Chapter 12: Lesson and Plot Armor

The moment my foot touched solid ground, the floating plate that had carried me so effortlessly through the sky… changed.

Light as a feather one second.
Heavy as boulder the next.

“Urgh!”

My knees nearly buckled. The force slammed through my spine and rooted me to the dirt. It felt uncomfortably familiar. Like the pack I’d left behind in the carriage. Like every overfilled bag, every crate, every bundle they threw onto my back because no one else wanted to carry them.

Like everything I’d endured with the Hero Party.

Did she… plan this?

Tap.

Elaister landed beside me, boots sinking into the soil. The plate under her feet floated as if gravity was just a polite suggestion she declined to accept.

“You gotta get used to fighting with weight on your back,” she said casually, as if she wasn’t rewriting the rules of physics right in front of me. “You’re still a mule first and foremost, just one that can defend the supplies if needed.”

So yes.
She planned this.
She planned all of this.

My throat tightened. “You… want me to fight like this?”

“No, I want you to learn to fight like this.” She tilted her visor toward me. “You think you’re graduating past pack mule after one breakfast? Don’t delude yourself.”

'Isn't that the same?!'

“And as for the nest,” she continued, voice switching to a clinical, businesslike crispness I’d only heard when she talked about machines or monsters. “I’ll take care of the king and queen goblin. You, kill and pile them up here.”

I swallowed hard. “But I-”

“Yes, yes, you suck, I know,” she cut in, waving dismissively. “I said that yesterday. I didn’t suddenly get stupid and forget about it.”

…Somehow, it still stung.

From Pandora, she produced several small purple stones, almost like pebbles. She tossed them into the forest with flicks of her fingers. Each stone landed with a soft tink, and then…

Silence.

Not quiet.

Absence.

The wind died. Birdsong vanished. The world dimmed into a soundless bubble.

“This area will be our gathering point,” Elaister said, dusting off her coat as if she had just tidied up a room. “You’ll pile the bodies here. Also, ” she pointed vaguely around us, “this entire spot is silenced. About a fifty-meter radius. Nothing in, nothing out. I assume you didn’t notice, because why would you.”

She lectured me like someone explaining simple arithmetic to a child.

And I probably did look like a child, staring dumbly around at the suffocating, empty air.

“Kiii?”

The sharp noise cut through the silence like a blade. I jumped. It sounded so loud, so jarringly out of place, because there was no ambient noise to soften it.

Elaister lifted a finger. “Hear that? Means there’s an animal in the butchering house.”

The bushes behind her rattled. Then it stepped out.

A goblin. BUT not the kind I knew.

Back home, goblins were pests, dangerous, but small, wiry, panicky little things. Filthy and desperate, but predictable.

This one…

Its skin was pale, almost gray-green, like rotting cabbage. Thick black veins crawled beneath the flesh, pulsing as if something inside wanted out. Its spine bulged unnaturally, as if it had split open once and poorly resealed. The legs were too long. Its stance too upright. Its height reached my shoulders.

Worst of all, its right arm was missing. In its place, a mutated stump oozed blackened mass. And yet…

It held its right arm on its left as a weapon.

The severed limb had fused with the same black veins, the bone exposed and sharpened like a blade. Its fingers twitched like a parasite learning how to move.

A demon-touched goblin.

My mouth dried instantly.

“Watch me, mule.”

Elaister’s voice snapped me out of my spiraling fear.

She reached into Pandora again, this time drawing out… a cane?

With one sharp motion, she snapped it open. The outer casing split, collapsing inward, and a blade slid free.

“Let me show you how swordfight is done.” She lifted the blade, resting it lightly on her shoulder. “I prefer not to demonstrate personally, but a great teacher shows things once. So, watch closely.”

She stepped forward with casual, almost lazily.

The goblin grinned back at her, jagged teeth bared. It saw an easy meal. Its muscles tensed and lunged.

It threw its entire twisted weight behind the strike, severed arm clutched in its remaining hand like a crude butcher’s blade. Its mutated veins pulsed black, eyes wide with feral hunger.

I flinched.

“First lesson,” she said lightly, almost bored. “When in confrontation with bladed appendages, the first objective isn’t to kill.” she pivoted to the right, letting the goblin’s bone-blade whistle past her coat by a hair’s breadth, “But to live.”

She flicked her visor toward me, “However, because we are hunting… live so you can kill Is more accurate.”

