I Returned as a God - Chapter 8

Chapter 8 – The Goblin Village (4)

At the sight of the suddenly appearing monsters, the four people gathered together and raised their weapons.

Kim Tae-woon, who was holding onto a greatsword, looked towards me and shouted out:

“You goddamn bastard! What did you do?!”

“Monsters in a situation like this…”

The troop of 50 goblins that had been summoned onto the bridge were slowly advancing towards us.

“What’s the Tower of Trials, and what the hell is a challenger?!”

“What? How should I know?”

“Ahhhh! What am I supposed to do without the status window?!”

“You said they were goblins, didn’t you? What kind of goblins look like this?”

The summoned goblins were completely different from the goblins that we’d seen in the dungeon.

If the goblins in the dungeon had been malnourished and starved half to death, armed with old weapons and leather armor, then these newly-summoned goblins were worlds apart from them.

With tempered muscles, steel armor, and wickedly sharp weapons on their backs, these goblins looked like trained soldiers.

‘That’s more like it.’

Even if the armor didn’t match exactly, these newly-summoned goblins were much closer to the goblins that I knew. 

Although I didn’t know if that was a good thing.

I briefly looked back at the tower, then took out my dagger and made my way to join up with the rest of the party. The four people just gave me a sideways glance as I arrived holding my dagger, and didn’t say much else.

In the face of 50 well-trained goblins, the label of “spare” became meaningless. It wasn’t a question about whether you could fight or not, you simply had to fight no matter what.

The goblin at the very back raised his spear. This goblin was much bigger than the others, different even from the Goblin Chief that we had seen in the dungeon.

Goblin Lord. The King of the Goblins.

At the same time as the King’s cry, the other goblins also raised their weapons high and cheered. 

Compared to the happy faces of the goblin troops, this side looked like a funeral home.

Under the command of the Goblin Lord, 10 of the goblins on the front lines started to attack. The sheer fact that they didn’t all attack at once meant that they were looking down on us.

Kim Tae-woon and Choi Min-hyuk, who were the closest, raised their weapons and clashed with the goblins. Choi Min-hyuk’s greatsword was successful in stopping the goblin’s attack, but that was all. 

“Damn it! If only I could use my skills!”

The summoned goblins were completely different from the goblins in the dungeon. It was difficult just to block their attacks, let alone to even try to counterattack.

One of the goblin’s grabbed onto Choi Min-hyuk, and at the same time, another goblin snuck up behind him.

Sensing the imminent danger, Choi Min-hyuk screwed his eyes shut tightly.

I quickly ran behind Choi Min-hyuk. My two daggers collided with the goblin’s sword.

The goblin just now started to push back with real strength, as if he had thought that there was no way that I would interfere.

‘Damn. This is dangerous.’

I started to scowl with exertion after having blocked the goblin’s sword.

“You…”

Choi Min-hyuk also frowned after seeing that he had received my help. But that expression didn’t last on his face for long. Pride meant nothing in a situation where everyone was likely to die. 

With Choi Min-hyuk at my back, I kept blocking the goblin’s sword with my dagger in a battle of strength.

Honestly, I was overestimating myself. More accurately, I was overestimating the body of Kang Han-kyul that I was possessing. 

Because I didn’t have his memories, I couldn’t figure out what kind of a guy this ‘Kang Han-kyul’ had been in the past. But the important thing was that I still had my precious memories.

The memories of surviving life-or-death situations in Arbelicia.

The problem was elsewhere.

I had hurriedly started exercising, but Kang Han-kyul’s body was still weaker than I’d thought.

This body might’ve been able to take on the goblins that we saw in the dungeon, but I felt that facing these well-trained gobins was definitely impossible.

But the worst part was that this wasn’t even the worst part.

Even if three people could each block one goblin, there were still way too many more goblins after that.

“D-Don’t come! Don’t come any closer!”

“Hey! Do something!”

“I’m a magician! What do you want me to do?! I can’t use my skills!”

“There’s no way I can kill those guys with these flimsy arrows!”

Normally, it wouldn’t make any sense for the frontline to split open and for monsters to start coming for two support players. But this was far from a normal situation, and it was hard for everyone to protect their own bodies.

‘I don’t have any skills to begin with, but… those guys are different.’

First of all, the very thought of not being able to use your skills had seemed to create considerable anxiety. Lee Ye-eun held up her emergency dagger and swung it towards the approaching goblins. 

“Don’t come closer. Don’t…”

“Just visualize it!”

“What are you saying?!”

“Just because the status window has disappeared doesn’t mean your skills have! Just shut up and use them like normal!”

The four people flinched when I now raised my voice after having barely said anything throughout the whole dungeon expedition.

From where he was squatting on the ground hiding behind Lee Ye-eun, Nam Woon-ik stretched his arms up to the sky.

Several ice spears appeared above Nam Woon-ik’s head.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

When he stretched both arms out with the mind to go all out, the ice spears that had appeared above his head pierced through the goblins’ armor.

* * *

It wasn’t enough to kill the goblins in one strike, but it surprised the goblins enough to make them scatter and retreat.

I felt hot fire behind my back.

“Duck! Now!”

At Choi Min-hyuk’s words, I quickly ducked down. His flaming greatsword swung around in a wide arc. Like before, the panicked goblins retreated.

