Chapter 89: Sweeping Destruction

Xia Nan stared at the goblin cave not far ahead with a peculiar expression.

It had taken most of the day to get here, plus the conversation that had abruptly ended last night.

Even if the barbarian was utterly silent and said not a word,

he could still roughly guess why he had been brought here:

choosing a combat technique was by no means easy; Foggon likely wanted to test and observe his actual combat power and fighting style through a real battle.

He had no idea how the other man had managed to precisely locate this goblin lair hidden deep in the dense forest.

But he had to admit, the opponent the barbarian had chosen for him happened to be within the scope he could handle.

As long as there were no elite individuals like a bugbear.

Goblins were weak in combat power, so the battle itself would not be too difficult; yet the sheer numbers of an entire lair added a considerable challenge.

Without words, the barbarian expressed his thoughts through his actions.

As his presence steadily diminished, his once long, powerful strides gradually slowed.

By the time they neared the goblin lair, he had, without Xia Nan noticing, come to stand behind him.

Instinctively, Xia Nan turned his head and glanced back in his direction.

Unlike Wood, whom he had met before, who relied on the rogue class’s superior techniques, using shadows and all manner of subtle tricks stacked together to reduce his presence,

the barbarian Foggon at this moment made no attempt to hide in Xia Nan’s line of sight; he simply stood there in silence.

Yet that tall, powerfully built body seemed to blend into the surrounding trees, branches and trunks, and shrubs as one.

To Xia Nan, he felt like a winter wolf lying in ambush deep in the snow, patiently waiting for prey.

It was a savage and primal hunting instinct.

By comparison, the former was led by agility and experience, using “technique” to conceal “presence” itself;

the latter fully employed perception and instinct, merging “nature” and “existence” into one.

Xia Nan had no intention of judging which of the two was superior, but the fact remained: even though he clearly and precisely knew where the barbarian was, his brain and body still sent all kinds of signals, subconsciously trying to make him ignore the man’s existence.

As if what stood behind him was nothing more than a common tree, a patch of ordinary grassland.

He shook his head sharply.

He stopped focusing on the stealth-hidden barbarian Foggon.

Xia Nan drew the decapitation long sword and held it diagonally across his front.

With a cautious stance, he stepped quietly into the cave.

His first reaction was “narrow”.

Jagged rocks on both sides pressed in close, and in the sunlight at the cave entrance, the sword body reflected an iron-gray sheen.

Poorly considered.

The constraints of the narrow terrain made it hard for the two-handed long sword to exert its full power. Even ordinary swings felt restricted; he could not fully unleash himself in battle.

He should switch to the one-handed sword form of 【Green Pine】.

Considering that he was now only in the corridor leading deeper into the cave, and had not yet entered the monsters’ actual core area of habitation,

“there was still room for error.”

Xia Nan turned his body slightly, quietly sheathing the decapitation long sword.

He gripped the light wooden sword firmly, still maintaining a guarded, ready-to-parry stance.

Inside, he was unexpectedly tense.

It was unusual.

By all logic, he had already killed no small number of goblins; his equipment was fine, and he even carried magic trinkets for protection. He really should not be this nervous.

Yet now, as Xia Nan went deeper, the surroundings grew darker and more cramped. Scattered shards of white bone lay underfoot, and his heartbeat quickened as well.

It was definitely not claustrophobia—after all, in the cave with the giant snake’s corpse, he had never felt such oppression.

Xia Nan himself found it strange.

Maintaining a high level of vigilance toward everything around him, he split off part of his mind, delving inward to analyze the source.

What rose before his eyes was the awful experience in the goblin cave two months ago, right after he had crossed into this world, together with the hunter Maji and the half-orc Gagu.

Blood-soaked incomplete corpses, seething fat in a boiling iron pot, scrawny goblins drooling at the corners of their mouths, and the bugbear that had nearly killed him…

For a modern man from a civilized society, the impact of those scenes had been immense. Though much time had passed, they still clung to his heart like a demon.

“Whew…”

He took a deep breath, trying as before to calm his emotions and ease his racing heartbeat.

But the sticky stench flowing into his nostrils with each breath made him frown and feel even more nauseated.

Finally, at the end of the dim, gloomy corridor, a faint light appeared.