The goblin snarled, stumbling from its overextended slash. Elaister was already to its flank, steps controlled.

“Look at its weaker spot,” she said. “This fellow doesn’t have a right arm. Its range is mostly on the left side. Keep that in mind.”

The goblin regained balance, black veins pulsing. It struck again, blade-arms sweeping in vicious arcs.

Elaister barely moved.
A tilt of her head.
A shift of her heel.

The goblin’s weapon sliced through empty air, its edge only grazing a loose strand of her white coat.

“This transitions nicely to our next lesson,” she announced like a professor lecturing a quiet classroom.

She stepped in.

Fast, no… Smooth.

“Play with range,” she said, tone almost bored. “Range is a tool to control pace. And once pace is controlled...”

Her sword plunged cleanly into the goblin’s shoulder joint.

“…It as if you could control time itself.”

CRACK.

Its entire right side, what remained of it, collapsed as she leveraged the cane-blade like a surgical lever. Veins ruptured. Bone snapped.

“KKKKIIIIIIIIK-KCKKK!”

The screech tore through the silent bubble, grotesquely loud in the absence of wind or birds or anything else to soften it. The goblin thrashed, head snapping left and right instinctively as if seeking its pack.

“You see?” Elaister said, flicking its blood off her blade with a casual twist. “This not so midget is trying to call its peers. Goblins’ advantage is numbers. But sound is not its ally in this particular circumstance.”

She swept her leg in a low arc and her sword followed.

Shhk!

Both its legs buckled. Not severed, just cut deeply through the muscle, clean incisions that tore stability out of its body.

“You see,” she continued, speaking over its screams without hesitation, “swords are sharp. You don’t need immense strength. Just a good edge alignment and targeting the right muscle groups.”

She pointed with her blade.

“This one,”

She stabbed.

“And this,”

A slash.

“This,”

A jab

“Also, this.”

Each place she pointed to, she struck. Small cuts individually. Devastating in combination.

The goblin’s movements weakened, then slowed, then stopped, leaving it sprawled helpless, twitching and bleeding out on the dirt.

“Anyway,” she continued, “this lesson only applies to humanoids or creatures with flesh properly proportioned for your cutting ability. Meaning, no giants, spirits, armored types, scaled nightmares, overwhelming assholes, or ranged bastards. You will die. Just like….”

She reached into Pandora.

A shimmer of silver.

“…this guy.”

SHK!

The blade plunged straight into the goblin’s heart, Its body convulsed once, then fell still.

I swallowed, my grip tightening around the sword she’d given me. The leather felt slick in my palms.

That… that was swordsmanship?

Precision?
Control?
Reading weaknesses like she was reading lines off a page?

Did she expect me to get all of that in just-

“Do you get it?” she asked, wiping her blade off on the goblin’s ragged loincloth. Not even looking back.

“I…” My voice cracked.

Do I?
Did I?

No way!

But I nodded anyway.

“Good, You’ll need to finish each goblin the same way. Heart stab. Use the knife sticking in that guy’s chest.”

She jerked her head at the bleeding corpse.

“Your job is simple, mule, lure them here. One at a time. Kill as many as you can.”

She didn’t look at me, but her visor angled just enough for me to feel her stare.

“You can’t keep being a passive mule,” she said, voice dropping to something almost serious. “Time to be an active one.”

Then the plates under her feet hummed.

Her body lifted effortlessly from the ground, coat fluttering in silent wind.

“I’m off to deal with the nest’s king and queen. You? I’m not sure you’ll survive even one unless you follow instructions.”

Before she fully gone, she added one more thing without looking back.

“Make sure you only lure one at a time.”

A pause.

“I don’t like wasting resources.”

And then she rose into the air, disappearing into the forest canopy like a streak of violet light.

Leaving me alone.

---

For a long moment, I just stood there.

Trying to steady the shaking in my hands.

The goblin Elaister killed lay sprawled at my feet, its blood seeping into the dirt. The silence dome smothered the world, no wind, no leaves rustling, no distant chirps.

Just me.
And the weight on my back.

The plate pulled downward like a living thing. Every shift I made forced my knees to compensate, tendons straining. It felt like carrying three packs at once, maybe more. My spine ached.

Still… I moved.

I grabbed the shimmering knife from the goblin’s chest and wiped it with my sleeve, trying not to gag at the smell.

“All I have to do is… lure one,” I whispered to myself. “Yeah, just one.”

But the silence swallowed even my own voice. It was eerie.

