wasn’t even the slightest trace of the creature left.
Still, I wondered if there might be some kind of clue, so I took a look around...
“This is...”
At the spot where the goblin had appeared, something just as familiar had fallen.
A tiny stone with a faint blue glow.
No, it was closer to a crystal. The inside was slightly transparent, after all. Its shape was a little irregular, though.
It was a tiny stone that looked like it might’ve been made by carving a piece of blue glass into whatever shape you wanted, then making it glow from within.
It didn’t exist on Earth, but it was a resource used every day in the other world. A mana stone. Judging by its size, about that of a small pebble, it seemed to be a goblin’s mana stone...
“Why did this fall here...?”
If you asked whether a mana stone being left here was perfectly normal just because a goblin had come through a Gate, I could say without hesitation that it wasn’t. A mana stone being here made no sense at all.
That was because mana stones were normally found inside monsters. To obtain one, you had to butcher a monster and search its corpse for it.
Extracting mana stones was one of the things beginner adventurers found hardest, and one of the jobs they hated most.
Anyway, finding a mana stone on the ground when it normally took that process to obtain one... honestly, it didn’t fit with what I knew about the other world.
Could it be... that they only looked like the goblins I knew, but were actually artificial life-forms created in a completely different world?
Otherwise, how could such a clean mana stone be left behind without any bloody butchering? And the fact that the goblin had turned into black ash and vanished was bizarre, too.
I put the mana stone that seemed to have come from the goblin into my pocket, then glanced around.
As before, there wasn’t a person in sight. Maybe that was because it was still winter break, but it might also have been because the convenience store I’d used had two doors: one leading outside and the other opening into the building.
Most people went in and out through the building instead of coming outside.
As I rubbed the mana stone in my pocket, I sensed the faint mana inside it and slowly started walking.
First, I’d go home. I’d seen enough of the university campus.
And if the goblin’s appearance... was more than a one-time incident, I probably wouldn’t have the luxury of enrolling in university.
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On the way home, I started looking things up on my smartphone.
Goblin. Gate. Hunter fiction. Web novels. Goblin Slayer... Ahem. Not that.
I searched the news and various online communities, but I couldn’t find anything about goblins appearing through Gates.
Had there been no appearances besides the one I’d encountered? Or had goblins appeared somewhere else and the matter been classified as top secret?
No, it didn’t seem possible to keep something completely secret just by classifying it in this day and age. Everyone could take photos and videos with their smartphones.
In an age when almost everyone carried a device that gave them access to the internet, there was no way they could keep the appearance of an unfamiliar creature like a goblin secret.
So... it was probably safe to assume no one else had encountered a goblin yet.
Well, even if goblins appeared, it wouldn’t be a big problem. Each one was pretty weak, and ordinary people could handle them easily enough.
As long as no one went into a goblin nest—the place where goblins were most dangerous—there’d be no real danger.
Then, for now... I should calmly wait and see how things changed. If this goblin was a one-time incident, nothing else would happen. If it was the beginning of something, another problem would soon crop up.
If nothing happened, I’d just go back to my ordinary life... But my hunch was telling me that goblin was only the beginning.
Thinking that, I walked through the terminal to buy a ticket for the intercity bus home.
“What is that...?”
“Are they filming something?”
“It’s floating in midair. Is it a hologram?”
“Idiot. There’s no way a hologram could float like that without any equipment, right?”
In the middle of the busy terminal, a Gate that looked similar to the one the goblin had appeared from—but much larger—was giving off a dark aura.
Well... sadly, my hunches like this had never been wrong. They’d been honed by a hard life... So even after all this time, they hadn’t grown dull.
I glanced around at the people who were panicking. If what came out of that Gate was just a goblin, there’d be a commotion and all, but it could be killed with a good hard kick, so it wouldn’t be a big problem...
The problem was if something other than a goblin came out.
Unlike goblins, which weren’t much of a threat unless you were in a trap-filled nest, there were plenty of other monsters capable of killing one or two people.
Preparing for anything that might happen, I pushed my way through the crowd and approached the Gate.
Whatever came out of it, I’d be close enough to respond right away.
Even if it meant drawing everyone’s attention. Still, that was better than standing by while someone got hurt or killed.
But contrary to what I’d expected, no monsters came out of the Gate.
Only a dark mist, seething and creeping outward.