The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

Chapter 22: From Defending to Changing for the Worse

“They’re here!”

Ritz’s voice rang out throughout the room.

The monsters that burst through the doors were regular goblins.

Although there weren’t as many as earlier, when they were being chased down the corridors, there were still quite many them.

Plus, the ruins had recognized Loren and the others as intruders, so there was no way to know how many more goblins were on the way.

“Damn it, fighting is the only chance we’ve got! Quartz, move closer to the young lady! Nim, stay near them and support us with your arrows! Jack, can you move!?”

“Yeah, I got this, god damn it!”

Although he was injured, Jack’s voice rang out loud and strong.

Loren decided that he was fine and started swinging his great sword.

The room was large enough for him to swing it about with no problem.

The problem was that it wouldn’t stay intact for much longer, but Loren decided not to think about it and jumped into the midst of the goblins, bashing the blade against them.

The great sword, which was more of a blunt weapon than a sharp blade, caught a few goblins that jumped towards him, and while some of them split into two pieces and spraying blood everywhere, others got their bones crushed and fell limp onto the ground.

Loren made sure to crush them with his foot, as they weren’t completely dead yet, and looked for his next prey. He then saw a black mock-goblin enter the room from one of the other doorways.

“Crap! It’s here!”

“Leave that one to me.”

The mock-goblin didn’t have a weapon in its hands, and reached for Loren with its bare hands.

Loren raised his great sword high over his head and charged towards it.

He let out a yell and brought the sword down on the mock-goblin, which raised its left arm to try to block the strike. He cut right through its arm and the sword sunk deeply into its shoulder, all the way to its collarbone.

As blackened blood spewed out from the cut, Loren put his foot on the screaming mock-goblin and pulled his sword out. He used that momentum to raise it above his head again and swung it straight down onto its flank.

Luckily, he didn’t hit any bones, and with the force behind the strike, cut the mock-goblin’s stomach open. As soon as the great sword passed through, its intestines started dropping out onto the floor.

But the mock-goblin paid no attention to its injury and went straight for Loren, who had just finished the swing.

Loren was surprised at its toughness, but as he returned a backswing, it caught the mock-goblin right on the neck, and it sank to the ground gurgling blood.

“That’s incredible…No matter how many times I see it.”

“If you’ve got time to talk, use it to kill more goblins.”

Warning Ritz, who was staring at him blankly, Loren looked down at the blade of his great sword.

The great sword, which was completely doused in the dark blood of the goblins, looked like it didn’t take much damage, but to Loren, who was holding the blade aloft, knew that it wouldn’t last much longer.

“This isn’t good.”

He murmured to himself, as he swept his great sword across some goblins that neared him.

If it were just the regular goblins, he could use the great sword for a bit longer with no problem, but the large mock-goblins, whom were way tougher, drained the blade’s durability much quicker.

“Lapis! How much longer is it going to take?”

Loren had no idea what Lapis was doing, but she had said that once she did it, the goblins wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

The only thing he could do was pray that she would finish what she was doing, before his sword broke.

“I’m trying my best, you know?”

Quartz was standing near Lapis, and Nim was near him, planting arrow after arrow into the goblins.

Every time she released an arrow, a goblin fell, but they kept on coming, wave after wave through the doorways.

“My opponent is a system of the Ancient Kingdom ruins. There’s no way it’s going to fall that easily.”

“I don’t need that kind of talk! I want to know how much longer it’s going to take!”

“It’ll take more than a few minutes, but it won’t take an hour.”

Loren was irritated at her ambiguous reply.

There was no way for him to tell time inside that room.

In cities, there was usually a magic item inside a clock tower that told the time, but once you left the city, there was no way to check time.

He knew there was no point in blaming Lapis, but he couldn’t do anything about the irritation that was building up.

“If only I had a magic spell left…”

“That can’t be helped. It can’t be helped, but I’m also about to run out of arrows.”

Nim tried to comfort Quartz, who was regretting not being able to do anything, but her face became grim as she saw her supply of arrow slowly deplete.

If she could retrieve some of the arrows from the goblin corpses it would be a bit better, but fights were happening all around her, so she couldn’t find an opening to do so.

“There’s no end to them! The bodies just keep piling up!”