I stepped toward the edge of the dome. The invisible barrier hummed faintly against my skin as I passed through it.

And suddenly…

Sound returned all at once.

Wind. Birds. Insects. The forest breathing.

I exhaled in relief.

Then I inhaled sharply, the forest stank.

Rot. Blood. Wet fur. Mold. And something sickly, the stench of something corrupted.

I took another shaky step forward, gripping the sword tight. The weight on my back dragged me sideways and I almost stumbled.

“Just one,” I whispered again, even though saying it didn’t make it true.

A twig cracked somewhere ahead.

“Ki… kiii?”

One goblin stumbled into view from behind a fallen tree. Pale. Veined. Missing chunks of skin on its left arm. Wound still bubbling with black.

It saw me.

Its head twitched in recognition.

But… it didn’t charge.

It sniffed.

Once.
Twice.

And then it grinned.

“Khikhikhi….”

My heart lurched.

“Wait-”

Two more heads rose behind it.

Then another.

Four. No, five. One was crawling, dragging a leg twisted backward at a horrible angle.

“S…stop-! No!”

They all shrieked at once.

“KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

The sound tore through the forest and into my skull. I clapped a hand over one ear, staggering backward.

I’d failed. I had one job. And I failed instantly.

I turned and ran toward the silence dome. The weighted plate jerked with every step, nearly pulling me sideways. My breath came in panicked bursts.

Please make it, please, please…

‘But even if I make it… No one will…’

A goblin pounced, its bone-blade arm stabbing toward my ribs.

I barely dodged. The blade sliced across my hip, tearing cloth, scraping skin. Pain flared white-hot.

I screamed.

The silence dome swallowed the sound whole as I tumbled inside.

The world muted in an instant.

The goblins burst through after me, five grotesque shapes tearing through the barrier.

I put the knife on my back pocket and raised my sword with both trembling hands.

“Okay-” I gasped, trying to remember Elaister’s lessons. “Edge alignment, muscle, control pace, range- range- range-”

“KIII!” The first goblin lunged.

I panicked, “GET AWAY FROM ME!” and swung wildly.

The sword hit its shoulder, but instead of slicing through cleanly, it bounced off sinew and bone. The edge was wrong. My form was wrong. My feet were wrong.

The weight on my back ruined my stance and I stumbled.

The goblin seized the moment.

Its bone arm stabbed forward, straight toward my throat.

I dropped to my knees, barely ducking it. The movement sent a shock through my back as the plate dragged me down violently.

My elbows hit the dirt hard.

The second goblin came at me from the side. Claws raked across my forearm. Hot blood soaked into my sleeve instantly.

“Ghn-!”

The third goblin’s foot smashed into my stomach. Air flew from my lungs as I rolled, vision blurring. The world spun. My sword slipped from my hand.

Everything hurt.

I scrambled, desperately reaching for the blade, fingers brushing the hilt-

A goblin kicked my wrist.

My hand bent with a painful crack.

Sweat stung my eyes.

Blood dripped onto the dirt from my forearm.

The goblins advanced slowly now, savoring it, circling me like wolves around a dying deer. Their movements were twitchy, jerky, unnatural. Black veins pulsed like parasites under their skin.

I tried to stand. The weight on my back forced me down again. My legs shook too violently.

I remembered Elaister’s words:

“You don’t need immense strength.”
“Good edge alignment.”
“Target weak spots.”
“One-on-one, mule. Just one.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat but never escaped.

I failed every single instruction.

The goblin with the crawling leg pulled itself closer, drooling black saliva.

One stepped on my sword, pinning it down. Another grabbed my hair, jerking my head upward. I felt its hot breath on my cheek. A fourth raised its bone-blade for the killing strike.

My back hit a tree trunk.

No escape.
No space.
Nowhere to run.

I was cornered.

The goblin’s bone-blade descended.

I clenched my eyes shut.

---

No pain came. No impact….

Just… void.

A strange, soundless, weightless void.

For a moment, I wondered if I had already died.

“…huh…”

But then-

A light shimmered.

Soft at first, like a candle flame in a cavern. Then brighter, warmer, golden, like dawn rising from beneath the earth.

It pulsed, and the darkness recoiled around it.

My breath caught.

Because in that golden glow, I heard a voice.

‘Move.’

It wasn’t a shout nor a plea.

It was a command.

But above all…

It felt familiar.