He could vaguely hear the crackling of flames consuming firewood and the excited shrieks of goblins.

His heart pounded wildly. His highly focused tension let him hear even the rush of blood through his veins.

With a strong sense of purpose, as if to confirm something,

his gaze first fell upon the cave’s only light source—the campfire.

There was no red-hot iron pot to make him gag, nor any limbs that might belong to intelligent creatures.

Above the orange-red flames, a small deer-like beast was roasting.

He immediately let out a breath of relief.

His gaze swept over the environment deeper in the cave.

Damp moss spreading from the cracks in the rock wall was tinted a sickly, clotted green under the firelight; in the air, the sweet, cloying scent of rotting meat and thick blood mixed together.

“Squeegah!”

Piercing goblin cries echoed between the stone walls.

Pus-covered bodies, jagged ribs beneath their coarse green skin, shriveled frames through which you might imagine organs squirming, stinking filthy wraps, half-chewed raw meat, jagged rotten teeth amid blood and scraps…

Fifteen fully grown green-skinned mongrels sat around the campfire!

It was hard to put Xia Nan’s feelings at this moment into words.

Like someone with a severe procrastination problem.

Before entering the cave and seeing the goblins with his own eyes, his disgusting first encounter after crossing had made him instinctively resist every step he took inside.

But once the dead line arrived, once external pressures left him no room to delay,

faced with these fifteen scrawny monsters before him,

in an instant all his prior inner resistance turned into a powerful loathing for goblins as a species and…

killing intent.

“Squeegah! Squeegah!”

The first to notice Xia Nan’s figure was a green skin sitting in a corner.

It leapt up, its sharp, shrill voice instantly ringing through the cave.

All heads whipped around in unison. Fifteen pairs of turbid, vicious blood-red eyes reflected the fully armed figure at the entrance.

From physical instinct combined with the catalyst and drive of a foreign soul,

the combat talent long suppressed by scorching sunlit field ridges and pale screens now emerged.

At some point, the wooden sword 【Green Pine】 had already been put away. The decapitation long sword, radiating iron-gray cold light, was gripped in his palm.

After the corridor, the cave space opened up, enough to unleash the full power of a two-handed sword, and the situation of one against many made him subconsciously choose a long-reach weapon with a wider attack range, able to reap many lives at once.

He did not retreat.

Facing the swarm of green-skinned rats who clearly regarded him as a meal delivered to their door, swinging clubs and cackling as they surged forward like a wave,

there was not a trace of fear in Xia Nan’s dark eyes.

All his earlier negative emotions had boiled into surging fighting spirit.

With several quick strides, he charged straight at them.

Against these blustering yet cowardly green-skinned trash, he could not afford even a shred of timidity.

Right in front of their own kind, cut off heads, crush eyeballs, and spread entrails across the ground.

Then these beasts would understand how dangerous he was, and they would no longer laugh.

Step forward!

Thick leather boots crushed moss, squeezing out viscous sap.

Gather strength!

Muscles beneath his armor lining swelled with blood; powerful force rose from below, converging and condensing.

【Whirl Slash】!

Whoosh—

Trailing iron-gray cold light, the decapitation long sword carved a perfect arc through the air, cleaving through flesh and bone alike.

The five goblins crammed in the very front of the “wave” vanished in an instant.

Blood sprayed; organs pattered down; corpses thudded onto the ground.

Like golden ears of wheat beneath an autumn sickle in his memories, shattered beneath the sword light, leaving only fragments.

The previously crowded battlefield suddenly opened up.

In an ordinary encounter, that one strike from Xia Nan would have been enough to send these inherently cowardly low-level monsters shrieking and fleeing.

But now he was alone, in a lair the green-skinned rats knew well.

Their combat power held.

“Gah!”

A goblin slightly bigger than the rest shrieked and rushed after him, its withered arm raised high, black-brown club glinting filthily in the firelight.

A second later, the sound cut off abruptly.

The razor-sharp, cold-glinting sword tip punched through its throat, spraying rancid, foul blood.

His arm drove the blade; the sword blade sliced through the clammy, humid air, slashing open the pustules on its green skin.

Skewering its corpse, he swept on, chopping apart another goblin running beside it.

“Seven.”

