He caught a faint foul odor in the air, like rotting meat mixed with excrement. It was weak, but sharp and unmistakable—very much like the smell goblins carried in his memory.
"Could there be goblins nearby?"
Wakasha's heart tightened. He stopped immediately, slowed his breathing, and cautiously looked in the direction the stench was coming from.
It led to a dense patch of bushes. The shrubs were tall—more than half a man's height—with thick, tangled branches and leaves that completely hid whatever was inside.
Wakasha moved forward little by little, carefully approaching the bushes without making a sound.
When he got to within about ten meters, he heard a faint series of chattering noises—high-pitched, messy, and impossible to understand, but unmistakably goblin voices.
His heartbeat quickened, and cold sweat gathered in his palms.
This was the first time he had encountered real goblins. He knew they were not especially strong individually, but the thought that there might be several of them inside still made him tense.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. His experience from his previous life told him that the more nervous he was, the easier it would be to make mistakes. Only by staying calm could he come up with a way to deal with this.
Slowly, he crouched down, picked up a small stone from the ground, and carefully tossed it at a large tree beside the bushes.
Thunk.
The pebble struck the trunk with a soft sound.
The chattering inside the bushes stopped instantly. A moment later, there came a rustling noise, as if something was moving through the brush.
Wakasha held his breath, gripped the short sword at his waist tightly, and stared at the bushes, ready for a fight.
After a moment, a goblin poked its head out from the bushes and cautiously scanned the surroundings.
It looked exactly like the goblins in Wakasha's memory: pointed ears, dark green skin, cloudy eyes, and thin limbs. It stood only about a meter tall, even shorter than Wakasha. It wore a tattered burlap shirt stained with grime and blood, and in its hand was a thick wooden club with some unknown filth smeared over one end.
Its gaze was murky, but there was something vile and savage in it. It looked left and right, failed to spot anything unusual, then let out a few more shrill cries, as if reporting back to its companions inside.
Wakasha quietly let out a breath of relief. It seemed only one goblin had come out to check. That meant there probably were not too many inside.
He slowly shifted his position and circled around to the side of the bushes, hoping to see how many goblins were actually there.
Once he got to the side, he peered through a gap in the foliage and finally saw what was inside.
There were three goblins in total. Besides the one that had just poked its head out, the other two were crouched together, gnawing on a chunk of rotting meat. It looked like the carcass of some wild beast. They were eating with obvious enjoyment, their mouths smeared with blood and filth. The foul smell was coming from there.
Three goblins. All of them looked like ordinary goblins. No stronger mutated type in sight. And right now they were fully focused on eating, with their guard down. For Wakasha, this was undoubtedly a good opportunity.
His mind began racing.
Three goblins. Individually, none of them were very strong. He had leather armor and a short sword. His body might be thin, but if he used the right strategy, he should be able to handle them.
And since they were distracted by food, he could ambush one first, catch them off guard, and then deal with the remaining two.
He slowly took the cloth bag off his back and set it behind a nearby tree so it would not get in his way during the fight.
Then he tightened his grip on the short sword, lowered his body, and carefully crept closer through the bushes toward the goblin nearest to him—the one with its back turned as it gnawed on the meat.
A goblin's hearing and sense of smell were not particularly bad, but they were not very smart, and these ones were too focused on eating to notice Wakasha approaching.
Step by step, he inched closer. The distance between them shrank. His heartbeat pounded harder and harder, and the sweat in his palm had already soaked through the coarse hemp wrapped around the sword hilt.
When he got within about two meters of the goblin, he stopped, took a deep breath, then suddenly lunged forward and drove the short sword into the goblin's back.
"Giiii!"
Caught completely off guard, the goblin let out a shrill scream as Wakasha slammed into it.
The short sword was not especially sharp, but Wakasha had put his full strength into the strike. The blade sank into the goblin's back and pierced straight through its body, the tip bursting out of its chest along with a spray of black blood that reeked horribly.
The other two goblins were startled by the scream. They stopped eating at once, whipped their heads around, and saw Wakasha on top of their companion. At once they erupted into furious chattering, waving their wooden clubs as they charged toward him.
Wakasha's heart clenched. He yanked the short sword free, shoved the dying goblin off himself, and quickly retreated a few steps to widen the distance.
The goblin he had stabbed collapsed to the ground. Its body twitched a few times, then went still. Black blood kept spilling from the wound, staining the earth around it.
Wakasha tightened his grip on the sword and fixed a wary stare on the two goblins rushing at him.
These two looked fiercer than the one he had just killed. Their cloudy eyes were burning with rage as they swung their clubs straight at his head and body.
Wakasha took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. Recalling some fighting techniques he had seen in his previous life, he twisted his body to the side and narrowly dodged the club swung by one of the goblins.
Bang.
The club smashed into the ground with a dull thud, sending dirt and dead leaves flying.
The other goblin seized the chance and brought its club swinging toward Wakasha's chest.
He had no time to dodge, so he could only raise his arm and block with the leather armor covering it.
Thud.
The club slammed into the leather armor with a heavy sound. Wakasha felt his arm go numb immediately as a wave of pain shot through it. The impact knocked him back several steps, and he almost lost his footing.
"So strong!"
Wakasha was shocked.
He had originally thought goblins were not that strong, but it turned out that even an ordinary goblin was a little stronger than he was. Luckily, he was wearing leather armor. Otherwise, that blow would definitely have injured his arm—and if that had happened, he would have been in real danger.