Like the voice I heard when I spoke to myself in the deepest parts of my mind, not the frightened, timid me of the present, but someone older, kinder, and infinitely stronger.

The weight on my back… felt lighter. Or maybe it was my heart that did.

For the first time in a long while…

I felt calm.

Golden radiance coiled into shape, forming a hazy silhouette of a man standing tall, wrapped in light. I couldn’t make out his face. Only the warmth that seemed to seep into me like a second heartbeat.

He extended a hand, pointing at me

‘Fight.’

The light burst.

My eyes snapped open.

---

The bone-blade missed by a narrow margin as I jerked my head sideways. The goblin’s arm stabbed into the tree bark instead, wedging itself deep.

It shrieked silently.

But my panic was gone.

My hands stopped trembling.

I moved, not faster nor stronger, but with a sudden clarity, a sharpness in the mind I’d never felt before.

Elaister’s voice echoed through my mind:

“Good edge alignment. Range. Pace.”
“Kill them with the knife. The heart.”
“Control the fight.”

‘The knife!’

I rolled, not gracefully, but just enough to make myself a space and grab the hilt from my back as another goblin pounced. I angled my body sideways, letting its claws rake over the plate on my back instead of my spine.

The impact hurt like hell, but not fatal!

I slashed.

The blade sank into its inner thigh, one of the weak spots Elaister casually listed like grocery items. The goblin collapsed, shrieking silently, blood spraying in dark arcs.

I moved to slash its neck before it hit the ground, twisting to face the second attacker. Its bone arm swung horizontally.

I dropped my weight.

The plate dragged me lower than intended, but that was fine. It made the goblin overextend.

There, the exposed armpit.

I stabbed upward.

The knife slipped between rib and muscle like slipping into a seam.

“Kiii?!”

I desperately pull the knife until it slashed its neck. The goblin convulsed.

“That’s two…”

Another rushed in from behind.

I didn’t have time to turn, but the golden silhouette flickered behind my eyes, guiding my instincts, not my strength.

I ducked, threw my head backward, and felt the wind of its swipe graze my hair. I jammed the knife backward, under my arm, blindly aiming, naively hoping.

Muscle groups. Tendons. Cut mobility first.

The blade struck its knee. Something popped.

It collapsed into an awkward heap.

I pivoted and drove the knife into its heart.

Silence swallowed its twitching.

That made three.

The crawling goblin dragged itself toward me with grotesque determination. I didn’t give it the chance to reach. I stepped forward, adjusted the angle of my blade, remembering Elaister’s dry, bored tone.

“Even with weak strength, proper edge placement does everything.”

I plunged the knife down into its chest.

Four. Only one left.

The first, its bone limb trapped in the tree trunk.

It screeched silently as I approached. It tried to pull its mutated arm free, but the bark clenched tight around the wedged bone.

I stood before it, breathing heavily.

Blood dripped from my forearm, my hip screamed from earlier, and the weight on my back felt like a mountain.

But my mind remained sharp.

Clear.

I looked into the goblin’s terrified, furious eyes.

“…It’s nothing personal.”

I stabbed it cleanly through the heart.

It shuddered once.

And went still.

The silence dome swallowed everything again.

I staggered backward.

My knees buckled.

I collapsed onto the dirt, arms splayed out, staring at the sky, or what little of it I could see through the canopy. My chest rose and fell in ragged breaths.

“…Hah…”

I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t fast. I couldn’t even use my mana.

But for the first time… I didn’t feel useless, nor being deliberately used by someone else

In my exhausted haze, I saw a faint glimmer of gold between the leaves.

“I… did it…”

A genuine laugh bubbled up in my throat.

“I WON!”

I laughed out loud in the silenced dome, a sense of pride in my chest.

“Haha…hahhahahha-”

Though it didn’t last long before another sound seemingly answered my laugh.

“Kiiii..?”

The sound vibrated at the edge of the dome, something had wondered in.

I shot to my feet.

‘There’s an animal in the butchering house.’ Elaister would call it.

I slapped my cheeks hard, forcing the surge of overconfidence out of my system.

“Focus… focus…”

I retrieved my sword from the dirt and slid the blood-soaked knife back into my pocket.

Ellaister was right, range mattered.

Even when I won, there was too many close calls happened the moment I was only left with knife.

I could already see what I could do with the range this sword provide.

I raised my blade, steadying my breath.

“All right,” I muttered, setting my stance. “This time… a proper fight.”

The bushes rustled.

And the next threat stepped in.

---

つづく

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