“Hah… Hah…”

With the desperate thought that he had needed to beat back the goblins no matter what, Choi Min-hyuk had used magic excessively and was now trying to catch his breath.

The bodies of two goblins with their heads cut off fell sideways.

That was Kim Tae-woon’s doing. After hearing me cry out, he had also immediately started to use his skills as before.

“Thank you.”

“How did you know that? You don’t even have any skills.”

“It was just a logical deduction. I didn’t know if it would work because I don’t have any skills of my own.”

“You’re a weird guy.”

We heard an explosion from behind us.

Lee Ye-eun had used a body strengthening skill to push back a goblin with a kick before firing an arrow towards its head.

After seeing the display of several dead goblin corpses in front of them, the remaining goblins stepped back slightly. But the goblins right in front of us wasn’t all of them.

There was still a large amount of armed goblins behind them.

Even though we’d figured out that we could use our skills, there was still a long way to go before we were in the clear.

Choi Min-hyuk gripped his greatsword tightly and held the goblins back.

“D’you think we can do this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hah, I never thought something like this could happen even before we debuted as Hunters.”

“Is that a death flag?”

“Don’t say stupid things like that. I’m not planning to go down without a fight.”

Nam Woon-ik and Lee Ye-eun came back to the party after having come back to their senses.

‘I don’t know if it’s even possible for us to do this.’

I tried not to have anxious thoughts whenever possible, but this situation was just too hopeless.

Maybe it was because they’d caught sight of the Goblin Lord, but the remaining goblins suddenly cried out and attacked all at once.

‘Let’s do the best that we can until the very end!’

Like the other members of my party, I definitely also had no plans to go down quietly. I’d survived like this so far, after all.

After dodging a goblin’s attack with minimal movement, I grabbed it by the back.

‘I can’t use any special skills, but the basics should still work.’

Rather, it was more strange that there was a status window to begin with.

I stabbed hard at the back of the goblin’s neck with my dagger after having poured magic power into the hand that was holding it.

With a blood-curdling scream, the goblin writhed and struggled. There hadn’t been enough power in the dagger to kill him with one strike.

It was almost like I was dangling from the goblin’s back before I plunged the second dagger in right next to the first one.

I pulled out the two daggers that were now stuck in the goblin’s back at the same time.

Blood splattered out through the gaping flesh, and both my body and the goblin’s fell to the ground.

There were still so many goblins left.

The goblin’s blood had come up to my wrist when I wrenched the dagger out.

“Kyaaa!”

“Ahhhh! Ack!”

I heard screams. The troops in the back had started to shoot their arrows.

Without thinking, I swatted away the oncoming arrows with my dagger. I narrowly blocked them, but my wrist felt like it was going to explode.

‘Kang Han-kyul’s body right now is at the level of an average adult man.’

Compared to the limp-high-schooler body borne from studying that I’d had when I first traveled to Arbelicia, I was thankful to now at least have the body of an average man in his 20s.

The problem was that this situation was now very different from back then. To me, an average 20-something-year-old’s body wasn’t that different from my body as a high school senior.

Lee Ye-eun had been hit with an arrow in her eye, and Nam Woon-ik had been hit in the leg, and the other goblins had sensed this weakness and attacked.

“Fuck—”

A huge ball of flame went flying at Choi Min-hyuk who had run over to help. He whirled around and lit his own sword on fire to block the fireball.

It was none other than Kim Tae-woon who grabbed at Choi Min-hyuk as he ran away after he’d barely blocked the fire.

Five goblins swung their weapons at the two that had fallen.

An incredible amount of blood splattered out from under the goblins’ feet.

One goblin holding an axe turned around. On the ground, I could see a severed hand.

“This is insane.”

Choi Min-hyuk had decided that this was no joke, and he gripped his greatsword even more tightly. The second wave of arrows came flying towards us.

There weren’t any more words exchanged between us.

The remaining goblins attacked, and I faced them in order to survive. Around when I had already killed two, and had barely managed to kill a third, it happened.

A whirlwind of flames and sparks shot upwards. It was Choi Min-hyuk’s attack. As the goblins retreated from the fireworks, Choi Min-hyuk held onto his sword and looked somewhere in the distance.

Choi Min-hyuk’s shoulder was covered in blood where a blade had sliced through it, and there was an arrow sticking out of his left thigh.

“Even if I die here, I’ll cut the head off that boss first!”

Deciding that there was no hope, Choi Min-hyuk ran towards the Goblin Lord in an all-or-nothing last-ditch effort.

A spear that a goblin was holding pierced through Choi Min-hyuk’s chest and stomach. Far from reaching the Goblin Lord, a nearby goblin had already stabbed him.

When the goblin pulled out the spear, blood and guts came spilling out of the hole in his punctured stomach.

Kim Tae-woon and I shared a glance with each other.

The Goblin Lord raised his weapon and gave another cheer.

A couple more goblins came out to the front.

Kim Tae-Woon and I stood back to back, and he took a deep breath.

He wasn’t fatally injured like Choi Min-hyuk, but his body wasn’t completely fine either.

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to use one arm either.’

Because I’d faced two more goblins after having sprained it while swatting an arrow, one of my arms was now completely broken.

Judging by the degree of the swelling, it was definitely a broken bone.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t have that much mana left.”

“Damn. That’s a huge confession.”

Throwing away my dulled dagger, I picked up a goblin sword that had fallen on the ground.

—-