Xia Nan counted silently.

Chaotic, hurried footsteps sounded in his ears.

Some sly, filthy mongrel had taken advantage of his distraction to sneak around to his rear flank.

Hunched over, its rough club swung upward toward his soft ribs.

Bang!

The club crashed down on the smooth surface of the arm shield, as if all its force had been swallowed by a black hole into the snake scales.

It did not even leave the faintest pale mark.

A fantastical artifact from another world, with toughness far surpassing ordinary metal or stone; there was no way this junk that did not even qualify as a proper weapon could break through.

Using his size advantage, Xia Nan drove his shield-bearing left arm down, slamming the goblin beneath the shield’s face.

Then he slashed hard.

Sssk—

The sharp edge of the shield split flesh; a dragging resistance pulsed up his arm.

Half of the goblin’s neck was gone; blood sprayed from its windpipe.

“Number eight.”

The many days of recuperation in Valley Town had not gone to waste, not against Xia Nan’s tireless day-and-night training.

With his excellent talent, and given that an arm shield, more than other shields, relied on live-combat reactions,

he had gradually mastered the use of such equipment.

And in this battle with goblins, he completed his first real test.

“Hurrah!”

Even starting at fifteen, they were still troublesome, even after more than half had fallen.

Footsteps pattered down like rain, mixed with the rasp of clubs scraping the ground.

The moment he felled another, the remaining green-skinned trash seized the chance to close in and surround him.

Strengthened attributes had enhanced Xia Nan’s physical fitness, granting him astonishing reflexes.

He turned his body, dodging two club strikes with near animal agility.

Then, twisting his torso as an axis like a spinning top, he shifted his center of gravity; the decapitation long sword shed a crescent of gray light around him.

Severed tongues and throats and pale shards of bone were flung up, wrapped in blood.

Two more goblins fell as corpses.

“Ten.”

Few remained, and Xia Nan, intent on finishing them in one stroke,

felt moss beneath his feet like a toad’s skin, tacky with slime as he stepped.

His footing slipped; his center of gravity lurched; his body tilted backward.

A flash of combat inspiration flickered through his mind.

Bang!

The pitch-black arm shield slammed hard against the rock wall; stone dust showered down as his left arm suddenly braced off the rebound.

His already-unstable balance collapsed entirely.

Instead of falling straight back, his body flipped sideways and backward.

Thud—

The three clubs that should have landed on him while he lay helplessly falling

now, thanks to his maneuver, were reduced to just one scraping across the plate armor on his chest with a ringing shriek.

Foul breath gusted at his nape; his back felt the cave floor’s cold, clammy touch.

Before he could fully rise, a nearby goblin was already scampering in fast on its short legs.

Xia Nan only had time to sit up and hurl the decapitation long sword in his hand like a javelin at the enemy.

Sssk!

The iron-gray sword body instantly pierced through the goblin’s hunched, frail torso and, driven by momentum, flew on.

Planting his palm, he pushed himself up as the light wooden sword flashed from its sheath.

Step, gather strength!

【Whirl Slash】!

Trained to the maximum level, even in his off-hand with slightly less force, it still carried more than enough power to tear an enemy apart.

A tight, short sword whistle burst forth; black sharp light ripped through the clinging damp air, cutting two charging green-skinned rats into four neat halves.

“Thirteen.”

Only a dozen or so seconds had passed since the battle began.

On the field, just two dim-witted low-level monsters remained. Their cackling had not even stopped before every companion around them lay dead.

For a moment, they even forgot fear, standing dumbly with clubs in hand.

Showing no mercy, he strode forward.

Even without triggering any attribute effect, the wooden sword 【Green Pine】, in terms of sharpness, was on par with ordinary metal weapons.

One thrust, one chop.

He sent the last two goblins down to Abyssal Hell.

Drip.

Warm, viscous blood fell from the edge of the arm shield, staining the moss underfoot red;

rings of chain mail jingled; slight scratches showed on the surface of the chest plate armor;

in one spot on the ground, a severed limb twitched and spasmed, fingers still curled around a weapon, stirring ripples in the blood pool.

The air was so thick with blood that the reek of decaying flesh was almost tangible.

The cave once filled with shrill goblin cries was left with only deathly silence.