Silver adventurers like Jack and Ritz had no problem dealing with normal goblins, but the mock-goblins were a bit of a different story.

Goblin corpses were strewn all over the floor, and they soon started seeing goblins collecting the corpses.

“They’re not forgetting to retrieve the corpses, huh.”

“Yes, they’re valuable materials and sources of information after all.”

As Loren was taking care not to slip on the blood across the floor, he heard Lapis say something he couldn’t ignore.

He swept his great sword and cut through a group of goblins, then turned his head toward Lapis.

“What did you say just now?”

“Materials and source of information?”

“I understand material, but why source of information?”

“They should be using them as sources of information for enhancing goblins. The best way to get battle information and experience is through physical experience, after all.”

Loren gulped and looked down at a goblin’s corpse lying on the ground.

Apparently, the ruins were collecting corpses like these, and using the experience from its brain to create new goblins.

As Loren found out that killing the goblins meant that they were helping the ruins enhance the goblins, he planted his palm on his forehead.

“Then that means, the more we fight them…”

“The goblins get tougher and tougher. According to the manual, it takes a while for the ruins to make the physical bodies, but installing the experience only takes a few seconds.”

“So, what you’re saying is…”

Right when Loren was getting a bad feeling, a new wave of goblins rushed into the room.

Ritz and Jack both looked tired, but immediately moved to fight them off.

They soon realized that these goblins were slightly different than the ones from before.

The goblins until now had swung their weapons aimlessly and couldn’t properly use their shields, and weren’t that hard to deal with.

But the new goblins knew how to use their weapons as well as their shields, and were harder to fight.

“What’s happening? They got smarter!?”

“You good for nothing goblins!”

Although they knew how to use their weapons, their fighting style wasn’t that different from the ones before, and they still weren’t a match for Ritz and jack.

But their large numbers were still a threat, as both started being covered in small cuts and bruises.

One of Nim’s arrows was used to kill a goblin, but they soon started blocking her arrows with their shields and weapons.

“The chances of us surviving is going down as time carries on!”

“After they gather enough information from normal goblins, the start inputting them into the enhanced goblins.”

Lapis was flipping through the manual with her right hand, while her left hand was still working on the control panel.

If what the manual said was true, it meant that the experiences from the goblins they were fighting now were going to be used on the mock-goblins.

They were a threat already, and Loren didn’t want to think about how strong they would get once they learned how to fight.

“They aren’t even at full power right now. If they start equipping themselves with weapons we’re actually done for.”

Before, the goblins didn’t stand a chance against Loren’s great sword, but the newer ones started to clash their weapons and shields against it.

Of course, that meant there was more pressure put on the blade, even though he wasn’t facing the mock-goblins. There was already a very thin, but visible crack beginning to form on the blade.

Loren was worried at how much longer the great sword would last, as he kept feeling an unpleasant sensation while swinging it around.

But the goblins didn’t care about Loren’s worries at all and kept charging at him. Slowly, Loren started getting small cuts here and there as well.

“The big one’s here!”

The bad news reached Loren’s ears.

He looked to the doorway that Ritz was pointing at and saw the mock-goblin, but this one was carrying a giant wooden club in its right fist.

As soon as he saw that it was armed, he kicked off the floor and charged towards it.

He acted immediately because he knew that Ritz and Jack couldn’t handle this one, but the mock-goblin didn’t even act surprised, and raised its club against Loren’s great sword.

After a loud clang erupted from the clash of iron against wood, Loren’s strike was stopped.

Not only that, Loren seemed to have lost in terms of strength and force, and he got pushed back a few steps, almost falling over.

It immediately ran towards him, not missing a chance to retaliate, and brought down its club onto Loren.

Loren brought his great sword up and barely caught the strike, using all his strength to stop it.

“You…”

He poured even more strength into his arms, trying to push it away, but its enhanced arms didn’t move so easily. In the antagonized situation, the mock-goblin looked at Loren and seemed to laugh at him.

“You…You smiled just now, didn’t you?”

Loren didn’t know if it understood what he was saying.

But as soon as he muttered those words, the mock-goblins smile seemed to widen.

It was most likely a ridiculing smile.

As soon as Loren had that thought, he felt something snap in the deepest corner of his mind.

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